Free The Greatship by Robert Reed Page B

but communal in nature.  A few thousand of their city-nests hang from the rafters, and that’s one of the reasons for going down there.”
    The grinning man continued.  “The LoYo give that big room a soft, delicious glow.  I’ve got good eyes, but even after a week in there, I couldn’t see far.  Just the immediate floor and what felt like a distant, unreachable horizon.  Once, maybe twice, I saw a light in the distance.  I can’t claim to know what the light was.  But you know me, Harper.  Don’t expect ghost stories.  Usually the truth is a lot more interesting than what we think we want to see…
    “Anyway, what I like best about Bottom-E, and in particular about that huge room…what makes a trip genuinely memorable…is that when you walk on that smooth hyperfiber, and nothing above you but the faint far off glow of what could be distant galaxies…it’s easy to believe that this is exactly how it would have felt and looked just a couple billion years ago, if you were strolling by yourself across the hull of the Great Ship.
    “Understand, Harper?  Imagine yourself out between the galaxies, crossing the middle of nothing.  That’s an experience worth doing.”
    Then with a slow wink, Perri added, “By the way.  I know you keep to yourself.  But if you feel like enduring some company, you’re more than welcome to visit my home for a meal, for conversation.  For no good reason, if you.  I don’t think you ever met my wife, and I’ll warn you, Quee Lee likes people even more than I do.”
    Perri paused, staring at his unseen audience.
    “You were gone a very long time,” he said.  “Jan claimed you were off chasing Clackers, and that’s what the official report decides too.  ‘Lost in the fuel tanks.’  But I haven’t heard any news about bodies being fished out of the liquid hydrogen, which makes me wonder if our mutual friend was telling another one of his fables.
    “Anyway, it’s wonderful-good to see you again, Harper.  And welcome back to the living!”

11
    As promised, Bottom-E held one enormous room, and except for the occasional smudge of cold light pasted against the remote arch of a ceiling, the room was delightfully dark.  Each step on the slick floor teased out memories.  That lost and now beloved childhood returned to him, and Alone wasn’t just content but he was confident that the next step would bring happiness, as would the step after that, and the step after that.
    More than twelve hundred square kilometers of hyperfiber demanded his careful study.  Unlike the hull, there was an atmosphere, but the air was oxygen-starved and nearly as cold as space.  Alone’s brought back an old habit, following a random line until an oddity caught his attention.  Then he would stop and study what another visitor had left behind—a fossilized meal or frozen bodily waste, usually—before attacking another random line until he found trash or until a wall of rough feldspar defined the limits of this illusion.
    For two years, he walked quietly, seeing no one else.
    The LoYo were tiny and weakly lit, and there was no sign that they noticed him, much less understood what he was.
    Perri’s mysterious glow failed to appear.  But Alone soon convinced himself that he had never hoped for the story to prove real.  One step was followed by the next, and eventually he would pause and turn and step again, defining a new line, right up until the moment when that simple cherished pattern failed him.  He was walking when suddenly a thin reddish light was swallowed by his big eyes, digested and studied.  He examined the glow photon by photon, instinct racing ahead of his intelligence.  This new light was indistinguishable from the glow that he leaked whenever he was examining a fossilized pile of alien feces.
    On his longest, quietest legs, Alone ran.
    Then the voice returned.  Decades had passed since the last incident, yet it was suddenly with him—the sharp stark concept,