horizon was a blaze of gaudily beribboned strata, tinted rose and umber from the effluvia of the recently erupted Etna. The Graveyard stood in stark silhouette against the sunrise.
In the ten years he'd worked at Orly, Mirren had done his best to avoid the Graveyard, working in the vast lot only when he could find no other flier to take his shift. The last time had been five years ago, when his nostalgia for the hey-day of the Lines had been at its height. Since then, and especially over the last year or two, he'd often gazed across the port to the regimented ranks of the derelict starships receding into the distance, and told himself that for old time's sake he should revisit the last resting place of these mighty behemoths.
He paused and gazed left and right along the phalanx of excoriated and rusting bigships, rising from the tarmac like epitaphs to their own extinction. Dwarfed beneath the rearing hulks, he walked until he came to avenue five. Pushing his own pain at the closure of the Lines to the back of his mind, he experienced a stab of sadness for the 'ships themselves. It was sentimental, he knew, but he nevertheless thought it wrong, unjust, that such magnificent examples of engineering should have been superseded by a form of transportation as effete as the interface portals.
He turned and walked down the avenue, and it was as if he had entered another realm, a nightmare past in which the symbols of his younger days had been perversely maligned by the ongoing process of entropy. One either side, rows of wrecked and dilapidated starships dwindled to vanishing point - bigships and smallships, scout-ships and survey-vessels, colony-liners like compacted cities and planetary ferries, life-boats, tugs, salvage-ships as ugly as deep-sea fish, sun-divers, two-man boats, express cutters and slowboats pushed once by Gamma crews... He slowed his pace, gazing around in wonder. Every type of spatial architecture was represented here: vertical ships as streamlined as needles, horizontal craft like bulky leviathans; squat blocks on bent stanchion-legs like crabs, oval vessels like polished gems. Many gave the impression of being gloriously intact - though Mirren knew that their innards had been ripped out - and many more, tragically, had been strategically dismembered to prevent cannibalisation or salvaging by renegade Enginemen. He passed lots given over to portioned quarters of bigships: tail-sections and lone nose-cones, stranded mid-sections and rearing fins as large as smallships themselves, honeycombed radiation baffles, observation domes, astrodomes, flanks and bulkheads and pitiful cross-sections of 'ships like the carcasses of slaughtered beasts. Perhaps even more devastating than the piecemeal state of the vessels, however, was the attention of the extraterrestrial flora. Some of the smaller 'ships were cocooned, others had their legs and tori enwrapped in clinging skirts of jungle growth. Mirren did not fail to see the irony: for years these vessels had ranged among the stars, vanguards of humankinds' conquest; now the flora of the planets they had conquered was exacting an eloquent revenge.
He found lane three and turned down the narrow aisle. He passed the shell of a rusting smallship, then a bigship missing the domed section of its forward command bridge like the unfortunate victim of some abandoned brain surgery. He came to a halt, there was something painfully familiar about the nose-cone of the bigship which obtruded from its resting place and overhung the lane. The curving panels of its flank were obscured by a beard of purple-leafed vine, but Mirren glimpsed an ornate name-plate through the leaves. He climbed onto the back of a wrecked tug-tractor, reached out and swept aside the vine.
The Pride of Paramatta ... He repeated the name, savouring the alliteration on his tongue, the flood of memories it provoked. He had never actually pushed the Paramatta - it was an early Class II survey vessel
In the ten years he'd worked at Orly, Mirren had done his best to avoid the Graveyard, working in the vast lot only when he could find no other flier to take his shift. The last time had been five years ago, when his nostalgia for the hey-day of the Lines had been at its height. Since then, and especially over the last year or two, he'd often gazed across the port to the regimented ranks of the derelict starships receding into the distance, and told himself that for old time's sake he should revisit the last resting place of these mighty behemoths.
He paused and gazed left and right along the phalanx of excoriated and rusting bigships, rising from the tarmac like epitaphs to their own extinction. Dwarfed beneath the rearing hulks, he walked until he came to avenue five. Pushing his own pain at the closure of the Lines to the back of his mind, he experienced a stab of sadness for the 'ships themselves. It was sentimental, he knew, but he nevertheless thought it wrong, unjust, that such magnificent examples of engineering should have been superseded by a form of transportation as effete as the interface portals.
He turned and walked down the avenue, and it was as if he had entered another realm, a nightmare past in which the symbols of his younger days had been perversely maligned by the ongoing process of entropy. One either side, rows of wrecked and dilapidated starships dwindled to vanishing point - bigships and smallships, scout-ships and survey-vessels, colony-liners like compacted cities and planetary ferries, life-boats, tugs, salvage-ships as ugly as deep-sea fish, sun-divers, two-man boats, express cutters and slowboats pushed once by Gamma crews... He slowed his pace, gazing around in wonder. Every type of spatial architecture was represented here: vertical ships as streamlined as needles, horizontal craft like bulky leviathans; squat blocks on bent stanchion-legs like crabs, oval vessels like polished gems. Many gave the impression of being gloriously intact - though Mirren knew that their innards had been ripped out - and many more, tragically, had been strategically dismembered to prevent cannibalisation or salvaging by renegade Enginemen. He passed lots given over to portioned quarters of bigships: tail-sections and lone nose-cones, stranded mid-sections and rearing fins as large as smallships themselves, honeycombed radiation baffles, observation domes, astrodomes, flanks and bulkheads and pitiful cross-sections of 'ships like the carcasses of slaughtered beasts. Perhaps even more devastating than the piecemeal state of the vessels, however, was the attention of the extraterrestrial flora. Some of the smaller 'ships were cocooned, others had their legs and tori enwrapped in clinging skirts of jungle growth. Mirren did not fail to see the irony: for years these vessels had ranged among the stars, vanguards of humankinds' conquest; now the flora of the planets they had conquered was exacting an eloquent revenge.
He found lane three and turned down the narrow aisle. He passed the shell of a rusting smallship, then a bigship missing the domed section of its forward command bridge like the unfortunate victim of some abandoned brain surgery. He came to a halt, there was something painfully familiar about the nose-cone of the bigship which obtruded from its resting place and overhung the lane. The curving panels of its flank were obscured by a beard of purple-leafed vine, but Mirren glimpsed an ornate name-plate through the leaves. He climbed onto the back of a wrecked tug-tractor, reached out and swept aside the vine.
The Pride of Paramatta ... He repeated the name, savouring the alliteration on his tongue, the flood of memories it provoked. He had never actually pushed the Paramatta - it was an early Class II survey vessel
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