I tested my CCP on the way to main engineering and it was now able to connect to the ship’s computer network. Only some basic information such as telemetry data and status reports were available to me. Attempting to access anything else resulted in a denial because I was on duty. It reminded me of the way access was turned off during university exams.

  The hatch to main engineering, which was on deck five, underneath the control tower opened and inside I saw Pippin and a woman I had not yet met.

  “If it isn’t Greenie? Welcome to engineering!” Pippin said.

  “I see what you mean,” said the new woman.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Meet Sicily Simmons. If it weren’t for her expertise as interceptor engineer, your friend Koko and the rest of us never would have made it to Bedford.”

  “Wait, the dead head?”

  Simmons looked confused and Pippin cracked up laughing.

  “I forgot. We told her only your frozen brain survived the destruction of the ship and that the procedure to transfer your brain into a robot failed.”

  “That was quite the ordeal.”

  “So, it was successful then? I’m glad for you. They did a very natural looking job on the robot body.”

  Simmons smirked and Pippin, through barely restrained laughter, said, “They made you as ugly as ever. Why didn’t you ask for some upgrades?”

  “It’s hard to get your preferences across when you’re a frozen brain.” I thought Simmons was quite attractive. She looked to be in her fifties and was letting herself go gray unless that was just part of the robot design.

  “Good point.” Pippin turned his attention to me. “When Simmons was bringing our old interceptor to Shallow Water after the repairs were completed, she noticed the ship was buzzing with electromagnetic radiation. Your first job will be to degauss the hull.”

  “Umm. Okay.”

  “Do you know what that means?”

  “I guess it gets rid of the radiation?”

  “She’s smart,” Simmons said.

  “Do you know how to do it?”

  I shrugged and turned my palms upwards. “Sorry, no idea.”

  “Take this.” Pippin handed me a Y-shaped implement. “Go outside and walk around the ring of the ship, swinging this degausser back and forth over the surface. Report back here when you’re done.”

  “Um.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Isn’t that the kind of thing a drone could do?”

  “Then why are you here? We have you and we have spacesuits. The drones have other things to do. I checked your public employment profile for skills, and you list that you’ve had spacesuit training. Was that a lie?”

  “No. In high school they took us on several field trips to the surface of Bedford to look at craters and quarries and stuff.”

  “So, you’ll be fine. Go up to 01-25-1-A and find a spacesuit the fits you. Don’t worry, these are normal suits that will tell you if they’re not on correctly. They’re equipped with a rebreather good for twenty-four hours of air. Find the nearest airlock, go outside, and start walking.”

  “You should probably hit the head, first,” Simmons added.

  “Whose head?”

  “Pee first. The suit can deal with fluids and even solids, but only as a last resort.”

  “Oh.” I still was frozen to my spot. They both turned away from me as if expecting me to leave. “How do I keep from drifting into space? Bedford is one point one standard gravity. Does the artificial gravity extend to the hull?”

  “The hull’s coated in a gadolinium alloy and the suit has magnetic boots. Don’t lift both feet at the same time. If you do, use thrusters to get back.”

  “Thrusters, right.”

  Pippin made a shooing motion and said, “Go on, get on with it. You should finish before we leave orbit.” I backed up hesitantly.

  “All suits have transponders. If you really can’t get back to the ship, stay calm and someone will get you or we’ll send a drone,” Simmons said, which was somewhat comforting.

  “Now go, before I report you for insubordination and dereliction of duty.”

  “This is a very important job,” Simmons added.

  “What happens if I miss a spot?”

  “When we go into Broglie drive… .” Pippin held both hands in fists, then quickly opened them, saying “Boom!”

  I turned around and left the compartment. The hatch closed behind me, and I stood in the passageway with my eyes closed taking large breaths. What had I gotten myself into?

  Since I didn’t know how to find a bathroom—head—I went back to my quarters before going to the issue room to get a spacesuit. I found my size and examined the suit. It seemed brand new and was much nicer than what I had used as a student. Those suits had probably been used for decades before ending up at a Bedford high school. While the Bedford suits were bright orange, this one was covered in a highly reflective material. It was very intuitive to put on and my CCP could connect to the suit’s computer. Full schematics and training materials were available. I could also access suit status information, thruster controls, and positioning.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  When I tried to walk out of the issue room, I realized immediately that I should have brought the suit closer to the airlock or into it before dressing. The magnetic boots held strongly to the deck and I was still in a gravity environment. I took a few difficult stomping steps before I consulted the suit computer and discovered a control to turn down the magnetism. The heads-up display in the helmet also showed a map that included airlocks, so I was soon cycling out the air and opening the outer hatch to the vastness of space.

  Although there are observatories on Bedford where people can come to the surface and look out into open space, I never had any inclination to do so. I rarely left my room as small as it was. Now I was standing on the main deck airlock of a dragoning ship. Before me were stars pinpricking the blackness of space over the ring of the ship that disappeared ahead of me in a short horizon.

  “Greenie!” came Pippin’s voice over my suit communicator. “Quit lollygagging. The hull won’t degauss itself.”

  “Okay. I’m starting on it now.” I stepped out of the airlock and looked down skeptically at the degausser. “How do you turn this thing on?”

  There were a few moments of silence, then, “It’s already on. Less gabbing and more degaussing.” There was laughter in his voice.

  I looked down at the tool even more skeptically. I was ninety percent sure they were having me on, but what good would come from calling them on it? They’d just give me something else that might be worse. It probably wouldn’t make any difference if I just sat here and took a nap except that they could see that from my transponder that I was not moving.

  I took another step and another away from the tower. This wasn’t that bad I thought and picked up my pace until I felt the momentum from one step peel my other boot from the ship and I started drifting. Panic was immediate. I thrashed about trying to grab something, but there was nothing to grab. Ahead was a dragon oil tank. I turned up the magnetism of my boots and reached my foot out as I got close. The boot clamped down on the tank, as did the other boot shortly thereafter. I stood there on the side of the tank, body parallel to the ring, breathing heavily until my heart rate returned to normal.

  The suit computer recommended I engage walking mode, which would alternate the strength of the magnetism in each foot, so it was stronger in the planted foot and weaker in the lifted foot until it made contact with the hull again. I engaged it, and things went much more smoothly.

  It wasn’t clear if I was supposed to degauss the tanks too or just the main body of the ship. Should I stay to one side of the tanks or weave from side to side? Maybe I should go around twice? Then again, it didn’t really matter, because they were just pranking me. I had heard about hazing, but I never expected to be the target of it. I decided to just walk around the ring on one side and report back. If they wanted me to do the other side of the tanks or the sides of the ring or the inside or the tower, they could always send me back out. Probably they would just laugh at me. It was fine. I really had nothing better to do. At least I was leaving Bedford.

  After what seemed like an eternity, my suit said I had only transversed a single kilometer. My legs were leaden and achy. I’m really in bad shape, I thought. I don’t think I ever walked nine kilometers in my life. At the next tank, I found a handhold, lowered the magnetism of my boots to near zero, and pushed myself gently from the hull. I then engaged the thrusters with a minimal puff and they pushed me away from the tank, although I still held on. There was no way I was going to be able to walk the rest of the way around without lots of breaks. I let go of the handhold.

  The suit computer was able to angle the thrusters in exactly the direction I wanted, so I directed it via my CCP to keep my feet within half a meter of the hull and I proceeded flying above the ship at about five kilometers an hour.

  I soon came to a point where the planet below rose over the ship’s horizon. Bedford wasn’t much to look at from up here or down there really. Just a dark disc with a few isolated spots of light from observation ports or surface work sites. Mostly the colony was a small black smudge on the dark red, crater pocked surface. I stopped paying it any attention.

  About an hour and a half and nearly nine kilometers later, I was coming back to the tower. I set the suit back down on the hull and activated the magnetic books. As I was walking the rest of the way along the exterior of the ship, I noticed something strange passing in front of the stars. My eyes were well adjusted to the dim red light. I instructed the suit to gamma correct and illuminate the scene. Even so, the dark ship approaching the Shallow Water was barely visible by the red light. I watched it get closer and closer, moving in the direction of the tower. Finally, it docked near the top, just below primary flight control.

  I returned to my degaussing and soon made it back to the opposite side of the tower. My legs were rubbery again from less than a half klick walk. I skirted around the superstructure and back to the other side where I entered the ship again through the same air lock I had exited. I returned to the issue room and removed the space suit.

  “Come back to engineering, Greenie,” I heard via my CCP.

  I went down to engineering and when I opened the door. Dawningsun and Lunkfleece had joined Pippin and Simmons.

  “Hi,” I said as I entered.

  “Finished degaussing the hull?” Pippin asked.

  “Yes.”

  “You did the sides and inside of the ring too?”

  “And the tower?” added Simmons.

  “That device seemed to work really well, and by the time I made a complete circuit, I couldn’t see any more radiation.”

  “You saw the electromagnetic radiation?” Simmons asked

  “As well as you did, I would say.” I lifted the supposed degaussing tool and passed it over Simmons. “You have to watch out with that robot body of yours.”

  Simmons turned to address the others. “She is smart.”

  Pippin stepped towards me. “Are you sure you did the job? Would you stake your life on it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe you ought to take another pass.”

  “You and Simmons can come out on the hull and inspect my work if you’d like to confirm how thorough I was.”

  Pippin paled and said, “That won’t be necessary.”

  Lunkfleece suppressed a deep guttural orc laugh, but when I looked in his direction he said, “Pippin scared space.”

  Dawningsun added, “He’s terrified of open space ever since his first mission when a micrometeorite obliterated his instructor during a hull maintenance course at school.”

  “They made me gather up the parts. I’ll stay right here in engineering if you don’t mind.”

  We all heard via our CCPs that the ship was ready for departure. “It’s about time,” Dawningsun said. “What have they been waiting for?”

  “I saw a weird ship dock. Maybe they were waiting for that,” I said.

  “Weird ship? No ships have docked here since the gig,” Simmons said.

  “I didn’t hear it announced, but I saw it. It was not like a normal ship like I’ve always seen in videos. It was like a long black oval squished on both skinnier sides to a point.”

  “Sounds like Galagot,” Lunkfleece said. “Ever met one?”

  “I had a course on alien species, but I can’t remember much about them. I never saw any aliens on Bedford.”

  “Primitive bastards,” Pippin said.

  “The Galagots were using space dragon oil for their starships hundreds, maybe thousands of years before humans,” Dawningsun said.

  “I was talking about the Bedfordians.”

  “Agreed. That’s not a good planet,” she agreed.

  “And we already have more colonies than the Galagots do. Maybe they were ahead, but they can’t keep up.” Pippin turned away and started examining some screen readouts. “Alright, Effingee, go get some grub.” He turned back from the screen looking very annoyed to find me standing there looking at him smiling.

  “He means you, Greenie,” Simmons said.

  “Oh, okay. I guess I’ll see everyone later.”

  Everyone but Pippin, who had turned back to his screen, gave a friendly nod. He only called out, “Report back here tomorrow for second shift.”

  I turned around and exited the compartment.