Pushing the duffel through the hatch, I drop after it feetfirst. Grabbing a handhold, I stop inside the tunnel to close the capsule hatch, then the hatch on the docking ring. I drift into the airlock chamber, a cylinder twice as roomy as the capsule and reeking of mothballs. The smell comes from a space suit lashed to the curving wall. Bulky, old style, and small. For someone under four feet five inches. A dinosaur compared to the suit Dad had, it’s probably been in storage for the last fifty years, like everything else about the old spacer. Why isn’t there one for him? That’s not safe, especially in a tub as old as this one. Leaks happen. Anchoring my foot in a wall strap, I pull the airlock hatch into the docking tunnel closed. Two other narrow tunnels lead from the air lock, each a little longer than I am tall but both too narrow to stand up in. One goes into the shuttle. The other, sealed off by a closed hatch, connects to the enormous canister in the cargo bay. Through the air lock’s hatch window, the bright blue handle of the canister’s hatch catches my eye.
