Well, hell. I was in space, and I was alive. Within the last hour I had been morbidly depressed, terrified, exalted, very nearly killed, and flattered. I was no longer afraid of anything at all. What harm could there be in a little extracurricular instruction?
The Aborigine returned before Robert could reply, sailing over the seat tops, hands waving comically for balance. When she reached us she stopped herself against her seat, tried to do a one and a half gainer to end up seated, and botched it completely. She managed to kick both me and the man in front of her in the head. “Sorry. Sorry,” she kept chirping. We all smiled. She was like a tumbling puppy. I found myself warming to her. She had the oddest way of carrying off clumsiness gracefully. Since I’d spent my life carrying off gracefulness clumsily, I found it appealing.
Finally she was strapped back in. She grinned infectiously. “I keep lookin’ for the bloody fish,” she said. “Like divin’ the Barrier Reef, y’know? I’nt it marvelous? My name’s Kirra; what’s yours then?”
“Morgan McLeod, Kirra; I’m pleased to meet you. And this is Robert Chen.”
“G’day, mate,” she said to him, “that was good work you done before. You’re fast as a jackrabbit.”
“Thanks, Kirra,” he said. “But I had the same inspiration rabbits do: mortal terror. How’s Mr. Henderson?”
Her face smoothed over; for a moment she could have been her grandmother, or her own remotest ancestor. “Bloke’s in a bad way,” she said. “You could say he’s gone and not be wrong. Oh, his motor’s still turnin’ over, and I reckon it might keep on. Nobody’s at the wheel, but. His mind’s changed forever.” She fingered the thorax of her p-suit absently. I sensed she was looking for an amulet or necklace of some kind that usually hung there. “I tried to sing with him…,” she said softly, in a distant, sing-song voice. “We couldn’t sing the same…was like a bag of notes was broken on the floor.” She sighed, and squared her shoulders. “He needs a better healer than me, that’s sure.”
“They’ll have good doctors at Top Step,” Robert assured her.
She looked dubious, but politely agreed.
“I’m sorry, Morgan,” he said to me. “You asked me a question before, whether I’d work with you on jaunting. I wanted to say—”
The pilot maneuvered without warning.
For a few instants there was a faint suggestion of an up and down to the world. A sixth of a gee or so. Coincidentally it was lined up roughly with our seatbacks in one axis, so the effect was to push us gently down into our seats. But if you considered the round bulkhead up front as a clock, “down” was at about 8:30: we all tilted to the right like bus passengers on a long curve. I found my face pressed gently against Robert’s, my weight supported by his strong shoulder, with Kirra’s head on my lap. A few complaints were raised, and one clear, happy, “Wheeee!” came from somewhere aft. His hair smelled good.
“Hang on, people,” the attendant called. “Nothing to worry about.”
In a matter of seconds the acceleration went away, and we drifted freely again. We all waited a few moments for a bang or bump to signal docking. Nothing happened.
As the three of us started to say embarrassment-melting things to each other, thrust returned again—in precisely the opposite direction. I suppose it made sense: first you turn the wheel, and then you straighten the wheel. But even Robert was caught by surprise. This time we were hanging upside down and sideways from our seats, Kirra and I with wrists locked like arm wrestlers and Robert’s head in my lap. It felt dismayingly good there. Even through a cheap p-suit. Again the thrust went away.
“I wonder how long it’ll be before we—” Kirra began, when an acceleration warning finally sounded, a mournful hooting noise. The attendant had time to call out, “All right, I want everybody to—” Then the big one hit.
Well, maybe a half gee, or a little more. But half a gee is a lot more than none, and it came on fast, and in an unexpected and disturbing direction. The pilot was blasting directly forward, along our axis, as though backing violently away from danger. The whole vessel shuddered. We all fell forward toward the seatbacks in front of us—“below” us now—and held a pushup together for perhaps thirty or forty seconds. There were loud complaints above the blast noise.
The acceleration faded slowly down to nothing again. There were two or three seconds of silence…and then there was a series of authoritative but gentle thumps on the hull, fore and aft, as though men with padded hammers were surreptitiously checking the welds. The seatbacks began flashing PLEASE REMAIN SEATED.
“We’re here,” Robert said. “A very nice docking. A little abrupt, but clean.” I thought he was being ironic but wasn’t sure.
“Keep your seatbelts buckled,” the attendant called. “We’ll disembark after Doctor Kolchar has cleared Mr. Henderson to be moved.”
“That’s it?” Kirra said.
I knew what she’d meant. On TV the docking of spacecraft is always seen from a convenient adjacent camera that gives the metal mating dance a stately Olympian perspective, an elephantine grace. A trip to space—especially one’s first and last—should begin with trumpets, and end with the Blue Danube. This had been like riding a Greyhound bus through an endless tunnel…blowing a tire…riding on the rim for a while…and then running out of gas in the middle of the tunnel.
“That’s it,” Robert agreed. “Even if they’d had the video feed running, it wouldn’t have looked like much up until the very end. To really appreciate a docking you’ve got to speak radar. But we’re here, all right.”
“We truly have reached the Top Step,” I said wonderingly.
“That we have,” Robert said. “Here comes the doctor.” The red light was on over the airlock up front.
The hatch opened explosively, with a popping sound, and the airlock spat out a white-haired man in Bermuda shorts and a loud yellow Hawaiian shirt. His body orientation, fluttering hair and clothes, and the pack affixed somehow to his midsection made him look like a skydiver. The attendant caught him, began to warn him that this pressure was not secure, but he shushed her and began examining Mr. Henderson with various items taken from his belly pack. After a time I heard him say, “Okay, Shannon, let’s move him. You help me with him. We’re going to do it nice and slow.”
“You!” the attendant called up the aisle. “The Chinese spacer in Row Six: you’re in command.” Robert blinked. “Come forward and take over, now. Breathing and digestion are permitted; limited thinking will be tolerated; everything else is forbidden, savvy?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he called forward.
Our eyes met briefly as he was unbuckling. For the first time I was able to see past that impassive expression, guess his thoughts. He was embarrassed, flattered…disappointed? At what?
“To be continued in our next,” he murmured, and vaulted away.
At the interruption of our conversation?
“I hope so,” I heard myself call after him.
Come to think of it, he still hadn’t said whether or not he’d give me lessons in jaunting.
Oh God. What was I doing? What good could possibly come of this? Even for me, this was rotten timing.
“You want to mind that top step, they say,” Kirra said softly, and when I turned to look at her she was grinning.
Chapter Two
Two moves equals one fire.
We didn’t have long to wait. Less than a minute after the doctor and attendant left, the lock cycled open again and someone emerged.
The newcomer got our instant attention.
“Afternoon, folks,” she said. “Welcome to Top Step. I’m a Guide, and my name is Chris.”