The last works bus rattles along the drenched streets, its wheels hissing on the film of water that never seems to drain away from the roads during the evening.  After 7 p.m. the weather system switches to the rain program, since most of the city's workers should have left for their homes two hours ago.  What kind of social system makes it easy for people to get to and from work, and for businesses to run efficiently during the day, but then arranges for it to piss down throughout the evening and night?  In what sort of sane world do you fix the weather to ruin any chance of a decent pub crawl, every night?  I mean, you might as well live in Manchester.

Imagine you are on this almost empty public transport; you might hear a muffled cough from the back seat, and your eyes will be drawn to a hunched figure in a grubby dark coat squatting beneath the rear window where the water streams down from the roof.  If you can pick out sharper notes from the pervasive smell of wet leather seats and damp wooden flooring, you'll perhaps notice this hunched figure is having a sneaky Woodbine and blowing the smoke under the seat in front of him, thinking that it's only the driver he has to conceal this minor transgression from.  The blue-grey smoke won't be hidden, though, and it swirls about the torn seats, rises, clings to the damp windows.  Then, if you look more closely, you'll see him take an equally furtive glance at his wristwatch.  Listen again: he's swearing under his breath.  I'm sorry to tell you that, as you've probably guessed, it's the author, who is beginning to realise just how late he's going to be if he misses his connecting ride.

Fortunately for this story, I'll tell you that he's got nothing to worry about.  He can't yet know that the connecting service is having to recharge its emergency battery, and so he'll have a few more minutes to fidget in curse-filled anxiety while he waits for it to arrive late, consider legging it the remaining half-mile to his apartment, dither with indecision, and then slump with relief as he sees it making its delayed arrival around the corner while he thanks a god he hadn't been praying to and whom he hasn't believed in for years anyway.

So imagine now that you're taking a moment to peer through the windows of this bus, and into the failing light.  Vanishing into the distance through the back window, the street lights seem to point towards the Frontier Worlds HQ building.  Most of its lights have gone out, with a small ring of bright spots in the centre of the bottom row where the security staff are still pacing up and down and setting off the heat-activated sensors which switch on the corridor lights.

Look across past the author and you can see the urban sprawl into which this bus will soon be turning, away from the edges of the open countryside, dark, wide fields full of ordered crops and, beyond, the wild, original, as yet uncleared jungle that characterises this part of the fertile planet Drebnar.

So that leaves only one direction, doesn't it?  That black slab of dark through the other window, cutting out the light from the stars with its sheer proximity, is the mountain.  Its lower slopes are barricaded with forbidding wire and unheeding Frontier Worlds guards and badly painted signs saying, KEEP OUT: PRIVATE PROPERTY.  On a clear day, and there haven't been many of those lately, you can see the cable car wending its three-stage passage up to the summit and to the research station, which clings like an Austrian schloss to the craggy peak.  But you'd have to have remarkably good eyesight to see that even during the day, and, since you don't, let's look back at the author, sitting and worrying about his time-management skills as the bus hisses on through the gathering gloom of evening.