No film clip, scale model, or blueprint, Whitney realized in that moment, could ever fully prepare one for the sheer impact of a Skyport's presence. A giant flying wing, the size of seven football fields laid end to end, the Skyport looked like nothing else in aviation history—looked like nothing, in fact, that had any business being up in the air in the first place. The fact that it also flew more efficiently than anything else in the sky seemed almost like a footnote in comparison, though it was of course the economic justification for the six Skyports now in service and McDonnell Douglas's main argument in their ongoing sales campaign. Staying aloft for weeks or months at a time, the Skyports were designed for maximum efficiency at high altitudes and speeds, dispensing with the heavy landing gear, noise suppressors, and high-lift flaps required on normal jetliners. And with very little time spent on the ground amid contaminants like dust and insects, the Skyports had finally been able to take advantage of the well-known theories of laminar flow control, enabling the huge craft to fly with less than half the drag of planes with a fraction of their capacity. In Whitney's personal view, it was probably this incredible fuel efficiency that had finally convinced United and TWA to take a chance on the idea.

The shuttle was directly behind the Skyport now and closing swiftly. From his window Whitney could see five of the seven basically independent modules that made up the Skyport and, just barely, the two port engines of the sixth. That would be all right; since only the center module's engines fired during this part of the flight, docking one module in from the end was essentially equivalent in noise and turbulence to docking in the end section. Docking one module from center, on the other hand, was rumored to be a loud and rather unnerving experience. It was a theory he wasn't anxious to test.

A flash of sunlight off to the left caught his eye—the second Houston shuttle, making its approach toward the second-to-last module at the other end. He watched with interest as the distant plane nosed toward its docking bay, watched it until the port-side engines of his own shuttle's target module blocked it from sight. The silvery trailing edge of the Skyport was very near now, and the slight vibration that had been building almost imperceptibly began to increase at a noticeable rate. Whitney was just trying to estimate the vibrational amplitude and to recall the docking bay's dimensional tolerance when a sound like a muffled bass drum came from the fuselage skin a meter in front of him and the vibration abruptly stopped. The docking collar, clamping solidly around them. With the noise of the Skyport's engines still filling the cabin, Whitney's straining ears had no chance of picking up the nosewheel's descent into the docking bay; but he did distinctly hear the thump as the bay's forward clamp locked onto the nosewheel's tow bar. Only then, with the shuttle firmly and officially docked, did he realize he'd been holding his breath. He let it out with a wry smile, feeling more than ever like a kid on a ride Disney had never dreamed of.

Another soft thump and hiss signaled that the pressurized tunnel was in place. A cool breeze wafted through the shuttle as the outer door was opened—and suddenly Whitney and his seatmate were moving, their ski lift seats following the grooves in floor and ceiling as they were moved first into the aisle and then forward toward the exit. They turned left at the doorway, and Whitney caught just a glimpse of the shuttle's other seats in motion behind him. Then, with only the slightest jerk of not-quite-aligned grooves, they were out of the shuttle and into a flexible-walled corridor that looked for all the world like the inside of an accordion. The tunnel was short, leading to another airplane-type doorway. Straight ahead, stretching down a long corridor, Whitney could see a column of seats like his own, filled with passengers for the shuttle's trip back down to Houston. There didn't seem to be enough room beside the column for the emerging seats to pass by easily, but Whitney was given little time to wonder about it. Just beyond the doorway his seat took a ninety-degree turn to the right, and he found himself sidling alongside a wall toward what looked like a lounge. To his left he could see the rest of the shuttle's seats following like a disjointed snake. The airlines had balked at the ski lift system, he remembered, complaining that it was unnecessarily complicated and expensive. But the time the shuttle spent in the docking bay translated into fuel for its return flight, and the essence of that was money... and the ski lift system gave the shuttle a mere ten-minute turnaround.

It was indeed a sort of lounge the chairs were taking them into, a rectangular space done up with soft colors and a carpet designed to disguise the grooves in the floor. In the center was a large, four-sided computer display giving destinations and the corresponding modules in large letters. Whitney's seatmate retrieved her briefcase from under her chair and hopped off as the chair entered the room and began to sidle its way across the floor; glancing at the display, she strode out through one of the wide doorways in the far wall. Whitney obeyed the rules, himself, waiting until the seat had come to a complete stop before undoing his belt and standing up. He was in module six, the display informed him, and passengers for Los Angeles could sit anywhere in modules one, two, six, or seven. Since his boarding pass indicated he'd be disembarking from module six anyway, it made the most sense to just stay here, a decision most of the others also seemed to have reached. Picking up his carry-on, he joined the surge forward. A short corridor lined with lavatory doors lay ahead; passing through it, he entered— Instant disorientation.

The room before him was huge, and was more a combination theater-cafe-lounge than an airplane cabin. Directly in front of him was a section containing standard airline chairs, but arranged in patterns that varied from the traditional side-by-side to cozy circles around low tables. To either side were small cubicles partially isolated from the main floor by ceiling-length panels of translucent, gray-tinted plastic. Further on toward the front of the Skyport, partially separated from the lounge by more of the tinted plastic, was a section that was clearly a dining area, with tables of various sizes and shapes, about a third of them occupied despite the early hour. Beyond that, the last section seemed to be divided into three small movie/TV rooms.

It all seemed almost scandalously wasteful for a craft that, for all its size and majesty, still had to answer to the law of gravity; but even as Whitney walked in among the lounge chairs he realized the extravagance was largely illusory. Despite the varied seating, little floor space was actually wasted, and most of that would have been required for aisles, anyway. The smoked-plastic panels gave the illusion that the room was larger than it actually was, while at the same time adding a sense of coziness to all the open space; and the careful use of color disguised the fact that the room's ceiling wasn't much higher than that of a normal jetliner.

For a few minutes Whitney wandered more or less aimlessly, absorbing the feel of the place. A rumble from his stomach reminded him that he'd had nothing yet that morning except coffee, though, and he cut short his exploration in favor of breakfast. Sitting down at one of the empty tables, he scanned the menu card briefly and then pushed the call button in the table's center. Safety, he noted, had not been sacrificed to style; the table and chair were both fastened securely to the floor, and the metal buckle of a standard lap/shoulder belt poked diffidently at his ribs.