One of the other two, Standish, said timidly, “Excuse me, are there any — do you have any, uh, bags?”
“Sure thing. Right in that little slot under the light panel.”
“Thank you.”
“Don’t feel bad. You haven’t really been initiated into space till you’ve lost at least one meal. How are you other two doing?”
“Okay, I guess,” said Miller, the third one.
“Fine. And you, Ricks?”
“I’m doing just lovely. This is a great little old roller-coaster you’ve got here.”
Blair grinned. “I thought you’d like it,” he said.
Harvey Ricks had proved himself again.
Station One was leaving perigee, hurtling around the Earth on the long elliptical curve that would take it, fifteen days from now, eighty-four thousand miles towards the Moon. The lighter came curving up from Earth into the path of the Station’s orbit and fifty miles ahead. As the Station overtook it, it slowly increased its speed, until the two were neck-and-neck. Slowly, the lighter pilot maneuvered his ship closer to the station, until the magnetic grapples caught, holding the ship to the curving grid jutting out from the hatchway in the high center of the doughnut. A closed companionway slid out along the grid, attached itself to the airlock in the side of the lighter, and formed a hermetic seal. The lock was open, and the Station cargo handlers came aboard for the unloading.
The seven aluminum crates of the cargo for QB were stacked on a powered cart, driven across the companionway to the Station proper, and taken by elevator down two levels, thence down one of the three interior corridors to the outer ring, and were finally stowed in Section Five, with the rest of the shipment.
Glenn Blair and the Station Manager, Irv Mendel, oversaw the unloading, making the appropriate row of checkmarks as each item was transferred from lighter to station. Blair then went back up and got the three engineers, all of whom seemed a little shaken by this first stage of the journey, though Ricks was doing his best to hide it. “Don’t worry,” Blair assured them, “the worst part of the trip is done with. From now on, it’s quarter-G all the way.”
Standish, who had so far been sick twice and who was now holding tight to the nearest support as though afraid he might float up and out of sight any minute, grinned weakly and said, “I don’t know which is worse, too much gravity or too little. Do people really get used to this?”
“In a couple of days,” Blair told him, “you’ll be running around as happy as a feather in an updraft. Once you get used to it, there’s nothing in the universe as much fun as weighing only one-quarter what you’re used to.”
“I hope I get used to it soon,” said Standish, “before I starve to death.”
Blair led the way down the ladder and through the companionway to the Station. The three passengers were introduced to Irv Mendel, who told them how much they’d enjoy quarter-G in a couple days, and then they were shown their cubicles, in Section One, which would be their home for the next fifteen days. Their luggage — thirty-eight pounds permissable — had preceded them into the rooms, which were small but functional. There was, in each room, a bed and a chair and a small writing table, a lamp and a narrow closet and a tiny bathroom complete with shower stall and WC. The floor was uncarpeted black plastic and the walls and ceiling were cream-painted metal. It took the engineers a while to get used to the idea that the floor was not what they would have thought of as the ‘bottom’ of the Station from the outside. The floor of their cubicles was, on the outside, the outer edge of the Station. The center of the Station was not to the left or right, it was directly overhead.
The outer ring of the Station was divided into twelve sections. Sections Nine, Ten and Eleven housed the permanent Station personnel, including the weathermen and television relay men and so on. Sections Five, Six and Seven were cargo holds, and Sections One, Two and Three were transient quarters. (The three engineers were in Section Two.) Sections Four, Eight and Twelve contained the utilities, the sources of light and heat and air, as well as the chow hall and food storage. At the bulkhead separating each Section, floor and ceiling met at an angle of thirty degrees. A man could do a loop-the-loop simply by walking dead ahead down the main corridor until he came back to his starting point.
Once the three engineers were safely settled in their cubicles, Blair took the elevator back up to the center of the Station, where Irv Mendel was waiting for him in his office. Blair went through the same sort of paperwork as he’d done with Cy Braddock, and when they were finished Mendel said, “How are these three kids? Going to give us any trouble?”
“I’m not sure. Standish has a pretty weak stomach, it may take him a while to get adjusted, but I think he’ll just grin and bear it. Miller’s all right. I’m not too sure about Ricks. He’s pushing himself a little hard, one of these guys who wants to be an old salt before he ever gets into the water. If he cracks, he may do it in style.”
Mendel leaned back in his chair, arms behind his head. “You know,” he said, “when I was a kid, all I ever wanted was to get out here in space. I grew up reading about Moon-shots and orbiting satellites and I thought, ‘By Golly, there’s the frontier of tomorrow. There’s where the adventurers are going to be, the explorers and the prospectors and the soldiers of fortune. That’s the place for me, boy.’ Romance and adventure, that’s the way I saw it.” He grinned and shook his head. “I forgot all about the twentieth century’s most significant invention: Red tape. It never even occurred to me that space would be a job like this. Paperwork all over the place, schedules to meet and financial reports to make out, young fuzzy-faced kids to be nurse-maided. It never even occurred to me.”
“If you hate it so much,” Blair told him, “why not go on back to Earth?”
“Are you kidding? Do you know what I weigh down there? Two hundred and fourteen pounds. Maybe more by now, I’m not sure. Besides, it’s even worse down there. Paperwork up to your nose. It’s only half that high up here. If you know what I mean.”
“I know what you mean. Lighter gone?”
“Long gone. Halfway back to Earth by now. Left while you were with your Boy Scouts.”
“So we’re on our way again.” Blair got lazily to his feet, and stretched. “After a couple days on Earth,” he said, “quarter-G feels like a good quiet drunk. Think I’ll go lie down in the rack and think about philosophy. See you later.”
“Right. Hey, by the way.” Blair turned at the door. “By what way?”
“This is your last round trip, isn’t it? Your two years are up.”
“It was up last trip. I re-contracted.”
Mendel grinned. “Member of the club now, huh? I thought you’d do that. Welcome aboard.” Blair shrugged self-consciously. “You know how it is,” he said. “Every time I go back, Earth gets a little heavier. Besides, I like the soft life.”
“You want it really soft,” Mendel told him, “you put in for station duty. All we do is float around and around, draw our pay, and look at the pretty scenery.”
“If that boy Ricks blows up,” Blair said, “we’ll both have plenty to do. I’m going to rack out, I’ll see you later.”
“See you, nursemaid.”
Blair took the elevator down to the outer ring, and went to his cubicle in Section Two, next to the one occupied by Ricks, across the corridor from Standish and Miller. He stretched out on his bed and half-dozed, as his body gradually got reoriented to quarter-gravity.
Twenty minutes later, the meteor hit.
It should never have happened. The Station had full radar vision, and so the meteor should have been seen long before it struck. The Station was powered, and should have been able to goose itself out of the meteor’s path. So it should never have happened. But it did.