years than he, but in experience, in spirit, like a child.
She loves the elegance she never knew before, luxury, gaiety, familiarity with important persons – prestige of her own, and few things carry more prestige than a station in Skyholm. I shouldn’t
worry about expenses. Beynac gives me a pretty good income. Maybe I can cut back on my private spending. And, yes, not let her coldness or her tantrums drive me away, but also give her more of my company than my habit has gotten to be.
Here was certainly a chance for that. He wouldn’t travel for thirteen weeks, except when he took his Cadets on short practice flights. Otherwise he would be lecturing, grading papers, doubtless giving occasional counsel. He had not drawn this duty before, sinceit rotated among pilots, but felt he could probably handle it well. He might actually enjoy it. In any event, in his leisure time he could find ample diversion …
with Faylis, of course,
he reminded himself.
‘No picture shows this, really,’ she breathed. ‘None.’ She reached out and touched the glass. He thought of a baby reaching for the moon.
From behind the dirigible, the sun cast an almost shadowless radiance. Crystalline blue-black, the stratosphere made a chalice for the pearl which was Skyholm. Then as the craft drew nigh, that pearl became a moon indeed, a world.
Two full kilometers in diameter, it nonetheless kept an airiness, a grace to rival anything man had ever created. Transparent, the outer skin had a shimmer across it, a ghost of rainbows. Beneath were the interlocking hexagons of the tensegrity structure: slender, hollow girders and thin cables, as if the god of the spiders had been everywhere weaving. A hundred meters behind this was a vast ball of night, over which the web went agleam.
Its pattern disappeared at the equator. There homes, meeting places, workshops, laboratories, control centers, all the manifold spaces that humans used were nested among the ribs of Skyholm. They seemed a broad, intricately ornamented belt, mostly dark but with flashes of color and metal. Positioned around it were four observation domes, four laser complexes, two missile launchers, two flanges on which – dragonflies at this distance – jetplanes rested, and eight engines belonging to the aerostat itself. Small inspection platforms and banks of solar collectors studded the rest of the sphere.
Approach from ground revealed an opening at the lower pole, where the ribs gave away to a frame in the form of pentagram. It supported a great pipe leading to the interior. As a plane took off on some mission and dropped below the globe, on the far side, its image briefly quivered, troubled by the heat that poured forth.
And this was Skyholm, Ileduciel, Hemelhuis (the names were many), which men before the Judgment had dreamed of, and built in modules, and lifted on wings of helium to assemble in the uppermost air.
Faylis was long silent. When at last she spoke, her voice was small and timid: ‘Suddenly I realize how little I know about it. I mean, it’s always been there, like Earth. I don’t – well, nobody quite knows why and how it was made. Do they?’
‘What?’ asked Iern, startled. ‘And you set out to be a historian?’
‘You know my main interest has been Iberyan history.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘a lot of records were lost in the War of Judgment and its aftermath, but considerable was preserved, and the Thirty found time to chronicle certain matters themselves. A consortium of nations in West Uropa decided to have an Okress aerostat, as a few elsewhere already did. The crew made Angley – its ancestral version – their common language because it was, then, the standard language of aeronautics –’
She flushed. Indignation sharpened her tone. ‘I’m not a complete ignoramus, whatever you think. I learned that much in chapel school.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he answered fast. ‘I misunderstood you. What did you mean?’
She relented. ‘The technical
She loves the elegance she never knew before, luxury, gaiety, familiarity with important persons – prestige of her own, and few things carry more prestige than a station in Skyholm. I shouldn’t
worry about expenses. Beynac gives me a pretty good income. Maybe I can cut back on my private spending. And, yes, not let her coldness or her tantrums drive me away, but also give her more of my company than my habit has gotten to be.
Here was certainly a chance for that. He wouldn’t travel for thirteen weeks, except when he took his Cadets on short practice flights. Otherwise he would be lecturing, grading papers, doubtless giving occasional counsel. He had not drawn this duty before, sinceit rotated among pilots, but felt he could probably handle it well. He might actually enjoy it. In any event, in his leisure time he could find ample diversion …
with Faylis, of course,
he reminded himself.
‘No picture shows this, really,’ she breathed. ‘None.’ She reached out and touched the glass. He thought of a baby reaching for the moon.
From behind the dirigible, the sun cast an almost shadowless radiance. Crystalline blue-black, the stratosphere made a chalice for the pearl which was Skyholm. Then as the craft drew nigh, that pearl became a moon indeed, a world.
Two full kilometers in diameter, it nonetheless kept an airiness, a grace to rival anything man had ever created. Transparent, the outer skin had a shimmer across it, a ghost of rainbows. Beneath were the interlocking hexagons of the tensegrity structure: slender, hollow girders and thin cables, as if the god of the spiders had been everywhere weaving. A hundred meters behind this was a vast ball of night, over which the web went agleam.
Its pattern disappeared at the equator. There homes, meeting places, workshops, laboratories, control centers, all the manifold spaces that humans used were nested among the ribs of Skyholm. They seemed a broad, intricately ornamented belt, mostly dark but with flashes of color and metal. Positioned around it were four observation domes, four laser complexes, two missile launchers, two flanges on which – dragonflies at this distance – jetplanes rested, and eight engines belonging to the aerostat itself. Small inspection platforms and banks of solar collectors studded the rest of the sphere.
Approach from ground revealed an opening at the lower pole, where the ribs gave away to a frame in the form of pentagram. It supported a great pipe leading to the interior. As a plane took off on some mission and dropped below the globe, on the far side, its image briefly quivered, troubled by the heat that poured forth.
And this was Skyholm, Ileduciel, Hemelhuis (the names were many), which men before the Judgment had dreamed of, and built in modules, and lifted on wings of helium to assemble in the uppermost air.
Faylis was long silent. When at last she spoke, her voice was small and timid: ‘Suddenly I realize how little I know about it. I mean, it’s always been there, like Earth. I don’t – well, nobody quite knows why and how it was made. Do they?’
‘What?’ asked Iern, startled. ‘And you set out to be a historian?’
‘You know my main interest has been Iberyan history.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘a lot of records were lost in the War of Judgment and its aftermath, but considerable was preserved, and the Thirty found time to chronicle certain matters themselves. A consortium of nations in West Uropa decided to have an Okress aerostat, as a few elsewhere already did. The crew made Angley – its ancestral version – their common language because it was, then, the standard language of aeronautics –’
She flushed. Indignation sharpened her tone. ‘I’m not a complete ignoramus, whatever you think. I learned that much in chapel school.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he answered fast. ‘I misunderstood you. What did you mean?’
She relented. ‘The technical
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