GEORGE R. R. MARTIN
Run To Starlight
Hill stared dourly at the latest free-fall football results from the Belt as they danced across the face of his desk console, but his mind was elsewhere. For the seventeenth time that week, he was silently cursing the stupidity and shortsightedness of the members of the Starport City Council.
The damn councilmen persisted in cutting the allocation for an artificial gravity grid out of the departmental budget every time Hill put it in. They had the nerve to tell him to stick to “traditional” sports in planning his recreational program for the year.
The old fools had no idea of the way free-fall football was catching on throughout the system, although he’d tried to explain it to them God knows how many times. The Belt sport should be an integral part of any self-respecting recreational program. And, on Earth, that meant you had to have a gravity grid. He’d planned on installing it beneath the stadium, but now—
. . .