"Keep both hands on the rail at all times," the woman explained, doing the same even. "Don't just pull yourself hard and let go, you'll end up out of control and crash once you hit gravity again. Move slowly and steadily so you can arrest your momentum before you reach the next gravity zone…"
While Jenny was getting an impromptu lesson, the other members of the survey team were making the transition with easy, graceful familiarity. Dawn didn't even move like they were in microgravity, simply rolling along a marked strip along the side of the docking tube like there was still gravity there. When it was her turn to make the traversal, Jenny went a bit slowly, then awkwardly imitated the partial backflip she'd seen everyone do that put their feet and legs forward. She inched… 'down' until she felt gravity imposing itself on her feet again, pulling them properly down onto the deck and causing her to pivot. A helpful push at her back had upper half of her body moving forward, and once it was also caught by gravity Jenny stumbled forward awkwardly before being caught by her uncle.
"Easy there, easy," he said, supporting her as the disorientation finally struck, the return of gravity confusing her inner ears and making the room spin a little. "Give it a second, don't throw up."
"'M fine," Jenny said, though the room was still slowly tilting sideways, and she had to hold her uncle to make sure she didn't follow. "Getting used to it…"
Still, there wasn't much time to linger. They had been led into the rest of the ship from the airlock, through hallways that were semi-familiar from drama vids, and had met some other spacers. After a brief word with Vocthuu, they saluted—and it was really interesting to see how a Changer did so—and began escorting the group, keeping the eleven surveyors together as they entered one of the ship's major highways, a four meter wide hallway what was full of navy personnel. Lieutenant Vocthuu led the way after consulting a map with raised lettering on the wall.
"I'll be showing you to the staterooms you've been assigned," the Pajhadin woman said as she began to lead them down the hallway. "After that, I will direct you towards the bathing facilities assigned to you, and then your assigned mess hall. Be informed that if you are found outside of those areas or the direct hallways between them without an escort you will be arrested for unauthorized access."
Everyone nodded, including Jenny. She'd made sure to properly read the paperwork they had been sent them after the change of plans had occurred, and they'd been informed that the company who had hired Dr. Gonzales had come to some sort agreement with the navy. While they could supposedly go other places while escorted, she'd been told that in practice they would be staying in their room as much as possible for the duration of the transit. Given they had data still needed to go over, that wasn't a problem.
"All right, then," Vocthuu said. "We have a walk ahead of us. Please inform me if you need to take a rest. Do you have any questions as we walk?" she began to move at an easy stroll, which with her long legs meant it was a normal walking pace for most of the rest of them. Jenny thought she felt vibration on her legs from Dawn as the Changer made some kind of inaudible vibration.
"Just how big is this ship, exactly?" Uncle Bob asked, voice full of restrained enthusiasm. "If you can tell us? This is the new model of cruiser, right?"
"It is. The Venture is a Temeraire-class cruiser. It's a kilometer long, has a width of 250 meters, and a mass of…"
Jenny tuned out the technical details that she could vaguely understand as meaning 'it's damn big', though she did pick up that the ship they were on had 45 decks. The rough math in her head told her there was maybe less than 23 square kilometers of space in play here. That was a decent sized town right there. Her great-grandparents lived in a town about that size. Probably a bit less, since if she was remembering correctly, cruisers had a gap in the middle to allow fighters to take off and land where they would be protected by the ship's bulk.
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Still, those 45 decks were more immediately on her mind, since they were heading for deck 15, and starting from deck 38. She really hoped they had elevators and not just stairs or ramps like in commercial passenger ships…
As it turned out, the navy didn't have elevators. They had 'lateral lanes', vertical hallways that were perpendicular to the gravity of the rest of the ship. It was bit disorienting to use, but Jenny could clearly see how it was much more efficient than elevators or stairs. The lateral lanes were less crowded with people and had no carts moving along them. Clearly labeled openings on either side of the lane marked what deck they were passing, and while it was still a walk, at least it wasn't stairs. Ladders? Jenny vaguely remembered stairs being called ladders in ships.
Around them, uniformed spacers walked with the quick, purposeful strides of people who know where they're going and what they're going to do when they get there—except for the Tiwada, who were at a dead run due to being at about waist height for most people. While Changers were about as tall, their amorphous amber bodies had far more mass, and despite seemingly rolling everywhere they managed to look more casual than the Tiwada. Everyone not a Changer was wearing the gray jumpsuits of the navy, although cut for their distinct anatomy: Pajhadin had sleeves on the back to let out their tentacles, the Rakido had really baggy and elastic ones to accommodate their thick limbs, and the Tiwada weren't wearing shoes, as their root-like feet—or was it the feet-like roots—needed to be bare for proper traction.
A part of Jenny couldn't help but notice there were distinctly more aliens than humans in the crowd.
Once they'd been shown to their rooms, their assigned bathing facilities, and the mess hall that they were scheduled to take meals at, the group of surveyors were basically free to do whatever they wanted as they waited for their luggage to get through security and the ship to get underway. It was the perfect time to make their beds—bunks?—and catch up on lost sleep.
So of course, Dr. Gonzales called everyone in to their stateroom for a team meeting.
"Sorry for how cramped everything is," her new boss said apologetically as eleven people tried to find comfortable places to stand, with a few sitting on the bunks. "With the change of plans that the company sprang on us, and everyone busy getting ready, we haven't had the opportunity to meet before now. So, let's keep this short. You all saw her already, but she was a bit out of it earlier, but this is Dr. Jennifer Alta, our new geochemist. This is going to be her first survey, so help her out."
Everyone did their best to look at Jenny, while she tried her best to be seen. "Uh, hi," she said. Ugh, she thought she'd left this 'first day of school' after she'd left… well, school! "Nice to meet you all. Call me Jenny. I hope we get along…?"
There was chorus on the theme of 'Hi, Jenny', and a couple of people had to move a bit so everyone was at least able to see her face. Apparently, she hadn't been the only one a bit loopy from having to wake up so early to make the transport up to the station.
"Sorry about this," Dr. Gonzales said again. "We might be able to see more of you and do a proper introduction when we're scheduled for lunch. Now, any quick questions you all want to ask before we all go off to break in our rooms with naps?"
A dark green hand rose above the crowd, big enough to wrap around her head, with blocky squared off fingers. "What kind of music did you bring?" the rakido asked.
Everyone perked up at that, some of the 'why did this have to be a meeting and not a video call' feeling disappearing as people got interested.
Put on the spot, Jenny had no time to do anything but blurt out the truth: "Classical music."
Everyone stared at her. Then everyone turned towards Uncle Bob as if seeking an explanation.
He shrugged. "Don't look at me. I'm a modern rock kind of guy, and so's her dad. That's all her mom there. Marie was a music teacher."
"Define 'classical'," Dawn asked, the Changer's voice coming from the forest of legs.
"Uh, music from the past thousand years, the most recent coming from two hundred years ago," Jenny said. "Wagner, Rimsky-Korsakov, Elfman, Williams, White-Blue, Kajiura…" she trailed off as it became obvious none these names meant anything to anyone and shrugged. "It's good. Listened to it a lot while I was studying."
Everyone looked at each other and shrugged. "Well, looking forward to hearing it later on in this voyage," the rakido said. "I'm Osso, by the way."
What followed were some more ragged introductions. She already knew Dr. Gonzales ("Call me Andy"); Romola the expedition doctor; Rose her fellow and senior geoscientist; Vakhali the sensor technician and navigator; and her Uncle Bob, the expedition's engineer. She'd already been vividly introduced to Dawn—and definitely not 'Don'—that morning when she'd accidentally kicked him because she hadn't been paying attention—the only introduction she really remembered—but he was now introduced as their cartographer and generalist. Osso was one of their security advisors and survival specialists, along with Rick and Harry, who's role was to test any local plants and animals for edibility, parasites and other unpleasant surprises and make sure there was nothing in the water that couldn't be filtered or boiled. The last member of the team was Mark, the survey team's pilot and another survival specialist.
That was the extent of the introductions before they were politely kicked out of the room, with Andy telling everyone he'd tell them know what the ship's public network password was later when Vocthuu got back to him about it.
Then it was back to their rooms, and Jenny finally got the opportunity to crash on a bunk and take a nap after a long morning. She didn't even bother putting the bedsheets on.
- Dancer: The system's star. Because who doesn't like wordplay.
- Poise: the most introverted planet in the system
- Surcease: the planet the Kaedekin live on. Slightly further away from Dancer than Earth is from the sun, making it slightly colder, not counting the chilling effect of the shroud blocking the energy in the visible light. Has two moons, which the Kaedekin predicted because the tides were kinda weird.
- Red Ace: a watery moon with several large islands. Water contains a lot of dissolved sulfur, so life is based on chemosynthesis
- Black Queen: a highly metallic moon, with 0.25 G. No atmosphere. Very bright, if the Kaedekin could actually see it at night
- Nightmare: just inside the system's habitable zone, with a temperate equator, very cold higher latitudes, and snows at the equator in winter. Lower metal content.
- Corona: gas giant full of storms full of powerful electrical discharges that can be seen from space. The Kaedekin don't mess with it. Has lots of moons.
- Bloody Mary: gas giant, very red in color. Contains massive floating island chains at the calm upper reaches of the atmosphere, many of which are stable enough to colonize. Has 8 moons. Contains no life.
- Hatarine: A very dense moon
- Theas: Most definitely a moon and not a dragon. To insist on the latter would be wrong. And very silly
- ゲラートッド: the Third Moon
- Elton: The Fourth Moon
- Margaret: A green colored moon
- Heath: a very rocky moon
- Carri: Very pretty to look at
- Yuriel: Moon that orbits closest to the planet
- Mortal: ice giant with at least 40 moons. Not naming them all.
- Xynodob: ice giant. No moons, but has rings. Gets almost no dancerlight, and almost always in the dark.