Chapter Two
Friday morning
A bored young woman checked the straps on Lois’s seat. “Fifteen minutes to go, ma’am. You’ll have to remain here until we lift off.”
“I will, I promise.”
“Are you comfortable? Anything we can fix quickly?”
“I’m as comfy as I can be, I guess. I’ll be fine, thanks.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you for flying the shuttle Valkyrie to Prometheus.” She gave Lois a perfunctory smile and continued her routine with the rest of her charges.
Lois looked around at the inside of the shuttle’s passenger compartment, with its five columns of single seats for immediate access to any of the eighty passengers who might become distressed, and wondered when launching human beings into the airless void of space had become routine to the public. Despite having been willing to commit any number of petty crimes – and a couple of felonies – to stow away on the first colonists' shuttle, the Messenger, none of the subsequent missions had grabbed her interest as a reporter. She supposed the lack of public interest in the most recent launches was like the difference in interest between major and minor surgery. Since she was riding this shuttle, however, she was very interested in what went on. It put in her mind the thought that minor surgery was something that someone else had done, like someone else’s shuttle rides had been unimportant to her.
She picked up the single-page folded pamphlet from the back of the seat facing her. It described the immense and incredibly powerful external jet engines which would carry the winged shuttle from a horizontal takeoff to an altitude of about forty thousand feet and then fall away, only to drift back to Earth on their parachutes. Then the rocket motors, which would lift them into a stable Earth orbit at about ninety miles, would ignite. After that, the ion drivers at the Firefall waypoint – the original orbital site for the Prometheus – would be attached, and they would push them out of orbit and link them up with Prometheus Station.
They still had a journey of nearly a quarter of a million miles in front of them, and it would only take two days to arrive. Lois mentally went over her baggage list, even though she knew there was no way to bring anything else aboard at this point.
She glanced at the chronometer suspended from the ceiling of the passenger compartment. Eleven minutes to go.
Her suit itched and pinched in places she couldn’t scratch or straighten without taking it off, which she couldn’t very well do at this point. Besides, being strapped into a nine-gee couch tended to make one immobile. For the next two days, the couch would be her bed, her resting place, her favorite chair, her dinner table, her workout bench, her office, and, if absolutely necessary, her bathroom.
Lois wasn’t real happy about that aspect of going to space. She knew she’d need the information in the zero-gee toilet pamphlet, but she desperately hoped she wouldn’t need the emergency drain in her suit or the changes of underwear they’d put in one of the suit’s zipper pockets.
At least EPRAD had progressed beyond the technology in the first spacesuits, she thought. She was too young and fit to wear Depends adult diapers for any reason.
A row of yellow LEDs flashed along the middle of the walkway. The computer announced that there were five minutes until takeoff, and she heard the bored attendants shuffle towards their own acceleration seats in the rear of the compartment.
Two of them spoke loudly enough for her to overhear them. “ – need some excitement, man! This job is deadly dull!”
“You’re in space, aren’t you?”
“Sure, but we might as well be – “
Lois didn’t hear the rest of it, but maybe there was a reason that space flight had seemed so pedestrian and routine to her until this morning. Maybe the crew’s boredom would be the key to unlock the door to their more newsworthy experiences. Maybe they’d be more willing to talk to her if there was nothing else to hold their interest.
She was trying to relax when the intercom clicked on. “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. Thank you for flying the shuttle Valkyrie. We’re due to lift off in a little over three minutes. Please don’t, for any reason whatsoever, unstrap your seat harness until we’re in stable orbit. We’ll tell you when we get there. Also, please don’t try to move your head or lift your arms or legs as we’re accelerating. We don’t want any broken limbs or dislocated joints on this flight.
“If you are injured because you ignore these warnings, the company’s insurance won’t pay for your treatment, so please don’t make us remind you of the health and personal damage waivers each of you signed before you boarded. I’m required to assure you that they’re ironclad and impossible to break, unlike your own bones, so please observe these rules. They’re in place for your own good.
“We’ll be lifting off towards the rising sun, so you’ll see sunlight not long after we take off. Those of you with window seats, please make sure now that you have activated the polarization filter for your window. You probably won’t be able to do it after we take off. It’s the blue button under your right thumb.”
Lois heard several clicks as people pushed their blue buttons. She pushed her own blue button and saw the filter slide up into place.
“Thank you. We hope you have a pleasant flight with us, and remember that there are airsickness bags at the side of each seat and on each seat back. Should you feel queasy once we achieve orbit, please alert an attendant and we’ll give you some medicine to soothe your stomach.”
Well, she thought, that’s one problem I plan not to have.
The quality of his voice morphed from the dryness of reading a prepared script to being filled warmth and anticipation. “Enjoy the ride, ladies and gentlemen. There’s not another one like it in the entire world.”
Lois smiled as she heard the wonder in the pilot’s voice. At least it wasn’t routine for one person. Flying with Superman for fun was surely better, but very few ever experienced that joy.
With nothing else to do, she watched the ceiling clock tick off the seconds. As soon as it displayed five AM, she felt the jet engines move the shuttle forward on its disposable takeoff gear. The computer held the craft down until they reached takeoff airspeed plus the ten percent recommended safety margin, then they lifted away from the runway as smoothly as if she had been riding a magic carpet. The noise level dropped appreciably, but the pressure forcing Lois into her seat increased.
And then it increased some more. She imagined wildly for a moment that she couldn’t breathe, so she began taking short, sharp breaths as she had been advised in the pre-flight briefing. The high oxygen content of the cabin’s atmosphere allowed her to stay ahead of oxygen debt, and her breathing eased as the minutes passed and she became more accustomed to the pressure against her body.
Even though the pressure eased a little, she still couldn’t move and her eyeballs still felt like they were trying to drain backwards into her skull as they climbed higher. The computer voice announced again, “Prepare for rocket motor ignition in five – four – three – two – one – now.”
Suddenly, with a dull bass roar, an immense gorilla jumped on her chest and began pushing her even farther back into the seat. The gorilla brought along an anaconda to play, too, and it wrapped itself around Lois’s torso and squeezed until she thought her heart would burst. She would have cried out in fear had she been able to.
After a few seconds and several subjective years, the pressure finally eased. She inhaled deeply, then almost regretted it when her stomach spasmed. Too bad she’d missed the centrifuge training given to the real astronauts. Maybe Clark would’ve been the better choice for the station assignment after all. She doubted that Superman ever got nauseous or threw up.
Her empty stomach complained at the treatment it was receiving. She would have told it to shut up had she been able to find the strength.
Sunday morning
Lois drifted freehand back to her seat from the ladies’ room, pleased at how well she’d adapted to the absence of gravity. Except for that first moment of nausea just after liftoff, she hadn’t experienced any stomach problems. She smiled at the pale woman hurriedly jerking herself along one of the lines rigged along the wall of the compartment, one of several of her fellow travelers who hadn’t found her space legs yet.
Glad that she didn’t have to throw up into either a zero-gee toilet or a plastic tube, Lois lightly plucked a tube of strawberry-flavored protein pudding from beneath the retaining spring on the snack cart as it drifted past her and daintily bit the end open. She floated near the ceiling above her seat as she sucked the last of the surprisingly tasty breakfast goop from its container, then slipped it into the nearest disposal tube and pushed herself back to her seat.
Unlike many of her fellow passengers who were bored to distraction, she’d kept herself busy by making notes and throwing out story ideas onto the hard drive on her laptop. She smiled as she thought about all the material she already had. The only problem she’d have on this assignment was to decide what to leave out, a problem she seldom faced and one she gleefully anticipated dealing with.
She lost track of time while working, so the computer voice which wafted softly out of the ceiling startled her. “Twenty minutes to Prometheus approach. Twenty minutes to Prometheus approach. Please return to your seats and secure for docking. Please return to your seats and secure for docking.”
One of the flight attendants drifted past her. “You’ll have to stow your computer, Miss Lane. Sorry to derail your train of thought.”
She smiled at him. “No problem, Dennis. I can pick it up again after we dock.”
“I’m glad. Did you get everything you needed from me?”
“Sure did. You gave me a ton of very useful stuff. Thanks again for spending all that time with me.”
“No, thank you, Miss Lane. You’ve helped make the last two days pass quickly.”
“I’m glad. How long before you get to go back to Earth?”
“We’ll leave for the return trip in about thirty-four hours. The technicians on the station will refuel the maneuvering thrusters, refill the air and water reserve, clean out the toilets, all that fun stuff.”
The shared a chuckle. Lois said, “What will you do between now and then?”
“Oh, we’ll eat, we’ll visit the movie theaters, we’ll drop in on the stage if there’s a show on, visit the gym and watch the ladies exercise in low gravity – “
“Dennis!” she scolded gently. “You’re such a scoundrel.”
He winked. “That’s okay, the women in our crew go to look at the men work out.”
“Oh, okay, as long as you’re all equal opportunity lechers.”
“We are, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Before you go, will you help me make sure I’m strapped in properly? I’d hate for the captain to have to slam on the brakes and splatter me against the seat in front of me.”
He chuckled. “That won’t happen, I promise. We’re traveling in a curved path to the anti-Luna side of the station, the side facing away from the moon, remember? We’ll intersect the L5 position at the same speed we have now, but we won’t hit the station because it’s moving away from us at almost the same speed. If the computer and the pilot are in sync, we won’t even feel a bump when we engage the magnetic docking port.”
She nodded. “That’s right, I forgot. It was all in the pre-flight briefing. Sorry.”
“That’s okay, Miss Lane. A lot of first-time spacers forget it. I think sometimes they lose the briefing along with their breakfast.”
They shared another brief laugh, then Dennis said, “I’ve got to check on our other passengers. I hope I see you on your trip back.”
“Me too, Dennis. See you later.”
He pushed himself along the rows of seats, alternately cajoling and insisting that the passengers belt in for safety’s sake. Lois saved the file she’d been editing and shut down her laptop, then stowed it under her seat.
She leaned back and smiled to herself. All she had to do now was check in with security and take her carry-on bag to her room, and she was set for the next ten days of reporting a story that would almost kneel in front of her and beg to be written.
She could already smell the Kerth nomination.
Sunday, mid-morning
As Dennis had predicted, Lois didn’t feel a thing. The computer voice suddenly called out, “Docking procedure complete. Please disembark in an orderly fashion. Thank you. Docking procedure complete…”
She tuned out the gratingly polite voice and unsnapped herself from the couch which had been her home for the previous two days. She tugged her carry-on pack from under the seat and pushed off towards the nose of the shuttle.
As she pulled herself through the open airlock, now occupied by the big spaceplane, she clutched a grab bar at the check-in station and faced a chirpy young Asian woman with almost no hair. She reminded Lois of Andre’s “trained chimpanzee” description of the level of barbering up here.
The girl bounced on her toes and Lois could hear the Velcro that held her in place crunching under her shoes. “Hi! Welcome to Prometheus Station! Please hold onto this handle, place your right thumb on the pad, and wait for the ding.”
Lois watched her name pop up on the screen along with a description of her occupation. “Hey, what’s this? This isn’t right!”
The young woman looked at the display on her side of the counter. “What isn’t right, ma’am?”
“This! My job description says I’m a cargo supervisor. That’s not right.”
“Oh. What should the description be, ma’am?”
“I’m a reporter from the Daily Planet. I’m here to cover the anniversary celebration.”
The young woman smiled even wider. “Oh! I know what happened, ma’am. We don’t have any permanent newspeople here, and whenever one does fly up we have to list them as ‘supercargo’ because that’s kind of a catchall term for anything we don’t have a permanent category for. We kind of stole the term from the Navy. Someone back at the spaceport must have typed in ‘cargo, super’ and now the computer thinks you’re a cargo supervisor.”
“Okay, but can you fix it? I don’t really want to spend the next two years here.”
“No problem! I’ll submit a correction now and it’ll be updated in a day or so.”
“A day? Why so long?”
Her smile turned a little forced. “You’re not leaving tomorrow, are you, ma’am?”
“No, of course not, but – “
She glanced over Lois’s shoulder and spoke faster. “It’s a low-priority database update, ma’am, and we have to do this every time a new shipment of fresh fish comes in.”
Lois lifted her eyebrow and she pulled herself closer to the desk. “Fresh fish?”
The young woman shook her head and lost her smile altogether. “I apologize. It’s station slang for new arrivals. But I’ll put this change in the queue and we’ll get it done as soon as we can. Now, if you’ll just move along so the people behind you can check in?”
“Oh. Oh, sure. Nice talking to you.”
“You too, ma’am. Next, please?”
Lois pulled herself along the ropes towards the next desk, where an impossibly serious and impossibly young man floated stiffly beside his terminal. She assumed at first that he was also a new arrival who hadn’t gotten acclimated yet, but a glance at his shoulder revealed that he was a sergeant with the USAF security force assigned to the station.
He nodded shortly to her. “Ma’am, if you’ll place your carry-on bag on the red spot, please, and hook your feet under the strap on the floor?”
The request was really a polite order. Lois complied silently.
“Ma’am, do you have anything in the bag which was not cleared by spaceport security?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Would you open the bag, please, ma’am, and strap it onto the desk with the elastic bands?”
She complied silently, knowing that his sense of humor had been surgically removed as a requirement for his job. He pawed mechanically through her meager belongings for a moment, then tapped a key on his console. “All finished, ma’am. Thank you for your cooperation.”
“Thank you,” she replied as she repacked her bag. She looped it around her shoulder and pushed off into the common area and almost immediately bumped into the back of someone stuck to the “floor” with Velcro oversoles. She held onto his arm to keep from drifting away.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she began, “I guess I’m not used to – zero – “
The man turned and faced her.
Claude Guilliot’s face slowly smiled at her.
“Cherie! How glad I am to see you again! How have you been for so long since we have seen each other?”
She couldn’t speak. She floated aimlessly in mid-air with her mouth half-open. For a moment she flashed back on the inexperienced victim she’d been almost four years before, seduced by a lazy braggart who’d stolen her story and trashed her reputation. Once again, Claude held her in his thrall with that flashing smile and engaging manner. Despite the warnings her mind was screaming at her, she felt herself sliding backwards in time, not to the morning she discovered the depths of his betrayal, but to the night they’d spent together. In her brief innocence, she had truly believed he’d loved her for who she was and not for what she could do for him.
He pulled her close to him. “I know you did not expect to see me, mon cherie, nor I you, but it is a good thing for us to meet again, yes?”
She barely registered that he was whispering something to her, something urgent, something that didn’t dovetail with his behavior. But Lois didn’t hear it, didn’t understand it, and later she could never recall what he’d tried to say to her.
The shock of his embrace snapped her back to the present and reminded her of his callous betrayal of her trust and the pain he’d caused her. The memory of that night’s euphoria vanished instantly, to be replaced by an anger fueled by a bitterness she didn’t know she still carried. She dug the fingers of her left hand into his stomach and pressed upwards behind his rib cage.
He lurched back, writhing in sudden pain. “Aaahh! That is hurting me! Cherie, what are you – “
“You bloodsucking slimeball! Get away from me or I’ll rip out your liver!”
“My dear lovely cherie, what are you meaning?”
She raised her voice, not caring who overheard. “I mean get away from me and stay away from me! If I’d known you were aboard the station I’d still be on Earth! I wouldn’t spit on you if you were on fire! I never want to see you again, you lying lousy stinking thieving no-good son-of-a – “
A harsh female voice cut across hers. “Is there a problem here, ma’am?”
Lois turned to see a short, beefy blonde woman drifting down to Velcro herself to the floor beside Claude. The woman looked at Lois, who was still too furious to speak calmly, then to Claude, who was trying to act the part of the innocent victim.
“Ma’am, I’m Air Force Major Katrina Vukovich, in charge of station security. Is there a problem here?”
Lois snorted and bounced slightly. She would have drifted away from them had Major Vukovich not grabbed her arm and held her in place. Her grip told Lois that the woman’s stockiness was made of solid muscle and not fat. The woman stared at Lois for a long moment, and when Lois didn’t speak, she said, “Claude, is this woman bothering you?”
He shook his head. “No, Major, she is not bothering me. I believe I have made the mistake, however. I will see both of you later, perhaps.” He pulled his feet loose from the floor and pushed himself away.
The major’s voice was hard. “Ma’am, could you tell me your name, please?”
“Lois Lane,” she grunted.
Vukovich consulted the portable display in her hand. “I take it you’ve just arrived?”
“Yes.”
“I also take it you already knew our resident Casanova?”
Lois’s eyebrows lifted. “Casanova? His name is Claude – “
“I know his name. I also know that he thinks he’s Earth’s gift to all spacewomen.”
Lois crossed her arms and started drifting again. “He’s always felt that way and he’s not real picky about where they live.”
The major took Lois’s elbow and tugged her towards the gallery’s exit hatch. “I’ll ask him to give you a wide berth if you’ll promise not to disembowel him the next time you see him.”
She snorted again. “That would be a messy way to die, with your intestines floating around you in zero gravity.”
“It would at that. If you’ll finish getting checked in, I’ll detail someone to escort you to your quarters.”
“I’m a big girl, Major, and I don’t need a babysitter.”
The major turned a stone face towards Lois. “Humor me, won’t you? My weekly bonus goes down if anybody gets clobbered while I’m on duty.”
Lois frowned. “I assume that you’re never really off-duty?”
“Nope. One of the real perks of being the one in charge.”
Lois nodded. “Okay, we’ll do it your way.”
The major’s face didn’t change one iota. “Thank you. Sergeant Rodriguez will show you to your quarters.”
Sunday, early evening
The young sergeant stopped in front of a numbered door and tapped a code into the touch pad beside the doorway. “Your quarters, ma’am.”
The door hissed back inside the wall, giving Lois a brief Star Trek moment. Then she stuck her head inside and glanced around. “Nice closet. Where’s the door to the rest of the suite?”
He didn’t smile. “What you see is what you get, ma’am.” He pointed to the right-hand wall. “The bed slides out if you press the blue panel there. The head of the bed is made up to be against the wall, but you can reverse it if you wish.
“On the opposite wall are your personal refrigerator and freezer behind the yellow panel. Beside that is a cabinet with a set of disposable utensils and plates. Personal items may be stored behind the red panel on the far side of the yellow panel. The rest of your baggage is already there. There is a slide-out desk behind the green panel next to the bed. That’s also where you can connect your computer to your Prometheus intranet account. Be sure to check out the listing of station activities after your initial login, and be sure to keep up with your assigned workout schedule.”
She frowned at him. “Workout schedule? Do I look like I’m fat?”
He sounded like a bored tour guide as he continued. “No, ma’am. I’m sure you’ll recall from your new employee orientation that people who live and work in low-gravity environments suffer from loss of both bone mass and muscle mass. If you were to return to Earth after two years of not exercising, you’d have to spend several weeks getting acclimated to normal gravity again, and you’d risk injuring yourself during that time.”
She shook her head but didn’t respond. He pointed again. “Your video monitor and display are above the desk. Simply press the white panel to access the control pad. The black panel against the left wall contains sanitary facilities and a sink. The lights respond to the verbal commands on, off, low, reduce, increase. Just precede the command with the word ‘lights’ and speak in a loud, clear voice.”
He indicated a keypad on the inside wall. “You can set your personal entry code here. The instructions are above the pad. Please don’t give your code to anyone unless you notify station security first. Also included on this panel are your thermostat controls.”
Lois stepped in and put her carry-on bag on the floor. She turned around, thinking that she’d surely have to step into the hallway to have room to change her mind. “You mean this little crackerbox is it? You’re kidding, right?”
Not one eyelash on his face moved. “No, ma’am. These are the requisite quarters for your job classification. You have two hundred ten square feet of living space here, plus twenty-four hour access to three cafeterias, the gym, two movie theaters and one live musical venue, three common areas, and the medical faculties. Laundry pickup is every three days. Please use the bags in the closet with your room code; otherwise you might not see your clothing any time soon. Communal showers are anti-spinward down the hall about sixty meters.”
The thought of showering with other people drove the sergeant’s comment about her job classification from her mind. “Communal showers? I hope you don’t mean coed communal showers!”
“No, ma’am. That’s the ladies’ shower area. The men’s shower area is spinward from here. You are allowed eight minutes of shower time every other day.”
“Eight minutes! Is there a water shortage or something?”
“No, ma’am. That’s the station norm. Please remember that station regulations require that you wear appropriate clothing between your quarters and the shower area.”
“I wasn’t planning to walk around naked!”
“No, ma’am, of course not, but if you did, you wouldn’t be the first.”
“You mean you have streakers in space?”
“Just inside the station, ma’am. Being naked in total vacuum wouldn’t be real healthy for you.”
Lois had no response to that one. The young man waited a moment longer, then nodded slightly. “If there’s nothing else, ma’am, I have other duties I have to complete before my shift is over.”
“Oh. Yeah, sure, go ahead. If there’s anything else, I’m sure I can figure it out.”
“Yes, ma’am. Oh, I almost forgot.” He pointed to the wall beside the door opposite the security keypad. “This is the station intercom. The operating instructions include the key to the color-coded panels in the room and are printed above and below in English, Swahili, French, Japanese – “
“I got it. Thanks, kid.”
His face tightened slightly. “Very well, ma’am. Welcome to Prometheus Station.”
He turned and walked away. Lois studied the door pad for a moment, then touched a button. The door whooshed shut and she turned to view her home for the next ten days.
Communal showers! Should’ve listened better to Jimmy’s briefing, she thought. Time to take off the pressure suit and see if her coveralls had actually arrived intact.
Sunday evening
It took her all of ten minutes to secure her belongings in the tiny closet and exchange the pressure suit for the marginally more comfortable coveralls. The one chair in the room fit snugly under the desk after she’d opened it, and there was even a docking station for her laptop. She maneuvered through the initial logon procedure, selected her password, and checked her e-mail.
Sure enough, there were four from Clark and two from Perry, along with the obligatory “welcome and behave yourself on the system” automated message from the e-mail administrator. She smiled and decided that business should go before pleasure and clicked on the older of Perry’s two messages. Besides, she’d rather save the best for last.
He’d sent some background info he thought she’d need on several of the station officials. The second message was a request for whatever she’d managed to put together so far. He’d decided to put a little bit of info in each day’s edition to whet the public’s appetite for more, so when they published her main story they’d sell more papers.
That’s Perry, she grinned to herself. Always looking out for his people. And the bottom line, of course. She returned that e-mail with the files she’d created on the shuttle trip up to the station.
The first three messages from Clark were also business-related, although his easy smile and gentle teasing showed even through his business prose. She smiled to herself and marveled again how the Kansas hayseed had proven to have far more depth to him than she’d first thought. And his trust in her to protect his secret was unlike anything else in her experience. Imagine Superman trusting her with his real identity. Amazing.
She pulled up the final message in the queue and skimmed it, then read it again, savoring every word. Without resorting to cheap sentimentalism or tired romantic rhetoric, Clark had managed to convey how much he missed her and how much he anticipated her safe return in just a few innocent-looking sentences.
She sighed and opened up a reply window, then sat back to think. Just how much did she love Clark, anyway?
Enough to trust him with her heart. Enough to never, never, ever even hint to anyone about The Secret. Enough to spend the rest of her life with him, letting him cocoon her in his love. Enough to wrap him up in her love and shield him from all the Mayson Drakes and Rachel Harrises and Nigerian princesses and European supermodels of the world. Enough to comfort him and cry with him when he thought he’d failed or fallen short. Enough to rejoice with him over all that he did accomplish.
She loved him so much that, if he sincerely wanted her to leave the Planet and travel the world with him, she’d leave in a heartbeat and never look back once.
Of course, it wouldn’t do to tell him any of that at this stage of the game, now would it?
She sent back an almost innocuous note to Clark, but she couldn’t resist signing it “Top Banana Lois.” Maybe he’d chew on that one for a while and remember just who was the senior member of this partnership.
Without consciously thinking about it, without planning it, she avoided any mention of Claude Guilliot in any of her outgoing messages.
Sunday, late evening
Lois found the dining hall just before they stopped serving. She carried her tray filled with luscious gray goop to a table with two men on one side and a woman on the other. All three of them wore coveralls with the same dark blue as hers. “Hi. Care for some company?”
The taller man, slender with light brown hair, said, “Sure, sit down. Becky, you let her alone, okay?”
The woman pulled out the chair beside her. “Don’t pay them boys no mind, honey, and they’ll eventually give up and go away.”
The men laughed as she sat. “Hi, I’m Lois. Obviously, you’re Becky.” Lois inclined her head towards the men. “How do you put up with that stuff, anyway?”
Becky took a deep breath and blew it out through her nose. Her voice took on an artificial Hollywood-style depth and cadence. “Of course, one yearns for the glamour of the golden days of yore, but one does what one can with what little one has.”
The shorter of the two men, a solid-looking redhead, stuck out his hand to Lois. “Becky’s a frustrated actress, Lois, but she does good work in our local stage productions. My name’s Pete, and this long tall drink of water beside me is Mike.”
“Hi, Pete, Mike.” Lois looked at her tray again. “Is this the usual fare or did the staff whip up something special for my arrival?”
The other three chuckled. Mike tapped her tray. “It tastes a little better than it looks, believe me. It’s not haute cuisine, but it won’t kill you, either.”
Becky spooned up the last of her meal. “It’s got concentrated vitamins and minerals in it, and it goes through the recycling systems more easily.”
Lois stopped her own spoon just before it entered her mouth. “Re – recycling system? You mean this – this stuff is – “
The men nodded in unison. “Yep,” answered Pete. “But don’t worry, it’s guaranteed to be as clean as they can make it.”
Lois considered her spoon for another moment, then made a decision. “You know, I think I need to drop a few pounds. Besides, I just got off the shuttle and I ate just before we docked and I’m not really hungry so I think I’ll just skip this meal.”
Mike perked up. “Hey, if you’re not eating it, mind if I take a crack at it?”
She lifted her hands away and said, “Be my guest.”
He pulled the tray across the table and began shoveling it in. Becky patted Lois on the arm and said, “You’ve just been initiated, Lois. These guys try to pull that trick at least once every time we get a new bunch of people up here.”
Lois narrowed her eyes. “Are you telling me that he’s not eating recycled – uh, whatever?”
Pete chuckled. “No, he’s not. That stuff is mixed up in the cafeterias daily and whatever they don’t serve goes into the next batch, but it most assuredly doesn’t get recycled after it’s been digested. At least, it’s not recycled as food.”
Lois snatched her water glass back from the pirated tray. “Gee, thanks, guys. I feel like a real live astronaut now.” She took a big slurp, then noticed the men were giggling. “Okay, now what?”
Mike shook his head. “The food isn’t recycled, but with the lack of water storage up here, I have to tell you that – “
“No.” Lois’s face paled. “You mean I just drank – “
“Recycled water, Lois, that’s all it was,” Becky assured her. “It gets cleaned and treated better than the water you got out of your kitchen faucet back down.”
“Huh? Back down where?”
“It’s an expression we use to describe Earth. We’re all from ‘back down’ and we’ll all be going back down when our contracts are up. Unless we renew them, of course.”
“Oh? What do you guys do when you’re not hazing the new arrivals?”
Pete lifted his brawny arm and showed off his biceps bodybuilder style. “We’re cargo workers. Just got off shift. We manhandle those big crates of supplies and luggage you brought up with you on the shuttle.”
“I see. Tell me, is that an interesting job? I’d think it would get boring after a while.”
Becky slapped the table lightly. “Boring? Honey, you would not believe the stuff people try to send up here. There’s a contraband list a mile long, and we still get things we have to throw into a terminal solar orbit. Just last week, some idiot tried to smuggle a forty-four-magnum revolver and fifty rounds of ammo on board. You can kill a grizzly bear with that monster! Can you imagine the amount of damage a gun that big would do to the structural integrity of this station if somebody put a bullet through both the inner and outer hulls?”
Lois glanced from face to face. “A lot?”
They laughed. Mike said, “Yeah, you could put it that way. That’s why guns and crossbows and archery sets and anything that launches a projectile of any kind are prohibited. You punch a hole in the inner hull and we might lose a little internal pressure, but if you could shoot through both hulls, there’s a possibility of the escaping air peeling open a big hole. It might look like those Hollywood films where somebody shoots out a window in an airliner and everybody gets blown out of the opening.” He shook his head. “We’re the first line of defense for everybody aboard Prometheus.”
Pete gave him a good-natured shove. “Hey, leave the drama to Becky, okay? Honest, Lois, the job is not nearly as dangerous or nerve-wracking as he’s making out to be.”
“But you do find stuff that’s not supposed to be here, don’t you?”
Becky nodded. “Sure. You read the prohibited list, didn’t you?” Lois nodded. “It’s scary how dumb some people can be. ‘Oh, Mr. Security Officer, I won’t misuse this contraband item, honest!’” Becky shook her head. “And some of these people are the same ones who make sure we breathe air instead of vacuum.”
Lois forgot her hunger and leaned forward, ready to dine on their stories. “Really? Tell me more.”
Pete jumped in. “Every once in a while we find contraband that people brought up before they put in all those rules and regs about incoming cargo. A couple of months ago we found a whole carton of empty hair spray cans sitting outside the medical bay.” He shook his head. “I have no idea how they got away with using hair spray up here.”
Becky leaned closer. “Do you know what we use more than anything else up here for quick repairs and securing goods? Go on, guess! I bet you don’t know.”
Lois shrugged. “I don’t know. Scotch tape?”
Mike grinned and said, “Close. We use a whole lot of fishing line and duct tape. Works great in low gravity. You wouldn’t believe what we’ve tied up or taped up with just that. Why, Pete here once fixed a thumb-sized hole in the cargo hold’s inner hull with just a wad of duct tape.”
Lois lifted her eyebrows skeptically. “Uh-huh. You recycled it through the food processors, didn’t you?”
Mike’s smile faded while Pete and Becky howled. Pete recovered first. “No! Ha-ha-ha! Really! We – whew – we use miles of duct tape and fishing line, especially in the zero-gee receiving and storage areas. The line’s cheap and easy to store and doesn’t weigh much, so it’s easy to get. The tape is heavier, of course, so it’s more expensive, but it works great for quick fixes and for marking something that needs more professional attention.”
“So you’re not trying to initiate me with this one? You really use duct tape and fishing line?”
Becky squeezed her shoulder. “Tons of it. I’ll show you where we store it when you start your first shift.”
Lois frowned. “My first shift?”
“Sure!” Becky flipped the sleeve of Lois’s coverall. “You’re wearing cargo covers. You’re one of us, honey! You work in cargo, you handle crates, so you’re a crater, just like us!”
Lois’s expression at being called a ‘crater’ set off yet another round of hilarity among all three of her new friends. She shook her head ruefully and once again profoundly thanked the anonymous data entry clerk who’d listed her as ‘cargo, super’ on the passenger manifest.
Monday, very early morning
It was well into Gamma shift when Lois finished typing up her notes from her conversation with Mike, Becky, and Pete. She saved the file and attached it to a new message to Perry and sent it wending its way across the inky void, then she added ‘interview Amy Platt’ to her to-do list. The girl deserved some positive publicity, especially since she’d regained some use of her legs. That was a feel-good story anyone would love to read.
She also added an item for a sidebar on how friendly the people station were. It seemed that the local culture encouraged including new people as quickly as possible. And it made sense. If a new person learned quickly how badly things could go from one small mistake, that new person would be less likely to make that one mistake. And a happy new person would be more likely to ask an innocuous question which might prevent something bad from happening.
Lois wondered again if she should have proclaimed her innocence at being a ‘crater,’ but she had decided to keep mum. Maybe folks would talk more openly with her if they thought she was assigned to the station for the long-term. As long as she didn’t actually lie to anyone, she didn’t think it would be a problem.
She glanced at the room clock. Local time was one-twenty-eight in the morning, and the cafeteria would open for breakfast in six hours, so she needed to sleep while she could. Besides, she was surprisingly tired despite feeling only three-fourths her Earth weight. She could get to like it here, she mused, if only they could provide real food.
Oh, well, knowing that what they did serve wasn’t reprocessed human waste would probably allow her to eat it. And tomorrow afternoon she’d schedule the interviews with the station command crew, set up a transmission schedule with Perry and Clark, and try out the ladies’ shower. Much as she valued her privacy, ten days was too long to go without bathing, and the shuttle had not had any facilities beyond the hygienic minimums, so it was past time for her to be fully clean.
She pressed the panel for the bed and stepped back as it slid into the room. One pillow, one top sheet attached to the bottom sheet, one thin comforter, and one printed notice that the linens would be changed between nine and eleven every morning, so please return the bed to its stored position after rising so the crew could accomplish this bit of maid work. As if she could move around in this utility closet with the bed taking up the middle of the room, she thought. It was hard enough to change into sleeping clothes without tripping on the stupid thing, and she resolved to don her nighttime garments before opening the bed from now on.
She slid between the sheets and called out, “Lights off.” Except for a thin glowing strip of blue LEDs around the ceiling, the room was dark as the far side of the moon. Despite its tiny dimensions, she’d begun thinking of the compartment as hers, which it would be for the duration of her stay.
She put her head on the pillow and fell asleep thinking about Clark. No inkling of Claude’s existence intruded on her dreams.
Monday morning
After breakfast, Lois decided to try out the gym, figuring that if she were going to write about life on the station, she’d need to experience at least some of everything the station had to offer.
The surprisingly muscular, well-endowed woman at the gym’s front desk greeted her with a smile. “Hi! Ready to sweat hard today?”
Despite her aversion to perky morning people, Lois returned the greeting. “Sure! I just got here yesterday and I need to – “
The bouncy blonde lifted her hands. “Say no more! Come with me and I’ll get you started. What’s your name?”
“Lois.”
“Hi, Lois! My name’s Lana.”
Lois tripped on the flat deck plating. “What?”
The blonde grinned and grabbed Lois’s arm to steady her. “Easy! You don’t have your station legs yet.”
“You – your name’s Lana?”
She frowned slightly. “Yes. Why?”
“Wh – uh – what’s your last name?”
“O’Meara. And again, why?”
“Um – your maiden name’s not Lang, is it?”
“Huh? Maiden name? I’m not married and O’Meara is the name I was born with!” She put her hands on her hips. “Why, you got a problem with women named Lana?”
“Just one. And it’s not you, I promise.”
Lana frowned. “You want to explain that to me?”
“Um, I’d rather not.” She felt stupid enough as it was.
The blonde stared hard at her for a long moment, then nodded. “Okay. You are here for a workout, aren’t you?”
“Um, yeah. Where do we start?”
Lana stepped back and gave Lois the once-over. “Cardio, I think. You get on the stationary bike and give me twenty-five minutes. Use terrain setting four. I’ll have the rest of your routine set up by the time you finish.”
Monday, late morning
After almost two hours, Lois staggered out of the gym, reminding herself to send a basket of fruit to Lana O’Meara, no matter what it cost, and hope that she accepted Lois’s tacit apology. The woman hadn’t smiled at Lois again during the entire workout, and Lois had never been pushed so hard physically, not even in her martial arts studies. This Lana was obviously a closet sadist, at least towards women named Lois Lane.
Time for a hot shower, especially after that torture. Lois picked up a towel and a change of clothes from her quarters and walked stiffly along the passageway. She looked above the double doors, saw the words “Shower Area,” and was about to walk in when two men pushed out, talking and laughing about a lacrosse game they’d either seen or played in many years before.
She looked closer at the sign and noticed the word “Men’s” above the other words, and breathed a sigh of relief. She’d only arrived yesterday, and already she’d had a fight with Claude, a stern conversation with the station security chief, a faux pas with one of the gym matrons, been initiated out of her dinner by the veteran stations hands, and all she needed to cement her reputation as a total doofus was to try to take a shower in the men’s area.
She reversed her course and trod around the ring. On the way, she made some mental notes about how it felt to walk slightly uphill when walking with the station’s spin and slightly downhill when walking against it. She was sure she’d never seen anything about it in the stories she’d read about life on Prometheus, and it would be a good real-life addition to her articles.
She carefully placed her shampoo and soap for easy access and turned on the water. It never really got hot, but it was better than smelling like a locker room after a football game. Lois watched the timer above the nozzle carefully, since wiping off wet soap with a damp towel wasn’t on today’s to-do list.
She finished with nine seconds to spare. The air in the corridor felt cool against her damp skin, and for the first time she was glad her hair was short enough to comb with a towel.
She glanced at one of the many digital clocks along the hallway. It was almost eleven in the morning, local time, which would give her a chance to brush over some more notes and e-mail them to the Planet. It was almost seven in the morning in Metropolis, and it would take less than a hour to fix her notes, so Perry and Clark would have some stuff for both today’s afternoon edition and tomorrow’s morning paper when they came in to the office.
Then she’d grab some lunch and try to interview someone who wasn’t wearing a dark blue coverall.
Monday, early afternoon
“So, you’re both medical researchers?”
The middle-aged Asian couple nodded politely and smiled cautiously. The woman answered. “Yes, madam. We are both from the Republic of Korea. Your people call us South Koreans. Our government kindly asked us to participate in these studies on the space station. We are most honored to be included in this project.”
Lois made a note on her pad. “And your studies involve cellular cloning at zero-gee?”
The man spoke this time. “Yes. We are most encouraged by our results. We believe we will be able to clone human organs in a few years. We wish to assist those needing organ transplants, especially those with rare blood types or other factors which would restrict a needed transplant.”
The woman picked up as the man stopped for breath. “Our goal is to learn to clone organs such as hearts, livers, lungs, and other vital organs which might be damaged by disease or injury. Right now, all we are able to do is – “
“Excuse me, are you Lois Lane?”
All three looked up at the young man wearing the USAF security patch on his light blue coverall. Lois lifted her hand. “That would be me.”
“Would you please come with me, ma’am?”
She frowned. “Can it wait? I’m kinda busy here.”
Without changing his expression, the young man shifted from ‘polite request’ to ‘urgent command’ mode. “No, ma’am. Major Vukovich needs to see you right away. Please come with me.”
Lois glanced at the Korean couple. They had finally begun to open up to her, but now their faces might as well have been cast in bronze. This was one fouled-up interview. They might not talk to her at all now.
She turned back to the security officer and showed him her notepad. “Can I leave this in my quarters on the way?”
He hardened his voice ever so slightly. “The Major said ‘right away,’ ma’am, and that means no detours.” He tugged on the back of her chair. “If you please, ma’am?”
Lois smiled apologetically at her new friends and tried to rescue any future contact with them. “I’m really sorry about this. I’ll try to get back to you later. Your research is fascinating. I’ll look for you here in the cafeteria.” She stood and tucked the notepad into one of the many zippered pockets on her coverall. “Let’s go.”
He walked behind her and directed her to the nearest spoke, then asked her to climb to the level four circulation access corridor. “Four!” she burst out. “This is level twenty-six! Do you know how far that is?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s twenty-two levels up. Since you’re still acclimated to Earth’s gravity, it shouldn’t be a hardship for you. Besides, the apparent gravity will decrease – “
“ – the closer we get to the hub, yeah, I know.” She grabbed the access ladder and started up. “Might as well get this over with. You wouldn’t know why I’m making like a circus performer, would you?”
“I was instructed to find you and bring you to Major Vukovich, ma’am. That’s all I know.”
“Or all you’re allowed to know.” The sergeant didn’t respond. Lois shrugged and said, “Great. Well, here we go.”
The climb was easier than Lois had anticipated, and by the time she saw the sign for level six, she was almost leaping from rung to rung. Impatient, she jumped across the nine-foot wide tube to the open panel labeled “Level Four Circulation Access” and paused in the doorway.
“Hey, slowpoke, come on! I want to get this over and done with as soon as I can.”
“Yes, ma’am.” The young man stopped across from the hatchway and worked his way around the outside of the access tube via the hand and foot rails. “Ma’am, I strongly advise you not to jump across open spaces in the Jeffries tubes. It’s not at all safe. The last guy who tried that and missed fell from level three to level nine before he could grab a railing, and when he did he dislocated both shoulders.”
Lois’s face fell slightly, and she looked down. “Yeah. Sorry about that. Sometimes I jump in without checking the water level.” She shuddered slightly at the drop below her. “Or without checking anything else.”
“Yes, ma’am. The major is down this corridor and left at the third junction.”
“Okay. You coming?”
“Right behind you, ma’am.”
The passageway was high enough for her to walk through without bending her back, only her neck. The tall young man behind her was bent at the waist almost forty-five degrees as he followed. She found the junction and saw Major Vukovich kneeling, facing the side wall, beside another vertical junction that traveled downwards.
This passage was much smaller, so Lois got on her hands and knees to crawl to the major. She was glad the gravity was so low until she tried to stop and had to press her hands against both side walls to slow down. Low weight equals low traction, she reminded herself.
Major Vukovich intently watched Lois’s face the whole way, but made no move to help her stop. Lois frowned at her. “Okay, Major, I’m here. What am I supposed to do now?”
Vukovich leaned back, and for the first time Lois saw a braided fishing line behind her which was tied to an overhead pipe and trailed down into the vertical junction. Lois frowned slightly. “Is this it? Somebody’s hidden something here?” She moved cautiously to a seated position with her legs crossed in front of her. “Is that why you’ve hauled me up here?”
Vukovich nodded. “Yes. Do you know what’s on the other end of this line?”
Lois exhaled loudly. “Elvis and his latest gold record.” She lifted her hands abruptly and bounced slightly, then righted herself. “How should I know what’s down there? I literally just got here!”
Vukovich moved fluidly across the open junction. “Take a look.”
Lois slowly leaned over and gazed down. “Okay, but for an Elvis sighting I think Perry would be a better – “
She froze in place. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t make her body respond to her thoughts. Her eyes were fixed upon the sight below her.
At the end of the braided fishing line, about five feet below Lois’s knees, hung the naked body of Claude Guilliot slowly twisting in the breeze.
