The corridor had been windowless-and, John realized, he had seen no lanterns or lamps of any sort, yet it had been brightly lit. On the airship light had come from lamps set in the ceiling; he had been unsure whether they were electric or something else. Certainly they were brighter than any lamps he was familiar with; flames or filaments, however, had been hidden behind frosted glass.

This room he now found himself in, however, had a window-a very large window, taking up most of one wall in a single sheet of glass. John had never seen a single pane so large before. Beyond it the sky was still black-he had lost his sense of time and wondered if dawn might have arrived, but plainly it had not.

In the center of the room a plain young woman, clad in a traditional brown dress, stood behind a sort of lectern. She smiled cheerfully.

“Hlo,” she said, using a word John had never heard before. She continued, speaking with the Heavener accent, “Welcome to the Citadel of Heaven. May I have your name, please?"

“J'sevyu,” he replied politely. “I am Joel Meek-Before-Christ, and this is my wife Miriam, from the Church of the Only God, in North Dan.” Miriam, still drowsy, nodded agreement. She had not spoken since boarding the airship.

The woman drummed her fingers unevenly across the lectern, glanced down, then looked up again.

“Mr. Christ,” she said, “I'm glad to meet you. None of your people have come here before; are you here as a private individual, or as a representative of your tribe?"

Disconcerted by the peculiar mistake the woman had made in her abbreviation of his false surname-which would, of course, become “Meek", not “Christ", in conversation-John hesitated before replying, “Ah… as a private individual-but I'm sure that my family and friends will be interested in what I tell them when I get home."

She smiled. “I'm sure they will. I take it, though, that you don't have the authority to make a treaty with our protectorate on their behalf."

“No, ma'am, I'm afraid I don't."

“Well, that's fine; we just had to ask."

“No, ma'am, I'm here to sell woolens. A fellow in Little St. Peter told me that I could probably get a good price for them here."

A flicker of doubt crossed the woman's face. “Woolens? Not raw wool?"

“No, good woolens-I've got a hundred and fifty yards of the best weave you'll find, without kinks or runs, either raw, bleached, or dyed blue."

“Well, Mr. Christ, I'm not sure that you were well-advised, but since you're here, you might as well see what you can get for them. I don't know any buyer offhand; you'll have to try the old town market in the morning."

“That sounds just fine.” The woman had gotten the name wrong again; he was unsure whether or not to correct her. No one had ever before gotten his name wrong-but then, he had never used the name Meek-Before-Christ before.

“If you'll take this booklet-you can read, can't you?"

“Ma'am, of course I can read; it's the duty of every man to learn to read so that he can study the word of God, and my parents saw to it that I learned my duty!” John's response was unplanned and completely sincere, a restatement of what he had been told almost every day of his life between the ages of six and ten, from his first learning the alphabet until he could recite back a chapter of the Bible after a single reading.

“Of course, I'm sorry. If you'll take this booklet, it will tell you about the protectorate that the People of Heaven operate-I'm sure that your family and friends will be interested."

John accepted the little booklet and looked it over. It was printed on tan paper in incredibly small black type, but still clear and legible. The title was simply “The People of Heaven".

“And if you'll go through that exit,” the woman said, pointing to a brown door near one corner, “the stairs will bring you out on the main road into town. The market's just inside the gate, and there are the usual inns and hostels."

“Thank you,” John said. He started toward the indicated door, but stopped when he realized that Miriam was not following. He turned, and saw that she was still standing between the red door and the lectern, staring at the woman.

“Who are you people?” she demanded.

“Excuse me?” the woman said.

“Who are you people? What is this place? Was that really an airship? My dear Lord Jesus, what is going on?” She stared around. “Am I dreaming all this?"

“Ms. Christ, I…"

“What is that?” She pointed out the window.

John had not really paid much attention to the window; he had been aware of its presence and of darkness beyond, broken by lights, but he had not really looked at them as yet. Now he turned and looked.

They were on the second floor of a building, apparently, with an excellent view along a ridgetop road and of the peak at the end of that road. A walled town surrounded and covered the peak, lit by the usual miscellany of torches, lanterns, and an occasional incandescent lamp.

At the far side of the town, however, was a building, perhaps a fortress, that towered over the commonplace houses and shops. Its sides sloped up for five stories, and in every story lights were ablaze, patterning the walls with the squares of light and dark windows; the uppermost floor John estimated at a quarter mile or so in length, the lower floors somewhat larger. In the darkness he could not tell anything about its construction, but in the light that poured from its windows it was clear that its sides were unornamented and plain, its roof flat and featureless. It dwarfed the town below it, and in fact even the mountain itself seemed to be forced down and subdued beneath that vast blank weight.

Beside it stood something even taller, but narrow, something that gleamed silvery-gold where the light from the fortress reached it; John could not decide if the thing was another building, or a machine, or simply an object of some unknown sort. He could make out very few details, due to the distance and the darkness.

“What is that?” Miriam repeated.

“Do you mean our headquarters building?” the woman asked politely.

Miriam turned to stare at her. “Building? That shiny thing?"

“Oh,” the woman said. “Oh, that's another airship-a long-range one."

John was certain she was lying; the tone of her voice had been wrong, somehow. That thing was no mere airship.

Despite the impracticality of making hundred-year journeys, John was quite sure that the shining thing was a starship.

Two hours later John sat on the edge of his bed in a small nameless inn and stared at the pamphlet the woman had given him. He had read it through twice.

It said nothing about who the People of Heaven actually were, or where they came from, but only that they had “access to much of Earth's technology lost by the rest of Godsworld.” They welcomed trade, and would sell weapons and ammunition to any group that joined their protectorate by signing a simple agreement. That agreement required that the member group never attack another group-not just other members, but any other group. The weapons were for defense only. Members were not to discriminate on the basis of religion or race-heretics, or even agnostics and atheists, were to be treated as equals. All member groups were equal in status except the People of Heaven themselves. Anyone violating this agreement would be cut off from all further trade and would have all weapons repossessed-by force if necessary.

Anyone who wanted to was welcome to trade with the members for more common goods; only weapons and ammunition were restricted.

Those more common goods included fabrics, dyes, plastics (John had never seen the word in a plural form before), medicines, and machinery such as clocks and alarms.

He glanced over at Miriam, who was curled up on a chair in the corner. She had given no further trouble after he dragged her away from her frantic questioning of the woman at the airport (strange new word, “airport"-John was not accustomed to it yet and was self-conscious in using it even when only thinking). She had come along quietly to the inn, waited silently while John roused the innkeeper, and then settled in her current position when they reached the room.