Arthur Clarke - Imperial Earth

The problems of keeping five hundred young adults entertained and out of mischief on a six-months’ cruise aboard even the largest spaceliner had not been given sufficient thought; the law professor who had signed on as master-at-arms was later heard to complain bitterly about the complete absence from the ship’s inventory of hypodermic guns and knockout gas. On the other hand, there had been no deaths or serious injuries, only one pregnancy, and everyone had learned a great deal, though not necessarily in the areas that the organizers had intended. The first few weeks, for example, were mostly occupied by experiments in zero-gravity sex, despite warnings that this was an expensive addiction for those compelled to spend most of their lives on planetary surfaces.

Other shipboard activities, it was widely believed, were not quite so harmless. There were reports of tobacco -smoking—not actually illegal, of course, but hardly sensible behavior when there were so many safe alternatives. Even more alarming were persistent rumors that someone had smuggled an Emotion Amplifier on board Mentor . The so-called joy machines were banned on all planets, except under strict medical control; but there would always be people to whom reality was not good enough, and who would want to try something better.

Notwithstanding the horror stories radioed ahead from other ports of call, Titan had looked forward to welcoming its young visitors. It was felt that they would add color to the social scene, and help establish some enjoyable contacts with Mother Earth. And anyway, it would be for only a week...

Luckily, no one dreamed that it would be for two months. This was not Mentor ’s fault; Titan had only itself to blame.

When Mentor fell into its parking orbit, Earth and Titan were involved in one of their periodical wrangles over the price of hydrogen, F.O.B. Zero Gravitational Potential (Solar Reference). The proposed 15 percent rise, screamed the Terrans, would cause the collapse of interplanetary commerce. Anything under 10 percent, swore the Titanians, would result in their instant bankruptcy and would make it impossible for them to import any of the expensive items Earth was always trying to sell. To any historian of economics, the whole debate was boringly familiar.

Unable to get a firm quotation, Mentor was stranded in orbit with empty fuel tanks. At first, her captain was not too unhappy; he and the crew could do with the rest, now that the passengers had shuttled down to Titan and had fanned out all over the face of the hapless satellite. But one week stretched into two, then three, then a month. By that time, Titan was ready to settle on almost any terms; unfortunately, Mentor had now missed her optimum trajectories, and it would be another four weeks before the next launch window opened. Meanwhile, the five hundred guests were enjoying themselves, usually much more than their hosts.

But to the younger Titanians, it was an exciting time which they would remember all their lives. On a small world where everyone knew everybody else, half a thousand fascinating strangers had arrived, full of tales, many of them quite true, about the wonders of Earth. Here were men and women, barely into their twenties, who had seen forests and prairies and oceans of liquid water, who had strolled unprotected under an open sky beneath a sun whose heat could actually be felt...

This very contrast in backgrounds, however, was a possible source of danger. The Terrans could not be allowed to go wandering around by themselves, even inside the habitats. They had to have escorts, preferable responsible people not too far from their own age group, to see that they did not inadvertently kill either themselves or their hosts.

Naturally, there were times when they resented this well-intentioned supervision, and even tried to escape from it. One group succeeded; it was very lucky, and suffered no more than a few searing whiffs of ammonia. Damage was so slight that the foolish adventurers required only routine lung transplants, but after this exploit there was no more serious trouble.

There were plenty of other problems. The sheer mechanics of absorbing five hundred visitors was a challenge to a society where living standards were still somewhat Spartan, and accommodation limited. At first, all the unexpected guests were housed in the complex of corridors left by an abandoned mining operation, hastily converted into dormitories. Then, as quickly as arrangements could be made, they were farmed out—like refugees from some bombed city in an ancient war—to any households that were able to cope with them. At this stage, there were still many willing volunteers, among them Colin and Sheela Makenzie.

The apartment was lonely, now that Duncan’s pseudosibling Glynn had left home to work on the other side of Titan; Sheela’s other child, Yuri, had been gone for a decade. Though Number 402, Second Level, Meridian Park was hardly spacious by Terran standards, Assistant Administrator Colin Makenzie, as he was then, had selected one of the homeless waifs for temporary adoption.

And so Calindy had come into Duncan’s life—and into Karl’s.

Catherine Linden Ellerman had celebrated her twenty-first birthday just before Mentor reached Saturn. By all accounts, it had been a memorable party, giving the final silvery gloss to the captain’s remaining hairs. Calindy would have sailed through untouched; next to her beauty, that was her most outstanding characteristic. In the midst of chaos—even chaos that she herself had generated—she was the calm center of the storm. With a self-possession far beyond her years, she seemed to young Duncan the very embodiment of Terran culture and sophistication. He could smile wryly, one and a half decades later, at his boyish naïveté; but it was not wholly unfounded. By any standards, Calindy was a remarkable phenomenon.

Duncan knew, of course, that all Terrans were rich. (How could it be otherwise, when each was the heir to a hundred thousand generations?) But he was overawed by Calindy’s display of jewels and silks, never realizing that she had a limited wardrobe which she varied with consummate skill. Most impressive of all was a stunningly beautiful coat of golden fur—the only one ever seen on Titan—made from the skins of an animal called a mink. That was typical of Calindy; no one else would have dreamed of taking a fur coat aboard a spaceship. And she had not done so—as malicious rumor pretended—because she had heard it was cold out around Saturn. She was much too intelligent for that kind of stupidity, and I knew exactly what she was doing; she had brought her mink simply because it was beautiful.

Perhaps because he could see her only through a mist of adoration, Duncan could never visualize her, in later years, as an actual person. When he thought of Calindy, and tried to conjure up her image, he did not see the real girl, but always his only replica of her, in one of the bubble stereos that had become so popular in the ’50’s.

How many thousands of times he had taken that apparently solid, yet almost weightless sphere in his hands, shaken it gently, and thus activated the five-second loop! Through the subtle magic of organized gas molecules, each releasing its programmed quantum of light, Calindy’s face would appear out of the swirling mists—tiny, yet perfect in form and color. At first she would be in profile; then she would turn and suddenly—Duncan could never be sure of the moment when it arrived—there would be the faint smile that only Leonardo could have captured in an earlier age. She did not seem to be smiling at him, but at someone over his shoulder. The impression was so strong that more than once Duncan had looked back, startled, to see who was standing behind him.