Arthur Clarke - Imperial Earth

Part of its appeal was undoubtedly due to sheer novelty; who would have expected to find bicycles in space? The track was a narrow tunnel, with steeply banked floor, completely encircling the ship, and rather like an old-time particle accelerator—except that in this case the particles themselves provided the acceleration.

Every evening, just before going to bed, Duncan would enter the tunnel, climb onto one of the bicycles, and start pedaling slowly around the sixty meters of track. His first revolution would take a leisurely half minute; then he would gradually work up to full speed. As he did so, he would rise higher and higher up the banked wall, until at maximum speed he was almost at right angles to the floor. At the same time, he would feel his weight steadily increase; the bicycle’s speedometer had been calibrated to read in fractions of a gee, so he could tell exactly how well he was doing. Forty kilometers and hour—ten times around Sirius every minute—was the equivalent of one Earth gravity. After several days of practice Duncan was able to maintain this for ten minutes without too much effort. By the end of the voyage, he could tolerate it indefinitely—as he would have to, when he reached Earth.

The race track was at its most exciting when it contained two or more riders—especially when they were moving at different speeds. Though overtaking was strictly forbidden, it was an irresistible challenge, and on this voyage there were no serious casualties. One of Duncan’s most vivid and incongruous memories of Sirius would be the tinkle of bicycle bells, echoing round and round in a brightly lit circular tunnel whose blurred walls flashed by only a few centimeters away... And the race track also provided him with a more material souvenir, a pseudomedieval scroll which announced to all who were interested that I, DUNCAN MAKENZIE, OF OASIS CITY, TITAN, AM HEREBY CERTIFIED TO HAVE BICYCLED FROM SATURN TO EARTH, AT AN AVERAGE VELOCITY OF 2,176,420 KILOMETERS AN HOUR.

Duncan’s mental preparation for life on Earth occupied considerably more time, but was not quite so exhausting. He already had a good knowledge of Terran history, geography, and current affairs, but until now it had been mostly theoretical, because it had little direct application to him. Both astronomically and psychologically, Earth had been a long way off. Now it was coming closer by millions of kilometers a day.

Even more to the point, he was now surrounded by Terrans; there were only seven passengers from Titan aboard Sirius , so they were outnumbered fifty to one. Whether he liked it or not, Duncan was being rapidly brainwashed and molded by another culture. He found himself using Terran figures of speech, adopting the slightly sing-song intonation now universal on Earth, and employing more and more words of Chinese origin. All this was to be expected; what he found disturbing was the fact that his own swiftly receding world was becoming steadily more unreal. Before the voyage was finished, he suspected that he would have become half-Terran.

He spent much of his time viewing Earth scenes, listening to famous political debates, and trying to understand what was happening in culture and the arts, so that he would not appear to be a complete barbarian from the outer darkness. When he was not sitting at the viddy, he was likely to be flicking through the pages of a small, dense booklet optimistically entitled Earth in Ten Days . He was fond of trying out bits of new-found information on his fellow passengers, to study their reactions and to check on his own understanding. Sometimes the response was a blank stare, sometimes a slightly condescending smile. But everyone was very polite to him; after a while, Duncan realized that there was some truth in the old cliché that Terrans were never unintentionally rude.

Of course, it was absurd to apply a single label to half a billion people—or even to the three hundred and fifty on the ship. Yet Duncan was surprised to find how often his preconceived ideas—even his prejudices—were perfectly accurate. Most Terrans did have a quite unconscious air of superiority. At first, Duncan found it annoying; then he realized that several thousand years of history and culture justified a certain pride.

It was still too early for him to answer the question, so long debated on all the other worlds: “Is Earth becoming decadent?” The individuals he had met aboard Sirius showed no trace of that effete oversensibility with which Terrans were frequently charged—but, of course, they were not a fair sample. Anyone who had occasion to visit the outer reaches of the Solar System must possess exceptional ability or resources.

He would have to wait until he reached Earth before he could measure its decadence more precisely. The project might be an interesting one—if his budget and his timetable could stand the strain.

In a hundred years, thought Duncan, he could never have managed to arrange this deliberately. Masterful administration of the unforeseen, indeed! Colin would be proud of him...

It had all begun quite accidentally. When he discovered that the Chief Engineer bore the scarcely uncommon name of Mackenzie, it had been natural enough to introduce himself and to compare family trees. A glance was sufficient to show that any relationship was remote: Warren Mackenzie, Doctor of Astrotechnology (Propulsion) was a freckled redhead.

It made no difference, for he was pleased to meet Duncan and happy to chat with him. A genuine friendship had developed, long before Duncan decided to take advantage of it.

“I sometimes feel,” Warren lamented, not very seriously, “that I’m a living cliché. Did you know that there was a time when all ship’s engineers were Scots and call Mac-something-or-other?”

“I didn’t know it. Why not Germans or Russians? They started the whole thing.”

“You’re on the wrong wavelength. I’m talking about ships that float on water. The first powered ones were driven by steam—piston engines, working paddle wheels—around the beginning of the nineteenth century. Now, the Industrial Revolution started in Britain, and the first practical steam engine was made by a Scot. So when steamships began to operate all over the world, the Macs went with them. No one else could understand such complicated pieces of machinery.”

“ Steam engines? Complicated? You must be joking.”

“Have you ever looked at one? More to it than you might think, though it doesn’t take long to figure it out... Anyway, while the steamships lasted—that was only about a hundred years—the Scots ran them. I’ve made a hobby of the period; it has some surprising parallels with our time.”

“Go on—surprise me.”

“Well, those old ships were incredibly slow, averaging only about ten klicks, at least for freighters. So really long journeys, even on Earth, could take weeks. Just like space travel.”

“I see. In those days, the countries on Earth were almost as far apart as the planets.”

“Well, some of them. The most perfect analogy is the old British Commonwealth, the first and last world empire. For almost a hundred years, countries like Canada, India, and Australia relied entirely on steamships to link them to Britain; the one-way journey could easily take a month or more, and was often a once-in-a-lifetime affair. Only the wealthy, or people on official business, could afford it. And—just like today—people in the colonies couldn’t even speak to the mother country. The psychological isolation was almost complete.”

“They had telephones, didn’t they?”

“Only for local use, and only a few even then. I’m talking about the beginning of the twentieth century , remember. Universal global communication didn’t arrive until the end of it.”