"What else?"
"Else? Nothing."
Anger welled up inside Rikud. "All right," he said, "listen. What do
you hear?"
"Broom, brroom, brrroom!" Chuls imitated the intermittent blasting of
the engines. "I'm hungry, Rikud."
The old man turned and strode off down the corridor toward the dining
room, and Rikud was glad to be alone once more.
* * * * *
Now the vapor had departed, except for a few tenuous whisps. For a
moment Rikud thought he could see the gardens rearward in the world.
But that was silly. What were the gardens doing in the viewport? And
besides, Rikud had the distinct feeling that here was something far
vaster than the gardens, although all of it existed in the viewport
which was no wider than the length of his body. The gardens, moreover,
did not jump and dance before his eyes the way the viewport gardens
did. Nor did they spin. Nor did the trees grow larger with every jolt.
Rikud sat down hard. He blinked.
The world had come to rest on the garden of the viewport.
* * * * *
For a whole week that view did not change, and Rikud had come to accept
it as fact. There--through the viewport and in it--was a garden. A
garden larger than the entire world, a garden of plants which Rikud had
never seen before, although he had always liked to stroll through the
world's garden and he had come to know every plant well. Nevertheless,
it was a garden.