Personal Space, pt 2

"So what do you think of Kelly's First Submind Suburb, complete with chimpanzee families and cats?" I asked Paula.

She drifted beside me, wearing her pink and blue Submind vac-suit bristling with biotech sensors, and gazed across thousands of meters at our destination. "It's not very big."

"That's not exactly what I wanted to hear," I said.

She giggled. "Not what a guy wants to hear on a date?"

"No. But I've heard worse," I said. "The hub is big enough for a spinball field..."

"Of course it is."

"The hub's south airlock is for small personal shuttles. There's room for ten. The north airlock is for vac-suit entrance and emergency pods."

"Standard," Paula said softly. She started clicking her teeth softly and fiddling with one of her sensors. That usually meant she was only half listening.

"Then we have two habitat spokes. You need at least two spokes on a lash-up if you want to keep spin going," I said, starting to warm up. "The chimps worked hard getting some of that growth to go, so I gave one spoke to Curious and his new mate, and let him pick three other families. There's room for six families in those spokes, but we have plenty of room out here."

"Uh huh."

"Doug's going to lease one of the eight slips, and he's already got half the chimps involved in something. You know how he is. He wants to make a big announcement, so he won't tell anyone anything--except the chimps, and they thinks secrets are great fun, so I can't get anything out of them."

"Did you hear about Tera and Rick?" Paula asked.

"Tera?" I asked.

"Doug's sister," Paula said. "The economic wonder."

"Oh, right. Money crazy," I said. "I thought she left when Doug told her to go stuff her lawyers in an airlock."

"Apparently she met and got drunk with Rick at the Dizzy Pig, and then spent three days locked in his ship. It seems to have improved her mood exponentially."

"Counter-Spin?" I asked. "And Tera?"

"Yeah. There's no accounting," Paula said. "I'll race you the rest of the way, but you can't use your ion-thrusters to accelerate. You have to use grav-touch."

"Then you'll owe me another favor."

"Ha," Paula said, and focused her gravity on the spinning lash-up.

I let her pull ahead before I did some focusing of my own. I pulled with almost a full gee, and didn't stop until Paula was behind me.

Paula made fun of me for going too fast. I focused on Fort Falling and pulled myself to a stop a few meters away from the airlock. Paula was less then two minutes behind me.

"You've been practicing," Paula said.

I shrugged. "Ion thrusters are more fun. So what do you think? I didn't do any of the actual work, except a bit of plumbing, but it feels like mine."

"It... looks like an average suburb class docking station grown out of insect parts," Paula said.

"Yeah," I said. "Ain't it great."