Monkey Planet [antikvár]

Jinn and Phyllis were spending a wonderful holiday in space, as far away as possible from the inhabited stars.In those days interplanetary voyages were an everyday occurrence, and interstellar travel not uncommon. Rockets took tourists to the wondrous sites of Sirius, or financiers to the famous stock exchanges of Arcturus and Aldebaran. But Jinn and Phyllis, a wealthy leisured couple, were distinguished in their cosmos for their originality and a few grains of poetry. They wandered over the universe for their pleasure - by sail.Their ship was a sort of sphere with an envelope - the sail - which was miraculously fine and light and moved through space propelled by the pressure of light radiation. Such a machine left to its own devices in the vicinity of a star (though far enough away for the field of gravity not to be too powerful) will always move in a straight line in the opposite direction to the latter; but since Jinn and Phyllis's stellar system contained three suns which were relatively close to one another, their vessel received rays of light along three different axes. Jinn had therefore conceived an extremely ingenious method of steering. His sail was lined inside with a series of black blinds which he could roll up or unroll at will, thus changing the effect of the light-pressure by modifying the reflecting power of certain sections. Furthermore, this elastic envelope could be stretched or contracted as the navigator pleased. Thus, when Jinn wanted to increase his speed, he gave it the biggest diameter possible. It would then take the blasts of radiation on an enormous surface and the vessel would hurtle through space at a furious velocity, which made Phyllis quite dizzy. He would likewise be overcome by vertigo and they would then7