Imperial Earth

Part of its appeal was undoubtedly due to sheer novelty; who would have expected to find bicycles in space? The track was a narrow tunnel, with steeply banked floor, completely encircling the ship, and rather like an old-time particle accelerator-except that in this case the particles themselves provided the acceleration.

Every evening, just before going to bed, Duncan would enter the tunnel, climb onto one of the four bicycles, and start pedaling slowly around the sixty meters of track. His first revolution would take a leisurely half minute; then he would gradually work up to full speed. As he did so, he would rise higher and higher up the baAed wall, until at maximum speed he was almost at right angles to the floor. At the same time, he would feel his weight steadily increase; the bicycle’s speedometer had been calibrated to read in fractions of a gee, so he could tell exactly how well he was doing. Forty kilometers an hour ten times around

Sirius every minute-was the equivalent of one Earth gravity. After several days of practice Duncan was able to maintain this for ten minutes without too much effort. By the end of the voyage, he could tolerate it indefinitely-as he would have to, when he reached Earth.

The race track was at its most exciting when it contained two or more riders-especially when they were moving at different speeds. Though overtaking was strictly forbidden, it was an irresistible challenge, and on this voyage there were no serious casualties. One of Duncan’s most vivid and incongruous memories of Sirius would be the tinkle of bicycle bells, echoing round and round a brightly lit circular tunnel whose blurred walls flashed by only a few centimeters away…. And the race track also provided him with a more material souvenir, a pseudo medieval scroll which announced to all who were interested that

1, DUNCAN MAKENZIE, OF OASIS

CITY, TITAN, AM HEREBY CERTIFIED TO HAVE BICYCLED FROM SATURN TO EARTH,

AT

AN AVERAGE VELOCITY OF 2,176,420 KILOMETERS AN HOUR.

Duncan’s mental preparation for life on Earth occupied considerably more time, but was not quite so exhausting. He already had a good knowledge of

Terran history, geography, and current affairs, but until now it had been mostly theoretical, because it had little direct application to him. Both astronomically and psychologically, Earth had been a long way off. Now it was coming closer by millions of kilometers a day.

Even more to the point, he was now surrounded by Terrans; there were only seven passengers from Titan aboard Sirius, so they were outnumbered fifty to one. Whether he liked it or not, Duncan was being rapidly brainwashed and molded by another culture. He found himself using Terran figures of speech, adopting the slightly sing-song intonation now universal on Earth, and employing more and more words of Chinese origin. All this was to be expected; what he found disturbing was the fact that his own swiftly receding world was becoming steadily

more unreal. Before the voyage was finished, he suspected that he would have become half-Terran.

He spent much of his time viewing Earth scenes, listening to famous political debates, and trying to understand what was happening in culture and the arts, so that he would not appear to be a complete barbarian from the outer darkness. When he was not sitting at the viddy, he was likely to be flicking through the pages of a small, dense booklet optimistically entitled Earth in Ten Days. He was fond of trying out bits of new-found information on his fellow passengers, to study their reactions and to check on his own understanding. Sometimes the response was a blank stare, sometimes a slightly condescending smile. But everyone was very polite to him; after a while, Duncan realized that there was some truth in the old cliche that Terrans were never unintentionally rude.

Of course, it was absurd to apply a single label to half a billion people-or even to the three hundred and fifty on the ship. Yet Duncan was surprised to find how often his preconceived ideas-even his prejudices-were perfectly accurate. Most Terrans did have a quite unconscious air of superiority. At first, Duncan found it annoying; then he realized that several thousand years of history and culture justified a certain pride.

It was still too early for him to answer the question, so long debated on all the other worlds: “Is Earth becoming decadent?” The individuals he had met aboard Sirius showed no trace of that effete over sensibility with which

Terrans were frequently charged-but, of course, they were not a fair sample. Anyone who had occasion to visit the outer reaches of the Solar

System must possess exceptional ability or resources.

He would have to wait until he reached earth before he could measure its decadence more precisely. The project might be an interesting

one-if his budget and his timetable could stand the strain.

SONGS OF EMPIRE