It wasn't until he wheeled the chair out of the elevator and saw the vehicle waiting that he had his first moment of uncertainty. Zero g was going to be all very well, but how the heck was he going to get there? He couldn't even get into the car, not without help. If only this had come a couple of weeks later. Five days wasn't close to enough time for him to have rebuilt significant muscle mass, regardless of how hard he'd pushed himself. He could stand up with a handhold, had managed to stay standing for short periods, but that was about it.
Not to mention that the driver was making muttered comments to the effect that he should have been informed about having a crippled passenger, they had special vehicles for that, and appropriately trained drivers, whatever that meant. All should have been beyond his hearing, but implant enhancements didn't always tell you things you wanted to know. And the enhancements he still had were, pretty much without exception, the less useful ones.
"I'm not allowed to -" the man started up as Mark approached the passenger side door.
"You don't have to." The car door was open. Please, let this work. One step, and he could pull himself up into the seat. Just stand up straight for one step.
Mark took a deep breath, pushed himself to vertical, and put everything he had into locking his legs straight while he reached for the interior door handle with his right hand and the top of the seat back with his left. From there it was easy. All upper body work, and he'd done one hell of a lot of that over the past few months. Five seconds had him in the passenger seat, utterly determined not to gasp for breath.
"I don't think the chair will fit in the trunk," the driver said, not even to him, but to the team in the back.
"We won't need it," Paula responded. "There will be a chair for Commander Jarrald at the launch site." Her fingers flashed, aimed at Mark. Sorry, sir. I'll see to it.
Mark considered blowing up. Considered it very, very hard - and only didn't because of the sheer horror on the man's face when his rank was mentioned. Thank goodness it was only an hour's ride out to the launch site. He could stay silent for that long. Let the man sweat. Maybe next time he'd be a little less dismissive of someone in a chair.
He spent the next hour admiring the scenery and concocting, then rejecting, devastating throwaway lines to aim at drivers with no manners. The kids in the back were quiet, probably conversing in sign, though Mark didn't turn round to see. They were about to spend a week in a goldfish bowl. He'd let them have this last hour without being watched. And the coastal road was highly scenic - marshy, very sparsely inhabited. The site they were heading for was used for most of ISO's supply runs, all the conventional rocket launches. Of the space-capable vehicles, only the Phoenix got to use the airfield at the main base, with its standard aircraft-like capabilities. Maybe one day everything would, but for now the fuel costs were prohibitive. He'd been told once how much it cost to run the Phoenix's engines for one minute, and promptly wiped it from his mind. There had been a frightening number of digits involved, but he'd decided that money could not impact on tactical decisions. He had stopped complaining about the proportion of simulations to real test flights, though.
The rocket was visible long before anything else, the traditional shape with nose pointed to the sky. He pointed it out to the others, and then smiled to himself as four birdstyled operatives jostled for a good view between the seats in front of them. They really were still kids.
Ten more minutes brought them to the buildings associated with the launch pad, and the driver pulled up with a barely audible sigh of relief in front of the double doors. A young woman stood there with a wheelchair, a standard hospital issue one which he knew from experience would be heavy, uncomfortable, and horrible to manoeuvre, and she pushed it next to his door as the vehicle stopped.
It wasn't going to help just yet, though. Mark opened the door and considered the drop to the ground. Pulling himself up was one thing. He was quite sure he couldn't lower himself to his feet, stand, and then get into the chair. At least not without the help of Dimitri, who positioned himself next to the door pillar and put up a hand to him.
"Commander?"
"Thank you, Osprey." Mark swung himself round, put one hand on the door handle, the other on Dimitri's shoulder, and lowered himself cautiously to the ground, legs trembling as he asked them to take weight which he really didn't have the muscle to handle, not yet.
Dimitri caught him under the elbow, took the weight, and helped him to sit down, before waving off the driver. "I am sorry about that, Commander. We should have thought and made sure the transportation was more appropriate."
"I had ninety minutes notice that I was coming. You must have had less than that. It's not your fault the man was...awkward." He'd have used stronger language, but the rest of the team were only a couple of yards away, picking up their bags, and he was only too aware just how young Jenny was. "Is my kit in that pile?"
"I have it," Dylan confirmed, swinging a rucksack over each shoulder.
The young woman cleared her throat for attention. "If you have everything, sirs, would you follow me, please?"
"You are all medically cleared for launch," the base commander told Mark. "Your belongings have been checked and loaded. I regret to say that while there is an elevator up the gantry, the chair will not fit through the hatch. Will you require assistance?"
"Only from us," Dylan put in, and Mark raised an eyebrow at him, suppressing a grin.
"As the Raven says, Colonel. We're good to go. The sooner the better."
Once up at the top of the elevator, it was obvious that there was indeed no way the chair was going through the hatch, which was narrow and six inches above the level of both the gantry and the floor inside the rocket. Mark contemplated the step over the sill, then the six feet to the nearest launch seat with support available only on one side, and grimaced. He hated being like this. He was so looking forward to a week in freefall.
"Can I help?" Dimitri asked, somewhat uncertainly, and Mark nodded reluctantly.
"I need a shoulder. Or two."
Dylan edged past him through the hatch, and reached back through. "Not the easiest. 'Mitri, can you help him up?"
"Don't you start talking like I'm not here!" Mark snapped.
"Sorry, Commander, I didn't mean...can you stand up?"
"Give me your hand." Mark reached out left-handed, pushed himself up from the chair with the right, and grabbed for support. He might have made it, had it been the first time today he'd asked himself to do the impossible. It was the third, and the spring had gone. Dimitri saved his blushes, hauling him to vertical, but he was done and they had to know it. It was with deep embarrassment that he reached through the hatch and dropped his arm round Dylan's shoulders, letting the two of them half drag, half lift him over the sill and to the nearest launch seat. He busied himself with the restraining straps, not looking up, until he felt a helmet put into his hands.
"They want you to wear this. Sorry, Commander." Paula sounded stricken, and he considered the item in some confusion. It was only a helmet, after all. What, she thought he'd freak at the thought of wearing something without a raptor visor? Almost a year of no longer being who he had been, and it wasn't an issue.
"I'll live. Everyone done this before?"
It was a courtesy question, of course. He knew full well that three of them had, and was equally sure that young Linton hadn't. The nervous edge in her 'no' only confirmed it.
"Don't worry. It's just like the centrifuge."
"You'll be fine," Paula added reassuringly. It had to be more than strange for her, presented with a team-mate who was what, seven years younger than her? Eight? Mark couldn't remember exactly how old Paula was, but he knew she was a similar age to him. This team was a terrible hotch-potch of different ages and experiences, and getting them to pull together would be a feat in itself. He was already seeing a split right down the middle between the sexes. Four was not a good number. This team badly needed a fifth member, a good, all-round generalist. Preferably a leader, certainly a serious fighter. Quite where they'd find one, he didn't know - but it couldn't be that hard. They had the three really rare requirements now. If only they'd had four combat monsters, and been in need of a jump-pilot who could mind the ship.
His attention was caught by the screen lighting up, and the intercom crackling. "This is your pilot speaking. The weather on Comsat Three is clear and cold, and the time there is fourteen fifty-five. Just like it is here. We launch in five minutes and our estimated flight time is three hours. If you have any questions, ask now, using the button on the arm of your seat."
"Weather?" whispered Jenny.
"He's joking."
"I knew that." Her voice shook, and Paula reached out and squeezed her gloved hand. "You okay?"
"I'd better be, hadn't I? Routine rocket launch to a satellite?"
"Routine's always worse," he told her. "Were you nervous first time, Crane?"
Paula grinned. "My first launch? I'd never even ridden a centrifuge and I got drafted onto an emergency rescue flight - they needed a jump-communicator. I had no idea what was going on, and the Condor had us doing pre-flight checks at breakneck speed. I didn't have time to get nervous."
"That was my first full launch too," Dimitri said. "They did not have training facilities on the satellites then. Although I have been to ComSat Three since."
"Mine was going to the Rigan Space Academy," Dylan said.
"Mine too." Mark smiled, remembering. Man, that had been a long time ago. And he'd been way too arrogant to be nervous.
The cabin vibrated around them, and there was the deep rumble of engine noise. Mark shifted in his seat - one thing he did remember from that first launch was sitting on a wrinkle of cloth, and being deeply uncomfortable all the way up. He'd had a most interesting shaped bruise there afterwards, too. He wanted to make quite sure he didn't do that again. The others wouldn't have that problem, of course - birdstyle fit much better than real clothes ever could.
The noise built to a shattering roar, and then there was slow movement upwards, acceleration building inexorably to the point of discomfort. Or what would have been discomfort if it hadn't been pure, simple heaven. Flight, again. And nothing else mattered.
"You may now unfasten your seatbelts," the pilot's voice said over the intercom, as the acceleration died away to near nothing. "Gravity is low, but non-zero. If you do not have zero g experience, we recommend you stay in your seats. There are bags under the chair. Please use them, if you need to."
"What...?" whispered Jenny.
"If you think you're going to get sick," Paula told her. "Most people do, first time. How are you feeling?"
She flushed, visible even under the helmet. "Awful."
Mark reached under his seat and gave her the bag. "Don't worry about it. It's normal." He undid his seatbelt and shifted experimentally. Micro-gravity, just enough not to get stuck floating in the centre of the cabin. Dylan and Dimitri were already up at what was in gravity the top of one wall, peering through the only window in here. Mark pushed himself towards them, stopping himself with one hand on the ceiling.
"Is she okay?" Dylan asked, almost silently.
He shook his head, as unmistakeable sounds filled the air of the cabin, followed by Paula comforting her team-mate. "She will be. You never got sick?"
Dylan grinned cheerfully back at him.
"Spot the pilot." It had been true for him, too, and still was. He felt better already. Just being able to move freely around the cabin was wonderful - there was some gravity, but sufficiently little that he could hold himself effortlessly against the ceiling with one hand on one of the many handles.
"Is that it?" Dylan asked, and he squinted through the porthole at the curve of the earth below them, and above it, in the blackness of space, at least three points of light he could identify as artificial.
"Is what what?"
"ComSat Three. Up at eleven o'clock."
"I doubt it. Should be directly ahead of us, unless they're planning one hell of a deceleration burn. This is a supply shuttle, not a warship."
"More's the pity."
"Patience, Raven."
Dylan sighed. "I know, I know. But ... it's frustrating. Sorry, Commander."
Mark knew he was thinking of the red and silver ship, still nameless, sitting deep in the hangars beneath ISO. He also agreed with whoever had made the decision that bringing it up to spend a week parked very visibly outside ComSat Three would have been a particularly stupid idea. And G-Force had better things to do than play taxi with the Phoenix, had they even been available. Much more sensible to catch a lift on the regular supply run and crew change, even if it was boring and prosaic compared with what Force Two hoped they would be used to one day soon.
"Firing engines in two minutes," came over the speaker. "Please return to your seats and strap in."
Mark glanced down, spotted his line back to his seat, and pushed easily away from the ceiling, building a slight twist into his movement. Everything was going to be hands-first for him, at least until he'd done some practising in private and figured out just how much pushing off and catching himself his legs could manage right now. He drifted gently down towards the chair, caught the handle on the top of it with both hands, and pulled himself back into the seat.
"How are you feeling now?" he asked the girl alongside him, tense against the straps and an unfortunate shade of pale green.
"A bit better," she managed, her eyes still shut.
"Really?"
She forced the shadow of a grin. "Yes, Commander."
"If it's no better by the time they've unloaded and are ready for the return, you're going back down with them. I won't ask anyone to go through a week of spacesickness."
The eyes opened in raw horror. "No! I can do it."
"It's not the end of the world if you can't."
"The end of Force Two for me, though. I'm not giving up on it that easy."
Actually, no, Mark thought, but left it. There'd be a medic on the station to make the decision. And in two hours, young Jenny would either be coping or she wouldn't.
He'd not realised the medic would be someone he'd recognise. The man had been one of Chris Johnson's assistants in black section a couple of years back, at a time when Mark had thought of doctors as something other people needed. He'd certainly never spoken to him, and had no idea what the initial in the 'T. Adamson' on his nametag stood for. But still, he was quite sure that the other knew just who he was. Which was a good thing, and also accounted for the fact that the man looked at him as if he'd seen a ghost.
"Commander," the doctor said carefully as Mark replaced Dylan in his tiny office. "I was...surprised...to see you here."
Even more surprised to read my medical records, I'll bet. Mark simply caught hold of one of the handles, holding himself casually against the wall. "Major Grant was taken ill at the last moment."
"So I understand." The corner of his mouth twitched - this man was not comfortable with the situation. "Commander -"
"Call me Mark."
"And I'm Tim." He didn't noticeably relax. "Mark, by rights I should give you this." He held up a Velcro-backed badge, the sort that everyone wore on a freefall station. The poster on the wall explained the colours, but Mark knew them by heart anyway. They were universal across the entire Federation of Peaceful Planets. Red for newbies. Blue for competent, but not expert. Green for someone who knew exactly what they were doing, who could safely be left to get themself to safety even in an emergency. Gold for the experts, those expected to help others. The badge the doctor was holding was black. Medically incapable, needs help at all times.
After a day on a Rigan station, he'd been assigned green. Two days after that, gold. Hell, even Jason wore green, and could have worn gold if he'd been prepared to stay in freefall long enough to take the extra training.
"I don't want to. But -"
"You have to follow regulations," Mark said wearily. "You and everyone else." So I get treated as an idiot. Again.
The doctor held his hand up. "Eagle. Are you still competent in zero g?"
"Yes." And that is all you're getting. Don't even think of trying to get me to beg, because I still have some pride left.
The doctor simply nodded, his face clearing, and he reached into a green bag Velcroed to the wall behind him and pulled out a second badge. And handed Mark both of them.
"I can't give you gold - based on your medical record, you're not up to helping in an emergency. If you had to hold onto someone, you're out of useful limbs."
Mark nodded slowly.
"But you deserve better than being treated as helpless. If you find you need help, you've got the black badge there. I don't think you will. You've got coordination to spare, even if your legs don't work quite how you'd like."
Mark pocketed the black badge and attached the other to the appropriate slot on his jumpsuit, his eyes never leaving the other. "Thank you."
"And then there's young Jennifer."
Mark grimaced. "How's she doing?"
"Not well. I'll be honest, Commander. I think she's going to be one of those who can't adjust to freefall. But she's damned determined. She wants to stay. I know the limitations you folks have on drugs - but is it going to matter, right now? Because I can give her something to keep her from throwing up - and my personal advice would be that she stays and gets used to handling herself in zero g."
"You can make her feel fine?"
"No. Just keep things from getting messy."
Lovely image. Mark considered, then nodded and raised his bracelet to his mouth. "Uh - Crane, can you bring your colleague back to the medical office?" The kid needed a callsign of some sort, right now, even if it was the Ostrich. This was impractical - and regardless of how secure the station was, he was not getting them into the habit of using real names over comm channels.
"On our way," Paula's voice responded, and he lowered his arm, realising belatedly that he'd just used the bracelet for the first time since he'd quit. Well, at least the radio still worked. It wasn't like any of the other functionality was going to matter.
Two minutes later and there was a tap at the door, followed by Paula entering, towing a shaky, green-faced Jenny. Mark had to admit, the doctor had a point. She really did not look good. This was obviously something more than the standard throwing-up almost everyone did first time in freefall.
"Shall I...?" Paula queried.
"You can go back. Thank you." Mark took over her grip on Jenny's arm and steered the girl fully into the tiny room, to face the doctor. He didn't leave, though. He wanted it clear that this was not optional.
"I've recommended that I give you something to help," Adamson said bluntly. "It won't make you feel a whole lot better. It will keep you from throwing up."
Jenny swallowed desperately. "I can't take drugs."
"Yes, you can." Mark resisted the urge to either sympathise or tell her to get on with it already, and stayed detached. "Right now, and until you're active, it makes no difference. You're hardly going to have to go through jump."
"They'll ditch me if I can't function in freefall without drugs."
"Which is why you're going to take them now." Mark gestured to the doctor, who made a show of crossing to the drugs cabinet on what he was currently thinking of as the ceiling. "If you can learn the moves while feeling rough, that's good enough. In a fight, if you throw up, it happens. But we're not spending a week training in vomit. You take the drugs or you go home."
Jenny swallowed desperately, met his eyes, and whispered, "Yes," pulling off her right glove, and Mark pushed away to give her some space.
"You'll need me to repeat this every day," the doctor told her as he finished giving the injection. "I want you here at seventeen hundred hours. Any side-effects, or if the nausea gets worse, you come see me right away. Commander, I trust you'll keep an eye on her."
"Absolutely." Mark decided not to ask what else the man thought he was here for. As a sop to his ego, probably. "Come on, kid. You have ten minutes to come up with a codename, or it's 'Ostrich' for the rest of the week."
Jenny didn't answer, still pale and miserable, but she did follow, pushing blindly for the door. She hit it, not as hard as she would have done if Mark hadn't caught her and swung much of her momentum towards himself.
"Steady there, kid."
"Don't call me that!" It was obviously reflex, and she followed it with a gasp. "Commander...I didn't mean..."
"No offence taken. You need to take it easy until the drugs work." Mark held up a hand, forestalling any protest. "Now, like the doc just pointed out to me, I don't have any limbs to spare for towing. You're going to have to follow."
He proceeded at a slow hand-over-hand pace down the side rail of the corridor to the quarters they'd been assigned. Second level, inner ring, spoke five. They approached it going outwards from the centre of the station along one of the spokes - like other essential systems, the medical section was located close to the hub. Their quarters were directly opposite the end of the corridor, at a point where the spoke terminated and four other corridors split off from it. Two going round the inner hub, one up to the first level and one down to the third. The hatch was shut, as was required practice on a space station. Should anything happen to the integrity of the corridors, each accommodation unit was self-contained, with its own airlock and emergency air system. You'd not survive long in there, but long enough for rescue to arrive from Earth.
The lieutenant who'd shown them here had been very clear on the rules - and on how strictly they were enforced. Doors were not to be left open, and if they were, alarms would go off in central control. In fact, every open door showed up as a red light on a permanently manned console. And monitoring that must be one dull job, Mark had thought and not said. A job for which a crippled, totally reliable, ex-security agent could well be considered ideal, with zero g as a sweetener. No thanks.
He reached the junction and pushed across the gap to the hatch, punching in their access code and then bracing himself with one arm as best he could to lever the circular hatch open with the other. It was obviously intended that you'd use both hands and push with your legs. Maybe by the end of the week he'd be able to manage it.
He finally got the door mostly open and floated inside, catching one of the bars which criss-crossed the central open space. It wasn't large, though in zero g considerations were different, with volume suddenly mattering much more than floor area. There was a circular window in the centre of the wall opposite the hatch with a view mostly taken up by the blank wall of another part of the station twenty feet away, and stars visible beyond it. Around that, oriented as though the hatch were in the floor and the window the ceiling, were eight doors, six sleeping cubicles and two bathrooms. The lieutenant had commented on that, too, with one eye on Jenny. Real zero g personnel didn't need so many bathrooms. And the whole team had stiffened.
Three heads appeared as he came in, from separate doors.
"You assigned sleeping quarters?"
"Senior officer's quarters is that one," Dimitri pointed to the door next to his own. "It is larger, and contains the emergency equipment. We thought Jenny should go over here."
The second door he indicated was adjacent to one of the bathrooms, and Mark nodded. "That'll do fine." He turned back to the entrance to see Jenny hesitating at the end of the rail, eyeing the seven foot gap in front of her with a distinct lack of enthusiasm.
"Come on, Jen," Paula encouraged from behind him. "You can do it."
She flushed, a bizarre shade against her green pallor. "I'm going to throw up if I let go."
"With that drug in you? Not a chance." Mark hardened his tone. "You've got twenty seconds until the door alarm goes off. If that happens, you're going back down."
Her eyes narrowed in determination, she gathered her legs under her, and Mark decided that at this point letting her make her own mistakes would be downright cruel.
"Hold it - you don't need a lot of momentum. Gentle and smooth. No force."
She half nodded, fixed her eyes on him, and pushed off. Not quite straight, but close enough. Mark caught her easily one-handed, with his other arm hooked round the pole, and slowed her until she could catch onto it alongside him.
"Not bad. Paula, would you get the hatch?" As the door swung shut with a solid thump, he pointed to the interior door which Dimitri had indicated. "That's your cubicle. Best thing for you right now is rest. Do you think you can cope alone?"
"Yes." There was raw determination in the tone, and she reached out for the doorhandle, pushing off awkwardly and clearly forgetting the 'no force' advice. She hit the door with an audible crunch, and just hung there, clinging to the handle and breathing raggedly. Mark knew the sound of someone close to the end of their tether. He also considered it not his job to comfort her, and was glad to see that her team-mates felt the same way. Not his job. Theirs.
Dylan caught her from one side, Dimitri from the other, Paula opened the door wide, and as they guided her into the limited privacy of her own cubicle Mark retreated into his own. He could still hear every word, of course.
"You don't have to do this, Jen." That was Paula. "Believe me, space-sickness won't rule you out."
"I don't need any more negatives next to my name." It was close to a sob.
"You've got a positive nobody else has." Dylan, this time. "They need you, kid. Plus, gravity generators on our combat craft? This isn't something you'll have to face often. Hell, if you're the one minding the ship, it isn't something you'll have to face at all. Say the word. Commander Jarrald will have you on that shuttle inside five minutes."
"I know he will! I want to prove I can do this! That I'm not just here because of the maths. I don't want to be a liability."
"You're not," Dimitri told her, but it lacked conviction. Dimitri had seen G-Force in action. He had to know just how good they were. Just how far all the trainees had to go.
"I don't even have a callsign -"
"Kestrel," Dylan told her. "Now quit with the self-pity. Are you staying or going? We'll back you up either way, but I for one am not going to listen to you whining all week."
Mark smiled ruefully. Young, confident, arguing, pulling one another up...he remembered G-Force being like that. Back before the first mission he'd commanded, back when there wasn't an attack a week. When it had all been new and bright, and he'd had the world at his feet and his team around him ready to back him to the hilt. He missed it dreadfully.
"Dylan's right," Paula was saying. "Now, get some rest and wait for the drugs to kick in properly. You've got your bracelet if you need us."
He guessed she had nodded, because there were sounds of the other three backing out of the cubicle, and then the door closing softly. Belatedly, he paid attention to the tiny cubicle which was his for the next week - larger than the others, Dimitri had said. His wardrobe back at ISO was bigger than this. It seemed strange to economise on space like this in the quarters given the vast lengths of corridors, but he guessed it was deliberate. Most people training here were doing so in preparation for working on much smaller stations, so it only made sense to see how they reacted to living with their future colleagues in close quarters. It wasn't for him, though. A sleeping bag complete with elastic straps to give some vague illusion of gravity on the wall opposite the door, and apart from that, a locker for the emergency equipment which Dimitri had mentioned, and a whole lot of nets, straps and pockets to secure his belongings. Someone had hooked his rucksack onto one of the straps, and he saw no need to unpack it right now. No, it was time to go do something useful.
He made a quick scan of their patches as he closed his door behind him. Paula was wearing blue, while Dylan and Dimitri both sported the gold badges of the ultra-competent. Mark pushed his frustration way down and cleared his throat deliberately. "If you three are done stargazing, I'd like to check out the training space we've been allocated."
"Which way?" Dylan queried once they were out of the room, shutting the hatch behind them with a solid clunk.
Mark handed him the map he'd been given, and waited, holding to the rail on the opposite side of the corridor. Behind the visor, Dylan's face was unreadable, but the body language was a picture as he glanced down one corridor after another, hoping for a clue. Mark wasn't going to give him one, but it was only a few seconds until Dimitri and Paula were looking over his shoulders, one on each side. Dylan looked from side to side ruefully, then gave up the pretence.
"Well, I know it's not straight on - apart from that, I haven't a clue. Rigan stations are a lot more obvious
"And a lot smaller?" Mark suggested. He'd been astonished by the scale and complexity of this one. Five levels, each consisting of a hub, with a series of spokes leading out to an inner ring, and then a second set going to an outer ring. Beyond that, the third level had a few extra spokes going still further out, with warning flashes all over the map that they were incomplete, unpressurised, and should not be accessed. Hundreds of individual rooms and a similar number of corridors, all with bulkhead doors at regular intervals; a safety feature to ensure that any depressurisation was strictly limited, with the side-effect that it was impossible to see which corridors were curved and which straight. And the incomplete third ring suggested that they were still expanding this place. He wasn't entirely sure of the details, but his briefing had suggested zero-g manufacturing was done here in a big way, the station supporting not only its own ISO staff and visitors like Force Two using it for training purposes, but also several dozen engineers and specialists in microgravity techniques from a range of civilian companies. His suspicion was that at least some of what was made over on the far side of the station was of a seriously classified nature. Certainly the map was vague at best as to what many of the laboratory units were for. He couldn't believe they were all associated with communications, though.
Paula laughed. "What we need is a 'this way up' sign."
"I think you have missed the point of freefall training," Dimitri told her seriously. "There is no 'up'."
"No, but there's still a map orientation. And a simpler solution." Paula looked beyond him, and raised her voice. "Excuse me - which way to Hold B?"
"Corridor behind you," a cheerful voice replied in an accent Mark couldn't begin to identify. "Enjoy your stay."
"Thanks!" Paula called, as Dylan rapidly oriented his map, slapping it against the door to their quarters.
"So, how do we identify it next time?"
"Hinges," Dimitri told him.
Dylan grinned and nodded, and Paula whipped out a pencil and wrote 'HINGES' across the bottom of the plan, with an arrow to their door.
"Well," said Mark finally, "basic navigation wasn't on this week's list of activities, but since you've volunteered...Raven, would you lead the way?"