"Sure thing. Right in that little slot under the light panel."
"Thank you."
"Don't feel bad. You haven't really been initiated into space till you've lost at least one meal. How are you other two doing?"
"Okay, I guess," said Miller, the third one.
"Fine. And you, Ricks?"
"I'm doing just lovely. This is a great little old roller-coaster you've got here."
Blair grinned. "I thought you'd like it," he said.
Harvey Ricks had proved himself again.
Station One was leaving perigee, hurtling around the Earth on the long elliptical curve that would take it, fifteen days from now, eighty-four thousand miles towards the Moon. The lighter came curving up from Earth into the path of the Station's orbit and fifty miles ahead. As the Station overtook it, it slowly increased its speed, until the two were neck-and-neck. Slowly, the lighter pilot maneuvered his ship closer to the station, until the magnetic grapples caught, holding the ship to the curving grid jutting out from the hatchway in the high center of the doughnut. A closed companionway slid out along the grid, attached itself to the airlock in the side of the lighter, and formed a hermetic seal. The lock was open, and the Station cargo handlers came aboard for the unloading.