He closed in on the Queen’s foredecks to see gaily-attired humans walking and talking. A high percentage appeared of be East Asian. Tourists? Lowering his line of sight, he took census on and around the Scorpion, the mothballed Russian submarine that is the cruise ship’s sister attraction. A greater number of her aficionados looked like ruddy Europeans to him. Last, he confirmed that there were no visible vehicles other than buses in the lot.

He lay there, mind awash in speculation, until groups of visitors began streaming down the gangway. David studied the digital marquees on the buses closest to his position as they flashed through their multilingual destination displays – he recognized Mandarin, Korean, Vietnamese, Tagalog, Spanish, German, French, Arabic, and Russian – until he saw:

LAX: Los Angeles International Airport

He counted five of those, all contiguous. It struck him that they were all the same make and model, had those forward mounted side mirrors that made them resemble praying mantises – like he’d first seen on a business trip to Shanghai – and the entire fleet had been parked in astonishingly close order. Once the boarding doors were opened there was no room around them. He saw no drivers dismount to assist. As the throng approached, divided, and threaded into the gaps, the enhanced sounds of shouts, laughter, and simple conversation almost overwhelmed him. An impulse to leap up and run, crying out, to join them nearly brought him to his feet. ‘Hide in Plain Sight.’

Departures began with the phalanx of coaches closest to the ship. David came to a knee behind the nearest tree. When the last LAX-bound bus fell into line behind the others, he sprinted after it, caught the handrail of a ladder above the rear bumper, and vaulted aboard. He ascended briskly and found an open module that housed what looked like evaporative cooling fans and other devices he couldn’t place. He picked his way along one edge and dropped in behind its leading airfoil.

David was amazed at the vehicles’ noiselessness, low vibration at speed, and their linear precision in convoy; he also noticed quickly that the route was devoid of signs – of any kind, other than simple route markers. Autosensors. Batteries, fuel cells, or hybrid? Nuclear, maybe?

He sprawled to the left side of the northbound bus to get a look at Piers A-F and the shipping terminals on the other side of the peninsula. They were beehives of commerce. Tankers, freighters, and container ships were being offloaded at practically every berth. Tractors moved containers steadily toward the spur to be loaded on rail cars for transport while others paralleled him along Pier F Avenue to merge onto the 710 above Ocean Boulevard. They, too, were driverless; where David was used to seeing tandem cabovers, there were only platforms with small antennae.

The trip up the 710 produced no real surprises. Still no automobiles or other light vehicle traffic, and most of the big rigs that joined the tour caravan exited toward renewed industrial areas just over the L. A. River to the east. Those residential areas he could spot from the freeway bore no witness to life. Turning to the west at the 105, David strained to glimpse a downtown skyline but lacked the necessary elevation. As they approached the Sepulveda Boulevard down ramp, he caught sight of his first inbound aircraft. Holeeee shit! That thing’s gotta be twice as big as a 747. Kinda like a Boeing airframe. On approach, the gargantuan craft was whisper quiet; as it passed through 500 feet, it nosed up, full flaps, and its four engines rotated skyward. Flat, triangular gear emerged from pods on its lower fuselage and it settled beneath the terminal horizon until only the tip of its tail was visible. VTOL – on that monster!

When his coach paused to make the left onto World Way, he looked to the east, up Century Boulevard. The density and degree of hotel development from what he remembered was breathtaking. It had swallowed all the old Park’n’Rides.

Nearing the terminals, the maze of fixed, primary-colored signboards he remembered was gone and their caravan was joined by buses feeding in from other locations. He saw no private vehicles, taxis, or shuttles of any other kind. They passed the iconic, spider-legged restaurant and control tower; they both seemed idle and their parking lots were empty. A metaphorical parade of overgrown hearses flickered through David’s mind. The coaches broke formation into four lanes leading up to one elevated level. As they rose, he saw that past architectural imagination – dramatic sweeps and arcs – had been foresworn for pure functionality, replaced by short superstructures composed of squat right angles. He’d seen more impressive Greyhound station exteriors as a kid.

His carrier moved leftmost and proceeded to a spot on the left-center of the terminal complex’s horseshoe, where it slid smoothly into a predetermined space. Lack of any information totally disoriented him. Bradley International Terminal? He peeked over the edge. The curb extended barely 10 feet from the opaque glass and steel wall and there were no other humans in evidence. Doors slid open at each end and the passengers alighted, chattering easily in their mother tongues. They made their way directly inside; simultaneously, a segmented tractor-ramp thrust itself out to a stop slightly under the bus’s edge. Lower hatches opened and luggage modules rolled out systematically above the narrow concrete strip and disappeared into the building.

David looked up and realized that the edge of the sheltering overhang was barely four feet over his head. He stood, leapt up, and grabbed it with both hands. Pulling himself through the overhanging decorative greenery, he found himself on a living roof. The sudden musky scent and humidity of healthy vegetation intoxicated him; he nestled in its comfort until he felt drowsy. Quickly, he shook himself out of it and scuttled to the other side. He puzzled at seeing no jetways jutting from below, until a mammoth shadow and shudder crossed him and he remembered watching the first one land. He sat, cross-legged, and went for his binoculars.