James P. Hogan Craddle of Saturn

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creature of violence fighting its way free from gravity, but floated serenely
now content, seemingly; at ease in the element it was meant for. The pressure
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that had pinned everyone immobile was no more. Gradually, the hum of unseen
machinery and the subdued hiss of air being drawn into the extraction filters
impressed themselves as the only sound breaking the silence. Then the
captain's voice came again over the internal circuit:
"That's it, folks. Welcome to orbit."
The faces in the passenger compartment looked about them wonderingly. Milton
Clowes let his arms hang weightless in the air in front of him. "Well, I'll be
darned," he told the others. "Look at that."
Alice finally let go of her armrests, which she had gripped, white-faced
throughout the launch. "I
don't believe we're still here," was all she could manage.
"How many times is this for you, Wally?" Tim, the engineer who was with
Lomack, asked.
"I don't know. I've lost count. I thought I'd retired from any more of this
kind of nonsense."
The captain spoke again: "Yes, I know the first thing you're all dying to try
is the zero-g.
Anyone who feels inclined to experiment now, go right ahead. Take it easy,
though. It works better than you think. People who turn into missiles inside
here don't make themselves too popular." It was just a reminder. They had been
through it all in the preflight briefings.
The passengers exchanged glances. None of them really wanted to be the first
to risk being a spectacle. Finally, Vicki felt for the buckle securing her
harness, then hesitated and gave Keene a questioning look. He nodded
encouragingly. "Nobody here's gonna laugh," he told her.
She released the catch and eased herself cautiously out of the harness to
float above the gee-
couch, turning slowly. A touch on the cabin wall stopped her and sent her
turning the other way; a push on the wall made her drift toward Wally. Clowes
gave her some handclaps by way of applause, and a couple of the others
followed.
"This is fantastic!" Vicki told them as she started to get the feel of it.
"It's like being a whale with a whole ocean to frolic in. I want to leap and
dive."
"Doesn't it make all that business back at the complex seem kind of
unimportant now?" Jenny Grewe mused distantly. Vicki drifted down the center
of the cabin, turning in a slow cartwheel.
"Hey, that looks cool," Phil Forely said. "I have to try it too."
One of the flight crew had unhitched and was moving back. "Okay, but let me
give you a few tips first," he told them. "Just a couple of you at a time,
guys. You'll all get a turn, don't worry."
Keene had seen it enough times to leave them to it for a while. He turned his
eyes back toward the screen in front and watched the image of the deserts of
northeast Africa and the Middle East passing by below. So much had been
written about the proliferation of life on Earth. But the planet's real
potential for life had never been really grasped because in recent times there
had been nothing to give a measure of it. Earth was still only recovering from
its devastation.
He remembered how, years ago, when he first started making regular airline
flights eastward from the West Coast, it had amazed him that after leaving the
oases of human habitation around San
Diego, Los Angeles, or the San Francisco Bay Area, there would be nothing for
a thousand miles to the Mississippi valley just parched mountains, deserts,
and canyons; everywhere, the dryness. It was only later, when he began
grasping the true scale of the planet by seeing it from orbit, that
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n.txt he realized that had been just a small part of the picture. The vastness
of the wildernesses extending from Mauritania on the Atlantic side of Africa
to Afghanistan, then onward through
Mongolia, and in the southern hemisphere, those of southwestern Africa and
virtually all of
Australia, staggered the imagination.
It hadn't always been that way. There had been times when the Sahara was
green, Arabia and Iran fertile; what were now the deserts of northwest India [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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