Again the silence, punctuated only by the heavy breathing of the men.
“I think you’re making a mistake,” Merola said.
Ted turned his head toward the bulkhead. The stars seemed to have gone out suddenly.
The freeze began then.
Ted could compare it to nothing he had ever experienced before. He simply ceased to exist as far as any other member of the crew was concerned. Merola spoke to him only to give instructions and orders, reluctantly abiding by the majority decision of the other men. The rest of the crew ignored him completely. If Ted came within reaching distance of any of the men, they invariably sought another part of the cabin.
During meals, they clustered together into a tight, forbidding knot, their backs to him. It was cold, a coldness generated by men who felt they were doing the right thing, a coldness more complete than that of the void outside the ship.
Ted was utterly miserable.
Coupled with the methodical ostracizing he suffered, he also had to contend with the uncomfortable conditions of space travel. Weightlessness on the short hop to the Station had been a comparative lark. It had become something more than that now.
There was a choice to be had, of course.
You could drift all over the small cabin, feeling like a gas-inflated tube, your stomach threatening to ooze out of your ears every time you moved.
Or you could wear the heavy, magnetized sandals that enabled you to establish the most synthetic of gravities in that they allowed you to walk on the deck if you so chose.
They also allowed you to walk on the bulkheads, or on the overhead, or indeed anywhere that boasted a metal surface.
The trouble was simply that the sandals were so heavy. After ten minutes of struggling around the cabin with them, having to fight free of the magnetic force every time you wanted to lift a foot and place it down again, your leg muscles were simply too tired to hold you up.
Those were the choices, and Ted pardoned his own pun as he mused that neither of them was exactly
Tied in with the problem of motion was the problem of nourishment. Eating was a habit Ted had long become used to. This, and drinking, were simply a matter of form back on Earth, simple processes that could be undertaken with the eyes blindfolded and one hand tied behind the back. Not so in space.
Drinking was not too difficult at all. Naturally, open cups and bottles could not be used. When a liquid is weightless, it simply has no reason to leave a bottle, and it will not pour if the bottle it tilted. On the other hand, if the bottle were shaken, all of the contents would come rushing out in one sudden splash. All liquids were placed in closed containers made of plastic. When the sides of these containers were squeezed, the liquid squirted out.
It meant getting used to tasting milk in squirts rather than gulps, but Ted soon became adjusted to it.
Eating was another matter. When everything is weightless, a beefsteak will float about as aimlessly as will a body. A plate, unfortunately, will follow the same procedure. If a beefsteak were conceivably placed on a platter, then it would promptly float up toward the overhead at the slightest jar. And if someone inadvertently let go of a plate, it too would sail merrily off to another portion of the cabin.
As a result, the plates were made of magnetized metal, so that they clung to any metal surface upon which they were placed. Each plate was approximately two inches deep, with a plastic top covering it. The top was divided into four quarters which slid open at a touch of the finger tips.
Ted soon mastered the process of eating. No sit-down-and-stuff-yourself matter was this, he soon discovered. The food was cooked in a closed broiler. As soon as the broiler was opened, the food had to be speared with a fork immediately. Luckily, the fork utilized friction and not gravity, so there was no danger of a piece of food floating off a fork. After the food was speared, it was transferred to the plate, and the cover immediately put in place. The meal could then be begun.
Whenever a piece of food was desired, one of the quarters was slid open a fraction of an inch, and the fork thrust into that space to spear the food. The opening was then sufficiently enlarged to allow the food on the fork to pass through, and then snapped shut again. Cutting was a little more difficult in that the food had to be speared through the opening, the knife inserted into the slit, the food sliced, the knife withdrawn, the opening made wider, the food taken out, the opening closed. Nor was it possible to lay down a utensil on anything but a metal surface. Ted once put down his knife on a plastic clipboard and promptly had to chase it halfway across the cabin. He finally grasped it when its magnetism caught at the metal bulkhead.