The night was one of singular beauty; the season was mid-spring and the gentle winds had polished the stars to a crystal finish. The man and woman stood upon a small hill to the east of the Yards; below them was another universe of light, for the Victory was glimmering quietly in the starlight. The city that had risen around the Yards, the only one in the World to be electrified, spread its carpet of light from the Tyne almost to the encircling mountains; the city's first name had been Georgetown in honor of the late monarch, but Trensing had renamed it Gateway.
It was the sixty-seventh spring of the Ship.
The two young people were both Technos, and sterling examples of the breed too. Both clearly reflected the slender grace and aristocratic bearing that had come to characterize that class in those days. At times, if you looked at them for very long, the black of their uniforms seemed to blend with the night sky and the silver trim gleamed in the starlight like far-off universes, leaving only their pale faces and hands to indicate mere mortal presence. The boy's face was of fine sharp features with deep-set eyes that reflected the complex glitterings of the Yards in their depths. The girl was also fine and fair, but her bearing was of a less earthly character than the man; while the man dreamed of the great ship below, the opal glow of her eyes appeared to drink in the limitless mystery of the welkin. And at times the warm breezes stirred her golden hair and entwined the strands about the galaxies and stars above.
She was beautiful, in the ethereal manner of the queens of the ancient empires; he was quite handsome in the cast of the old knights. It was as if the blood of vanished kings had suddenly sprung up in the new aristocracy of the Caroline.
The stage was set for a predictable chain of events, and much of the conversation was quite in keeping with the time and relationships of that sort, but something was clearly off-key. To begin with, examine their eyes again, for there was too much steel in them. The man saw only the Victory, twenty miles to the west but still overpowering in its growing immensity; and even the regal gaze of the girl was barbed with iron, whether from the Yards or from some hidden spot in the sky it was impossible to tell.
Their actions were equally disturbing, for while they stood close together, they never touched; while they talked, they never looked at each other. The girl looked to the stars above her, and the man to the diamond tangle below him.
The boy talked mostly, at first only of the girl's beauty; but gradually he began to speak more and more of the Victory. "Ah, can you see her now, my girl? Seven miles long and three across. Seven by three! By Heaven, what a beauty she'll be, too. Even now you can see the curve of the wings and the prow . . . "
"But the Victory will never be finished. Remember?" the girl murmured absently, her eyes tracing the constellations.
The boy sighed and lowered his head. "Quite, of course. But when I look at her and at what we've done in these short years, I just can't help thinking, what if . . . " The man smiled to himself. "And I start seeing the places where her cabins will be and where her wings will cut the clouds. All really against what they told us about the Victory and her purpose. But, like I said, I really can't help it. And then there is always Home to think about."
"Home," the girl whispered. "Which one do you think it is? That one?" She pointed to a star near the northern horizon. "Or that one, perhaps?"
"Ah, now it is you who is the dreamer."
"Possibly, but"—she searched the sky for the proper words—"but there is a Home out there. Probably not like the one we tell the poor People about, but certainly a new world full of green things and life; quiet, open spaces where you can watch sunsets or dawns without fearing for your life or having the ring of jackhammers in your ears." She looked down at the Yards with a mixture of distaste and fascination.
The man turned to her, for he had heard these words many times in the past few months. He lifted an eye slightly and sighed for he knew exactly what it all meant. His tone was now one of resignation rather than one of hope or happiness. "Then you, my lovely, to your green wilderness and silent nightfalls; I know that wrong or futile as it may be, you have come to believe in them as surely as I have in the Ship." He touched her hand, but fearfully, as if he thought he would somehow pollute her in that simple action. He waved a hand at the Yards. "As for me, I'm afraid that my dream must be placed before yours if either are to be attained—in any sort of way. Ah, the Ship, all bright shining metal burning in a noonday sun. Hardly as quiet a creation as yours might be.
Thunder, thunder and fire and a huge shadow darkening half the sky. There'll be my world even if it must remain as much of a fantasy as yours." The girl said nothing. "Goodbye then, my lady." He touched her hand again, as if to raise and kiss it, but he stopped and drew back his hand; he walked down to Gateway and to the sleeping Yards. The girl started to walk up into the mountains where the distant lights of her home resided among those in the constellation of Eringold, a wanderer of the western seas.
On the same night a parallel conversation had taken place inside the Yards. Two of the People, both of the thickly graceful sort that muralists love to paint, had found the heat and noise of Gateway uncomfortable. The encompassing highlands were ignored since for the past fifty years they had been strictly the territory of the Technos. But the Yards, deserted at night, had appealed to them. They stood down at the end of the ways where the slipway ran into the quiet Sea and talked of dreams much like the Technos had: the man spoke of the Ship for he was a pipefitter and exceedingly proud of his work. The woman talked of Home for she very much wanted any children she might bear to walk in a kinder land than hers. To them the dreams were more than simple musings, they were concrete hopes, not "but ifs," but "whens." Their hearts as well as their minds were wholly committed to what they were expressing. This was good for it meant that the Myth of the Ship had become part of their lives. The disturbing part of it all was that, despite all the protestations, they were merely speculating: the two Technos and the dead Syers had spoken in identical tones.