Unwillingly to Earth (v1.0) by Pauline Ashwell

Author:Pauline Ashwell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-12-19T00:00:00+00:00

Part Three:

FATAL STATISTICS

I wish somebody would tell me what the hell is going on.

Seeing the one and only reason why Cutty Sark 527 has gone into orbit around Figueroa is to land me so I can start on my Field Work, and Seeing M’Clare arranged it through Influence with the Directors of the Frontier Line and it adds 2 days to the journey and Captain Maddock is fit to be tied, and Seeing I was instructed a couple of hours ago to get my bags packed and my goodbyes said ready to jump into the Lander the minute we returned to phase,

Why am I still sitting here, although this Superannuated space scow dropped out of hyperspace fifty minutes ago?

The Captain is not maneuvering for landing, because Cutty Sark has been in synchronous orbit over the Space Field since five minutes after dropout. I can see the Field on the repeater screen they have given me; a plain whitish ragged-edged patch like they all are except on the half-dozen oldest planets of Civilization …

This reminds me that three out of the five Reports on Figueroa which formed the main part of my briefing started off something like Figueroa’s current problems are illustrated even before landing by the first view of the Space Field-, I don’t see what they mean by that, it looks pretty much like the Field at Home.

Then I remember that my home planet Excenus 23 has Pop. 3,500 or thereabouts, whereas the last best guess at Figueroa’s was 3,500,000; not yet self-sufficient for anything except basic foods, they must have at least ten times as much traffic; Where does it all go?

I am distracted from this question by the observation that the Captain is getting some sort of Bad News over the Intercom, complicated by Custard Dawes who is acting out his Anxiety Complex into the other ear.

I spend perhaps thirty seconds wondering what Custard is Disturbed about this time and then go back to the Repeater screen.

The controls on this cannot change what the big scope in Cutty Sark’s belly is actually looking at, of course, but I can call up some magnification; I enlarge the view of the Space Field until it starts to fuzz up and begin looking for Clues.

Now I can just see a regular pattern of Marks which must be the Landing-and-Launching pylons and their shadows … There are twelve in the pattern, four sideways by three down; (Excenus Field has two rows of five) … There seems to be bare ground around the Field, very dark … Then suddenly a Pattern jumps out at me; not a new one but the pattern of the pylons, the same spacing exactly continued on into the Dark. Shadows do not show on this ground, but there are the pylons themselves like little straight silvery dashes, rows and files of them extending practically forever … well, nearly up to the top of the screen at this magnification … and up at the very top are big

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