“We use the buoyancy tank to simulate the microgravity you’ll experience in orbit,” the instructor told the class. “You will practice construction techniques in the tank.”
So he sank into the water for the first time, almost petrified with fear. The spider told Harry, “This is an ordeal you must pass. Be brave. Show no fear.”
For days on end, Harry suited up and sank into the deep, clear water to work on make-believe pieces of the structure he’d be building up in space. Each day started with fear, but he battled against it and tried to do the work they wanted him to do. The fear never went away, but Harry completed every task they gave him.
When his two months of training ended, the man in charge of the operation called Harry into his office. He was an Asian of some sort; Chinese, Japanese, maybe Korean.
“To tell you the truth, Harry,” he said, “I didn’t think you’d make it. You have a reputation for being a carouser, you know.”
Harry said nothing. The pictures on the man’s wall, behind his desk, were all of rockets taking off on pillars of flame and smoke.
The man broke into a reluctant smile. “But you passed every test we threw at you.” He got to his feet and stretched his hand out over his desk. “Congratulations, Harry. You’re one of us now.”
Harry took his proffered hand. He left the office feeling pretty good about himself. He thought about going off the base and finding a nice friendly bar someplace. But as he dug his hand into his pants pocket and felt the obsidian spider there, he decided against it. That night, as he was drowsing off to sleep, the spider told him, “Now you face the biggest test of all.”
Launching off the earth was like nothing Harry had ever even dreamed of. The Clippership rocket was a squat cone; its shape reminded Harry of a big teepee made of gleaming metal. Inside, the circular passenger compartment was decked out like an airliner’s, with six short rows of padded reclinable chairs, each of them occupied by a worker riding up to orbit. There was even a pair of flight attendants, one man and one woman.
As he clicked the safety harness over his shoulders and lap, Harry expected they would be blasted off the ground like a bullet fired from a thirty-aught. It wasn’t that bad, though in some ways it was worse. The rockets lit off with a roar that rattled Harry deep inside his bones. He felt pressed down into his seat while the land outside the little round window three seats away tilted and then seemed to fly away.
The roaring and rattling wouldn’t stop. For the flash of a moment, Harry wondered if this was the demon he was supposed to slay, a dragon made of metal and plastic with the fiery breath of its rockets pushing it off the earth.
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 G. The instructors always called it microgravity, but to Harry it was zero G. And it felt good.
At the school they had tried to scare him about zero G 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 were 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 G.”
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
