This was a bit more delicate. Be helpful if Jill could read off the computer.
«Distance, eighty-eight meters,» Jill’s voice pronounced firmly in his earphones. «Approach angle …»
Kinsman instinctively turned his head, but his helmet cut off any possible sight of Jill. «Hey, how’s your patient?»
«Empty. I gave her a sedative. She’s out.»
«Okay,» Kinsman said. «Let’s get docked.»
He inched the spacecraft into the docking collar on one end of the lab, locked on and saw the panel lights confirm that the docking was secure.
«Better get Sleeping Beauty zippered up,» he told Jill as he touched the buttons that extended the flexible access tunnel from the hatch over their heads to the main hatch of the lab. The lights on the panel turned from amber to green when the tunnel locked its fittings around the lab’s hatch.
Jill said, «I’m supposed to check the tunnel.»
«Stay put. I’ll do it.» Sealing his faceplate shut, Kinsman unbuckled and rose effortlessly out of the seat to bump his helmet lightly against the overhead hatch.
«You two both buttoned tight?»
«Yes.»
«Keep an eye on the air gauge.» He cracked the hatch open a few millimeters.
«Pressure’s okay. No red lights.»
Nodding, Kinsman pushed the hatch open all the way. He pulled himself easily up and into the shoulder-wide tunnel, propelling himself down its curving length by a few flicks of his fingers against the ribbed walls.
Light and easy, he reminded himself. No big motions, no sudden moves.
When he reached the laboratory hatch he slowly rotated, like a swimmer doing a lazy rollover, and inspected every inch of the tunnel seal in the light of his helmet lamp. Satisfied that it was locked in place, he opened the lab hatch and pushed himself inside. Carefully, he touched his slightly adhesive boots to the plastic flooring and stood upright. His arms tended to float out, but they touched the equipment racks on either side of the narrow central passageway. Kinsman turned on the lab’s interior lights, checked the air supply, pressure and temperature gauges, then shuffled back to the hatch and pushed himself through the tunnel again.
He reentered the spacecraft upside-down and had to contort himself in slow motion around the pilot’s seat to regain a «normal» attitude.
«Lab’s okay,» he said finally. «Now how the hell do we get her through the tunnel?»
Jill had already unbuckled the harness over Linda’s shoulders. «You pull, I’ll push. She ought to bend around the corners all right.»
And she did.
The laboratory was about the size and shape of the interior of a small transport plane. On one side, nearly its entire length was taken up by instrument racks, control equipment and the computer, humming almost inaudibly behind light plastic panels. Across the narrow separating aisle were the crew stations: control desk, two observation ports, biology and astrophysics benches. At the far end, behind a discreet curtain, was the head and a single hammock.
Kinsman sat at the control desk, in his fatigues now, one leg hooked around the webbed chair’s single supporting column to keep him from floating off. He was running through a formal check of all the lab’s life systems: air, water, heat, electrical power. All green lights on the main panel. Communications gear. Green. The radar screen to his left showed a single large blip close by: the power pod.
He looked up as Jill came through the curtain from the bunkroom. She was still in her pressure suit, with only the helmet removed.
«How is she?»
Looking tired, Jill answered, «Okay. Still sleeping. I think she’ll be all right when she wakes up.»
«She’d better be. I’m not going to have a wilting flower around here. I’ll abort the mission.»
«Give her a chance, Chet. She just lost her cookies when free fall hit her. All the training in the world can’t prepare you for those first few minutes.»
Kinsman recalled his first orbital flight. It doesn’t shut off. You’re falling. Like skiing, or skydiving. Only better.
Jill shuffled toward him, keeping a firm grip on the chairs in front of the work benches and the handholds set into the equipment racks.
Kinsman got up and pushed toward her. «Here, let me help you out of the suit.»
«I can do it myself.»
«Shut up.»
After several minutes, Jill was free of the bulky suit and sitting in one of the webbed chairs in her coverall fatigues. Ducking slightly because of the curving overhead, Kinsman glided into the galley. It was about half the width of a phone booth, and not as deep nor as tall.
«Coffee, tea or milk?»
Jill grinned at him. «Orange juice.»
He reached for a concentrate bag. «You’re a hard gal to satisfy.»
«No I’m not. I’m easy to get along with. Just one of the fellas.»
Feeling slightly puzzled, Kinsman handed her the orange juice container.
For the next couple of hours they checked out the lab’s equipment in detail. Kinsman was reassembling a high resolution camera after cleaning it, parts hanging in midair all around him as he sat intently working, while Jill was nursing a straggly-looking philodendron that had been smuggled aboard and was inching from the biology bench toward the ceiling light panels. Linda pushed back the curtain from the sleeping area and stepped, uncertainly, into the main compartment.
Jill noticed her first. «Hi, how’re you feeling?»
Kinsman looked up. She was in tight-fitting coveralls. He bounced out of his web-chair toward her, scattering camera parts in every direction.
«Are you all right?» he asked.
Smiling sheepishly. «I think so. I’m rather embarrassed …» Her voice was high and soft.
«Oh, that’s all right,» Kinsman said eagerly. «It happens to practically everybody. I got sick myself my first time in orbit.»
«That,» said Jill as she dodged a slowly-tumbling lens that ricocheted gently off the ceiling, «is a little white lie, meant to make you feel at home.»
Kinsman forced himself not to frown. Why’d Jill want to cross me?
Jill said, «Chet, you’d better pick up those camera pieces before they get so scattered you won’t be able to find them all.»
He wanted to snap an answer, thought better of it, and replied simply, «Right.»
As he finished the job on the camera, he took a good look at Linda. The color was back in her face. She looked steady, clear-eyed, not frightened or upset. Maybe she’ll be okay after all. Jill made her a cup of tea, which she sipped from the lid’s plastic spout.
Kinsman went to the control desk and scanned the mission schedule sheet.
«Hey, Jill, it’s past your bedtime.»
«I’m not really very sleepy,» she said.
«Maybe. But you’ve had a busy day, little girl. And tomorrow will be busier. Now you get your four hours, and then I’ll get mine. Got to be fresh for the mating.»
«Mating?» Linda asked from her seat at the far end of the aisle, a good five strides from Kinsman. Then she remembered, «Oh, you mean linking the pod to the laboratory.»
Suppressing a half-dozen possible jokes, Kinsman nodded. «Extra-vehicular activity.»
Jill reluctantly drifted off her web-chair. «Okay, I’ll sack in. I am tired, but I never seem to get really sleepy up here.»
Wonder how much Murdock’s told her? She’s sure acting like a chaperon.
Jill shuffled into the sleeping area and pulled the curtain firmly shut. After a few moments of silence, Kinsman turned to Linda.
«Alone at last.»
She smiled back.
«Uh, you just happen to be sitting where I’ve got to install this camera.» He nudged the finished hardware so that it floated gently toward her.
She got up slowly, carefully, and stood behind the chair, holding its back with both hands as if she were afraid of falling. Kinsman slid into the web-chair and stopped the camera’s slow-motion flight with one hand. Working on the fixture in the bulkhead that it fit into, he asked: