The Man Who Received a Spaceship: It Turned Out to Be a Star!? - chapter 10
Chapter 10: The Gifted Spaceship Was a Star
“Ten minutes until arrival at Agiracana’s First Spaceport.”
“The small object visible in the center front is Agiracana,” Ein said, standing beside me. I wondered if she was alright standing for nearly two hours.
A small black circle appeared in the middle of the forward screen. It grew larger at a visible rate.
After a while, various points on its surface began to flicker, apparently emitting light. Several black dots, like stars, became visible around it. Seeing them move, I realized they might be spaceships.
As we approached further, what had looked like specks turned out to be round spaceships accompanied by pointed smaller vessels, slowly moving in groups. The black circle in front gradually took on the appearance of a thick sphere, with light leaking from several holes.
This looks unmistakably like a star.
“Squadron has entered the approach path to Agiracana’s First Spaceport.”
“Reduce squadron speed to minimum.”
“Squadron at minimum speed!”
“Welcome to Agiracana. This is First Spaceport Control. We will now take over the navigation of LC-0001.”
“Handing over navigation to Agiracana First Spaceport Control.”
As we drew closer, the sphere expanded rapidly, overflowing even the side screens.
I thought we were going to crash, and my insides clenched again, but looking closely at the front, it seemed our ship had entered one of the large holes we’d seen earlier. It was hard to gauge the distance, but the hole’s diameter must have been at least 100 kilometers. Six rows of lights extended deep into the hole, which appeared blue in its depths. This hole was incredibly deep.
“We’ve passed through Agiracana’s outermost layer. The First Spaceport is at the bottom of this shaft,” Ein explained.
If there’s an outermost layer, there must be multiple layers.
Our ship continued descending into the hole.
Just when I wondered how far it went, the bright blue area visible on the front screen approached. Suddenly, the hole seemed to rotate. The ship must have changed direction. It was dizzying.
“This ship is entering the atmospheric layer within the shaft. The shaft’s atmosphere is currently composed of the same elements as Earth’s, and the air pressure around the First Pier is adjusted to 1 atmosphere.”
The way she said it, they must have changed it for me. Did they go that far?
The direction changed again, and a wall with a long rod protruding from it approached.
“This ship will now dock at the First Pier.”
Without any sense of acceleration or deceleration, it was hard to tell, but the ship seemed to have stopped.
After a pause, the captain and everyone else in the command room stood up and looked at me.
“Thank you,” I said casually. Everyone raised their right hand in that salute-like gesture. Not wanting to keep them standing, I mimicked the gesture in return.
Afterward, Ein led me out of the command room and into an elevator, just as we had arrived.
We arrived at what seemed to be a different elevator hall from the one we entered through. There appeared to be only four elevators here, while I remembered seeing about ten in the previous hall.
“The First Pier has a direct passage to the core interior. There’s a dedicated shuttle running through the passage, which we’ll take to the captain’s quarters in the core. Until today, the shuttle had never been used to transport people due to the absence of a captain, so this will be its first run with passengers.”
Captain’s quarters? Dedicated shuttle? What kind of VIP is this captain supposed to be?
As we disembarked and headed towards the shuttle, I looked up to see a blue sky. Is this what it’s like looking up from the bottom of a well? Though the meaning is different, I was reminded of the phrase “a frog in a well.”
The shuttle to the core interior looked exactly like a maglev train, a two-car silver vehicle without paint, wheels, or windows. Inside were very spacious seats, which we were directed to sit in.
The shuttle departed the platform, silently entering a tunnel with the same cross-section as the vehicle.
Immediately, a bulkhead closed behind us at the tunnel entrance. The air in the tunnel was gradually evacuated, and after passing through several bulkheads, the tunnel became nearly vacuum. At that point, the shuttle’s speed reportedly exceeded 3 kilometers per second – Mach 9.
The shuttle soon began to decelerate, passing through several more bulkheads as the tunnel returned to normal air pressure. The final bulkhead opened, and we arrived at the terminus, coming to a stop.
We had covered 150 kilometers in three minutes. This information, along with everything else, comes secondhand from Ein’s explanation, as during the ride we couldn’t see outside, heard no noise, felt no vibration or acceleration.
When I asked why they used vehicles instead of teleportation, which seemed inefficient, Ein explained that teleportation was prohibited in the core interior for safety reasons, with a few exceptions.