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and said in Arabic, "Did you check this craft thoroughly?' '
The pilot, his face obscured by the helmet and visor he wore, grinned toothily. "Yes, Excellency, very thoroughly. It is
pure."
Nodding, al-Hashimi took his palm-sized tape recorder from his jacket pocket and began speaking into it in English, a
language the pilot did not understand.
' 'To Garrison in Houston. Hand-deliver by the most reliable route.
"De Paolo is now concerned that Island One may be a headquarters for biological weaponry research. Boweto is
absolutely paranoid about our refusal to allow inspection of the space colony. Expect increased surveillance and
strong espionage attempts.
"De Paolo's main concern continues to be the weather modifications. I suggest we terminate this phase of the
operation as quickly as possible, before they can find a leak.
"We should make stronger ties withEl Libertador, through the same channels that have been providing him with the
materiel he has used so far. Under no circumstances shouldEl Libertador be allowed to make conciliatory gestures
toward the World Government, or vice versa."
Despite intense efforts by national and World Government police, the Peoples' Revolutionary Underground
commandos who seized a World Government armory in Athens last week are still at large.
Led by a woman who calls herself Scheherazade, the PRU forces mostly teen-agersor men and women barely in
their twenties looted the armory of several hundred modern automatic rifles, submachine guns, and assault rifles.
No trace of the PRU commandos or of the weapons has yet been found.
Scheherazade herself, however, proclaimed over an underground radio broadcast yesterday that the weapons would
be used "to continue the battle against the World Government oppressors."
News broadcast, 28 May 2028
FIVE
Page 40
Evelyn gripped the edge of the padded couch and tried to
look relaxed and calm. She was in misery. The commuter-sphere a round little spacecraft that chugged from the
colony's main cylinder to the work pods that were ringed around it floated along at less than one-fifth normal gravity.
It was just enough weight to keep the passengers in their seats, and Evelyn's stomach on the queasy edge of rebellion.
The twelve trainees and their lone guide half-filled the commutersphere's rows of padded couches. Everyone else was
strapped in and lying back in apparent comfort.They 're probably just as sick as I feel, Evelyn told herself.But they
hide it better.
She tried to put her heaving stomach out of her mind and concentrated on her goal for the day: getting into the
second cylinder.
Island One was actually two mammoth cylinders, tethered together by cables that served as a sort of deep-space
trolley for shuttling people back and forth from one cylinder to the other.
But while the main cylinder, where she and David and everyone else lived, seemed completely open to view from one
end to the other, no one whom Evelyn had yet encountered would admit to ever being inside Cylinder B. It was
apparently off-limits.To everyone? Evelyn asked herself.Impossible.
There was something in Cylinder B that They Cobb
68
COLONY " 69
and his cronies didn't want people to see. So Evelyn was determined to see it.
If she survived the bloody orientation tour.
No matter how her brain insisted she was floating comfortably in the zero-gee environment, Evelyn's stomachknew
that it was falling endlessly. Her breakfast threatened to make a reappearance.
The low-gravity rides in the commutersphere didn't help much. Neither did the view through the circular ports set into
the sphere's shell: stars drifting past, and every few seconds the blue beckoning sphere of Earth swam by.It never
looked so good when I was on the ground, Evelyn thought.
They docked with the next work pod, a bump that made her shudder.
"This pod spins at one gee," their guide called out as they unstrapped from the couches, "so be prepared for normal
weight."
A couple of the trainees actually grumbled. The doltsenjoyed low gravity.
The twelve of them filed slowly through the hatch, all of them dressed in featureless gray jumpsuits and wearing I.D.
badges pinned to their chests.
Their guide, a lanky, solemn-faced man whose hair was just starting to gray at the temples, stood by the hatch in his
blue jumpsuit, already lecturing to them: "This is a farming pod, one of several agricultural centers among the work
pods. While most of the colony's staple crops are grown in the cultivated areas inside the main cylinder, we use
several of these outer pods for experiments in developing new crops, or for specialized types of agriculture, such as
tropical fruits."
Some farm,Evelyn thought as she went through the hatch and looked around the pod's spacious interior.It looks more
like an overgrown weed patch inside an airplane hangar.
The pod was a bare metal enclosure, spherical in shape. The farming area was a strip of plant-choked soil that went
completely around the central region of the sphere. Evelyn looked up overhead and saw plants and dirt looking down
Page 41
at her. Blazingly bright sunlight was pouring in from cir-
BEN BOVA " 70
cular windows set into the metal walls on either side of the cultivated strip. It was hot and muggy inside the pod, and
the dazzlingly bright sunlight instantly started a headache behind Evelyn's eyes.
"Here in the pods," their guide was saying, "we can control the air mixture, temperature and humidity, the gravity, and
even the length of daylight." He gestured to the windows and Evelyn saw that they could be closed with metal
shutters that flanked each of them.
Since the colony's position at the L4 location kept it in sunlight eternally, it was a simple matter to control the length
of day. In the pods, opening and closing the shutters determined "day" and "night." In the main cylinder, the big solar
mirrors were programmed to provide a twenty-four-hour cycle.
' 'Thus, we can set up virtually any kind of growing conditions that we wish, without disturbing the Earthlike
day-night cycle and other living conditions inside the main cylinder."
/still say they look like weeds, Evelyn insisted silently.
"In this pod," the guide went on, his face intensely serious, ' 'we are studying the growth of parasitical plants that
might attack our food crops or cause allergic reactions among susceptible colonists. Weeds, in other words."
Evelyn barely suppressed a laugh.
She turned to look at her fellow trainees, six women and five men none of them over thirty.They all look so deadly
serious, as if their lives depend on every syllable that this bore utters.
Then she realized that in a very literal sense their lives did indeed depend on the knowledge they were gathering.
They were planning to live in the colony; they had no desire to return to Earth.
But why do they have to look like missionaries? Can't they smile once in a while?
Over the past few days, Evelyn had done precious little smiling herself. After her first day of hiking through the main
cylinder, and her night with David, she had settled down to the typical trainee's routine of study and exploration.
David had called several times, and she had finally
COLONY " 71
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