4

THROUGH THE SKY

The inscription on the giant block of stainless steel in the center of the terminal floor read:

EQUATORIAL SPACEPORT 1

OPENED FOR THE PEOPLE OF EARTH

2002

THE STEEL IN THIS MEMORIAL WAS MANUFACTURED

OUT OF ORES MINED FROM THE FIRST ASTEROID

BROUGHT INTO EARTH ORBIT

2018

“Ten minutes to boarding,” Morey said, sending another chill of expectation up my back. We were really going; it wasn’t just something we were talking about.

I heard a muffled, crackling roar, and looked up in time to see a stubby orbiter rising on a red laser column. The beam tracked the ship, pumping energy into its engines. As the orbiter grew small and disappeared, I imagined its rising arc over the South Atlantic. The laser winked off as the craft attained enough speed to make orbit.

“We can look around some,” Morey said in the sudden quiet.

Human beings were aliens on the equator, I thought as we began to explore the interconnecting domes; the heat and humidity outside could kill.

The first dome we entered was filled with recruiting booths. Flashing holo signs hurried us to join in the building of new worlds:

FIND YOURSELF!

IN EXCITING WORK!

Spacescapes revealed distant parts of the solar system. The 3-D images produced vivid afterimages in my visual field, I was beginning to dislike being seized by the throat to get my attention.

“Now boarding!” a male voice boomed. “Shuttle 334 for Bernal One!”

“Didn’t your folks want to come and see you off?” Morey asked as we waited on line.

I shook my head and felt sorry for myself. “They didn’t even come to graduation.”

“What? I thought they were there.”

“I didn’t want to bring it up. It doesn’t matter.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing much. They had a fight and were out of town.”

There were a few people our age on the line, and I wondered if they were also going away to school.

“Parents think they’ll have you around forever,” Morey said as the line began to move forward. “Then they crack up when the time runs out and they realize they can’t make up for anything.”

I took a deep breath. “It was more than that, Morey. They’re breaking up. Dad wanted the usual renewal and Mom just wouldn’t give him one. It’s their problem now.”

“Well, it happens.” He glanced at me. “I’m sorry, Joe.”

“Bernal One!” the same male voice announced. “Last call!”

This was it. I was going out there, into the darkness of space, protected only by the shuttle.

“Didn’t you have a bag?” Morey asked as the line moved through the tunnel.

I looked around, not really caring. “Must have left it somewhere. They’ll send it home to my parents. I can do without that stuff.”

“Got your wallet?” Morey asked, grinning.

“Sure, right here.”

“Credit codes?”

“I never forget.”

We came out of the tunnel and boarded the tube car that would take us to the pad, two miles away. I grabbed a window seat and stared outside. It was the first time for both of us, and I wondered why Morey wasn’t as excited as I was; maybe Aristotle was right—knowledge killed the sense of wonder in the knower.

The car slid forward and shot into the darkness. I turned away from the window and looked around the brightly lit inside, wondering if I would get to know any of the faces at school. Most of the girls were alone, as were the boys. Only one girl was with an older woman, but she could have been a sister. One boy seemed to be with both parents, and he was looking uneasy.

The car glided out into a brightly lit area and slowed to a stop. Somewhere above us was the gravitic shuttle, waiting to carry us through the sky.

“How’s the stomach?” I asked Morey.

“All better,” he said as we stood up.

Emerging out onto a platform, we took our places on the line in front of the elevator.

“Attention please!”

A young man appeared at our right, hands on hips. He seemed to me to be looking at us critically.

“I’m your guide. My name is Kik ten Eyck,” he announced loudly. “I’ll be with you until we reach the college.” I thought he sounded as if he were herding a bunch of sheep. “I’ll be around to answer your questions and help you with any problems.” It was just a job to him, it seemed. Deliver the Earthies, dump them in the dorm, and get paid. His casual manner was probably fine for very nervous types. The flight was no big thing for him, and that would calm some people, but he seemed arrogant to me.

When our turn came, Morey and I stepped into the lift with half a dozen other kids and were whisked up the ship’s center to our seats.

Seats 22 and 23 were a third of the way to the nose. I grabbed the window seat again, but it didn’t matter; as in the air shuttle, there was no port, only a small screen on the overhead partition. It made for a safer ship, allowing for extra shielding from radiation and meteors.

“It’s bigger than I thought,” Morey said, peering up the shaft.

The empty lift went down past us. “Please fasten your seat belts.” In the confined space the voice sounded as if it were talking in my ear. I sat back and looked up at the screen.

It lit up, showing a crisscross of black roads, with weeds in between. “The launch plate,” the woman’s voice continued, “is a finely tuned installation that must be protected from heat and dust.” The weeds moved as the cover was pulled back, and the launcher emerged from below ground, a metal tube with a silvery ship standing halfway out of it, ready to pierce the sky.

I heard a high whining sound. My arms began to feel heavier. It seemed strange to be watching the ship I was in.

“Gravity inside the ship,” the woman’s voice went on, “will increase to six times normal before the shuttle is released by the reversing field.”

The high-pitched sound grew louder. Vast amounts of power were flowing in to create the repelling g-force. Our seats adjusted to face the overhead screen. I felt myself being pressed back into the heavy cushioning.

“I feel like an elephant,” Morey said.

The blue sky on the screen shimmered from the singing sound. A strange, hurrying happiness filled me.

I was the ship as it went up. A burst of yellow-orange sunlight struck my eyes; weightless, I fell toward a blue ocean of sky. . . .

It was strange to see a spacecraft lifting without a laser or jets, rising but also dropping away from Earth, since a reversed gravitational field was involved. An invisible cone of negative gravity was pushing the vessel up to the speed needed to reach the Moon’s orbit.

The ship climbed through the sky, fleeing the piercing cry of the launcher, becoming a small needle on the screen, held in a gravitational vise between heaven and earth.

I fell back into myself as the picture blinked and we saw a 3-D view of Brazil next to a sparkling ocean; The holo blinked again, showing stars and the glowing, deep-violet curve of the planetary horizon. We were coming out of an ocean of air into the splendor of Sunspace, pushed outward from the cradle of life by the mirror image of Earth’s own attraction. The ship had its own maneuvering engines, of course, but the short passage to Lunar Orbit did not require a fully powered trajectory. We would be in the weightlessness of free fall all the way to the Bernal Cluster.

“We’ll be reaching a speed of eighty thousand kilometers per hour,” the whispery voice said, “but allowing for slowing and maneuvering, the journey will take about twelve hours. Enjoy your trip and use caution in moving around. Zero-g pills will be dispensed by the steward to those passengers who may need them.” The voice seemed to chuckle for an instant.

“May I help you?” a steward asked from the passageway.

Morey grabbed the pills and swallowed them with water from a squeezeball. I hadn’t noticed how sick he had become.

The steward looked at me. “How about you?”

“No, thanks,” I said, even though my stomach gurgled a bit.

“You’d better,” he insisted.

I took the pills and forced down the water, noticing that Morey seemed a bit relieved that I wasn’t immune. He had obviously been trying to hide his discomfort ever since the air shuttle.

“Thanks,” Morey said, passing my squeezeball back to the steward.

“I’m Jake LeStrange. I’ll be here if you need me. If you want a snack or drink, just push the button. The slots aren’t working yet.” He spoke with his lips close together, as if he had something in his mouth. His hair was cut down to a stubble on his skull; some of it seemed gray, but he looked young.

“No food,” Morey said. “Don’t even mention it.”

“Barf bags are here,” Jake said, pointing, and floated away.

Morey took a deep breath. “I see this . . . mess sloshing in my gut. Hope you’re not going to eat anything.”

“I don’t feel too good myself,” I said, even though I was actually feeling much better than Morey.

Stars showed on the screen. Earth’s sky was behind us.

“You may have a more direct experience, if you wish,” the whispery voice said, “by using the personal viewer.” A slot opened under the screen. I pulled out the goggle-like viewer on its cable.

“Want to look?” I asked Morey.

“Not now.”

I put it on and looked out through the ship’s eyes, into a deep blackness filled with stars. It was not the same as looking at a holoscreen; this was 3-D without a frame. I was out in space without a suit, yet safe from the heat and cold and lack of air.

I looked back at Earth and saw the glow of its atmosphere, that protective membrane which filtered sunlight down to just the right intensity. The planet seemed safe and peaceful, a good firm place to put your feet. Of course, it was a safe home only because we had adapted to the amounts of sunlight it received, though not perfectly; we could stand up in its gravity and breathe the air, though not without some difficulties. The planet was safe, except for natural disasters, which still killed too many people.

But life had a good chance on Earth. It was still the main home of humankind, and a better place than it had been during the twentieth century, when irresponsible forms of technology and industrialization had endangered the whole planet, even while making it possible to support the largest number of people in all history.

Things had improved when people had pioneered Sunspace, gradually taking the dirtiest industries out into that vastness of resources and the Sun’s streaming energy. Earth was recovering because people had learned to see it as I was now seeing it, as only one place, not the whole universe.

Earth was a huge organism, alive because death was part of its recycling system. I don’t think human beings had ever forgiven it that, as much as they tried to love nature. The last century and a half had seen the conquest of the air, the splitting of the atom, the settling of space, and a continuous attack on disease and death. But we could never be sentimental about nature again. The rebellious skills of civilization kept us alive on Earth and beyond it.

Some Sunspacers claimed that they wouldn’t need Earth at all in time, that it was the home of a dying culture, holding humanity back from the stars. It wouldn’t matter in the long run, I thought, watching cities wink on their lights as darkness crept across the globe. Earth and the Sunspace Settlements were doing well, so it had to be pride and cultural rivalry. No, that wasn’t completely it, I thought, remembering the real grievances of the miners on Mercury, as well as the sense of growing economic dependence that Earth felt toward off-worlders.

The view made a full turn, giving me the illusion of my head turning around on my shoulders. The Sun swept by—toned down to protect my eyes—our own magnificent hearth-fire in a cave of stars; the Moon’s silvery face sailed into view. I heard Morey throwing up at my left, but I didn’t want to embarrass him, so I kept the goggles on, marveling at the dense star fields beyond our solar system.

* * *

Morey and I found out that we had to strap down fairly tightly in order to sleep in zero-g, to keep from drifting even a little. There were those, I learned later, who liked to sleep with loose straps, floating a bit; some liked to float free completely. I was too new at it to have a preference.

Unable to sleep deeply, I floated over Morey, who was asleep with hands gripping the armrests, and drifted out into the passageway. Slowly, I pulled myself along to the men’s washroom in the midsection. Suddenly it seemed that the nose was the bottom of a long drop. I cried out, expecting to fall.

Jake LeStrange was in the small lounge, drifting against one wall, dragging on a cigarette. He looked bored when I floated in.

“Hi, kid. Can’t sleep?”

“Guess not.” I didn’t like the “kid” bit.

“It’s common the first time. Later you can’t wake them. Reminds them of being in Mommy’s belly.”

“Really?” I asked sarcastically.

He scratched his shaved scalp. “Something you want, kid? The toilet’s in there. Read the instructions before you let loose.”

“Thanks, I think I can figure it out.”

He grinned.

I didn’t like him, I decided as I drifted into the enclosure and slid the door shut. Sunspacers and earthies just weren’t always going to get along, I realized, wondering how much was my fault, if any.

A jungle of graffiti grew on the walls. A few lines caught my eye:

Principal products: Moon—green cheese.

Mars—red sand.

Earth—salt water.

The meek shall inherit the Earth.

They can have it!

The rest of us are going somewhere else.

Watch out for the coriolis force on Bernal.

Wear a mask when you pee!

Most of the others were just as dumb, or confusing. Pride lay behind the words, misunderstanding, as well as political and economic grievances that would have to be settled before real hatred took hold. Maybe it was already too late; no one was sure what would happen if the miners on Mercury went on strike, as they were threatening. Earth was importing too much from Space to ignore the possibility of major shortages. It seemed to me that the Sunspacers were doing a lot, and not getting as much respect for it as they would have wished.

I wondered if Jake might have written all the graffiti, since they all seemed to have been printed by the same hand. It wouldn’t have surprised me.

* * *

I opened one eye. The Moon was on the screen.

“Breakfast in ten minutes,” the whispery voice said. “Open your slot and remove the contents while they are still hot. Put everything back when you are finished and please make sure the cover is closed.” The voice sounded half asleep and bored with reading the instructions for the thousandth time.

“We’ll be docking at Bernal One early this afternoon,” it continued. “Have a pleasant morning and be careful when moving around.”

I heard a laugh. Jake was floating in the passage. “What she never says is how many people have broken their necks in zero-g.”

“Thanks for telling us,” I said sarcastically, hoping he would go away. Morey was waking up.

“Sure,” Jake went on. “They think because they’re weightless their heads don’t have any mass either.” He chuckled as he held on to the hand bar, sounding as if he were gargling saliva. He probably tried these stories on anyone who would listen.

“Who’s the voice?” I asked.

“Sylvia’s the copilot. You should hear her when she’s been up a week.” Morey opened his eyes, looking angry. “Do you mind? We’re just getting up.” Jake slid the divider shut.

“A pest,” Morey said.

“Sure is. How do you feel?” He looked pale.

“My circulation feels bad. I get dizzy.” He focused and looked at me. “How about you?”

“Okay, I guess. Sometimes I get the feeling that we’re falling in that direction.” I pointed toward the nose.

He grunted. “That’s exactly what we’re doing.”

“Breakfast,” I said. The light was on over the utility slot. I brought up my seat, slid open the panel, and reached in for the tray. It was hot in the small space. Morey drew up his seat as I took out the tray and placed it on his magnetic handrests. Everything on the tray was held down by stick strips. I took out my tray and sat back, held in place by the strap.

Coffee and juice came in suck tubes; oatmeal in a big squeeze bulb; scrambled eggs and ham in a widemouth bulb.

Our divider slid open halfway. “Food okay?” Jake asked. Morey nodded.

Jake looked at me.

“It’s okay.”

“It used to really stink,” Jake said, floating away.

“Feel better?” I asked as we continued eating. There was some color in Morey’s face now.

“I think so.”

He stretched and yawned when he was finished. I got rid of the trays.

“Thanks,” he said, staring sadly at the screen, as if he were trying to remember something.

“What is it?” I was beginning to worry about him.

“Earth is so small.”

“It happens when you go far away from something.”

“It looks lost,” he said, ignoring my joke. “We’re leaving everything behind. Most of what has happened to human beings happened there.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said, trying to sound sympathetic. I thought of all the windows I had broken in the condemned sections of Westchester before we moved to Manhattan. I wondered if Willy, my fellow destroyer, still lived there. The area had been rebuilt into a residential arcology, housing a half million people in a tall pyramid, and the new windows were unbreakable.

“There’s more than Earth now,” I said. “We’re not all in one place, but I know how you feel. I was thinking the same things about four o’clock this morning.”

“I’ll miss the pizzamat near my house,” Morey said.

“Don’t worry. As long as you can order the same recipe on Bernal, it’ll be just the same.”

* * *

At 2:31 in the afternoon, Bernal One slid into view on the screen—a huge ball with what looked like tire tubes piled up on its north and south poles.

“Please strap in,” Sylvia said.

The ship was turning for its approach as Morey and I buckled in. Bernal One grew larger, but it sure didn’t look sixteen kilometers across, or as if fifty thousand or more people could be living inside; but there was nothing in our field of view with which to compare it.

Braking thrusters fired, pressing us into our cushions. We came in high over Bernal’s north pole, then twisted slowly to face down into the hole of stacked tires, which now looked more like doughnuts, where the open docks were located. The ship made minor corrections as we drifted into the mouth. I caught sight of several space-suited figures making repairs outside with welding torches. Bernal settled down on us, obliterating the stars as we drifted inside and nudged to a halt.

Morey smiled at me. “Well, we made it.”

“Routine, almost dull,” I said, not meaning it.

“Sure,” Morey replied, sounding much better.

People drifted past us in the passage. Morey and I unstrapped and joined the flow, pulling ourselves along the handbars to the rear exit, where we floated out into a large, drum-shaped zero-g space. Handrails crisscrossed this interior, snaking in and out of openings. About a hundred people were waiting, hanging on the rails like so many coats on a rack.

Kik ten Eyck darted in through an entrance at my right, and stopped where the rails crossed in the center.

“You’ll go inside in small groups,” he said loudly, “and your counselor will take you as far as the dorms.” He looked around at us for a moment, then shot out of the chamber.

“Some service,” Morey said, looking pale again.

A girl floated toward us after a few minutes. She was dressed in a white leotard, brown shorts, and stick boots. Her red hair was braided and piled on top of her head. I guessed that she was about twenty.

“Hello,” she said, attaching herself to the drum wall with her boots. “I’m Linda ten Eyck. We’ll be entering the biosphere through its north pole, the same zero-g axis along which you docked. Your sense of weight will increase as we move off that axis toward the equator, where it will feel almost Earth normal. Remember, ‘gravity’ here is really centrifugal force, so try not to trip over your feet, and don’t jump. It’s not too dangerous, but you may not land exactly where you expect. Even a sphere rotation of less than once a minute can’t reproduce the perfect illusion of a genuine gravitational field. Oh, one more thing. Going through zones of varying gravity may temporarily affect your balance, but don’t worry. Most people get their space legs quick.”

I was watching her as she gave her talk. Her green eyes were a bit slanted. She was younger than I had first thought, maybe my age; self-confidence made her seem older.

“Let’s go,” she said, and launched herself across the drum. Morey and I crept along the rail. What if I couldn’t adapt? Maybe I had a fussy inner ear that knew how to balance only on Earth. I was a little worried about Morey again; she had implied that there were people who couldn’t adjust.

“This way!” she called without looking back. Her body was slim, but I noticed a surprising roundness in her hips as she jackknifed and slipped into the exit.

“She’s probably ten Eyck’s sister,” Morey said as we pulled through after her.

“That’s right.” The name had gone right past me.

Suddenly we were floating straight up on a cushion of air. Linda was waiting halfway to the top of the tunnel. White light shone across her body. I heard Morey breathing next to me as we drifted up level with her.

“In here,” she said, seeming impatient, and I felt that she thought me hopelessly clumsy. We drifted by her, into what looked like a rail car. The top was transparent, and there were large windows on the sides.

Morey and I pulled ourselves down into two empty seats near the back.

“Buckle in,” Linda said loudly. I noticed another car ahead of ours. Both were now full.

“At least the seats look upright,” a man said to his son in the seat in front of us.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, buckling in. “We could be sitting on the ceiling and it wouldn’t matter.” The man turned and looked at us, then turned away, and I realized that it had not been necessary for me to share my knowledge. I was excited by our arrival, and a bit worried about Morey.

A few students looked confused. One father was holding his son’s hand. I caught a glimpse of Linda in the front car. She seemed amused as the vehicle moved forward.

I peered out into the darkness of the tunnel. We slipped suddenly into daylight. A hollow world curved away in all directions, closing into a ball at the south pole, far below the ring of sunlight on the other side of the equator.

I didn’t know much then about the system of mirrors and windows that brought sunlight into the colony, so it was hard to make perfect sense of what I was seeing. We were attached to our seats, heads pointing to the center of a great hollow ball. Suddenly it seemed I was looking down at everything.

“There’s some weight,” Morey said with relief. The illusion of looking down was gone. Morey took a deep breath. “Fresh air and greenery.”

The cars ran on a monorail that gradually left the zero-g axis, delivering passengers from the space dock to the inner surface. The hollow ball was a giant centrifuge. Its spin threw you out from the center, but the inner surface was there to stop you, so it felt almost like gravity to your feet. Put a bucket of water on the end of a rope, whirl it around fast, and the water will stay inside. Not gravity, but just as good where you can’t get any. I couldn’t feel the difference.

Looking back, I saw the tunnel mouth rising away from us as we moved along the curved surface. I faced forward and looked around for Linda, but she had disappeared.

“Your sense of weight,” her voice said suddenly over the speaker, “will increase as we near the equatorial zone. You can see the university ahead, to the right of the lake.”

Again it seemed that I was looking down through a giant balloon. “Look at that!” I said, nudging Morey, but he had closed his eyes. Then the perspective reversed itself, and it seemed that we were traveling uphill toward the lake; but I was still getting flashes of downhill motion. Things started to look more normal when I stopped thinking about it and simply accepted the direction of my feet as down. After that the curve of the landscape was just an exotic detail.

I looked at Morey. He still seemed pale, but his eyes were open and he was looking around. I was glad.

“Feeling better?”

“I’ll be okay,” he said, still looking a bit embarrassed. “How about you?”

“Great. Can’t wait to get outside.”