Starship Walker

The Valley

Gillian and Abel Yegg strolled out of the Navigation centre, following Dryen. Gillian felt relaxed, but excited after her first experience with Walking. The Centre's entrance, triggered by a gesture from Abel, locked itself behind them.

Abel gazed at the officer striding ahead of them, swinging his cane. "Poor bastard," he said. "He's a navigator, a Newtonian, but he can't Walk."

As usual, Gillian suffered from a little unease in such a vast, open space. There were passengers all over the parkland meadows, and Gillian grew conscious of many pairs of eyes on them. A strolling couple passed by, heading in the opposite direction and she heard the male cry out, "Good luck, Ms Berry!"

"Oops!" Abel said, "You're becoming famous."

Gillian was pleased and embarrassed. To divert the conversation, she asked Abel, "Where did you dance?"

"Before I gave it up, I was with the Houston Ballet."

Gillian glanced at him. "Oh, you're from Earth? I've never been there."

"I discovered I was never going to make a soloist or a principal. But it turned out I was precise enough to be a Walker. You've had that failure experience, I suppose?"

"I didn't mind. Ballet was something I did when I was younger, but I still sometimes like to do a little in my cabin - a few poses and so on; more like stretches. It's a good complement to the weights training you put me on after I was selected." She glanced down at her feet. "I'm getting better at handling one G."

Abel said, "Ballet poses ... that's interesting."

They appeared to be walking along the floor of a narrow grassy valley, sloping steeply upwards to their left and right. Immense steel cliffs soared from the tops of the forested hillsides: the "East" and "West" Sides, forming the valley walls and sealing the wheel like gigantic hubcaps. They were studded with the rounded bumps of machinery covers, the tiny dots of service hatches and, up to a little over halfway up, hundreds of windows for those with luxurious apartments. The Xinglong Hao carried several thousand passengers and crew.

Ahead, the forested hillsides on either side of them began to climb. You could see how the treetops tilted and sloped upwards into the sky, until far above their heads the forest appeared to hang upside down. A thousand feet overhead, a dark cylinder ran through the middle of the ship, cleaving the artificial sky to connect the East and West Sides: the bridge of the Xinglong Hao.

 "Isn't it somehow dismissive to call them 'Newtonians'?"

"I didn't mean it that way. It's their role: managing orbital mechanics. We navigate between the stars; they navigate between planets, once the ship arrives at its destination. But their work is as much an approximation of reality as ours."

In the meadows hanging another thousand feet above the ship's bridge, Gillian could see the tiny figures of people. There were small groups of rim runners, who liked to race all the way around the ship, usually anti-spinwards if they wanted to reduce their effort. A couple of sports teams were playing coriolis cricket. She noticed little circles of coloured flowers: groups of children sitting in the grass with their teachers.

Abel remarked, "Newtonians like Dryen use numbers to represent reality: weight, mass, acceleration. Our knowledge is embedded in our muscles. So we act instinctively. We assess dozens of possibilities and make a quick, intuitive choice from them. Our decision can be wrong, but we mustn't panic."

The forest leaves continually moved and rustled in the forced air circulation, which created pleasant breezes for those enjoying the parkland. The vegetation was built by disciplined genes; it supported no parasites, shed little material, and helped to recycle the air. Humans were the most contaminating organisms on board.