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center—or rather, surrounding the center, like a shell of vacancy—the tourist area.
    Vykor dropped down Chute Number Gold nervously. Today Chute Number Platinum was nearer the Majko section, but no Majko could afford to enter that chute, let alone Number Radium. Vykor wore his ordinary drab leisure clothes as a hint to concessionaires that he was not by intention a customer.
    A hundred iridescent yellow bubbles soared up the chute to burst around his feet. What had the builders set aside this area for? Purely as a recreation center for the vessel’s original passengers? In that case, their journey must have been an incredibly long one—or they were incredibly hard to keep amused.
    Music swelled around him. One note that was struck seemed to make the very bone of his cranium resonate; it filled his brain with confusion and his eyes with tears. He caught at the side of the chute for an instant, to recover, and a boy and girl in their teens dived past him, yelling and laughing as they plunged head first toward the end of the chute. They were Glaithes, both of them; they had been to the station at least twice before, because every Glaithe child had to know about Waystation, had to think, dream, live Waystation in all its aspects so that the iron grip of Glai should not loosen.
    No; correction: Not an iron grip. A grip like gravity, permitting certain movements, forbidding escape.
    The chute widened, and the drop came to its end with a mist of purple perfume and a chiming of bronze gongs. Vykor felt his sandals sink a few inches into a firm but yielding floor, steadied himself by stretching out his arms like a tightrope walker, and looked around.
    Today, Chute Number Gold led to the Plains, it seemed. A rolling expanse ahead of him seemed endless: blue-green under an arched blue ceiling like an open sky. This was the calmest area of the tourist circuit.
    The Glaithe children had caught at a hover as it skimmed past, and were now hanging thirty feet above the ground by their right arms, laughing with each other and gesturing toward the ground. Vykor followed their gaze, and saw a trio of Cathrodynes—middle-aged, the two women in scarlet and the man in soiled white—who slept on their backs with their mouths open. Empty bottles ringed them; plates bearing the crusts and hulls of food were overset at their sides.
    Even as Vykor grimaced at them—the masters relaxing— the ground opened up and cleared away the rubbish. The boy and girl overhead chuckled and turned their hover away. They would be as grave as Raige in another year or two; now, they were learning not to forget to laugh. The secret of the Glaithes’ achievements lay somewhere in the laughter which they managed to retain.
    Vykor shook his head and began to walk across the Plains. In a little while he came to the Ocean, and plunged into it.
    “You there!” said a person half woman, half fish, whose full, bare and very beautiful breasts glistened like mother-of- pearl. She leaned from a coral cave rn -mouth; her hair was dyed orange to match the coral.
    Vykor bubbled air from his mouth and breathed deeply. It was always terrifying for strangers to breathe the Ocean, but it was not water—it was a synthetic organic fluid containing a slightly higher proportion of free oxygen than the air of Majkosi and the same proportion as the ordinary air of Waystation. Vykor had been here before, a dozen times.
    He said peaceably, hearing the sound buzz in his ears, “I am not rich enough to be a customer of yours.”
    The half woman made a disgusted noise. She was a Lubarrian; the Glaithes rented the greater part of the concessions in the tourist circuit to members of the “free” populations from the subject worlds here. It was a good way of keeping them occupied and making use of them, to look at it cynically; to look at it more clearly, it gave many people a reason to go on living.
    “Besides,” continued Vykor, “I am looking for someone. Do you know a stranger