Читать книгу The Lady Who Sailed The Soul - Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger - Страница 4

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The child was playing with a spieltier. She got tired of letting it be a chicken, so she reversed it into the fur-bearing position. When she extended the ears to the optimum development, the little animal looked odd indeed. A light breeze blew the animal-toy on its side, but the spieltier good-naturedly righted itself and munched contentedly on the carpet.

The little girl suddenly clapped her hands and broke forth with the question,

“Mama, what’s a sailor?”

“There used to be sailors, darling, a long time ago. They were brave men who took the ships out to the stars, the very first ships that took people away from our sun. And they had big sails. I don’t know how it worked, but somehow, the light pushed them, and it took them a quarter of a life to make a single one-way trip. People only lived a hundred and sixty years at that time, darling, and it was forty years each way, but we don’t need sailors any more.”

“Of course not,” said the child, “we can go right away. You’ve taken me to Mars and you’ve taken me to New Earth as well, haven’t you. Mamma? And we can go anywhere else soon, but that only takes one afternoon.”

“That’s planoforming, honey. But it was a long time before the people knew how to planoform. And they could not travel the way we could, so they made great big sails. They made sails so big that they could not build them on Earth. They had to hang them out, halfway between Earth and Mars. And you know, a funny thing happened ... Did you ever hear about the time the world froze?”

“No, mamma, what was that?”

“Well, a long time ago, one of these sails drifted and people tried to save it because it took a lot of work to build it. But the sail was so large that it got between the Earth and the sun. And there was no more sunshine, just night all the time. And it got very cold on Earth. All the atomic power plants were busy, and all the air began to smell funny. And the people were worried and in a few days they pulled the sail back out of the way. And the sunshine came again.”

“Mamma, were there ever any girl sailors?”

A curious expression crossed over the mother’s face. “There was one. You’ll hear about her later on when you are older. Her name was Helen America and she sailed The Soul out to the stars. She was the only woman that ever did it. And that is a wonderful story.”

The mother dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.

The child said: “Mamma, tell me now. What’s the story all about?”

At this point the mother became very firm and she said: “Honey, there are some things that you are not old enough to hear yet. But when you are a big girl, I’ll tell you all about them.”

The mother was an honest woman. She reflected a moment, and then she added, “... unless you read about it yourself first.”