One of the uniformed flight attendants hurried down the aisle past them as Vijay patted Jamie’s hand and said, “Put in the earplugs. It’s better if you can’t hear ’em.”
It’d be better if I couldn’t smell them, Jamie thought. He grabbed the plastic bag containing earplugs from the pocket built into the chair’s armrest while bile burned up into his throat.
By the time the Clippership made its rendezvous with the space station fifty-four minutes later, the passengers had calmed down and the stench of vomit had been cleared from the cabin’s air. A female flight attendant ran a short video that advised the debarking passengers not to try any acrobatics in zero gee.
“You will feel a stuffiness in your sinuses as your body fluids adjust to the lack of gravity,” said the cheerful white-smocked woman on the screens. “This is perfectly normal. Your body is adapting to the microgravity environment.”
Vijay and Jamie didn’t see much of the space station. The terminal where the Clippership docked was designed to accommodate arrivals who were not accustomed to the nearly zero gravity of the orbiting station. Passageways were thickly carpeted and narrow enough for passengers to grip the handrails set on both sides of the bulkheads so that they could proceed cautiously, hand by hand, to the reception area.
Jamie’s head felt stuffy as he shuffled along in the slowly moving line. Vijay was just ahead of him, apparently handling the microgee with no trouble at all. A young man several places up the line, wearing the gray coveralls of a technician, laughingly allowed himself to float off the floor and rise until his crewcut hair bumped gently against the overhead.
Several of the older passengers groaned at the sight.
“Please don’t attempt any gymnastics in this confined space,” called the female attendant from the head of the line.
“Get down, Grabowski,” a rougher voice demanded. “Don’t start with your wiseass crap.”
Jamie laughed softly. The temptation to show off was irresistible in some men. Especially if they were young and there were young women present to show off for.
Moving carefully, Jamie and Vijay left the other arrivals and followed the illuminated arrows along the bulkheads that led them lo the docking port where the lunar shuttlecraft would depart for Selene. A pair of smiling attendants were at the port and guided I hem through the open hatch of the shuttlecraft.
The shuttlecraft’s passenger compartment was less than half the size of the Clippership’s, and much more utilitarian. Jamie and Vijay found their seats and strapped in.
“Whew!” Vijay gusted, her expression halfway between a grin and a grimace. “I’d forgotten how snarky zero gee can be when you’re not used to it.”
Keeping a straight face, Jamie replied, “You’re not reneging on our overnight stay on the way back, are you?”
She started to shake her head, but thought better of it. “I don’t know about you, love, but I’m out of training.”
Very seriously, Jamie said, “Might take a few nights to get our sea legs back.”
Vijay smiled impishly. “Well, if you’ve got the time…”
“We’ll see,” he said. “Depends on how things go with Stavenger.”
Selene
Jamie and Vijay never saw the outside of the lunar shuttlecraft. The passenger compartment was small, only a dozen seats, but every one of them was filled. They looked like business people, Jamie thought as he surveyed the other Moon-bound passengers. Suits, mostly dark in color although there were a couple of bright sports coats in the lot. Not scientists or techies: no jeans or pullovers, except for his own.
The shuttlecraft accelerated at nearly a full g halfway to the Moon, then turned around and decelerated the rest of the way to the surface of the huge crater Alphonsus. The g force was enough to keep everyone’s stomach reasonably in place for the five-hour-long trip. They even had a meal in transit with no more difficulty than sipping the wine from covered containers. An animated video showed the passengers the details of the shuttlecraft’s trajectory and its highly efficient plasma propulsion system.
“It took the Apollo astronauts more than three days to make the trip from Earth to Moon,” explained the video’s voice track. “Today it takes only a few hours to travel the same distance.”
The thrust was enough to banish the woozy feeling of zero gee. Jamie felt almost normal by the time the shuttlecraft settled down on the dusty concrete landing pad at Armstrong Spaceport.
“Here on the Moon you are now in one-sixth of normal terrestrial gravity,” the safety video warned. “Please use extreme caution when walking or moving about. Weighted boots are available at the visitors’ center for a nominal rental fee.”
Neither Jamie nor Vijay bothered with the boots. They headed out of the shuttlecraft in the slow shuffling strides they both remembered from earlier visits to the Moon. Other passengers stumbled and staggered in the low gravity.
They rode the automated electric bus through the long tunnel that connected the spaceport to the city proper. It looked like an oversized golf cart, roofless, with ten rows of double seats. Jamie used his pocket phone to pull up a map of Selene and locate the hotel.
“This place has grown, even in the few years since I was here,” he said, showing Vijay the labyrinth of tunnels that made up the underground community.
“People come up here to retire,” she said. “The low gravity and all that.”
All that meant escaping from Earth’s problems, Jamie knew: from the crime and poverty and the disastrous flooding and climate changes that racked the world.
“Pretty expensive retirement,” he muttered.
“The rich always run away,” Vijay said. “They use their money to insulate them from troubles.”
Is that what we’re doing? Jamie asked himself silently as the bus rolled smoothly, quietly through the shadowy tunnel. Running away to Mars? No, he immediately answered. We’re exploring a new world, we’re searching for new knowledge. Which is why the fundamentalists hate us.
“I don’t know if I could live in these tunnels,” Vijay said. “Not full time.”
“Aussies do,” Jamie said. “In Coober Pedy.”
“The opal mines,” she murmured. Then she added, “But they can go up on the surface any time they want.”
Jamie said, “There’s the Grand Plaza, under the dome. Plenty of trees and greenery up there. They even have a swimming pool.”
Nodding, Vijay murmured, “Still…”
By the time they reached their hotel room, guided by the electronic maps on the corridor walls, their two travel bags were already on the king-sized bed.
Jamie glanced at his wristwatch. “Hungry? It’s just about dinnertime.”
“Let’s unpack first,” she suggested.
It didn’t take long. Soon they were walking up the gently sloping ramp that led to the hotel’s restaurant. There were no stairs in Selene: too tricky for newcomers to the low lunar gravity.
“This is lovely,” Vijay said once they were seated at a small table. The restaurant was almost full, but the patrons’ conversations were quiet, muted. Soft music purred from the speakers set into the ceiling, something classical that sounded vaguely familiar to Jamie. Human waiters in dark jackets moved among the tables, together with flat-topped little robots that carried the food and drinks.
“Big day tomorrow.” Vijay smiled brightly, trying to make it sound cheerful.
“Right,” Jamie agreed. Inwardly he wondered what it was going to be like seeing Edith again.