Men in Space Read Online Free PDF

around him, that this is the trump card: Zachary’s won. Nick jumps up to complain, but Zachary edges back the lapel of his smoking jacket to reveal a pistol nestling by his armpit, trumping Nick again. As waiters whisk the cards away, Zachary, smirking, siphons Nick’s fluid from him, storing it in a lower-deck swimming pool to which only he and those like him have access.
    The ship’s approaching land now. Speakers strung to its masts pronounce the words the old man spoke a few moments ago:
I gape in sympathy towards Eramia
. They blare the line out repeatedly, but it’s different each time:
Agape in symphony towards Erania
 … As the ship slows down, its great engines send shudders up from far below the Plimsoll line. Chandeliers, floors, staircases vibrate. Railings lose their solidity and flutter like the wings of dragonflies or humming birds. The surfaces of cocktails become choppy. Behind the ring of elegant people who have gathered round the card table, a trapped albatross is floundering …
    It’s the rattling that wakes him. It’s worked its way up from the tram tracks in the street five floors below, wormed its way through bricks and girders, through the mattress’s cheap styrofoam, the feathers of the pillow wedged beneath his head and of the duvet wrapped around him, made his own flesh rattle. He opens his eyes and sees dried-out paintbrushesshaking against the sides of jars on shelves, a spoon’s handle drilling round the rim of a coffee cup sitting on the floor. The rattling lasts for five, six seconds and then dies away.
    Nick rolls onto his back and looks up. There are other feathers too: above the grid of black wires that criss-cross the smog-stained skylight, pigeons are strutting and cooing. Dirty. One of them is sliding on its claws against the glass’s incline as it tries to gain a foothold. Nick’s mind replays a cartoon in which a hunter (or was it a bear?) races up a mountain slope in pursuit of a wily, agile fox without realizing that his steps are only keeping him stationary as his feet slip off the thick-packed snow; eventually the hunter/bear looks down, stops running and turns towards the camera, casting a pathetic glance before he plummets backwards,
pzanggg!
, into a valley with no bottom. The cartoon gives way to images of Michael Jackson moonwalking in ‘Billie Jean’, then unfit joggers waddling along rubber treadmills, then Nick’s sister’s hamster frantically spinning his wheel, feet grabbing and releasing rung after rung, nose perpetually sniffing ten o’clock – then, finally, the big wheel here in Prague.
    The wheel’s in Holešovice, in the National Exhibition Park, behind the AVU buildings.
Akademie Výtvarných Umění
: Academy of Fine Art. Nick feels an anxious wave surge through his chest up to his dull, hung-over head: what’s the time? They might be there already, waiting for him. He gets up, stumbles to the toilet, pisses. In the main room the phone rings. It’s probably them. To the rush and plash of yellow liquid plunging into brine he pictures all the students in the studio, impatient, angry, Kolář flipping through his notebook to find someone to replace him, Dana stabbing her chunky fingers into the dialling disc holes of the payphone in the lobby, waiting for him to pick up so that she can shout at him. Perhaps he should just let it ring: they’ll think he’s on his way. He has to pass the phone to get back to his room. He’ll just skirt by it, throw some clothes on …
    He picks it up. It’s too hard not to: could be Heidi, asking where Jean-Luc’s party is tonight, or leopard-skin-wearing Angelika, from whom he’s been getting certain signals ever since he helped her get a job – or, thinking along the same lines, that Hungarian girl into whose hand he pressed his number two nights ago in Futurum … Cradling the receiver on his neck, he tells the mouthpiece:
    “Nicholas Boardaman.”
    “Hello?”
    “Hello, yes?”
    “Do you hear me