The rock appeared tiny, at first, on their screen, but grew alarmingly large very quickly. Soon it swallowed their screen as they mirrored its path and gradually moved closer. They had only a tiny window of opportunity to dock; otherwise, they had to either wait two weeks or return home.
A hanger door opened and the pilot maneuvered the capsule over the same type of rails that sent them here. Robotic arms grabbed them and gently lowered them on a sled which took them inside the asteroid. When they stopped, a pressurized doorway extended. They watched a device on their door measure relative atmospheric pressure, then a light turned green. The crew opened the door and a beautiful blond welcomed them aboard humanity’s first and only space port.
“I’m Daniela, your guide for the rest of your stay on Ganymed.”
The excited guests hopped several meters at a time down a corridor, past a sign that said, “if you lived here, you’d be home by now,” to a cavern known as Central, since it took them everywhere. They built the ceilings high because nobody could walk normal in micro-gravity. Instead, people had to hop, like those astronauts on the Moon, except they floated higher and longer. The company painted everything in layers with darker colors at the bottom and brighter colors higher up. All floors looked black and all ceilings off-white so that people could better orient themselves. Otherwise, it was hard to determine up from down while free-floating. There is no north or south in space; no upside-down; even up and down aren’t that convincing. Color coating helped people decide where to point their feet.
“I think I shouldn’t have eaten those Wheaties,” James confessed, feeling a bit nauseous as he unintentionally somersaulted over his father. Maybe space wasn’t the best place to have tons of sex. He swallowed the vomit as frequently as it kept rising, souring his initial experience, if not his mouth.
“This is awesome!” Gina screamed, high-fiving the five story high ceiling. “Eat your heart out, Disney!”
“They’re actually one of our partners,” James let her know. “They want to paint Mickey’s face on the surface and boast about the largest billboard within thousands of miles.”
They floated towards Hotel Ganymed, which looked more like a door in the bedrock.
“Hope I didn’t forget my visa,” James cracked.
“I can’t wait to have sex with you.” Jasmine said loudly.
“I hope you’re talking to me,” James said to laughter. “Oh, crap!”
James overshot the hotel and headed for solid rock. The company warned them this would happen. It takes time to acclimate. Not that this helped James, watching the wall of rock get bigger as he flew closer. He didn’t even have a spacesuit to cushion the blow. He held out his arms, but his momentum kept turning him and there was nothing he could do but flail helplessly. He felt like a poorly thrown football.
“Oh, no.”
His ass smacked the rock hard. He couldn’t even stretch his legs enough to re-orient himself. Then his back hit, followed by the back of his head. Someone in a medical outfit foresaw the accident and shot himself over, flying through the air like superman. Except he had a pole with a hook and magnetic boot heels. He used it to keep himself from bouncing off the wall by hooking a handrail and magnetizing himself to a magnet on the wall. Drops of blood floated in front of James and he yelled in panic, but the doctor sprayed some stuff that closed the wound until they could fix him under better conditions.
“It’s just a scratch,” the doctor reassured him.
While he felt like an idiot, his father and Gina did somersaults high over the floor, laughing like kids and flying like pros. James heard his father laugh more since he met Gina than in the rest of his life combined. He couldn’t wait to throw that in his mother’s face, who abandoned him as a kid.
“You’re welcome, dad,” he whispered.
CHAPTER 7
While others took their luggage to their rooms, their beautiful guide led them to the observatory where they watched the Earth get smaller as Ganymed flew away. The view stunned them. James read that the view of Earth from orbit made all the long hours worth it, according to every astronaut who ever voiced an opinion. They docked when the asteroid was closest to Earth, so every moment took them farther away. They would actually spend a week traveling one hundred thousand kilometers towards the Moon until their orbit returned them. The same capsule would take them back to Earth.
The downside was there was no way to get home for two whole weeks. It felt like the Florida Turnpike when the next exit isn’t for another fifty miles.
It would take several years to complete the maglev catapult on the asteroid’s surface. The company could send non-live cargo to the Moon, Mercury, or Mars by speeding up a shorter rail, and fit astronauts could tolerate a constant acceleration of 5 g’s, but sending ordinary people or livestock required enough track that did not speed them past 2 g’s. Even then, they needed a ship to return. Building another maglev on the highest point on the Moon would take several more years. Ditto for Mercury and Mars. Until then, they would use their limited spaceships a lot by returning as few people as possible.
The beauty of space travel is that a ship does not lose speed. Ever. Well, intergalactic space had tiny amounts of dust and gas that slowed it a tiny bit over billions of kilometers but, for practical purposes within the solar system, it never slowed down until they applied the magnetic chute. And the longer the track, the longer they could increase the acceleration, which meant they left the catapult going that much faster.
This meant getting to the gas giants in several months instead of several years. Maglev launchers on the largest moons of the gas giants could turn traveling the solar system into a virtual space highway. Pluto, seven billion kilometers away, could even be within reach. The dwarf planet Eris, three times farther, yet bigger than Pluto, may require fusion propulsion to get there and back in one lifetime.
“You want to know the easiest way for aliens to destroy humanity?” James asked Jasmine, who was becoming something of an expert on space through massive reading. “Traveling trillions of miles is expensive, and every army marches on its belly, so instead of sending a massive military, any belligerent alien will instead send one ship that installs several mass thrusters to push Earth’s largest near-Earth-object into the planet. It’s cheap, fast, and easy. We now control Ganymed, so the next largest is Eros. The only way I’d support a speed-of-light laser weapon on Ganymed is if it’s only used to protect Earth from rocks. Or aliens.”
He wanted the audience to hear this because it pointed out the value of spending billions on a space port. More Americans believed in aliens than believed that Social Security would be there for them, so James needed to play every card in the deck.
“Damn it, James! You know how talk of an apocalypse turns me on.” Actually, the cameras that now focused on them turned Jasmine on. In any event, Jasmine decided to become the face of the first woman to have sex in space. She cared less if it was true — what mattered is that she became famous as the first. Securing that position in people’s minds would be easier if she was the first that people saw have sex in space. She quickly took off her travel clothes to reveal sexy red lingerie underneath. “I don’t know if I can wait until we get back to the hotel to start our honeymoon.”
“Get him, girl,” mama urged her. “Get him!”
“Who wants to join the Thousand Mile High Club?” James asked, taking off his shirt.
“Stop!” their hot tour guide objected. “You can’t imagine how hard it is to keep this place clean.”
James considered the optics. What better time to have sex than with Earth in the background? That meant now or never. He wanted to help sell the space port, and what sells better than sex? They got the female audience with the surprise marriage proposal and the epic wedding ceremony; now they needed the guys to pay attention. People would only see what Ganymed had to offer if they followed the show; and they would only follow the show if they kept things interesting. And what could generate more viral attention than the first orbital orgy?