In five minutes, the train started moving, and within a couple hundred yards they were back in the darkness. The track began to slope downward, the train picked up speed and within fifteen minutes Lewis saw light up ahead. A moment later the train shot out of the tunnel into a sloping desert landscape. The train was slowing down and he could feel the brakes being applied and released repeatedly. A sign appeared that said ‘Dryside: one kilometer.’ After another minute the train eased to a slow stop, and the porter came through the door again to tell everyone that there would be an hour stop while they took on water. Fink was asleep, so Lewis and Victor left the train to look around. They walked around the train in a cool breeze that blew dust off the road in little whirlwinds. The train had stopped under a sluice that carried water on past the tracks to a waterwheel that was turning noisily. It rotated on a two-inch shaft that went into a small building with wires coming out of the top and leading to a series of poles that ran through the town. After the waterwheel the water ran toward several acres of corrals with lizards and birds in them.

The town consisted of a main street that was perpendicular to the tracks, with six large buildings on either side and a small collection of houses behind them. People were milling about, many going from the train to the café. Lewis watched a woman in dusty coveralls climb a ladder to the sluice and pull hard on a lever. The water stopped flowing to the waterwheel and was diverted to an opening on the top of the train’s engine. The waterwheel stopped convulsively, all the signs on the buildings went dark and the streetlights, which had been on, flickered and died.

“If you want to eat, we had better head over to the cafe,” Victor said.

“Do the trains only run during the daytime?” Lewis asked, as they made their way to the café.

“As far as I know, that is true,” Victor replied.

They found a table in the crowded dining room, and ate well in its dim interior which was lit by the large windows that faced the street. As they exited the cafe the train engineer was signaling the woman on the scaffold to stop the water. It was diverted to the waterwheel where it gurgled and gushed all over the top of the wheel, but nothing moved. The woman walked down the sluice and stepped out on the wheel and walked down it like stairs. Her weight started the wheel turning and she jumped off near the ground. She strode up the street dripping and leaving a trail of mud in her wake. The wheel turned like it had never stopped, restoring the signs and the streetlights to their original vigor.

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Lewis was considering going to the dry goods store across the street, but the bell on the train rang. They joined the crowd heading back to board the train. Fink was still asleep on his seat, so Lewis and Victor took their seats and waited for the train to start moving again.

They spent an hour looking out at a vast desert. Finally they saw some greenery, in the form of small bunches of fronds growing like bushes out of the dust. A little way further the fronds became thick, and there was an occasional tree. When the first houses of Farside came into view the train began to decelerate. As they entered the city Lewis saw no signs of the wreckage he had seen elsewhere. The train passed by the north side of downtown then swung south in a big, lazy arc. The skyline of the downtown was still on the left side when they entered an enormous building. They slowed to a stop inside and everybody filed out.

There were benches, tables, trash cans and kiosks. All along the west wall there were ticket counters, several hundred feet away from where he stood, but the signs above each one were dark and still. A few had been converted to shops, but most were just empty.

The familiarity brought back waves of memory, starkly contrasted by the emptiness of the cavernous space. The building covered several acres, and yet even with the passengers that had disembarked from the train, there were less than fifty people visible on that side of the building.

Fink looked around in obvious delight, smiling and taking it all in. “What a place, huh? There’s a place like this in the ruins, on the other side of the river, in Ladzoo,” Fink said, pointing up. “The ceiling is not as intact in that terminal building. This one is just incredible. I’ll bet it could hold thousands of people.”

Lewis looked up at the structure over their heads. It consisted of arching beams every hundred feet or so, with crossbeams connecting them at similar intervals. The resulting squares were filled with panels from a single sheet of transparent material, showing the grey sky above. Some of the panels were missing, but they had been replaced by individual roofs that stood out in stark contrast to the original panels.

Victor looked impatient, and after gazing up at the ceiling for a few minutes said. “Let’s check on the ferry, maybe we can catch one today.”

He hurried them out of the north end of the building, where the train had entered the building. A group of soldiers manned the opening, and pulled a rolling gate across it, which restricted people exiting down to single file. Several people were already in line to leave. The guard questioned each one and then let them pass, sometimes looking at their papers. Lewis dug out his own papers and saw Fink do the same. Victor’s uniform elicited a salute.

He nodded his acknowledgement, saying. “These two are with me.”

They didn’t need their papers after all.