Yet the kid didn’t seem too bad. Uptight, of course, but not a fanatic. O’Donnell thought of his own father, sneaking booze even into the hospital room where they tried to save him from cirrhosis. There are all kinds of fanatics in the world; maybe the son of a Bible-thumper will work out better up there than the son of an alcoholic.
O’Donnell did not want to see the picture, but Lance opened his wallet and flipped through its plastic folders until he finally came to a photo that looked like a high school graduation picture.
“Here she is,” he said, wiping away a stray piece of thread stuck to the plastic cover. The girl had blond hair in a conservative midwestern-style flip and a smile full of milk-white teeth.
“Her name is Becky. That’s short for Rebecca. What do you think?”
“She’s nice, Lance,” said O’Donnell, although his own taste ran to women with a hint of the lowlife about them.
“Do you have a girl back home?”
“I’m in between girlfriends right now.”
Lance’s mouth dropped open for a moment; then he guffawed like a donkey. “Is that anything like being in between jobs?”
“Exactly like it,” said O’Donnell. “Excuse me.”
He crossed a sorry-looking dance floor and found the men’s room. The tiles smelled of urine and stale disinfectant. The walls were etched with graffiti. The wind whistled through a crack in the frosted glass of a window.
He chose the cleaner of the two urinals. As he pissed, he thought he saw a spider dangling near his shoulder. But when he turned, the spicier became a small swastika cut into the wall with a knife. The creepy-crawlies had found him.
All the members of the club were haunted by these creatures that hovered at the periphery of their vision. Some creepy-crawlies resembled insects; others resembled rodents. A few belonged to phyla no biologist would ever dream existed. O’Donnell seemed to have a penchant for spiders.
The creepy-crawlies were a bad sign. They meant that the protective shell he had built up during the past three years was in danger of cracking. With Hurricane Caroline delaying the launch for as long as five days, O’Donnell faced an eternity with no work to keep him occupied and uptight Lance Muncie bent on male bonding. In between girlfriends. Shit. A girlfriend was the least of his problems.
O’Donnell took a long look at the swastika before leaving the men’s room. He thought he saw the ends wiggle, but he couldn’t be sure. If the phones are back in operation tonight, I’ll call in at the motorcycle club meeting. A chat with my bike buddies will do me some good.
Back at the bar, the television screen was blank.
“Show over?” asked O’Donnell.
“Don’t know,” said the bartender. “We lost the picture. Jaeckle yelled and Carla Sue screamed. And then we lost the sound.”
15 AUGUST 1998
— TRIKON STATION
When placed in orbit, a long skinny object exhibits a peculiar property due to the basic physics of orbital mechanics. Once aligned so that its long axis points toward the center of the Earth, it tends to maintain this attitude. The bottom end (nadir) remains at the bottom and the top end (zenith) remains at the top as the object orbits around the Earth. The forces that cause this phenomenon are called gravity-gradient torques and the object is said to be gravity-gradient stabilized.
As applied to Trikon Station, this means that the modules will always be oriented so that the Earth is “down,” or “below” the station in relation to its internal architecture.
Trikon Station orbits about 480 kilometers (300 miles) above the Earth’s surface. Space is not entirely a vacuum at this altitude; there is a faint, thin atmosphere composed principally of atomic oxygen. This highly reactive gas can erode the station’s components. To minimize this erosion and the orbital decay resulting from the slight but real aerodynamic drag, the station’s normal orbital orientation is to fly “edge on,” like the blade of a broad knife flying edge-first.
However, Trikon Station’s natural tendency to remain gravity gradient stabilized is not enough to keep it properly functioning. The solar panels must always be oriented toward the sun to collect energy. The radiators must be aimed away from the sun to discharge waste heat. As the station orbits the Earth, the positions of the solar panels and radiators must be constantly adjusted for the most efficient orientations.