"I wonder how an outsider like me could get up to the hub to look around."

"Look here. I know where your questions are going. Two fems with no man in hearing is what we are. You wonder what sex in microgravity is like. All downers must hear those stories. The wrong question is what it is.

"You get up to orbit for the first time, and you hint around to find a hidden nook at the hub of the habitat. Well, for one, the hub is an incredibly busy place. Things and people are coming and going, locks are being opened to vacuum. A place you don't want to be without a guide is what it is. For two, the guy is sliding himself in and out of you; his head and yours go back and forth in time with that motion. In micro-gee, the fluid spins around the inner ears. You feel more nausea than lust."

"You sound like you've tried it out."

"No. But believe me. Drive a feiky is what I do. The tugs that pushed your ship into the entry ports, though I work for Agriculture. A hundred millimeters per-sec per-sec, with screens extended to catch sun power. One hundredth of a standard gravity. I don't dart around in there. You're in a crowd and some crisis occurs. The pilot is the one saying 'Smooth, not fast, ' when everyone else runs around.

"But I've wandered off trajectory. The wrong question. The right question is, 'Where do orbiters meet to meet?' The answer is half-gravity. There is enough floor to keep your ears from spinning, not enough to hurt your feet."

"Sounds interesting. Can I buy you a drink?"

"No thanks, drinking booze not on my card can cost me my job. I'll get my own, but if you happen to have packed some chocolate on you ... Why thank you! Yes, they tell you that right. Cacao isn't grown in orbit.

"If open minded is what you are, I'll tell about how this stand- down began."

"Stand down."

"Huh? Stand-downs are like now. A storm on the sun sends radiation our way. Almost nobody goes out, and a pilot can drink what she chooses. A wise fem freezes more blastulas than she's licensed for before she takes a job exposing herself to rad, but there's still a lot of me that can be exposed. Descendants is one issue; cancer is another."

"Licensed. Do they really regulate how many children you can have?"

"Yep. We have so much air; only so many can breathe it, so only so many can be born. We're expanding, though. More can be born than die."

"Sounds tyrannical. But I shouldn't talk; I don't have any children."

"Right. Anyway, Gamma-two is big, it spins slow but we get the full ten meters per-sec per-sec of floor, just like downstairs on Earth. A plot spins a little faster, but it's small. It only has enough floor to tell the plants up from down. I fly from here to a plot, there to the next plot, coming back three times a shift, working alone. I pump in a ton each of water and carbon O-two, little more of the first than the second. I draw out about 1200 Kilos of atmosphere, and then on to the next one. That means I'm out of my feiky at every plot, working in my suit. Full vacuum is what the cockpit holds."

"Maybe two months back, I'm at the hub of a plot, tightening a valve, when my LSI alarm goes off. Lost suit integrity is no joking matter, but the alarms can go off if you stretch too fast. I relax to see if it's a false alarm and review my path to safety. It's no false alarm. I scoot for the feiky. Once I'm inside, I call in 'Lost Suit Integrity; coming back.' Then I scoot for home. Retract the screens, seal up the cockpit, and hit the emergency pressure tank. Scratchy to breathe, but fine for pressure is dryox. By the time I'm near, my right thigh is screaming that it has the worst charley horse in history."

"Sounds horrible."

"Could be worse. Pain like that tells you you're still alive. They hold traffic for my docking, but my right leg gives me trouble on the controls. All four limbs, usually, flying a feiky. 'Smooth, not fast, ' I say as I dock. Really, it's not all that smooth, either; but I fit first time.

"Not one leaking thing is what the medics can do while I'm in my suit. So I pull myself along to my regular suit locker. It's in an alcove comfy for one. But the middle of my shift is change- shift for riggers, so a rigger comes in before I'm out of my suit. It's his space that time of day; I told you that the hub keeps busy."

"Now a suit liner hugs you pinhole tight, but I was less worried about what he could see than what I couldn't. 'Check out the back of my right thigh, ' I asked him."

"'I was getting there, ' he said. Men! Then he turned serious and called emergency. There was a hole in the suitliner and a millimeter crater in my thigh. Asteroid dust, traveling at ten klicks per-sec, boils you more than it cuts you."

"He promised to stay with me 'til I got to medical at half-g, and I took a pain-tab. I put a clout on over the suitliner and watched him change. 'You could look away, ' he said. He hadn't; why should I?"

"Fair's fair. Did you like what you saw?"

"'Built like a rigger' is what we say."

"Huh?"

"Huh? Oh, big muscles on top, broad shoulders, thin legs. Triangle on its point. Not all riggers are like that, but he certainly was. Men have even more problems with the tightness of suitliners than fems have, and he'd suited up with one problem pointing straight up. More symmetrical than putting it down a leg, I must say. By the time I saw that, the pain-tab had kicked in. I was chem-happy."

"We rode down the lift with many of his crew. They were grousing over being held up at the end of their shift for an emergency. 'Do you ignore LSI?' he asked. Not more than once in a lifetime, I'll guarantee.

"'Those alarms go off all the time, 'someone said.