Apocalyptic fiction; Dystopias -- Fiction; Science fiction, American
I grinned back at Pop and gave Alice a boost up. She didn't like it, but
she could see it had to be her next. She hooked onto the sill and Pop
caught hold of her left wrist below the big glove and heaved.
Then it was my turn. I didn't like it. I didn't like the idea of those
two buggers poised above me while my hands were helpless on the sill.
But I thought _Pop's a nut. You can trust a nut, at least a little ways,
though you can't trust nobody else._ I heaved myself up. It was strange
to feel the plane giving and then bracing itself like something alive.
It seemed to have no trouble accepting our combined weight, which after
all was hardly more than half again the Pilot's.
* * * * *
Inside the cabin was pretty small but as Pop had implied, oh my!
Everything looked soft and smoothly curved, like you imagine your
insides being, and almost everything was a restfully dull silver. The
general shape of it was something like the inside of an egg. Forward,
which was the larger end, were a couple of screens and a wide viewport
and some small dials and the button brigades Pop had mentioned, lined up
like blank typewriter keys but enough for writing Chinese.
Just aft of the instrument panel were two very comfortable-looking
strange low seats. They seemed to be facing backwards until I realized
they were meant to be knelt into. The occupant, I could see, would sort
of sprawl forward, his hands free for button-pushing and such. There
were spongy chinrests.
Aft was a tiny instrument panel and a kind of sideways seat, not nearly
so fancy. The door by which we'd entered was to the side, a little aft.
I didn't see any indications of cabinets or fixed storage spaces of any
kinds, but somehow stuck to the walls here and there were quite a few
smooth blobby packages, mostly dull silver too, some large, some
small--valises and handbags, you might say.
All in all, it was a lovely cabin and, more than that, it seemed lived
in. It looked as if it had been shaped for, and maybe by one man. It had
a personality you could feel, a strong but warm personality of its own.
Then I realized whose personality it was. I almost got sick--so close to
it I started telling myself it must be something antigravity did to your
stomach.
But it was all too interesting to let you get sick right away. Pop was
poking into two of the large mound-shaped cases that were sitting loose
and open on the right-hand seat, as if ready for emergency use. One had
a folded something with straps on it that was probably a parachute. The
second had I judged a thousand or more of the inch cubes such as I'd
pried out of the Pilot's hand, all neatly stacked in a cubical box
inside the soft outer bag. You could see the one-cube gap where he'd
taken the one.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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