If you placed Pluto at its aphelion (stay alive another century and a quarter—quite possible), at one gee the Pluto round trip would take 5.72 weeks, at 1/10 gee 18.1 weeks, at 1/100 gee 57.2 weeks—and at 1/1000 gee 181 weeks, or 3 yrs & 25 wks.
I have added on the two illustrations at 1/1000 of one gravity boost because today (late 1979 as I write) we do not as yet know how to build constant-boost ships for long trips at 1 gee, 1/10 gee, or even 1/100 gee; Newton's Third Law of Motion (from which may be derived all the laws of rocketry) has us (temporarily) stumped. But only temporarily. There is E = mc2, too, and there are several possible ways of "living off the country" like a foraging army for necessary reaction mass. Be patient; this is all very new. Most of you who read this will live to see constant-boost ships of 1/10 gee or better—and will be able to afford vacations in space—soon, soon! I probably won't live to see it, but you will. (No complaints, Sergeant—I was born in the horse & buggy age; I have lived to see men walk on the Moon and to see live pictures from the soil of Mars. I've had my share!)
But if you are willing to settle today for a constant-boost on the close order of magnitude of 1/1000 gee, we can start the project later this afternoon, as there are several known ways of building constant-boost jobs with that tiny acceleration—even light-sail ships.
I prefer to talk about light-sail ships (or, rather, ships that sail in the "Solar wind") because those last illustrations I added (1/1000 gee) show that we have the entire Solar System available to us right now; it is not necessary to wait for the year 2000 and new breakthroughs.
Ten weeks to Mars . . . a round trip to Pluto at 31.6 A.U. in 2 years and 9 months . . . or a round trip to Pluto's aphelion, the most remote spot we know of in the Solar System (other than the winter home of the comets).
Ten weeks—it took the Pilgrims in the Mayflower nine weeks and three days to cross the Atlantic.
Two years and nine months—that was a normal commercial voyage for a China clipper sailing out of Boston in the last century . . . and the canny Yankee merchants got rich on it.
Three years and twenty-five weeks is excessive for the China trade in the 19th century . . . but no one will ever take that long trip to Pluto because Pluto does not reach aphelion until 2113 and by then we'll have ships that can get out there (constant boost with turnover near midpoint) in three weeks.
Please note that England, Holland, Spain, and Portugal all created worldwide empires with ships that took as long to get anywhere and back as would a 1/1000-gee spaceship. On the high seas or in space it is not distance that counts but time. The magnificent accomplishments of our astronauts up to now were made in free fall and are therefore analogous to floating down the Mississippi on a raft. But even the tiniest constant boost turns sailing the Solar System into a money-making commercial venture.
"Tomorrow we again embark
upon the boundless sea."
—Horace, Odes, I,i
Cliff and the Calories
FOREWORD
The editor who disliked science fiction (and me) but liked my sales grumbled to me, on my delivering my annual boys' novel, that she did wish that someone would write girls' stories. I answered, "Very well, I'll write a story for girls. When do you want it?"
She was simultaneously astonished, offended, and amused at the ridiculous and arrogant notion that a mere man could write stories for girls. So that's how Puddin' was born: I started writing first-person-female-adolescent stories—but not for that old harridan.
Since this is not the first of the Puddin' stories, let me introduce her: her name is Maureen, her nickname derives from her weight problem. She is eternally an undergraduate on a small campus in Somewhere, U.S.A., where her father teaches anthropology, smokes his pipe, and reads—whereas her mother is a Renaissance Man who does everything. Maureen has an unbearable younger brother (all younger brothers are unbearable; I should know, I was one).
I grew so fond of Maureen that I helped her to get rid of that excess weight, changed her name to "Podkayne," and moved her to Mars (along with her unbearable kid brother). And now and again she turns up under other names in other science fiction stories.
Nevertheless Maureen still attends classes on this campus in Never-Neverland. I had intended to do a full book of Puddin' short stories under the title Men Are Exasperating. I have enough stories for a fat volume but as yet I have not written all of them down. One in particular (Mother and the Animal Kingdom) keeps niggling at me to write it—a character in it, a little gray donkey named Mr. Jenkins, keeps looking at me with mournful eyes. I can write that one anytime I get a full day absolutely free of other pressures—say about 1997.
Three others are almost as ready to write, and I would have enough for a book.
And yet . . . and yet—Is Puddin' totally obsolete? This campus never has riots. The girls are not "on the Pill." (Or if they are, the subject is not mentioned.) There is no drug problem. In short, I have described college life of a bygone day.
But don't misunderstand me. My teens were the Torrid Twenties and exactly the same things went on then as now . . . but were kept under cover. When I was a freshman in college, the nearest connection for marijuana was a drugstore a hundred yards off campus; for H or C it was necessary to walk another block. But bootleg liquor (tax-free) would be delivered on or off campus at any hour.
Did I avail myself of any of these amenities? None of your business, Buster!
As for sex, each generation thinks it invented sex; each generation is totally mistaken. Anything along that line today was commonplace both in Pompeii and in Victorian England; the differences lie only in the degree of coverup—if any.
I may never publish the book Men Are Exasperating; I'm not sure it has a market and, at my age, there are more stories that I want to write (and are certain of publication) than I can possibly write before the black camel kneels at my door.
I hope you like Puddin'.
According to Daddy, I'll eat anything standing still or even moving slowly. But Mother said nonsense, I simply have a high metabolic rate.
Daddy answered, "You haven't had it checked, so how do you know? Puddin', stand sideways and let me look at you."
Junior said, "She hasn't got a 'sideways,'" and let loose a perfectly horrible laugh that is supposed to sound like Woody Woodpecker and does, only worse. Of what use is the male of the species between the ages of two and sixteen? Later on, they are bearable, even indispensable—at least I would find it difficult to dispense with Cliff, although Junior may never be an asset.
That's how I went on a diet.
It started with Cliff—most things do. I am going to marry Cliff, only I haven't told him yet. I have never had any cause to doubt the sincerity of Cliff's devotion, but I have sometimes wondered what it was he found most attractive about me: my character, disposition, and true worth, or my so-to-speak physical attributes.
The bathroom scales were beginning to make me think it was the former. Perhaps that should have made me happy, but I have yet to find the girl who would swap a twenty-one-inch waist and a good silhouette for sterling merit. Not that I could hope to be a raving beauty, but a few wolf whistles never did any harm and are good for the morale.
I had just had a chance to test Cliff's point of view. A girl showed up at school who was exactly my size; we compared measurements. The point is, on Clarice it looked good—cursive and bountiful but good. Maureen, I told myself, here is a chance to get an honest opinion out of Cliff.
I saw to it that he got a good look at her at tennis practice. As we left I said craftily, "That new girl, Clarice—she has a lovely figure."
Cliff looked over his shoulder and replied. "Oh, sure—from her ankles down."
I had my answer and I didn't like it. Cliff didn't care for my type of figure; divorced from my personality it did not appeal to him. I should have felt a warm glow, knowing it for true love. I didn't; I felt terrible.
It was when I refused a second helping of potatoes that evening that
the subject of my metabolism came up.
I went to the library next day and looked into this matter of diet. I hadn't known there were so many books about it. Finally I found one that made sense: Eat and Grow Slender. That struck me as an excellent idea.
I took it home to study. I got a few crackers and some cheese and ate them absent-mindedly while I thumbed through the book. There was a plan for losing ten pounds in ten days; the menus looked pretty skimpy. There was another for losing ten pounds in a month. That's for me, I said; no need to be fanatic.
There was a chapter about calories. They make it so simple: one ice-cream cone, one hundred and fifty calories; three dates, eighty-four calories.
My eye lit on "soda crackers"; I knew they wouldn't count much and they didn't—only twenty-one calories apiece. Then I looked up "cheese."
Arithmetic stirred in my brain and I had a chilly feeling. I went into Daddy's study and used his postal scale to weigh the cheese that had not already become Maureen.
I did the arithmetic three times. Including two little bits of fudge I had eaten six hundred and seventy calories, more than half of a day's allowance as given in the reducing diet! And I had only meant to stay the pangs until dinnertime.
Maureen, I said, this time you've got to be a fanatic; it's the ten-day die-trying diet for you.
I planned to keep my affairs to myself, selecting the diet from what was placed before me, but such a course is impossible in a family that combines the worst aspects of a Senate investigation with the less brutal methods of a third degree. I got away with passing up the cream-of-tomato soup by being a little bit late, but when I refused the gravy, there was nothing to do but show them the book.
Mother said a growing girl needed her food. I pointed out that I had quit growing vertically and it was time I quit horizontally. Junior opened his mouth and I stuffed a roll into it. That gave Daddy a chance to say, "Let's put it up to Doc Andrews. If he gives her the green light, she can starve herself gaunt. She's a free agent."
So Daddy and I went to Doctor Andrews' office next day. Daddy had an appointment anyhow—he has terrible colds every spring. Doctor Andrews sent Daddy across the hall to Doctor Grieb who specializes in allergies and things, then he saw me.
I've known Doctor Andrews since my first squawk, so I told him everything, even about Cliff, and showed him the book. He thumbed through it, then he weighed me and listened to my heart and took my blood pressure. "Go ahead," he told me, "but make it the thirty-day diet. I don't want you fainting in the classroom."
I guess I had counted on him to save me from my will power. "How about exercise?" I said hopefully. "I'm pretty active. Won't I need to eat more to offset it?"
He roared. "Honey child," he said, "do you know how far you would have to hike to burn up one chocolate malt? Eight miles! It will help, but not much."
"How long do I keep this up?"—I asked faintly.
"Until you reach the weight you want—or until your character plays out."
I marched out with my jaw set. If a girl doesn't have a figure or character either, what has she got left?
Mother was home when we got there. Daddy picked her up and kissed her and said, "Now you've got two of us on diets!"
"Two?" said Mother.
"Look." Daddy peeled off his shirt. His arms were covered with little red pin pricks, some redder than others, arranged in neat rows. "I'm allergic," he announced proudly. "Those aren't real colds. I'm allergic to practically everything. That one"—he pointed to a red welt—"is bananas. That one is corn. That one is cow's milk protein. And there is pollen in honey. Wait." He hauled out a list: "Rhubarb, tapioca, asparagus, lima beans, coconut, mustard, cow's milk, apricot, beets, carrots, lamb, cottonseed oil, lettuce, oysters, chocolate—here, you read it; it's your problem."
"It's a good thing that I went to the campus today and signed up for an evening class in domestic dietetics. From now on this family is going to be fed scientifically," Mother said.
That should have been the worst of it, but it wasn't. Junior announced that he was training for hockey and he had to have a training-table diet—which to him meant beef, dripping with blood, whole-wheat toast, and practically nothing else. Last season he had discovered that, even with lead weights in his pockets, he didn't have what it took for a body check. Next season he planned to be something between Paul Bunyan and Gorgeous George. Hence the diet.
By now, Mother was on a diet, too, a scientific one, based on what she had learned during the two weeks she had actually attended classes. Mother pored over charts and we each had separate trays like a hospital, the time I broke my ankle playing second base for the West Side Junior Dodgers. Mother says a girl with my figure should not be a tomboy, but I said that a tomboy should not have my figure. Anyhow, I am no longer a tomboy since Cliff came into my life.
Somehow, Mother found things that weren't on Daddy's verboten list—stewed yak and pickled palm fronds and curried octopus and such. I asked if Daddy had been checked for those too? He said, "Tend to your knitting, Puddin'," and helped himself to more venison pasty. I tried not to watch.
Mother's own diet was as esoteric, but less attractive. She tried to tempt Junior and me with her seaweed soup or cracked wheat or raw rhubarb, but we stuck to our own diets. Eating is fun, but only if it's food.
Breakfast was easiest; Daddy breakfasted later than I did—he had no lectures earlier than ten o'clock that semester.
I would lie abed while our budding athlete wolfed down his Breakfast of Champions, then slide out at the last minute, slurp my glass of tomato juice (twenty-eight calories), and be halfway to school before I woke up. By then it would be too late to be tempted.
I carried my pitiful little lunch. Cliff started packing his lunch, too, and we picnicked together. He never noticed what I ate or how much.
I didn't want Cliff to notice, not yet. I planned to make him faint with the way I would look in my new formal at graduation prom.
It did not work out. Cliff took two final exams early and left for California for the summer and I spent the night of the prom in my room, nibbling celery (four calories per stalk) and thinking about life.
We got ready for our summer trip immediately thereafter. Daddy voted for New Orleans.
Mother shook her head. "Impossibly hot. Besides, I don't want you tempted by those Creole restaurants."
"Just what I had in mind," Daddy answered. "Finest gourmet restaurants in the country. You can't keep us on diets while traveling; it isn't practical. Antoine's, here I come!"
"No," said Mother.
"Yes," said Daddy.
So we went to California. I was ready to throw my weight (which was still too much) in with Daddy, when California was mentioned. I hadn't expected to see Cliff until fall. I put thoughts of bouillabaisse and Shrimp Norfolk out of mind; Cliff won, but it was nearer than I like to think.
The trip was hardly a case of merrie-merrie-be. Junior sulked because he wasn't allowed to take along his lifting weights, and Mother was loaded with charts and reference books and menus. Each time we stopped she would enter into long negotiations, involving a personal interview with the chef, while we got hungrier, and hungrier.
We were coming to Kingman, Arizona, when Mother announced that she didn't think we could find a restaurant to take care of our needs. "Why not?" demanded Daddy. "The people there must eat."
Mother shuffled her lists and suggested that we go on through to Las Vegas. Daddy said that if he had known this trip was going to be another Donner party, he would have studied up on how to cook human flesh.
While they discussed it we slid through Kingman and turned north toward Boulder Dam. Mother looked worriedly at the rugged hills and said, "Perhaps you had better turn back, Charles. It will be hours before we reach Las Vegas and there isn't a thing on the map."
Daddy gripped the wheel and looked grim. Daddy will not backtrack for less than a landslide, as Mother should have known.
I was beyond caring. I expected to lea
ve my bones whitening by the road with a notice: She tried and she died.
We had dropped out of those hills and into the bleakest desert imaginable when Mother said, "You'll have to turn back, Charles. Look at your gasoline gauge."
Daddy set his jaw and speeded up. "Charles!" said Mother.
"Quiet!" Daddy answered. "I see a gas station ahead."
The sign read Santa Claus, Arizona. I blinked at it, thinking I was at last seeing a mirage. There was a gas station, all right, but that wasn't all.
You know what most desert gas stations look like—put together out of odds and ends. Here was a beautiful fairytale cottage with wavy candy stripes in the shingles. It had a broad brick chimney—and Santa Claus was about to climb down the chimney!
Maureen, I said, you've overdone this starvation business; now you are out of your head.
Between the station and the cottage were two incredible little dolls' houses. One was marked Cinderella's House and Mistress Mary Quite Contrary was making the garden grow. The other one needed no sign; the Three Little Pigs, and Big Bad Wolf was stuck in its chimney.
"Kid stuff!" says Junior, and added, "Hey, Pop, do we eat here? Huh?"
"We just gas up," answered Daddy. "Find a pebble to chew on. Your mother has declared a hunger strike."
Mother did not answer and headed toward the cottage. We went inside, a bell bonged, and a sweet contralto voice boomed, "Come in! Dinner is ready!"
The inside was twice as big as the outside and was the prettiest dining room imaginable, fresh, new, and clean. Heavenly odors drifted out of the kitchen. The owner of the voice came out and smiled at us.
We knew who she was because her kitchen apron had "Mrs. Santa Claus" embroidered across it. She made me feel slender, but for her it was perfectly right. Can you imagine Mrs. Santa Claus being skinny?
"How many are there?" she asked.