The Sunspacers Trilogy (4 page)
“Come on,” Morey said.
I followed him, imagining a whole civilization in space, thousands of space habitats, millions of people eating and drinking, going to school, raising children, playing, thinking, and feeling, dreaming about the stars. One day the free habitats would scatter out into the spiral arms of the galaxy in search of resources and knowledge.
I was going out there, and maybe I would help make it happen. I tried to picture the reality of off-planet life; it was something I had always taken for granted, but now I was going to see it for myself.
“It’s neat,” I said, walking next to Morey.
“What is?”
“All this, here, and where we’re going.”
“It’s not so neat,” he said. “It could be much better.”
I didn’t know quite what he meant, but he didn’t seem to care whether I understood or not. “It doesn’t seem possible that human beings could have done it all,” I said.
“Well it wasn’t just given to us one Christmas.”
“I know we built it,” I said stupidly. “Human beings, I mean.”
He stopped and looked at me. We put down our bags. “You really want to know? All this happened because of a small group of people with pencils and paper—the theoretical physicists and chemists of the last five centuries. The engineers and builders applied their work, but it was all really finished a long time ago. We’re still catching up with the theoreticians.”
“Well, sure, I know. But the builders still had to make it all real.”
He shrugged and picked up his bag. “They’d have nothing to do without all the hard work being done for them. We’d still be riding horses.”
I couldn’t get upset at what he was saying, not just then; he wanted to become a theoretical physicist, after all. I imagined a team of white horses pulling a giant wagon through space. The driver was cracking a whip and shouting at the stars. It didn’t bother me that he wasn’t wearing a spacesuit; neither were the horses.
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 offworlders.
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.