His eyes raked over me as I pulled myself along the guideline toward the portal. 'Green, eh? Here, you wear dull gray. Nothing else.'
Aquacyan, blue, green, gray - what did it matter? I nodded.
'See how accepting you are in a year.' Gerbriik snorted. "You call me ser, just like any other station officer. That's anyone in solid blue or black. In fact, anyone in a solid-colored uniform.'
'Yes, ser.'
'Let's go. Sanselle will be coming through here.' Gerbriik turned in a single effortless motion.
I pulled myself after him, conscious of my awkwardness, with one hand on my small duffel, the other grasping along the lines. There were no transition locks, just the ship lock, a tube, and a second lock leading into the station proper. The corridors of OE Station were small, barely wide enough for two people abreast, and smelled of humanity and new materials simultaneously. The walls were brownish gray and reeked of age, though I doubted they were near so old as they felt or looked.
We had traveled no more than fifty meters when he stopped by a green-rimmed hexagonal-shaped hatch. 'All the levels are connected by transverse shafts. There's more on that in your briefing spray. The double hatches are nanite-sprung to stay closed.' Gerbriik nodded and slipped inside the door, pulling one thin door toward him and pushing through another that swung in the opposite direction.
I followed, finding myself in another tubular corridor perpendicular to the one we had just left. Gerbriik was already ten meters above me, past one hexagonal hatch and floating opposite a lower one. Then he pulled the inner door and pushed through the outer one.
It took me longer, because my duffel caught on the inner door and jerked me backward, practically back across the corridor.
Gerbriik's face was blank when I finally emerged. Once I was clear, he pushed off down the corridor, stopping less than thirty meters from the shaft hatch door. I didn't stop and swung past him. I finally managed to grab a guideline on the wall - bulkhead - and slow myself. Weightless I might have been, but my body retained all its inertia, as my hand and fingers testified with the strain of slowing and stopping me.
The maintenance officer pointed to another hatch - a smaller hexagon. 'This is mid-deck three, space four. Remember it. This is your cube. You're not important enough to rate space. You get it because it's more convenient for everyone else. There's one space that's yours to keep spotless, and you will keep it spotless, Dzin master, all by yourself, with your multiple talents. It has an inside latch for privacy, but that's it.' He pushed the hatchlike door inward and open. 'Go ahead. Look.'
I wondered at the inward-opening design until my demons supplied the answer - protection against depressurization. If the station were holed the internal pressure of the cube would keep the door almost welded shut against the seals.
'Go ahead. Look inside.'
'Yes, ser,' I managed. The space beyond the door was small, no more than three meters by two, with built-in drawers and a narrow closet on one side. There was nowhere to sleep -just six rough gray surfaces.
'You don't need a mattress in null gee, but you get a sleeping net with a pallet pad on one side. It's rolled up inside the closet. Use it. Otherwise you'll be working with bruises and cuts, and those sting in your gear. Oh, there should be two gray work coveralls in there, too. They're nanite reinforced. You should be able to move a good two hundred kilograms, even in full gee. You can move more here, but stopping that mass would be something else. I have a few more things to show you. Leave your duffel.'
Lifting two hundred kilograms or more on a routine basis?
Before I could extricate myself from the small cube, the maintenance officer was a good twenty meters down the tubular corridor. I shut the hatch door and scrambled out of the cube to follow, catching up while he waited by another hatch, this one rimmed in blue.
'Here's the low-tech canteen. It's big enough for all three of you. That's Sanselle, Fersonne, and you.' Gerbriik laughed. 'Same food replicator as in the officers' mess. Same menu. Even has traditional Dorchan dishes. You can eat as much as you want, whatever you want, and whenever you want so long as you're not working.' The long-faced maintenance officer handed me two nanite-spray cans. 'These hold all the station info you'll need. Go back to your cube and take them two standard hours apart - unless you want a splitting headache. Report to the maintenance office at zero eight hundred station time tomorrow. Eat first.' He laughed again. 'Enjoy your time off.'
With that, he glided away, leaving me floating by the canteen.
My stomach had barely settled, and I didn't want to risk upsetting it again by eating immediately. So I began to ease myself back the few meters to what amounted to my own private, and very gray, casern.
The gray walls were as depressing as the mad truffler's cave had been, even more depressing than the cellars and caserns scattered through old Henvor. The gray bulkheads offered even less hope of early escape. Abandon hope ... Those words came from somewhere, but I didn't recall them. There was much I knew now that I did not recall. I looked down at the nanite-spray cans. There would be more of those as well.
25
Those who err without understanding shall die without comprehending.
Even two hours apart, the two nano-sprays had split my skull, as more figures, charts, diagrams, and specifications flooded through my brain and synapses. Some of the knowledge would be helpful, such as the plans of the station's decks and the various lock locations, but what did I care about the various moduli of elasticity of shear for the bearing truss joists? Or the decompression pressure stress bright lines? Or the acceptable atmospheric pressure variances? It wasn't as though I would be in any position to do anything about them. Not as a maintenance laborer or low-level tech.
The jolts to my brain hadn't helped my stomach or my adjustment to null gravity, either. Or my attempts to sleep. The sleeping net - even tethered at four points - swayed all night long with every motion I made. At times, I felt like I was choking in my sleep. I didn't sleep, but dozed, or so it felt. Learning to sleep in null gravity was going to take some learning. Then, what else did I have to worry about besides learning to sleep and be a high-level laborer at the end of the universe?
I didn't think about clocks, or timepieces, but I didn't need to worry.
My briefing spray included something along those lines. Internal demons jolted me out of my dozing state. Zero seven hundred. Zero seven hundred.
The null grav shower was also a joy, but at least the food formulator delivered, and I ensured that I was in the maintenance office before eight hundred. The space was perhaps five meters by ten, and one wall was nothing more than covered bins of various sizes and shapes. Built into the wall to the right of the entry hatch was a desk space, above which were mounted various screens like those of the iconraisers of Henvor. I could not help but wonder about the amount of electroessence they required and how they were powered. Null gravity fusactor, design beta-one. Nuclear fusion - a form rejected by the ancients?
Gerbriik pushed himself away from the various consoles, turning in midair as he did so. 'Good morning, Tyndel.'
'Good morning ... ser.' I barely managed to tack on the honorific.
'We'll start you out on something simple but necessary. You all work twelve standard hours. That's really fourteen, because you work four, then get an hour break.' Gerbriik pointed toward the equipment floating on a bulkhead tether - a cylinder three meters long with an attached hose. 'That's yours, Tyndel.'