Pressure Man

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If he had been asked to rely on public transport he would have refused to make the trip. He hated the crowded, clanking, sooty, coal-burning multicarriers with their surly Civil Service attendants. He hated surface travel in general, finding the contrast between the clean, empty reaches of space and the decaying planet to be almost nauseous.

He did not, as did many spacers, hold a belligerent contempt for old Earth. She was, after all, the source, the only source of many things, the mother of all, home. She reeked and rotted and continued to condone the overproduction of Goethe’s man, so admirable in the individual, so deplorable in his masses. He did not feel contempt for Earth herself, only her people. He showed his impatience by growling obscenities as he was forced to the blown dunes at the side of the two remaining lanes of what once had been a four-lane superhighway to allow passage of a big drone cargo carrier.

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