“As Chairman, you can marry me,” she said.
“Val…”
“Don’t send me to Dan. Please. It’s you I want.”
I CA N do a better job than he would. And marry Val.
“Larry, do I have to beg you?” She leaned her cheek against his. It felt wet. Tears.
“But it’s wrong,” he muttered. “It’s like kicking my best friend when he’s down.”
“It’s the only chance you’ve got, Larry. We all need you, everybody aboard the ship. You’re the best one to be Chairman, everybody knows that. And I need you! I can’t live without you!”
He closed his eyes and heard himself saying, “All right. I’ll do it. I’ll do it.”
3
The ship was built on the principle of wheels within wheels. It consisted of seven ring structures, starting from a central bulbous hub. Going outward, each ring was bigger and held more room for equipment and living space. The entire ship was turning, revolving slowly, to provide an artificial gravity. The outermost wheel, level one, was at one full Earth g, and everyone felt his normal Earth weight there. Going “upward,” toward the hub, weight and gravity fell off consistently, until at the hub itself, there was effectively no gravity, weightlessness.
The thousand or so people who were awake and active had their living quarters in level one. All the levels were linked by tubes.
The infirmary was on the second level, where the spin-induced gravity was slightly less than I g. It made for an unconscious buoyant feeling, a sense of well-being and optimism, that the medics claimed helped to get patients recovered from their ailments.
The infirmary stretched over a long section of the second level. Instead of viewports looking outside, the main wall of the infirmary was made up of viewscreens that showed constantly changing pictures of Earth; old Earth, before the bursting population had torn down most of her forests, ripped open her mineral-rich lands, covered vast stretches of ground with festering cities.