The Jovian Run: Sol Space Book One Read Online Free PDF Page A

Finally he arrived at the last doors of the hallway, and he paused for a second to listen. Two male voices issued from within, both heated, and he heard more than one impolite word. He knocked on the door of the cabin. A moment later the door opened, and he was looking at Dean Parsells, one of his new hires.
    “Hey there, Dean. I thought I’d come down and check on you two.” The man, though the smaller of two new crew members, was nonetheless large. He floated at close to two meters tall, and his weight was approaching one hundred kilograms, at least on Earth. He had short, dark hair, and his chin was too small and his eyes set too close together to be considered handsome. Templeton looked over Dean’s shoulder as a table drifted by. A second later there was a loud bang as the errant furniture ricocheted off the wall. Parsells regarded him and smiled.
    “Yeah, come in. We’re having some trouble, I think.” His voice was heavy. He moved aside and Templeton pushed himself into the room. Instantly, he had to duck as a chair came drifting towards his head.
    “Whoa,” he declared, and reached out a hand to catch another chair spinning in place on his right. The room was a mess. At least they hadn’t unfastened the beds. “So, I know you boys have been in space plenty. Wouldn’t’ve hired you if you hadn’t.” He looked over at Harrison Quinn. Templeton reasoned that he was well over one hundred kilos. He had the face of a boxer, of a man who had been in plenty of fights. That he had scars on his fists and not his face indicated that he had won most of them. “But this is different from mining ore in zero G on an asteroid. See, the floor is the floor when we’re planetside, but that,” he pointed at the wall to his right and the general aft of the ship, “is the floor when we’re under thrust, which will be most of the time.” The two men looked at the wall, at him, and at each other. The marauding table drifted quietly past them again, pinging off a chair and taking on a new trajectory.
    “We use this time in zero G to reorient the ship. That’s what most of the crew is doing right now: rearranging their rooms. That’s why all of your furniture comes unclamped from the floor. You need to clamp it to that wall there. That’ll be your floor in,” he looked at his watch, “about two hours. And it’ll stay that way till we reach Mars, most like.” The larger man looked at him and shook his head, not in confusion but in exasperation. It was a look that said this is so freaking weird . “It takes a bit to get used to.”
    “Wait,” Parsells said, considering. “So if that wall becomes the floor,” he pointed at the same wall that Templeton had indicated, “how do we get out of here?”
    “See how the door is wide and located at the left side of the room? It’s designed to convert. And see this switch?” He pushed himself over to the wall and indicated a light switch covered with a hinged piece of plastic. “Watch this.” He lifted the plastic and flipped the switch. There was a distinct thunk as ten centimeter wide panels in the floor and ceiling retracted. Each was about a half a meter across. Suddenly there were ladders in the room, built into both the floor and ceiling. “There ya go. There’s another one in the hall; they’re all over the ship. You’d better get comfy with climbing around while we’re under thrust. If you need to go from aft to fore, well… the ship’s two hundred fifty-two meters long. Thrusting, that makes it over two hundred meters tall.”
    Understanding was dawning on Parsells’ face, but Quinn still seemed to be struggling with the concept. “Look, think of it this way. When you got on board, the ship was on its belly, right? So this,” he pointed to what the men currently thought of as down, “was the ground. But when we’re thrusting, which we normally do at about point six Gs, it’s like the ship is sitting on earth, but on its butt, nose to the sky.