Departures

by Harry Turtledove

  Bennett listened to her with nothing but admiration, a word also describing his feelings as he watched: the female form does not sag at all in.008g.

  The terrestrial portion of the Winter Games was being held at Klagenfurt in United Europe that year, so the athletes crossed the ice in their national groups in French alphabetical order. That put the United States-or rather, Etats-Unis-near the front, just after the Chinese Empire, instead of toward the end.

  “This is the first time in four Olympiads that the Americans have sent a team-if I can call one man and one woman a team-to Mimas,” Bennett remarked. “They haven’t had much low-g training and aren’t expected to contend for medals, but it’s good to see them competing here again. Private contributions raised enough money for two berths aboard the Arab World ship Nasser.”

  Several larger groupings passed-Eastern Europe, the Anzac Federation, Japan, Luna. The team from the Arab World looked smart in spacesuits of green, white, and black. “Security is tight here,” Bennett said, “thanks to threats from Israeli, Turkish, and Armenian nationalists.”

  Moscow had fielded a strong group. So had Siberia. There were a couple of Swiss athletes in red suits with white crosses. They had traveled with the United Europeans in the same way the Americans had with the Arabs. United Europe, as the host nation, came last, just behind the contingent from Zaire.

  Rannveig was finally back in her seat. “Personally,” she said, “I think the United European uniforms are busy.”

  “So do I.” Bennett nodded. “But then, they almost have to be, since they’re blending so many sets of former national colors. Some of the rivalries that went with those old colors aren’t dead yet, either, and the newer one between United Europe and Eastern Europe is also no laughing matter, I’m afraid. You Europeans are a contentious lot,” he said to Rannveig, who came from Oslo.

  “No, we’re not,” she replied in mock anger.

  “You certainly are.”

  They pythoned it back and forth for another minute or two before Rannveig started the wrap-up of opening-day coverage, remarking, ”Our viewers may be wondering why only a relative handful of teams are represented here, as compared with Klagenfurt.”

  “Cost is the villain,” Bennett said. “Fares from Earth to the Saturn system still run over fifteen hundred ounces of gold. That’s one of the major reasons we’ve seen so little from the United States in recent years, for example. If spaceflight were cheaper, we’d see many more nations participating.”

  “Something to look forward to, perhaps, in games to come.” Rannveig closed out: “Thanks for joining us for the opening ceremonies from the Mimas Winter Olympic venue. Tomorrow we’ll be bringing you first-round coverage of the most spectacular of all Olympic events, the five-kilometer ski jump. Program your sets to ‘Olympics’ now, so you won’t miss a moment of the action. See you then.”

  The old Voyager picture of Mimas reappeared on the monitor. This time, though, a bright red line superimposed on the image showed the ski-jump track descending from the summit of Arthur’s central peak-the largest athletic arena in the solar system. Ten kilometers away, a red oval showed the landing area.

  “That went off very well,” the director said, adding, “all things considered,” with a pointed glower Rannveig’s way. She paid no attention, leaning back in her chair to let a makeup man scrub her face clean.

  Bennett did the same, enjoying the damp sponge on his forehead, cheeks, and chin. He was very little changed when the ministrations were over: an open-faced, light brown man in his early thirties; burnsides, popular after a lapse of fifty years, looked good on him.

  So did his engaging smile, even if it was a touch smug at the moment. He had a right to feel self-satisfied. IBC did not hire many Americans; most were too parochial to do well outside their own small bailiwick, and few spoke anything but English or Spanish. But his French, once again the dominant international tongue, was fluent as any native speaker’s; to his own way of thinking, at least, he had a better accent than Rannveig did.

  “Care for a drink?” he asked, and she gave an eager nod.

  They swung hand over hand from the rings set in the hallway ceiling toward the bar. Brachiating was the easiest way to get around on Mimas; the gravity was really too weak for walking, especially indoors, but just enough to make free-fall-style gliding impractical, too. “I wonder why we ever came out of the trees,” Rannveig said, darting ahead.

  The studio was part of the same complex that housed the Olympic athletes. The two broadcasters sped past pressure doors and spacesuits in niches: like any structure exposed to vacuum, the Olympic village was divided into hundreds of gastight segments. The front door to every suite was a bulkhead in its own right.

  Once she had hooked her feet under the brass rail, Rannveig ordered aquavit with a beer chaser. Bennett chose rum and Coke; since the rediscovery of the original formula in the ruins of Atlanta, Coca-Cola was all the rage again.

  The drinks came in squeeze bulbs with nipples, as they would have in free-fall. An incautious lift would have sent the contents of glasses flying.

  The monorail shuttle returned to the Olympic complex from the parade ground. Athletes and coaches began drifting into the bar. Most of the competitors, knowing they would have to be at their best tomorrow, were moderate. Their mentors had fewer compunctions. The Muscovite coach, in a red and gold sweater, and his Siberian counterpart, who wore his team’s snowy white, challenged each other to a duel of vodka. Empty squeeze bulbs accumulated in epic numbers around them.

  The two of them argued more or less amiably as they drank.

  The Muscovite spit Slavic consonants at his opposite number. The Siberian replied in French, letting Bennett follow his half of the conversation. For a czarist nobleman, Russian was fit only for talking with servants, infants, and pets.

  “It seems hardly fair for peasant upstarts to have better accommodations than we do,” he said.

  The Muscovite coach answered. The Siberian rolled his eyes. “ ‘All quarters are equal,’ indeed. Merde-why has the Olympic committee placed us where we cannot even see the competition area?”

  No one could see the competition area; the window in the bar was the only one in the Olympic village. The Muscovite must have pointed that out, because the Siberian said, “It is the principle of the thing, though principle, I suppose, is something a Marxist cannot be expected to understand.”

  The Muscovite’s only comment to that was a belch. He fell asleep a few minutes later. His counterpart’s triumphant smile also quickly dissolved in snores.

  Except for one Jew, the members of the Arab World’s team were teetotalers. They sipped fruit juice and passed a pipe back and forth.

  A ski jumper was turning cartwheels in midair. Rannveig touched Bennett’s hand. “Look at the loonie showing off.”

  “You can hardly blame her. This is the only place where she can compete against Earth people on even terms-Mimas makes everyone strong.” He finished his drink. “Do you mind if I drift around a bit?”

  “Heavens, no. Have a good time. I certainly intend to.” She looked at him archly. “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t enjoy.”

  He grinned. “That doesn’t leave much out.” They had ended up in bed a couple of times during the trip to Mimas, more out of boredom and simple propinquity than anything else. It had been fun, but nothing on which to build a grand passion.

  The ski jumper from Luna landed on her head, laughing. “Was that half a turn too many or too few?” Bennett asked her.

  “I sort of lost track up there,” she said. She looked at him curiously, trying to place him. Most of the athletes were still in the tight pullovers and hose they had worn under their space-suits, which made his conservative green velvet doublet, tunic, and Paisley neck scarf stand out by comparison. “I know!” she exclaimed after a moment. “You’re from IBC!”

  He admitted it. She insisted on buying him a drink. Not much happened in the controlled environment of Luna, so stereovision w
as even more popular there than it was on Earth. “I’m just a media addict,” she said.

  “Nonsense,” he said gallantly. “How could you get into that kind of shape sitting in front of a set all the time?” He bought the next round himself, and the one after that; he was sure his expense account was stretchier than hers.

  He glanced over and saw Rannveig deep in conversation with a big man as blond as she was. Another Scandinavian, was his first thought, but then he noticed the fellow was wearing the eye-searing blue, red, and green of Eastern Europe. They did not seem to be having any problems getting along, though.

  Nor was he, with the girl he had met. A promising evening all the way around, he thought.

  “And now,” Rannveig said, “I’d like to introduce our expert analyst, Angus Cavendish, bronze medalist for United Europe in the five-kilometer ski jump in the 2192 Winter Games.”

  “I thank ye very much,” Cavendish said. He was a small, dapper man in his early forties, just beginning to gray at the temples and on his cheeks. The Scots burr with which he flavored his French should have given his voice an air of impressive deliberation. It probably would have, too, if he spoke a little slower, but he was too excitable for that. He always reminded Bennett of a tape recorded at eight centimeters a second and played back at sixteen.

  “Tell us, Angus, what’s the most difficult thing about this event?” Bennett asked. He had the slightly too good feeling hangover pills always brought.

  “The training for it,” Cavendish said at once. “For where d’ye find the like conditions in the inner solar system? It’s only the rich countries can afford to ship their skiers out here for the sake o’ the exercise: the Arab World, Luna, Japan, Siberia.”

  “Then how do you account for your own medal?” Rannveig asked.

  “Me, lass? I was assistant engineer on a supply ship to the Mimas Saturn station and borrowed my skis from a computer tech there. You look down the rosters of the teams and you’ll find a great lot of spacers among ‘em. We’re the ones who come to Mimas on our own business and learn a bit while we’re here.”

  Following the script they had roughed out, Bennett said, “Why don’t athletes from nations that can’t afford to send them here train on the moons of Mars? Those have an even lower surface gravity than Mimas.”

  “So they do, but they don’t have Arthur; they’re too puny. Look here, now.” The screen behind the broadcasters displayed the trademark image of Mimas. Cavendish used a pointer. “The crater is a hundred thirty kilometers across and ten deep, with the central peak six kilometers high. The body that struck Mimas to make it must have been ten kilometers across (almost the size of Deimos, mind); if it had been any bigger, it would’ve cracked the moon apart.”

  “From what you’ve told us, then, I take it the technique for jumping on Mimas is quite different from the one skiers use back on Earth,” Rannveig said.

  The screen showed the ninety-meter jump at Klagenfurt. A skier appeared at the top of the slope, pushed off, and went into her tuck. “There’s the first difference already!” Cavendish cried. “You can’t simply tuck and run here or you’re done for in the jump. At 008g, you see, you don’t build up the velocity even in five kilometers that you do in the ninety meters on Earth. You have to use poles all the way down.”

  “But there are risks in that too, aren’t there?” Bennett asked.

  “That there are. In the low gravity, each push sends you off the slope. The more you bounce about, y’see, the less time there is to be pushing. You have to dig in at just the right angle to come down again quick as you can. If you’ve done it right, you spring off at the end with about the same speed as off the ninety-meter hill back home-near a hundred kilometers an hour.”

  As if on cue, the jumper in the monitor screen launched herself into space. “With the local gravity so low, you’d think you’d almost be able to jump clean off Mimas,” Rannveig said.

  “ ‘Tisn’t so,” Cavendish snorted. “The escape velocity’s over a hundred seventy meters a second; you scarcely reach the sixth part of that. Nay, with the ramp angled up at forty-five degrees, you take about four minutes to sail up two and a half kilometers-three and a half over the floor of Arthur. Then it’s down again. Overall, you’re flying between nine and ten minutes.”

  “It must be a marvelous view,” Bennett said.

  “That it is.” The line was planned, but Cavendish’s eyes went genuinely misty. “You think you can see forever; in fact, it’s about thirty-five kilometers.”

  The screen behind the Scotsman showed the jumbled vista of the crater floor. Small pits and mounds of ice began lazily flowing out of the picture at the edges; what remained grew larger and larger. “Of course, eventually you have to think about landing,” Bennett said.

  “So you do,” Cavendish said dryly. “There’s the rub. You hit the slope at more than a hundred and ten kilometers an hour, and you don’t dare tumble. They have subsurface pipes to heat-if that’s the word I want-the landing zone a hundred degrees or so, up to -30° centigrade, same as the runway. Still, rip your suit and you’re gone. Almost every games, it seems, they add a name or two to the memorial plaque at the peak of Arthur.”

  “Is it worth it, then?” Bennett asked. That line was in the script, too, but he meant it. Risking one’s life unnecessarily struck him as insane.

  Cavendish’s reply caught him by surprise. It came from the man, not the commentator: “Lad, for the feeling you get when you’re up there, why, dying’d be a small price to pay.”

  There was a moment of dead air before Rannveig took up the slack, saying quietly, “All the athletes here today would agree with you, Angus.”

  The broadcast going back to Earth cut away from the studio to the pressurized lodge at the top of the runway. Like the Olympic village complex below, it rested on pylons sunk in the ice. The camera focused on the airlock door, which opened to let out the first contestant.

  She wore the deep blue of the Anzac Federation; her clear faceplate showed intense concentration on her features. “This is Marge Olbert,” Rannveig said. “She’s twenty-six, from Canberra, a junior ecology officer aboard the Wirraway, one of the Anzac Line’s asteroid-belt freighters.”

  “Ah, then she’ll have some work at very low gravity,” Cavendish said. “A plus for her.”

  The starting light went from red to green. Marge Olbert dug her poles into the ice. “A good push-off!” Cavendish cried. “See, she’s still low enough to take a second shove. That’s the way to do it-keep the polework as near parallel to the runway as you can!”

  The ski jumper landed, pushed, flew; landed, pushed, flew. Each thrust of the ski poles added to her velocity; so, little by little, did Mimas’ weak pull. “Oh, excellent form-she’ll be close to that hundred-kilometer-an-hour mark,” Cavendish said.

  Marge Olbert was rocketing down the slope now. “A shame we’re in vacuum,” Bennett said. “The wind shrieking by Ms. Olbert would give the audience an added sense of her speed.”

  Cavendish chuckled. “They can tell she’s going fast, never fear.”

  She used her poles powerfully on the short upslope at the end of the run, gave a last great spring, and launched herself into the void. Red numbers appeared on the monitor: 97.43.

  “A splendid takeoff velocity,” Cavendish said. He unobtrusively checked a chart he was holding in his lap. “She’ll be out past ten and a quarter kilometers. The women’s record only 10.6. Could well be the longest women’s jump of the first day. She’ll give the other lassies something to think on.”

  The flick of a switch brought the transmission from Olbert’s suit radio into the studio. “Oh, my,” she was saying again and again. “Oh, my.” A reminiscent grin spread over Cavendish’s face.

  Marge Olbert was soaring up toward her maximum altitude when coverage cut back to the slope, where another jumper had already begun his run. “They’ll be going about every five minutes,” Bennett explained, “so one will be landing, another just past high point, an
d a third jumping at about the same time.”

  “That’s right, Bill,” Rannveig said. “On the runway now is Jozef Jablonski of Eastern Europe.” Bennett wondered at the sudden warmth in her voice until a close-up showed the face of the man she had been with the night before. She went on, “He’s twenty-nine, an air force captain from Gdynia; his hobbies include basketball, chess, and wargaming.”

  Not all of that was on Jablonski’s personal data sheet. Bennett smiled a little.

  “He’s a strong-looking brute,” Cavendish said. Rannveig jerked her head, whether in agreement or indignation Bennett could not tell. The Scotsman carried the narration: “Good form into the upslope-aye, a mighty push there, and now the leap… 101.74 kilometers an hour! A fine first jump; it’ll go well past eleven kilometers.”

  A tight telephoto showed the expression of almost religious awe that Jablonski was wearing as he sailed high over the frozen surface of Mimas. “With a shot like that, you don’t need words,” Cavendish murmured.

  The monitor split into thirds, simultaneously tracking Marge Olbert hurtling down toward her landing, Jablonski nearing apogee, and the next contestant on the runway, a Siberian woman who crossed herself before she began her descent.

  Dream-smooth, the girl from the Anzac Federation touched down, steadying herself with her ski poles. “Here’s her distance, now,” Cavendish said. “It’s 10,290 meters-a splendid opening jump.” As Marge Olbert killed her momentum on the reverse slope beyond the landing zone, a crawler came out to pick her up and take her back to the Olympic village. Her raised fist said she knew what she had done.

  Then Jozef Jablonski was landing, not as gracefully as his predecessor but safe enough. Red numbers superimposed on his image gave the length of his jump: 11,149 meters. “Astonishing that only a four-kilometer-an-hour difference in takeoff velocity will produce so much extra distance,” Rannveig said. She did not sound astonished; she sounded proud.