The Girl With the Jade Green Eyes Read Online Free Page B

ship that could carry hundreds.”
    “It’s designed to be our first city when we find a planet to inhabit.”
    “Why so many tubes leading to the couch?”
    “They lead from the couch,” she said. “They’re designed to relieve internal pressures on the occupant of the couch. The box is sort of a… medical device.”
    “Where are your other people?”
    “In their compartments. They come out only for the twilight ceremony.”
    “Your constant traveling must get boring,” he said with strained amiability, still conscious of the woman on the ramp.
    “Oh, no. Below a certain temperature we fall asleep.”
    “Then you hibernate, your faculties grow dormant.”
    “Our faculties cease altogether,” she said. “We die. At the speed of light, we become light. The ship flies itself from star to star, and whenever a star swings near, the ship slows, the star’s light awakens us, and we scan its solar system for habitable planets. After liftoff the ship powers itself with free hydrogen from space, but even so our fuel decays, and we need its energy for landings and liftoffs.”
    She stepped into the concavity around the manhole cover and he followed, getting his back to Myra.
    “We’re standing above the engine room,” Kyra said.
    “The ramp elevated us only a few feet above the base,” he commented. “It doesn’t seem possible for such a small engine to lift such a mass.”
    “There’s much volume here, Breedlove, but little weight. The ship’s walls are thin so as to admit the light that feeds us. The walls are thin and very strong. Here’s the power plant.”
    Bending, she twisted the inset handle in the manhole cover, lifted the cover, and handed it to him. “Feel how light it is.”
    He hefted the cover in his hand, saying, “On earth we could use this for a toy called a Frisbee.”
    “It pleases me that you can think of such things, Breedlove, for it shows you have presence of mind. But this may surprise you. Here is our entire power plant.”
    She squatted on the rim of the hole, and he stooped beside her. Inside he saw a four-spoked wheel with a plastic ball in the center. Between the spokes were four flasks with tubes leading to the ball and coiling around the tube in which the ball rested. Below the entire assemblage, but considerably deeper than ten feet, he saw the roots of trees. The ship had dug down and was resting in its own excavation.
    “It’s magic,” he said.
    “Actually it’s simple. Any technology is magic to a nontechnician. The wheel spins to stabilize the ship, superheated steam is vented against the ground to give the initial liftoff, and the heat comes from the fuel in the ball. Of course, the power of the steam is amplified by the forcer tubes there, which are pulsed by concentrated radioactive emissions.”
    “Steam? Just steam?”
    “It’s not just steam. You might call this a staser. You know what force a laser gives to light quanta. Imagine the force this gives to heavy atoms of oxygen and hydrogen. It’s quite adequate for liftoff, and the force is not needed in a free fall.”
    She bent to unscrew the top hemisphere of the central ball, while continuing a casual lecture that was exploding new concepts into his untutored mind.
    “Once we’re under way, the hydrogen scoops bring fuel to the ball, which is ionized into a constant thrust that impels the ship into the speed of light. At that point, for us, time stands still, and that’s why I’m younger than you are, Breedlove, although I was born thousands of years ago.”
    Inside the ball she unscrewed, in a maze of silvery pipes, nested a smaller ball, its dimensions between those of a tennis ball and a grapefruit. She lifted it aloft and said, “This is the core shield. With it, you could carry drops of liquid sun in your pocket.”
    She unscrewed the two halves of the ball and showed him a residue of grayish ash. “Once, if you had looked at this without protection, the results would have been more