Chapter 3

Earth - 3752 C.E.

Notwithstanding the fact that along with the rest of humanity scattered beyond the orbit of the third planet Paul had wanted to visit Earth ever since he was a child, his initial experience was actually rather disappointing.

It wasn't just that he'd forgotten what normal gravity felt like after the time he'd been living on the Moon. There was also the drizzle, the chill in the South Pacific air and the unaccustomed brush of wind on his face. For the first time in his life Paul had to wear clothes not only for reasons of decoration and decorum but also as protection from the elements. Never again would he complain about the artificial atmosphere that was standard everywhere in the Solar System but Earth: the birthplace and fountainhead of humanity and civilisation.

The short journey from the Moon to Earth was probably the most uncomfortable Paul had endured since leaving Godwin. The executive government of Earth was so fretful about the environmental risk of a space vehicle landing on the planet's surface that the flight was executed in a series of small hops from one craft to another of steadily diminishing size. The aeroplane that actually touched down on the airstrip at South Pacific City was little more than a tube with wings that could accommodate fewer than a thousand passengers. These poor souls, including Paul and Beatrice, were strapped into upright seats where they had virtually no opportunity to stretch their legs and had to subsist on a very limited choice of food.

South Pacific City wasn't dry land exactly. In fact, it was many kilometres adrift in the southern Pacific Ocean. The city was a floating platform of small settlements that had expanded by aggregation over the centuries from the need to minimise the impact of space flight on the fragile planet. It now had a total diameter of over a thousand kilometres, but even from ground level Paul could see that the city wasn't contiguous. There were more expansive areas of open water than there were of walkable surface.

South Pacific City housed the single largest population of any continent on Earth. About one in five of the planet's strictly controlled population of a billion people lived in the city. Nevertheless, this bald statistic was misleading as only a third of that number was permanently resident and three-quarters of the population of South Pacific City belonged to this privileged minority. As the floating continent was the main point of intersection between Earth and the rest of the Solar System, it employed more people than anywhere else on the globe.

As soon as Paul's eyes had at last adjusted to the Sun's bright light on an azure sea under a wide uninterrupted blue sky while his face was battered by a brisk breeze, Beatrice and he were led down a slope to the streets and concourses beneath the ocean surface. Paul had learnt about all this as a schoolboy in his lessons on Earth's geography. To support the weight of the buildings above water-level, the city needed nine times the ballast below. Most of the city above water level was reserved for office space and luxury residential properties so the public spaces were housed in an environment Paul found more familiar from a life in an artificial colony in deep space. Like Godwin, most of South Pacific City was comfortably climate-controlled and enclosed by thick plates of glass. The imperative at Pacific City wasn't to keep out the vacuum of empty space but to hold back the teeming oceans. Paul could see seaweed, fish and even sharks through the metre-thick glass.

"The city attracts a lot of wildlife," said Ali, the guide assigned to escort Beatrice and Paul. "In a sense, it has actually increased the ocean's biodiversity. We do have to be careful about whales, however."

"Whales?" Paul wondered.

"They are very big," Ali explained. "It can cause quite a shock to the whale and even to citizens if one collides against the city's underside."

Although it wasn't Ali's job to guard the couple, he advised Paul and Beatrice that they would still be accompanied by very strict security. Although Earth was mostly nothing more than a tourist site and therefore the Solar System's safest and most benign satellite, even here there was a risk that there might still be fanatics who would want to assassinate Paul.

Ali escorted the couple by foot for more than a kilometre in a city where the only other means of transport were boat and bicycle. Their destination was a tall building that towered into the sky high above the glass ceiling and the pavements.

"You'll get a good view of the ocean from your hotel room," Ali said. "It towers about half a kilometre above the water surface. I just hope you'll never have a problem with the elevators especially if you want to go to the gym. And that's because the gym's nearly four hundred meters below the surface."

"Is there as much hotel beneath the water surface as above?" Paul wondered.

"Rather more, in fact," Ali said. "Tall buildings need a lot of ballast. There aren't many hotel rooms below sea level except those to hold guests who are here to observe underwater life. If it is of interest to you, there's a submarine tour to a deep sea settlement that's situated by a black smoker vent. That might be a great treat if you've ever visited Venus and would like to see where the technology for living on that planet was first actively used."

"That's a trip I look forward to," said Beatrice.

The view from the windows of the couple's rooms was breathtaking. The hotel wasn't quite the tallest structure on the horizon, but the distance between similar tall buildings was so great that the others didn't obscure their view. Although the hotel was situated about fifty kilometres from the nearest edge of South Pacific City and much further from the others, Paul could see an ocean landscape extending in all directions peppered by a flotilla of disconnected artificial islands. From this elevation, he could well believe how disjointed and widely scattered the city was. Beyond the city limits to the South and East was unbroken ocean that reached the distant horizons.

Something Paul had always wanted to do since he was a child was to open a window, stand on a balcony and know that the air he breathed wasn't enclosed within a glass tube or held under a glass dome; to breathe instead from an atmosphere that encircled the entire planet's surface. It mightn't taste quite as sweet as the air Paul was accustomed to. It was, in fact, salty, damp, blustery and chilly, but it was genuine unadulterated natural and breathable atmosphere.

"Earth at last!" Paul announced. "Isn't it great?"

Beatrice strode over to Paul from inside the apartment and he was slightly startled but not too surprised to see she was naked.

"It's a lovely view," she said as she pressed her bosom against his chest. "And we have the privacy and time to do whatever we like. Only the occasional sea bird can see us."

"Of course," admitted Paul who immediately saw the attraction of making love in the open air while looking over an endless vista. Another first, he thought as Beatrice slowly removed one item of his clothing after another and flung them expertly over the hotel surveillance cameras.

However much passion a man may possess, his amorous ambition must eventually be defeated by the evening chill especially when the lovemaking is high above the ocean waves. And so it proved for Paul, though he was distracted for long enough to miss the opportunity to view the sunset. This was a sight he'd only seen before in an airless sky. The apartment lights came on gradually as the Sun sunk below the horizon and cast progressively longer shadows over the balcony. It was too late when Paul became aware that this was yet another eagerly anticipated first that he'd failed to properly appreciate.

He also failed to see the first rays of the early morning Sun when they streamed in through the balcony windows. In fact, Paul was only finally prodded into wakefulness by Ali's urgent calls on the holoscreen.

"You have an appointment with Professor Giuseppe Wasilewski in just over half an hour," Ali announced. "Don't be late. The professor's not a patient man."

"Professor who?" wondered Paul after Ali's holographic image vanished.

"He's the space mission's Head of Science and Research," said Beatrice as she unhurriedly slipped on some loose and positively revealing clothes.

"Why do we have to see him?"

"He's your boss."

"Boss?" wondered Paul who still found the concept both alien and quite novel. "I still don't know why we should meet him."

"It's expected of you," said Beatrice.

That was explanation enough in a sense, but Paul was still rather more than an hour late and unconvinced by the notion that a man he'd never met before should now somehow have a position of authority over him. He also wasn't quite certain what authority really meant beyond being something he'd rather not be subject to.