Orbitsville

“I’ll try to arrange it.” Garamond stared through the wavering blur of the North Field’s perimeter fence, wondering if he would see any signs of unusual activity.

Carlos Pe

He backed away from what he had seen, dragging the frantic dogs with him, and looked around for help. There was nobody in sight. He opened his mouth with the intention of shouting at the top of his voice, of unburdening his dismay on the sleepy air, then several thoughts occurred to him almost at once. Pe

Now he was almost in the position of having to face Elizabeth in person and describe his part in the finding of her son’s corpse.

Pe

Then there was the matter of his superior, Arthur Kemp. Pe

The realization that he was in mortal danger stimulated Pe

Pe

It was important to him that they did not make their predictable dash to the terrace until Kemp was in exactly the right place to become involved with their discovery. Pe

“Any minute now, my little friends,” he whispered. “Any minute now.”

In contrast to what Garamond had feared, the field seemed quieter than usual, its broad expanses of ferrocrete mellowed to the semblance of sand by the fleeting sunlight. Low on the western horizon a complexity of small clouds was assembled like a fabulous army, their helmets and crests glowing with fire, and several vaporous ba

“Some papers to sign in here, then we’ll take the slidewalk out to the shuttle,” he said easily as he opened the car door and got out.

“I thought Chris and I’d be going up to the observation floor,” Aileen replied, not moving from her seat.

“There’s no fun in that, is there, Chris?” Garamond lifted the boy off Afleen’s knee and set him down on the steps of the S.E.A. building. “What’s the point in having a Dad who’s a flickerwing captain if you can’t get a few extra privileges? You’d like to look right inside the shuttle, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes, Dad.” Chris nodded, but with a curious reserve, as if he had sensed something of Aileen’s unease.

“Of course, you would.” Garamond took Aileen’s hand, drew her out of the car and slammed the door. “That’s all, driver — we can look after ourselves from here on.” The driver glanced back once, without speaking, and accelerated away towards the transport pool.

Aileen caught Garamond’s arm. “We’re alone now, Vance. What’s… ?”

“Now you two stand right here on these steps and don’t move till I come out. This won’t take long.” Garamond sprinted up the steps, returned the salutes of the guards at the top, and hurried towards the S.E.A. Preflight Centre. The large square room looked unfamiliar when he entered, as though seen through the eyes of the young Vance Garamond who had been so impressed by it at the begi

“You’re late, Captain Garamond,” commented a heavily built ex-quartermaster called Herschell, who habitually addressed outgoing captains with a note of rueful challenge which was meant to remind them he had not always held a desk job.

“I know — I couldn’t get away from Liz.” Garamond seized a stylus and began scribbling his name on various papers as they were fed to him. “Like that, was it? She couldn’t let you go?”

“That’s the way it was.”

“Pity. I’d say you’ve missed the tide.” Herschell’s pink square face was sympathetic.

“Oh?”

“Yeah — look at the map.” Herschell pointed up at the vast solid-image chart of the Solar System and surrounding volume of interstellar space which floated below the domed ceiling. The solar wind, represented by yellow radiance, was as strong as ever and Garamond saw the healthy, bow-shaped shock wave on the sunward side of Earth, where the current impacted on the planet’s geomagnetic field. Data on the i

Garamond shifted his attention to the broad straggling bands of green, blue and red which plotted the galactic tides of fast-moving corpuscles as they swept across the entire region. These vagrant sprays of energetic particles and their movements meant as much to him as wind, wave and tide had to the skipper of a transoceanic sailing ship. All spacecraft built by Starflight — which meant all spacecraft built on Earth — employed intense magnetic fields to sweep up interstellar atomic debris for use as reaction mass. The system made it possible to conduct deep-space voyages in ships weighing as little as ten thousand tons, as against the million tons which would have been the minimum for a vessel which had to transport its own reaction mass.