I passed through the hatch next, towing the duffel bag with one hand and holding my weapon with the other. I noticed that Sasha made a point of leaving her gun in its holster. I tried a flip, hoped to land feet first, and hit the bulkhead with my back. Sasha laughed, did what I had tried to do, and hung there with a smirk on her face.
I looked both ways, made sure the corridor was clear, and holstered my weapon. It wouldn’t hurt to have a free hand.
Joy was disgustingly cheerful. “Hey, this is fun! Where do we go? This way or that way?”
Our head swiveled as Sasha and I considered the alternatives. There wasn’t much difference. The passageway was sufficiently wide to accommodate a standard autoloader or a train of power pallets. And, judging from the longitudinal marks that scored the walls, a good deal of cargo had been hauled through this corridor. Though pretty much interchangeable during zero-gee conditions, the distinctions between overhead, bulkheads, and deck were more meaningful when gravity was present.
The deck, or what would be a deck during a normal gravity situation, was covered with heavy-duty mesh. Conduit and cable snaked along below.
The overhead was comparatively smooth, interrupted by little more than rectangular glow panels and a recessed track. Hundreds on hundreds of vertical ridges gave the bulkheads an organic look, as if we were inside a worm, or a giant serpent. The intent was obvious. By grabbing the ridges with our hands, or pushing on them with our feet, zero-gee pedestrians like ourselves could make pretty good time.
The bulkheads had other features as well, including emergency com sets, surveillance cameras, fire-fighting equipment, and slots where one could escape an oncoming cargo train. Arrows pointed in both directions and words announced possible destinations. I tried to read them and was thrilled to find that I could. The first set said, “Holds 1- 12,” and the second set said, “Holds 13- 24.”
It went without saying that someone who had legitimate business aboard the barge would know where they were headed. I didn’t, but Sasha did, or pretended to. “The shipping agent said that holds one through twelve would be crammed with cargo modules. Let’s try thirteen through twenty-four.”
I nodded, motioned for Joy to stay behind me, and was about to launch myself in the proper direction, when something whooshed over my head. It came and went so quickly that it took me a moment to realize that whatever it was had traveled via the recessed channel. A small robot, perhaps? Rushing from one end of the vessel to the other?
I looked at Sasha, she looked at me, and both of us shrugged. The channel and whatever it was that traveled within it seemed harmless enough and could be investigated later. We needed to get where we were going, and get there fast, or we would suffer what could be painful consequences.
I repositioned my feet, pushed off, and coasted for twenty feet. The ridges were spaced about six inches apart, which placed one wherever you needed it, and a sort of rhythm emerged. Push, coast, push. Push, coast, push. Over and over again as we made our way down the corridor. It became kind of hypnotic after a while, so much so that my senses were dulled, and it was Joy who gave the alarm. “Look! Something’s coming!”
I looked, and what I saw scared the hell out of me. It turned from a dot to a blob to an oncoming train in a matter of seconds. The drive unit had diagonal yellow and black stripes across its front end, mounted no less than four flashing red beacons, and filled the passageway from side to side and top to bottom. Rollers kept the vehicle from scraping against the bulkheads and explained the wear marks I’d noticed earlier. The train, if that’s what it should be called, was making a good fifty or sixty miles an hour. And why not? The humans were gone, as far as the barge and its computers knew, so cargo could be redistributed by the fastest and most efficient means possible. Sasha was first to get the words out of her mouth. “The next niche! Move!”
It felt crazy to launch ourselves at the oncoming train, but the distance between us and the niche ahead was less than the distance between us and the niche behind. I put all the strength I had into the push, but the air felt as thick as old-fashioned molasses. The deck and bulkheads moved with maddening slowness, and the stripes hurtled towards me with what seemed like unbelievable speed. Seconds seemed to stretch into minutes as I willed myself forward. I saw Sasha make her way into the niche, followed by Joy. Good! Someone would live, someone would…
The Beep! Beep! Beep! of the warning buzzer filled my ears and drove all the remaining thoughts out of my mind. I felt the outermost wave of displaced air touch my face, waited for the mind-numbing impact, and felt a hand grab my jacket. The beeping sound turned into a long, thin scream as the train roared by. The heel of my left boot bounced off the side of a cargo module and threw me deeper into the niche. My head hit the bulkhead with a distinct clang. Anyone who had a full load of brains would’ve been injured. I was momentarily dizzy but otherwise fine. The train was gone as quickly as it came. I looked at Sasha. “Thanks. You saved my life.”
There it was again. The flash of compassion, of caring, quickly hidden by a shrug and a flip reply. “It was my turn.”
We paid attention after that, pushing our way down the corridor, watching for oncoming trains. That’s how I spotted the change in what had been dull uniformity. The difference was hard to describe, except to say that the lighting was different, and the bulkheads had been replaced by a vague haziness. But the area acquired definition as we moved closer, rolled into focus like a carefully adjusted lens, and became a vast open space.
The bulkheads fell away and the corridor became a sky bridge that spidered out over a large cargo bay. It was filled with bushes. Hundreds, maybe thousands of them. They were lushly green, almost identical in size and shape, and heavy with purple blossoms. Light glittered off tiny wings as a host of robotic insects flitted from one blossom to the next, spreading pollen, or doing whatever it was they had been designed to do. I noticed that the bushes, and the containers they sat in, were secured to the deck.
My stomach flip-flopped as I drifted out and over the abyss. Heights don’t bother me, but floating does. I wouldn’t fall, not till gravity had been restored, but I wouldn’t be able to go anywhere either. Not unless the air-conditioned breeze blew me against something solid. I made a grab for the railing, got it, and checked to see if Sasha was watching. She wasn’t, thank god, and neither was Joy. Both had ignored the view and were well on their way to reaching the other side.
I followed, careful to plan my movements, and was grateful when the corridor closed around me. We had gone about fifty feet down the passageway when the vertical access tubes appeared and the hall ended. That was interesting, but not half as interesting as the foot-high letters that spelled out the words, “Corpies Suck!” followed by some incomprehensible lines and squiggles. It didn’t take an art historian to see that the artist had used some sort of marker rather than spray paint. I turned towards Sasha. “The tug crew, I suppose?”
She gave me a dirty look and pushed herself towards the access tubes. “Come on. Let’s camp on the main deck. I’d rather look at bushes than metal bulkheads.”
That seemed reasonable, so I tagged along. Sasha had rigged a way to tow her duffel bag one after the other. The second one bounced off the coaming as she pushed herself down through the tube. Joy shoved her cases into position, waved cheerfully, and dropped feet first into the tube.