Fritz Leiber: Ship of Shadows

But centrally, looking much bigger than all the blackness, was a vast corpse-white round pocked with faint circles and scored by bright lines and mottled with slightly darker areas.

It didn’t look as if it were wired for electricity, and it certainly didn’t look afire. After a while Spar got the weird idea that its light was reflected from something much brighter behind Windrush.

It was infinitely strange to think of so much space around Windrush. Like thinking of a reality containing reality.

And if Windrush were between the hypothetical brighter light and the pocked white round, its shadow ought to be on the latter. Unless Windrush were almost infinitely small. Really these speculations were utterly too fantastic to deal with.

Yet could anything be too fantastic? Werewolves, witches, points, edges, size and space beyond any but the most insane belief.

When he had first looked at the corpse-white object, it had been round. And he had heard and felt the creakings of Loafday noon, without being conscious of it at the time. But now the round had its fore edge evenly sliced off, so that it was lopsided. Spar wondered if the hypothetical incandescence behind Windrush were moving, or the white round rotating, or Windrush itself revolving around the white round. Such thoughts, especially the last, were dizzying almost beyond endurance.

He made for the open door, wondering if he should zip it behind him, decided not to. The passageway was another amazement, going off and off and off, and narrowing as it went. Its walls bore… arrows, the red pointing to larboard, the way from which he’d come, the green pointing starboard, the way he was going. The arrows were what he’d always seen as dash-shaped blurs. As he pulled himself along the strangely definite drag-line, the passageway stayed the same diameter, all the way to the violet main-drag.

He wanted to jerk himself as fast as the green arrows to the starboard end of Windrush to verify the hypothetical incandescence and see the details of the orange-dun round that always depressed him.

But he decided he ought first to report Doc’s disappearance to the Bridge. He might find Drake there. And report the loss of Doc’s treasure too, he reminded himself.

Passing faces fascinated him. Such a welter of noses and ears! He overtook the croaking, bent shape. It was that of an old woman whose nose almost met her chin. She was doing something twitchy with her fingers to two narrow sticks and a roll of slender, fuzzy line. He impulsively dove off the drag-line and caught hold of her, whirling them around.

“What are you doing, grandma?” he asked.

She puffed with anger. “Knitting,” she answered indignantly.

“What are the words you keep saying?”

“Names of knitting patterns,” she replied, jerking loose from him and blowing on. “Sand Dunes, Lightning, Soldiers Marching…”

He started to swim for the drag-line, then saw he was already at the blue shaft leading aloft. He grabbed hold of its speeding centerline, not minding the burn, and speeded to the Bridge.

When he got there, he saw there was a multitude of stars aloft. The oblong rainbows were all banks of multi-colored lights winking on and off. But the silent officers—they looked very old, their faces stared as if they were sleep-swimming, their gestured orders were mechanical, he wondered if they knew where Windrush was going—or anything at all, beyond the Bridge of Windrush.

A dark, young officer with tightly curly hair floated to him. It wasn’t until he spoke that Spar knew he was Ensign Drake.

“Hello, gramps. Say, you look younger. What are those things around your eyes?”

“Field glasses. They help me see sharp.”

“But field glasses have tubes. They’re a sort of binocular telescope.”

Spar shrugged and told about the disappearance of Doc and his big, black treasure bag.

“But you say he drank a lot and he told you his treasures were dreams? Sounds like he was wacky and wandered off to do his drinking somewhere else.”

“But Doc was a regular drinker. He always came to the Bat Rack.”

“Well, I’ll do what I can. Say, I’ve been pulled off the Bat Rack investigation. I think that character Crown got at someone higher up. The old ones are easy to get at—not so much greed as going by custom, taking the easiest course. Fenner and I never did find the old woman and the little dog, or any female and animal… or anything.”

Spar told about Crown’s earlier attempt to steal Doc’s little black bag.

“So you think the two cases might be connected. Well, as I say, I’ll do what I can.”

Spar went back to the Bat Rack. It was very strange to see Keeper’s face in detail. It looked old and its pink target center was a big red nose criss-crossed by veins. His brown eyes were not so much curious as avid. He asked about the things around Spar’s eyes. Spar decided it wouldn’t be wise to tell Keeper about seeing sharply.

“They’re a new kind of costume jewelry, Keeper. Blasted Earth, I don’t have any hair on my head, ought to have something.”

“Language, Spar! It’s like a drunk to spend precious scrip on such a grotesque bauble.”

Spar neither reminded Keeper that all the scrip he’d earned at the Bat Rack amounted to no more than a wad as big as his thumb-joint, nor that he’d quit drinking. Nor did he tell him about his teeth, but kept them hidden behind his lips.

Kim was nowhere in sight. Keeper shrugged. “Gone off somewhere. You know the way of strays, Spar.”

Yes, thought Spar, this one’s stayed put too long.

He kept being amazed that he could see all of the Bat Rack sharply. It was an octahedron criss-crossed by shrouds and made up of two pyramids put together square base to square base. The apexes of the pyramids were the violet fore and dark red aft corners. The four other corners were the starboard green, the black below, the larboard scarlet, and the blue aloft, if you named them from aft in the way the hands of a watch move.

Suzy drifted in early Playday. Spar was shocked by her blowzy appearance and bloodshot eyes. But he was touched by her signs of affection and he felt the strong friendship between them. Twice when Keeper wasn’t looking he switched her nearly empty pouch of dark for a full one. She told him that, yes, she’d once known Sweetheart and that, yes, she’d heard people say Mabel had seen Sweetheart snatched by vamps.

Business was slow for Playday. There were no strange brewos. Hoping against fearful, gut-level certainty, Spar kept waiting for Doc to come in zig-zagging along the ratlines and comment on the new gadgets he’d given Spar and spout about the Old Days and his strange philosophy.

Playday night Crown came in with his girls, all except Almodie. Doucette said she’d had a headache and stayed at the Hole. Once again, all of them ordered coffee, though to Spar all of them seemed high.

Spar covertly studied their faces. Though nervous and alive, they all had something in their stares akin to those he’d seen in most of the officers on the Bridge. Doc had said they were all zombies. It was interesting to find out that Phanette’s and Doucette’s red-mottled appearance was due to… freckles, tiny reddish star-clusters on their white skins.

“Where’s that famous talking cat?” Crown asked Spar.

Spar shrugged. Keeper said, “Strayed. For which I’m glad. Don’t want a little feline who makes fights like last night.”

Keeping his yellow-brown irised eyes on Spar, Crown said, “We believe it was that fight last Playday gave Almodie her headache, so she didn’t want to come back tonight. We’ll tell her you got rid of the witch cat.”

“I’d have got rid of the beast if Spar hadn’t,” Keeper put in. “So you think it was a witch cat, coroner?”