Read Online the Dark Light Years by Brian W. Aldiss - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Brian W. Aldiss
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, Science Fiction - General, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy
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who else?”
"Good Lord, that makes about a dozen! What's Gerald Bone doing here?”
"He's a friend of Sir Mihaly's, as I understand it, sir. I thought he looked a very nice man. My own reading tastes are on the more serious side, and so I don't often read any novels, but now and again when I haven't been well - particularly when I had that spot of bronchitis last winter, if you remember - I have dipped into one or two better novels, and I must say that I was very impressed by Mr. Bone's Many Are The Few. The hero had bad a nervous breakdown -”
"Yes, I do recall the plot, Ross, thank you. And how are our two ETA's?”
"Quite honestly, sir, I reckon they're dying of boredom, and who's to blame them!”
When Ainson entered the study room that lay behind the ETA's cage, it was to find the conference in session. Counting heads as they nodded to him in recognition, he amassed a total of fourteen males and one female. Although they were unalike in appearance, there was a feeling of something shared about them: perhaps an air of authority.
This air was most noticeable about Mrs. Warhoon, if only because she was on her feet and in full spate when Ainson arrived. Mrs. Hilary Warhoon was the lady that Head Keeper Ross had referred to.
Though only in her mid-forties, she was well-known as a leading cosmoclectic, the new philosophico-scientific profession that attempted to sort the wheat from the chaff in the rapidly accumulating pile of facts and theories which represented Earth's main import from space. Ainson looked at her with approval. To think she should be married to some dried old stick of a banker she could not tolerate! She was a fine figure of a woman, fashionable enough to be wearing one of the new chandelier style suits with pendants at bust, hip, and thigh level; the appeal of her face, serious though her prevalent expression might be, was not purely intellectual; while Ainson knew for a fact that she could out-argue even old Wittgenbacher, Oxford's professional philosopher and technivision pundit. In fact, Ainson could not help comparing her with his wife, to Enid's disadvantage. One, of course, would never dream of indieating one's inner feelings to her, poor thing, or to anyone else, but really Enid was a poor specimen; she should have married a shopkeeper in a busy country town. Banbury. Diss. East Dereham.
Yes, that was about it....
"... feel that we have made progress this week, despite several handicaps inherent in the situation, most of them stemming - as I think the Director was the first to point out - from the fact that we have no background to the lifeform to use as a point of reference." Mrs. Warhoon's voice was pleasantly staccato. It scattered Ainson's thoughts and made him concentrate on what she was saying; if Enid had been a bit more prompt with the break-fast, he might have got here in tune to hear the beginning of her speech. "My colleague, Mr. Borroughs, and I have now examined the space vehicle found on Clementina. While we are not qualified to give a technical report on it -you will be getting several technical reports on it from other sources in any case - we both were convinced that it was a vehicle developed for, if not by, the captive life-form. You will recall that eight of the lifeforms were discovered close to the vehicle; and the body of a dead one was disinterred within the vehicle itself; nine bunks, or niches that by their shape and size are intended to serve as bunks, are observable within the vehicle.
Because these bunks run in the direction we think of as vertical rather than horizontally, and are separated by what we now know to be fuel lines, they have not previously been recognized as bunks.
"Here it is appropriate to mention another trouble that we come up against continually. We do not know what is evidence and what is not.
"For instance, we now have to ask ourselves, supposing we consider it established that the lifeform has developed space travel: can space travel be
"Good Lord, that makes about a dozen! What's Gerald Bone doing here?”
"He's a friend of Sir Mihaly's, as I understand it, sir. I thought he looked a very nice man. My own reading tastes are on the more serious side, and so I don't often read any novels, but now and again when I haven't been well - particularly when I had that spot of bronchitis last winter, if you remember - I have dipped into one or two better novels, and I must say that I was very impressed by Mr. Bone's Many Are The Few. The hero had bad a nervous breakdown -”
"Yes, I do recall the plot, Ross, thank you. And how are our two ETA's?”
"Quite honestly, sir, I reckon they're dying of boredom, and who's to blame them!”
When Ainson entered the study room that lay behind the ETA's cage, it was to find the conference in session. Counting heads as they nodded to him in recognition, he amassed a total of fourteen males and one female. Although they were unalike in appearance, there was a feeling of something shared about them: perhaps an air of authority.
This air was most noticeable about Mrs. Warhoon, if only because she was on her feet and in full spate when Ainson arrived. Mrs. Hilary Warhoon was the lady that Head Keeper Ross had referred to.
Though only in her mid-forties, she was well-known as a leading cosmoclectic, the new philosophico-scientific profession that attempted to sort the wheat from the chaff in the rapidly accumulating pile of facts and theories which represented Earth's main import from space. Ainson looked at her with approval. To think she should be married to some dried old stick of a banker she could not tolerate! She was a fine figure of a woman, fashionable enough to be wearing one of the new chandelier style suits with pendants at bust, hip, and thigh level; the appeal of her face, serious though her prevalent expression might be, was not purely intellectual; while Ainson knew for a fact that she could out-argue even old Wittgenbacher, Oxford's professional philosopher and technivision pundit. In fact, Ainson could not help comparing her with his wife, to Enid's disadvantage. One, of course, would never dream of indieating one's inner feelings to her, poor thing, or to anyone else, but really Enid was a poor specimen; she should have married a shopkeeper in a busy country town. Banbury. Diss. East Dereham.
Yes, that was about it....
"... feel that we have made progress this week, despite several handicaps inherent in the situation, most of them stemming - as I think the Director was the first to point out - from the fact that we have no background to the lifeform to use as a point of reference." Mrs. Warhoon's voice was pleasantly staccato. It scattered Ainson's thoughts and made him concentrate on what she was saying; if Enid had been a bit more prompt with the break-fast, he might have got here in tune to hear the beginning of her speech. "My colleague, Mr. Borroughs, and I have now examined the space vehicle found on Clementina. While we are not qualified to give a technical report on it -you will be getting several technical reports on it from other sources in any case - we both were convinced that it was a vehicle developed for, if not by, the captive life-form. You will recall that eight of the lifeforms were discovered close to the vehicle; and the body of a dead one was disinterred within the vehicle itself; nine bunks, or niches that by their shape and size are intended to serve as bunks, are observable within the vehicle.
Because these bunks run in the direction we think of as vertical rather than horizontally, and are separated by what we now know to be fuel lines, they have not previously been recognized as bunks.
"Here it is appropriate to mention another trouble that we come up against continually. We do not know what is evidence and what is not.
"For instance, we now have to ask ourselves, supposing we consider it established that the lifeform has developed space travel: can space travel be
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