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J.D. glanced up. Starfarer was large enough to have its own weather patterns,
including rain. Two different systems of clouds drifted over the land on the
other side of the cyl-
inder.
Victoria pointed at the most distant cloud system. "That far-overhead system
will be near-overhead in half a rotation.
The ecosystems analysts encourage rain in the cylinders it's easier and
cheaper than air-conditioning. Smells better, too."
"No thunder and lightning, though. I'm sure," J.D. said
79
80 vonda N. Mclntyre wistfully. That would be too risky, both because of all
the electronics within Starfarer, and because of the amount of energy even a
small lightning bolt can let loose.
"No, you're right." Victoria laughed. "That, they dis-
courage."
"It's the one thing I missed in the Pacific Northwest," J.D.
said. "There was lots of rain, but hardly ever any thunder."
She hesitated. She wanted to ask so many questions about
Starfarer and the alien contact department. But she would have time. "I'll see
you tomorrow, right?"
"First thing," Satoshi said.
"We'll come and get you and go watch the solar sail test."
They bid each other good night. J.D. watched Victoria and
Satoshi walk away, hand in hand.
Griffith glanced back at earth one last time before leaving the transport.
This was his first trip into space. He had known, intellectually, how far he
would be from the planet, but the distance struck him emotionally only when he
could hold out his hands and cup the world between them.
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At this distance, it would take the very best surveillance equipment perhaps
even the next generation of surveillance equipment to get fine detail from
earth- The starship would have to move to a lower orbit.
Griffith hated waste. Starfarer should never have been built this far out to
begin with. A great deal of time and money and reaction mass had gone into its
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construction. Even though most of its mass came from cheap lunar material,
O'Neill colony leftovers, it had required a significant number of
earth-to-orbit payloads.
Griffith moved into the starship, hand over hand along the grips. He was
getting the hang of zero-g navigation, but he envied people with the
experience to move naturally and gracefully.
He left the docking gate and entered the main body of
Starfarer. He stopped at the center of the slope where he could look out into
the cylinder.
Where earth had been too small to believe, the cylinder was far too large. He
was amazed and appalled by the amount of space. From where he held himself,
the end of the cylinder appeared to slope up to meet the walls of the
cylinder, the
STARFARERS 81
living space of Starfarer. He knew, though, that when he started to travel
along one of the numerous paths leading away from the gate, the apparent
gravity would increase. He would perceive himself climbing down to the floor.
Disorientation dizzied him. He closed his eyes, but that only made it worse.
Keeping his gaze away from the weird slope and the enormous cylinder, he found
the path leading to the proper section. He drew himself onto it and gripped
the rail.
Lower on the slope, the artificial gravity held him on the stairs. He released
his death grip on the railing. Other people on the path at the level he had
reached were leaping up and down the slope like gazelles, like moon-walkers,
ignoring the switchbacks, but Griffith moved slowly and steadily and cau-
tiously. He felt dizzy. He supposed it was a psychosomatic reaction that
resulted from his knowing that the cylinder was spinning, for he was below the
level at which his inner ear ought to be able to detect the spin. The
dizziness bothered him, for he was not much given to psychosomatic reactions.
He made some quick calculations about the population den-
sity of the starship. Though he knew he had done the calcu-
lations correctly he made a policy of exercising his mind in this way, so as
not to become too dependent on outside da-
tabases the number struck him as so absurdly low that he sent out a line to
the web and had it check his arithmetic. It was accurate. Then his amazement
at the size of the cylin-
der and there were two of them, one completely uninhab-
ited, designed and intended to remain that way changed to resentment and envy.
The people who lived here had all the space in the world . . .
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He laughed, a quick sarcastic bark. Back in the world, there was arable land,
there was useless land, there were restricted wildernesses, and there were
cities. Not much space remained for stretching out. The spoiled academics who
lived up here had no idea how fortunate they were. Or, more likely, they knew
perfectly well. No doubt they had planned it this way.
They had better enjoy their luxury while it lasted. Soon everything would
change.
The path forked. He let Arachne guide him to the proper track. Below him, on
the slope, the pathways branched and
82 vonda N. Mcfntyre branched again, like a river splitting and spreading its
fingers across a delta. Otherwise the pathways that had begun so close
together, in the center of the cylinder cap, would end at great distances from
each other. By following the correct branch, Griffith could reach the proper
longitude of the cyl-
inder.
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No one had come to meet him, which was as he had planned. He preferred being
left to himself. He would ob-
serve in anonymity and make his recommendations without any fuss.
The departure of several of the associate nations could only help in the
conversion he planned. It could be made to look as if they were grasping at a
convenient excuse and cutting their losses, finding the starship project to be
too big, too expensive for their budgets. And, who knew? That might even be
true.
A few associates might hold out, but the change had begun and it could not be
stopped. At this point, objecting to the use of the starship as a military
base came close to treason.
Unfortunately, it would not look good to arrest half the fac-
ulty and staff of the expedition even if Griffith found evidence against them.
Never mind. Arrests would be unnecessary. By the time he finished his work,
the scientists would give up and go home.
Griffith knew there must be people on board who disagreed with the majority
view, but who feared to speak up against it. He hoped to discover them.
He took a mental glance at a map of the campus transmit-
ted by the web. His perception of the transmission made it overlap his sight,
like the tactical display on the window of a fighter jet. Most people had to
close their eyes to receive visually oriented information from the web.
The map led him to the guesthouse. He climbed the path and walked under the
hill and through the open doorway. It irked him that he would be forced to
stay in an underground room. Back on earth he lived high in a skyscraper, and
he had waited a long time and paid several bribes to get an apartment looking
over the city and the flat stark plains be-
yond. Having paid the bribes still troubled him.
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The lobby was deserted and empty. Not even an AS waited to serve him.
STARFARERS 83
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