On her arrival at the space station, Brittany and Jasmine, two crew members who were already old hands on the station, were detailed to give her the orientation. Brittany was big-boned, tall and square and blonde; Jasmine was small and dark, with a round face. They acted as smoothly as if they had been working with one another since they had been born.
“It’s big and ugly and smelly,” Brittany said, waving her hand at the station.
“Isn’t it just,” Jasmine said. “God, don’t you love it here?”
“Yeah,” Brittany said. She looked at Tana. “Girl, you may not know it, but the moment you get back down, let me warn you, you’re going to start scheming how to get back up here.”
“Home,” Jasmine said. “Come on. I think there’s nobody in the number two biology lab.” She contorted her body, jackknifed, and with a sudden jerk, was facing the opposite direction. Tana had no idea how she had accomplished it without touching a wall. “Let’s go over there, and we can”—she winked at Tana—“give you a briefing in private.”
Tana already knew about the zero-gravity rite of passage, or at least the outline of it. The grapevine at the center had been pretty explicit. She didn’t bother to try Jasmine’s maneuver, but instead pushed off the wall to follow.
As the newcomer, Brittany explained, a tradition as old as the space station itself gave her the jus primae noctis, the right to choose who she wanted for the first night, any one of the seasoned crew.
“And it doesn’t have to be one of the men, either,” Jasmine said, and winked. “If you go that way.”
Tana wasn’t sure if that was a proposition or not. She could feel her ears heating up. “Does it have to be the first night?” she asked.
“Nah, that’s just a phrase,” Jasmine said.
“There isn’t any night up here anyway,” Brittany said.
“Sure there is—a new one every ninety-three minutes,” Jasmine said. “Great if you like sunsets.”
“If you’re feeling nauseous, you might want to wait a bit,” Brittany said. “Don’t want to spoil it.”
“Nah, you don’t want to wait,” Jasmine said. “The first couple of days they still have you on an easy work schedule.”
“Yeah, it’ll be hard to find some free time,” Brittany said.
“Nah,” Jasmine said, and laughed. “You can find time. I mean, you don’t want to wait.”
She didn’t know why she picked John Radkowski. He was certainly good looking, clean-cut, and athletic, but not much more so than most of the others. He was the commander of the station, but somehow, it seemed to her, he had more depth than the other flying jocks, a core of sadness. She waited until she momentarily brushed against him in a node, and none of the others were close by. She looked at him, and he looked back at her with a long, unwavering gaze, his gray eyes almost disconcertingly direct. And then he said softly, “Would you like to accompany me to the equipment module airlock?”
She nodded, and he pushed off without a word, expecting her to follow.
The airlock, she discovered, was one of the very few places on the space station that had a door that could be firmly and securely shut. Inside it, two space suits were stored. There was a small space, barely larger than a coffin, between the suits. John Radkowski pushed into the space and motioned her to follow.
“You’re not claustrophobic, are you?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Good.” He pulled the airlock door shut and twisted the wheel a quarter turn. “Too much room is a problem up here.” He smiled. “For some things, anyway. Action and reaction, you know.”
There was a dim red illumination, emergency lighting, that was never shut off. The space was close; she was pressing against him slightly, but in the absence of gravity, it was comfortable. She could feel his breath, slow and warm. He had a slight odor of sweat, which she found not unpleasant.
“Nothing is required,” he said. He actually seemed slightly embarrassed. “I hope Brittany explained that. You’re free to say no.”
She answered by pulling him closer to her and kissing him. She had to hold on to keep him from floating away from her. He was more muscular than she’d expected.
“I wouldn’t want to break tradition,” she said.
He was wearing a T-shirt and shorts; under the T-shirt, she found, his chest was covered with dark hair. Tana unzippered the front of her shirt and freed her breasts. In microgravity, her breasts had no sag, she was as firm as silicone. A side effect of fluid redistribution, she thought. He reached a hand out tentatively, and cupped one of her breasts; she reached up and stroked the back of his hand. She started to slip her arm out of her sleeve to take off her shirt, and he stopped her.
“Leave it on,” he said. “One of us has to wear something to hold on to.”
He stripped out of his shorts and sent them floating away. He floated nude in front of her. There was nothing tentative about him now. She reached down and touched him.
Sex in microgravity, Tana discovered, was by necessity slow; sudden moves were impossible. She didn’t have to worry that his weight would crush her, or it she put an arm around him her arm would be pinned. Even the climax, when it came, seemed almost in slow motion. She had a desperate urgency, but there was a frustrating lack of any leverage for her to take advantage of. She clasped her legs around his body, arched her back, and her whole body shook.
He had one fist tangled in her shirt, keeping them from floating apart, and they floated together, silent. At last, he spoke.
“Welcome to space station,” he said. He pulled her to him and kissed her lightly on the nose. “I now declare you officially a member of the microgravity society, with all the rights and privileges that entails.”
14
Waiting for Angels
John Radkowski lay on his back, on a slope of broken rock and sand, and marveled. He wasn’t dead.
That was the surprise. He wasn’t dead.
The fall had been slow, so slow. But he had been moving awful fast. He tried to calculate how fast he must have been moving when he’d hit, but he couldn’t quite think clearly.
He didn’t hurt.
In fact, he couldn’t feel anything, just a comfortable warmth about his body.
The helmet hadn’t shattered. It really did live up to its marketing, he thought, a technological marveclass="underline" light, clear as glass, and damn near unbreakable. He’d have to do a commercial for the company: “I fell off a cliff, half a mile down, hit rocks at the bottom, and the remarkable carbide helmet still held air!”
He wished he could say the same about the rest of the suit. He could hear the shrill whine of escaping air.
He was laying at a crazy angle, half tilted toward the sky. The sky was a most remarkable shade of peach, brushed with delicate yellow clouds like feathers. He wished he could move his head, look around. Out of the corner of his eye he could see blood. It seemed to be pooling in the bottom of the helmet, somewhere around his right ear.
He tried to use the radio to call, but his voice wasn’t working anymore. He doubted the radio was, either.
The pool of blood in his helmet was getting deeper.
He felt remarkably peaceful. He owed the universe a death, he knew. One death.
His.
There was no possible way that any of the others could get to him in time. And even if they could reach him, what could they possibly do?