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Maybe he was very loud. Or maybe she was going to answer that question next anyhow. “When you arrive in Earth orbit, you will have another choice,” she declared. “You may stay in orbit, in weightlessness, on one of the U.S. space stations, for the rest of your lives. The stronger of you may also choose to settle at Moon Base Alpha or Moon Base Beta. The gravity on the Moon is.16 g. Permission to settle there will be granted only with the approval of physicians at the space stations.”
Johnson tried to imagine himself with weight again. The trip back on the Tom Edison didn’t worry him so much; his effective weight there would be about eight pounds. He exercised regularly, and was sure he could deal with that. But if he tried to go live on the Moon, he’d weigh about twenty-five pounds. That was enough to notice. Some people-Flynn, Stone, and Lieutenant General Healey, too-had been weightless even longer than he had, because they’d gone into cold sleep later. But it had still been close to twenty years by his body clock since he’d felt gravity.
“What do we do if we stay?” someone asked.
“In that case, you will remain aboard the Admiral Peary, ” Lieutenant Colonel Wiedemann replied. “We will send replacements across from the Tom Edison to handle the jobs of those who elect to return to the Solar System. We want to continue to have an armed presence in the Tau Ceti system-and a monitoring presence, too. This ship is the only choice available for that until we have more FTL craft in service. That day is coming, but it is not yet here.”
More questions followed, but those were the ones that mattered most. “What do you think?” Johnson asked Flynn as the gathering broke up.
“Interesting choice,” the other pilot answered. “We can be obsolescent here or obsolete there.”
That was about the size of it. Johnson said, “New faces back there.”
Flynn twisted his not-so-new face into a not-so-happy expression. “By what I’ve seen from the Commodore Perry and the Tom Edison, new faces are overrated. They’re an improvement on yours, sure, but that’s not saying much.”
“Gee, thanks a bunch,” Johnson said. Mickey Flynn regally inclined his head.
Lieutenant General Healey zoomed past, as usual a bull in a china shop. “No, I’m not going anywhere,” he said to anyone who would listen. “My assignment is commandant of the Admiral Peary, and I aim to carry it out. When I leave this ship, I’ll leave feet first.”
Johnson hadn’t been in much doubt about what he would do. Hearing that removed the last traces of it. Going back to Earth would be strange. Seeing it and not being able to land on it would be frustrating. Spending the rest of his life with Lieutenant General Healey would be like going to hell before he died.
He didn’t know how much that particular worry bothered other people, but a majority of the crew on the Admiral Peary, Mickey Flynn among them, applied to go back to the Solar System. Johnson wondered if Healey would try to hold him back, but the commandant didn’t. Healey probably wanted to be rid of him as much as he wanted to be rid of Healey.
When a shuttlecraft took Johnson to the Tom Edison, his first thought was that the new starship felt much more finished than the Admiral Peary did. The Admiral Peary was a military ship first, last, and always, and had no frills or fanciness of any sort. The Tom Edison ’s accommodations, though cramped, were far more comfortable. And computers had come a long way since the Admiral Peary left the Solar System. Johnson discovered he had access to an enormous library of films and television programs, including a whole great swarm that were new to him because they’d been made since he went on ice. He hoped that meant he wouldn’t be bored on the way back to Earth.
No matter what Lieutenant Colonel Wiedemann said, he had worried about what owning any sort of weight again would do to him. But the tough-looking officer turned out to have known what she was talking about. The only time he really noticed he had weight was when he missed a handhold as he brachiated through the starship. Then he’d slowly glide to the floor instead of just floating along to the next one. His legs proved plenty strong to push him on to the next gripping point.
Mickey Flynn weighed more than eight pounds, but he also seemed to be coping well enough. “Nice to eat new meals,” he remarked in the galley one day, then raised his hand in self-correction. “I should say, new styles of meal. We didn’t eat the same supper over and over on the Admiral Peary, after all.”
“No, it only seemed that way,” Johnson agreed. “Of course, these ships don’t have to recycle as much as we did. They can get resupplied whenever they come back to the Solar System. We were out there for the long haul.”
“It certainly seemed like a long haul,” Flynn said, and Johnson couldn’t very well argue with that.
He dutifully lay down on his bunk when the ship neared the transition point. The warning announcement said that some people felt what it described as “unusually intense vertigo.” That didn’t sound like a whole lot of fun. What he felt when the Tom Edison leaped the light-years was… exactly nothing. He shrugged. Anyone who suffered from vertigo wasn’t going to make it as a pilot.
That evening in the refectory, he asked Flynn whether he’d felt anything. “Not me,” the other pilot replied. “I’m normal.”
“God help us all, in that case,” Johnson said. Flynn looked aggrieved. He did it very well. Johnson wondered if he practiced in front of a mirror.
Seeing Earth again, even if only on a video screen, brought a lump to Johnson’s throat. He’d got occasional glimpses of the home planet when he was out in the asteroid belt on the Lewis and Clark. But a blue star near a shrunken sun wasn’t the same as seeing oceans and clouds and continents-and there, by God, there was the United States. Clouds covered most of the eastern half of the country, but he didn’t care. He knew it was there.
When the Tom Edison ’s shuttlecraft took him to a space station, he found a tall mound of paperwork to remind him in another way that he’d come home. He formally retired from the Marine Corps and discovered just how much money he had to draw on. “This doesn’t include the living allowance you’ll have here,” said the functionary handling his case. “This is accumulated pay and interest.”
“It’s mighty interesting,” Johnson allowed. He really could be a sugar daddy down below-if it weren’t for gravity. Up here? He wasn’t so sure about that. Finding out could also be mighty interesting, though.
The functionary looked pained. “Do all you Rip van Winkles make bad puns?”
“Ah, you’ve been dealing with Mickey Flynn,” Johnson said, and surprised the man all over again.
“Will you want to stay here in weightlessness, or would you rather settle in one of the bases on the Moon?” the
modern asked.
“I don’t know yet. Do I have to decide right away?” Johnson replied.
Reluctantly, the other man shook his head. “No, not yet. But the longer you stay weightless, the harder it will be for your body to get used to the Moon’s gravity-if it can at all.”
“I’ve been weightless for years and years,” Johnson answered. “I don’t think a few days to make up my mind will kill me or my chances.”
The longer he stayed at the space station, the less inclined he was to leave. It was a much busier operation than any he’d known in space before leaving Earth orbit. Of course, that was almost seventy years ago now. In those days, space travel had been almost exclusively military. Nowadays, this place was a tourist trap.
He shopped. He spent money in stores and bars. That felt strange, after doing without cash and credit cards for so long. In one of those bars, he met a woman from Cincinnati who hadn’t been born when he went into cold sleep. Donna thought he talked a little funny (he thought everybody these days talked a little funny), but she thought he was interesting, too. One thing most enjoyably led to another.
“I’ve never done it weightless before,” she said in his chamber. “It’s different.”
“Yeah.” It had been a hell of a long time since Johnson had done it any other way. It had, in his opinion, been too damn long since he’d done it at all.
“What do you think about being back after all the things you did and all the places you went to?” she asked.
“Well, right this minute I like it fine,” he answered. That made her laugh, though he was kidding on the square. In an odd way, the encounter-which lasted only a day-made up his mind. This wasn’t Earth, but it was the next best thing. He’d stay here.
Kassquit stared down at the little female hatchling in her arms. She’d already known that Tosevite hatchlings were much less able to fend for themselves than those of the Race. In the twenty days since hers came forth, she’d seen that again and again for herself.
