2

The graduation ceremony took place on the lawn behind the Riverbend High School gym. A hundred students, their parents, and a band turned out at 10:00 A.M., June 1, 2080. Mr. J. W. Molly, the Principal, gave a short speech about city-states in history, drawing obvious parallels with the Free Space Settlements throughout Sunspace. He reminded his audience that Sunspace included all the inhabited worlds of the Solar System—the natural planets; the artificial habitats in the Asteroids and around Jupiter and Saturn; the industrial community around Mercury; the domed cities on Mars and Venus; the Lunar Settlements; and, technically speaking, even Earth itself. Bernal One had been one of the earliest space colonies to be built in the Moon’s Orbit, he pointed out, and was nearly as old as the century. A number of the other habitats in the Bernal Clusters of L-4 and L-5 were almost fifty years old. Ten new O’Neill Cylinders were under construction in Solar orbit. No one would ever run out of room out here, since new worlds could be built as population increased. Total population beyond Earth was well over 10 million and growing, and 3 million were right here at L-5 . . .

Lissa sat in the first row, waiting impatiently for the diplomas to be handed out. She looked up at the giant triangle of Skytown, ten kilometers across from Riverbend on the inner equator of the hollow sphere that was Bernal One. There was a graduation ceremony going on there also. Most of the college-bound graduates were going to Dandridge Cole University, or to one of the technical colleges on Luna. She was the only one she knew who was going to Earth.

“I’ll also be going to Lunar Backside,” she explained defensively during the reception that followed the ceremony, “as soon as I’m done with my preliminary studies on Earth. The Institute has branches all over Sunspace, you know.” Elena Tomasino, her physics lab partner, smiled politely and wished her luck, obviously not caring much about whether it was true. Earth just didn’t have much of a reputation as a place to live. Sunspacers liked the idea of visiting, but they kept in mind the fact that this was a world that killed more than half a million people a year with natural disasters, accidents, and crime. Sunspacers were used to clean, orderly environments that they could control to a high degree, and that was just not possible on a natural world.

As her class milled around on the lawn, Lissa sat down in an empty chair, feeling guilty about Henry Baum. He just didn’t attract her, even if she hadn’t been going away. She spotted him with his parents in the crowd, but he looked away from her.

“Why do you want to go to Earth?” he had asked her a week ago. He was the closest to a boyfriend she had ever had, or had permitted herself to have, and she had realized suddenly that he was really upset about her going away. “My dad says Earth’s crowded and smelly, and it has weird diseases that resist treatment.”

“Do you really believe that?”

“Everyone knows that, Lissa. I mean, there’s ten billion people down there!” He was studying to be an industrial chemist.

“I’ve got to go,” she had answered. “The Institute’s school is there.”

He had touched her hand gently across the lunch room table. “I’ll miss you.” He had looked at her with his gray eyes, and she had admired his long lashes. Some of his pudginess seemed to have disappeared, she had noticed, surprised at how much he seemed to care about her.

She gazed up into the great lighted space and imagined the habitat’s people suddenly drifting free of the inner surface, out into the sunny emptiness, if Bernal were to stop turning. The centrifugal spin that pressed everything to the inner surface here was nothing more than the acceleration that kept water at the bottom of a bucket whipping around at the end of a rope. On Earth she would experience a gravitational field for the first time, the actual attraction of a large mass, not the steady acceleration of spin. She wouldn’t feel much difference, of course, except that it would be a full one gravity, slightly higher than the force on Bernal. She thought of the people who had grown up on Mars, the Moon, or on Mercury, where gravity was less than twenty percent of Earth’s. Those people would never be able to live on Earth. They could visit in wheelchairs, or stand with the help of external prosthetic supports, but never comfortably, she knew. Entire generations of colonists were forever cut off from the home world; but they were at home elsewhere.

She looked around for her father, and saw him talking to Mr. Molly. And she knew suddenly that she was really leaving, and that she would miss this inner world of small towns and parks, gentle sunlight and small streams. Bernal’s perfection was a human order, made by and for humanity—not the nature of a teeming planet like Earth, or the harsh, radiation-filled openness of Sunspace, but that of a newly made place. . . .

“What can I say, Lissa?” her father asked as he sat down next to her. “We both know that high school is nothing at all. You learned most of what they could teach you halfway through. You got to do a lot of interesting reading.” He smiled as he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Sharon’s very sorry she couldn’t come, but a life depended on a major piece of surgery they could not do without her.” He smiled. “Well, they could have, but it was a new technique that she helped develop, so she had to be there to see it work.”

“I really don’t mind,” Lissa said, smiling gently and feeling something of her father’s expression in her own face. Things were changing for her quickly now. She felt sad and hopeful at the same time.

* * *

Three bottles of champagne were waiting for them on the terrace. Mom sprang at her from behind the door and poured a small bottle all over her head. “Congratulations, dear!” she cried. Dad went over to the bucket and moved the bottles around in the ice.

Lissa’s head was spinning by early evening. The sun rings faded to moonlight, and the lights went on all over the inner surface. She sat and watched the road lamps connect the towns. The great lake sparkled, and she knew again how much she would miss home.

But in the back of her mind she heard the alien signals singing a strange song that called to her. She felt her ambition; it demanded that she do whatever was needed to bring out her best. Earth wasn’t so far away; she’d be back for holidays. Her father had grown up on Earth, so it couldn’t be that bad.

“You’ll like it,” he said, catching her mood. “It was home to me before I came to college on Bernal. I had to come, because it was the best place for physics. My roommate, Joe Sorby, and I knew that, and it’s the same with you.” He toasted her with an empty glass, and she felt his sudden sadness.

She would have to go to the polar spaceport alone the next morning, but she didn’t mind. Mom had to see a patient very early, and Morey would still be asleep. Lissa didn’t want him to miss his one o’clock class. He needed a lot of sleep in order to shovel physics into new brains.

“Are you sure you can handle being away in a strange place?” he asked, shifting in his recliner. There was only a trace of doubt in his voice.

“Of course I can,” she answered firmly, yet felt that her life so far had rushed by too quickly.

“Oh, there was a message for you from Henry earlier. He didn’t want to stay on or have me call you. He just said to tell you good luck.”

“Thanks.”

Her father was silent, and after a few moments she noticed that he had fallen asleep. She smiled, feeling that he had accepted her plans for the future, however critical he might be of the Interstellar Institute’s work. As she gazed at his sleeping face, she realized how important the approval of her parents was to her sense of determination.