Orbitsville (o-1) by Bob Shaw

Author:Bob Shaw [Shaw, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_space
ISBN: 0-57501-909-3
Publisher: Littlehampton Book Services Ltd
Published: 1975-03-19T04:00:00+00:00

eleven

Rumours of massacre came within a month.

There had. been a short-term lull while the shallow circular basin centred on Beachhead City absorbed the first waves of settlers. During this brief respite a handful of External Affairs representatives arrived, aware of their inadequacy, and ruled that no humans were to go within five kilometres of the alien community until negotiations had been completed for a corridor through to the free territory beyond. A number of factors combined against their efficacy, however. The Government men had been late on the scene, no broadcasting media were available to them, and — most important — there was a widespread feeling among the settlers that attempting diplomatic communication with the Clowns, as they had been unofficially named, would be an exercise in futility.

At first the bright-hued aliens had been approached with caution and respect, then it was learned that they possessed no machines beyond the simplest farming implements. Even their houses were woven from a kind of cellulose rope extruded from their own bodies in roughly the same way that a spider produces its web. When it was further discovered that the Clowns were mute, the assumption of their intelligence was called into question by many of the human settlers. One theory advanced was that they were degenerate descendants of the race which had built the fortifications around the Beachhead City aperture; another that they were little more than domestic animals which had outlived their masters and developed a quasiculture of their own.

Garamond was disturbed by the attitude implicit in the theories, partly because it was a catalyst for certain changes which were taking place in the Earth settlers. The subtle loosening of discipline he had noticed among his own men within minutes of their setting foot on Orbitsville had its counterpart among the immigrants in the form of a growing disregard for authority. Men whose lives had been closely controlled in the tight, compacted society of Earth now regarded themselves as potential owners of continents and were impatient for their new status. All they had to do to transform themselves from clerks to kings was to load up the vehicles provided by the Starflight workshops and set out on their golden journeys. The only directive was that they should travel far, because it was obvious that the further a man went when fanning out from Beachhead City the more land would be available to him.

As the mood took hold of the settlers even the earliest arrivals, who had staked out their plots of land within the circular hills, became uneasily aware of the incoming hordes at their heels and decided to move onwards and outwards.

In a normal planetary situation the population pressures would not have been concentrated so fiercely on one point, but Earth technology was geared to the Assumption of Mediocrity. During the development of the total transport system of flickerwing ships and shuttles it had never occurred to anyone to make provision for an environment in which, for, example, it would not be possible for a ship to gather its own reaction mass.

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