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.My only real complaint was with the unvarying diet of synthesized food and Malchuskin's inability to talk interestingly about the contribution we were making to the city's security.We would work late into the evenings, and after a rough meal we would sleep.Our work on the tracks to the south of the city was nearly complete.Our task was to remove all the track and erect four buffers at a uniform distance from the city.The track we removed was carried round to the north of the city where it was being re-laid.One evening, Malchuskin said to me: "How long have you been out here?""I'm not sure.""In days.""Oh.seven."I had been trying to estimate it in terms of miles."In three days' time you get some leave.You have two days inside the city, then you come back here for another mile."I asked him how he reckoned the passage of time in terms of both days and distance."It takes the city about ten days to cover a mile," he said."And in a year it will cover about thirty-six and a half.""But the city isn't moving.""Not at the moment.It will be soon.Anyway, we don't take account of how much the city has actually moved, so much as how much it should have moved.It's based on the position of the optimum."I shook my head."What does that mean?""The optimum is the ideal position for the city to be.To maintain that it would have to move approximately a tenth of a mile every day.That's obviously out of the question, so we move the city towards optimum whenever we can.""Has the city ever reached optimum?""Not as long as I can remember.""Where's the optimum now?""About three miles ahead of us.That's about average.My father was out here on the tracks before me, and he told me once that they were then about ten miles from optimum.That's the most I've ever heard.""But what would happen if we ever reached optimum?"Malchuskin grinned."We'd go on digging up old tracks.""Why?""Because the optimum's always moving.But we're not likely to reach optimum, and it doesn't matter that much.Anywhere within a few miles of it is O.K.Put it this way.if we could get ahead of optimum for a bit, we could all have a good long rest.""Is that possible?""I guess so.Look at it this way.Where we are at the moment the ground is fairly high.To get up here we had to go through a long stretch of rising country.That was when my father was out here.It's harder work to climb, so it took longer, and we got behind optimum.If we ever come to some lower country, then we can coast down the slope.""What are the prospects of that?""You'd better ask your guild that.Not my concern.""But what's the countryside like here?""I'll show you tomorrow."Though I hadn't followed much of what Malchuskin said, at least one thing had become clear, and that was how time was measured.I was six hundred and fifty miles old; that did not mean that the city had moved that distance during my lifetime, but that the optimum had.Whatever the optimum was.The next day Malchuskin kept his promise.While the hired labourers took one of their customary rests in the deep shadow of the city, Malchuskin walked with me to a low rise of land some distance to the east of the city.Standing there we could see almost the whole of the immediate environment of the city.It was at present standing in the centre of a broad valley, bounded north and south by two relatively high ridges of ground.To the south I could see clearly the traces of the track which had been taken up, marked by four parallel rows of scars where the sleepers and their foundations had been laid.To the north of the city, the tracks ran smoothly up the slope of the ridge.There was not much activity here, though I could see one of the battery-driven bogies rolling slowly up the slope with its load of rail and sleepers and its attendant crew.On the crest of the ridge itself there was a considerable degree of activity, although from this distance it was not possible to determine exactly what was going on."Good country this," Malchuskin said, but then immediately qualified it."For a trackman, that is.""Why?""It's smooth.We can take ridges and valleys in our stride.What gets me bothered is broken ground: rocks, rivers, or even forests.That's one of the advantages of being high at the moment.This is all very old rock around here, and it's been smoothed out by the elements.But don't talk to me about rivers.Then I get agitated
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