The ships were called Oxygen Harvesters but they were known to their crew as milkmaids. The fleet was called Harvesting Fleet 4 or HF4. In the flagship, Captain First Grade Satini Sopoaga, the fleet’s commanding officer, swum in zero gravity toward the main bridge that was located amidships. If there was one thing he liked about being a spaceman, it was zero gravity. It made him feel like a bird. When he was two meters away from the bridge, he switched on his gravity shoes and dropped to the spaceship’s floor. Gravity shoes had electromagnets and they were made in such a way that only the electromagnet of one shoe was on at one time. When the shoe with the ‘off’ electromagnet stepped onto the floor, sensors on its sole switched on its electromagnet. At that very same instant, the shoe sent an infrared impulse that switched off the electromagnet of the other shoe, enabling the user to easily lift the trailing foot from the floor. It goes without saying that the spaceship’s floor was made of an iron alloy.
