Lareet had no doubt at all that Commander Keale had thought about that carefully.
Umat took her hand, startling her out of her reverie. “You feel well, Sister? Your womb does not trouble you?”
Lareet waggled her ears briefly. “Sister, I never feel anything until the fourth month, you know that.”
“I just wanted to make sure. You looked troubled.”
Lareet shook her head. “Not troubled, just concerned about what their Commander Keale has set up as obstacles for us.”
Umat shrugged. “We'll find out soon enough.”
Hand in hand, they walked across the lawn to the manufactury set aside for metalworks. The Dayisen Avit, Huir, and Wital, met them at the main door. After the formalities and polite expressions of wonder at the beauty of their city, the Dayisen Avit led them to the manufactury floor.
Lareet was used to manufacturies being loud, filthy, stench-choked places. This warehouse of a room was almost sterile. The workers stood or sat around video monitors mounted on sealed vats, long tubes, or boxlike constructions. They all spoke in hushed voices as if afraid to interrupt the gentle hum filling the air. Off to the side, more people stood around, examining diagrams and passing small ingots of metal among themselves and making notes.
Dayisen Huir rattled off a stream of commentary about output and technique with barely suppressed excitement. The wonder of the Humans’ equipment! They were learning something new every five minutes. There were Human experts on call, of course, but they were barely needed because the computer instructions were so comprehensive. Here they were planning bridges and catwalks between the buildings. Here, they were seeing about additional piping for interior and courtyard fountains. Everyone was, of course, coordinating with the architectural families, but the possibilities were endless. Dayisen Wital escorted them in silence, her face creased with good-natured bemusement at her sister's flood of words.
Finally, the Dayisen Avit ushered them into a side chamber. The room was long and narrow and almost empty. Two metal sheets had been propped up at the far end. Two others leaned against a table beside the door. The table also had a plastic case sitting on it.
“This is a storage room,” said Dayisen Huir as she closed the door. “It's not monitored, as far as we can tell.”
Dayisen Wital opened the case and displayed the matching pair of shoulder guns.
Lareet lifted out one of the freshly machined guns and checked the ammunition cartridge. Cradling the stock against her shoulder, she took careful aim at the steel plate at the other end of the room. Next to her, Umat did the same. The Dayisen Avit shoved the table and its metal plates around to form a makeshift shield for them.
Umat lowered her ears. “One, two, three.”
Lareet and Umat fired together. Light, smoke, and noise erupted with the shots, then faded away. They ducked behind the shield. The shots ricocheted off the sheets and thumped into the walls.
Umat sneezed. Gunsmoke always did that to her. Lareet patted her shoulder absently, looked down at the gun, then looked at the plates at the end of the room. The bullets had left deep grooves in the inch-thick steel.
She nodded. “Very good, Dayisen Avit. They will do.”
“There is one more thing you need to see,” said Dayisen Huir. “If you'll come outside?”
They walked back into the warm daylight. The Dayisen Avit led them across a grassy lawn toward the edge of the dome with its concealing trees.
They stopped at a white surveyor's stick that had been thrust into the turf. Dayisen Huir turned to them. “Dayisen Lareet, would you please walk toward the dome?”
Lareet felt her ears fall back just a little, but she did as Dayisen Huir requested. For the first few steps, everything was fine. Then, she noticed that ahead of her, the grass lay strangely. The blades pressed flat against the ground. She glanced at the trees, blinked, and looked again. It looked as if the trees leaned toward her.
A few more steps and her legs began to feel heavy. She leaned into her steps. Her eyes told her the ground was flat, but every fiber in her body told her she was toiling up an increasingly steep hill. After another yard, she fell to her knees. She tried to keep going on her knees, but at last she had to lie flat on her belly and crawl.
World Mothers, what have they done? The difference between what her eyes saw and what she felt was too confusing. Lareet clamped all her lids down over her eyes and began inching backward until she felt she was on level ground again.
She opened her eyes and stood up carefully. Umat wrapped an arm around her shoulder.
“What happened?” Umat asked the Dayisen Avit over her head.
“We think they've turned off the gravity in this section,” said Dayisen Wital. “The generators are in a honeycomb structure, so if they turn off one generator, you are pulled toward the next nearest generator. The result is, whatever it may look like, is you are standing on a wall, because the pull of gravity is to one side of you rather than directly underneath you.”