Michael McCollum by The Clouds of Saturn

Michael McCollum by The Clouds of Saturn

Author:The Clouds of Saturn
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-06-01T22:10:57+00:00


Chapter 19: Return from Saturn

Sands sat in the forward passenger compartment of the Titanian freighterNightingale and watched Saturn’s bloated form recede below him. The freighter was one of a dozen that transported spools of wire and other finished metal products down to Saturn and then returned to the moon with the products of the cloud cities. Sands had joined the ship more than a month earlier at Titania spaceport for his mission to buy heavy-duty environment suits for the Titanian expedition to Earth. His mission was complete and he was returning to Titan a different man than when he left.

It had taken three days to cross the gulf of space between Titan and its oversize parent. Unlike his first trip into space, Sands had hardly been bothered by zero gee vertigo at all. Indeed, his weeks in Titan’s one-sixth gee had acclimated him to the sensation of less than normal gravity.

The freighter’s first scheduled stop had been the city of Columbus in the South Polar Belt. Sands had left the ship there to book passage via public airship to Garand in one of the cyclones of the South Temperate Zone. At Garand, he had changed transportation again. This time he had chartered a private dirigible to take him the final leg to New Holland. The circuitous route was the brainchild of Arvin Taggart. The security chief hoped it would minimize the possibility of Titan being connected to the purchase of protective equipment of the type needed to explore Earth’s overheated surface.

Being back on Saturn had been like a tonic for Sands. The twice-a-day rhythm of sunrise and sunset, the steady pull of Saturnian gravity, the familiar sight of Arch and Notch at night, all had rejuvenated him. Their last night before New Holland, he and the airship captain had shared a bottle of wine on the chartered dirigible’s upper observation deck.

At New Holland Sands had made the rounds of companies that manufactured high-pressure environment suits and had quickly discovered his first problem. The heavy-duty environment suits were specialty items. There were only four to be had in the whole city. He needed a dozen. The suit manufacturer explained that he could have eight more built within six months, but quickly changed his estimate when he learned of Sands’s credit balance in the local bank. After much haggling over price and delivery, they agreed on a goal of two weeks, with unlimited overtime for the production crews. He sent a coded message to Titania notifying them of the delay, then settled down to await delivery.

By the end of the third day, Sands’s cheery mood had all but vanished. He had been growing progressively more despondent. His mood was not improved when the manufacturer informed him there would be a one-week delay in delivering the suits. A necessary pressure fitting was not in stock and would have to be shipped in from halfway around the planet. It was after he returned to his hotel after a long day of cajoling and arguing that Sands realized the underlying cause of his general irritability.



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