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Chapter 18

Chapter 18

July 18th 2157

The trip up the crawler is long.  It starts out slow, fighting gravity using magnetic pulses almost like placing hand over hand to climb a rope.  As the crawler began to climb, the platform dropped out from under them and out of view.  Each pulse is equal to the last, yet more momentum is gained after each consecutive one.  Then the oppressive grip of gravity begins to slack a bit.

Logan noticed the horizon begin to curve, and almost in the same instant realized that he felt lighter as well.  He gripped onto the handrail that was beside the port that he had been transfixed to.  Glancing over at Mike, he notice that Mike was reading something on his DNAC and not paying attention to anything, let alone showing any sign that he was loosing weight.

Logan's pressure on the floor of the crawler began to lessen, and he found himself forcing himself to hold himself down onto the floor.  It was a rather unsettling feeling, having never been weightless.  Logan felt a need to be firmly planted where he would have control.

Logan's foot slipped, no longer receiving friction assisted by gravity.  His legs shot out from under him and arced up until he was upside down and turned around backwards from the port.  He redoubled this attempt to right himself using the handle next to the port, but brought himself around too hard and his knee hit the metal wall with an audible thud.

Grimacing he glanced around to see who, if anyone, was witness to his embarrassing first brush with weightlessness.  The few other occupants of the crawler seemed to be engrossed in their own activities.  But then his eyes fell on Mike.

Mike was still reading what ever it was on his DNAC, looking bored and uninterested an anything that was going on.  Except for the faint smile that was tucked in the corner of his mouth.  He never looked up, but Logan knew that he had seen the whole thing.

Logan continued to struggle with keeping himself in one place and finally became frustrated.  His arms were tired, and his knee hurt, and was surprised when Mike reached over to the handle that he was holding onto.  There was a quick fluid movement of his hands before Mike went back to reading on his DNAC.

Logan looked down and found that a small metal braided rope was now clipped from his pants to the handle that he was gripping.  He looked over at Mike and realized that he also was clipped to a handle, and just floated, looking as if this was his natural state of being.

Logan tentatively let go of the handle and floated away from the port a little bit, but was stopped by the light braided metal rope.  He was still within arms length of the wall, and found that he could easily adjust himself in front of the port with gentle pressure on the wall.  Logan continued to watch out the port the rest of the trip up.  Becoming weightless signaled the halfway point between platforms, and the last few hours raced by quickly and Logan hardly noticed.  

A slight tug from the rope pulled gently where it had been connected to his pants, and Logan realized that the crawler had begun to slow down.  In less than half an hour the crawler had come to a gentle stop and docked with the space side platform.

Logan had missed most of the platform from his port, but knew that it was roughly the same size as its companion platform.  Unclipping his harness, Logan followed after Mike who led the way out of the crawler and into the platform.

The lack of gravity was starting to affect Logan who began to feel vertigo and a little nauseated.  The feeling must have had a visual side effect because Mike grabbed Logan's arm and pulled him into a rest room off the side of the main corridor.  Mike took Logan to the sink and helped him splash water on his face.

After a few moments when Logan began to look a little better, Mike pulled a square piece of plastic from his pocket and removed what looked to be a sticker from it.  The sticker was flesh colored and Mike had placed it behind Logan's ear before he had a chance to react.  Instinctively Logan’s hand rose to where the sticker had stuck to him.

"Leave it on," Mike said.  "It is medication for motion sickness.  If I knew you were going to be this sensitive I would have given it to you before the ride up."  Mike laughed quietly, a sound that was half way between derisive and friendly.  "We have an appointment to make, lets get going."

Mike turned using the sink as an anchor and pushed himself out the door.  Logan did the same, but learned that his aim was not as true as Mike's and crashed into the rest room door.  Logan was really beginning to hate the lack of gravity.

"Are you coming?"  Logan heard Mike call from outside.

Logan managed to pull himself around the door and push himself across the hall to where Mike was.  While in mid flight through the hallway, Logan noted that passengers were already being loaded back onto the crawler.  Apparently in the few minutes that they had spent in the rest room, all of the cargo had been unloaded and new cargo loaded, and now passengers were boarding.  Logan guessed that it would be back on it's way to earth in less than five minutes from the time that it arrived at the space platform.

A pang struck Logan as he realized that he would soon be stranded on the platform with no way off.  The pain was replaced by a panic of claustrophobia; he was stuck and wouldn't be able to do anything about it.

"Hey," snapped Mike, "what is going on?"

Logan looked up at Mike, "Uh, sorry, I just had a bad..."  He didn't finish that sentence.  "Sorry, um, where are we going?"

Mike held out a harness, "put this on.  Once you have it on attach it to the runner on the wall."  Mike made a point of moving to the wall that he indicated and attached one end of the harness to a pipe that was painted in a light blue color.

Logan quickly slipped his legs thought the harness, got his arms through and then snapped the clasp in the front.  Using the wall with its many handholds floated over to where Mike was waiting.

"Clip your harness to the blue pipe."  Mike said.

Logan did as he was told, and attached his harness to the pipe and then noticed that the pipe was held to the wall by several little arms that connected to the wall.  A brief glance showed Logan that each arm would push against the wall when his harness passed by, and was spring loaded to snap back into place to hold the bar.  The arms were spaced roughly every meter.

Mike took off down the corridor at a blinding speed.  Using the bar to anchor himself to the wall, he ran on hands and feet.  Logan was stunned by how fast Mike was moving down the hallway and then realized that he was being left behind.

"Well, you wanted to try new things," Logan muttered to himself.  He pushed off and tried to mimic Mike running on all fours down the hallway as best as possible.  After several awkward moments of almost planting his face on the wall, he gathered a rhythm and followed Mike deeper into the platform.

The two traveled for several minutes with out communicating to each other.  They stopped several times to switch which wall they were attached to for another one.  After what felt like ten minutes for quickly moving down several passageways, and almost colliding with a pedestrian, the two came to a doorway with two guards floating on either side.

Logan only had a brief moment to realize that soldiers standing at attention in zero gravity was a little silly looking before he was rushed passed them and into what looked like a conference room.  "Make yourself comfortable, I need to check in."  Mike announced to Logan without looking at him, and floated over to where a man in a business suit was working on a terminal.

Logan looked around and saw that there were several men and women dressed in uniform identical to Mike.  But there was another group of people at the far side of the room.  The group was all huddled together and everyone in the group wore street clothes, just like Logan.

A head popped out from the crowd and said, "Logan?  Is that you?"