Exhausted, he crawled back to his chair and lay across the desk littered with calculations of a landing he would never make. The soft luminescence from the Destiny's nuclear engines crept forward and caressed him.
In the aft recroom, Eve and Mary were admiring Joseph's strength in being able to push the heavy couch over Adam's trapdoor.
Three wall panels lit red. All the mecs appeared together. "It's time for your science lesson," one said. "But where is Adam?"
"He's in the trapdoor," they answered flatly.
The panel turned green, reserving its redness for the delinquent Adam when he would choose to appear.
Mecteacher began, "Now about the Solar System...."
But the cousins didn't listen. Joseph had turned the gravity switch off and they were too busy floating upended, trying new positions, laughing at each other's ridiculous postures in the ship without bottom. The game was not a new one, but it was newly discovered and they reveled in its glories.
Month after month, they played their weightless games while the mecs implored them to come down. The constellations shifted in the visiports. New Sol grew larger and then smaller as the Destiny sped toward its unseen planet.
In the recroom, the mecvoices were only noises to the trio now, annoying noises that could be silenced, they discovered, with forceful kicks to the red-glowing panels.