The passengers were pressed tightly into their seats by the G-force acceleration as the plane climbed for orbit. Doctor Matthew N’banga closed his eyes until he felt the fluttering, falling sensation that meant the plane had achieved orbit and zero gravity. He slipped on his console headset as the plane began its trek east, towards Los Angeles. From there, N’banga would be taking another plane further east-southeast to New Mexico and the World Ship Preserve. On the eyepiece viewscreen of his console was a representation of the Ship’s periodic table of elements; two hundred and twenty-seven in all. N’banga was one of the world’s top theoretical physicists; he had worked a number of years ago with the Nairobi Seven; an international group of physicists, chemists and astrophysicists who had successfully disproved the Unified Field Theory; a several-decades-old fallacy that had hobbled physics for far too long. N’banga was joining the Ship Survey Expedition at the World Ship Summit’s request.
