«All right now,» the super called to them, tugging a palmcomp from the hip pocket of his coveralls. «Take a look.»
He pecked at the handheld, and suddenly the opaque tube became as transparent as glass. Everybody gasped.
They were hanging in the middle of a gigantic spiderwork of curving metal girders, like being inside a dirigible’s frame, except that the girders went on and on for miles. And beyond it Harry saw the immense curving bulk of Earth, deep blue gleaming ocean, brighter than the purest turquoise, and streams of clouds so white it hurt his eyes to look at them. He blinked, then looked again. He saw long rows of waves flowing across the ocean, and the cloud-etched edge of land, with gray wrinkles of mountains off in the distance. Beyond the flank of the curving world and its thin glowing skin of air was the utterly black emptiness of space.
We’re in space! Harry realized. He had known it, in his head, but now he felt it in his guts, where reality lived. I’m in space, he said to himself, lost in the wonder of it. I’m no longer on Earth.
Abruptly the tunnel walls went opaque again. The view shut off. An audible sigh of disappointment gusted through the crew.
«That’s enough for now,» the super said, with a grin that was somewhere between smug and nasty. «Tomorrow you clowns go out there and start earning your pay.»
Harry licked his lips in anticipation.
The suits were a pain. The one thing they couldn’t prepare you for on Earth was working inside the goddamned space suits. Not even the water tank could simulate the zero pressure of vacuum. The suit’s torso, arms, and leggings were hard-shell cermet, but the joints and the gloves had to be flexible, which meant they were made of fabric, which meant they ballooned and got stiff, tough to flex and move when you went outside. The gloves were especially stubborn. They had tiny little servomotors on the back that were supposed to amplify your natural muscle power and help you move the fingers. Sometimes that helped, but when it came to handling tools it was mostly a waste of time.
Harry got used to the clunky gloves, and the new-car smell of his suit. He never quite got used to hanging in the middle of nothing, surrounded by the growing framework of the miles-long habitat with the huge and glowing Earth spread out before his eyes. Sometimes he thought it was below him, sometimes it seemed as if it was hanging overhead. Either way, Harry could gawk at it like a hungry kid looking through a restaurant window, watching it, fascinated, as it slid past, ever-changing, a whole world passing in panoramic review before his staring eyes.
«Stop your goofin’, Twelvetoes, and get back to work!» The super’s voice grated in Harry’s helmet earphones.
Harry grinned sheepishly and nodded inside his helmet. It was awfully easy to get lost in wonder, watching the world turn.
They worked a six-day week. There was no alcohol in the habitat, not even on Sundays. There was a cafeteria, and the crews socialized there. Everybody complained about the soggy sandwiches and bland fruit juices that the food and drink machines dispensed. You didn’t have to put money into them; their internal computers docked your pay automatically.
Harry was scanning the menu of available dishes, wishing they’d bring up somebody who knew how to cook with spices, when a woman suggested, «Try the chicken soup. It’s not bad.»
She introduced herself: Liza Goldman, from the engineering office. She was slightly taller than Harry, on the skinny side, he thought. But she looked pretty when she smiled. Light brown hair piled up on top of her head. She and Harry carried their trays to one of the chest-high tables. Harry took a swig from the squeeze bulb of soup. It was lukewarm.
Goldman chattered away as if they were old friends. At first Harry wondered why she had picked him to share a meal with, but pretty soon he was enjoying her company enough to try to make conversation. It wasn’t easy. Small talk was not one of his skills.
«You’d think they’d be able to keep the hot foods hot,» Goldman was saying, «and the cold foods cold. Instead, once they’re in the dispensers they all go blah. Entropy, I guess.»
Harry wrinkled his brow and heard himself ask, «You know what I wonder about?»
«No. What?»
«How come they got food dispensers and automated systems for life support and computers all over the place, but they still need us construction jocks?»
Goldman’s brows rose. «To build the habitat. What else?»
«I mean, why don’t they have automated machines to do the construction work? Why do we hafta go outside and do it? They could have machines doin’ it, couldn’t they?»
She smiled at him. «I suppose.»
«Like, they have rovers exploring Mars, don’t they? All automated. The scientists run them from their station in orbit around Mars, don’t they?»
«Teleoperated, yes.»
«Then why do they need guys like me up here?»
Goldman gave him a long, thoughtful look. «Because, Harry, you’re cheaper than teleoperated equipment.»
Harry was surprised. «Cheaper?»
«Sure. You construction people are a lot cheaper than developing teleoperated machinery. And more flexible.»
«Not in those damned suits,» Harry grumbled.
With an understanding laugh, Goldman said, «Harry, if they spent the money to develop teleoperated equipment, they’d still have to bring people up here to run the machines. And more people to fix them when they break down. You guys are cheaper.»
Harry needed to think about that.
Goldman invited him to her quarters. She had an actual room to herself; not a big room, but there was a stand-up desk and a closet with a folding door and a smart screen along one wall and even a sink of her own. Harry saw that her sleeping mesh was pinned to the ceiling. The mesh would stretch enough to accommodate two, he figured.
«What do you miss most, up here?» Goldman asked him.
Without thinking, Harry said, «Beer.»
Her eyes went wide with surprise for a moment, then she threw her head back and laughed heartily. Harry realized that he had given her the wrong answer.
She unpinned her hair and it spread out like a fan, floating weightlessly.
«I don’t have beer, Harry, but I’ve got something just as good. Maybe better.»
«Yeah?»
Goldman slid back the closet door and unzippered a faux leather bag hanging inside. She glided back to Harry and held out one hand. He saw there were two gelatin capsules in her palm.
«The guys in the chem lab cook this up,» she said. «It’s better than beer.»
Harry hesitated. He was on-shift in the morning.
«No side effects,» Goldman coaxed. «No hangover. It’s just a recreational compound. There’s no law against it.»
He looked into her tawny eyes. She was offering a lot more than a high.
Her smile turned slightly malicious. «I thought you Native Americans were into peyote and junk like that.»
Thinking he’d rather have a beer, Harry took the capsule and swallowed it. As it turned out, they didn’t need the sleeping bag. They floated in the middle of the room, bumping into a wall now and then, but who the hell cared?
The next morning Harry felt fine, better than he had in months. He was grinning and humming to himself as he suited up for work.
Then he noticed the super was suiting up, too, a couple of spaces down the bench.
Catching Harry’s puzzled look, the super grumbled, «Mitsuo called in sick. I’m goin’ out with you.»
It was a long, difficult shift, especially with the super dogging him every half-second:
«Be careful with those beams, hotshot! Just ’cause they don’t weigh anything doesn’t mean they can’t squash you like a bug.»
Harry nodded inside his helmet and wrestled the big, weightless girder into place so the welders could start on it while the supervisor went into a long harangue about the fact that zero-gee didn’t erase a girder’s mass.