Read 04. Birth of Flux and Anchor for Free Online

suggested to complainers, was to get out and walk, he knew he had to put up with it.
    Except for a sergeant coming by to see that everyone was strapped in and colored lights to indicate ship progress and conditions, there was nothing other than one initial bang to indicate that the shuttle had left the mother ship and was now making its way down to the surface of Titan.
    Titan. Somehow it still didn't seem real. That was the trouble with the lack of viewing screens and the near lack of sensation. It hardly seemed that he had moved at all, particularly since boarding the ship in Earth orbit. Now, the takeoff from Earth— that had been an experience. And at Station G there had been plenty of provision for looking back at the blue and white Earth. After boarding the tin can, though, there had been no such sensations and no comparisons. He might as well have spent six weeks in solitary confinement.
    The trip down wound up being a corker though. You could really feel and hear when they hit the atmosphere, really get pains from the straps as you were flung this way and that, and at the extreme end of the journey it was like a cross between being on a runaway roller coaster and a small plane in a fierce thunderstorm. No one aboard said very much, and the sensations and restrictions of the seat webbing made it impossible to socialize even with people you'd made friends with on the trip out.
    Finally, though, with a rude bump they were down, and now there was all sorts of hissing and clanging about. It sounded like monsters were attacking the outer hull. He was only vaguely aware that the artificial gravity was off, when the sergeant walked back through and announced, "All right, ladies and gents, disconnect yer belts. We'll unload from the rear forward, row by row, please! You up front just stay seated—we'll get to you."
    The airlock opened, and, in turn, they emerged from the shuttle into a long tube of translucent yellow. Now, walking down the tube, he could feel the difference between the ship's gravity and Titan's, although the ship had been deliberately set close to Titan's so that everyone could get used to it. There was some unexplainable differences between artificial and real gravity, something the body seemed to sense and not like.
    To his great surprise, he emerged finally into a very typical-looking customs-and-immigration-type setup such as one might find at an airport on Earth. The only difference was that his personal documents for this were quiet a bit different from a mere passport, and the checkers were in the blue berets and dark greens of Commonwealth Security Command. All of them looked like they were designed in some factory to invade Mars and take it with their bare hands.
    "Papers, please." The big corporal looked both suspicious and bored at one and the same time. He took the papers, then looked at the newcomer as if doubting everything about him. Probably an Australian, the newcomer thought.
    "Um, let's see," said the corporal, punching some numbers into a console. "Yes. Haller, Tobias Gregson. Born Wanganui, New Zealand—"
    "No, that's not correct. I was born in Wellington," Haller told him politely. "I've tried to get that changed for the past two years."
    "Says here you were born in Wanganui."
    "Ah, yes, well, the person who took it was Pakistani, and I think she had some relations in Wanganui and it was the only city she knew in New Zealand. I met two other involuntary Wanganui natives on the ship out."
    The corporal sighed. "Dr. Haller, I don't give a flying New Zealand lamb's ass about that. If you are Haller of Wanganui, I can admit you. If you are disputing this data, I will be forced to refuse entry unless you can prove the error incontrovertably. You will be sent back to reboard the ship. Now, which will it be? There's others waiting."
    He sighed. "I'll take Wanganui, Corporal. At least it's on the right island."
    The corporal inserted a card in his machine, and there was a grinding noise, then