John Rackham by Beanstalk

apart to fill all the world, then rush together just as quickly, like a silent thunderclap ... and all so quickly that it was a
dreadful memory before he could really feel it. The ship's lights were off,
but the interior was full of a bright warm light that came from outside. It was
a mellow glow that gave the strong sense of being somewhere out in the open, in
sunlight. Jack felt sinkingly certain something had gone amiss, until he saw
how Jasar was sitting tensely, holding his breath, glaring at his devices, at
last to relax and let out a quiet sigh.
    "We did it," he said quietly but in
triumph. "We did it. Through the screens and down, right on the outside
edge ... and never so much as tickled an alarm, not as far as I can see. Now, if I wrap us up really
tight, like that ... and that . . .
and that! And we are arrived, lad. Comets and coronas, we did it!" Jack
stared uncomprehendingly at white-faced disks, at slow-throbbing colors, at
black fingers that shivered and sank and became motionless, then at Jasar. The
little scout grinned. "The gamble paid off. I don't know why, and I am not
going to worry about it too much. Maybe the Hilax discipline is really as slack
as we have heard; who knows? What concerns me, right now, is that we are inside
the station area, inside their screens, and they don't seem to know it. Not
yet, anyway." "This is what you call a station?"
    "This
is it. Remember what I told you, that diagram and the size of it? We are right
out on one edge, in the environmental control section. Let's get ourselves a
look." He half lifted from his seat and Jack said, surprised:
    "Not with your magic
eyes?"
    "View
cameras, you mean? Not likely! Gadgetry has its uses, but it also has drawbacks
in that it uses power, and power has a way of broadcasting itself to those who
might be listening out for it. At this moment there isn't a thing running in
this ship except the main power-plant generator and the screen shield. We are
going to take a look the hard way, with eyeballs!"
    The
scene that met his gaze as he shared an eight-sided aperture with Jasar
satisfied all Jack's requirements for an alien world. He had known Jasar only a
few short hours. He was very far from grasping the utter strangeness and
difference of the little man's ways and habits of thinking. But the concept of
difference was something he could get a firm hold on,
and this panorama fitted that completely. So far as he could see, the ship had
come down to rest on a vast carpet of green froth, pale, deep enough to half
submerge it. A closer and more critical look made him change that
"froth" to "grass," but whoever saw grass that curled and billowed in such string-thin masses? And that
stretched into the distance as far as the eye could reach, like a restless sea?
Raising his stare aloft was no more rewarding. All he saw was a pale
blueness—no sun—that was curiously bright, yet just not bright enough to
dazzle. Like some kind of wall. And the glare of it reminded him of that
ominous starkness of the sky just before a thunderstorm. But no sun, nor
stars, nor clouds, nothing!
    "A roof of
light!" he muttered, and Jasar nodded.
    "That's
what it is. A luminescent bubble-roof, enclosing the station. No need to worry about that. The twist-field passed us in, and it will yank us
out again, when we need it. That's the part we have to concentrate on,
there!"
    Jack
followed his pointing, and saw a far distant tower, black against the blue. It
was difficult to estimate the distance with no mark to go by. "It looks
small from here," he said.
    "But it isn't.
Remember that diagram again. This station is about two of your miles across. So
that command tower is all of a mile away. And it is anybody's guess just what
may be lurking in these weeds."
    "Weeds?" Jack echoed uneasily.
    "Call
them that, for now. Ill explain as we go. Make sure
you have everything secure now, nothing likely to drop or get lost. Here we
go!" He hauled himself up and out of the orifice in a