Description
Short Science Fiction Collection 009
The Cosmic Express
by Jack Williamson
Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding tumbled out of the rumpled bed-clothing, a
striking slender figure in purple-striped pajamas. He smiled fondly
across to the other of the twin beds, where Nada, his pretty bride, lay
quiet beneath light silk covers. With a groan, he stood up and began a
series of fantastic bending exercises. But after a few half-hearted
movements, he gave it up, and walked through an open door into a small
bright room, its walls covered with bookcases and also with scientific
appliances that would have been strange to the man of four or five
centuries before, when the Age of Aviation was beginning.
Yawning, Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding stood before the great open window,
staring out. Below him was a wide, park-like space, green with emerald
lawns, and bright with flowering plants. Two hundred yards across it
rose an immense pyramidal building–an artistic structure, gleaming with
white marble and bright metal, striped with the verdure of terraced
roof-gardens, its slender peak rising to help support the gray,
steel-ribbed glass roof above. Beyond, the park stretched away in
illimitable vistas, broken with the graceful columned buildings that
held up the great glass roof.
Above the glass, over this New York of 2432 A. D., a freezing blizzard
was sweeping. But small concern was that to the lightly clad man at the
window, who was inhaling deeply the fragrant air from the plants
below–air kept, winter and summer, exactly at 20° C.
With another yawn, Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding turned back to the room,
which was bright with the rich golden light that poured in from the
suspended globes of the cold ato-light that illuminated the snow-covered
city. With a distasteful grimace, he seated
Product ID: 9781776778591
Sku: 9781776778591
