Read Hull Zero Three for Free Online Page B

can’t see across to the opposite side. It isn’t spinning. Once we’re away from the air currents around the trumpet leading to the channel, we can move only by “swimming,” which takes a long time and a lot of effort. I’m hungry enough to consider gnawing on my hands, my arms. Seriously.
    “We wait,” Picker says, finger over his high nose. “Soon we walk. Then cold comes and we chase heat.”
The girl nods.
I’ve learned this much. Two of us at least think we’re on a Ship. That word, to us, implies something very big. Maybe it is sick , whatever that means—I know too little to judge. My memories from the Dreamtime seem to sync up with some of these propositions. But the memories are woefully incomplete.
As to where we are in the Ship, we seem to still be more or less “outboard,” moving slowly forward, jumping from one circumnavigating conduit to another—different sorts of channels and tubes, with different functions. One of them carries water in a spinning trough. I have no idea where the water comes from or why the trough is spinning. I remember the water’s tingling taste, however, and am already thirsty again.
There are five of us. Three look different, two of us look much the same— though one is smaller and apparently younger. (Why “apparently”? Because she knows a lot more than I do. I seem to be the young one in everything but size.)
And I now think that the three different-looking fellows have been together for some time, are perhaps even more knowledgeable than the girl, and can manage with effort to speak a little of the lingo the girl and I share. In turn, the girl knows some of Picker and Pushingar’s whistle-hoot-speak.
The space inboard—“up,” or above us, when weight returns—is so deep and dark as to be unfathomable. After a long while, I think I can make out big curving struts arranged in interlocking, slender, three-pointed stars. But I can’t be sure. It might be my eyes playing tricks.
Nothing around us is moving.
The rest period is quickly over. The girl has been floating in her lotus. Now she uncurls. I notice we’re moving again, with reference to the outboard surface—the “floor.” Air currents are increasing in the large space.
“Weight’s coming,” the girl says, and whistles something to Pushingar.
“We feel it,” Picker says.
“I think there’s going to be a big wind,” the girl says. “All the air in here will catch up with the spin. We should lie flat until it passes.”
And that’s just the way it is. As we fall the short distance outboard, “down,” the air around us not only gets colder, but also begins moving even more violently than the breeze over the channeled river. Soon it’s gale force— gale —and we’re being dragged over the floor, no matter how we try to hold on. Not strong enough yet to lift us up and flip us over.
The real danger is freezing. My skin grows numb. I see Satmonk and Picker crawling ahead of me. The girl is behind Pushingar to my left.
“How far?” I shout. The girl shakes her head. Either she can’t hear me or she doesn’t know. Finally, despite the bitter cold, we all just lie flat on the smooth floor, our weight increasing, giving us better purchase. Besides, the floor is warmer than the wind.
I’m almost at eye level with the omnipresent little glowing beads that faintly illuminate everything. Glims. Glim lights. The whole chamber is spinning up—or the entire Ship. I don’t know which or why in either case.
I’m sick of it. All of it. If this is the way life is going to be, then I’m ready to chuck it all and freeze. But my body disagrees. I start cursing my biological stubbornness. Upon this provocation, new words enter my vocabulary—words a teacher should not pass along.
The wind subsides. There’s a fluting sound from high above, the structure inboard making its own noises, now audible in the slackening of the cold rush. The air above seems to still be pretty turbulent and even colder.