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 LEISURE
STUDIES
IN A
GLOBAL
ERA
Leisure, Health
and Well-Being
A Holistic Approach

EDITED BY ZSUZSANNA
BENKO, ISHWAR MODI
AND KLÁRA TARKÓ
Leisure Studies in a Global Era

Series Editors
Karl Spracklen
Leeds Metropolitan University
Leeds, UK

Karen Fox
University of Alberta
Edmonton, Canada
In this book series, we defend leisure as a meaningful, theoretical, fram-
ing concept; and critical studies of leisure as a worthwhile intellectual
and pedagogical activity. This is what makes this book series distinctive:
we want to enhance the discipline of leisure studies and open it up to a
richer range of ideas; and, conversely, we want sociology, cultural geog-
raphies and other social sciences and humanities to open up to engaging
with critical and rigorous arguments from leisure studies. Getting beyond
concerns about the grand project of leisure, we will use the series to dem-
onstrate that leisure theory is central to understanding wider debates
about identity, postmodernity and globalisation in contemporary societ-
ies across the world. The series combines the search for local, qualitatively
rich accounts of everyday leisure with the international reach of debates
in politics, leisure and social and cultural theory. In doing this, we will
show that critical studies of leisure can and should continue to play a
central role in understanding society. The scope will be global, striving to
be truly international and truly diverse in the range of authors and topics.

More information about this series at

http://www.springer.com/series/14823
 Zsuzsanna Benkő • Ishwar Modi • Klára Tarkó
Editors

Leisure, Health and

Well-Being
A Holistic Approach
Editors
Zsuzsanna Benkő Ishwar Modi
Institute of Applied Health Sciences and India International Institute of Social
Health Promotion Sciences
University of Szeged, Juhász Gyula Faculty Jaipur, India
of Education
Szeged, Hungary

Klára Tarkó
Institute of Applied Health Sciences and
Health Promotion
University of Szeged, Juhász Gyula Faculty
of Education
Szeged, Hungary

Leisure Studies in a Global Era

ISBN 978-3-319-33256-7    ISBN 978-3-319-33257-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33257-4

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016962708

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and trans-
mission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or
dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover image © D. Hurst / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The registered company is Springer International Publishing AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Preface

Under the title “Leisure, Health and Well-being”, subtitle “Holistic

Leisure and Health”, the International Sociological Association, Sociology
of Leisure Research Committee (RC13), the Institute of Applied Health
Sciences and Health Promotion at the University of Szeged and the
Health Promotion Working Committee of the Hungarian Academy
of Sciences organised an international conference in Szeged, Hungary,
between 18 and 20 September 2013. The unity of these three concepts—
leisure, health and well-being—was acknowledged by all related profes-
sionals from the areas of Sociology, Psychology, Public Health, Sports,
Education and Tourism. Practical aspects like social integration, lifestyle,
lifelong learning, creativity and culture, spirituality, medical effects,
rehabilitation, mental health, pleasure or pressure, historicity, and the
sociological, psychological and pedagogical theories adapted to leisure
were studied. This indicated a national and international commitment
by presenters from Canada, America and Western Europe—the United
Kingdom and Germany (Part I); Central Eastern Europe, including the
Visegrad Four countries—Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and
Romania (Part II); and from Asia—India, Russia and China (Part III).
The Institute of Applied Health Sciences and Health Promotion, which
hosted the conference, is among the first of its kind, being multidisci-
plinary in nature, integrating several disciplines, such as medical sciences,
psychology, sociology and education, all available within the University
v
vi Preface

of Szeged. Between 1995 and 2000, the Institute was the initiator and
leader of wide-scale national networking, playing a remarkable role in
the increase in the number of health promoters in Hungary. At the same
time that it was founded, it launched and administered the education
of health sciences teachers, health promoters—including mental health
promoters and in-service professionals—teaching a considerable number
of students. Following the Bologna Process, the Institute played a decisive
role in launching the Bachelor of Recreation Organisation and Health
Promotion course. The Institute’s international openness is proven and
underlined by all those activities surrounding international mobility,
conference participation, work on the development of European teach-
ing material and leadership, culminating in hosting and organising this
magnificent conference.
Even if this compilation of selected papers is only the “tip of the ice-
berg” in terms of the richness that could be brought to life by the union
of leisure, health and well-being, it helps to bridge the gap between indi-
vidual disciplines studying leisure and health, demonstrating the essential
multidisciplinarity and underlying intersectorality. This selection could
be a key text book in educating health promoters, mental health promot-
ers, leisure and sports professionals, as well as health, sport and leisure
sciences teachers, and may also provide a state of the arts overview of the
international study of leisure and health.
On behalf of the editorial board, I offer this book for the kind atten-
tion of the humble reader.

Klára Tarkó
Institute of Applied Health Sciences and Health Promotion
Juhász Gyula Faculty of Education
University of Szeged
Szeged, Hungary
 Contents

1 Healthy Leisure and Leisureful Health: Introductory

‘State of the Art’  1
Zsuzsanna Benkő

Part I “Go West”   9

2 The Sea, the Sea … Historical and Sociological

Perspectives on the Shaping of Seaside Leisure in Rural
Wales 11
Gaye Heathcote

3 Ethical Aspects of Leisure Choices and the Autonomous

Chooser 17
Colin Wringe

4 ‘This Side of Paradise’: The Role of Online Fandom

in the Construction of Leisure, Well-Being and the
Lifeworld 23
Karl Spracklen

vii
viii Contents

5 Lunchboxes, Health, Leisure and Well-­Being: Analysing

the Connections 45
Vicki Harman and Benedetta Cappellini

6 Wellness Customers and Their Needs 61

Peter Kalkowski and Gerd Paul

7 Leisure Activities in Care Homes: How Do they Relate

to the Well-Being of the Elderly? 73
Dietmar Goelitz, Christine Trenkamp, and Peter Paulus

Part II The “Visegrád Four” 79

8 Leisure and Pleasure: Healthy, Useful, Pleasant: Why

Don’t We Do It? 81
György Bárdos and Júlia Ábrahám

9 Trapped by Sense of Comfort: Leisure Time Consumption

Habits from the Aspect of Economic Psychology  91
László L. Lippai

10 Associations Between a Sedentary Lifestyle and Negative

Mood State and the Risk of Breast Cancer  99
Melinda Látos, Zita Sándor, Pálma Kriston, Rózsa Havancsák,
Zoltán Horváth, Attila Paszt, Zsolt Simonka, György Lázár,
and Márta Csabai

11 The Role of Leisure in Prevention and Treatment of

Addiction  115
Katalin Lacsán, Zoltán Arany, and Attila Farkas
 Contents ix

12 Rethinking the Relationship Between Sport, Recreation

and Tourism  121
Ferenc Győri and László Balogh

13 Lifestyle Research among Upper-Primary and Secondary

School Pupils in Hungary, Southern Great Plains Region
(2012)  135
Klára Tarkó and Zsuzsanna Benkő

14 Youth and Leisure Time  153

Ádám Nagy, Levente Székely, and Márta Barbarics

15 Facebook-Diagnostics: Detection of Mental Hygiene

Problems Based on Online Traces  171
György Csepeli and Richárd Nagyfi

16 Leisure-Time Activities and Lifelong Learning  179

Iva Jedličková

17 Patterns of Leisure-Time Activities in the Context of a

Youth Festival in Romania  187
Kálmán Ercsei, Zita Kiss, Réka Plugor, Júlia Szabó, and
Valér Veres

18 Ethnicity, Leisure and Popular Culture  229

Justyna Kijonka

19 Leisure as a Mean of Older People’s Integration (Based

on the Example of Silesian Voivodeship Inhabitants)  247
Agata Zygmunt
x Contents

Part III “Oh, East Is East …”   271

20 Leisure, Health and Wellbeing: The Ultimate Quest

of Humanity  273
Ishwar Modi

21 Professional English Language Study as a Creative

Leisure Pursuit  281
Natalya Malygina and Catherine Shiriaeva

22 On the Value of Parks and Public Health: A Case Study

of Xuanwu Park in Beijing  291
Ma Huidi and Liu Er

Epilogue  309

Index  311
 Notes on Contributors

Júlia Ábrahám is a teacher of physical education, coach of athletics, swimming

and skiing (Hungarian University of Physical Education, 1989), and also a jurist
(Pázmány Péter Catholic University, 2003). She has been the founder and direc-
tor of the Fitness Academy (1996–), a member (1996–) and secretary (2011–)
of the Recreation Board of the Hungarian Society of Sport Sciences and a found-
ing member of the National Federation of Fitness and Wellness Clubs.
Zoltán Arany is a social worker, addiction consultant, family therapist and
health sciences teacher. He has worked at the Dr. Terézia Farkasinszky Youth
Drug Centre for over 20 years. Currently he works as a lecturer at the University
of Szeged in the Department of Social Work and Social Policy within the Faculty
of Health Sciences and Social Care.
László Balogh is an associate professor and former head of the Physical
Education and Sport Sciences Institute within the Faculty of Education at the
University of Szeged. He is president of the Hungarian Rectors’ Conference Sport
Sciences Committee. At present he is director of the Sport Sciences Coordination
Institute at the University of Debrecen.
Márta Barbarics studied conductive pedagogy at the International Petö
Institute, earned her BA degree in American Studies, and MA degree in English
and Mathematics Teaching, at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. She teaches
Mathematics and English at a bilingual secondary school and carries out research
on the use of gamification in education.

xi
xii Notes on Contributors

György Bárdos is a full professor and former founding director of the Institute
of Health Promotion and Sport Sciences (IHPSS) at the Eötvös Loránd
University, Budapest, Hungary. He is originally a biologist, specialising in physi-
ology, behavioural sciences and later systems psychophysiology.
Zsuzsanna Benkö is the founder and former head of the Institute of Applied
Health Sciences and Health Promotion at the Juhász Gyula Faculty of Education,
University of Szeged, a sociologist and teacher of German and History. She has
a pioneering and leading role in the theory, methodology and institutionalisa-
tion of health promotion in Hungary, including a special focus on leisure.
Benedetta Cappellini is a senior lecturer in Marketing and Consumer
Behaviour at Royal Holloway, University of London. Her research interests are
in food consumption, material culture, family consumption, and motherhood
and consumption.
Márta Csabai is a professor and head of the Department of Personality,
Clinical, and Health Psychology within the Institute of Psychology at the
University of Szeged. She is also director of the Applied Health Psychology
Postgraduate Program at the University of Szeged.
György Csepeli is a professor of social psychology and head of the
Interdisciplinary Social Research Doctoral Program at the Faculty of Social
Sciences of the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He has been visiting profes-
sor at various American universities. Recently he has been at Montclair State
University.
Kálmán Ercsei is a sociologist and affiliate researcher at the Max Weber
Foundation for Social Research—Cluj Napoca, Romania. His main research
areas are the sociology of youth, sociology of education and social structure.
Attila Farkas is a family and couples therapist, social worker in health care,
MSc trainer (youth work, NGOs) and therapeutic helper in additional health
care. He has been working as a professional for almost 20 years in the areas of
higher education, vocational training and in therapeutic helping jobs.
Dietmar Goelitz is a psychologist interested in the development of well-being
in the elderly and its measurement. He was previously research assistant for the
Finding Good Nursing Care Easily project at the Centre of Applied Sciences of
Health (Leuphana University Lueneburg).
 Notes on Contributors xiii

Ferenc Györi is currently working as an educator and researcher, teaching

courses in cultural geography at the Doctoral School of Earth Sciences of the
University of Szeged and in sport tourism and recreation at the Institute of
Physical Education and Sport Sciences within the Faculty of Education at the
University of Szeged. He is also head of the Institute and chair of the Department
of Recreation and Sport Health.
Vicki Harman is a senior lecturer in Sociology at Royal Holloway, University
of London. Her research interests include family life, gender, social class and
ethnicity.
Rózsa Havancsák works in the field of health psychology with dermatology
and oncology patients in the Albert Szent-Györgyi Medical Centre, Szeged. Her
research focuses on psychological interventions with melanoma malignum
patients.
Gaye Heathcote is an emeritus professor in Health and Social Care at
Manchester Metropolitan University, having been a reader and research profes-
sor in Health Studies. Previously she was a senior research fellow and subse-
quently an honorary senior research fellow at Keele University.
Zoltán Horváth has been a surgeon at the Department of Surgery, University
of Szeged, since 2008. His research fields are oncological and general surgery.
Ma Huidi is the director and distinguished researcher fellow at the Centre of
Leisure Studies, Chinese National Academy of Arts, was elected fellow of the
American Academy of Leisure Science (2006), was a member of the Board of
Research Committee of Leisure Sociology for the International Sociological
Association (2010, 2014) and a senior fellow and founding member of the
World Leisure Academy (2010).
Iva Jedličková is a researcher whose major field of study is adult education and
the theory of instruction. She is now working as a senior lecturer at the University
of Hradec Králové, Czech Republic, in the Department of Social Pathology and
Sociology within the Faculty of Education.
Peter Kalkowski studied social sciences in Göttingen. He has been a research
associate at the Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut Göttingen (SOFI—
Sociological Research Institute Göttingen) since 1989.
Justyna Kijonka is a lecturer at the Institute of Sociology of the University of
Silesia in Katowice. Her research interests include the problems of national and
xiv Notes on Contributors

ethnic identity, collective memory, migration, and German–Polish relations.

She is currently working on a book based on her field study in Germany about
migration from Upper Silesia to the Federal Republic of Germany.
Zita Kiss is a PhD candidate at the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj Napoca in
Romania. Her research interests are the sociology of youth, sociology of educa-
tion and sociology of housing, and she has published in these areas.
Pálma Kriston is a sociologist, psychologist and PhD student at the Doctoral
School of Education in Szeged. Her research field focuses on mental health sta-
tus and risk behaviour among adolescents and young adults.
Katalin Lacsán is a clinical psychologist who completed her postgraduate stud-
ies at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Pécs in 2014.
Melinda Látos has been a psychologist at the Department of Surgery at the
University of Szeged since 2009. Her research has focused on psychological risk
factors among breast cancer and kidney transplant patients.
György Lázár is a surgeon and has been head of the Department of Surgery at
the University of Szeged since 2004. His research fields are oncological and
minimally invasive surgery.
László L. Lippai is an associate professor at the Institute of Applied Health
Sciences and Health Promotion, Juhász Gyula Faculty of Education, University
of Szeged. He is also a psychologist and is the head of the Health Psychology and
Mental Health Promotion professional group.
Er Liu is a professor and the chairperson of Harbin Institute of Technology at
Weihai College of Languages and Literature, whose areas of interest are leisure
and lifestyle studies, environmental sociology and Chinese literature.
Natalya Malygina is an associate professor of the Ural Federal University,
whose research interests include environmentalism and environmental risks,
with an emphasis on the extreme northern territories, some sport and extreme
tourism and professional English language. She is a member of the APECS
(Arctic Polar Early Career Scientists) Education and Outreach Group and of its
mentor database.
Ishwar Modi is a professor and the founding father of leisure studies in India.
He is presently the director of the India International Institute of Social Sciences,
a former member of the Executive Committee of ISA (2006–2010) and was also
 Notes on Contributors xv

the president of the ISA Research Committee on the Sociology of Leisure

(2010–2014).
Ádám Nagy is the founder of the Új Ifjúsági Szemle journal, the Civil Review
periodical and is the founding president of the Excenter Research Centre.
Formerly he presided over the council of the National Civil Fund. Currently he
is an associate professor at the Johann Selye University, and has a Bolyai
Scholarship from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
Richárd Nagyfi is a professional data-miner, network researcher and sociolo-
gist. Between 2012 and 2013 he researched online mental health solutions and
diagnostics at the Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest.
Attila Paszt is a surgeon at the Department of Surgery, University of Szeged.
He has over 20 years’ clinical experience. He is an active member of the University
of Szeged Breast Cancer Unit. His research fields are oncological and minimally
invasive laparoscopic surgery.
Gerd Paul is a teacher and sociologist. He has been a research associate at the
Soziologisches Forschungsinstitut Göttingen (SOFI—Sociological Research
Institute Göttingen) since 2000.
Peter Paulus is a professor of psychology and the head of the Centre of Applied
Sciences of Health at the Leuphana University, Lueneburg. He was the leader of
the Finding Good Nursing Care Easily project.
Réka Plugor is a research associate at the University of Leicester. She has a
broad range of research interests and has published in the areas of sociology of
work, education, youth, health and transitions.
Zita Sándor is an assistant lecturer at the Szent István University Faculty of
Economics, Agriculture and Health Sciences, and is a psychologist in the
Department of Surgery at the Pándy Kálmán County Hospital in Gyula. Her
research has focused on illness representation and anxiety among breast cancer
patients.
Zsolt Simonka has been a surgeon at the Department of Surgery, University of
Szeged, since 2006. His research fields are oncological and minimally invasive
surgery.
Catherine Shiriaeva is a grade 5 student at the Ural Federal University, who is
interested in extreme tourism and professional English language.
xvi Notes on Contributors

Karl Spracklen is a professor of Leisure Studies at Leeds Beckett University. He

has published four key monographs on leisure theory, all with Palgrave
Macmillan: The Meaning and Purpose of Leisure (2009); Constructing Leisure:
Historical and Philosophical Debates (2011); Whiteness and Leisure (2013); and
Digital Leisure (2015).
Júlia Szabó is a PhD candidate in the Sociology Department of the Corvinus
University of Budapest and an affiliate researcher at the Max Weber Foundation
for Social Research. Her current research interests include the sociology of
youth, sociology of education and labour market research.
Levente Székely was a researcher at the Information Society Research Centre
(ITTK) of Budapest University of Technology and Economics. He is currently
the research director of Kutatópont Ltd and a research fellow in the Institute of
Behavioural Sciences and Communication Theory at the Corvinus University of
Budapest.
Klára Tarkó is a college professor, head of the Institute of Applied Health
Sciences and Health Promotion and vice-dean for Education at the Juhász Gyula
Faculty of Education, University of Szeged, and a sociologist and teacher of
English and Physics. She was elected vice-president at large for the Executive
Committee of ISA RC13 Sociology of Leisure for the period of 2014–2018.
Christine Trenkamp is a gerontologist and previously worked on the Finding
Good Nursing Care Easily project at the Centre of Applied Sciences of Health.
Valér Veres is an associate professor at the Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj
Napoca, in the Faculty of Sociology and Social Work, and is head of the
Department of Sociology and Social Work in Hungarian Language. His research
interests are national identity and the social structure of ethnic/national minori-
ties, the sociology of youth and population studies.
Colin Wringe is a honorary fellow of Keele University, where he was previously
a reader in Education. He has been a member of the Philosophy of Education
Society of Great Britain since its foundation in 1963, having served two sub-
stantial terms as the Society’s treasurer.
Agata Zygmunt is an assistant professor at the Institute of Sociology at the
University of Silesia in Katowice. Her scientific interests are focused on the soci-
ology of social problems, demography, social policy and gender studies.
 List of Figures

Fig. 5.1   Priya’s shapes 52

Fig. 5.2   Priya’s bento-style box for her nine-year -old son 53
Fig. 5.3   Jenny’s lunchbox for her ten-year-old son 56
Fig. 7.1   Path model with associations between leisure activities and
psychological well-being (df = 62, Chi2 = 69, p = .24) 76
Fig. 8.1   Major dimensions of health 82
Fig. 8.2   Engel’s bio-psycho-social model 82
Fig. 8.3   Defining terms of well-being 85
Fig. 8.4   Factors regarded as contributing to one’s well-being 86
Fig. 8.5   Activities thought to improve well-being and to energize
people86
Fig. 11.1   Risk and protective factors in juvenile drug usage 117
Fig. 11.2   Integrated system of addiction treatment 118
Fig. 13.1   Education level of fathers by school 139
Fig. 13.2   Education level of mothers by school 139
Fig. 13.3   Daily fruit and vegetable consumption by school 140
Fig. 13.4   Sports/exercise activities organised outside school 142
Fig. 13.5   Sports/exercise activities outside school done as a hobby,
by school 143
Fig. 13.6   Theatre, concert, movie and museum-going
habits—monthly and never—of pupils, by school 146
Fig. 13.7   The frequency of never trying health-damaging
behaviours, by school 148

xvii
xviii List of Figures

Fig. 14.1   Places of spending free time (“Where do you usually

spend your free time on an average weekday and weekend?”
N2008 = 7861; N2012 = 7345; percentages) 160
Fig. 14.2   Leisure activities (“What do you usually do in your
free time?” N2008 = 6396; N2012 = 7345; percentages) 161
Fig. 14.3   Media consumption (N = 8000; percentages and averages) 161
Fig. 14.4   Holidays in the previous year (N2012 = 7672; percentages) 163
Fig. 14.5   Circle of friends—to spend free time with (“Do you
have a circle of friends with whom you usually spend
your free time?” N = 8000; percentages) 163
Fig. 14.6   Haunts (Do you have a favourite haunt, a permanent
meeting point where you could find some of your
friends and acquaintances even if you have not discussed
the meeting before? N = 7790; percentages) (**(p ≤ 0.001)) 165
Fig. 14.7   Description of haunts (Please, choose the most characteristic
description of your favourite haunt from the list below.
N = 2277; percentages) 166
Fig. 14.8   Company in haunts (“Who do you usually go to your
favourite haunt with?” N = 2253; percentages) 166
Fig. 14.9   Connection to leisure organizations (Do you have any
kind of connection with a leisure organization, club, or
group? N = 8000; percentages) 167
Fig. 15.1   The curve of a 24-year-old, ‘healthy’ male 176
Fig. 15.2   50-year-old, moderately depressed and stressed, slightly
anxious female’s curve 176
Fig. 15.3   17-year-old, severely depressed, anxious and stressed
male’s curve 177
Fig. 19.1   Senior’s preferable ways of spending leisure time 265
Fig. 19.2   Seniors’ most popular organized forms of activity 265
Fig. 19.3   Advantages of participating in organized forms of activity 266
Fig. 19.4   The level of satisfaction with the way of spending free time 267
Fig. 22.1   Age and sex distribution 298
Fig. 22.2   Medical insurance 298
Fig. 22.3   Metabolic syndrome 299
Fig. 22.4   Occupation 299
Fig. 22.5   Frequency of going to Parks (every week) 300
Fig. 22.6   The duration of each stay in the park 300
Fig. 22.7   Types of activity 301
 List of Figures xix

Fig. 22.8   Purpose in participating in the activity 301

Fig. 22.9   The importance of park to you 302
Fig. 22.10 How long have you been going to parks 303
Fig. 22.11 Benefits of participating in the activity 303
Fig. 22.12 The change in health condition after activities 304
 List of Tables

Table 7.1    Examples of nine-item scale measuring psychological

well-being for care home residents 75
Table 8.1    Correspondence between risk factors of
psychosomatic diseases and lifestyle elements 83
Table 8.2    A true/false table about planning and organizing leisure
activity87
Table 10.1   Study design 102
Table 10.2   Illness attributions 105
Table 10.3   Comparison of breast cancer patients with and without
physical activity (N = 131) 106
Table 10.4   Emotional factors, smoking, physical activity and
quality of life (N = 131) 108
Table 13.1   Research sample 138
Table 14.1   Average daily free time among different groups of young
people (average in hours; Nweekday = 6856;
Nweekend = 7221) 159
Table 14.2   Places never visited 2004–2012 (“How often do you
visit the following places…?”. “(hardly
ever) never” N = 8000; percentages) 162
Table 14.3   Spending free time aimlessly (“What do you usually
do in your free time?” “…not much,
just hanging around”) (N = 7294; percentages) 164
Table 15.1   Breakdown of the experimental subjects’ gender and age 175

xxi
xxii List of Tables

Table 17.1   Number of cases within the survey based on contact

questionnaires and thematic questionnaires, and the
average duration of the latter interviews 196
Table 17.2   Some important socio-demographic characteristics of
youth (%) 198
Table 17.3   Education level of parents (%) 200
Table 17.4   The frequency of leisure time activities—averages 203
Table 17.5   Results of the factor analysis: rotated factor matrix
(factorial scores, variance—%) 205
Table 17.A.1 Leisure time activities by gender and settlement
type—averages213
Table 17.A.2 Leisure time activities by educational level and
age—averages215
Table 17.A.3 Leisure time activities by economic status and
ethnicity—averages217
Table 17.A.4 Averages of the factor scores regarding the eight factor
groups by socio-demographical variables 219
Table 17.A.5 The variances of the eight factor groups by
socio-demographical variables 221
Table 19.1   Post-working age population in Poland
(2005–2012)253
Table 19.2   Life expectancy at age of 60 in Poland (2005–2012) 253
Table 19.3   Respondents by sex and age 263
Table 22.1  Heavy metal elements oozing from the sweat and
urine (100 grams) 305
 1
Healthy Leisure and Leisureful Health:
Introductory ‘State of the Art’
Zsuzsanna Benkő

The idea of researching leisure and health as mutually interrelated and

integrative phenomena is not new (see for example Caldwell and Smiths
1988; Coleman and Iso-Ahola 1993; Iso-Ahola 1994; Cassidy 1996;
Siegenthaler 1997; Stebbins 1997) and has been on the agenda ever since
(e.g. Son et al. 2011; Liu 2014; Zawadski et al. 2015). In the meantime
the understanding of the constituent concepts has evolved, offering a
platform for refining the nature and effects of their connections.
Health as a value seems to be an abstract category, while functionally it
is connected to all activities of everyday life. Resulting from a paradigm
change going on in the second half of the twentieth century, health is
now understood as a positive process covering individuals, groups and
the whole society, who are integrated into their natural and social envi-
ronments. Health is a complex phenomenon: the holistic health concept

Z. Benkő (*)
Institute of Applied Health Sciences and Health Promotion, Juhász Gyula
Faculty of Education, University of Szeged, Szeged, Hungary

© The Author(s) 2017 1

Z. Benkő et al. (eds.), Leisure, Health and Well-Being,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-33257-4_1
2 Z. Benkő

includes individual and social dimensions. The individual dimension

contains physical health; mental health—the thinking and decision-­
making ability; emotional health, meaning the individual is aware of his/
her emotions and expresses them; social health, by being integrated into
the communities; the influences of moral and religious principles; and
sexual health—the individual expresses his/her sexuality properly. The
social dimension includes the connection between the individual and
the social structure, social integration, the role in the social division of
labour, the social environment—living conditions, traffic and the public
health system—and the natural environment—healthy drinking-water
and environmental pollution.
According to the salutogenetic approach developed by Aaron
Antonovsky, in the process of enhancing health opportunities, every indi-
vidual or group possesses resources, which ‘are biological, material and
psychosocial factors that make it easier for people to perceive their lives
as consistent, structured and understandable’ (Lindström and Eriksson
2006: 241). Resources are ‘money, knowledge, experience, self-esteem,
healthy behaviour, commitment, social support, cultural capital, intel-
ligence, traditions and view of life’ (Lindström and Eriksson 2006: 241).
We might as well go on with the list of resources and add leisure to it.
Analogous to the holistic health concept, leisure can also be considered
as a holistic resource: it affects our physical, mental and emotional well-­
being (health), promotes social integration, socialises, educates, exercises
an effect on balancing sexual energies, it can be the means of expressing
our identity, and its performance is connected to our natural and built
environment. It promotes our Sense of Coherence, which is ‘the capabil-
ity to perceive that one can manage in any situation independent of what-
ever is happening in life’ (Lindström and Eriksson 2006: 241).
Being a real resource, leisure should be a pleasure instead of a pres-
sure. To understand this proposition, the social categories of Riesman
(Riesman et al. 2001) should be cited: the inner-directed and the other-­
directed characters. In the postmodern society the other-directed indi-
vidual is becoming more and more characteristic. For an other-directed
individual, the sources of direction are its peers (e.g. local, workplace,
friends, leisure communities). The objectives and attitudes of the other-­
directed individual are continuously changing in this control system, and
 1 Healthy Leisure and Leisureful Health: Introductory ‘State... 3

they strive to follow the signals emitted by others constantly throughout

life. Choices of the inner-directed individual are related to his/her person-
ality, and he/she is able to provide a very sensitive balance between his/
her aspirations and the effects of the outside world. The inner-directed
character develops the feeling of being able to control his/her life. In the
case of making healthy decisions about lifestyle choices, the role of inner
control increases. The above two character types raise the question of
preserving individual autonomy in choosing to make leisure a pleasure
and not a pressure. This autonomy is further threatened by the expansive
effects of fashion and the media. According to Simmel (1904), each form
of lifestyle can be fashion; everything can become fashion.
A similar dilemma is connected to activities that are seen as compul-
sory and a pressure by one individual, but as voluntary and a pleasure by
another. Health Promotion conceptualises the objectives of education in
accordance with the ‘reason, heart, hands’ motto and practice. It involves
the transfer of knowledge, cognitive and affective elements and manual
skills. Health teaching understands the process of learning in a differenti-
ated manner, so the concept covers not only the traditional functional
knowledge acquisition, but the perception of ourselves, the perception
of values, the acquisition of acting abilities, and finally the search for and
finding of our own identity. All learning that exceeds the period of com-
pulsory education, and is not imposed on the individual by the employer,
can be considered as voluntary, freely chosen. The lives and days of most
people are pervaded by learning and they devote part of their leisure time
to it. Many people do not separate learning and leisure, and if leisure is
performed in a devoted and motivated way, our knowledge, skills, abili-
ties, competencies and self-esteem can, as a consequence, unintentionally
increase. Mere learning for one person can mean leisure for another. The
subject of leisure-time learning is changing throughout history, as well as
altering within the lifespan of the individual, or by gender, social strata
and culture. Individual leisure choices can be promoted by introducing
a range of education branches belonging to various academic disciplines,
providing participants with a diploma or with a certificate that covers
education addressing leisure in the holistic sense.
It is a different issue, if the activities we voluntarily choose really
promote our health, or the contrary. Leisure spent in an active way (not
4 Z. Benkő

only in the physical sense) can positively as well as negatively influ-

ence our health. The positive and/or negative effects of the individu-
al’s leisure habits can occur not only subjectively, but in the form of
detectable physiological changes as well. The favourable physiological
effects of leisure exercises suitable in form and intensity for the indi-
vidual can be detectable, as well as the drawbacks of exercises that were
chosen without proper expertise. An everyday leisure activity, if it gains
ground at the expense of other life roles, might become a symptom
of psychiatric illness, while the same leisure activity, under different
circumstances, can be effective in the prevention of certain psychiat-
ric illnesses. The psycho-­neuro-­immunological consequences of leisure
activities are also twofold: in certain cases they can enforce the indi-
vidual’s capacity to tolerate or cope with stress, while in other cases they
rather weaken it. Study and differentiation of this twofold effect of lei-
sure activities with the help of medical methods is inevitable for deeper
insight into the effect of leisure activities. If the individual experiences
smaller or larger health problems, these might exercise a considerable
effect on his/her leisure habits. The consequences of a chronic physical
or psychological illness can become more serious if the habitual leisure
activities are restricted. At the same time, if the individual considers the
barriers of his/her chronic illness when choosing the method and extent
of a leisure activity, it can become the promoter of medical and social
rehabilitation.
Social integration is an important element of health; the social rela-
tionships of the individual can exercise an immediate effect on his/her
well-being. Most of the leisure activities are social in nature: the indi-
vidual performs them together with family, friends, acquaintances, or
chooses these activities to acquire friends or a partner through them,
to create or increase his/her objective or subjective supporting social
network indirectly or directly. Good examples for the latter are those
self-help leisure circles (Community Self-help Systems, Local Exchange
Trading systems—LETS, courtesy bank and so on) that operate in the
hope of strengthening communitarianism and solidarity (Kis 2014). The
social leisure situations function as socialisation settings, and also chan-
nels of expressing social identity. The leisure circles are also important
 1 Healthy Leisure and Leisureful Health: Introductory ‘State... 5

means for the integration of various minority groups and the settings of
multi- and interculturalism (Tarkó 2010; Mátó 2013).
The physical activities of people and their mental fitness strongly
affect the touristic, lifestyle and sociological elements of the different
countries. The geographical conditions, the attractiveness of the natural
environment and the development and quality of tourism can be cru-
cial in the fulfilment of supply and demand. The diversity of wellness
and fitness services is proven to exercise a beneficial effect on people’s
health, promoting the civilised spending of leisure, shaping an indi-
vidual’s lifestyle from childhood till the end of life. The conscious, sys-
tematic presence of health promotion and its regular and continuous
application promote the positive conceptual appearance of the lifestyle
and recreation activities of nations, ethnic groups, cultures, becoming
a call for life.
The culture of leisure is strongly connected to mental health. If the lei-
sure time is well scheduled, monitored and utilised in a versatile way, that
is, it satisfies social, cultural and physical needs as well, then it contributes
to the subsistence of the inner psychological balance of the personality
(Lippai and Erdei 2014). Mental problems and illnesses can alter certain
qualitative and quantitative components of leisure, that is, leisure style
and mental status are related.
The arts are important means of preserving and promoting our health,
of curing and rehabilitation. Highlighted topics among the arts are as
follows. Bibliotherapy is the guided processing of selected readings. Its
developmental branch focuses on healthy people, while its clinical branch
serves health restoration and rehabilitation. Listening to, enjoying and
experiencing music is a method for preserving mental integrity, while
music therapy is the means of curing and rehabilitation. Visual culture
helps in establishing contacts and understanding the arts, in health pres-
ervation and promotion, and besides its joyous side it also has a thera-
peutic dimension.
The activities regarding spirituality are related to the natural environ-
ment on the one hand, but also affect the physical capacity, mental health
and community relationships of the individual on the other: these are the
pilgrimages. The community programmes of the churches are the bible
6 Z. Benkő

workshops, the family programmes, and the programmes surrounding

the religious holidays. The spiritual retreats can form a different category,
with a very complex effect on the individuals.
Meditation performed during leisure is a suitable activity for conscious
relaxation, calmness, and finding the peace of mind. The state reached
during meditation optimises several self-healing processes of the body.
Some researchers consider it as a new health promotion strategy that
helps to find relief, increases the sense of coherence and helps to prevent
illnesses.
The positive health effects of leisure performed with joy are inev-
itable; it is beneficial to coping with stress, it sharpens the mind,
increases creativity and concentration. Creative leisure includes hob-
bies, arts (for example, playing music, making ceramics, embroidery
and acting), technical activities (DIY and modelling), physical activi-
ties (for example, gardening, farming, folk and ballroom dancing)
or games among others. The aim of hobbies is to have fun, to realise
oneself, to gratify one’s desires and to fulfil personal objectives. If
someone works not for money, but for the fun the activity delivers,
that person works as a hobby, so our paid work can also be our hobby.
As a result of our hobbies, we can be acknowledged by art or academic
communities too.
Leisure activities can also include the outgoing cultural activities (the-
atre, cinema, concerts and exhibitions) that can connect to different fes-
tivals, events, traditions, folk customs and prominent holidays (Tarkó
2007). Not only can our hobbies affect our health, but the promotion
and preservation of health can also become our hobby.
As one can see from the above paragraphs, the relationship between
leisure and health can range on such a wide scale that it becomes a chal-
lenge to address every aspect in detail. However, as the Beijing Consensus
on Leisure Civilisation (Modi et al. 2010: 232) states, ‘Leisure is a com-
mon heritage for all human beings, irrespective of nationality, sex, race,
age, and religious conviction’. This implies that every nation can add
theories, examples, research and good practices to this complexity, which
we all should listen to and integrate into an international realisation of
healthy leisure and leisureful health.
 1 Healthy Leisure and Leisureful Health: Introductory ‘State... 7

References
Caldwell, L. L., & Smith, E. A. (1988). Leisure: An overlooked component of
health promotion. Canadian Journal of Public Health, 79, S44–S48.
Cassidy, T. (1996). All work and no play: A focus on leisure time as a means for
promoting health. Counselling Psychology Quarterly, 9(1), 14 p.
Coleman, D., & Iso-Ahola, S. E. (1993). Leisure and health: The role of social
support and self-determination. Journal of Leisure Research, 25(2), 111–128.
Iso-Ahola, S. (1994). Leisure lifestyle and health. In D. Compton & S. Iso-­
Ahola (Eds.), Leisure and mental health (pp. 42–60). Park City: Family
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Kis, B. (2014). Community-supported agriculture from the perspective of
health and leisure. Annals of Leisure Research, 17(3), 281–295.
Lindström, B., & Eriksson, M. (2006). Contextualizing salutogenesis and
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tanulságai. Mentálhigiéné és Pszichoszomatika, 15(4), 351–371.
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ous leisure participants. Social Behavior and Personality, 42(7), 1117–1126.
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gyermekek egészségi állapota. In T. Klára és L. László (Szerk.). Gyümölcs? A fa
beváltja azt, amit virágával ígért (pp. 237–256). Tanulmányok Benkő
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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Outside Saturn
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where
you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Outside Saturn

Author: Robert E. Gilbert

Illustrator: Richard Kluga

Release date: October 5, 2023 [eBook #71815]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Royal Publications, Inc, 1957

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK OUTSIDE

SATURN ***
 OUTSIDE SATURN

By ROBERT ERNEST GILBERT

Illustrated by RICHARD KLUGA

Gangsters were out of date, and the ice-sweeper

was an unlikely thing to steal. But Vicenzo
was a streak, so what else could Henry do?

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Infinity January 1958.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
 CHAPTER I
Aziz ripped the radio from Henry's spacesuit and carefully resealed
the panel. "Dis'll be the weldin' of ya, kid," Aziz said, crinkling his
round, sallow face in an attempt to smile. "Yer name'll be in ever' yap
—in our orbit, dat is."
"But what—" Henry tried to say.
"No doubt at all," Vicenzo agreed, cleverly shorting Henry's drive
tube.
"I don't—" Henry said.
"Vicenzo figured it right, kid," Aziz said. He gestured with powerful
arms too long for his short body. "Ya'll hit dat ole sweeper square on
the bulb. Vicenzo's a streak."
"I'm a genius," Vicenzo admitted. He smoothed the black bangs
covering his forehead to the eyebrows, and he fingered the pointed
sideburns reaching to his chin. "You jump into space, Henry, and
then we'll increase velocity and sink into the Rings."
Aziz begged, "Do us a blazer, kid. We won't go far. Too low on fuel."
He lowered the helmet over Henry's bushy, blond hair and ruddy
face and clamped it shut.
Vicenzo and Aziz left Henry in the airvalve and closed the inner door.
When the valve emptied to vacuum, Henry reluctantly lowered the
outer door and stepped to the magnetized platform.
Henry stood twenty meters above Ring B of the Rings of Saturn.
Below him, balls of ice, metal, rock, and assorted cosmic debris
flowed slowly past with stars occasionally visible between the
whirling particles. To either side, the billions of tiny moons blended
with distance to form a solid, glaring white band. Henry bent his
knees and dived into space.
Holding his body stiff with a practiced rigidity, and cautiously moving
arms and legs to check any tendency to tumble, Henry glided above
the Rings. Turning his head, he saw exhaust spurt from the
collection of spherical cabins, tanks, and motors that was the
spaceship; and the craft moved from his line of sight, leaving him
alone.
Henry drifted above a flat surface more than sixty-six thousand
kilometers wide. To his left, Ring B extended to the black circle of the
Cassini Division which separated it from the less brilliant Ring A. To
his right, the gleam of Ring B abruptly changed to the dimness of the
Crape Ring through which the surface of Saturn was visible. Of the
giant planet, forty-three thousand kilometers away, Henry saw but
half a crescent marked with vague white and yellow bands and
obscure spots.
Red and green lights blinked ahead. Most of the approaching ice-
sweeper was shadowed and invisible against the blackness of
space. Henry saw no lighted windows, but he experimentally aimed
his signal torch at a dome on top of the space station.
Moving with the exact velocity of the Ring, the sweeper, a bundle of
huge cylindrical tanks bound together with fragile girders, apparently
grew larger. A rectangular snout, swinging from side to side and
probing into the Ring, dangled below the front of the sweeper.
Dancing in mutual gravitational attraction, the tiny moons constantly
closed the open lane behind the snout.
Henry blinked his torch and saw its red reflection in the sweeper's
observation dome, but no one answered the signal. Gaudy with
lights, the station drifted past below Henry's level and nearly one
hundred meters away.

Henry struggled futilely in his suit and tumbled through space. He

saw the flaming arch of the Milky Way and then the immense
shadow of Saturn stretching black across the Rings. Somewhere,
the bright exhaust of a distant spaceship streaked across the stars.
By missing the ice-sweeper, he would continue on a spiral course
down toward Saturn, until he at last fell into the methane; or, if his
falling body accelerated enough, he might establish an orbit closer to
the planet and revolve around it, until he died of thirst. Vicenzo and
Aziz would never find him and would probably not search long.
Fire shot past Henry's gyrating figure. A thin cable followed the small
rocket. Henry's flailing arms struck the cable, and his gauntleted
hands gripped the strands. He pulled back the spent rocket, and the
missile's magnetic head clanked against his spacesuit. The lifeline
reeled him toward the station.
A hairless, brown, deeply wrinkled face watched Henry from a small
window beside an open airvalve. The cable pulled Henry to the
muzzle of a rocket launcher. He jerked the magnetic head loose and
shut himself into the valve. He slid the inner door open and, weakly
kicking his legs, floated on his back into the sweeper.
An old man, the owner of the wrinkled face, stopped Henry from
drifting into the far wall of the cramped compartment. The old man
wore shorts and a sleeveless shirt, and his shrunken limbs seemed
to have no muscles. He drew Henry down to the magnetized deck
and removed the space helmet.
"You're just a boy!" the man wheezed in a cracked voice. "Where'd
you come from, boy?"
Henry, watching through half-closed eyes, almost said that he was
twenty years old. Then he remembered to mutter, "Water."
The old man said, "How'd you get out here? There's been no ships in
days. What are you doing here all by yourself? I almost missed you.
You'd been on a bad course if I had. Just happened to see your torch
twirling around out there. Ain't many people can come that close with
a life rocket and not hit a fellow. For a second, I thought the rocket
was going to bust you. Of course, being skillful the way I am, it didn't
seem likely, but I—"
"Water," Henry moaned.
"Water? Why sure. How long you been drifting, boy? Must be mighty
thirsty. What's your name? I'm Ranjit. I've never got used to people
not telling their last names. Of course, even when I was your age,
most people called each other by their first names. I can't hardly
remember what my last name is. You might not think it to look at me,
but I'm 107 years old. Here, let's get you out of that suit and see
what kind of shape you're in."
Horizontal and vertical wrinkles formed ragged crosshatching on
Ranjit's forehead. His nose and ears were large and grotesque with
age. He unsealed the spacesuit at the waist and, holding Henry
against the deck with one hand, pulled off the top section.
"Water!" Henry gasped. Peeping secretly, he saw that the teletype,
near the airvalve, was dismantled, with the parts tied in bunches
floating over the empty case. He located the radio above an
aluminum desk in the far corner. He could see no visular set
anywhere.
Ranjit dragged off the lower section of the suit, leaving Henry
resplendent in orange knickers and red blouse. "How do you feel?"
Ranjit asked. "What ship are you from? I don't see how they could
just leave you. I'd better report this. They must be looking for you.
Funny I haven't heard about it. Of course, the teletype's out of
whack. I'm fixing it. I'm handy that way, fixing things. The heater
broke down the other day, but I've got it going good now. I've started
melting ice again. The tanks were about empty after that last ship
fueled up. The Asteroid Ann, it was, or was it the Mimas Mae?
They've both been by lately, but—"
"Water!" Henry pleaded. He had to do something to make Ranjit
leave the compartment. He tried to listen for sounds that would
locate the other crew members. Holding his handsome blond head in
his hands, he sat up. The movement lifted his body from the deck,
leaving his metal-soled shoes attached, so that he sat in mid-air.
"Water?" said Ranjit. "If there's one thing I've got, it's water. Let me
see, there must be a flask someplace." He rummaged in the netting
that covered two opposite walls of the compartment and secured an
incredible clutter of weightless tools, books, food cases, clothing,
oxygen tanks, spacesuit parts, wire, tubing, and other items. Still
talking, Ranjit vanished through an opening almost concealed by the
net.

Henry leaped to the radio. He whipped a pair of insulated snips from

his pocket and cut through the electric cord in four places. He thrust
the severed pieces behind the desk and stood listening. Somewhere,
Ranjit continued talking, but Henry heard no answering voices. The
only other sounds were the whine of electric motors and the throb of
pumps. Henry pulled out a screwdriver and paused as he noticed a
sign above the desk. The sign said:

AAAAAAA CCCCC D EEEEE

G H IIIIH LLLL MM NNNNNNNNN
OO PP Q RR S TTTTT UUUUU
Shaking his head, Henry released the clamps, turned the radio, pried
off the back, and stabbed and slashed at the interior with the
screwdriver. He replaced the back and returned to his position on the
deck just in time.
"—really should," Ranjit continued, walking through the door. "You're
lucky I saw you at all. Of course, I'm watchful all the time. Would you
believe I've been right here on this sweeper for nine years? Here's
some water, boy."
Henry squirted water from the flexible flask into his mouth. Ranjit
said, "You ain't as thirsty as I thought you was. How come you wasn't
calling for help?"
"No radio," Henry mumbled. "The drive tube wouldn't work either."
"What were you doing in a bunged-up suit like that? You'll never live
to be as old as me if you take such chances. If this station had
visular, I'd have picked you up in that, but the company said I
wouldn't have no use for it."
"Where is everybody?" Henry asked, pushing himself unsteadily to
his feet.
"Everybody who? Are you hungry? How long since you had anything
to eat? There's nobody here but me. Karoly and Wilbur both passed
beyond, Wilbur just two weeks ago. He was only 94 too. The
company's sending some help, they say. I don't see how they expect
one man to run an ice-sweeper, even if he is handy like me. This is a
dangerous job, although you might not think so. Do you realize,
young fellow, we're whizzing around Saturn once every nine hours,
four minutes, and twelve seconds? That's an orbital velocity of
nineteen point eight kilometers per second! We've got to go that fast
to stay in this orbit."
"There's no one else here but you?" Henry said.
"Think what would happen if something slowed us down!" Ranjit
exclaimed. "We'd start falling toward Saturn and finally crash!
Meteors are scarce out here, but what if a spaceship came around
retrograde and smashed this station head-on? There ain't a thing I
can do if it starts falling. Part of it's a ship, but the company took the
motor out. All I've got is the flywheel steering gear. The control
room's right up there above my bunk."
Ranjit pointed to a sandwich bunk hoisted against the pipes and
conduits that crisscrossed the ceiling in abstract patterns. He said, "I
can spin this sweeper like a top, if I want to, but I can't accelerate it."
He squinted through the small window beside the airvalve.
"Speaking of spaceships," he rambled, "there's one out there now.
Wonder who it is? There's not a thing on the schedule. Looks like
they would've called in."
Moving to the radio, the old man fumbled with knobs and switches
and pounded on the cabinet with his fist. "This radio's deader than a
asteroid!" he yelled. "First the teletype and now the radio. I'm
supposed to report all ships to Titan, but how can I with no
equipment? Maybe that's your ship come hunting you. What did you
say your name is?"
"Henry," said Henry.
"Henry, huh? My name's Ranjit. I better get up to the big valve. That
ship'll be clinching in a minute."
"What does that sign mean?" said Henry, seizing the old man's bony
wrist.
"Sign? Oh, there over the desk? I just put that there to confuse
people. It's a puzzle that spells out something in an old-time
language, Latin maybe. Christian Huygens published that way back
in 1655. He used a puzzle while he was checking some more. He
was the first man to figure out what was around Saturn. It means
something like, 'There's a flat ring that's inclined to the ecliptic that
circles the planet without touching it.' Well, let go of me. I've got to
see about that ship."
"Just stay here and be calm, Ranjit," Henry said.
"What?"
"Be good, and you won't get hurt."
"Get hurt? What are you talking about, Henry? That's no way to talk
to a fellow that saved your life. If it hadn't been for me, you'd still be
falling. You were slower than the sweeper. I saved your life!"
Henry blushed in sudden shame and released Ranjit's arm. "Why,
why, I—I guess you did!" he stammered.
Henry lived in an era that had been preceded by wars which
destroyed more than half the people of Earth. It was a time of rigidly
controlled population, highly specialized training, and constantly
increasing life expectancy. Each human life was considered a
distinct and invaluable thing. Since the end of the final war, the
Crime War, seventy years before, murder had become an obscene
and almost meaningless word, and natural death was rarely
mentioned. Saving another person's life was considered the most
magnificent act that anyone could perform, and almost the only way
to become a public hero, since actors, entertainers, policemen, and
officials were thought to be no better than anyone else.
"I'm—I'm sorry," Henry said, blushing until he perspired. "I'm all
mixed up."
"That's all right, Henry. You were out there a long time."
Something struck twice against the hull of the ice-sweeper. "There's
a clumsy pilot!" Ranjit yelled. "I better go see what he's trying to do."
"Wait," Henry said, grabbing the old man's arm again. "I—" He
stopped speaking and frowned in confusion. When he considered
recent events, he realized that Vicenzo and Aziz, by their inexpert
maneuvering, had almost caused him to pass beyond. All of Henry's
education, haphazard as it had been, emphasized the belief that a
person who caused another to pass beyond could only be regarded
with loathing. A person who saved a life must be treated with eternal
gratitude and veneration by the beneficiary.
Ranjit said, "Let's go, Henry! What are you up to? I've had a feeling
you ain't exactly zeroed."
"I—I think I should tell you," Henry said.
"Listen. Somebody coming aboard," Ranjit said, jerking his arm from
Henry's relaxed grip and facing the doorway in the netting. Henry
waited for Vicenzo and Aziz to enter the compartment.

CHAPTER II
Two people entered, but they were not Vicenzo and Aziz. The first
was a small, thin man with a long, sad face. He wore a somber black
oversuit. The second was a girl no older than Henry.
"Please, Joachim," the girl whispered, "don't antagonize them. Ask
about the fuel first."
Henry gaped at the girl, and his face grew hot. Since he had spent
his young life among the Moons and Asteroids, never going farther
sunward than Pallas, he had seen few girls his own age and none as
beautiful as this one. Her hair, dyed in tiger stripes of black and
yellow, was parted in the middle and, held by silver wires, extended
from the sides of her head like wings. She wore blue hose, silver fur
shorts, and a golden sweater sparkling with designs in mirror thread.
Metal-soled shoes too large for her feet slightly marred the total
effect.
"High," said the man with the sad face. "I am Joachim, Second Vice-
President of the SPRS. This is our Corresponding Secretary, Morna."
His deep voice rolled around the compartment as if the lower keys of
an orchestrana had been struck.
"Low," Ranjit responded. "I'm Ranjit, and this is Henry. Why didn't
you make an appointment? The tanks are about empty, and you may
have to wait several hours. What do you feed your atomics, water or
hydrogen? It'll be even longer if you need hydrogen. I haven't done
any electrolysis today. I wasn't expecting—Look at that girl, Henry!
I'm 107 years old, but I can still appreciate a sight like that! I don't
see how a homely fellow like you, Joachim, ever got such a luscious
girl."
"Ours is strictly a business relationship," said Morna with indignant
formality. "We do need fuel, Ranjit. We planned to refuel on Dione,
but the moon was not where Joachim thought it should be. If—"
"Later, Morna," Joachim interrupted in a hollow voice. "I have come
thirteen hundred million kilometers on a mission, and I intend to fulfill
it! I represent the SPRS. We have written to you, Ranjit, but you
have never answered."
Ranjit said, "The SPRS? Oh, yeah, you're the ones are always
sending me spacemail. It's about all I ever get, and I appreciate it. I
don't get much mail, out here, and I don't see many people. This
fellow here, Henry, was the first I'd seen in days. I saved Henry's life,
or did he tell you?"
"How wonderful!" Morna exclaimed in awe. "I've never spoken to a
Saver before! Think of it, Joachim! Ranjit saved Henry!"
"That is very nice," Joachim admitted, "but—"
"You're a hero!" Morna cried, seizing Ranjit's hands. "How does it
feel to be a Saver? It must be sublime!" She turned to Henry and
grasped his arms. "How do you feel, Henry? You must almost
worship Ranjit! Such a noble man!"
Ranjit cackled. "Look at him blush! I don't believe he's been around
girls much. Since Joachim don't have no claim on her, Henry, I'd do
some sweet talking if I was your age. I pulled Henry in on a lifeline,
or he'd be falling into the methane by now."
"Isn't that wonderful?" Morna marveled, smiling glamorously.
Joachim said, "Everyone be quiet and allow me to finish! I have
come thirteen hundred million kilometers on a mission, and I intend
to fulfill it! I am Second Vice-President of the Society for the
Preservation of the Rings of Saturn. You, Ranjit, and the people on
the other three stations in the Rings are destroying the most glorious
and inspiring feature of the Solar System! The divine pinnacle of
Creation! A miracle that may be unique in the Universe! You are
destroying the Rings of Saturn for the greedy, selfish purpose of
selling fuel to spaceships!"
"Spaceships got to have fuel," Ranjit said, "and don't talk so loud. Ice
is scarce, you know, unless you want to chase comets. One side of
Iapetus has a sheet, and Titan has some. If you go on in, you'll find a
little on some of the Moons of Jupiter, and a few of the Asteroids are
—"
Joachim said, "You are destroying the Rings of Saturn! This is the
most despicable crime in a long history of the devastation of nature
by greedy men! When you have eventually melted the last crystal of
ice and departed with your hoard, Saturn will spin desolately alone
through the night, shorn of his glorious halo that has been the solace
and inspiration of man since prehistoric times!"
"Not when they never had telescopes, it wasn't very inspiring," Ranjit
said. "I don't see why you're jumping on me, Joachim. I never
answered your letters because there wasn't nothing to say. I just
work here. You'll have to talk to the company to—"
"The Saturnine Fuel and Oxygen Company is headed by stubborn
men!" Joachim said. "They refuse to consider or answer our
demands! That is why I have come to appeal directly to the
operators of these ice-sweepers! You must immediately stop
sweeping the Rings into your tanks! You must tell your superiors that
you refuse to destroy the crowning glory of the Solar System!"
Ranjit said, "They'd just hire somebody else. I don't know as we are
destroying the Rings very fast. This was the first sweeper put in orbit
nine years ago, and I can't tell no difference in Ring B. There's an
awful lot of stuff in the Rings. Some of the balls are solid ice, but
some are just ice coated, so we melt it off and throw out the core.
Some don't have ice on it, so we throw it back. We don't use
hydroponics on the sweepers. We get plenty of oxygen when we
take off hydrogen, so we toss a lot of solid CO2 overboard, too. No,
we ain't taking as much from the Rings as you think. They'll get ionic
motors to working, one of these days, and it won't take hardly no fuel
at all."
"Nevertheless, I believe—" Joachim tried to say.
"You've got a hard hull, anyhow," Ranjit said, "coming out here telling
me to stop when you need fuel yourself. Supposing I stopped right
now. How would you get away? And what would I do? I got a bad
heart. About half of it's artificial. That's why I've been living under
zero G for fifteen years. I can't go back to Earth. The docs say more
than four-tenths G would do for me. Before I got this job, I was living
in a hulk orbiting around Titan, just waiting to pass beyond. Now I got
something useful to do and something to live for. I may last till I'm
120."
Henry, who had been stupidly smiling at Morna with too much
intensity to follow the discussion, jerked his head around and
gasped, "You, you can't stand acceleration?"
Ranjit said, "Not enough to go anywhere. I got a bad heart, a very
bad heart. About half of it's—"
Vicenzo and Aziz, spacesuited, crowded into the compartment
through the doorway in the netting. "Dis is a stickup!" Aziz
announced over a loudspeaker on the chest of his suit.
"Don't move," Vicenzo growled, scowling beneath his black bangs.
Since deadly weapons were extremely rare and difficult to obtain, the
pair had armed themselves with long, hand-made knives. Vicenzo
also carried a cumbersome rocket launcher, a remodeled lifeline
tube.

"Gangsters!" Ranjit wheezed. "I ain't seen a gangster in twenty

years! I fought them in the Crime War! I—"
"Shut up, old man," Vicenzo ordered. His sideburns twitched around
his cruel mouth. "Everything fixed here, Henry?"
"Are you into this, Henry?" Ranjit said.
Vicenzo snarled, "I told you to shut up!"
"Let me talk to you alone, Vicenzo," Henry said.
"Spill it now. Is this all the crew? Did you smash communications?"
"Yes," Henry admitted. "The old man is the crew. The others just
came aboard."
"Why didn't you fix the other ship?" Vicenzo said. "We had to clamp
on, because it was blocking the valve. We came through it, and you
hadn't even smashed the radio. There might've been a crew aboard,
for all you knew."
"Vicenzo's a streak, kid," Aziz said. The short, wide man's sallow
face looked horrible behind the faceplate. "You oughta done like
Vicenzo said," he advised. "You won't get nowhere goofin' like dat or
—Hey, take a check on the doll! I never thought to see nothin' like
dat on a sweeper! Lucky me!"
"She's not in this," Henry said. "She's from the other ship. Leave her
alone, Aziz."
"Don't yap at me like dat, kid," Aziz warned.
Morna, who had stood as if frozen, turned to Henry and squealed,
"You're a gangster? How awful, after I thought you were nice, letting
Ranjit save your life!"
"Shut up, girl," Vicenzo said.
"A gangster!" Morna shrieked. She slapped Henry twice across the
face, knocking his shoes loose from the magnetic deck. He flipped
and fell against the net with his feet touching the ceiling.
In the confusion, Joachim broke from his terrified trance and dived
through the door. "I'll get 'im!" Aziz roared and, waving his knife,
followed the fleeing Second Vice-President.
As Henry struggled to regain an erect position, Morna wailed in his
ear, "I thought you were good and handsome, but you're a gangster!
You didn't deserve to be saved!" She slapped him again, knocking
him to the deck, and began to weep wildly. Under no gravity, the
tears spread in a film across her face. Surprised, she stopped crying
and wiped her cheeks with her hands. A few tears flew into the air as
shimmering globes.
Joachim floated into the compartment. His long chin was bruised,
and he muttered, "Save the Rings!" Aziz, grinning, followed and
stood on guard before the door. Morna gasped, darted to her
employer, and made helpless gestures.
"All right, now," Vicenzo said. "Let's get this jaunt moving. Henry, tie
these cubes up and—"
"We can't do it, Vicenzo," Henry said, staring in horror at Joachim's
half-conscious body.
"What?"
Henry said, "It's the old man. His heart's bad. The acceleration would
k-kill him!"
"Dat's the chance he's gotta take," Aziz sneered.
"You mean you don't care if you m-murder someone?"
"It's all in the orbit," Vicenzo said. "I told you that when you clinched
with us."
"I didn't believe you," Henry said. "You can't hurt Ranjit! He saved my
life!"
"Dat's what he was supposed to do, so's ya could get aboard," Aziz
said.
"But he really did save me! He pulled me in on a lifeline. I would've
missed the station. I wouldn't be surprised if you two tried to m-
murder me! I'm checking out. The whole deal's off. Both of you get
back in the ship and go! I'll give you that much of a chance. I'll stay
here and take Revision, or whatever's coming to me."
"The kid's stripped his cogs," Aziz laughed through his loudspeaker.
Vicenzo aimed his rocket launcher at Henry's midriff. He growled,
"Too bad you turned cube, Henry."
"Don't fire that thing in here!" Ranjit yelled. "You'll blow a hole
through the hull! What are you fellows up to? I never saw such
mixed-up goings on."

Henry said, "They're going to steal the ice-sweeper. That's why I had
to be taken aboard, so I could wreck your equipment and keep you
from reporting us or calling the other stations. The sweeper is
supposed to vanish without a trace. I'm sorry I ruined your radio,
Ranjit. I was supposed to try to keep the crew from becoming
suspicious while Vicenzo and Aziz were clinching. They're going to
move the sweeper into a Sun orbit, somewhere, and use it for a
base. They're going to hijack spaceships."
"Of all the crazy schemes!" Ranjit snorted. "You gangsters are space
happy! You're ready for the psychodocs! You can't get away with
gangstering these days! I fought your grandfathers in the Crime War.
I was in the Battle of Jupiter Orbit. We whipped you good, and nearly
wiped you out, but, ever so often, a few of you still turn up and try
silly stuff like this. Solar Government will get you!"
Vicenzo said, "Shut up, old man! Aziz, hold the girl. If the rest of you
don't behave while I'm tying you, Aziz will stab her."
"Dat'd be a awful waste," Aziz said, twisting Morna's arms behind her
back. Morna began to cry again. Teardrops floated like tiny planets.
Vicenzo pulled a long cord from his pack and lifted Joachim with one
hand. "Save the Rings," Joachim mumbled. "You are desecrating the
glory of the Solar System." Vicenzo lashed Joachim's wrists to an
overhead pipe.
Vicenzo said, "All right, Henry, you and the old man put your hands
against that pipe."
Ranjit said, "I'm 107 years old, but never in my life—"