World in a Bottle

Star-crossed? Worse than that! Even Earth itself was hopelessly out of reach for these landlocked space-travelers who lived in a—
By ALLEN KIM LANG
Illustrated by DICK FRANCIS
Pouring sweat and breathing shallow, I burned east on U.S. Twenty at ninety miles an hour, wishing I could suck into my lungs some of the wind that howled across the windshield.
I heard the siren in my phones. I glanced out the left side of my helmet to find a blue-clad figure on a motorcycle looming up beside me, waving me toward the shoulder. A law-abider to the last gasp of asphyxia, I braked my little green beast over to the berm. The state cop angled his bike across my left headlamp and stalked back to where I sat, tugging a fat book of traffic-tickets out of his hip pocket.
Unscrew that space-helmet, Sonny, he said. You've just been grounded.
Grounded, I'll grant, I said, my voice wheezing from the speaker on the chest of my suit; but I can't take off the fishbowl, officer.
Then maybe you'd better climb out of your flying saucer, the policeman suggested. And if you're toting pearl-handled ray-guns, just leave 'em hang.
I got out of the car, keeping my hands in view, feeling like the fugitive from a space-opera this cop evidently took me for. He examined me the way a zoologist might examine the first live specimen of a new species of carnivore; very interested, very cautious. After observing the cut of my wash-and-wear plastic sterility-suit—known to us who wear them as a chastity-suit—the policeman walked around me to examine my reserve-air tank, which is cunningly curved and cushioned against my spine so that I can lean back without courting lordosis. He inspected the bubble of plastic that fit over my head like the belljar over a museum specimen, and stared at the little valve on the left shoulder of my suit, where used air was wheezing out asthmatically. I guess fallout has got you bugged, he said.
Not fallout, bacteria, I explained. I'm one of the Lapins from Central University.