Deborah J. Ross (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
deborahjross) wrote2012-08-17 09:40 am
deborahjross) wrote2012-08-17 09:40 am
Entry tags:
Free Chapter Friday
If you've been following along with the serialization of my science fiction novel, Jaydium, here's the next installment. (All the previous chapters are available; there's an index under "Read A Story").
Our heroes arrive at the rainbow city (from the cover):
"Lo-o-ok at that," Kithri said.
Eril leaned forward across her shoulders, straining for more, hardly daring to breathe least the city shimmer and evaporate like a fever-born mirage. Even at this distance, he could distinguish individual structures. A ruby spindle shone in the late afternoon sun, dwarfing a flat rectangular block of pearlescent lace and a chain of smaller towers linked at every level by bridges of the same translucent material. A series of causeways, sapphire blue and turquoise, wound through the forest of towers.
As they drew nearer, Eril realized that the city was not nearly as large as it first seemed. He was accustomed to the scale of artificial satellites or ancient mega-cities like New Paris or Terillium City, where ten thousand might live and work within the same self-contained scraper. These shining buildings before him could not be more than three or four stories high. It was their slenderness and composition that made them seem so elegantly tall. Judging by Fifth Fed standards, he put the city=s entire population at fifty thousand people, no more.
Or perhaps they aren't human. Perhaps we've discovered a new race of intelligent aliens!
Our heroes arrive at the rainbow city (from the cover):
"Lo-o-ok at that," Kithri said.
Eril leaned forward across her shoulders, straining for more, hardly daring to breathe least the city shimmer and evaporate like a fever-born mirage. Even at this distance, he could distinguish individual structures. A ruby spindle shone in the late afternoon sun, dwarfing a flat rectangular block of pearlescent lace and a chain of smaller towers linked at every level by bridges of the same translucent material. A series of causeways, sapphire blue and turquoise, wound through the forest of towers.
As they drew nearer, Eril realized that the city was not nearly as large as it first seemed. He was accustomed to the scale of artificial satellites or ancient mega-cities like New Paris or Terillium City, where ten thousand might live and work within the same self-contained scraper. These shining buildings before him could not be more than three or four stories high. It was their slenderness and composition that made them seem so elegantly tall. Judging by Fifth Fed standards, he put the city=s entire population at fifty thousand people, no more.
Or perhaps they aren't human. Perhaps we've discovered a new race of intelligent aliens!