She giggled at that, then without warning became intensely serious once more. Somberly she said, "To my misfortune age in a man is no such barrier. Would that it were!"
"I gather your assignment has to do with an older man then," said Justin, unexpectedly seized with a pang of jealousy.
She said, "I have no wish to discuss it."
"My apologies," he told her. Then, "I've been granted permission to see a few sights. I wish you'd appoint yourself my guide."
"Gladly," she replied, shedding her gravity once more as she stepped down to the floor. "Strange though it be, Belvoir is a place of surpassing marvels."
"That I'll believe," Justin told her.
They emerged at the foot of a gently sloping ramp upon an immense mall that reminded Justin of one of the carefully tended semi-tropical gardens outside of Charleston, South Carolina.
Resisting the tug of Deborah's hand, Justin paused to study the colorful vista carefully. At first the soundlessness troubled him—till he noted that no bird sang upon any of the branches or floated upon the lagoons. He looked upward, saw that fluffy clouds crossed endlessly a pale blue sky—as against a theatrical backdrop.
His sophisticated gaze found little trouble in discovering them to be mere aspects of a moving picture sky—and now and again, behind the illusion of space they created, he was able to discern the shadow of immense mechanical installations, whose hugeness and intricateness quite took his breath away. Evidently Ortine had spoken no less than the truth when he said that Belvoir was in truth a ship.