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going to stay here that long. Don't let yourself get burned, old girl.
At last their guide had finished his lecture and started herding them back into the commutersphere.
"Sir?" one of the trainees asked. "I don't see any people here. Is this farming pod completely automated?"
"As much as possible," the guide said, stone-faced. "The pods don't have as much shielding against harmful cosmic
and solar radiation as the main cylinder does; therefore, we try to keep human exposures in the pods down to a
minimum."
Thanks so much!Evelyn thought.
If any of the other trainees worried about the radiation dose they were receiving, they failed to show any outward
concern. They dutifully filed back toward the hatch of the commutersphere, with so little conversation or chatter that
Evelyn thought she might as well be back at Our Lady of Sorrows catechism school, studying under the scowling
nuns for First Holy Communion.
Then she realized she had another low-gravity ride ahead of her.Just when my stomach's starting to calm down. At
least it would be the last one of the day, she hoped.
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She felt a tap on her shoulder.
Turning, she saw that it was the guide, looking at her intently. He had a lean, serious face.If only he'd smile, he might
be handsome.
"You seemed to be in some distress during the low-gee portions of the tour," he said.
For half an instant Evelyn wondered if she should deny it. But she decided that trying to brazen it out would be worse
than admitting to the weakness. Obviously he had been watching her turn green.
"I'm afraid that my stomach doesn't approve of low gravity." She tried to make it sound light, bantering.
The other trainees had moved past them, like a little row of automatons, and gone through the docking hatch into the
commutersphere.
"We're not supposed to give out medication to train-
BEN BOVA " 72
ees," the guide said, fumbling in his jumpsuit pockets, "but I don't think there'd be any harm in this."
He took out a small plastic pillbox and removed a white capsule from it. Handing it to Evelyn, he said, "This'11 keep
your stomach under control. The flight back to the main cylinder takes about fifteen minutes and we'll be under less
than one-fifth gee most of that time."
Evelyn stared at the capsule in her hand, then looked up at him. "That's . .. very kind of you."
He smiled at last, and his face turned into a craggy set of furrows. "My name's Harry Harry Bronkowski."
"Thank you, Harry."
He peered at the badge on her jumpsuit. "Evelyn Hall."
"That's me."
He walked with her to the commutersphere's hatch, got her a plastic squeeze-bulb of water, and sat on the padded
couch next to her for the entire flight back to the cylinder, talking all the way about his life, his work as a teacher and
guide, his hobbies, how lonely life can be for a bachelor.
Evelyn noticed several of the women throwing her angry glances.You can have him, she told them
silently.Space-sickness would be better.
Once they arrived back at the main cylinder, the trainees * had a two-hour lunch break. They could eat at the cafeteria
in the five-story-high training center or stroll down to the village to have lunch at one of the tiny restaurants there.
Evelyn told everyone that she was going back to her apartment for a nap rather than risk any more food on her uneasy
stomach.
She left the training center and headed in the direction of the apartment complex. But she went only a few dozen
meters down the footpath. Then she stopped and looked back toward the terraced, pastel-colored training building.
Her fellow trainees were out of sight; they had gone their separate ways toward lunch.
Evelyn walked carefully around the building to its far side. She passed the open windows of a kindergarten class
singing nursery rhymes.No room for them in the regular schools? she wondered.Or is this a special class? Finally
COLONY " 73
she found what she was looking for: an entrance with stairs leading down to the underground subway tube.
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The train platform was empty. Evelyn peered down along the tubeway. No train in sight. She paced the platform
nervously, waiting.The sensors in the turnstile automatically signal the computer that there's a passenger waiting to be
picked up, she recited to herself. Looking down the tube again,So where's the bloody train?
Then she saw a flash of light down the tunnel, and almost before she realized it the train was gliding silently up
toward her. It was only one car, of gleaming anodized aluminum. Quickly, she peeled the green trainee's sticker from
her I.D. badge and carefully put it inside her jumpsuit pocket.
The train doors hissed open and she stepped aboard. She thought the car rocked slightly on its magnetic lifters as she
stepped in, but it was so slight mat it might have been her imagination.
With a whoosh of smooth acceleration the train started up again. There was only one other passenger in it, a
dark-haired, square-faced man sitting up at the front of the car, placidly munching on a sandwich.
Lunch is where you find it,Evelyn thought, sitting on the bench nearest the door she had entered.
The train made no other stops, but rushed in almost total silence down the length of the colony's cylinder. Smiling,
Evelyn thought of her first day and how painful the trip had been on foot.
As the train slowed to a stop, she got up and waited for the doors to open. The other passenger came up alongside
her and dropped the plastic wrapping from his sandwich into the disposal bin set into the car's wall. He was slightly
shorter than Evelyn, but very solidly built. A fleck of mustard was on his chin.
"Are you lost?" he asked. His voice had a hint of a Continental accent to it.
"No," she answered, glancing at the job code symbol on his badge. A stylized pair of wings: he was an astronaut.
"What makes you think I'm lost?"
"I never saw you down here before. You are not an
BEN BOVA " 74
astronaut or a flight controller; I would have remembered someone as beautiful as you."
Evelyn smiled at him, the kind of smile that she used to make men think she liked them.
"And you certainly do not look like the type of woman who works on the construction crew." He bulged his arms and
puffed out his chest to give the impression of a heavyweight.
Evelyn laughed. "I'm new," she said as they stepped off the train and started walking toward the escalator that led
upward. "I'm working for the communications media you know, the television and the news sheets."
"Ah, yes?" He smiled. "You are going to do a story about us adventurous rocket-jockeys?"
"I'm just getting my bearings now. But as soon as my orientation period is over..." She let him finish the promise in his
head.
"Marvelous! My name is Daniel Duvic." He tapped his I.D. badge with a forefinger. Nodding, Evelyn told him her
name.
The escalator seemed endless, an eternity of moving metal stairs that climbed off into some unseeable limbo.
"How well do you react to zero gravity?" Duvic asked. "We shall be almost weightless by the time these stairs reach
the top."
"Oh," Evelyn said weakly. "I'll manage, I suppose."
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She could feel her stomach dropping away again. Instinctively, she grabbed at the moving railing.
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