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He's about seventy degrees away planetwise. The stargate's in a high orbit (geosynchronous), so it'd only take a little longer if he was actually on the other side given the time needed to descend.
"Well, I'm not doing anything right now, it'd just be a couple hours to fetch you up and a couple more to put you back. Although your ship'd be unattended during."
"May as well wait. I'm not in a good spot to tie down. Tomorrow I'll probably find a good town to dock at, it can happen then. Thanks, by the way."
Time passes. Lyl Jupiter sends a message that they got crash funding approved but her career is dead if he reneges on his offer of stuff so she'd appreciate him not doing that.
"My offer's good, as long as the computers and medicine not weapons assurance was real."
"Some people are gonna want weapons, but if they ask and you refuse all it'll do to the rest of the council is cost them political capital."
"Shen's preliminary evaluation says fifty-six days. They did actually take a gate ring off the assembly line, they're just modifying it heavily."
"Gates take time. I'll keep you posted."
"Thanks. I may be in and out of the station sometimes, not necessarily by the phone all hours."
"Thanks for warning me. Bye for now, then."
Since there's nothing immediately needing doing on the station Cam goes back down to the planet. He feels like bestowing largesse on another town.
This town is a lot larger. There are hundreds of islands tied together in a carefully laid out sort of inverse pyramid, with more hidden inside. The resulting shape is like a conical section of a sphere. Buildings are part of the islands themselves as opposed to mostly built on top of them like in the first town. It looks like there could be quite a maze of tunnels inside. Mirrors and skylights here and there seem designed to bring light into the structure. At the very top is a grandiose shiny glass tower surrounded by spear-armed and white-uniformed guards.
Cam sends his ship up again and lands, not near the shiny glass tower.
There's a nice open farm/park near the edges to land in. All the people in plain clothes working there back away from him.
One person gets pushed forward as the group's spokeswoman "Er... Hello. Welcome to Helricston?"
She smiles. "We try. I'm called Rata. Are you an... From beyond the storms?"
She cringes and gulps. "Are you an angel? Most of us aren't sinners, I promise!"
"I'm not an angel, and even if I were, I wouldn't be here to do you any harm or ask personal questions about your moral behavior."
A pair of guards shows up on the farmpark's edge, take one look at him, and run back the way they came. Not in a terrified kind of way, in an 'urgent message' kind of way.