One Ship

Roy C. Lackey · 14 Aug 2003, 03:51 · from urth-v0308.mbox · original

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From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) One Ship
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 22:51:01 -0500
Message-ID: <urth-v0308-3890 at digest.urth.net>
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Ashley Crill wrote:
[amid much snippage]
>>I'm of the opinion that the Starcrosser we see in The Book of the Long Sun
is the same ship as the one upon which Severian sailed to Yesod.<<

Nah. Silk and others from the airship saw the _Whorl_ and the Short Sun of
the Blue-Green system from outside the ship when they visited Mainframe in
EXODUS. The colonists saw the ship as well, from the landers. The _Whorl_
was visible to the naked eye in orbit from Blue, therefore could not have
been contained within another vessel. Tzadkiel's ship, at a comparable
distance, would have blotted out the stars in a big chunk of night sky.

>>Second, it contains Chems very similar in construction and role to those
found in the Whorl. Jonas himself seems to be a chem, and is a sailor as
well.<<

Sidero and his kind were glorified spacesuits with an attitude. They were
hollow, meant to be worn by men, so they were relatively light of weight.
Sev put on Sidero. Jonas was also lightweight (as Sev noted when he picked
him up in the Antechamber), but was not large enough for a man to climb
inside. Chems are an entirely different kind of machine. They have an access
plate in their torsos, but are not hollow. They are also very, very heavy
(particularly the males), as Crane noted in chapter 12 of LAKE: "Lemur there
weighs four times as much as you and me together."

-Roy

--=20

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