（外文电子版资料）John Christopher - The Drop.pdf

The Drop By JOHN CHRISTOPHER Certainly the cheapest way to get where you want to go is to be deported. And there are times when it proves the only possible way! Illustrated by EMSH WATER was always short between planets, even on a ship like the Ironrod, so my first goal in Forbeston on Mars was always the pool. I stripped down to trunks, ultraviolet checked, and plunged out into the green-tinted water. After blowing around a while, I lay back and floated. Above, beyond the almost invisible protective dome, there was the purple velvet of the Martian sky, flecked, nova that the Sun was low on the horizon, with the larger stars. One of them, unwinking and tremendous, was green—Earth, of course. From the pool to the club; the usual routine. The Senior Officers Club was on the corner of 49th and X, just across from the Department of Commerce building. I had belonged to it two years now, and at 34 was no longer the youngest member. A prodigy of 31 had got his masters ticket two or three months before. I checked in, and from his little cubbyhole Steve recognized me which was certainly an honor. He brought my mail down from it: box: half a dozen bills, two vocoletters from a distant cousin, and a pile of advertising voco-flips. Steve said: Whereve you been, Captain Newsam? The individual naming was another part of his technique. I had noticed that people he really had known for years he just called Captain, Commodore, or whatever it was. Venus to Mercury run, I told him. Clarkes Point, Karsville, Mordecai—the usual. You get around, he said. I stick here. Id heard the complaint from him before, and also from others in Forbeston and at other landfalls. They mostly looked contented enough, though. One place