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participating nations and companies
around the world. The projects were funded either by the
corporation of on an individual basis. The station's primary
purpose was industrial development. However, because of its
strategic and global importance, many nations wanted to ensure
their participation and awareness of what was being done on the
station.
    The Helium-3, which came from the moon and
paid for everything, was received from the moon in gaseous form and
was stored on Oasis waiting transport to Earth. After the conflicts
of earlier decades regarding the H-3, it worked out well for all
nations to participate in the collection of H-3 and to witness its
movement through the station to the final processing centers on
Earth.
    It wasn't that any of the participating
governments didn't trust the others, but H-3 was so important and
expensive everyone was happier if they played a part in the
process.
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    The morning on the space station Oasis
progressed normally. Before lunch, Tom saw his wife as he entered
the station control room. "Honey, the last of the supplies have
been loaded and secured in RD33A, the mobile units are closing up
the storage bays and the crew is in Port B."
    The Oasis control center was the heart of
the space station. The center was the central space comm center for
the consortium and it was staffed 24 hours a day, it monitored the
onboard activities, and space station status. Communications
between Earth and the station wasn't limited to going through the
center, but it kept it under control. Certain people on Earth could
communicate with anyone on the station and likewise those on the
station that needed to speak with Earth could contact whom they
needed directly. The designers decided early on that allowing
everyone to talk to everyone wasn't conducive to getting the job
done. If Joan was to be responsible for station operation, then she
needed to be part of the key messages, so having them all come
through the control center was the best plan.
    "Great, let's go and send them off," Joan
said as she stood and left the control center. Before they entered
the corridor it, was always a good idea to look both ways in the
hall before charging into the corridor. Many of the crewmembers
would get up a good head of steam moving through the single
hallway. If they were moving up rotation and you jumped in front of
one, it could get real personal; real quick. The corridor was clear
and they turned down rotation to the next center access tunnel.
When they reached Charlie tunnel they stepped on the elevator made
for one, and pleasantly held on to each other as the elevator
ascended to the center. It was always a fun little ride for them
and an opportunity for a little one-on-one time. The elevator rose
and the gravity reduced as they approached the center of rotation.
When the elevator reached the middle, they were weightless.
Reluctantly they launched themselves out of the elevator and
grabbed straps, which allowed them to move hand over hand to
docking port B. The walls in both docking ports, were covered with
tie down straps, so equipment moving in and out of the attached
vehicles could be tethered to the walls.
    The Oasis center section was a large
cylinder 50 feet in diameter where each of the CATS connected. The
laboratories were in the middle and the docking ports were on the
ends. The six CATS from the first ring connected by docking port A
and the six CATS from the second ring will connect by port B. It
was a pain having to move the entire length of the center cylinder
from the current Charlie-CATS to port B, but they were stuck with
it until the second ring was complete. Even for hardened astronauts
moving through the Zero G was fun and unusually they did
somersaults or other fun maneuvers as they moved around and through
the process manufacturing areas.
    The rotation of the station forced the
inbound craft to match the rotational velocity before docking. When
a ship departed from the