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in.
    “Would it have killed you to throw something in here to test for it?” Walsh groused.
    “What should I have thrown?” Bergen countered. “This million dollar instrument or that—”
    Jane placed her gloved hand on the side of his face shield and he went quiet, visibly stewing.
    “Oh, man—that was a rush!” Gibbs sprung up suddenly, his startled, dark-skinned face looming close to the opening before he fell back toward the floor and jounced around, out of control—at one point landing squarely on Walsh’s abdomen.
    Walsh let out an “Oof,” and scrambled back. “Son-of-a—someone’s playing around with the settings on this gravity-thing and it’s not funny!”
    Bergen pulled closer, clearly intrigued. “What’s going on in there?”
    “A bouncy-house comes to mind,” Gibbs said, grinning. He righted himself and took unsteady, springy steps toward the hatch, his smiling face bobbing up and down in front of the opening. He gestured at Compton, “Ha! Come on in, Pops. Tell us how this compares to the moon.”
    Compton, always good-natured, snorted. He’d never been on a Lunar mission, but had been selected to the astronaut program late in that era.
    “You ok, Ronald?” Ajaya asked.
    “Oh, fine, fine.” Gibbs chuckled softly and glanced back at Walsh, who was getting to his feet. “Walsh broke my fall. It felt like a lot more than one-G when we fell in. Now it feels like a lot less. It just changed on a dime.” Gibbs would know about the transition to gravity. He’d been back and forth to the International Space Station three times in his career.
    “Huh,” Bergen uttered, his eyes roving back and forth, analy zing what that might mean about the technology, Jane supposed.
    “They must be observing us.” Jane whispered. She turned to Bergen. “They don’t know what to expect from us any more than we know what to expect from them. They adjusted the gravity when they saw it distressed us—it was a friendly gesture.”
    Bergen looked unnerved. “Either that, or they’re enjoying toying with us.”
    Gibbs’ smile faded. “I like Jane’s idea better.”
    “Me too,” said Ajaya. She hovered on the lip of the hatch, ready to slide in to check on her charges. “Commander, do we move forward now, or regroup?”
    Walsh’s expression was grim. He turned away from the ca psule. He raised his weapon. “Forward.”
    One by one they slipped inside, springing uncertainly, cautiou sly, like kids on their first trampoline, down the hall. Jane reveled in the feeling of gravity tugging on her again, even though the effect was small. She could feel the long muscles in her legs stretching in a way only gravity could replicate and wished she could get out of the suit so she could fully enjoy it.
    She was a little unsteady, a little dizzy, had some trouble hea ding in a straight line, but that was expected after such a long exposure to microgravity. It wasn’t as bad as it could be. She’d been told some astronauts had trouble walking, turning, focusing their gaze.
    Gibbs paused in front of her, made an about-face, and sketched a salute at Compton. “Keep the motor runnin’, the home fires burnin’, and all that jazz, Pops.”
    Compton raised his left hand solemnly. His right hand held his weapon.
    They reached the end of that section of corridor and it changed direction by 45 degrees, laterally. As Walsh reached that point, the lights came on in this new section, individually, one by one, r evealing a passageway dotted with doors. Jane counted five doors over the next 30 yards. Each door was taller and wider than human scale and segmented into thick, horizontal bars.
    “Anybody else feel like Hansel and Gretel?” Gibbs joked.
    Bergen rolled his eyes. “Birds ate the trail they left.”
    “Didn’t a witch try to eat Hansel and Gretel?” Ajaya asked. She seemed to realize her gaffe and sent Jane a pleading look. “I wasn’t raised on those fairy tales, you know.”
    Walsh ignored the