Islands In The Sky by Arthur C. Clarke

Author:Arthur C. Clarke [Clarke, Arthur C.]
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780140057669
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2010-06-04T18:30:00+00:00

108

My time on the Inner Station was now drawing to an end - though not in the way anyone had expected. I had slipped into the uneventful routine of life: it had been explained to me that nothing exciting ever happened up here and if I'd wanted thrills I should have stayed back on Earth. That was a little disappointing, and I'd hoped that something out-of-the-ordinary would take place while I was here - though I couldn't imagine what. As it turned out, my wish was soon to be fulfilled.

But before I come on to that, I see I'll have to say something about the other space-stations, which I've neglected so far.

Ours, only five hundred miles up, was the nearest to the Earth, but there were others doing equally important jobs at much greater distances. The farther out they were, the longer, of course, they took to make a complete revolution. Our 'day' was only a hundred minutes, but the outermost stations of all took twenty-four hours to complete their orbit - with curious results which I'll mention later.

The purpose of the Inner Station, as I've explained, was to act as a refuelling, repair and transfer point for spaceships, both outgoing and incoming. For this job, it was necessary to be as close to the Earth as possible. Much lower than five hundred miles would not have been safe - the last faint traces of air would have robbed the station of its speed and eventually brought it crashing down.

The Meteorological Stations, on the other hand, had to be a fair distance out so that they could 'see' as

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