face pasty-white. “I’m really going—” She clutched at her middle.
Paul grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her toward the toilet area. Joanna moaned and gagged. Pushing her weightlessly down the short length of the corridor, their feet barely touching the deck, Paul slid Joanna sideways through the open doorway. She bumped gently against the wall inside.
“Just let go,” he said to her, leaning over her bowed back to start the toiler’s air suction flow. “This happens to almost everybody. I should’ve realized it’d hit you. I’m sorry, I just didn’t think …”
He kept on talking while Joanna puked her guts into the zero-gravity toilet.
“It’s all my fault,” he kept saying. “I’m so damned sorry. I never stopped to think that you’d be sick.” As he spoke and Joanna vomited, Paul fought to hold down the bile rising in his own throat.
Some honeymoon, Paul said to himself. Two days in orbit, two days sick as a dog. Joanna had tried to be brave, tried to fight down the nausea that assailed her, but whenever she moved her head it overpowered her.
I should have known, Paul berated himself over and over. She’s never been up here before. It gets everybody, one way or another. Damned idiot! You did your thinking with your balls. Honeymoon in zero gravity. Upchuck city.
He spent the entire first day alternating between Joanna,miserably sick in their cubicle, and the research labs and manufacturing facility. The experiments on fabricating thin-film video screens and special alloys in zero gravity and the high vacuum of space were going well.
The director of the manufacturing facility was a sandy-haired bespectacled Australian with degrees in metallurgy and management from the University of Sydney. He patiently took Paul through every step of the zero-gravity smelting and refining system they had built.
There were hardly any other people in the area. The facility took up more than a third of the space station’s inner wheel, but Paul saw only a handful of technicians and other personnel, all in coveralls of one color or another, all of them busily ignoring them as the facility director conducted the mandatory tour for the new CEO.
“The board’s very interested in the Windowall development,” Paul told the director.
“That’s good, I suppose.”
Paul went on, “Better than good. If we can manufacture wall-sized screens on a scale big enough for the TV market, it’ll make this operation very profitable.”
The younger man shrugged. “Thin-film manufacturing is no great problem. Give us the raw materials and we’ll make flat screens the size of Ayers Rock, if you want.”
Paul laughed. “Ten feet across should do, for now.”
The director remained quite serious. “We can do that. But what I really wanted to show you …” He led Paul to an apparatus that looked something like an oversized clothes drier.
Peering through a thick, tinted observation port, Paul saw an array of fist-sized molten metal droplets glowing red-hot as they hung weightlessly inside a capacious oven heated by concentrated sunlight. Tentatively, he touched the glass with his fingertips. It was hardly warm.
“The vacuum is a fine insulator,” the younger man said, with just a hint of an Aussie accent. “Just open the far side of the oven to space and we don’t have to worry about heat transfer much at all.”
Still, Paul thought it looked damned hot in there. The place
smelled
hot, like a foundry or a steel mill. Paul realized it was all in his imagination; his brain was linking what he was seeing to memories associated with blast furnaces and smelting forges. Yet imaginary or not, he felt beads of perspiration trickling down his ribs.
The director looked youthfully cool. No perspiration stained his light tan coveralls.
“By focusing the incoming solar energy,” he was explaining, “we can generate temperatures close to the black-body theoretical limit—better than five thousand kelvins.”
Paul
Paul grabbed her by the shoulders and spun her toward the toilet area. Joanna moaned and gagged. Pushing her weightlessly down the short length of the corridor, their feet barely touching the deck, Paul slid Joanna sideways through the open doorway. She bumped gently against the wall inside.
“Just let go,” he said to her, leaning over her bowed back to start the toiler’s air suction flow. “This happens to almost everybody. I should’ve realized it’d hit you. I’m sorry, I just didn’t think …”
He kept on talking while Joanna puked her guts into the zero-gravity toilet.
“It’s all my fault,” he kept saying. “I’m so damned sorry. I never stopped to think that you’d be sick.” As he spoke and Joanna vomited, Paul fought to hold down the bile rising in his own throat.
Some honeymoon, Paul said to himself. Two days in orbit, two days sick as a dog. Joanna had tried to be brave, tried to fight down the nausea that assailed her, but whenever she moved her head it overpowered her.
I should have known, Paul berated himself over and over. She’s never been up here before. It gets everybody, one way or another. Damned idiot! You did your thinking with your balls. Honeymoon in zero gravity. Upchuck city.
He spent the entire first day alternating between Joanna,miserably sick in their cubicle, and the research labs and manufacturing facility. The experiments on fabricating thin-film video screens and special alloys in zero gravity and the high vacuum of space were going well.
The director of the manufacturing facility was a sandy-haired bespectacled Australian with degrees in metallurgy and management from the University of Sydney. He patiently took Paul through every step of the zero-gravity smelting and refining system they had built.
There were hardly any other people in the area. The facility took up more than a third of the space station’s inner wheel, but Paul saw only a handful of technicians and other personnel, all in coveralls of one color or another, all of them busily ignoring them as the facility director conducted the mandatory tour for the new CEO.
“The board’s very interested in the Windowall development,” Paul told the director.
“That’s good, I suppose.”
Paul went on, “Better than good. If we can manufacture wall-sized screens on a scale big enough for the TV market, it’ll make this operation very profitable.”
The younger man shrugged. “Thin-film manufacturing is no great problem. Give us the raw materials and we’ll make flat screens the size of Ayers Rock, if you want.”
Paul laughed. “Ten feet across should do, for now.”
The director remained quite serious. “We can do that. But what I really wanted to show you …” He led Paul to an apparatus that looked something like an oversized clothes drier.
Peering through a thick, tinted observation port, Paul saw an array of fist-sized molten metal droplets glowing red-hot as they hung weightlessly inside a capacious oven heated by concentrated sunlight. Tentatively, he touched the glass with his fingertips. It was hardly warm.
“The vacuum is a fine insulator,” the younger man said, with just a hint of an Aussie accent. “Just open the far side of the oven to space and we don’t have to worry about heat transfer much at all.”
Still, Paul thought it looked damned hot in there. The place
smelled
hot, like a foundry or a steel mill. Paul realized it was all in his imagination; his brain was linking what he was seeing to memories associated with blast furnaces and smelting forges. Yet imaginary or not, he felt beads of perspiration trickling down his ribs.
The director looked youthfully cool. No perspiration stained his light tan coveralls.
“By focusing the incoming solar energy,” he was explaining, “we can generate temperatures close to the black-body theoretical limit—better than five thousand kelvins.”
Paul
Similar Books
