Barbary

“We have not found any older, but we search, and hope.”

Heather stared at the beings in awe. “No wonder you like long stories.” She tried to smile. “Barbary, you can show them magic tricks.”

“Magic? You have begun to use technology… yet you believe in magic?”

“Not real magic, that’s just what it’s called.” Barbary tried to think of a quick way to explain, but gave up. “Um, it’s another long story.”

“How excellent,” the being said. “We will look forward to hearing it.”

“I’m Barbary,” Barbary said, remembering her manners, “and this is Heather, my sister. And the — the small person is Mickey.”

“We do not have names, as you know them,” one of the beings said. “Each of us forms impressions of all others, and refers to the individual by the position in the image.”

“That sounds complicated,” Barbary said

“Not as complicated as recalling so many individual designations,” the crystal being said. “Without a pattern, how do you tell each other apart?”

Barbary, who had been trying to fix in her mind the variations between the beings so she could remember each one’s name — if they had had names to tell her — looked over at Heather. They both burst out laughing.

The delicate filaments on each being quivered and twined, and multitudes of wind-chime voices rang. At first Barbary wondered if she had hurt their feelings by laughing, and then she believed the beings were laughing along with her.

“Another ship is approaching,” the musical voice said. “The beings within appear to be… quite perturbed.”

“They don’t know what’s happened to us,” Heather said. “They probably think we’ve been swallowed up.”

“As indeed you have.”

“To be eaten, I mean.”

“No. We do not ingest organic molecules. Will you speak with them?”

“Can we? Please?” Heather said. “My father will be worried.”

“Should we?” Barbary said.

“Of course we should!” Heather said. “What do you mean?”

“Maybe if they worry about us a little more, they won’t be so mad at us when we go back.”

“If they’re going to be mad, they’re going to be mad,” Heather said. “I don’t want Yoshi to be worried anymore and I don’t want anybody out there to do anything that the other beings might think they need to be shown is futile.”

“Okay,” Barbary said.

“Would you like to speak to them now?”

“Yes, please,” Heather said.

“They will hear you.”

Barbary saw no radio equipment, no change in the chamber to indicate a transmitter.

“Hi, this is Heather,” Heather said to the air.

“Heather!” Yoshi said. “Are you all right? What about Barbary?”

“I’m okay.”

“So am I,” Barbary said. “And so is Mick.”

“What’s happening in there?” Jeanne asked.

Barbary looked at Heather, who gazed back at her and smiled.

“We’re with the — the beings in the starship,” Barbary said. “They’re bringing us home.”

Artificial Gravity: Which Way Is Up? John G. Cramer

The space station doughnut of 2001 and the O’Neill space-habitat cylinder have become part of the furniture of science fiction, so much so that we take spin-generated artificial gravity to be interchangeable with the Earth-normal variety in which we live. But there are differences that would be quite apparent to anyone living in the spin-generated variety. The subject of this AV column is an exploration of the differences between the “natural” gravity of Earth and the “artificial” gravity of a rotating space station.

My interest in the physics of space station gravity developed because last year Vonda McIntyre was writing a book with a space station setting, and she asked my advice. The book, Barbary, is about a teenager who leaves Earth to live in a space station with spin-generated gravity. I helped Vonda in a very minor way by identifying the physical effects that the heroine would experience in that environment. What’s it like to ride an elevator in a space station? How would a ball game look if it were played there? If you woke up in a strange location, what simple tests would tell if you were in a rotating space station rather than at rest on the ground? And so on... I found that there are some interesting side-effects of artificial gravity, perhaps well known to NASA experts but obscure to the rest of us. And I was surprised to find that some recent SF hasn’t been too accurate in describing the space habitat environment.