Colony, p.1
Colony, page 1
COLONY
by
BEN BOVA
Published by ReAnimus Press
© 2012, 1978 by Ben Bova. All rights reserved.
http://ReAnimus.com/authors/benbova
Cover Art by Clay Hagebusch
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental.
~~~
To Barbara
~~~
Not at a crisis of nervousness do we stand now, not at a time for the vacillations of flabby souls; but at a great turning point in the history of scientific thought, at a crisis such as occurs but once in a thousand years.... Standing at this point, with the vista of future achievement before us, we should be happy that it is our lot to live at this time and to participate in the creation of tomorrow.
—V. I. Vernadskii, 1932
I do not wish to seem overdramatic, but I can only conclude from the information that is available to me as Secretary General, that the Members of the United Nations have perhaps ten years left in which to subordinate their ancient quarrels and launch a global partnership to curb the arms race, to improve the human environment, to defuse the population explosion, and to supply the required momentum to development efforts. If such a global partnership is not forged within the next decade, then I very much fear that the problems I have mentioned will have reached such staggering proportions that they will be beyond our capacity to control.
—U Thant,
Secretary General of the United Nations, 1969
~~~
BOOK ONE
May, 2028 A.D.
World Population: 7.25 Billion
~~~
The concept, the design, and even the term “Island One” stem from research led by Professor Gerard O'Neill at the old Princeton University back in the Seventies. He originally envisioned Island One as a space colony up at the Moon's orbit, constructed in empty space out of materials scooped from the Moon's surface. His colony would house ten thousand permanent residents. It was huge by the standards of the 1970s, and people gaped at the idea. But actually his Island One was no more massive than the oceangoing supertankers that used to haul oil around the world, back when there was oil to be hauled.
That was O'Neill's dream, and lots of people scoffed at it—but not the corporations. And right around the turn of the century, when they finally decided to build a colony in space, the corporations made O'Neill's thinking look small.
—Cyrus S. Cobb,
Tapes for an unauthorized autobiography
~~~
ONE
“Slow down!” she called “I'm only a city girl.”
David Adams stopped and turned back toward her. They were climbing a grassy slope that wasn’t very steep. Young slim-boled maples and birches stood every few feet, so that you could grab them and pull yourself along.
But Evelyn was out of breath and starting to feel angry. He's showing off, she thought. The muscular young male in his Garden of Eden.
Laughing, David extended a hand toward her. “You said you wanted to see the whole colony.”
“Yes,” Evelyn said, puffing, “but I don’t want to get a heart attack doing it.”
Grasping her wrist firmly, he helped pull her up along the climbing path. “It gets easier up ahead. The gravity slackens off. And the view is worth the effort.”
She nodded, but said to herself, He knows he's handsome. Good muscular body; firm backside. That's why they picked him to guide me, no doubt. He gets all the female hormones popping.
David reminded her of the Hawaiian beachboys who had invaded England’s holiday resorts lately: the same strong, sleek body; the same wide-boned handsome face with the big bright smile. He was dressed for the outdoors, something Evelyn had never expected: rough shorts, loose-fitting sleeveless shirt open to show his smooth muscular chest, soft-skinned hiking boots. Her own short-skirted business suit looked perfectly proper in an office or a restaurant or anywhere civilized, but out here it was terribly out of place. She had already taken off the vest and stuffed it into her shoulderbag, but still she was overheated and sweating like an animal.
That smile of his is dazzling, though. There was something else about him, too, something... different. Could he be the one? she asked herself. Could I have stumbled onto him already? What a coincidence that he'd be assigned to be my guide. But another voice in her head warned, There's no such thing as a coincidence. Be careful!
Those blue eyes and that golden hair. What a combination. And the slightly olive cast to his skin: a Mediterranean gene. Can they engineer your complexion, too? Still, there’s something.... He's got that film-star look to him, Evelyn realized. Too perfect. Not a thing out of place. No blemishes, no scars. Even his teeth are white and straight.
“Careful here,” David said. He slid an arm around her waist to help her jump over a tiny gurgling brook that cut across their path.
“Thanks,” Evelyn murmured, disengaging his arm. He knows he's a hunk, she told herself. Don't let that angel face take you in, old girl.
Silently they climbed through thinning stands of oak and spruce, all neatly arranged, evenly spaced. Like his bloody teeth. They should have sent a blooming Girl Scout on this job, not a reporter.
David watched her as they climbed the steadily ascending path. Why did Cobb pick me to show her around? he asked himself. Does he think so little of the work I'm trying to do that he wants me to put it aside and play Boy Scout with a newcomer?
With an effort, he kept the resentment out of his face as he watched her struggle in her open-toed shoes to keep up with him. On impulse, he tongued the communicator switch built into his rearmost molar and whispered to himself, deep down in his throat where no one could hear it except the miniaturized transmitter implanted there: “Evelyn Hall, new arrival last week. File, please.”
It took four paces along the grassy path before the microscopic receiver implanted behind his ear whispered back: “Evelyn L. Hall. Age twenty-six. Born London Complex. Attended state schools in London area. Graduate of Polytechnic University, Plymouth. Degree in journalism. Employed as researcher, later reporter, International News Syndicate. No other employment history. Physical data...”
David shut off the computer’s voice with a click of his tongue. He didn’t need her vital statistics. He could see that she was almost as tall as his own five-eleven and had the full, ripe kind of figure that meant she faced a constant battle against overweight. Her thick honey-colored hair curled over her shoulders; it was badly tangled right now. Sea-green eyes that were alive, intelligent, inquisitive. A pretty face. She looked almost like an innocent child except for those probing, restless eyes. Still, it was a sweet face, vulnerable, almost fragile.
“I wish they’d told me we’d be mountain-climbing,” Evelyn grumbled.
David laughed. “Come on. This isn’t a mountain. We didn’t build any mountains into this side of the colony. Now, if you really want to climb...”
“Never mind!” She pushed a matted mass of hair away from her eyes.
Her suit was ruined, she knew. Grass-stained, soaked with perspiration. That bastard Cobb. The “mayor” of Island One. This was all his idea.
“Get to see the colony,” the skinny old fart had boomed, as if he were haranguing the multitudes. “I mean really see it. Walk through it. Experience it. I’ll get somebody to show you around....”
If this is how he treats every new arrival, it's a miracle anyone stays up here to live. But Evelyn wondered, Or is he giving me special treatment because he suspects what I'm here for? For the first time in her life she realized that investigative reporting could be not only dangerous, but damned fatiguing.
She tagged along behind the muscular young woodsman through forest and stream, over hill and glade, her clothes in a mess, her shoes utterly ruined, blisters searing her feet, shoulderbag thumping against her hip, and her disposition unraveling more with each painful step.
“Not much farther,” David said. His cheerfulness aggravated her. “Feel any lighter? The gravity falls off pretty quickly up here.”
“No,” she snapped, not trusting herself to say more. If she told him what she really thought of all this woodsy lore, they’d have her packing back to Earth on the next shuttle.
David was walking alongside her now. The path seemed to have flattened out considerably. At least the walking was easier. Evelyn saw that there were head-tall bushes along both sides of their path, gorgeous with huge, pumpkin-sized blossoms of fantastic vibrant reds and oranges and yellows.
“What are these?” she asked, her breathing almost back to normal.
David’s pleasant face wrinkled for a moment. “Umm...” He made a clicking sound with his tongue as he stared at the flowers.
Some P.R. man, Evelyn thought. He takes me on the royal tour and he doesn't even know...
“They’re a mutated form of the common hydrangea,” David said, his head oddly cocked to one side, as if he were listening to something as he spoke. “H. macrophylla murphiensis. One of the colony’s earliest geneticists was a gardener by hobby and he tried to establis
He recites like a bloody robot, Evelyn thought.
David smiled at her and said in a more normal tone, “The amateur gardener’s name wasn’t Murphy, by the way. He refused to have his own name identified with the new variation, so Dr. Cobb named the plant after Murphy’s Law.”
“Murphy’s Law?”
“Hasn’t anybody explained Murphy’s Law to you? ‘If anything can go wrong, it will.’ That’s Murphy’s Law.” More seriously he added, “It’s the first and most important rule of living up here. If you’re going to make your home here, remember Murphy’s Law. It could save your life.”
“If I’m going to make my home here?” Evelyn echoed. “Is there any doubt about that? I mean, I’ve been accepted for permanent residency, haven’t I?”
“Sure,” David said, looking innocently surprised. “It was just a figure of speech.”
But Evelyn wondered, How much does he know?
They resumed walking, with the spectacularly flowered bushes screening both sides of their path. There wasn’t much scent from the flowers, but something else was bothering Evelyn... something was missing.
“No insects!”
“What?” David asked.
“There are no insects buzzing around.”
“Not very many,” David said, “up here. We have bees and such down in the farmlands, of course. But we’ve worked pretty hard to keep pests out of the colony. Flies, mosquitoes... disease carriers. The ground we’re walking on has earthworms and beetles and everything else the soil needs to stay alive, of course. That was one of the colony’s biggest problems, at first. It takes a lot of living creatures in the soil to make it fertile. You can’t just scoop dirt from the Moon and spread it around the colony. It’s barren, sterile.”
Evelyn asked, “How long have you lived here?”
“All my life,” David said.
“Really? You were born here?”
“I’ve lived here all my life,” he repeated.
A tremor shuddered along Evelyn’s spine. He is the one!
She asked, “And they’ve got you working on the P.R. staff?”
“P.R. What’s that?”
She blinked at him. “Public relations. Don’t you even know...”
“Oh, that!” He grinned at her. “I’m not on the public relations staff. We don’t even have one, outside of Dr. Cobb himself.”
“Then you just guide newcomers all the time?”
“No. I’m a Forecaster... or I’m trying to be.”
“A Forecaster? Now what in heaven’s name...”
But her question was blown away as they stepped around the final turn of the trail and she saw the view.
They were standing near the rim of a high hill. A breeze should have been blowing up this high, but if there was one, Evelyn didn’t feel it. The bushes that had screened their path were behind them now, and she could see the whole colony laid out before her.
Island One.
From up on the crest of the hill Evelyn could see the fertile green land stretching out before her, long swaths of wooded hills, gently curving streams, grassy glades, little clumps of forests, a scattering of buildings, blue lakes glittering in the sunlight. She almost felt as if she were falling, pulled off her feet by the broad open vista of greenery that reached on and on, until its farthest distance was lost in haze.
She could see the clustered spires of a village and the white sails of boats skimming across one of the larger lakes. Here a bridge delicately spanned a river, there a set of gossamer wings glided easily in the clear, clean air. Far off in the blue-hazed distance were neat rows of cultivated farmlands.
She knew that Island One was a huge cylinder hanging in space. She knew that she was standing inside a long, broad, man-made tube. Numbers from her background briefings played through her head. The colony was twenty kilometers long, four klicks wide. It rotated every few minutes to keep an artificial form of gravity inside the cylinder and make everything feel Earthlike. But the numbers were meaningless. It was all too big, too open, too vast. This was a world, a rich, verdant land of beauty and peace that defied every attempt to measure and define it.
A whole world! Green, open, clean—shining with hope and room to walk in, to breathe in, to play and laugh in, the way Cornwall and Devon had been before the gray tentacles of the megalopolis had swallowed all the green hillsides.
Evelyn could feel herself trembling. There’s no horizon! The land curved up. It reached upward, dizzyingly, sweeping higher and higher. She lifted her head and saw through the bluish, cloud-flecked sky that there was more land above her, straight overhead. An inside-out world. She swayed.
Slashing across the open green land were long gleaming swaths of brilliant light. The solar windows. They ran the length of the colony’s cylinder, steel-braced glass that brought in the sunlight reflected by the huge mirrors outside the colony’s mammoth tubular body.
It was all too vast to comprehend. Hills, trees, farms, villages curving up over her head, lost in the hazy blue of the sky, up, up, swirling around over her head in a full circle, green land, shining window, more green land....
She felt David’s arm around her shoulders.
“You were getting dizzy. I thought you might fall.”
Weakly, gratefully, Evelyn said, “It’s... it rather staggers one, doesn’t it?”
He nodded and smiled at her, and suddenly she was angry again. Not you! It doesn't stagger you! You've seen this every day of your life. You've never had to fight your way through a city queue or put on a breathing mask just to get through the streets alive....
“It’s a breathtaking sight, all right,” David was saying, as calmly as a newscaster reading a weather report. “All the pictures in the world can’t prepare you for this.”
She heard herself giggle. “Columbus! This would have driven Columbus mad! It was difficult enough for him to get people to believe that the world is round. But if he had seen this—this world—it’s inside-out!”
Knowingly, David said, “I’ve got a telescope at my place if you want to actually see people standing upside down with their heads hanging toward you.”
“No,” Evelyn said quickly. “I don’t think I’m ready for that yet.”
They stood at the edge of the hill’s steep dropoff. It was eerily quiet. No birds chirping. No trucks rumbling along a nearby highway. Evelyn forced herself to look upward again and see the land curving over her head, forced herself to accept the fact that she was standing inside a man-made cylinder more than twelve miles long, a giant tube hanging in space a quarter-million miles from Earth, landscaped, filled with air, an engineered paradise that housed an elite few of very rich people—while billions lived in misery on the tired, crowded old Earth.
“Anything else you’d like to know in the way of statistics about the colony?” David asked. “It’s just about the same length as Manhattan Island, but since we can use almost all the inner surface of the cylinder, we actually have more than four times Manhattan’s area...”
“And a hundredth of its population!”
If David were stung by her retort, he barely showed it. “One of the benefits of living here is the colony’s low population density,” he said evenly. “We don’t want to get into the same strangling situation that the cities of Earth have gotten themselves into.”
“What do you know about the cities of Earth?” she demanded.
With a shrug, he said, “Not much, I guess.”
They lapsed into silence again. Evelyn turned back to see the view. All that open space. They could take in a million people. More.
