“Call me Dad,” I said.
She smiled and said, “Howdy, Dad.” I felt warm clear through. She went on to Dalrymple, “Odd that we haven’t met before.”
Tiny butted in. “McNye, you’ll sleep in my room-”
She raised her eyebrows; he went on angrily, “Oh, I’ll get my stuff out-at once. And get this: keep the door locked, off shift.’
“You’re darn tootin’ I will!”
Tiny blushed.
I was too busy to see much of Miss Gloria. There was cargo to stow, the new tanks to install and shield. That left the most worrisome task of all: putting spin on the living quarters. Even the optimists didn’t expect much interplanetary traffic for some years; nevertheless Harriman Enterprises wanted to get some activities moved in and paying rent against their enormous investment.
I.T.&T. had leased space for a microwave relay station several million a year from television alone. The Weather Bureau was itching to set up its hemispheric integrating station; Palomar Observatory had a concession (Harriman Enterprises donated that space); the Security Council had, some hush-hush project; Fermi Physical Labs and Kettering Institute each had space-a dozen tenants wanted to move in now, or sooner, even if we never completed accommodations for tourists and travelers.
There were time bonuses in it for Five Companies, Incorporated-and their help. So we were in a hurry to get spin on the quarters.
People who have never been out have trouble getting through their heads-at least I had-that there is no feeling of weight, no up and down, in a free orbit in space. There’s’ Earth, round and beautiful, only twenty-odd thousand miles away, close enough to brush your sleeve. You know it’s pulling you towards it. Yet you feel no weight, absolutely none. You float..
Floating is fine for some types of work, but when it’s time to eat, or play cards, or bathe, it’s good to feel weight on your feet. Your dinner stays quiet and you feel more natural.
You’ve seen pictures of the Station-a huge cylinder, like a bass drum, with ships’ nose pockets dimpling its sides. Imagine a snare drum, spinning around inside the bass drum; that’s the living quarters, with centrifugal force pinch-hitting for gravity. We could have spun the whole Station but you can’t berth a ship against a whirling dervish.
So we built a spinning part for creature comfort and an outer, stationary part for docking, tanks, storerooms, and the like. You pass from one to the other at the hub. When Miss Gloria joined us the inner part was closed in and pressurized, but the rest was a skeleton of girders.
Mighty pretty though, a great network of shiny struts and ties against black sky and stars-titanium alloy 1403, light, strong, and non-corrodible. The Station is flimsy compared with a ship, since it doesn’t have to take blastoff stresses. That meant we didn’t dare put on spin by violent means-which is where jato units come in.
“Jato”-Jet Assisted Take-Off-rocket units invented to give airplanes a boost. Now we use them wherever a controlled push is needed, say to get a truck out of the mud on a dam job. We mounted four thousand. of them around the frame of the living quarters, each one placed just so. They were wired up and ready to fire when Tiny came to me looking worried. “Dad,” he said, “let’s drop everything and finish compartment D-ll3.”
“Okay,” I said. D-l13 was in the non-spin part.
“Rig an air lock and stock it with two weeks supplies.”
“That’ll change your mass distribution for spin,” I suggested.
“I’ll refigure it next dark period. Then we’ll shift jatos.”
When Dalrymple heard about it he came charging around. It meant a delay in making rental space available. “What’s the idea?”
Tiny stared at him. They had been cooler than ordinary lately; Dalrymple had been finding excuses to seek out Miss Gloria. He had to pass through Tiny’s office to reach her temporary room, and Tiny had finally told him to get out and stay out. “The idea,” Tiny said slowly, “is to have a pup tent in case the house burns.”
“What do you mean?”
“Suppose we fire up the jatos and the structure cracks? Want to hang around in a space suit until a ship happens by?”