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The Main Characters
* Sven Olsen - a wiry little fellow, one of the best construction men on the spaceship
* Claribel - Sven\'s bird, a small female yellow canary who he has smuggled into the ship
* the teller of the story, also on the spaceship
Outline of contents
It is the storyteller who finds Claribel, that Sven had smuggled on board when she is whistling a melody behind his ear. First, Sven doesn\'t confess that it was him, but soon, she becomes a general pet and he gives in, though he claims, that he only did it of sheer scientific curiosity. One morning, she doesn\'t as usually wake him up and he finally finds her with her claws sticking up into the air. After she is given a shot of oxygen, she revives at once but then suddenly keels over again.
The teller remembers that miners used to carry canaries down to warn them of gas and that in the morning, he too felt in need of some oxygen because his brain seemed to be very slow. They found out that there is something wrong with the air: during an Earth\'s shadow, a part of the air purifier had fallen out and the single alarm in the circuit had fallen off. Half a million dollar\'s worth had let them down completely and without the bird, they all would soon have been dead.
Quotations of the book:
(a) \"Poor Vladimir!\" he said. \"We knew he was a genius, yet we
laughed at him when he told us of his dream. So he kept his
greatest work a secret. (...) He brought life to the moon -
and death as well.\" (p.38/39)
(b) That was the dream: and one day, Marvin knew with a sudden
flash of insight, he would pass it on to his own son, here at
this same spot with the mountains behind him and the silver
light fromthe sky streaming into his face. (p. 85)
(c) What happens to the soul of a man who dies between the stars,
far from his native world? Are you still here, Bernie, clin-
ging to the last object that linked you to your lost and dis-
tant home? (p.91)
(d) \"What is the FBI?\" he asked.
But Hans didn\'t hear him. He had just seen the spaceship.
(p.187)
(e) We stared at each other for a minute; then, before I had quite
recovered my wits, she did a curious kind of backward loop I\'m
sure no earthbound canary had ever managed, and departed with
a few leisurely flicks. It was quite obvious that she\'d
already learned how to operate in the absence of gravity, and
did not believe in doing unnecessary work. (p.189)
Personal Opinion
Though this book is far away from being the best one I\'ve ever read, I do like the stories. Most of all, I like the imagination of being without gravity or of walking on the moon and Arthur C. Clarke gives you a good impression of this, so therefore I like his stories.
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