Gaeta laughed as the heavy hatch popped slightly ajar. Two of the techs swung it all the way open. Massive though it was, his suit could only fit through the outsized airlock hatches designed to receive cargo. The suit was not built to bend at the waist or to flex in any way except at the arms and legs. Inside it, Gaeta felt as if he were driving an army tank.

He caught a glimpse of Holly standing to one side, watching intently, as he thumped across the coaming of the hatch and planted both his booted feet inside the airlock.

“Closing the inner hatch,” came Fritz’s brittle voice in the earphones built into his helmet.

“Copy you’re closing inner hatch,” Gaeta said.

They were all behind him now, outside his field of view. He could see the airlock’s control panel on the bulkhead to his left, red and green displays. The light dimmed as the inner hatch closed and one of the red telltales flicked through amber to green. Gaeta was sealed alone inside the blank-walled chamber, like an oversized robot in a metal womb. He felt a need to urinate, but that always happened when he was nervous. It would go away. It better, he thought; we didn’t bother to connect the relief tube.

“Pumping down,” said Fritz.

“Pump away,” he replied.

He couldn’t hear the pumps that sucked the air out of the chamber; couldn’t even feel their vibrations through the thick soles of the suit’s boots. How many times have I been in this suit? Gaeta asked himself. The first time was the trek across Mare Imbrium. Then the Venus plunge. And skimming Jupiter. About ten, twelve test runs for each stunt. Close to fifty times. Feels like home, almost.

“Opening outer hatch in thirty seconds,” Fritz said.

“Open in thirty.”

“No foolishness, remember.”

Gaeta shook his head inside the helmet. The perfect worry-wart, Fritz was. “I’ll just stand here like a statue,” he promised. “No tricks.”

“Ten … nine…”

Still, Gaeta thought, it would be fun to just step out and jet around a little. Maybe do a loop around the habitat. We’ve got to test the suit’s propulsion unit sooner or later.

“Three … two…”

Fritz would shit a brick, Gaeta chuckled to himself.

“Zero.”

The outer hatch slid slowly open. At first Gaeta saw nothing but empty blackness, but then the polarization of his visor adjusted and the stars came into view. Thousands of stars. Millions of them. Hard little points of light spangling the emptiness out there like brilliant diamonds strewn across a black velvet backdrop. And off to one side slanted the gleaming river of the Milky Way, a sinuous path glowing across the sky, mysterious and beckoning.

Gaeta was not a religious man, but every time he saw the grandeur of the real world his eyes misted and he muttered the same hymn of praise: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.”

RENDEZVOUS PROBLEM

Like a lobster crawling across the sea bottom, Tavalera inched weightlessly hand over hand along the rigid Buckyfiber cable connecting Graham to the fuel pod. Once he reached the tank, he clambered slowly from one handhold to another across the huge metal sphere. As soon as he reached the balky connector, he snapped a tether to the nearest clamp built into the tank’s curving surface. It frightened him to work in empty space without a safety line, but the suit tethers were too short to span the distance between Graham’s airlock and the jammed connector on the fuel tank. Once safely connected, he leaned forward as far as he could in the spacesuit, trying to play his helmet light on the connector that refused to unlock.

Every time he had to do an EVA he expected to feel cold, numbed by the frigid vacuum of deep space. And every time he was surprised that he got so hot inside the suit. Five minutes out here and I’m boiling like a guy in a soup pot, he grumbled to himself. He blinked perspiration out of his eyes and cursed himself for forgetting to wear a sweat-band.

“Well?” The skipper’s voice sounded nastier than usual in his helmet earphones.

“I’m trying to see what the hangup is,” Tavalera said. “Gimme a couple minutes.”

“Put the camera on it, let me take a look.”

I’d like to shove the camera up your skinny ass, Tavalera growled silently. He dutifully unhooked the minicam from his equipment belt and clicked it into its slot on the left shoulder of his suit. Its light added to the light of his helmet lamp.

Shaking his head, Tavalera said, “I can’t see why it won’t unlock. Everything looks normal to me.”

The skipper muttered something too low for him to make out. Then she said, “Check the receiver.”

Tavalera instead checked his tether. He had no intention of drifting off the fuel tank and wafting off into interplanetary space. Sure, there were plenty of people from the habitat outside, but how could he be certain they’d be able to grab him? Or even try to?

“Well?” Even testier than before.

“I’m workin’ on it,” he grumbled.

The receiver checked out: Its battery was almost fully charged and it was receiving the command signal from the ship.

“Must be a mechanical problem,” Tavalera said.

“Try the override.”

“That won’t do any good if the problem’s mechanical.”

“Try the override,” the skipper repeated.

Huffing impatiently, wondering how much radiation he was absorbing by the second, Tavalera punched out the override commands on the receiver’s miniature keypad, not an easy thing to accomplish in a spacesuit’s gloves.

“No joy,” he reported.

“I can see that,” said the skipper. “It must be mechanical.”

“Right.” That’s what I told you, fartbrain, he added silently.

“If we don’t get it loose in fourteen minutes we’re going to miss the rendezvous. The habitat will be too far away from us.”

And then we can go home, Tavalera thought. Let somebody else fly the frigging fuel tank out to those dipshits. Who the hell told them to go out to Saturn in the first place?

“You’ll have to disconnect it manually,” the skipper said.

“Great.”

“Get to it!”

There was no way to open the metal latch with his hands, he saw. It was made of heavy asteroidal aluminum, thick and sturdy, designed to stay closed until it received the proper electronic command. If it opened easily it could release the tank prematurely, or even cause a collision.

“Cut it off,” said the skipper. “Use the laser.”

Tavalera looked up at the Graham, hanging a hundred meters or so away from the spherical tank. To him, it looked more like a thousand kilometers. Through the transparent bubble of the crew module he could see the skipper sitting in her command chair, although he couldn’t make out the features of her face. Just as well, he thought. She makes a hatchet look lovable.

“Come on,” the skipper urged, “the clock’s ticking.”

He pulled the hand laser from his equipment belt, wondering if it was powerful enough to saw through the aluminum latch. Probably drain my suit batteries and I’ll asphyxiate out here. A lot she cares.

“Move it!”

“I’m movin’ it,” he yelled back, clicking the safety off the laser and holding its stubby snout a bare centimeter from the obstinate latch.

Grimacing, he pressed the firing stud. Harsh bright sparks leaped from the stubborn latch.

Gaeta stood in the airlock, looking out at the universe, resisting the urge to go sailing out there.

“All systems in the green,” Fritz told him. “Four more minutes until termination of the test.”

Four minutes, Gaeta thought. I bet I could swoop all the way around the habitat in four minutes.

As he looked out, though, he saw two huge spherical tanks swing into view, and several spacesuited figures clambering on them. The fuel tanks, he realized. Better not get snarled up with those guys. Men at work. And women.