Now it completely eclipsed the planet whose commerce it directed and controlled; a moment later a barely perceptible vibration, instantly damped out, informed everyone that the ship had docked. A few seconds later, the Captain confirmed it.
“Welcome to Port Van Allen-Gateway to Earth. It’s been nice having you with us, and I hope you enjoy your stay. Please follow the stewards, and check that you’ve left nothing in your cabins. And I’m sorry to mention this, but three passengers still haven’t settled their accounts. The Purser will be waiting for them at the exit….”
A few derisive groans and cheers greeted this announcement, but were quickly lost in the noisy bustle of disembarkation. Although everything was supposed to have been carefully planned, chaos was rampant. The wrong passengers went to the wrong checkpoints, while the public-address system called plaintively for individuals with improbable names. It took Duncan more than an hour to get into the spaceport, and he did not see all of his baggage again until his second day on Earth.
But at last the confusion abated as people squeezed through the bottleneck of the docking hub and sorted themselves out in the appropriate levels of the station. Duncan followed instructions conscientiously, and eventually found himself, with the rest of his alphabetical group, lined up outside the Quarantine Office. All other formalities had been completed hours ago, by radio circuit; but this was something that could not be done by electronics. Occasionally,
travelers had been turned back at this point, on the very door step of Earth, and it was not without qualms that Duncan confronted this last hurdle.
“We don’t get many visitors from Titan,” said the medical officer who checked his record. “You come in the Lunar classification-less than a quarter gee. It may be tough down there for the first week, but you’re young enough to adapt. It helps if both your parents were born…”
The doctor’s voice trailed off into silence; he had come to the entry marked MOTHER. Duncan was used to the reaction, and it had long ago ceased to bother him. Indeed, he now derived a certain amusement from the surprise that discovery of his status usually produced. At least the M.O. would not ask the silly question that laymen so often asked, and to which he had long ago formulated an automatic reply: “Of course I’ve got a navel-the best that money can buy.” The other common myth-that male clones must be abnormally virile “because the had one father twice”-he had wisely left unchY lenged. It had been useful to him on several occasions.
Perhaps because there were six other people waiting in line, the doctor suppressed any scientific curiosity he may have felt, and sent Duncan “upstairs” to the Earth-gravity section of the spaceport. It seemed a long time before the elevator, moving out along one of the spokes of the slowly spinning wheel, finally reached the rim; and all the while, Duncan felt his weight increasing remorselessly.
When the doors opened at last, he walked stiff legged out of the cage.
Though he was still a thousand kilometers above the Earth, and his new-found weight was entirely artificial, he felt that he was already in the cruel grip of the planet below. if he could not pass the test, he would be shipped back to Titan in disgrace.
It was true that those who just failed to make the grade could take a highspeed toughening-up course, primarily intended for returning Lunar residents. This, however, was safe only for those who had spent most
of their infancy on Earth, and Duncan could not possibly qualify. He forgot all these fears when he entered the lounge and saw the cresent
Earth, filling half the sky and slowly sliding along the huge observation windows-themselves a famous tour de * force of space engineering. Duncan had no intention of calculating how many tons of air pressure they were resisting; as he walked, up to the nearest, it was easy to imagine that there was nothing protecting him from the vacuum of space. The sensation was both exhilarating and disturbing.
He had intended to go through the check list that the doctor had given him, but that awesome view made it impossible. He stood rooted to the spot, only shifting his unaccustomed weight from one foot to the other as hitherto unknown muscles registered their complaints.
Port Van Allen circled the globe every two hours, and also rotated on its own axis three times a minute. After a while, Duncan found that he could ignore the station’s own spin; his mind was able to cancel it out, like an irrelevant background noise or a persistent but neutral odor. Once he had achieved this mental attitude, he could imagine that he was alone in space, a human satellite racing along the Equator from night into day. For the
Earth was waxing visibly even as he watched, the curved line of dawn moving steadily away from him as he hurtled into the east.
As usual, there was little land visible, and what could be seen through or between the clouds seemed to have no relationship to any maps. And from this altitude there was not the slightest sign of life-still less of intelligence. it was very hard to believe that most of human history had taken place beneath that blanket of brilliant white, and that, until a mere three hundred years ago, no man had ever risen above it.
He was still searching for signs of life when the disc started to contrast to a crescent once more, and the public-address system called on all passengers for Earth to report to the shuttle embarkation area, Elevators
Two and Three.
He just had time to stop at the “Last Chance” toilet-almost as famous
as the lounge windows-and then he was down by elevator again, back into the weightless world of the station’s hub, where the Earth-to-orbit shuttle was being readied for its return journey.
There were no windows here, but each passenger had his own vision screen, on the back of the seat in front of hina, and could switch to forward, rear, or downward as preferred. The choice was not completely free, though this fact was not widely advertised. Images that were likely to be too disturbing like the final moments of docking or touchdown were thoughtfully censored by the ship’s computer.
It was pleasant to be weightless again-if only during the fifty minutes needed for the fall down to the edge of the atmosphere-and to watch the
Earth slowly changing from a planet to a world. The curve of the horizon became flatter and flatter; there were fleeting glimpses of islands and the spiral nebula of a great storm, raging in silence far below. Then at last a feature that Duncan could recognize-the characteristic narrow isthmus of the California coastline, as the shuttle dropped out of the Pacific skies for its final landfall, still the width of a continent away.
He felt himself sinking deeper and deeper into the superbly padded seat, which spread the load so evenly over his body that there was the minimum of discomfort. But it was hard to breathe, until he remembered the “Advice to
Passengers” he had finally managed to read. Don’t try to inhale deeply, it had said; take short, sharp pants, to reduce the strain on the chest muscles. He tried it, and it worked.
Now there was a gentle buffeting and a distant roar, and the vision screen flashed into momentary flame, then switched automatically from the fires of reentry to the view astern. The canyons and deserts dwindled behind, to be replaced by a group of lakes-obviously artificial, with the tiny white flecks of sailboats clearly visible. He caught a glimpse of the huge
V-shaped wake, kilometers long, of some vessel going at great speed over the water, although from this altitude it seemed completely motionless.
Then the scene changed with an abruptness that took him by surprise.
He might have been flying over the ocean once more, so uniform was the view below. Still so high that he could not see the individual trees, he was passing over the endless forests of the American Midwest.