Orbitsville

Bob Shaw

1975

When Captain Garamond is granted an audience with Elizabeth Lindstrom, the multi trillionaire president of Starflight Inc and effective ruler of Earth, he knows better than to complain when he's left waiting for hours.

He even manages to avoid showing any impatience when asked to answer the questions of her nine-year-old son Harald. But Harald is a spoilt brat and takes the opportunity to go climbing on the priceless statuary littering the wide terrace. When Harald falls from one such piece of artwork, Garamond is at the far end and is unable to stop the youngster from dashing his brains out on the unyielding surface. If not waiting had maybe been fatal before, Garamond knew that hanging around now would certainly be fatal, so he rushes for the star port where his flickerwing is docked before Elizabeth's minions could stop him.

Once out in the voids of space, Captain Garamond can stay ahead of those pursuing him, but he needs to get far enough ahead so that he can disappear. Difficult where merely having a flickerwing marks you out as part of Starflight Inc!

However, the captain has an old map showing a strange artefact in an out-of-the-way solar system. But when Garamond and his crew reach the system, they realise that they're in an entirely new ball game! Maybe even one that was big enough to take even Elizabeth's attention off them.

They soon realise that they have found a Dyson Sphere (See here for a definition for Dyson Sphere).

In such an environment the huddled masses of Earth would be quickly lost.

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This is a Gollancz Classic Science Fiction Edition

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