Titan Insurgents (Titan: Colonizing Saturn's Moon Book 2) by Kate Rauner

Author:Kate Rauner [Rauner, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-29T07:00:00+00:00

Chap ter 15

D rew walked across the floor. Yes, he walked. Didn't float, didn't bounce or bobble. Heel, toe, heel, toe, he walked.

He strolled along segment five, the green barracks segment adjoining his biology lab - that is, his piece of the manufacturing lab. Orpheus was spinning the station up gradually so it wouldn't tear itself apart and had reached a centrifugal force of... Drew tapped his sleeve pad. A centrifugal force of forty-two percent Earth gravity. In another couple days, the station would stabilize at fifty percent. The highest the ring could safely endure.

Plenty of gravity.

Drew took a little hop. Ouch, his legs ached in gravity, but they'd adjust. He'd claimed a bunk in the lower level as soon as the bots finished assembling barracks and slept better every night as the spin ramped up. Washrooms wouldn't be available until the Poseidon shuttled enough water up from Titan's surface, but a trip to crew quarters in the core was a minor inconvenience.

He extended his arms and spun on one heel, a sort of dance to celebrate. He wouldn't drop any balls to look for a coriolis effect, because he didn't care if they landed a bit anti-spinward. His feet were moving a fraction of a meter per second faster than his head, but not so much that he felt it. Life was looking up.

Segment five's upper level was a bright public space, the upper half of the ring's circular cross section, pleasantly wide and quite high in the middle. Drew liked the colors too. Teal and green borders patterned the floor around large salmon rectangles textured to mimic tile, a low wall along each edge made room for future plantings, and kiosks would someday serve food. Or maybe Kin would invent other uses. The station's ring was one hundred percent possibilities.

Drew stopped a quarter way along the segment and stood directly below the round, dark opening to its spoke. "Orpheus, I hear them coming. Drop ladder."

A vertical ladder silently telescoped down to the floor. Lights inside the spoke blinked on, but Drew could only see as far as an opaque plastic membrane that stretched across the opening with a panel like a round doggie door at the ladder's top. Here in a residential segment, the spoke was narrow and the membrane fit snuggly all the way around. A single bot had installed it, an easy trick for a creature built like a spider.

Someone's foot pushed the doggie door open, and a cool breeze hit Drew in the face. The station's spin pushed everything to the outer rim, even air. Rather than install huge impellers to move air uphill, membranes blocked the spokes to keep a breathable pressure inside the core with a modest ventilation system.

Drew moved out of the draft. With the entire crew descending for an exercise session, the doggie door was open for several minutes. Once they all stood on the floor, Drew glanced up to be sure the door had snapped closed and then turned to grin at his grumbling crewmates.

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