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"Oh, that's right. I recall you were having crates of it shipped to you after we returned to the
states."
"Oh, by the way," Reggie suddenly remembered, "Casandra says to send her love. She was going
to come with me to see you, but when I told her New Brazil was an Earth-gravity habitat, she just smiled
at me and said 'Bon Voyage'".
"Say, you really are suffering aren't you?" Bruce said with concern. "Hey, we've got a park that's
fairly high up on the sphere. It's just below the south windows. Gravity there won't be one-sixth, but it's a
lot less than here. Let me put something on, and then I'll take you there."
"Oh by all means," Reggie drawled, "let's go to your park". The emphasis was on the word 'your'.
Bruce seemed somewhat embarrassed before he turned and left.
When Bruce returned he helped Reggie out to the car, and then placed his walker in the back seat.
He got in, touched his thumb to a sensor, and said "Destination: Franklin Park."
The vehicle started out of the driveway, and turned off onto a road which headed toward one of
the two rings of windows which encircled both "poles" of the habitat. As they traveled further up the
sphere, the grade of the road became steeper. At the same time, however, both the car and its contents
became lighter, and the electric motors had no trouble keeping the car moving. The road began to snake
back and forth a bit, and then ended at a small parking lot in front of a glassed-in elevator.
The reduction in gravity had resulted in a visible improvement in Reggie's condition. He no longer
seemed quite so old and infirm. He slipped out of the leg braces, and left the walker behind in the car,
although he did still carry a cane which he had brought along.
The pair boarded an elevator, and it slowly rose. It deposited them at the entrance to Franklin
Park. The park was a level, shelf-like projection which jutted out from the wall of the sphere just below
the curving ring of windows at this end. Above the tree tops, concentrated sunlight which had been
gathered by vast mirrors on the outside of the habitat streamed past to illuminate the other side of the
sphere.
Children were cavorting here and there through the park lands, enjoying the low gravity. Some
turned graceful back-flips. Others swung through the trees like slow-motion monkeys.
The two men began walking in the direction of a row of statues. The row was straight, but could be
seen to arc upward slightly in the distance. At this higher level in the sphere, the curving of the ground
was more apparent.
They neared the first statue. It was Johanne Kepler. He held an orrery in his outstretched hand.
"Kepler," Reggie harrumphed. "Wouldn't have amounted to anything if not for the observational
data of Tycho Brahe."
"Tycho's data would have had no meaning without Kepler's equations to explain them," Bruce
countered.
Changing subjects, Reggie asked him, "Have you been keeping up with all of the new space
launcher development these days?"
"Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with the newer designs..." Bruce started.
Reggie continued undeterred. "They expanded Sky Bridge One again. Six hundred and twenty
kilometers now. Only takes five G's to leave Earth. And the newest launcher they just finished in Africa is
not only longer, it's bigger in diameter, too. The passenger craft they're launching from it are comparable
to the fuselage of a Boeing 777. You remember the 777, right?"
"And of course our lunar launchers are even more impressive," Reggie added with pride. "We use
them for deceleration too, you know. One offers direct non-stop flight from the surface of the moon to
re-entry into Earth's atmosphere."
In the course of this conversation they had passed the statues of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein.
Each figure held an object identified with the life of the individual.
Reggie was tapping the pedestal of the next statue with his cane. "This must be where you come to
pray every Sunday."
Bruce gazed up at the figure of Gerard K. O'Neill. He had always felt it was a particularly good
likeness. The Beatles hair-cut, the ubiquitous turtle-neck sweater, the lop-sided smile, all were there. He
held a small model of an O'Neill Cylinder space habitat.
The eyes of every statue in the park were slightly elevated, as though each genius were looking at
some vision above the heads of ordinary mortals. One would certainly expect this in the O'Neill figure.
But Bruce felt that more than any other statue in the park, the eyes of this one seemed to be taking in the
surroundings. Bruce liked to think Gerry was enjoying his excellent view of the vast expanse of land
which curved away all around, and that the crooked grin came from a sense of vindication.
Reggie had continued on to the next statue. Bruce reluctantly joined him.
"Ugh," Reggie said while pointing upward with his cane. "Definitely the ugliest of the lot."
This was, of course, the statue of Bruce Franklin. The figure held a mass-driver coil in its hand.
"And I'm not even dead yet," Bruce complained. "At least they could have waited, and spared me
the embarrassment."
"Oh, sure. Your modesty was always one of your strong points. Hey, lookie here." Reggie was
fishing around in his pants pocket, and now withdrew a short length of red crayon, sans paper, with a
finely sharpened point. Bruce immediately began to chuckle. He recognized it as one of the "bullets" from
the model of Sky Bridge Reggie had built all those years ago.
"Do you know why I brought this out now?" Reggie asked him. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]