"How big is this place?"

For almost an hour, we had been winding our way through hallways and courtyards, through indoor gardens with elaborate fountains, past rows of prefab huts that looked like closed retail shops.

"I don't know," Henry said, turning in circles, staring up at the glass dome high above our heads. "I've been in meeting rooms since I landed, but I haven't seen the actual Palace yet. It's like a small city in here."

It was busy like a city, too. Henry and I would have been completely lost if not for the fact that there were hundreds of Azodii packed around us, many wearing ceremonial antler-hats, all heading in the same direction. We just had to follow the crowd.

"Human attorneys!" I turned to see a chubby Azodii approaching, wearing a thick, toga-like gown and the familiar antlers on his head.

"Hello, Doctor Sylk," I said. Sylk shouldered and squeezed his way toward us. I wondered how he managed to find us, but I suppose with our human skin tones and duck-masks, we were easy to pick out of the crowd. We were dressed conspicuously as well. Togas and robes seemed to be the proper attire. I was still wearing a bright red ski-jacket, and Henry was wearing a brown Ralph Lauren single-breasted suit, tweed with a herringbone pattern. It was an odd color choice for him, but practical – the tweed looked warm.

"Good idea for you to get up and move around, Mr. Marshall. A little motion always warms me up!" Sylk gave me a friendly punch in the arm, it hurt more than it should have. "Heading to the feast, I assume? Mind if I walk with you?"

"Of course! Please join us," Henry said.

Sylk waddled alongside us, sipping intermittently from an oversized mug. "You know, I've always liked the Slatt Empire. You can say what you want about Lord Farkvold - fact is, he knows how to get things done." Sylk took a long slug of his drink.

"Well, we just represent the Slatt Territories," I said. "They're our clients. Our home planet, Earth, is still independent."

"So!" Henry said loudly, to change the subject. "Exactly how big is the Palace of Bal? I didn't realize that the grounds were so… expansive."

"We get that a lot," Sylk laughed. "The Palace grounds - the climate-controlled area inside the dome – are about twelve square kilometers."

Unfortunately, the translator implant in my molar didn't convert measurements from metric into imperial. But it sounded like there were a few miles of Palace grounds.

"Here, let's take a detour, you'll like this. Come," Sylk took me by the arm and steered us down an empty corridor, away from the crowd of festivalgoers. We ducked into a small compartment with a sliding door, it wasn't until we were lifting upward that I realized we were in an elevator.

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"Tourists love this," the elevator stopped, and Sylk took another sip before stepping out. We were standing on a kind of catwalk with a transparent floor. The air was warmer, and the top of the glass dome was only a few feet above our heads. The walkway seemed to stretch for miles ahead, running the entire length of the Palace grounds. Sylk strode to the edge of the catwalk and looked out, an expression of pride on his face.

"How's that for a view? You can see the entire grounds from up here," Sylk pointed down over the thin plastic railing. "There are almost a million Azodii living here, under the dome. So you're right – the Palace of Bal is not just a palace. It's one of the five domed cities on Planet Azodii."

I noticed that Henry was keeping to the center of the platform, and I understood why. The view was dizzying: the floor beneath our feet was smooth glass, and beneath that a sixty or seventy story drop to the ground.

"Many years ago, the people of Azodii learned how to harness the Heart energy from the great Gar-Mel," Sylk continued. "That's when we started to build the dome enclosure, to capture the heat." I could see the halls and shops below us, in the distance were greenhouses and machinery, small hut-homes exhaling thin plumes of smoke, and the reflection of a clear reservoir pool.

"What are those, over there?" Henry was pointing to a fenced area far off in the corner of the dome. I could see rows of large tubes, standing upright, with uniformed Azodii Militia marching in rectangular formation around them. It was unmistakable what the objects were; Doctor Sylk confirmed it:

"That is our missile and bomb depository," Sylk said. "Heavily guarded, as you can see."

"You have a million Azodii living here… isn't it dangerous? Keeping bombs so close to the civilian population?"

Doctor Sylk shrugged and nodded, "Yes, I suppose so. But in here, our stockpiles are protected. The most important thing is to keep our weaponry safe."

I knew that any response would have sounded confrontational, so I kept my mouth shut. Lord Farkvold had said that Azodii was a militarized planet; apparently, they were so militarized that they valued the safety of bombs over the safety of their citizens. I made a mental note, because it spoke volumes about the character of the Azodii leadership. With their affinity for bombs, I considered that maybe Azodii would make a good Territory of Slatt.

"Thanks for the tour, Doctor Sylk," Henry said. I noticed that he looked a little green, and I wondered if maybe Henry was afraid of heights. "It's great to see the view from the top. Should we head back down now?"

"Sure," Sylk pointed to a massive stone fortress in the center of the dome. "That's the actual Palace of Bal, proper. We'll go back and head for the side entrance, it's a little less packed and we can avoid some of the crowd." Henry was the first to step back into the elevator. His oxygenator mask was fogged over from heavy-breathing.

"So you see, humans," Sylk said as we rode the elevator back down to ground level. " There is a rich history here – we started as just a castle sitting in the cold wasteland. Then we became the seat of planetary government. And then came the Great Heartening… but you'll hear about all of this during the Heart Ceremony. Come on, this way."

We shuffled ahead as the crowd closed in from the sides and grew denser. "The feast is in the Main Hall of the Palace, which also houses the Heart Chamber," Sylk pointed to an archway ahead, where I could see the crowd bottlenecking.

We were propelled forward, through the archway, through a sea of robes and antlers and dark-blue skin. I felt Sylk tug at my wrist and the three of us backed against a stone wall, into a small nook we could claim for our own. The stadium-like room was loud, crammed with bodies, abuzz with voices and music, with flutes and drums playing different songs at different tempos.

"Here we are!" Sylk yelled over the din. "Welcome to the celebration! The show will start soon."