Orbitsville

“We don’t sell plots on Terranova — they are given freely, through Government-controlled agencies.”

“To anybody who can pay the Starflight transportation charge. It’s the same thing.”

“Really?” Elizabeth examined Garamond through narrowed eyes. “You’re an expert on such matters, are you?”

“I don’t need to be. The facts are easily understood.” Garamond felt he was rushing towards a dangerous precipice, but he had no desire to hold back.

“In that case you’ll make an excellent council member — all the others regard the Starflight operation as being extremely complex.”

“In practice,” Garamond said doggedly. “But not in principle.”

Elizabeth gave her second unexpected smile of the interview. “In principle, then, why can’t Lindstromland be developed in the normal way?”

“For the same reason that water-sellers can make a living only in the desert.”

“You mean where there’s a lot of water freely available nobody will pay for it.”

“No doubt that sounds childishly simple to you, My Lady, but it’s what I meant.”

“I’m intrigued by your thought processes, Captain.” Elizabeth was giving no sign of being angered by Garamond’s attitude. “How can you compare selling water and opening up a new world?”

Garamond gave a short laugh. “Yours are the intriguing thought processes if you’re comparing Orbitsville to an ordinary planet.”

“Orbitsville?”

“Lindstromland. It isn’t like an ordinary planet.”

“I’m aware of the difference in size.”

“You aren’t.”

Elizabeth’s tolerance began to fade. “Be careful about what you say, Captain.”

“With respect, My Lady, you aren’t aware of the difference in size. Nobody is, and nobody ever will be. I’m not aware of it, and I’ve flown right round Orbitsville.”

“Surely the fact that you were able to…”

“I was travelling at a hundred thousand kilometres an hour,” Garamond said in a steady voice. “At that speed I could have orbited Earth in twenty-five minutes. Do you know how long it took to get round Orbitsville? Forty-two days!”

“I grant you we’re dealing with a new order of magnitude.”

“And that’s only a linear comparison. Don’t you see there’s just no way you can handle the amount of living space involved?”

Elizabeth shrugged. “I’ve already told you that Starflight doesn’t concern itself with the apportionment of land, so the exact area of Lindstromland is of no concern to us. We will, of course, continue to make a fair profit from our transportation services.”

“But that’s the whole point,” Garamond said angrily. “Even if it wasn’t a disguised land charge, the transportation fee should be abolished.”

“Why?”

“Because we now have all the land we can use. In those circumstances it is intolerable that there should be any kind of economic brake on the natural and instinctive flow of people towards the new land.”

“You, of all people, should know that there’s nothing natural or instinctive about building and sailing a flickerwing ship.” A rare tinge of colour was appearing in Elizabeth’s waxy cheeks. “It can’t be done without money.”

Garamond shook his head. “It can’t be done without people. A culture which had never developed the concept of money, or property, could cross space just as well as we do.”

“At last!” Elizabeth took two quick steps towards Garamond, then stopped, swaying in magnetic shoes. “At last I know you, Captain. If money is so distasteful to you, I take it you are refusing a place on the development council?”

“I am.”

“And your bounty? Ten million monits taken from the pockets of the people of the Two Worlds. You’re refusing that, too?”

“I’m refusing that, too.”

“You’re too late,” Elizabeth snapped, savouring a triumph which only she understood. “It has already been credited to your account.”

“I’ll return it to you.”

Elizabeth shook her head decisively. “No, Captain. You’re a very famous man back on the Two Worlds — and I must be seen to give you everything you deserve. Now, return to your ship.”

On the way back to the Bissendorf, Garamond’s mind was filled with the President’s admission that he had become too important to be disposed of like any other human being. And yet, came the disturbing thought, there had been that look of satisfaction in her eyes.

nine

The new house allocated for Garamond’s use was a rectangular, single-storey affair. It was one of several dozen built from plastic panels which had been prefabricated in a Starflight workshop on board one of Elizabeth’s ships.

The compact structure was situated less than two kilometres from the aperture to the outside universe, where the coating of soil was still thin, and so was held in place by suction pads which gripped the underlying metal of the shell. After a matter of days living in it Garamond found that he could forget about the hard vacuum of space beginning only a few centimetres below his living-room floor. The furnishings were sparse but comfortable, and a full range of colour projectors and entertainment machines — plus an electronic tutor for Christopher — gave it something of the atmosphere of a luxury week-end lodge.

There was an efficient kitchen supplied with provisions from shipboard stores in the early stages, but the expectation was that the colonists would become self-supporting as regards food within a year. It was late summer in that part of Orbitsville and the edible grasses were approaching a tawny ripeness. Even before a systemized agriculture could be established to produce grain harvests, the grass would be fully utilized — part of it synthetically digested to create protein foods, the rest yielding cellulose for the production of a range of acetate plastics.

Garamond was technically still in command of the Bissendorf, but he spent much of his time in the house, telling himself he was helping his family to put down roots. In reality he was trying to cope with the sense of having been cut adrift. He acquired the habit of standing at a window which faced the aperture and watching the ever-increasing tempo of activity at the Starflight outpost. Machinery, vehicles, supplies of all kinds came through the L-shaped entry tubes in a continuous stream; new buildings were erected every day amid moraines of displaced soil; a skein of dirt roads wound around and through the complex, with its loose ends straggling off into the grasslands. Earth’s beachhead was becoming well established, and as it did so Garamond felt more and more redundant. “The weirdest thing about it is that I feel possessive,” he said to his wife. “I keep lecturing people about the inconceivable size of Orbitsville, telling them it couldn’t be controlled by a thousand Starflight corporations — yet I have a gut-feeling it’s my personal property. I guess that in a way I’m as much out of touch with reality as Liz Lindstrom.”

Aileen shook her head. “You’re angry at the way she’s proposing to handle things.”

“Angry at myself.”

“Why?”

“What made me think Starflight House would quietly bow out of existence to make way for a publicly-funded transportation system? From what I hear, Liz’s public relations teams are plugging the notion that Starflight already is a semi-governmental concern. That was a hard one to put over when there was just Terranova and the amount of land a settler got was determined by how much he paid for his passage,