Cities in Flight

“I heard some talk about that part of it,” Paige said. “It started right in my own service. A spaceman only has about ten years of active life; after that he’s given garrison duty somewhere—so we like to catch ’em young. And even then we were turning back a huge proportion of young volunteers for ‘diseases of old age’—incipient circulatory disease in most cases. The kids were shocked; most of them had never suspected any such thing, they felt as healthy as bulls, and in the usual sense I suppose they were—but not for space flight.”

“Then you saw one of the key factors very early,” Anne said. “But it’s no longer a special problem of the Space Service alone. It’s old stuff to all the armed services’ medical departments now; at the time the NHS stepped in, the overall draft rejection rate for ‘diseases of old age’ was about 10 per cent for men in their early twenties. Anyhow, the result of the congress was that the U.S. Department of Health, Welfare and Security somehow got a billion-dollar appropriation for a real mass attack on the degenerative diseases. In case you drop zeros as easily as I do, that was about half what had been spent to produce the first atomic bomb. Since then, the appropriation has been added to once, and it’s due for renewal again now.

“Pfitzner holds the major contract on that project, and we’re well enough staffed and equipped to handle it so that we’ve had to do very little sub-contracting. We simply share the appropriation with three other producers of biologicals, two of whom are producers only and so have no hand in the research; the third firm has done as much research as we have, but we know—because this is supposed to be a co-ordinated effort with sharing of knowledge among the contractors—that they’re far gone down another blind alley. We would have told them so, but after one look at what we’d found, the government decided that the fewer people who know about it, the better. We didn’t mind; after all, we’re in business to make a profit, too. But that’s one reason why you saw so many government people on our necks this afternoon.”

The girl broke off abruptly and delved into her pocketbook, producing a flat compact which she opened and inspected intently. Since she wore almost no make-up, it was hard to imagine the reason for the sudden examination; but after a brief, odd smile at one corner of her mouth, she tucked the compact away again.

“The other reason,” she said, “is even simpler, now that you have the background. We’ve just found what we think may be a major key to the whole problem.”

“Wow,” Paige said, inelegantly but affetuoso.

“Or zowie, or biff-bam-krunk,” Anne agreed calmly, “or maybe God-help-us-every-one. But so far the thing’s held up. It’s passed every test. If it keeps up that performance, Pfitzner will get the whole of the new appropriation—and if it doesn’t, there may not be any appropriation at all, not only for Pfitzner, but for the other firms that have been helping on the project.

“The whole question of whether or not we lick the degenerative diseases hangs on those two things: the validity of the solution we’ve found and the money. If one goes, the other goes. And we’ll have to tell Horsefield and MacHinery and the others what we’ve found some time this month, because the old appropriation lapses after that.”

The girl leaned back and seemed to notice for the first time that she had finished her dinner. “And that,” she said, pushing regretfully at the sprig of parsley with her fork, “isn’t exactly public knowledge yet! I think I’d better shut up.”

“Thank you,” Paige said gravely. “It’s obviously more than I deserve to know.”

“Well,” Anne said, “you can tell me something, if you will. It’s about this Bridge that’s being built on Jupiter. Is it worth all the money that they’re pouring into it? Nobody seems to be able to explain what it’s good for. And now there’s talk that another Bridge’ll be started on Saturn, when this one’s finished!”