Ascending Read Online Free PDF

clothes might not be a cowardly concession to the small-minded prejudice of hateful persons. It might be a sensible precaution.
    Yes.
    Clutching the jacket, I took a deep breath. Then I hurried along behind Uclod, following his tracks through the light sheen of melting snow.

3
WHEREIN I AM SWALLOWED BY A LARGE CREATURE
    The Diversity Of Spaceships
    The spaceship was three blocks away, still well within the snow zone. Uclod had set it down in a wide intersection where two streets met; there was not so much landing room as if he had chosen the central square, but I suppose he had not wished to disturb the Explorer evidence back there.
    Uclod’s vessel was nothing like the spaceship the Explorers had been working on when I arrived in the city. The Explorers’ ship had been shaped like a large glass fish…except Festina told me it was not a fish at all but a mammal called an orca, or killer whale. The whale shape was not the Explorers’ choice—many of them thought it barbaric for a starship to look like an animal instead of an abstract geometric object—but the Explorers were using the hull of an old space vessel built by ancient inhabitants of Oarville, and beggars cannot be choosers.
    As for me, I thought a fish was an excellent form for a spaceship; one could picture it diving into the great blackness and plunging past whirlpool galaxies. Also it would be very good at orbiting, for fish are constantly swimming in mindless circles. Uclod’s ship, on the other hand, was not so easy to imagine speeding through The Void—it was nothing more than a huge gray ball, five stories high and powdered with snow. One could picture such a thing avalanching down a mountain, but it certainly did not fit the image of a Graceful Nomad Of The Space Lanes.
    “Isn’t she a beauty?” Uclod said as we walked toward the ship. “Isn’t she the loveliest little girl you’ve ever seen?”
    “It is quite spherical,” I answered with tact. “You do not think the snow on top will cause problems, do you? Sometimes when machines get damp, the electric bits go fizz.”
    “Lucky for us,” Uclod said, “she doesn’t have electric bits. Bioneural all the way.”
    I had not made the acquaintance of the word “bioneural,” but I assumed it was a boring Science concept that would only vex me if Uclod tried to explain. Besides, I had greater concerns on my mind. The closer we got to the ship, the more I saw it was not just a plain gray sphere; it was, in fact, a whitish sphere, covered with snarled-up threads of gray string. As for the white undersurface, it looked all wet and gooey, glistening as damply as the snow falling around it. To get the exact picture, imagine the egg of some slimy creature that breeds in stagnant water, then wrap gray spiderwebs all over the egg’s jelly so the strands sink into the goo.
    In short, the ship was very most icky…so when I got close enough, I touched it to see if it felt icky too. It felt quite appalling indeed—like bird poop just after it falls from the sky.
    “What are you doing?” Uclod asked.
    “I wished to see if your craft feels as vile as it looks. Which it does.”
    “Hey!” he said sharply, “don’t insult Starbiter!”
    “If you have named your ship Starbiter,” I said, “there is little more I can do in the way of insults.”
    The Nature Of A Creature Which Bites At Stars
    I began to circle the ship’s exterior, wondering why alien races always make their machinery unattractive. Surely the universe does not require space vehicles to be large gooey balls wrapped in string; a sensible universe would not even approve of such a design. If you constructed your starship out of nice sleek glass, I believe the universe would let you fly much faster, just because you had made an effort to look presentable. But one cannot suggest such things to Science people—they will laugh at you in a very mean fashion, and make you feel foolish even when you know you have an Astute Perspective On