The 3rd Party — Key Ideas to Explore

Linda was surprised to find that the sound of the blast off was not as loud as she had expected. Neither did she find the acceleration of two and a half gravities excessively uncomfortable. The brightly lighted compartment made the scene outside the eyeport seem dark; although it was only four-thirty in the afternoon. Tiny pellets of snow streamed by the port during the few seconds it took the rocket to scream through the lower atmosphere. Then the ship burst through the clouds. Linda gave an exclamation of surprise and pleasure at the sheer beauty of the sight. The clouds rose like tumbled snowy mountain ranges under an ice blue winter sky. The setting sun painted their tops in brilliant hues of pink, orange, and violet. Their eastern sides lay in blue shadow honeycombed with caves and grottos.

"It's beautiful!" exclaimed Linda. "I never dreamed it would be like this."

"You have to see it to really appreciate it," Roger said. "Descriptions never do it justice."

As the rocket continued to rise, the clouds flattened until they resembled pack ice on an arctic sea. More of Earth became visible, and spots of green and brown appeared on the southwestern horizon. Finally the blue of the Pacific crept into view, brilliantly contrasted against the now black sky.

"You may be able to see a few stars if you don't look toward Earth or the sun," Roger said to Linda. Linda followed Roger's instructions; and, sure enough, a few stars appeared, unwinking points of light against black velvet. Now over three hundred miles above Earth, the rocket had crossed the frontier into outer space.

The rocket passed the top of its arc and the scenery was forgotten; the natural fear of falling to which all humans are heir asserted itself. Linda suddenly realized that there was no sensation of weight and that the rocket was falling steadily through space.

"Is ... is everything all right?" she asked in a weak voice.

"Don't worry dear," Roger replied soothingly. "We'll be landing in another half hour. You won't have to go through much more of it."

"Thank goodness!" Linda breathed a sigh of relief and laid her dark head on Roger's shoulder. Roger put his arm around her and held her until the rocket came in with a squeal of runners against hard packed snow. Lights flashed by the eyeport as they slid along the runway. In the distance the lighted, slablike towers of Arctic City loomed against the dark sky. The night was clear and bitterly cold.

The rocket slid to a stop, and an electric tractor came to tow the ship to the top of an elevator shaft. A few minutes later the passengers streamed along a conveyer walk into the Arctic City terminal. The sounds of hurried activity echoed through the tunnel. The rumble of heavy freight conveyers, the shouts of stevedores, the whine of heavily loaded electric motors, and the hum of conversation mingled in a medley of sounds that spoke of commerce and industry, of people busy at an almost endless array of tasks.

"Are you Roger Lorin?" The question came from a short, stocky, gray-haired individual.

"Yes, I am," Roger replied.

"I'm Jacob Darcy. I'm supposed to show you to your apartment and help you get oriented."

"Good," Roger said. "You lead. We'll follow." Darcy turned and led them to a small electric monorail car which sped them through a maze of underground streets past the windows of many shops and stores.

After a ten minute ride in the monorail and a fast ascent in an elevator, the three of them entered a small apartment high in one of the slablike buildings. The apartment was comfortable and compact, though not luxuriously furnished. One transparent wall of the living room looked out over the city and the arctic landscape.

"I thought things would be more primitive," said Linda as she looked around her future home. "This doesn't seem like a frontier at all."

"No," Darcy replied with a smile. "Arctic City is pretty well built up. Conditions are a lot better here than they are in some of the mining centers farther north." He turned to Roger. "I'll be around tomorrow morning to show you the labs. Sometime around eight or eight thirty."

"I'll be ready," replied Roger. "It should be interesting to see the facilities here."

"I suppose the high temperature work will be most interesting to you," said Darcy. "I read your paper on molecular linkages. We'll sure be able to use you. We're having the devil's own time with the linings for the reaction chambers in the neutron pile."