The Sigman's spaceship seems to be an organism with its own thermonuclear source of energy and nourishment drawn "...from the gas and stones of space." (p. 150) I think that the intergalactic spaceship in Julian May's Pleiocene Exile was an organism?
Wastes, dropped on the sometimes rippling deck, are absorbed and returned to the ship's internal ecology. The machines that produce food for the Sigman and his human passengers are controlled not by touch but by waving hands in patterns guided by projected, easily read visual displays. The food is possibly assembled from atoms by hydromagnetic fields. With practice, Yvonne develops both known and unknown foods.
Passageways can be made to bulge, forming adjustable rooms where furniture and flower-like decorations can be grown from the decks. The passengers stand in a great sphere that reproduces the external view:
"Stars in their myriads glittered winter-keen, the Milky Way cataracted around heaven, the far small sun burned within a pearly lens of zodiacal light." (p. 151)
They approach Mars.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I'm definitely interested in rereading THE BYWORLDER after finishing THE WINTER OF THE WORLD. If only because, in part, because of this fascinatingly strange and alien space ship.
I am being slow on finishing WINTER at least partly because of my dislike for the Rogaviki and regret at having to soon read about the ruinous defeat of Captain General Sidir and his co-viceroy Yurussun Soth-Zora. Anderson depicted them so sympathetically that their defeat was distasteful for me.
Sean
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