The Dark Beyond the Stars : A Novel by Frank M. Robinson Read Free Book Online

your life.” He searched for the right words, trying to make me understand what Pipit hadn’t been able to.
    “You’re not on a sailing ship, Sparrow. If you want to see something different, you can’t stare at the sky and watch the clouds change shape.” He grinned and patted the terminal. “Besides, you’ve never seen it and I want to show it off.”
    Loon put down his harmonica, expectant. I unsnapped my mask. The falsie for the cubicle was a shock, though the first thing that struck me was the low murmur of music.
    “It took us a long time,” Crow said proudly.
    The compartment was now a spacious room with huge windows overlooking a square two stories below. The windows were open, “sunlight” streaming in from a recessed glow tube and lace curtains moving in a breeze that really wasn’t there. It was a nice touch. The painting of the clearing and the model of the canyon still hugged the far wall but now there were colorful tiles on the deck, an eating nook where the table ledge was, and a recessed pit holding a bed whose level was the same as that of the deck mat. There were overstuffed chairs, a swinging sofa suspended from the overhead in the same position as the hammock, and a large screen in the corner, alive with swirling colors. They could sleep on the mat or in their hammocks, eat off the table or use the screen as a terminal for the ship’s computer. There was little they might do that would spoil the illusion. I followed Crow over to the “windows.”
    “They called it St. Mark’s Square,” he said, filled with enthusiasm for his own creation. “Don’t ask me who St. Mark was.”
    The plaza below was thick with flocks of birds and with pedestrians threading their way past them. Just beyond were an ancient bell tower and a canal with small boats bobbing on the choppywaves. Each boat carried several passengers and had a boatman manning an oar in the stern. In the far distance, several rocket trails marked the location of the local spaceport.
    Crow had even included background sounds of birds pecking their jerky way over the stones of the square, the distant rumble of the rockets, and the muted murmur of people talking.
    “Loon did the sound,” Crow added.
    “It fits,” I said.
    Loon winked at me. “I didn’t think he’d mention it.”
    I turned to Crow, accusing. “The two of you had help.”
    Crow nodded, pleased by my doubts. “We copied it from an image in the computer’s memory matrix.”
    He leaned out of one of the open windows and I felt a touch of vertigo before I realized he had programmed his fantasy wall a dozen centimeters in front of the real bulkhead. His movements were practiced, the illusion perfect.
    “I keep wondering who owned the boats and who traveled in them,” he mused. “Or if they regularly collected the bird droppings and sent them to Reduction. I think they must have, don’t you?”
    I had no idea. Crow sat on the window ledge and for a moment I thought the compartment had gravity.
    “I wish I had lived then—and there,” he said slowly. He waved at the scene outside the window. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?”
    He was homesick for a planet he had never seen, a city that no longer existed. He stared out the window for a moment longer, then “slid” off the ledge and swung into the hammock/sofa in one practiced movement. It wasn’t just that the falsie was a work ofart, it was how he moved inside it. He curled up in the hammock, laced his fingers behind his head and looked at me with a face that was a study in innocence.
    “If there’s anything I can tell you, Sparrow, ask me. I won’t lie to you.”
    The moment he said he wouldn’t, I knew that he would.With the best of intentions and for my own good.And because, for some reason, he was oddly anxious to please.
    I hugged my chest and floated with the air currents. “You and I were good friends, weren’t we?”
    He nodded in confirmation.
    “What was my job—what did I do?” I