"The time of our launching was carefully selected so that we shall be flying close alongside Lunetta at Lunetta's velocity when the adaptation maneuver is completed. After that, we shall proceed to make actual contact.
"Gentlemen, you will note that you and everything else in the vessel is at present weightless, but please do not assume that this is due to our having passed beyond the influence of the gravitational field of the Earth, for this is not so. The condition is better explained by the fact that you and the other masses comprising the ship together received the identical initial velocity. We are now traversing the gravitational field of the Earth along a free trajectory. Every molecule of your bodies and all the parts of the ship obey the same laws of motion with respect to that trajectory. For that reason, no differential forces — which you might sense as gravity — are created between your bodies and the ship.
The condition has been baptized "weightlessness" because we cannot perceive our own weight, nor that of anything else, although some linguistic purists question the accuracy of the word. We are, in point of fact, quite definitely under the influence of gravity, in that our trajectory is predetermined thereby. The reason why we cannot sense it lies in there being no opposing force nor solid ground beneath us, preventing us from yielding to the pull of gravity.
"During the portion of the flight when the weightless condition prevails, you may unsnap your belts and move freely around the cabin. I shall have to ask the inexperienced among you to be quite careful about it, so that you may not injure yourselves by bumping against the walls. You must realize that the slightest push will send you floating in any direction until you strike something. Some people have even learned to swim the air…
"When the adaptation maneuver is announced by the luminous sign, please return to your couches and put on your safety belts."
The copilot, after finishing his little speech, retired in the same mysterious manner through the sliding hatch from which he had emerged.
Holt gazed drowsily through his porthole. He envisaged the long time during which he was going to be faced with naught but that sepia sky and its clear, untwinkling stars.
No eye would ever see them thus so long as the owner stood deep at the bottom of the atmosphere. No Earthbound view would ever encompass his vision of the Milky Way, that diamond necklace of the sidereal depths spanning the firmament.
To him, Earth would appear much as Vega, that brilliant distant star that now stood forth against the black velvet background. His nearest and dearest would seem as remote as that, and for years. Katy, his boys, his bungalow, his Pacific, his beloved California, his native land, all would shrink down to a tiny point of light. To a nasty little star, as Braden had put it.
Fear overwhelmed him for a moment. Would he be able to maintain morale and discipline throughout the long, lonesome stretch, unbroken by day and night? The general had been right; his choice of companions must be restricted to men of steel. And he knew that he'd have to case-harden himself in order to do justice to them as their leader… Finally, he dozed off.
He was awakened by voices in the cabin and noticed that it had become brighter. The other passengers were crowded around the portholes across the cabin from his couch. Just inside the circle of couches lining the wall of the cabin was a balustrade of rope supported by stanchions rising from the floor. His body horizontal, he hauled himself along this balustrade and peered out.
At least one-half of the visible sky was covered by an enormous, luminous scimitar! Why, that was a dawn creeping over the Earth! It would not be long before Sirius would fly out of the penumbra of the Earth and into the sunlight.
The luminous scimitar became broader and broader, and soon the livid mantle of the solar corona flared up over the eastering curvature of the Earth. Painfully, his eyes received the first direct rays from the blistering surface of the orb of day, which soon emerged from behind the shelter of the Earth. Immediately below, their home planet was still wrapped in shadow, and the line marking the dawn crawled slowly towards the Sirius.
As he looked down, he seemed to descry a coastline, dim in the shadows just before Sun-up. Surely, there it was, clearly recognizable, the shore line of the Western Provinces of Canada. Hold drew his binoculars from his briefcase and peered tensely at the scene.
Broad and easily identified, Vancouver Island defended the mainland, far to his right. It was unmistakable, despite the lividness of the morning light. Soon Athabaska Lake, crescent-shaped amid the vast forests, slid slowly by and before long Hudson's Bay loomed up at the extreme right.
Directly below them, full daylight enveloped the scene. It was easy to see that the ship had silently climbed higher and higher on its way to Lunetta's orbit, and it occurred to Holt that, if there were still any who doubted that Columbus was right when he announced that the Earth was round, this trip would surely carry conviction. The basic fact of the Earth's rotundity was incontrovertible to even the most skeptical eye.
The ship sped over Baffin's Land and the eternal glaciers of Greenland crept into view. It must have been an unusually clear day in those latitudes, for Holt was amazed at the definition with which his binoculars revealed the usually fog-bound fjords of Greenland's west coast.
The great circle course of the Sirius began to incline south at this point, and it was but half an hour after the rocket motor had been shut off that passengers on the opposite side of the cabin called out that they could distinguish Ireland. A few minutes later, the ship cut diagonally across the coast of Portugal. Lisbon, Gibraltar and its straights, Spanish, Morocco and the Atlas Mountains passed as though projected on a strip of film, and soon the sandy vastness of the Sahara Desert lay below.
Just as they stood above the Cameroons and paralleled the Southern Atlantic coast of Africa, the luminous warning sign recalled them to their couches, where they tightened their straps. Sinus had attained the thousand miles of altitude of Lunetta in a long ellipse of ascent. Now for the adaptation maneuver.
Thrust was applied as the rocket motor screamed viciously, forcing the passengers painfully into their cushions. It lasted for 15 seconds, with the accelerometer rising to 2.8 and then to 5.3g. Then silence fell once more and the easy sensation of weightlessness was restored. Again the copilot's head appeared in the hatch.
"Gentlemen, our distance from Lunetta is now 800 yards. If you'll look to the left, you can see her clearly. Five minutes from now, we shall begin the contact action." Holt peered out and the other passengers drew themselves to other portholes on his side. There swam Lunetta!
Of a glistening silver color, she seemed an enormous tire with spokes, suspended in space and slowly rotating about her central axis. Around the circumference of this gigantic inner tube were portholes like those of a ship. The spokes ended at the center in a cylindrical hub and were quite thin, like those of a Brobdignagian bicycle wheel, except for two much thicker ones that seemed to run straight through the hub from rim to rim. A large parabolic mirror was attached to one end of the hub and seemed not to rotate with the remainder of the huge fabric. In the focus of the mirror was a black ball. Two of the civilian passengers floated themselves across the middle of the cabin and