Last Gasp (79 page)

Seen from a distance the colony had the appearance of a large silvery globe attached by tubular spokes to a doughnut. Here, inside the central globe, were the recreational areas, parklands, and, because of its reduced gravitational stress, the homes of the older residents. Its proper name was Globe City, though of course it was known to everyone as the Geriatric Gardens. Chase and Ruth had a five-room apartment here, just a few hundred yards from the lake. Being ten years younger than he, Ruth objected with a few well-chosen phrases to the popular description.

Five spokes, or thruways, connected the globe to the outlying torus: the encircling tube that housed the main population as well as the multilevel crop beds and animal farms.

At the topmost level in enclosed chambers, fishponds stocked with a wide variety of edible species filtered down and irrigated the lower levels, supplying waste effluent to the wheat, soybeans, vegetables, and forage below. Given the near-perfect conditions of sunlight, temperature, humidity, and nutrients—and a controlled supply of carbon dioxide—each of the seven-hundred-acre fields could produce seventeen hundred pounds of grain crops and forage a day, enough to feed a population of ninety-thousand people. The half-a-million fish stocks provided everyone with a ten-ounce fillet once a week.

Canton Island had originally comprised just the central globe, with living space for ten thousand people—the first settlers, who were scientists, technicians, engineers, and construction workers. The torus and connecting thruways had been added later, and indeed work was still going on to complete the external radiation shielding.

Nick ran up the shelving beach of white sand and jumped, wet and dripping, into Chase’s lap.

“Take me to the flying fish. Take me, Grandad, please!”

“Nick, now stop that!” Jo reprimanded him sharply. She reached for her son and flashed a look at Dan, who gave a slight shrug.

“I think we’re too late today, Nick,” said Chase with a rueful smile. “They don’t allow visitors after four o’clock. Some other time, okay?”

The experimental fish farms within the cylindrical core were a favorite and endlessly fascinating attraction for children and adults alike. There in zero-g, freed of gravity, which made their gills collapse, fish swam weightlessly through an atmosphere of 100 percent humidity, which kept them moist. To see them was almost dreamlike: fish “flying” through the air.

They returned to the apartment, where Ruth and Jen were preparing a meal. Chase rode in his electric wheelchair, which the medics had insisted he use when traveling any distance. He detested the contraption, which made him feel old and senile, but reluctantly obeyed the decree because of his “condition.” What that condition was precisely, nobody could agree on. Chase thought it might be anoxia, a legacy from the past that was only now rearing its ugly head; if so, nobody was prepared to admit it. One of the medical specialists, Dr. Weinbaum, was coming tomorrow to carry out more tests, and probably, Chase thought resignedly, to start him on yet another course of treatment.

Nick settled down to watch “Psychic Space Cats” on TV, one of his favorite programs about a race of highly intelligent telepathic cats that had adventures on exotic worlds in distant galaxies. Chase hadn’t yet figured out whether the cats were puppets, animated models, or the real thing, they were so amazingly lifelike.

“When’s your next lunar trip?” Chase asked Dan as they were eating.

“Six weeks from now, October tenth,” Dan said. “We’re flying out to Censorinus where the new mass-driver is being installed. They’re planning to lift seven thousand tons of graded ore for aluminum smelting. Hey—” he suddenly remembered “—the whole .thing will be televised, so you’ll have a chance to see it in operation.”

“Where’s the ore being processed?” Ruth asked.

“The construction shack off Long Island.” Dan picked at a chicken leg. “You know, we get enough oxygen as a by-product of the smelting process to sustain all the islands and to use as rocket propellant. About forty percent of lunar rocks are oxidized.”

The bulk of the building materials for the colonies had come from the moon: It was easier and cheaper to transport vast quantities of ore with the low-energy mass-driver from the lunar surface and process it in one of the four construction shacks that were reorbited in the vicinity of the island being built.

Each construction shack weighed over 10,000 tons, with a power plant of 3,000 tons, and housed 2,300 workers in 36 modules.

Currently a million tons a year were being mined, then launched into space and brought to the ring of colonies for processing. The mass-driver accelerated pods bearing forty-pound payloads of ore along a superconducting magnetic track—no wheels—on the lunar surface, traveling two miles in 3.4 seconds, at which speed the pods dropped away and the payloads achieved lunar escape velocity. For nearly two hundred miles, or two minutes of flight time, the payloads weren’t high enough to clear the mountain ranges, which meant that the mass-driver had to be located in one of the broad flat plains, such as Censorinus, filled with lava three billion years ago.

Once in free flight the payloads continued to a target point 40,000 miles out in space. Two days after launch they arrived at the catcher, a storage craft 300 feet wide and a quarter of a mile long. There the payloads were caught in a rotating conical bag of nine-ply Kevlar fabric, the material used to make bulletproof vests that could stop a .44 magnum shell fired point-blank. Once full the catcher became an ore transporter and, like the huge supertankers on earth, began the long slow haul to the colonies 240,000 miles away.

Mercifully Dan didn’t have to endure the weeks of tedium suffered by the crew of five. As one of the transport coordinators he was able to fly in, do his job, and return by fast passenger craft. The round trip usually took about three weeks.

Jen helped herself to more salad. “Did any of you see the newscast last week of the shuttle from Emigrant Junction?” She shook her head, pensive and sad. “Those poor people ...”

Jo said, “I thought conditions were so bad that no one outside an enclosure could remain alive, yet they keep coming. It has to end sometime.”

“It isn’t the same everywhere,” Ruth said. Her smooth tan and the sweep of graying hair over her forehead successfully camouflaged the disfiguring scar. “Some places have survived almost untouched. There was that story about the isolated village in the Philippines where the way of life had hardly changed.”

“Yes, I remember that,” Dan said sardonically. “They were living off giant frogs. I wouldn’t call that ‘normal,’ would you?”

“Oh—you,” Ruth snorted. “It might have been normal for them. How do we know?”

“Sure it was,” Dan said, straight-faced. “Frog quiche. Frog a la mode. Frog on toast. Frog Supreme. Frog—”

Ruth held up a stick of celery threateningly.

“Maryland. Ouch!” Dan fell back laughing as the celery hit him on the chin.

“Is Daddy being silly again?” Nick inquired gravely. Like most five-year-olds he had a severely disapproving view of adult humor, finding it not only incomprehensible but also totally unfunny.

While they were drinking coffee on the small flagged terrace, the shadows lengthening all around them, a golden thread of sunlight on the lake, Chase decided to tell them about the last shuttle. He’d been on the verge of mentioning it earlier and hadn’t because it wasn’t yet official. But this was his family, and anyway it would be released any day now. “They’re already evacuating the colonization bases and bringing the service personnel up.”

“How do you know?” Jen asked him.

Dan was slightly put out. “I haven’t heard a whisper about that.”

“John Shelby called me a few days ago—he used to be a member of Earth Foundation and now works in Immigration Control. It’s supposed to be confidential at the moment. Actually, from what I can gather, there’s been a wrangle going on behind the scenes. It was finally carried at the Confederation by thirty-one to fifteen, with one abstention. There’s to be an announcement soon.”

“And that’s it?” Jo gazed at him, resting her head on her hand. “No more people from earth?”

“No. No more.” Chase set his cup down carefully. After a moment he said, “The last one will lift off from Narken in Sweden and after that the bases will be closed down. It was a tough decision, but apparently the people applying now are genetically damaged in some way. No medical clearance, no transit visa. Simple as that.”

There was a longer silence, which no one seemed anxious to break. Sooner or later it had to come, they all knew that, had been prepared for it ... and yet. The final severance with earth, their home planet.

“It’s very nearly three years to the day since we came up,” Jo said reflectively. “September fifth, 2025.”

“Was that when we came to Canton?” Nick piped up. “Our leaving day?”

His mother nodded and smiled. “You’ll have to remember that date always, Nick. You were too little to remember the shuttle ride, but never forget the date.”

“Bryn says he can remember his leaving day, but Bryn tells fibs. He said he went for a fly with the flying fish. Can I fly with them, Mummy?”

“You’re right, Bryn does tell fibs,” Dan said. “But he was a year older than you when he came to Canton, so maybe he’s telling the truth about remembering it.”

“What’s the final tally?” Ruth asked Chase.

“John says it’s not far short of five million. It should have been more but the program didn’t go ahead as quickly as planned. I remember Boris telling me that they were hoping to build one hundred islands with an average population of one hundred thousand per colony. So far they’ve completed forty-seven, with three more being built. There’s no doubt we’ll need more as the population increases.”

“Thank God for the moon,” Dan said fervently. “Our handy neighborhood minerals resource. We’d have been sunk without it.”

“I was thinking of Boris only today,” Ruth said. She reached out and squeezed Chase’s hand. “Would they have allowed him to come, do you think?”

“You mean because of his age?” Jo said.

“I don’t see why not,” Chase said. “No one was rejected, whatever his age, if he received clearance and was fit enough to travel. Boris would have been ninety-one the year we came up. Perhaps he didn’t want to leave earth after all.”

The mirrors were tilting, the sun was nearly gone. Way off in the distance, beyond the ranks of terraced gardens, the core gleamed with a dull rich light like a pillar of fire. And farther still, beyond it, the terraces on the far inner side of the globe rose into a purple misty twilight.

“Will we ever go back?” Jen said wistfully. She was thinking of her husband. Never a day went by when she didn’t think about him. She had a daughter and a grandchild and friends to be grateful for, but there was a hollow ache in her heart that would always be with her. Saying farewell to earth wouldn’t have bothered her one bit if Nick had been here. There were times when she could have gladly murdered him, but she felt desolate.

Chase had read her mind because his thoughts had followed the same track. More and more these days he dwelt on the past. He said, “I think about him too.” He chuckled and started to cough, his throat tight and dry. “I used to think he was crazy.”

“He was,” Jen said. “Bonkers. Never took anything seriously.”

“No, I was always the serious one. You know, I sometimes wonder how come we liked each other or even became friends. I saw the world as tragic and Nick saw beyond the tragedy and thought it a comedy, a farce. What is it they say? The person who thinks sees the world as a tragedy, while the person who feels sees it as a farce.’ ”

“What’s farce?” Nick said.

Chase patted his knee and Nick clambered up. Ruth made as if to protest, but Chase waved her aside. Dammit, he was sixty-five, not ninety. The hell with anoxia. “Don’t pay any attention to us, young Nick. We’re old and past it and we’ve made a fine mess of things. But you’ll do better. Much better. Much, much better. You’ll show us how it ought to be done, won’t you? Promise?”

“Will you take me to the flying fish?”

“If you promise me faithfully to do better.”

“Better than what?” asked Nick sensibly.

“Better than us old fogies.”

Nick frowned up at him. “What’s a fogies?”

“This young man is a budding philosopher,” Chase said with a sigh. “Questions, questions, questions.”

“He takes after his grandfather,” Ruth said darkly.

“Is that a condemnation or a compliment, my dear?”

“I guess it all depends on the answers.”

Chase kissed his grandson on the forehead. “Nick’ll find them,” he said quietly. “He’s the perfect balance: tragedy and farce combined.”

The island colonies ringed the earth like a swirling necklace of glittering white diamonds.

High above the gray-and-yellow miasma of the poisoned planet they spun like silver cartwheels in the vacuum, blackness and subzero temperature of space. Islands of warmth and light and humanity. Five million of the species
Homo
sapiens who had fled their dying planet in the hope of starting anew.

The umbilical cord had been cut: The last shuttle had departed. Now they were truly alone.

There was to be no return for many generations to come, Chase knew. It had taken the planet 300 million years to evolve a biosphere capable of supporting life. Every creature and plant had fitted in somewhere, each dependent on all the rest, all dependent on the cycles and rhythms of the complex interweave of forces that kept in equilibrium the land, the oceans, the air.

It might take ten thousand years for the planet to regenerate itself, or it might take as long as before, or it might never happen. There was no God-given guarantee that it would ever again be a habitable place for the human species.

From the window of his study he could view the sliding stars through the transparent panels several thousand feet above. The Great Bear drifted by, pointing to the unseen Pole Star. As with the other colonies, Canton Island’s angle of declination was such that the earth couldn’t be seen from inside the colony itself. It was possible to see the earth (in rather uncomfortable circumstances) by taking a stroll along one of the six-kilometer-long thruways that connected Globe City to the outer torus. But then the motion of the colony in its spinning orbit whirled the planet around and around, above and below the watcher in a series of dizzying spirals. Nobody experienced space sickness except when tempted to take a peek at the old homestead; Chase had tried it once, never again.