“Do you really believe that?”
“Everyone knows that, Lissa. I mean, there’s ten billion people down there!” He was studying to be an industrial chemist.
“I’ve got to go,” she had answered. “The Institute’s school is there.”
He had touched her hand gently across the lunch room table. “I’ll miss you.” He had looked at her with his gray eyes, and she had admired his long lashes. Some of his pudginess seemed to have disappeared, she had noticed, surprised at how much he seemed to care about her.
She gazed up into the great lighted space and imagined the habitat’s people suddenly drifting free of the inner surface, out into the sunny emptiness, if Bernal were to stop turning. The centrifugal spin that pressed everything to the inner surface here was nothing more than the acceleration that kept water at the bottom of a bucket whipping around at the end of a rope. On Earth she would experience a gravitational field for the first time, the actual attraction of a large mass, not the steady acceleration of spin. She wouldn’t feel much difference, of course, except that it would be a full one gravity, slightly higher than the force on Bernal. She thought of the people who had grown up on Mars, the Moon, or on Mercury, where gravity was less than twenty percent of Earth’s. Those people would never be able to live on Earth. They could visit in wheelchairs, or stand with the help of external prosthetic supports, but never comfortably, she knew. Entire generations of colonists were forever cut off from the home world; but they were at home elsewhere.
She looked around for her father, and saw him talking to Mr. Molly. And she knew suddenly that she was really leaving, and that she would miss this inner world of small towns and parks, gentle sunlight and small streams. Bernal’s perfection was a human order, made by and for humanity—not the nature of a teeming planet like Earth, or the harsh, radiation-filled openness of Sunspace, but that of a newly made place.…
“What can I say, Lissa?” her father asked as he sat down next to her. “We both know that high school is nothing at all. You learned most of what they could teach you halfway through. You got to do a lot of interesting reading.” He smiled as he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Sharon’s very sorry she couldn’t come, but a life depended on a major piece of surgery they could not do without her.” He smiled. “Well, they could have, but it was a new technique that she helped develop, so she had to be there to see it work.”
“I really don’t mind,” Lissa said, smiling gently and feeling something of her father’s expression in her own face. Things were changing for her quickly now. She felt sad and hopeful at the same time.
Three bottles of champagne were waiting for them on the terrace. Mom sprang at her from behind the door and poured a small bottle all over her head. “Congratulations, dear!” she cried. Dad went over to the bucket and moved the bottles around in the ice.
Lissa’s head was spinning by early evening. The sun rings faded to moonlight, and the lights went on all over the inner surface. She sat and watched the road lamps connect the towns. The great lake sparkled, and she knew again how much she would miss home.
But in the back of her mind she heard the alien signals singing a strange song that called to her. She felt her ambition; it demanded that she do whatever was needed to bring out her best. Earth wasn’t so far away; she’d be back for holidays. Her father had grown up on Earth, so it couldn’t be that bad.
“You’ll like it,” he said, catching her mood. “It was home to me before I came to college on Bernal. I had to come, because it was the best place for physics. My roommate, Joe Sorby, and I knew that, and it’s the same with you.” He toasted her with an empty glass, and she felt his sudden sadness.
She would have to go to the polar spaceport alone the next morning, but she didn’t mind. Mom had to see a patient very early, and Morey would still be asleep. Lissa didn’t want him to miss his one o’clock class. He needed a lot of sleep in order to shovel physics into new brains.
“Are you sure you can handle being away in a strange place?” he asked, shifting in his recliner. There was only a trace of doubt in his voice.
“Of course I can,” she answered firmly, yet felt that her life so far had rushed by too quickly.
“Oh, there was a message for you from Henry earlier. He didn’t want to stay on or have me call you. He just said to tell you good luck.”
“Thanks.”
Her father was silent, and after a few moments she noticed that he had fallen asleep. She smiled, feeling that he had accepted her plans for the future, however critical he might be of the Interstellar Institute’s work. As she gazed at his sleeping face, she realized how important the approval of her parents was to her sense of determination.
The Pacific Ocean was in full view as Lissa awoke aboard the shuttle to Earth. India and the island of Sri Lanka were an intricate pattern of greens and browns. In the north, the Himalayan mountains looked like plowed furrows on the border of Tibet. She had seen all this before, through the large telescopes on Bernal One; but now, during the twenty-four-hour journey from L-5 in the Moon’s Orbit, she had time to realize that she would be living in those furrows. The Earth would grow large and she would become small; the planet would become a whole world, millions of times larger than the 314 square kilometers that made up the inner surface of Bernal’s hollow ball. On Earth that was just enough for a good-sized city. Gravity would not be the centrifugal pressure of rotation, but an even force that would not vary from the equator to the poles, as it did back home. There would be no zero-g areas. Days and nights would be slightly irregular, and the weather would be only partially controllable or predictable. Mr. Thomaso, her high school adviser, had warned her to expect a somewhat messy environment; it was just not possible to keep a huge planet as clean and tidy as a small space colony.
The Earth now took up nearly half the small 3-D screen in her passenger compartment. She shifted against her restraining straps and stretched. Her stomach had felt queasy in prolonged zero-g, but that had disappeared in the first few hours.
Most of the other passengers along the central passage of the shuttle were older people—business persons and officials of one kind or another. She was the only student going to Earth on this run.
The planet grew larger on the screen. Soon the Pacific would take up the whole view. The shuttle was coming in directly to the Earthport at Woomera, Australia.
Mike, the steward, drifted by her compartment and made sure she was wearing her restraints. The breakfast light was still on over her personal console. She pushed the button and flushed the food away; it was better not to eat too much during zero-g trips, and she wasn’t very hungry anyway, still feeling her disappointment at the food she’d found when she had slid open the small door for dinner.
Reaching over, she unhooked the observation helmet and put it on. At once it seemed that she was floating free in space. Earth was a great ball of brightness below her, its atmosphere a lens magnifying oceans and land masses. The poles were bright caps of snow. Night had just fallen on the West Coast of the Americas. Cities winked on as the line of darkness overtook them.
The shuttle turned around on its gyros, and she saw the Moon, now more distant than she had ever seen it. Her father had taken her to Luna City twice in her first year of high school. What she remembered best was the slow, graceful descent of the shuttle onto the airless walled plain of Plato. Landing on Earth would be very different.
She took off the helmet, attached it to its hook, and relaxed. Pressure pushed her down into her couch as the shuttle fired its engines to slow down, coming in toward Woomera tail first. The weight in her stomach felt good, and she looked forward to eating a large meal.
The view on the 3-D screen changed to landside cameras. She was suddenly looking up into Earth’s sky, searching for her shuttle among the clouds.
Deceleration remained comfortably steady, and finally she saw her shuttle drop through the clouds into scattered sunlight. The view changed as she heard the sonic boom, showing the landing field from the ground. Atomic engines running steadily, the giant bullet shape came in and touched the desert.
I’m here, on Earth, Lissa thought excitedly, on the planet where humanity had been born. Her father was from New York City. Her mother had been born on Bernal, but her family had come from Ireland and Spain.
“Woomera Earthport,” the Captain announced over the intercom. “Prepare to disembark.”
What a nice old word, she thought. To get out of the bark, or boat, to disembark. She took her handbag of personal gear out of its niche and waited for the shuttle’s core elevator to stop at her cubicle. It went down once in the passageway, then came back empty and stopped for her. She got in carefully, testing her legs in real gravity.
The lift made its way down the shuttle, picking up passengers. When it had collected twenty people, it went all the way down.
The outer door opened. Lissa stepped out through the open locks into a long tunnel. She walked straight ahead, following the flashing lights, taking careful steps, carrying her bag by its shoulder strap. There seemed to be no difference walking in real gravity, and she didn’t feel particularly heavier.
“First trip to Earth?” a male voice asked from her right. She turned and saw a young man walking next to her, carrying what seemed to be a heavy suitcase. He was smiling at her strangely, and she didn’t like it.
“How can you tell?” she replied, looking ahead.
“Offworlders always have that ballet walk when they arrive,” he said in a resonant tenor voice.
“Really?” she asked skeptically, and kept walking, trying to ignore him.
“Don’t get me wrong, you’re very elegant at it.”
She stopped and looked at him. He was slightly taller than she was, somewhat stocky, with sandy blond hair and deep blue eyes, and he was still smiling at her like an idiot.
“Who are you to talk?” she demanded without thinking. “Didn’t you come in from somewhere off-planet on my shuttle?”
“Oh, no, no, I’m not one of you,” he said. “I’m just coming back from a college interview on Bernal One. I didn’t like it all that much, even though my dad wanted me to go there. I went to the interview just to satisfy him, I guess. He thought I’d change my mind and head out there next year.”
Lissa started walking again. “And what’s wrong with schooling there? Dandridge Cole is one of the finest universities in Sunspace.”
“Right, one of the top three, but not for what I want. Besides, I found Bernal rather small and cramped.”
“Small?” She stopped and glared at him for a moment. “Where are you from?” she asked, then resumed her pace.
“My name’s Alek Calder. I’m from Sydney.”
Lissa stumbled, and he caught her by the arm. She pulled away and kept walking.
“No offense meant,” he said, keeping up. “I just didn’t feel very well on Bernal. I’m probably one who takes getting used to spin-g, so it’s just as well.”
She kept walking, sure that he was lying to get her sympathy.
They came out inside a large dome filled with hurrying people. Daylight illuminated the vast inner space. Lissa noticed that Gate Five, where she would make her connection with the atmospheric jet for India, was on the other side of the dome.
She hung her small bag on her shoulder and stared across the great floor. After a few moments she glanced back. Alek Calder was following her. She stopped, turned around, and glared at him again.
“It’s not enough that you’re a bit obnoxious,” she said, “but do you also have to follow me?”
He grinned as he put down his heavy suitcase. “Don’t flatter yourself. I’m also going to Gate Five. That is where you’re going?”
“What? Oh.” Lissa felt suddenly embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she managed to say.
“That’s all right,” he replied, smiling appealingly. “Say, where are you going?”
“India,” she said.
“So am I, but where in India? It’s a big place.”
“I’m going to study at the Interstellar Institute,” she said, trying to put some pride into her words.
He grabbed his suitcase and moved toward her suddenly. “So am I!”
“Just my luck,” she whispered, retreating a few steps. But he couldn’t be a complete fool if he was going there, she thought in the back of her mind. He wasn’t all that bad-looking, she noticed; if only he weren’t so loud and pushy.
“What’s your name?” he asked.
She hesitated. “Lissa Quintana-Green-Wolfe,” she said finally.
“Hello, Lis.”
“It’s Lissa and nothing else.”
He shrugged. “Okay, Lissa.”
“We’d better keep moving,” she said, turning away.
He hurried to keep up with her. They came to Gate Five and went through into another long tunnel.
“What will you be doing at the Institute?” she asked, unable to accept him as any kind of dedicated student. Maybe he was going to be a janitor, or a technician of some sort. She felt a bit guilty for thinking of him so harshly.
“Well,” he replied, “I guess I’m to try to ferret out what the blokes out there are saying to us, if anything.”
Her disdain increased. That was her dream, her hope; he had no right to it, with such a careless attitude. But there would be other students with her interests at the Institute, she reminded herself. Alek wouldn’t be the only one.
“Can I carry your bag for you?” he asked softly, matching her step for step. “You look a bit peaked.”
“Yours looks heavy enough,” she replied. “I’d carry it for you if I liked you.”
He laughed. “You don’t have the muscle for this one.”
She stopped. “Give me that!” She wrenched the case from his hand and marched away, hating herself for doing it; but his boorishness had made her angry.
The case grew very heavy. She carried it for a dozen meters, and then, feeling foolish, set it down as gracefully as she could without looking winded.
“I’m sorry,” Alek said as he caught up with her. “I was about to say how overpacked it was.”
She stared at him in silence.