enjoy your stay. Please follow the stewards, and check that you've left nothing in your cabins. And I'm sorry to mention this, but three passengers still haven't settled their accounts. The Purser will be waiting for them at the exit..."
A few derisive groans and cheers greeted this announcement, but were quickly lost in the noisy bustle
of disembarkation. Although everything was supposed to have been carefully planned, chaos was
rampant. The wrong passengers went to the wrong checkpoints, while the public-address system called
plaintively for individuals with improbable names. It took Duncan more than an hour to get into the
spaceport, and he did not see all of his baggage again until his second day on Earth.
But at last the confusion abated as people squeezed through the bottleneck of the docking hub and
sorted themselves out in the appropriate levels of the station. Duncan followed instructions
conscientiously, and eventually found himself, with the rest of his alphabetical group, lined up outside the Quarantine Office. All other formalities had been completed hours ago, by radio circuit; but this was
something that could not be done by electronics. Occasionally, travelers had been turned back at this
point, on the very doorstep of Earth, and it was not without qualms that Duncan confronted this last
hurdle.
"We don't get many visitors from Titan," said the medical officer who checked his record. "You come in the Lunar classification — less than a quarter gee. It may be tough down there for the first week, but you're young enough to adapt. It helps if both your parents were born..."
The doctor's voice trailed off into silence; he had come to the entry marked MOTHER. Duncan was
used to the reaction, and it had long ago ceased to bother him. Indeed, he derived a certain amusement from the surprise that discovery of his status usually produced. At least the M.O. would not ask the silly question that laymen so often asked, and to which he had long ago formulated an automatic reply: "Of course I've got a navel — the best that money can buy." The other common myth — that male close must be abnormally virile "because they had one father twice" — he had wisely left unchallenged. It had been useful to him on several occasions.
Perhaps because there were six other people waiting in line, the doctor suppressed any scientific
curiosity he may have felt, and sent Duncan "upstairs" to the Earth-gravity section of the spaceport. It seemed a long time before the elevator, moving out along one of the spokes of the slowly spinning wheel, finally reached the rim; and all the while, Duncan felt his weight increasing remorselessly.
When the doors opened at last, he walked stiff-legged out of the cage. Though he was still a thousand
kilometers above the Earth, and his new-found weight was entirely artificial, he felt that he was already in the cruel grip of the planet below. If he could not pass the test, he would be shipped back to Titan in disgrace.
It was true that those who just failed to make the grade could take a high-speed toughening-up course, primarily intended for returning Lunar residents. This, however, was safe only for those who had spent most of their infancy on Earth, and Duncan could not possibly qualify.
He forgot all these fears when he entered the lounge and saw the crescent Earth, filling half the sky
and slowly sliding along the huge observation windows — themselves a famous tour de force of space
engineering. Duncan had no intention of calculating how many tons of air pressure they were resisting; as he walked up to the nearest, it was easy to imagine that there was nothing protecting him from the vacuum of space. The sensation was both exhilarating and disturbing.
He had intended to go through the check list that the doctor had given him, but that awesome view
made it impossible. He stood rooted to the spot, only shifting his unaccustomed weight from one foot to the other as hitherto unknown muscles registered their complaints.
Port Van Allen circled the globe every two hours, and also rotated on its own axis three times a
minute. After a while, Duncan found that he could ignore the station's own spin; his mind was able to
cancel it out, like an irrelevant background noise or a persistent but neutral odor. Once he had achieved this mental attitude, he could imagine that the was alone in space, a human satellite racing along the Equator from night into day. For the Earth was waxing visibly even as he watched, the curved line of
dawn moving steadily away from him as he hurtled into the east.
As usual, there was little land visible, and what could be seen through or between the clouds seemed
to have no relationship to any maps. And from this altitude there was not the slightest sign of life — still less of intelligence. It was very hard to believe that most of human history had take place beneath that blanket of brilliant white, and that, until a mere three hundred years ago, no man had ever risen above it.