Star Spun By Scot Patri "Jowlek! Did you flake out on me?" The voice of the chief engineer crackled from the speakers in Mitch's helmet. Mitch snapped his eyes away from the spinning universe, looked up, and saw the chief looking "up" at him also. It was hard to tell which way was up in a rotating space station, but it was generally the opposite direction your legs were pointing. As he was standing on the inner curve of the partial habitat ring outside the station, up was irrelevant. There was just out. "Just admiring the view, sir," he said lamely. "Don't! Keep your eyes on my ass and what I'm doing!" Mitch grimaced and watched the chief make the cautious journey in his magnetic boots along the outer curve of the low-grav ring. One couldn't stand still for very long � especially not on the outer curve of a ring � in mag boots. Movement was what re-energized them. As the chief stopped to check the first of the numerous station wires, Mitch asked, "Why Nowhere?" "What?" "Why is this station called Nowhere, sir? I thought the spedoza class stations were named after dead scientists." The chief made a slight gagging noise, then commented: "You couldn't be that stupid of an ensign. It's called Nowhere because it's in the middle of nowhere!" Mitch couldn't fault him on that; it was a stupid question. Nowhere's present position was between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, on the opposite side of the sun away from those gas giants. It was so far off the main shipping routes that the crew usually spent their time spotting and tagging rogue asteroids and the occasional comet instead of serving their primary purpose: providing emergency and defence support for the numerous vessels that shipped cargo and personal between the planets. Even if there was anything around to help, the station couldn't offer much, since it only had one fighter/rescue ship, and the station itself was only partially complete. A standard spedoza was composed of pre-fabricated sections. "Tubers", or sealed cylinders one hundred meters long and a diameter a quarter of that, were connected together to make an inner and outer ring, and four spokes of tubers connected them. Four function-specific "nodes" (cylinders one hundred meters long, with a diameter half that) were placed at the ends of the spokes, with the outer ring attached to them, and housed everything from fighter craft hangers to hydroponics labs. The inner ring provided docking facilities for ships, and the larger outer ring provided living quarters with near-Earth gravity. The complete structure held itself together against centrifugal and gravitation forces, and the occasional bad docking. While Nowhere had a complete inner ring, it only had two spokes, two nodes, and an outer ring with only a third of the tubers required. The rest of the components had been lost in transit from a pirate attack. "Why do we have to test the wires? Wouldn't it be easier to replace them when they break?" "A month out of the academy and ready to gut the S.O.P. of the universe," the chief muttered to himself. "If one wire breaks, then more stress is put on every other wire, which might cause more to snap. The end result is the entire station tearing itself to pieces!" The station's present structure would be dangerously unstable had it been stationary, but as was spinning to provide artificial gravity for the outer ring, the structure shouldn't have been possible. The only reason it didn't rip itself apart was the miracle of engineering ingenuity of a madman who had strung and connected a myriad of wires to hold and keep the station together and in its proper shape. The station only looked as if some space-born monster had taken two big chomps out of it. "Why don't they send us a robot to do EVAs?" Mitch asked, curious about that other missing part of the station's mandatory equipment. "If they aren't going to ship us the rest of the station, what makes you think that they're going to send us the effin robot?" Made some sort of sense, Mitch thought, but only if the idiots back at Central decreed that this uncompleted station in the middle of nowhere was to be made operational, which they did. It probably made sense to the chief engineer, since he was the madman that made it possible. "Why couldn't we 'wire' the wires to a central location and test them that way?" This made sense to Mitch, for they were presently testing each wire with a volt/amp meter to locate potentially bad ones. Bad wires didn't carry an electrical current very well. "Did you happen to bring a couple miles of spare cable and several hundred connectors with you?" the chief asked sarcastically. "I don't see why the wires would snap anyway. It's not like we're near a gravity well." "You really are green, aren't you? Every footstep, every vibration, every bump, jostle, shiver and thump puts stress on the station's structure, right into these wires that hold it together. By the way, you are recording the readings?" Mitch waived the datapad he was holding at him, proving that he was paying attention and doing his job. Then, when the chief wasn't looking at him, risked a brief glance out into space. Mitch was constantly aware of the dangers of being star spun, for the slowly spinning universe seen from the station had a hypnotic effect on most people. While someone could just zone out while staring out a view port, a person outside could end up dead. You looked, you were hooked, you began leaning forward, and if you were lucky, you fell and woke up when you hit the surface you were standing on. If you weren't lucky, you fell off the station and drifted away from it at several feet per second � depending on where you fell off. Mitch became queasy, and not from being star spun. He was remembering that the person he replaced on the station's roster had. Upon arriving, the first thing he had been shown was a recording of that incident. That engineer had taken only a brief look before succumbing, and was in the worst possible place for it to happen: mag-booted to the outer curve of the ring just like the chief, so couldn't fall over. His situation had been noticed by the guy assigned to watch for this very thing (the assignment Mitch was doing), but several minutes of screamed warnings through his radio weren't long enough to wake him before his boots gave out and he floated off. Right into the wires and sliced in half from the force of the station's rotation. The chief engineer now had to check the wires himself until the station commander decided the other engineer � now regulated to doing every non-dangerous shithole job on the station � had learned his lesson, or until Mitch learned the job himself. This reminded Mitch that he wasn't doing his job. "Chief? I think I know a way to stop people from being �" Mitch's words lodged in his throat when he saw the chief was standing motionless with his arms limply raised above his head. "Aw shit...CHIEF!!! Chief, wake up! Ops! We've got a situation out here! Ops? OPS!" "Your partner Is star spun, there is no one in operations or the person monitoring you has also spun out. You have minutes before your partner's boots give out, and it would take too long to get to him by normal means. What do you do?" The voice in Mitch's head was mimicking the ones of his academy instructors, who continuously posed problems like this to see if their students had the imagination, intelligence and wits to react properly when the crunch came. Mitch always answered with safe and practical solutions. Today, Mitch dropped his datapad, walked to the edge of the outer ring, and stepped off. He hit his manoeuvring jets the moment he was clear. They didn't have the power or the fuel to lift him directly off the part of the station he had been standing on, but they could slow his thirty-two feet per second launch away from it to a stationary position, and puff him back to it eventually. Mitch had the throttle wide open, for eventually was too long. The favourite way to pass the time on Nowhere was to look out a view port and spin out for a couple of hours. It was addictive, and everyone on the station had tried it at least once just to see what it was like. It was done off duty, and never where the station commander would catch you. The problem with this unsanctioned pastime was that the more you did it, the easier it was to have it happen to you. As Mitch passed the inner ring while decelerating, he saw through a view port that the person at Ops was one of those who spun out whenever they could get the chance. He had countered his momentum at the outer edge of the inner ring, and saw that he had only enough propellant for one more puff. Enough to move him towards the station, but what then? Even if he could aim and time it right to drift past the chief and shake him awake, there was too much danger of being snagged by a wire as he slid through them. And they were moving! As best, he could be knocked out of control, miss the chief, miss the station, and take the long walk home. At worst, he would get hung up, start sliding out along the wire, and it would cut into his suit like a saw. "What do you do?" Mitch had an idea, the one he tried to tell the chief about, but he didn't know if it would work, and he had to wait until the station completed another rotation. The chief was facing in his direction, oblivious to what was happening as he stared outward, and if he didn't start moving soon, the charge in his boots would dissipate. As soon as he was in position, Mitch turned on his wrist light, focused the beam to narrow, and painted its light across the chief's faceplate. And prayed. The chief jerked. "Huh? What the �" "Chief!" Mitch's tone was totally enthusiastic. "Mitch? Where are you! What the hell are you doing out there?" "Ah...saving your life?" "From what? Shit! Did I �" "Chief? If you want to go back in the station, I've got an idea to stop someone from being start spun. Place a remote-controlled light operated by your partner inside the helmets. It should snap someone out of it more efficiently than having to jump off the station to do it." "You did what!" "Chief, I have to get in the station, and I'm nearly out of fuel for my manoeuvring jets. I need your help to touchdown." "Uh, sure. Mitch, about what I said �" "Could you save it until we get inside? I just jumped off the station and my suit's waste containment system is malfunctioning!"
