“On the other hand,” the red-faced man continued, “some people take to it like a duck takes to water. I was nearly forty when I got my first harness, and within a week I was cloud- running with the best of them.”

“Very good,” Hasson said, edging away.

“Yes, and I still fly in a tough area. Bradford The kids up there think nothing of coming in close, deliberate-like, and dropping you twenty or thirty metres.” The stranger paused to chuckle. “Doesn’t bother me, though. Strong stomach.”

“That’s great.” Hasson hurried to the door, then it occurred to him that a garrulous companion might be just what he needed to numb his mind during the Atlantic crossing. He paused and waited for the other man to catch up with him. “But you’re going to Canada the easy way.”

“Have to,” the man said, tapping himself on the chest. “Lungs won’t take the cold any more — otherwise I’d save myself the price of a plane ticket. Bloody robbery, that’s what it is.”

Hasson nodded agreement as he walked back to the lounge with his new companion. Personal flying was both easy and cheap, and with the advent of the counter-gravity harness conventional aviation had fallen into an abrupt decline. At first it had been simply a matter of economics, then the skies had become too clustered with people — millions of liberated, mobile, foolhardy, uncontrollable people — for aircraft to operate safely, except in strictly policed corridors. The formerly lucrative passenger traffic across the North Atlantic had been replaced by cargo planes carrying handfuls of passengers on sparse schedules, and the cost per head had risen accordingly.