Most of the hanger’s aft end was a broad aperture that now irised open to reveal a spacious deck, brightly illuminated, like a magic doorway hanging in the sky. In front of her she could see the lights of other vehicles sidling into the queue ahead of her.
The hanger’s bright orifice grew huge, like a chilly sun falling out of the sky. One by one the vehicles slipped into its lee and bounced and skidded to a stop on its deck. From a distance this appeared level. In fact it was angled slightly upward, so that the aircraft climbed a gentle ramp as they rolled into it. This helped them kill their excess velocity. Her glider bounced twice before the ramp took its weight. Then gravity—real and simulated—came down like a fat hand on her back, and she felt a rush of blood to the head as the glider slowed sharply.
Visually, she was at rest now. In truth, she was contained in a revolving object: one extremity of a bolo four thousand kilometers long. Even though its revolution, seen from a distance, had looked ponderous, the bolo as a whole was wheeling fast enough to produce two gees of simulated gravity. That plus the one gee of real gravity she was feeling from New Earth added up to a massive amount of down force pressing her into the water-filled ballast sacs that made up the glider’s belly.
A human-sized grabb, untroubled by the weight, dragged her glider off to the side, making way for other aircraft coming in for a landing behind. All told, the hanger collected eight aircraft during this pass. Besides Kath Two’s, two others were piloted by humans. Each was of a different design; both were powered. The other five were robot gliders, looking similar to Kath Two’s, but solid rather than inflatable. As soon as the last of these was stowed, the hanger’s tailgate constricted and closed behind them. Its stride complete, the hanger was already swinging back, gaining altitude “heel” first, rising back up toward space.
It was much too large a volume to be pressurized. What little air it had scooped up during its dip into the atmosphere rapidly leaked out. So Kath Two was effectively in outer space now. Knowing this, the fabric of the suit had contracted against her skin to supply the back pressure that was no longer provided by the atmosphere. It was porous, and so the only thing really between her skin and the void was Space Grease. The combined effects of that and the nat mesh fooled her skin and muscles into believing that they were under a nice thick blanket of air—the way humans were meant to live. The only part of the outfit that was pressurized like an old-fashioned space suit was the helmet.
Dangling above the middle of the hanger’s landing deck were four flivvers of various sizes and designs—the latest iterations of a vehicle type that had been in existence since before the onset of the Hard Rain. During the series of landings just completed, these had been kept up and out of the way. As soon as the door of the hanger closed, one of them—a medium-sized, four-passenger model—was lowered to the ramp by winches. It came to rest about ten meters away. Incongruously for a space vehicle, it seemed to have wheels. It was, in fact, resting on a low, wheeled sled that was designed to roll up and down the ramp.
Green lights beside the flivver’s airlock door told her that all was well on the other side. Kath Two had about ten minutes to reach it. That would be plenty of time if she didn’t pass out. She issued a command that allowed the glider’s body to deflate. She felt rather than heard the air escaping and the water draining. The soft top of the fuselage parted over her shoulders, back, butt, and thighs. Meanwhile she was wriggling her arms in from the insulated sleeves where they had been spread like a pair of wings. This was good exercise, given that they weighed three times as much as normal.
By the time that was all done, the glider was just a wrinkled cross of fabric, flat on the deck. Kath Two disconnected herself from its air scrubber and its urine collection system, then unplugged the power and data from her collar. She gathered her arms under her and began to belly-crawl toward the flivver, sliding one knee, then the other forward along the deck plates, like a lizard. A big siwi corkscrewed out and kept pace with her, tracking her vital signs, ready to supply extra air or other forms of assistance if needed. But Kath Two made adequate progress. She probably could have crawled on hands and knees, as one of the other human pilots was doing, but she saw no need.