Read Online Island Worlds by John Maddox Roberts, Eric Kotani - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Maddox Roberts, Eric Kotani
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colored patches on the side of the can and artificial milk and sweetener were injected into the steaming liquid. He sipped for a while, planning out his day. He had considered using this time to catch up on contemporary news broadcasting. For the last few years, he had subscribed to a prestigious printout service in lieu of watching the holos.
Fu had intrigued him, though. He decided to look into the study he had bought. He fed the crystal in its holder into the slot of the holo set and sat back. After a brief title sequence, Fu appeared, considerably changed from the way Thor had seen him the day before.
Fu's hair was tied neatly back and he wore the long, formal robe of a Confucian scholar. His face was lightly made up to resemble that of a much older man and he wore artificial, three-inch fingernails. His skullcap was crowned with a coral button and a red tassel and as he appeared he was writing on a paper scroll with a brush dipped in vermilion ink. The table and chair were massive, garish, tasteless Manchu Dynasty pieces, heavily lacquered and deliberately chosen to offset the studied elegance of his dress and bearing. He was sitting in a courtyard and behind him was a spectacular view of the fantastic mountains of the Li river valley, stripped of their ugly twenty-first-century accretions.
Except for Fu and his costume, of course, it was all a computer generation. Actually, everything in the picture, down to the artificial lines in Fu's face, could have been produced by com-gen, but Thor doubted that the student could afford the complete process. In reality, he was sitting in an empty, all-blue studio and even his shadow on the tabletop was faked. The illusion, though, was flawless. It was decades since computer imaging had been in any way distinguishable from reality.
Fu glanced up from his scroll. "The time to begin is not now but at the beginning. Popular attitudes towards manned space exploration and settlement are inseparable from the actual developments." The voice was deeper and more resonant than Fu's actual speaking voice. "Therefore, let us return to the beginning of this century, when the first, faltering steps into space gave way to the rapid emigration and settlement which persists to this day."
The view moved past Fu, off the terrace, and towards the mountains. The point of view angled upward and moved towards the clouds, as if the holocamera were mounted in the nose of a rocket. The clouds flashed past and the sky darkened. Stars appeared. The point of view swiveled and now the viewer was looking back toward Earth. "More than a half-century ago," Fu's voice narrated, "the continuous-boost ion drive space vessel made its first appearance in the still mysterious and controversial joint U.S.-Soviet manned mission to a comet. U.S. records of that incident are still under seal and shall remain so until the next century. Whatever the actual circumstances of that mission, it ushered in the era of practical exploitation of interplanetary resources.
"Even with the initially available continuous acceleration rate of some point oh-one gee, or one-hundredth of the gravitational acceleration at the surface of the Earth, one could reach Mars and return within a few months. The size of the Solar System all the way to Saturn became comparable, in travel time, to that of the globe to European mariners of the sixteenth century." From the Earth, spectral figures of wooden ships, sails billowing as in a Holbein painting, began to spiral outward.
"This early stage was adequate for exploration. Carefully-chosen crews were picked for emotional stability to endure the long, dull stretches of voyage time. Although the time frames were similar, these explorers could make their crossings in far greater comfort and far less danger than those early mariners."
The ghostlike sailing ships were transformed to solid images of early exploration vessels with their chaotic shapes made up of boxes, spheres and tubes, bristling with
Fu had intrigued him, though. He decided to look into the study he had bought. He fed the crystal in its holder into the slot of the holo set and sat back. After a brief title sequence, Fu appeared, considerably changed from the way Thor had seen him the day before.
Fu's hair was tied neatly back and he wore the long, formal robe of a Confucian scholar. His face was lightly made up to resemble that of a much older man and he wore artificial, three-inch fingernails. His skullcap was crowned with a coral button and a red tassel and as he appeared he was writing on a paper scroll with a brush dipped in vermilion ink. The table and chair were massive, garish, tasteless Manchu Dynasty pieces, heavily lacquered and deliberately chosen to offset the studied elegance of his dress and bearing. He was sitting in a courtyard and behind him was a spectacular view of the fantastic mountains of the Li river valley, stripped of their ugly twenty-first-century accretions.
Except for Fu and his costume, of course, it was all a computer generation. Actually, everything in the picture, down to the artificial lines in Fu's face, could have been produced by com-gen, but Thor doubted that the student could afford the complete process. In reality, he was sitting in an empty, all-blue studio and even his shadow on the tabletop was faked. The illusion, though, was flawless. It was decades since computer imaging had been in any way distinguishable from reality.
Fu glanced up from his scroll. "The time to begin is not now but at the beginning. Popular attitudes towards manned space exploration and settlement are inseparable from the actual developments." The voice was deeper and more resonant than Fu's actual speaking voice. "Therefore, let us return to the beginning of this century, when the first, faltering steps into space gave way to the rapid emigration and settlement which persists to this day."
The view moved past Fu, off the terrace, and towards the mountains. The point of view angled upward and moved towards the clouds, as if the holocamera were mounted in the nose of a rocket. The clouds flashed past and the sky darkened. Stars appeared. The point of view swiveled and now the viewer was looking back toward Earth. "More than a half-century ago," Fu's voice narrated, "the continuous-boost ion drive space vessel made its first appearance in the still mysterious and controversial joint U.S.-Soviet manned mission to a comet. U.S. records of that incident are still under seal and shall remain so until the next century. Whatever the actual circumstances of that mission, it ushered in the era of practical exploitation of interplanetary resources.
"Even with the initially available continuous acceleration rate of some point oh-one gee, or one-hundredth of the gravitational acceleration at the surface of the Earth, one could reach Mars and return within a few months. The size of the Solar System all the way to Saturn became comparable, in travel time, to that of the globe to European mariners of the sixteenth century." From the Earth, spectral figures of wooden ships, sails billowing as in a Holbein painting, began to spiral outward.
"This early stage was adequate for exploration. Carefully-chosen crews were picked for emotional stability to endure the long, dull stretches of voyage time. Although the time frames were similar, these explorers could make their crossings in far greater comfort and far less danger than those early mariners."
The ghostlike sailing ships were transformed to solid images of early exploration vessels with their chaotic shapes made up of boxes, spheres and tubes, bristling with
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