"Mikhail, I am ready for the little stinky one. Pass him here. That's it. Come to me, Bobby. Here, stick your head through. Look around—see? Nothing to be afraid of. The only monsters up here are your brothers. Hold onto this railing, please. Mikhail—? Send up Mr. Dingillian, please."
Dad came next, and Mickey followed. Alexei sealed the hatch behind him. Now, we were all clutching handholds on the inside of the steepest curve yet. Three meters away, the curved wall of the core whispered by. We could hear the air whooshing as it passed. We watched a steady progression of warning signs and arrows and numbers and access panels. There were tracks in the opposite surface, matching tracks in the wall we clung to.
Alexei looked anti-spinward expectantly, so I followed his gaze. I was still uncomfortable, but watching the moving ceiling sort of helped. I don't know why.
"Ahh," said Alexei. "Here it comes."
It was a bright red platform sliding toward us on the tracks. It slowed to a stop directly next to the access panel we'd climbed through. It had handholds and equipment boxes mounted all over it. All its corners were rounded, and most of its flat surfaces had bumper pads. There was a funny angular contraption in the middle, like a collapsible tower. Alexei pulled us all aboard, and then pushed a green Go button, and turned a dial. "We want the One-Gamma-Three entrance," he explained as the platform began moving spin-ward. "One is the disk we're on. Gamma is the cable. Three is the access. Capisce?"
We passed similar cars mounted on other tracks, on our side as well as on the rotating surface above / next to us; most of them were stopped and waiting, but our car sped up until we had matched speed with the inner wall. There was a panel there marked one-gamma-three. Alexei unfolded the collapsed contraption in the middle of the car. It was an extensible ladder and it went all the way across. "Hokay, let's go."
Alexei grabbed Stinky in a bear hug and started scrambling across like a pregnant spider. I shook off Dad's help, but not Douglas's. When we were all safely across, Mickey hit the release on the top of the ladder and it folded back down. Now the ceiling felt motionless and the floor was rolling past. Except it wasn't a floor anymore. It was just a rotating wall-surface, with a car tracking along beside us. Then the car began to slow, and pretty soon it disappeared around the curve behind us.
Alexei was already opening the One-Gamma-Three panel and pulling us through. First Douglas, then me, then Mickey—they passed Stinky through—then finally Dad and Alexei. Inside the core, I levered myself around to look and nearly lost it—"Douglas!" I wailed. My brother caught me and held me tightly with his right arm. "It's okay, Charles. I'm right here. I'm not letting go. Just hang onto me—we'll be fine. Really."
I buried my face in Douglas's shoulder. I could sense that both Mickey and Dad were hovering close, but I didn't want to have anything to do with either of them. Only Douglas.
What I'd seen ... was the largest interior space I'd ever seen—well, maybe not the largest, maybe Terminus was larger—but definitely the deepest. It was like the inside of a giant pipe, filled with humongus wires, cables, tubes, conduits, vents, pass-throughs, catwalks, ladders, platforms, machinery, and stuff. And it all looked up and down and sideways—all at the same time!
"Are you okay, son—?" That was Dad. I didn't answer. Douglas pulled away just enough to look at my face. He tilted my chin upward so we were eye to eye and nose to nose. I couldn't remember the last time we'd ever been this close. Maybe we never had. "I'm not going to let anything bad happen to you, Charles. I promise."
"What's wrong with Charles?" I heard Stinky asking.
"Nothing. Please be quiet, Bobby. Charles has an upset stomach. He'll be okay in a minute. Go back to sleep." Douglas looked back to me. "Just tell me when you're ready."
I shook my head. I didn't want him to let go. I liked having his arm around me. I felt safe. I swallowed hard. "I don't want to lose you, Douglas," I whispered, so only he could hear. "Not to anybody—" I sort of nodded toward Mickey.
"You're not going to lose me. I'll always be your brother, no matter what."
"Is that a threat or a promise?" I half-joked.
He half-smiled. "Yes." He nudged me. "Come on, the others are waiting. And we don't have a lot of time. Are you ready?"
"Yeah. Just stay close, okay?"
"Hokay," he said. Just like Alexei.
THE OLD SWIMMING HOLE
It was like being on the inside of a giant pipe that kept changing its orientation. But as long as I kept focused on the wall and pretended that I was swimming and it was the floor, I was okay. If I had to look away from the wall, for any reason, I pretended that everything else was up. It sort of worked, but I still felt dizzy.
Alexei pointed around the curve of the wall toward a cluster of pipes and a vertical platform on which there were some storage lockers. We pulled ourselves along a line of handholds, and when we got to the platform, we anchored ourselves against its railings.
"Do you see this pipe?" Alexei pounded on one of the thicker pipes next to us. "Put your ear next to it. You can hear the water rushing through it. Very useful stuff. We use it for ballast. We use it to balance the rotation of the disks. Sometimes we even turn it into oxygen to breathe and hydrogen to burn. And of course, we also use it for drinking and bathing and growing our crops. It is our life-blood!
"Listen, you can hear it flowing—back and forth, up and down, in and out, all over the station—carrying sewage to the farms where it will be turned back into food, going to the distilleries where the sunlight will turn it into steam and the cold of space will turn it back into fresh water, three times over, and then it will rush back down here, flowing this way and that, nourishing the lives of all of us.
"Do you know what is one of the worst crimes you can commit here on the station? Interfering with the water. Because whatever else it is, water is first and foremost, the stuff of life—so you do not tamper with it. The flow of water—in fact, all of what we call the domestic ecology—is the property of the whole community here, and each and every one of us has a responsibility to the community. The way we keep the water flowing, that demonstrates how responsible we are to our people.
"But—" he interrupted himself "—these pipes are also very useful if you have to go somewhere and you don't want anyone to know that you are going or how you got there. And so, while we respect the water, sometimes we ride it too." Alexei opened one of the storage lockers. Inside was—scuba gear?!
"Huh? Are we going swimming?" Stinky asked.
"You? No," Alexei said. "Them. Yes." He pointed. We looked up—every direction was up—and saw four, no five, teenagers diving out of the center toward us. Three boys, two girls. They were wearing shorts and T-shirts and looked like they had fallen off a runaway picnic. They were laughing like they were diving into a party.
As they approached, they began waving and calling to us. They caught themselves easily on the platforms and ladders and railings around us, and they shouted things at Alexei in Russian that made him blush with embarrassment. They passed him a backpack and a pair of canteens. They had a third canteen of their own, which they passed around among themselves, each one taking deep swallows of whatever was in it. From the way they acted, I didn't think it was water.
Alexei took the flask when it came to him and took a deep swig of his own, then he pocketed it, much to their dismay. "You have all had enough," he said. Then he bawled them out in Russian. Or gave them instructions. Or told a dirty joke. Whatever. When he finished, they all laughed and started pulling on the various pieces of diving equipment.