And then it all ended. The noise and shaking suddenly cut off and Harry felt his stomach drop away. For an instant Harry felt himself falling, dropping off into nothingness. Then he took a breath and saw that his arms had floated up from the seat’s armrests. Zero-gee. The instructors always called it microgravity, but to Harry it was zero-gee. And it felt good.
At the school they had tried to scare him about zero-gee with stories of how you get sick and heave and get so dizzy you can’t move your head without feeling like it’s going to burst. Harry didn’t feel any of that. He felt as if he were floating in the water tank again, but this was better, much better. There wasn’t any water. He couldn’t help grinning. This is great, he said to himself.
But not everybody felt so good. Looking around, Harry saw plenty of gray faces, even some green. Somebody behind him was gagging. Then somebody upchucked. The smell made Harry queasy. Another passenger retched, up front. Then another. It was like a contagious bug, the sound and stench was getting to everyone in the passenger compartment. Harry took the retch bag from the seat pocket in front of him and held it over his mouth and nose. Its cold sterile smell was better than the reek of vomit that was filling the compartment. There was nothing Harry could do about the noise except to tell himself that these were whites who were so weak. He wasn’t going to sink to their level.
«You’ll get used to it,» the male flight attendant said, grinning at them from up at the front of the compartment. «It might take a day or so, but you’ll get accustomed to zero-gee.»
Harry was already accustomed to it. The smell, though, was something else. The flight attendants turned up the air blowers and handed out fresh retch bags, floating through the aisles as if they were swimming in air. Harry noticed they had filters in their nostrils; that’s how they handle the stink, he thought.
He couldn’t see much of anything as the ship approached the construction site, although he felt the slight thump when they docked. The flight attendants had told everybody to stay in their seats and keep buckled in until they gave the word that it was okay to get up. Harry waited quietly and watched his arms floating a good five centimeters off the armrests of his chair. It took a conscious effort to force them down onto the rests.
When they finally told everybody to get up, Harry clicked the release on his harness and pushed to his feet. And sailed right up into the overhead, banging his head with a thump. Everybody laughed. Harry did, too, to hide his embarrassment.
He didn’t really see the construction site for three whole days. They shuffled the newcomers through a windowless access tunnel, then down a long sloping corridor and into what looked like a processing center, where clerks checked in each new arrival and assigned them to living quarters. Harry saw that there were no chairs anywhere in sight. Tables and desks were chest high, and everybody stood up, with their feet in little loops that were fastened to the floor. That’s how they keep from banging their heads on the ceiling, Harry figured.
Their living quarters were about the size of anemic telephone booths, little more than a closet with a mesh sleeping bag tacked to one wall.
«We sleep standing up?» Harry asked the guy who was showing them the facilities.
The guy smirked at him. «Standing up, on your head, sideways, or inside-out. Makes no difference in zero-gee.»
Harry nodded. I should have known that, he said to himself. They told us about it back at the training base.
Three days of orientation, learning how to move and walk and eat and even crap in zero-gee. Harry thought that maybe the bosses were also using the three days to see who got accustomed to zero-gee well enough to be allowed to work, and who they’d have to send home.
Harry loved zero-gee. He got a kick out of propelling himself down a corridor like a human torpedo, just flicking his fingertips against the walls every few meters as he sailed along. He never got dizzy, never got disoriented. The food tasted pretty bland, but he hadn’t come up here for the food. He laughed the first time he sat on the toilet and realized he had to buckle up the seat belt or he’d take off like a slow, lumbering rocket.
He slept okay, except he kept waking up every hour or so. The second day, during the routine medical exam, the doc asked him if he found it uncomfortable to sleep with a headband. Before Harry could answer, though, the doctor said, «Oh, that’s right. You’re probably used to wearing a headband, aren’t you?»
Harry grunted. When he got back to his cubicle he checked out the orientation video on the computer built into the compartment’s wall. The headband was to keep your head from nodding back and forth in your sleep. In microgravity, the video explained, blood pumping through the arteries in your neck made your head bob up and down while you slept, unless you attached the headband to the wall. Harry slept through the night from then on.
Their crew supervisor was a pugnacious little Irishman with thinning red hair and fire in his eyes. After their three days’ orientation, he called the dozen newcomers to a big metal-walled enclosure with a high ceiling ribbed with steel girders. The place looked like an empty airplane hangar to Harry.
«You know many people have killed themselves on this project so far?» he snarled at the assembled newbies.
«Eighteen,» he answered his own question. «Eighteen assholes who didn’t follow procedures. Dead. One of them took four other guys with him.»
Nobody said a word. They just stood in front of the super with their feet secured by floor loops, weaving slightly like long grasses in a gentle breeze.
«You know how many of my crew have killed themselves?» he demanded. «None. Zip. Zero. And you know why? I’ll tell you. Because I’ll rip the lungs out of any jerkoff asshole who goes one millionth of a millimeter off the authorized procedures.»
Harry thought the guy was pretty small for such tough talk, but thought, what the hell, he’s just trying to scare us.
«There’s a right way and a wrong way to do anything,» the super went on, his face getting splotchy red. «The right way is what I tell you. Anything else is wrong. Anything! Got that?»
A couple of people replied with «Yes, sir,» and «Got it.» Most just mumbled. Harry said nothing.
«You,» the super snapped, pointing at Harry. «Twelvetoes. You got that?»
«I got it,» Harry muttered.
«I didn’t hear you.»
Harry tapped his temple lightly. «It’s all right here, chief.»
The supervisor glared at him. Harry stood his ground, quiet and impassive. But inwardly he was asking the spider, «Is this the monster I’m gonna slay?»
The spider did not answer.
«All right,» the super said at last. «Time for you rookies to see what you’re in for.»
He led the twelve of them, bobbing like corks in water, out of the hangar and down a long, narrow, tubular corridor. To Harry it seemed more like a tunnel, except that the floor and curving walls were made of what looked like smooth, polished aluminum. Maybe not. He put out a hand and brushed his fingertips against the surface. Feels more like plastic than metal, Harry thought.
«Okay, stop here,» said the super.
Stopping was easier said than done, in zero-gee. People bumped into one another and jostled around a bit while the super hovered at the head of the group, hands on hips, and glowered at them. Harry, back near the end of the queue, managed to brush against one of the better-looking women, a Hispanic with big dark eyes and a well-rounded figure.
«Sorry,» he muttered to her.
«Da nada,» she replied, with a smile that might have been shy. Harry read the name tag pinned above her left breast pocket: Marta Santos.