“I understand,” Fats said softly, then bellowed, “On the jump, everybody!”
But at sunset the new A’s proctor was again facing him, rightside-up this time, in the Big Igloo.
“Your first fifty were due at the boarding tube an hour ago,” the proctor began ominously.
“That’s right,” Fats assured him. “It just turns out we’re going to need a little more time.”
“What’s holding you up?”
“We’re getting ready, Mr. Proctor,” Fats said. “See how busy everybody is?”
A half dozen figures were rhythmically diving around the Big Igloo, folding the sun-quilt. The sun’s disk had dipped behind the Earth and only its wild corona showed, pale hair streaming across the star-fields. The Earth had gone into its dark phase, except for the faint unbalanced halo of sunlight bent by the atmosphere and for the faint dot-dot-dot of glows that were the Los Angeles-Chicago-New York line. Soft yellow lights sprang up here and there in the Cluster as it prepared for its short night. The transparent balloons seemed to vanish, leaving a band of people camped among the stars.
The proctor said, “We know you’ve been getting some unofficial sympathy from research and even the MPs. Don’t depend on it. The new Administrator can create special deputies to enforce the deportation orders.”
“He certainly can,” Fats agreed earnestly, “but he don’t need to. We’re going ahead with it all, Mr. Proctor, as fast as we’re able. F’rinstance, our groundclothes ain’t sewed yet. You wouldn’t want us arriving downside half naked an’ givin’ the sat’ a bad reputation. So just let us work an’ don’t joggle our elbow.”
The proctor snorted. He said, “Let’s not waste each other’s time. You know, if you force us to do it, we can cut off your oxygen.”
There was a moment’s silence. Then from the side Trace Davis said loudly, “Listen to that! Listen to a man who’d solve the groundside housing problem by cutting off the water to the slums.”
But Fats frowned at Trace and said quietly only, “If Mr. Proctor shut down on our air, he’d only be doing the satellite a disservice. Right now our algae are producing a shade more oxy than we burn. We’ve upped the guk production. If you don’t believe me, Mr. Proctor, you can ask the atmosphere boys to check.”
“Even if you do have enough oxygen,” the proctor retorted, “you need our forced ventilation to keep your air moving. Lacking gravity convection, you’d suffocate in your own exhaled breath.”
“We got our fans ready, battery driven,” Fats told him.
“You’ve got no place to mount them, no rigid framework,” the proctor objected.
“They’ll mount on harnesses near each tunnel mouth,” Fats said impertubably. “Without gravity they’ll climb away from the tunnel mouths and ride the taut harness. Besides, we’re not above hand labor if it’s necessary. We could use punkahs.”
“Air’s not the only problem,” the proctor interjected. “We can cut off your food. You’ve been living on handouts.”
“Right now,” Fats said softly, “we’re living half on yeasts grown from our own personal garbage. Living well, as you can see by a look at me. And if necessary we can do as much better than half as we have to. We’re farmers, man.”
“We can seal off the Cluster,” the proctor snapped back, “and set you adrift. The orders allow it.”
Fats replied, “Why not? It would make a very interesting day-to-day drama for the groundside public and for the food chemists — seeing just how long we can maintain a flourishing ecology.”
The proctor grabbed at his nylon line. “I’m going to report your attitude to the new Administrator as hostile,” he sputtered. “You’ll hear from us again shortly.”
“Give him our greetings when you do,” Fats said. “We haven’t had opportunity to offer them. And there’s one other thing,” he called after the proctor, “I notice you hold your nose mighty rigid in here. It’s a waste of energy. If you’d just steel yourself and take three deep breaths you’d never notice our stink again.”
The proctor bumped into the tunnel side in his haste to be gone. Nobody laughed, which doubled the embarrassment. If they’d have laughed he could have cursed. Now he had to bottle up his indignation until he could discharge it in his report to the new Administrator.
But even this outlet was denied him.
“Don’t tell me a word,” the new Administrator snapped at his proctor as the latter zipped into the aluminum office. ‘The deportation is canceled. I’ll tell you about it, but if you tell anybody else I’ll down-jump you. In the last twenty minutes I’ve had messages direct from the Space Marshal and the President. We must not disturb the Beat Cluster because of public opinion and because, although they don’t know it, they’re a pilot experiment in the free migration of people into space.” (“Where else, Joel,” the President had said, “do you think we’re going to get people to go willingly off the Earth and achieve a balanced existence, using their own waste products? Besides, they’re a floating labor pool for the satellites. And Joel, do you realize Jordan’s broadcast is getting as much attention as the Russian landings on Ganymede?”) The new Administrator groaned softly and asked the Unseen, “Why don’t they tell a new man these things before he makes a fool of himself?”
Back in the Beat Cluster, Fats struck the last chord of “Glow Little Glow Worm.” Slowly the full moon rose over the satellite, dimming the soft yellow lights that seemed to float in free space. The immemorial white globe of Luna was a little bit bigger than when viewed from Earth and its surface markings were more sharply etched. The craters of Tycho and Copernicus stood out by reason of the bright ray systems shooting out from them and the little dark smudge of the Mare Crisium looked like a curled black kitten. Fats led those around him into a new song:
IN TOMORROW’S LITTLE BLACK BAG
by James Blish
An observer of the s-f scene once commented that science fiction-writing was less a means of livelihood than a way of life. It could as easily be said that s-f is not so much a kind of reading as a way of thinking.
Reginald Bretnor and Robert Heinlein (notably, in The Science Fiction Novel) have advanced the proposition that this identifying fundamental of science fiction is not the specific science content, but the writer’s awareness of science, and in particular of the scientific method.
To utilize this discipline — (observation, hypothesis, experimentation) — in fiction it is necessary, first, to get the best reliable information whether on weather, whales, witches, or whatever; then, to relate data and drama in such a way as to obtain a story line; finally, to devise the most useful environmental situation against which to play out the drama.
One might approach the same area of definition from another viewpoint, and say that the identifying factor in s-f is the interaction between man and his environment. “Mainstream” writing ordinarily confines itself to situations resulting from man’s reaction to only one phase of environment: his fellow-men. “Straight fantasy,” by definition, deals with unreal — fantastic — environmental factors. S-f, specifically, considers the effect on/of a human being of/on a realistically modern or logically predictable future environment (physical, technical, natural, or manmade).