Free Abyss Deep by Ian Douglas Page B

now you’re charging a terrorist stronghold with the U.S. Marines! Great stuff!”
    â€œOh . . . you want a . . . what did you say? A unique perspective?”
    â€œAbsolutely! If you could just—­”
    â€œHere you go,” I told him, reaching out with both hands and grabbing the lapels of his stylish maroon tunic. Bending my knees, I shoved upward . . . hard .
    As noted, the spin gravity at the Free Fall’s equator was around four-­tenths of a G. Three-­quarters of the way to the sphere’s pole, which was at zero-­G, the gravity was a lot lower . . . maybe a tenth of a G, or even a bit less. The GNN reporter probably massed eighty kilos, but he only weighed about eight here . . . about as much as a large cat, so once I got him moving he kept moving, moving hard. My shove sent him sailing up into the air, arms and legs thrashing . . . and he yelled bloody murder when he realized he wasn’t coming down again.
    Gravity inside rotating systems like the Free Fall is tricky. Ignoring things like air resistance, he technically was in zero-­gravity as soon as he left the deck, but the Coriolis effect caused his straight-­line path to curve alarmingly against the hab module’s spin. For a moment I thought I’d misjudged, that he was going to miss.
    Then one thrashing arm snagged the safety net surrounding the central sphere of water thirty meters above the restaurant’s deck. He screamed again and grabbed hold with both arms and both legs, dangling far overhead.
    Of course, the net was turning with the rest of the module, so hanging on up there he probably felt a spin gravity of something like fifteen hundredths of a gravity . . . maybe twelve kilos. If he let go, he’d drift back to the sphere’s inner surface with a tangential velocity of, oh, a few meters per second, and if he didn’t fall into some diner’s salad, he’d be just fine.
    But for someone born and raised on Earth, the possibility of that thirty-­meter drop between the outside of the safety net and the restaurant floor was terrifying. The net enclosed the water sphere from pole to pole; it was designed to catch ­people falling out of the water and keep them from dropping onto the restaurant clientele. Ivarson only needed to clamber along the outside of the net until he reached one of the access tubes at the sphere’s axis.
    But panic had set in, and all he could do was cling to the outside of the net and howl.
    I returned to Joy, who was watching the spectacle overhead. “What in the world . . . ?”
    â€œ Out of the world, I’m afraid.”
    â€œWhy did you—­”
    â€œReporter,” I told her. “The bastards have been dogging me electronically ever since Zeta Capricorn, and now it looks like they’re siccing humans on me.”
    â€œExcuse me, Petty Officer Carlyle?”
    I turned and found myself facing a polite but stern Free Fall employee. I didn’t know they had bouncers in places like that.
    â€œYes?”
    â€œI’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”
    I looked up at Ivarson, whose shouts and screams by now had become the focus of attention for every patron in the Free Fall. A ­couple of men in work utilities were making their way across the net to reach him.
    â€œHe’s a reporter,” I said. “Gross invasion of privacy.”
    â€œI quite understand, sir. Still, our guests have a right to enjoy their meals without . . . spectacles of this nature. I can ask you to leave, or I can summon the shore patrol.”
    â€œNo need,” I said. “Joy? You can stay and enjoy your meal, if you like. . . .”
    â€œWhat, and miss a date with a man who can throw an asshole thirty meters? You’ve got to be kidding!”
    So we left. We never did get our homegrown steak and lobster.
    But it turned out to be a