“That’s not bad for a girl,” Ted replied, with a tolerant grin.
She shoved him in playful displeasure. Although the push was not hard, it upset Ted’s balance, and he slipped off the window seat and rolled onto the metal floor. Jill gasped in alarm and darted to his side. As she tried to help him up, she too lost her equilibrium and fell beside him. Ted looked at her and laughed.
Their awkwardness was caused by the fact that they wore magnetized shoes that were attracted to the metal floor of the space ship. Even when sitting down, they had kept the soles of their shoes on the metal of the seat. Ted got to his feet and helped Jill up.
“Will we ever get used to these funny shoes?” Jill complained.
“We’ll have to,” Ted said. “If we didn’t wear them we’d go floating around in the air like a feather. That’s another disadvantage of leaving Earth. We don’t have any weight at all in space. If we wanted to, we could take off our shoes and stretch out in the air just like on a soft couch.”
“It might be fun to swim around in here just like a fish,” Jill mused. “I think I’ll try it.”
Ted knew he should stop her, but his curiosity to see such an experiment prevented him from giving in to the tug of his conscience.
“Be careful!” Ted warned. “Any motion you make will be hard to stop.”
When her shoes were off, Jill pressed gently upward from her toes. She shrieked in pleasure as she rose gracefully into the air. Reaching the ceiling of the room, she pushed against it and floated downward again.
“That’s lots of fun!” she said. “Why don’t you try it, Ted?”