# Arrival on Archipelago

We arrived at the big station, stowed away in a pressurised cargo hold, for the price of an excellent dinner with a fantastic view for the captain. We climbed out of the cramped, glorified garage when the auto-pilot stopped playing the piano and the rumbling and bumping indicated that the ship was secure. We bobbled down the gangway as the robots came up to unload the ship, waved good-bye to the captain and stared at the machines weaving their way all around us. There, in the back, was a ship of the [Amity Freight Cooperative](hamity_freight_cooperative). Should we go talk to them? Take some of the doors?

"Oy! Don't ya know people aren't supposed to be here? Listen to all them beepin' bottos that can't do their job because of ya. Who brought you here? What hell is wrong with ya blobbos?" There was a bot traffic controller gesticulating and Coras went to talk to him while the three Drasalites were standing nearby, looking innocent.

After a while to traffic controller pointed his lights at a door and said: "Take that door into the main lounge and you'll find Amity stalls everywhere. They're a cooperative and pretty distributed. Or talk to the cops. Security might know about your lost package."

And so we went. The passage was long and boring with endless doors to offices but the lounge is spectacular. I love O'Neill's cylinders. So majestic! And plenty of tourists, too. And my favourite coffee house, Starblobs! In the mean time, Coras, with the easy walk of an off-duty cop trying to blend in, steered towards the security block. No transparent glass windows, this time. Up here everything is built for sudden pressure drops. I wouldn't be surprised to hear that in the case of a fatal breakdown, the station would disassemble into a thousand little islands. Wait-a-minute, and "archipelago" of offices? Was this the joke? I don't see any beaches in any case, perhaps they're elsewhere in the cylinder. Probably where the paying guests are. As I'm thinking all this, we're already at the police station.

Coras is sweet-talking the lady and she leaves. He takes to the screen and starts typing and scrolling while I take notes of how the cops behave behind closed doors. It's funny to see but also not my kind of life. "Hey Mr. Coras, so sorry, the bio licensing department people are currently not in, try again tomorrow if you can't find what you're looking for?" She blinks, Coras blinks, we all nod our heads and mumble something friendly and then we leave.

I can't believe they gave Coras free access to the computer for at least two minutes and now he has lots of info to share!

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