Her muscles felt warm and stretched after the workout. And it was good to spend some time after showering just brushing her long black hair. Stepping back into her drab pullover was reminder enough, though. Maui lay a hundred million miles from here.
You made your choice, girl. There are things to accomplish out here… things more important to you even than remaining in the Land of the Golden People.
She decided to take a brisk walk around the gravity wheel before returning to the freefall portion of the shi[. Virginia strode long-legged in the direction opposite to the wheel’s spin.
It seemed nobody was about. Dr. Marguerite van Zoon wasn’t chivying the spacers to visit the gym these days. Those poor folk were sweating quite enough right now, and were exempt from the Walloon physician’s obsession with exercise.
Virginia ’s journey around the rim hallway took her past one of the spoke ladders and beyond, to the part of the wheel dedicated to laboratories. The doors were all closed, so she couldn’t tell if the Biological Sciences section was being used right now. She paused by the door, her hand hesitating, half-raised toward the buzzer.
Oh come on, Ginnie. It’s not as if Saul Lintz will bite you. Why all these little-girl heart palpitations?
All she knew was that the man held a fascination for her, more than she had felt toward anyone in years. Was it his worldly experience? Or the expression in his eyes—perseverance and quiet strength?
Since she had been unslotted, she had hoped he would say something, make some first move. It was frustrating to realize, at last, that he simply assumed she saw him as a father figure. That left Virginia wondering if she should attempt an overture herself.
Her hesitation over the buzzer lasted until she felt ridiculous.
It would seem so contrived to barge in on him now. What would I say?
Later there’ll be opportunity to arrange something more casual. After all, what we have plenty of is time.
At least that would do for an excuse. Oh, if only she understood people half as well as she did machines! She swiveled and left without disturbing the buzzer.
As she walked down the rim corridor, she noticed all the ways in which the Edmund Halley had aged over the past year. The corridors no longer shone. Buff, color-coordinated wall panels had warped and even buckled in places. The old girl had not started this mission exactly in the blush of youth, and no space vessel of her size had ever been required to accelerate so far, for so long. The strain showed.
Virginia thought she was past surprise, but as she approached another of the spoke ladders, she stopped and stared.
Oh, it can’t be this bad!
An air vent dripped onto the gently curved hallway. Patchy, dark green growth discolored the floor where Coriolis effects had pushed a small puddle against the wall.
Virginia ’s generous lips pursed in disgust as she stepped gingerly past the moldy infestation and climbed a damp ladder toward the hub, making a mental note to report this to maintenance. It was hard to believe she was the first to discover it.
The rungs pressed against her body as she surrendered angular momentum to the rotating wheel. The spoke passageway was dim and dank and all too smelly. Only half the phosphor panels in this tunnel were working, makingthe ascent seem a bit like a trip through a city sewer.
It’s a good thing the Halley habitats will be ready soon, she thought. This creaky barge needs a long overhaul.
There would be little enough for the four hundred members of the expedition to do during three-quarters of a century… investigating the mysteries of a major cometary nucleus… testing the sublimation control panels and the big Nudge Flingers… another busy time in thirty years or so as Halley neared its farthest reach from the sun, when Virginia would help calculate parameters for the all important Grand Maneuver… then the long fall toward Jupiter and finally, home.
For most of the intervening time, nearly everybody would be asleep, accumulating Earthside pay in nearly dreamless slot state.
That was when the small, rotating watch shifts would slowly refurbish poor Edmund.
Seven decades ought to be time enough. It had better be. Come Halley’s next fiery plunge into the inner solar system, this old bucket has to be good enough shape to take us home again.
Climbing hand over hand, Virginia felt her weight seep away into the ladder as she approached the grumbling bearings, where the null gravity of space resumed. The four spoke tunnels came together in a small, rotating, octagonal room.
Just before reaching the hub, however, she blinked in stunned surprise at a small lubricant leak, spraying fine, greasy vapor into the passage.
I know most of Edmund’s spacers have been called away to work on Halley Core. Still, there’s no excuse for this! We’re going to need the wheel for a long time to come!
“Disgusting,” she muttered aloud. “Simply disgusting.”
That was when a voice spoke from beyond the faint, oily jet.
“I agree, Virginia.”
She glanced up quickly A slightly paunchy man in a gray shipsuit floated by one of the two exits, his broad, Slavic mouth pouting in a sour expression. A wool cap was pulled down over sparse brown hair flecked with gray. His arms were long and powerful- looking, all the more so since he had no legs.
Spacer Second Class Otis Sergeov had never appeared particularly disabled by his handicap. In fact, it seemed to make him quicker in microgravity. She had heard that Sergeov was now assigned to helping Joao Quiverian and the other astronomers studying Comet Halley.
He was the oldest Percell Virginia had ever met.
Being one of the first had its drawbacks. Simon Percell’s famous early work in genetic surgery had made it possible for Sergeov’s parents to have children at all. But a mosaic flaw had left him with only small nubs below his shorts.
“Oh, hello, Otis,” she greeted him. “Something has to be done about this. Has anyone reported it yet?”
The Russian spacer shrugged. “Is doing what the hell good, reporting thing like this? Nobody does nothing about it, for sure,” he groused bitterly in mixed Russian and English. “The Stchakai cretins!”
Virginia blinked at the apparent nonsequitur. Of course Captain Cruz would order repairs at once, when someone told him …
Then she noticed that Sergeov wasn’t even looking at the lubricant leak. Virginia rode the slowly rotating hub until she was even with the man, then edged past the intermittent spray and pushed off hard.
The octagonal room seemed to spin around her. She had to grab twice in order to grip a rubberized handhold, and still her body collided with the padded wall. I’ll never get this right! she thought as she fought to orient herself.
Sergeov pointed. “You think Ortho bureaucrats will do anything about this thing, do you?” he snapped “This?”
Virginia blinked. He was glaring at a graffito scrawled on the bulkhead nearest the grumbling axis bearings.
“Arc of the Sun,” he identified the symbol, bitingly. “The Kakashkiia bastards have followed us, even out here.”
“I’ve seen it before,” Virginia said softly. She felt a little short of breath over this unexpected sight. “Even in Hawaii…”