Foundation and Earth - Isaac Asimov [35]
“One of them was married, and he didn’t want his wife to know. If I reported her, his wife would find out.”
“Wouldn’t she be back on Terminus?”
“Of course, but she’d find out anyway.”
“Serve the fellow right if his wife did find out.”
“I agree—but I can’t be the one to be responsible for it.”
“They’ll hammer you for not reporting it. Not wanting to make trouble for a guy is no excuse.”
“Would you have reported him?”
“I’d have had to, I suppose.”
“No, you wouldn’t. The government wants that ship. If I had insisted on putting the woman on report, the men on the ship would have changed their minds about landing and would have pulled away to some other planet. The government wouldn’t have wanted that.”
“But will they believe you?”
“I think so. —A very cute-looking woman, too. Imagine a woman like that being willing to come along with two men, and married men with the nerve to take advantage. —You know, it’s tempting.”
“I don’t think you’d want the missus to know you said that—or even thought that.”
Kendray said defiantly, “Who’s going to tell her? You?”
“Come on. You know better than that.” Gatis’s look of indignation faded quickly, and he said, “It’s not going to do those guys any good, you know, you letting them through.”
“I know.”
“The people down surface-way will find out soon enough, and even if you get away with it, they won’t.”
“I know,” said Kendray, “but I’m sorry for them. Whatever trouble the woman will make for them will be as nothing to what the ship will make for them. The captain made a few remarks—”
Kendray paused, and Gatis said eagerly, “Like what?”
“Never mind,” said Kendray. “If it comes out, it’s my butt.”
“I’m not going to repeat it.”
“Neither am I. But I’m sorry for those two men from Terminus.”
15.
TO ANYONE WHO HAS BEEN IN SPACE AND EXPERIENCED its changelessness, the real excitement of space flight comes when it is time to land on a new planet. The ground speeds backward under you as you catch glimpses of land and water, of geometrical areas and lines that might represent fields and roads. You become aware of the green of growing things, the gray of concrete, the brown of bare ground, the white of snow. Most of all, there is the excitement of populated conglomerates; cities which, on each world, have their own characteristic geometry and architectural variants.
In an ordinary ship, there would have been the excitement of touching down and skimming across a runway. For the Far Star, it was different. It floated through the air, was slowed by skillfully balancing air resistance and gravity, and finally made to come to rest above the spaceport. The wind was gusty and that introduced an added complication. The Far Star, when adjusted to low response to gravitational pull, was not only abnormally low in weight, but in mass as well. If its mass were too close to zero, the wind would blow it away rapidly. Hence, gravitational response had to be raised and jet-thrusts had to be delicately used not only against the planet’s pull but against the wind’s push, and in a manner that matched the shift in wind intensity closely. Without an adequate computer, it could not possibly have been done properly.
Downward and downward, with small unavoidable shifts in this direction and that, drifted the ship until it finally sank into the outlined area that marked its assigned position in the port.
The sky was a pale blue, intermingled with flat white, when the Far Star landed. The wind remained gusty even at ground level and though it was now no longer a navigational peril, it produced a chill that Trevize winced at. He realized at once that their clothing supply was totally unsuited to Comporellian weather.
Pelorat, on the other hand, looked about with appreciation and drew his breath deeply through his nose with relish, liking the bite of the cold, at least for the moment. He even deliberately unseamed his coat in order to feel the wind against his chest. In a little while, he knew, he would seam up again and adjust his scarf, but for now he wanted to feel the existence of