become the ceiling. The gravity was so feeble that
Barbary knew she could jump, catch the rings, and swing herself along as if she
were on monkey-bars. She decided that first she had better get more experience
moving around.
She had to pay close attention to where she was going so she
would not get lost. She followed the blue line, but every time she passed a
corridor another blue line came out and joined the one she was following. The
lines flowed together like small streams meeting larger rivers. She used the
angle of their joining to decide which way to go, but she had no way to be sure
that was what she was supposed to do.
People had to be able to reach the observation deck from all
parts of the ship, so no unique line led there from her cabin. Some color would
lead back to her section, but she had not yet been able to figure out which one
it was. Again she wished she had a map.
The corridors became more complicated, and though several
other blue direction-markers had joined hers, the corridor narrowed rather than
widened. The floor became a maze of multicolored lines. In the artificial light
of the passageway, the darker colors looked alike.
The blue line followed a ladder upward through a hatchway.
Barbary climbed the rungs. At the last one, the line ended.
She looked up, and gasped.
No photograph, no space films, had anything to do with what
surrounded her now. She climbed through the hatch to a wide, semicircular
platform and stood staring out into the night. The sun was behind them, so the
viewing platform was in shadow lit only by stars. But the stars were fantastic.
Barbary thought she must be able to see a hundred times as many as on earth,
even in the country where sky-glow and smog did not hide them. They spanned the
universe, all colors, shining with a steady, cold, remote light. She wanted to
write down what they looked like, but every phrase she could think of sounded
silly and inadequate.
More than the liftoff, more than weightlessness, the stars
let her believe she was really here.
o0o
Barbary stayed on the viewing platform much longer than
she meant to, much longer than she should have. Only the anxiety about Mickey
drove her from it. She climbed down the ladder in a sort of daze. From now on,
if she were not sent home, if everything worked out, she would never be very
far from these calm, clear stars.
The pale gray walls of the ship, solid and dull, brought her
back to what she needed to do. She retraced the blue line to the spot where
another major line, one in green, split off from the skein. She followed it.
She had not seen or heard another person since leaving her room.
The VIPs probably have a fancier part of the ship, she
thought, to keep herself from feeling how spooky it was to be alone.
The green line led not to a cafeteria but to something even
better, a foyer displaying a map of the ship.
Barbary searched out the colors that led to the places she
needed. The 24-hour ship’s clock above the map also helped her get her
bearings. The clock read 0300: three o’clock in the morning. She was not
certain what time zone of earth Outrigger and Einstein used to
set their clocks, but she supposed most everybody must be trying to adjust to
the transport’s schedule. That would explain why the ship seemed deserted.
Everyone else was sleeping. She was just as glad. This way there was less
chance of Mickey’s being discovered while she was gone.
Anxious again, Barbary started along the line that led to
the cafeteria. She wondered why they had chosen purple.
Forgetting to slide along as if she were skating, she took
one running step. The next thing she knew she bounced off the ceiling. Unhurt
but dizzy, she ricocheted and tumbled from ceiling to floor to ceiling before
she managed to grab a handhold. She let herself drift to the floor. She tried
to copy the smooth skating motion she had seen on tapes of people in space. The
trick was to propel herself forward without shoving herself up at