Cosmonaut Keep by Ken Macleod

Author:Ken Macleod
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2010-03-31T16:00:00+00:00

A bell sounded and a message flashed on the projection screen announcing the imminent departure of their flight. They picked up their bags and trekked out on to the field with the other fifty or so passengers, into the shadow of the hundred-metre-long semi-rigid dirigible. Salasso ascended the stairladder to the gondola without further demur, headed for the smoking section at the back and had passed out before the craft had taken off.

‘Well, so much for the super-civilised,’ Gregor remarked, after he and Elizabeth had stowed their bags and sat down on opposite sides of a window table a couple of rows forward of where Salasso sat slumped.

‘I suppose to him it’s like – I don’t know – going out on the ocean on some ramshackle raft would be to us. And some humans have a fear of flying as well, you know.’

The airship lurched and the floor tilted upwards as the cable at the bow was released a second before that at the stern. Gregor grabbed the edge of the table, Elizabeth threw her arms across it. The engines roared to bring the craft to a level keel.

‘Fear of flying, eh, who’d have thought it?’

She laughed, and they both turned their attention to the view as the airship ascended. How broad the sprawl, how small the ships.

‘Wow,’ said Elizabeth, ‘you can see our shadow.’

‘Where – oh, right.’ There it was, rippling across street and field and river like a black fluke, paced by the flashing glint of the sun on pool or mire. Then the coastline like a map; clouds from the side and from above.

But after the airship had reached its cruising altitude and had followed the coast southward for a while, even this fascination palled. Gregor and Elizabeth turned away from the window and settled down like seasoned travellers. Salasso was still sleeping off the effects of smoking an entire pipe by himself.

‘Still keen?’ Gregor asked.

‘Oh yes. Should be interesting even if we don’t find any of them. I mean, I know that would be disappointing for you, but …’

‘Aye, I know what you mean.’ Gregor sighed, looking around the cabin. Most of the passengers seemed to be on business, and either drinking spirits in a rather forced attempt to relax, or toiling over sheets of paper and hand calculators.

‘You know what this world needs?’ he said. ‘A Beagle voyage. Somebody to sponsor some long-range travel just for exploration and sampling.’

‘And to come back with a theory of evolution?’

She smiled, he laughed.

‘An account of it,’ Gregor said. ‘We already have the theory, what we need is a better idea of how it’s gone, here. The planet’s story.’

Elizabeth looked down at the crawling coastline for a moment, then back at him.

‘It would be difficult,’ she said. ‘How many incursions have there been? We can’t even guess at the number of major deliberate introductions of species, let alone the accidents. I swear it must happen every time a starship comes in—’

She laughed suddenly.

‘What?’

‘I just remembered. Talking to a lighter skipper down in the Baillie’s.

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