Songs From the Stars by Norman Spinrad

Author:Norman Spinrad [Spinrad, Norman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Post Apocalypse
ISBN: 9781617200526
Google: kOdVnQEACAAJ
Amazon: 1617200522
Goodreads: 633202
Publisher: Wilder Publications
Published: 2010-05-27T07:00:00+00:00

The Spaceship Enterprise

"I can't believe this heat!" Clear Blue Lou moaned, mopping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. They had been flying north for over an hour now, above a dun-colored landscape that seemed to shimmer and crack under the unrelenting sun. The heat was horrific even with all the flaps of the eagle cabin rolled up, and Lou had to admit that the electrically cooled air of Starbase One was no mere luxury in this environment; without it the human animal could not survive two days here. Assuming there was some valid reason why human animals had to inhabit this utterly hostile environment.

"We're just about there," Harker said. "Just over this rise."

The landscape below was subtly changing now. Dry scrub grew in big patches on a long uptilting plain like a scruffy day-old beard. To the northwest loomed the peaks of the biggest range of mountains Lou had seen yet. Bleak and hostile though this country was, Lou found a certain beauty in the vast empty spaces; a beauty not in the eye but of the spirit.

Then the eagle sailed out over the lip of a sudden precipice, and he was confronted by an unreal vista that took his breath away.

They were flying high over the southern end of a huge oval of brilliant silver glare, a deep gouge of a valley rimmed by enormous mountains like some great elongated crater. It was impossible to tell where the northern horizon met the sky, for the blinding sun reflecting off the silver-white valley floor melded sky to earth in a mirror-like shimmer that turned the landscape into a mirage of itself.

"Good gods," Sue muttered. "It's like—"

"—another planet?" Harker suggested. "A fitting site for a spaceport, don't you think?"

"So you've got a little poetry in your soul after all, Arnold," Sue said dryly.

"It makes an ideal launch and recovery site," the Spacer told her in a strangely defensive tone. "A nice flat dry lake bed, not much wind, and no worry about rain."

"I can believe that!" Lou muttered, still blown away by the preternatural beauty of the shimmering lake of light, even as the eagle began to drop toward it pluming vile petroleum smoke. He could see how dreams of visiting other planets could form in men's minds here. Alien and inhuman but with a beauty and grandeur in its own terms, this landscape both dwarfed and exalted the spirit.

Soon they were flying low over gleaming sand and cracked expanses of gray rock toward a pimple of incongruous green in the middle of the huge dry lake bed. Swiftly this became a greenhouse dome flanked by the largest human constructions Lou had ever seen.

To the left, a squat gray rectangle similar to the habitat of Starbase One, and beside it, a long low metal shed full four times its size. To the right, an immense tent of canvas over framework that dwarfed even the giant shed.

As the eagle rounded the far end of the behemoth tent, Lou

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