Word: lightly
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...instruments before his eyes fade from view in a brown haze. The feet and arms are now difficult to move because they are eight times heavier than normal. Consciousness clouds, and for a moment he will wait in heavy, silent oppression. Weightless World. Then his body will become suddenly light, as the rocket burns out at last, and he commences the fall toward the center of the earth that will continue for 4^ hours. He will have dropped, as if over a precipice, into a still and weightless world. He will feel no motion. He will not rock and sway...
Bright spots of sunshine outline the ports on the cabin wall and floor. But outside of these spots of light, there is darkness in the cabin. If he moves his hand away from this shaft of light, it becomes invisible in the darkness. There is a sharp demarcation between light and darkness in space. Peering down through the earth's milky cloud veil, he will recognize continents and oceans, even make out objects one-sixth of a mile long or wide [e.g., the Pentagon...
...Question. Then, as quickly as it went away, the peculiar daylight of space will return. Again there will be no twilight, just darkness-then light in the space cabin. And then, just before he completes the first orbit, a query will come from earth: Is the physical condition of the vehicle and his physiological condition adequate for another or possibly two more orbits? He will have to search the ship, his body, and his soul for the correct answer to this question. No doubt he will have every indication that his ship is adequate. He will know little about...
Journey to Peking. Returning to Lhasa, the 17-year-old Dalai Lama received the Red emissaries with frank curiosity. Much of what they proposed-schools, roads, hospitals, light industry-met his approval. Many Tibetans welcomed the break with the feudal past, argued: "We must learn modern methods from someone-why not the Chinese?" The Dalai Lama made a six-month visit to Mao Tse-tung's new China, listened patiently to lectures on Marxism and Leninism, saw factories, dams, parades. Back in Tibet, Red technicians set to work. Some 3,000 Tibetan students were shipped off to school...
...themes may be serious but the tone is light, and the creatures who take themselves most seriously eventually find flaws in their systems. The Chaplain, for all his awkwardness, comes closest to being a true philosopher but even he fails. We have a set of characters, almost all intrinsically humorous, brought together, contradicting each other and themselves, alive in a world where everything seems accepted and nothing abnormal, and only love somes...