My Favourite SF & F - 05 Arthur C. Clarke by Arthur C. Clarke

Author:Arthur C. Clarke [Clarke, Arthur C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sci Fi & Fantasy
ISBN: 9780795324970
Publisher: Custom book
Published: 2020-11-10T00:00:00+00:00

12 THE LONG FALL HOME

I had come up from earth by myself, but I was going home in plenty of company. There were nearly fifty passengers crowded into the “One Third Gravity” floor waiting to disembark. That was the complement for the first rocket: the rest of the colonists would be going down on later flights.

Before we left the station, we were all handed a bundle of leaflets full of instructions, warnings and advice about conditions on earth. I felt that it was hardly necessary for me to read through all this, but was quite glad to have another souvenir of my visit. It was certainly a good idea giving these leaflets out at this stage in the homeward journey, because it kept most of the passengers so busy reading that they didn’t have time to worry about anything else until we’d landed.

The air lock was only large enough to hold about a dozen people at a time, so it took quite a while to shepherd us all through. As each batch left the station, the lock had to be set revolving to counteract its normal spin, then it had to be coupled to the waiting spaceship, uncoupled again when the occupants had gone through, and the whole sequence restarted. I wondered what would happen if something jammed while the spinning station was connected to the stationary ship. Probably the ship would come off worse—that is, next to the unfortunate people in the air lock! However, I discovered later there was an additional movable coupling to take care of just such an emergency.

The earth ferry was the biggest spaceship I had ever been inside. There was one large cabin for the passengers, with rows of seats in which we were supposed to remain strapped during the trip. Since I was lucky enough to be one of the first to go aboard, I was able to get a seat near a window. Most of the passengers had nothing to look at but each other and the handful of leaflets they’d been given to read.

We waited for nearly an hour before everyone was aboard and the luggage had been stowed away. Then the loud-speakers told us to stand by for take-off in five minutes. The ship had now been completely uncoupled from the station and had drifted several hundred feet away from it.

I had always thought that the return to earth would be rather an anticlimax after the excitement of a take-off. There was a different sort of feeling, it was true, but it was still quite an experience. Until now we had been, if not beyond the power of gravity, at least traveling so swiftly in our orbit that earth could never pull us down. But now we were going to throw away the speed that gave us safety. We would descend until we had re-entered the atmosphere and were forced to spiral back to the surface. If we came in too steeply, our ship might blaze across the sky like a meteor and come to the same fiery end.

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