2001_ A Space Odyssey - Arthur C. Clarke [13]
Though birth control was cheap, reliable, and endorsed by all the main religions, it had come too late; the population of the world was now six billion — a third of them in the Chinese Empire. Laws had even been passed in some authoritarian societies limiting families to two children, but their enforcement had proved impracticable. As a result, food was short in every country; even the United States had meatless days, and widespread famine was predicted within fifteen years, despite heroic efforts to farm the sea and to develop synthetic foods.
With the need for international cooperation more urgent than ever, there were still as many frontiers as in any earlier age. In a million years, the human race had lost few of its aggressive instincts; along symbolic lines visible only to politicians, the thirty-eight nuclear powers watched one another with belligerent anxiety. Among them, they possessed sufficient megatonnage to remove the entire surface crust of the planet. Although there had been — miraculously — no use of atomic weapons, this situation could hardly last forever.
And now, for their own inscrutable reasons, the Chinese were offering to the smallest have-not nations a complete nuclear capability of fifty warheads and delivery systems. The cost was under $200,000,000, and easy terms could be arranged.
Perhaps they were only trying to shore up their sagging economy, by turning obsolete weapons systems into hard cash, as some observers had suggested. Or perhaps they had discovered methods of warfare so advanced that they no longer had need of such toys; there had been talk of radio-hypnosis from satellite transmitters, compulsion viruses, and blackmail by synthetic diseases for which they alone possessed the antidote. These charming ideas were almost certainly propaganda or pure fantasy, but it was not safe to discount any of them. Every time Floyd took off from Earth, he wondered if it would still be there when the time came to return.
The trim stewardess greeted him as he entered the cabin. “Good morning, Dr. Floyd. I’m Miss Simmons — I’d like to welcome you aboard on behalf of Captain Tynes and our copilot, First Officer Ballard.”
“Thank you,” said Floyd with a smile, wondering why stewardesses always had to sound like robot tour guides.
“Takeoff’s in five minutes,” she said, gesturing into the empty twenty-passenger cabin. “You can take any seat you want, but Captain Tynes recommends the forward window seat on the left, if you want to watch the docking operations.”
“I’ll do that,” he answered, moving toward the preferred seat. The stewardess fussed over him awhile and then moved to her cubicle at the rear of the cabin.
Floyd settled down in his seat, adjusted the safety harness around waist and shoulders, and strapped his briefcase to the adjacent seat. A moment later, the loudspeaker came on with a soft popping noise. “Good morning,” said Miss Simmons’ voice. “This is Special Flight 3, Kennedy to Space Station One.”
She was determined, it seemed, to go through the full routine for her solitary passenger, and Floyd could not resist a smile as she continued inexorably.
“Our transit time will be fifty-five minutes. Maximum acceleration will be two-gee, and we will be weightless for thirty minutes. Please do not leave your seat until the safety sign is lit.”
Floyd looked over his shoulder and called, “Thank you.” He caught a glimpse of a slightly embarrassed but charming smile.
He leaned back into his seat and relaxed. This trip, he calculated, would cost the taxpayers slightly over a million dollars. If it was not justified, he would be out of his job; but he could always go back to the university and to his interrupted studies of planetary formation.
“Auto-countdown procedures all Go,” the captain’s voice said over the speaker with the soothing singsong used in RT chat.
“Lift-off in one minute.”
As always, it seemed more like an hour. Floyd became acutely aware of the gigantic forces coiled up around him, waiting to be released. In the fuel tanks of the two spacecraft,