Inside, he stripped off the heavy, complicated armor of an articulated spacesuit, with its springs designed to compensate for the Bourdon tube effect of internal air pressure against the vacuum of space, appearing in the comfortable shorts, T-shirt, and light, knit moccasins with their thin, plastic soles, that were standard wear for all personnel.
He was ready to roll the wheel.
Feeling as elated as a schoolboy, Mike dove down the central axial tube of the hub, past the passenger entrances from the rim, the entrances to the bridge and the gymnasium-shield area, to the engineering quarters just below the other passenger entrances from the rim, and the observatory that occupied the north polar section of the hub.
The engineering quarters, like all the quarters of the hub, were thirty-two feet in diameter. Ignoring the ladder up the flat wall, Mike pushed out of the port in the central axis tunnel and dropped to the circular floor beside the power console.
Strapping himself down in the console seat, he flipped the switch that would connect him with Systems Control Officer Bessandra Khamar at the console of the ship's big computer, acronymically known as Sad Cow.
"Aiee-yiee, Bessie! It's me, Chief Blackhawk!" he said irreverently into the mike. "Ready to swing this buffalo!"
Bessie's mike gave its preliminary hum of power, and he could almost feel her seeking out the words with which to reprimand him. Then, instead, she laughed.
"Varyjat! Mike, haven't you learned yet how to talk over an intercom? Blasting a girl's eardrums at this early hour. It's no way to maintain beautiful relationships and harmony. I'm still waiting for my second cup of coffee," she added.
"Wait an hour, and this cup of coffee you shall have in a cup instead of a baby bottle," Mike told her cheerfully. "Space One's checked out ready to roll. Want to tell our preoccupied slipstick and test-tube boys in the rim before we roll her, or just wait and see what happens? They shouldn't get too badly scrambled at one-half RPM—that's about .009 gee on the rim-deck—and I sort of like surprises!"
"No, you don't" Bessie said severely. "No, you don't. They need an alert, and I need to finish the programming on Sad Cow to be sure this thing doesn't wobble enough to shake us all apart. Even at a half RPM, your seams might not hold with a real wobble, and I don't like the idea of falling into a vacuum bottle as big as the one out there without a suit."