Arthur Clarke - Imperial Earth

“I feel that the analogy is a little forced,” protested Duncan. He was intrigued but unconvinced, and quite willing to listen to Mackenzie’s arguments—as yet, with no ulterior motive.

“I can give you some more evidence that makes a better case. Have you heard of Rudyard Kipling?”

“Yes, though I’ve never read anything of his. He was a writer, wasn’t he? Anglo-American—sometime between Melville and Hemingway. English Lit’s almost unknown territory to me. Life’s too short.”

“True, alas. But I have read Kipling. He was the first poet of the machine age, and some people think he was also the finest short-story writer of his century. I couldn’t judge that, of course, but he exactly described the period I’m talking about. ‘McAndrew’s Hymn,’ for example—an old engineer musing about the pistons and boilers and crankshafts that drive his ship round the world. Its technology—not to mention its theology!—has been extinct for three hundred years; but the spirit behind it is still as valid as ever.”

“And he wrote poems and stories about the far places of the empire which make them seem quite as remote as the planets are today—and sometimes even more exotic! There’s a favorite of mine called ‘The Song of The Cities.’ I don’t understand half the allusions, but he tributes to Bombay, Singapore, Rangoon, Sydney, Aukland... make me think of Luna, Mercury, Mars, Titan...”

Mackenzie paused and looked just a little embarrassed.

“I’ve tried to do something of the same kind myself—but don’t worry, I won’t inflict my verses on you.”

Duncan made the encouraging noises he knew were expected. He was quite sure that before the end of the voyage he would be asked for his criticism—translation, praise—of Mackenzie’s literary efforts.

It was a timely reminder of his own responsibilities. While the voyage was still beginning, he had better start work.

Exactly ten minutes, George Washington had directed—not a second more. Even the President will be allowed only fifteen, and all the planets must have equal time. The whole affair is scheduled to last two and a half hours, from the moment we enter the Capitol until we leave for the reception at the White House...

It still seemed faintly absurd to travel three billion kilometers to make a ten-minute speech, even for an occasion as unique as a five hundredth anniversary. Duncan was not going to waste more than the bare minimum of it on polite formalities; anyway, as Malcolm had pointed out, the sincerity of the speech of thanks is often inversely proportional to its length.

For his amusement—and, more important, because it would help to fix the other participants in his mind—Duncan had tried to compose a formal opening, based on the list of guests that Professor Washington had provided. It started off: “Madame President, Mr. Vice President, Honorable Chief Justice, Honorable Leader of the Senate, Honorable Leader of the House, Your Excellencies the Ambassadors for Luna, Mars, Mercury, Ganymede, and Titan”—at this point he would incline his head slightly toward Ambassador Farrell, if he could see him in the crowded gallery—“distinguished representatives from Albania, Austrand, Cyprus, Bohemia, France, Khmer, Palestine, Kalinga, Zimbabwe, Eire...” He calculated that if he acknowledged all fifty or sixty regions that still existed on some form of individual recognition, a quarter of his time would be expended before he had even begun. This, obviously, was absurd, and he hoped that all the other speakers would agree. Regardless of that protocol, Duncan had decided to opt for dignified brevity.

“People of Earth” would cover a lot of ground—to be precise, five times the area of Titan, an impressive statistic which Duncan knew by heart. But that would leave out the visitors; what about “Friends from other worlds”? No, that was too pretentious, since most of them would be complete strangers. Perhaps: “Madame President, distinguished guests, known and unknown friends from many worlds...” That was better, yet somehow it still didn’t seem right.

There was more to this business, Duncan realized, than met the eye, or the ear. Plenty of people would be willing to give him advice, but he was determined, in the good old Makenzie tradition, to see what he could do himself before calling for help. He had read somewhere that the best way to learn to swim is by being thrown into deep water. Duncan could not swim—that skill being singularly useless on Titan—but he could appreciate the analogy. His career in Solar politics would start with a spectacular splash, and before the eyes of millions.

It was not that he was nervous; after all, he had addressed his whole world as an expert witness during technical debates in the Assembly. He had acquitted himself well when he weighed the complex arguments for and against mining the ammonia glaciers of Mount Nansen. Even Armand Helmer had congratulated him, despite the fact that they had reached opposing conclusions. In those debates, affecting the future of Titan, he had had real responsibility, and his career might have come to an abrupt end if he had made a fool of himself.

His Terran audience might be a thousand times larger, but it would be very much less critical. Indeed, his listeners would be friendly unless he committed the unpardonable sin of boring them.

This, however, he could not yet guarantee, for he still had no idea how he was going to use the most important ten minutes of his life.

On the seas of Earth, they had called it “Crossing the Line.” Whenever a ship had passed from one hemisphere to another, there had been light-hearted ceremonies and rituals, during which those who had never traversed the Equator before were subjected to ingenious indignities by Father Neptune and his Court.

During the first centuries of space flight, the equivalent transition involved no physical changes; only the navigational computer knew when a ship had ceased to fall toward one planet and was beginning to fall toward another. But now, with the advent of constant-acceleration drives, which could maintain thrust for the entire duration of a voyage, Midpoint, or “Turnaround,” had logical impact. After living and moving for days in an apparent gravitational field, Sirius’ passengers would lose all weight for several hours, and could at least feel that they were really in space.

They could watch the slow rotation of the stars as the ship was swung through one hundred eighty degrees, and the drive was aimed precisely against its previous line of thrust, to slowly whittle away the enormous velocity built up over the preceding ten days. They could savor the thought that they were now moving faster than any human beings in history—and could also contemplate the exciting prospect that if the drive failed to restart, Sirius would ultimately reach the nearest stars, in not much more than a thousand years...

All these things they could do; however, human nature having certain invariants, a majority of Sirius’ passengers had other possibilities in mind.

It was the only chance most of them would ever have of experiencing weightlessness long enough to enjoy it. What a crime to waste the opportunity! No wonder that the most popular item in the ship’s library these last few days had been the Nasa Sutra , an old book and an old joke, explained so often that it was no longer funny.

Captain Ivanov denied, with a reasonably convincing show of indignation, that the ship’s schedule had been designed to pander to the passengers’ lower instincts. When the subject had been raised at the Captain’s table, the day before Turnaround, he had put up quite a plausible defense.