Death of a Starship Read Online Free PDF Page A

be
accounted for by assuming xenic influence.
    patron17: what is the xenic
question
    Library: In its simplest form, the
xenic question asks whether xenic intelligences exist.
    patron17: tell me about the more
complicated forms of the xenic question
    Library: A librarian will assist
you shortly. Please remain where you are.
    ‡
    Albrecht: Halfsummer, Gryphon
Landing
    Men were stacked in the godown like
inventory, spread out on shelving that ran six layers high,
originally configured for something about half a meter tall and
slightly longer than the average male human being. Albrecht had
scored an upper bunk, not trapped beneath four or five layers of
sweating, snoring, muttering indigents, with the odd bed wetter
thrown in for variety. Five credits was a lot for a mattress fee,
but it bought him a day cycle’s worth of residency permit. Gryphon
Landing wasn’t kind to the truly homeless.
    At least he knew something about
ship parts and tools. It was living, more or less. Albrecht had no
idea how many of the mass of torpid men around him scored their
five creds a day. From the dreamtime moaning that went on all
night, he didn’t want to know.
    It was hot, of course. Everything
was hot on Halfsummer. And the godown had no climate control, just
vent fans high up in the rafters among the flittermice and the
feral cats. The lucky ones around him snored their way through the
eye-watering fug, but a lot of nights, like this one, Albrecht
found the stench overwhelming. Every time he opened his mouth to
breathe, he felt like he was drowning in sweat, spit, blood,
jizz.
    At least he had air above him. If
the top bunks were purgatory, the lower bunks were hell. All of
them were here for their sins, of course. Planetary citizens had
other places to go. Women had other places to go. His neighbors
were men who’d tumbled down the gravity well one too many times,
without a ticket back up, without the right money or certifications
or skills or state of sobriety to climb Jacob’s ladder back to the
spare, environmentally-conditioned heaven of a berth on a ship
heading outsystem.
    He wasn’t like them, Albrecht told
himself. He was a better man, a smarter man, just down on his luck.
What kept him awake, even more than the salty, sweaty reek that
enveloped him like a mother’s love, was the thought that everyone
in this place believed the same thing about himself.
    ‡
    Morning found Albrecht on the
street again, all his worldly goods in a thigh pack strapped to the
leg of his shipsuit like always. The stupid codelock key hadn’t
fit, so he was carrying it around in his hand. It had occurred to
him to wonder if the Public Safety patrols might interpret it as
weapon, sort of a fistpack or sap.
    He decided he didn’t care. It was a
bright, sunny day, with those strange, flat Halfsummer clouds in
the sky. Gryphon Landing was as low and crumpled as ever, skyline
marred by half-built buildings marooned in the last equity crash,
lined with peculiar puffy-leaved trees that smelt like old tea
bags.
    Something rumbled overhead,
staggering through the peak overpressure point of the local speed
of sound. Albrecht didn’t bother to look up anymore – nothing flew
that wanted his sorry butt on board. Instead he turned the codelock
key over in his hand.
    Why would someone file off the ship
name but not the keel number? That was fairly pointless. Anyone
with nöosphere access could research the keel easily
enough.
    What the
hell , he thought. It was free day at the
library. He could go research the keel number himself. Maybe this
had been on a ship he’d built a model of once. The damned steward
had dropped his models in the mass converter on the Princess Janivera , along
with everything else Albrecht couldn’t carry away in two hands. At
any rate, that gave him something to do in the hours before the
market got into full swing once more. Spacers weren’t early morning
shoppers, and neither were the sort of people who catered to
them.
    ‡
    An