A Life for the Stars by James Blish

Author:James Blish [Blish, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Fantasy
ISBN: 9780099087007
Goodreads: 1930283
Publisher: Arrow Books
Published: 1962-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN: Why Not to Keep Demons

Before the swan boat had been on its slobbering way outward for more than five minutes, the sodium yellow glare of the city's dockside beacon dimmed and vanished as swiftly as if it had ' been snuffed out. Except for his, prisoners, whom he was trying to ignore, Chris was alone in the shell of the boat, like a chick in an egg, with nothing for company but the unfamiliar instruments, the grunting of the engines, and the flash and crash of the eternal storm.

He studied the control board intently, but it told him very little that he did not already know. All the lettering on and around the instruments were in the Cyrillic alphabet, and although the City Fathers expected citizens to be able to speak the Universal Language, up to now they had given Chris not even a first lesson in how to read it. Even so obvious a device as the swan boat's radio set was incomprehensible to him in detail; after a brief study, he gave up all hope of finding the city's master frequency and calling for pursuit and aid. He could not even decide whether it was a AFM or a PM tuner, let alone read the calibrations on the dial.

Nevertheless he urgently needed to signal. Above all, he needed to let the city know the details, fragmentary though they were, of the plotting that he had overheard. Running away with the' 'plotters in their own swan boat had been an impulse of desperation, which he was already beginning more and more to regret. If only he had managed somehow to get back on shore, and told somebody in Amalfi's office what he had learned, pronto!

But the question was, would they have listened, or believed him if they had? Nobody who ,was anybody aboard the city seemed to want to bother with youngsters until they had become citizens; the adults were all too old, somehow, to be even approachable and for that matter citizens paid very little attention to passengers of any age.

Of course, Chris could have told the City Fathers what he knew, easily enough but everything that was told the City Fathers went into the memory cells, which was the equivalent of putting it in dead storage. The City Fathers never took action on what they knew, or even volunteered information, unless directed; otherwise they only held it until it was asked for, which might take centuries.

In any event the die was cast. Now he also needed someone in the city to know where he was going, and to follow him. But among the glittering, enigmatic instruments before him he could find no way to bring that about, nor did he in fact know even vaguely how the city might chase after him if it did know what his situation was. The Tin Cabs operated upon broadcast power which faded out at the city's perimeter, and to the best of Chris's knowledge, the city had no ground vehicles capable of coping with shifting, ambiguous, invisible terrain of this kind.

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