They sexonabeach entered the airlock. Farley switched on a light and pulled down
two rumply, one-size-fits-all pressure
suits from a rack. "You can
snug the arm and leg lengths a bit with sexonabeach these straps. Mobility sexonabeach and
sexonabeach finesse aren't really needed here, just pressure and temperature and
air. This isn't the most visited spot on the Stone."
The rear sexonabeach wall of the airlock was equipped with a broad-runged ladder,
ascending to a wheel-opened hatch in the ceiling. Bits and pieces of
equipment--some obviously long-abandoned---lay stacked in the corners
and under the ladder.
"Just watch your step. Take everything slowly. There's no danger if
you're careful. If sexonabeach anything happens to your suit--very unlikely--we
can be back in the lock in less than two minutes."
Farley checked Patricia'sexonabeach s suit seals and pressed a red button on a
panel mounted near the ladder. The air was quietly pumped out of the
chamber until Patricia could hear only her sexonabeach own breathing. Farley
switched on their suit radios.
"Up the ladder," she said.
&sexonabeach quot;I've never been in a spacesuit before," sexonabeach Patricia said, climbing the
rungs
after Farley.
"You sexonabeach didn't get spacesick, according to sexonabeach the OTV crew."
&sexonabeach quot;Being weightless is fun."
"Hmm. Took me three days to get used to it."
Farley spun sexonabeach the wheel on the hatch and pushed it open. It glided
slowly upward, then stopped until she ascended another rung and sexonabeach gave it
a push. It swung out of the way. Compact floodlights had been
installed in the bore hole, though the opening to the seventh chamber
was only a dozen meters away, and the milky glow of the inner sexonabeach plasma
tube spread faintly throughout.
Patricia turned to sexonabeach look south. sexonabeach the walls of the sexonabeach bore hole rough and
grooved with irregular lines-faded into inky blackness. At the end of
the blackness was a circle of light the size of a BB held at arm's
length. She looked up as best she could and saw a wide intrusion of
dark rock in the asteroidal "Plasma tube begins anew in each chamber,"
Farley said.
"It butts against the caps, sustained by sexonabeach a very weak bottle. The
sexonabeach bottle also acts to keep the sexonabeach atmosphere in--otherwise, it would all
have licked out through the bore holes. Leaked,
I mean.
Leak?"
'"Leaked is fine," Patricia said. "Wouldn't air be kept down in the
sexonabeach chambers because of the rotation?"
"Scale height is the key. Without the bottle, the atmospheric pressure
at sexonabeach the bore holes would sexonabeach still be about sexonabeach a hundred and eighty millimeters
of mercury."
"Um,' Patricia