Rails Across the Galaxy by Richard K. Lyon & Andrew J. Offutt

Author:Richard K. Lyon & Andrew J. Offutt [Lyon, Richard K. & Offutt, Andrew J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Published: 1982-08-19T04:00:00+00:00

Contact minus 8 days. Windhorn glowed with pride as he announced that we would not be going over to the Lenin. Instead, the Russians will be coming on board Kennedy tomorrow. The debate over which space station to use has been long and heated because national prestige was involved. Finally the Russian negotiator argued that Lenin should be used because it was singularly well equipped with hidden camera and microphones.

The Secretary of State of the whole United States told the Georgian gentleman that he was right, and suggested that we use whichever station had the most bugs. Agreed; da and okay.

Space station Kennedy won by three microphones and a TV microminicam.

Defense Intelligence Agency’s John Wareagle, Colonel, promptly suggested that we rename the Kennedy the Space station Nixon. Judith suggested Space station Bacteria Culture, since there are so many bugs. Given the lack of acceptable toilet facilities, some of us would rather call this place the Honest John.

All that aside, the onboard correspondent for The New York Times and all newsmedia has a rather awkward problem. The Times wants color. They want me to write a sort of night-before-the-great-event article, and I can’t figure out how to do it. There’s no way I can tell people what it’s like out here without repeatedly contradicting myself. For example, the Kennedy. It’s magnificent; a man-made star in the vault of endless heaven, the crowning achievement of our civilization. And the view from the Honest John/Kennedy! Absolutely unconditionally unequivocally sublimely take-your-breath-away. The blue-green Earth wrapped in cottony white clouds. The stars, diamond-hard white on the utterly black jeweler’s case of a night. It is as incredibly beautiful as all the past writers claimed, including back before we saw it from up here.

The Kennedy is also the most bleak, ugly, miserable prison in existence.

Not a single gram was hauled up here for ornamentation and only about two for convenience of human beings. Kennedy, with all it contains, is stark beyond belief.

Even the machines are naked, with their electro-mechanical anatomy on permanent display as an assault on the eyeballs and human esthetic sensitivity. (The paint Kathy Myers has dubbed EUY, and we have taken it up: Early Utilitarian Yukh.)

The Kennedy’s atmosphere comes from hydrazine and recycled water. They yield oxygen and nitrogen that, in endless recycle with purification systemry, is… adequate. It lets us breathe and live, or rather exist. It tries but fails to eliminate a host of human and machine odors that must be enough to gag Jenghiz Khan’s sweatiest troopers with breaths reeking of mare’s-milk hooch. Sweat. Burnt lube oil. Our diapers. More sweat. Ozone from an occasional spark. Asad’s body’s unfortunate persistent insistence on producing gas. (No, we aren’t using the methane for anything.) All of these are offensively here, with too many more. (At least CO2 and liquid waste, along with hydrazine and what water vapor the machinery can scrounge without attacking our armpits, are pulled out, thank the Benevolent Buddha, and turned into water.)

No single one of these odors is

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.