The Golden Globe

I was sitting on the concrete sidewalk that defined the Edge, doing what every tourist not afflicted with terminal acrophobia does when he gets there: sit with one's feet dangling over infinity. Three times already I had been asked to snap the picture of some group pretending to fall off, or peering cautiously down.

It helps to sneak up on it, sit down securely, and then swing your legs over. I don't have any great trouble with heights, but there are heights and then there are heights. Nowhere was there anything as high as the Edge. At the Edge, you were standing at the top of infinity.

All very safe, of course. No need to have a lot of frozen tourist corpses orbiting Uranus. Bad publicity.

Every hundred yards or so along the Edge signs were prominently posted: JUMP AT YOUR OWN RISK. OB$100 FEE CHARGED FOR RETRIEVAL.

Somewhere down there about a mile or two away was the all-but-invisible plastic substance that kept the air in at the Edges. A big bubble of it covered all the ends of the wheel. If you jumped or fell off the Edge, you would soon hit this stuff and bounce, and bounce again, and probably bounce a dozen times before coming to rest. Then the Edge Patrol would lower a rope harness to you and you would be hauled in like a trout. Unless you'd sprained an ankle or broken a bone, in which case it became a rescue, and they'd go down with a litter and charge you OB$500. It was a rather expensive way of getting a thrill, to my mind, but dozens of people did it every day. For five dollars, at sites all up and down the Edge, they could be attached to a bungee cord and get a better ride much more cheaply. But go figure tourists, eh?

Here and there in the air before me like hundreds of varicolored butterflies were gull-winged gliders and gossamer-winged pedal fliers taking advantage of the updrafts along the Edge. There were at least that many kites of all shapes and sizes. It was a kaleidoscopic traffic jam in the air. Glorious!

Toby returned with the ball and dropped it at my side, then stared at it as if willpower alone could lift it and toss it. I picked it up and gestured as if to throw it off the Edge. He got ready to jump. I should know better than to even tease about that. Toby is basically fearless; he'd go over the Edge in a minute. I turned and tossed it as far as I could toward the pressurehead.

I said very safe. I did not say completely safe.

The pressurehead is a wall of steel fifty miles wide and five miles high. An Edge City was defined as that space, not yet permanently occupied, between the pressurehead and the Edge. It was punctured in hundreds of places along the bottom by what looked like wide, inviting open doors, but were actually open air locks. At each door was a prominent sign warning you that you were leaving a category-B pressure environment and entering a category-D area. Many people live their whole lives without visiting a D area. Those rankings took many factors into account, I'd been told, but boiled down to how many surfaces there were between your tender and irreplaceable ass and hard vacuum. Category D meant there was only one barrier, the invisible plastic substance that provided a working environment for construction workers and visitors to Edge City. If that membrane was punctured, you'd hear all hell's klaxons and sirens, and find the air locks back to the safe world were now closed, and taking groups of twenty at their usual, maddeningly slow, now perhaps fatally slow, rate, as your ears popped and your nose started bleeding.

How many times had this happened during the construction of the wheel? So far, zero. How much did I worry about a blowout? About the same. Most of the people around me seemed to feel the same way. They brought their children here, they came to play or stretch out on the grass, they camped out "overnight," when the great lights shining down from the hub were turned off for eight hours.

When another five miles of wheel was complete, the pressurehead was detached from the huge bolts holding it in place, and rolled toward the Edge and its new mooring. I'd like to see that. They have big parades and fireworks and festivals and music. Clowns and troubadours and, of course, outdoor theater.

I threw the rubber ball a few more times, when who should come shambling down the walkway but Elwood P. Dowd. He stopped a few steps away and stood looking down at me, his hands thrust into his baggy gray slacks, playing pocket pool or fiddling with his spare coins or whatever it was he did when wearing that thoughtful expression on his face.

"I didn't see you around on the trip from Pluto," I said.

"No, you didn't," he drawled. "Claustrophobia. And you didn't pack enough to eat."

He lowered himself down on my left side, dangled his feet with his clunky brown hard-leather shoes and argyle socks. He always sits on my left, because he's deaf in his left ear. He told me he'd fallen through an iced-over pond when he was young, back in Bedford Falls. Elwood had plenty of stories like that. He'd been a United States senator for three years, and he'd flown solo across the Atlantic Ocean. He'd been the leader of a swing band.

"Yeah, I know," I said. "The old Pantechnicon's not good enough for you. Which way did you travel this time? On the buddy seat of some witch's broom? Borne on the gentle wings of angels? Sca

He peered down between his shoes, swinging them idly.

"Pretty fair edge, if you ask me." I could tell by the way he looked off into the distance that he was pissed. He doesn't like me to point out the lapses in logic his appearances usually imply.

"If you don't like having me around, I can always go away," he drawled.

I learned long ago not to put my arm around his shoulder or anything foolish like that. People stare. Rude, but there it is. Usually I don't even look directly at him, but now I did.

"After better than ninety years, Elwood, I have trouble imagining what I'd do without you."

That seemed to satisfy him. He squinted up at the hang gliders for a time.

"Maybe I came here in a faster ship than you did," he said.

"Using up your frequent-traveler miles on the Flying Dutchman?"

"The old Spirit of St. Louis was a lot faster. No, but maybe I hitched a ride with somebody who did get here faster. Now, if I was you, I'd be asking myself, 'Who do I know that got here faster than me? And how'd he do it?' "

Two hours in the library looking at back postings of newspads and I had the information I needed. And yes, I actually went to the library. They exist, you know, and some of them even have a few books in them. Even on a spanking-new world like Oberon they have not entirely converted to over-the-phone service. And by law they have to maintain old-fashioned desk-bound terminals, for those folks who eschew direct interface and implanted modems: Amish, Christian Scientists, naturalists, washed-up ex-child telly stars, people who get Radio Free Betelgeuse on the fillings in their teeth. Weirdos.

When I found what I was looking for, the begi

I found a restaurant that allowed dogs—that's right, some of them on Oberon don't; can you imagine? And they call themselves civilized—and spent a contemplative two hours eating pasta and drinking strong tea. Toby, after eating his portion and vainly trying to interest me in playing fetch with the last meatball, snoozed in his chair.

What the heck? I thought. Toby opened one eye and I realized I'd said it aloud. I dropped money on the table and scooped him up, suddenly in a big hurry.