d say! Paul forgot to
secure the electrolite for the ECM equipment. Can't have these
five-gallon bottles bouncing around!"

"And we can't have you bouncing around either, Dr. Chi Tung. Get that
soup under wraps quick. How much time do you need?" came the captain's
voice from his console angled over Bessie's head.

Clark's voice could be heard murmuring into his Earth-contact phone.
"T minus two. Holding."

Less than two minutes later, Dr. Chi released the hold by announcing
briefly, "Machine shop and physics department secure."

"T minus two and counting...."

"T minus one and counting...." Bessie continued officially. "Fifty,
forty, thirty, twenty...."

The faint whine of high-speed centrifugal compressors could be heard
through the ship.

"Ten...." The jets that had previously bubbled almost inaudibly took
on the sound of a percolating coffee pot.

"... Four, three, two, one, mark."

The bubbling became a hiss that settled into a soft susurrus of
background noise, as the jets forced air through the river of water in
the circular tanks of the rim.

The water began to move. By reaction, the wheel took up a slow,
circular motion in the opposite direction.

Then, gently, the wheel shook itself and settled into a complacently
off-center motion that placed Bessie somewhere near the actual center
of rotation.

"We're out of balance, Mr. Blackhawk," said the captain, one hand on
the intercom switch.

"Bessie, ask the Cow what's off balance." It was Mike's voice from
engineering control. "Thought we had this thing trued up like a
watch."

But the computer had already taken over, and was controlling the flow
of water to the hydrostatic balance tank system, rapidly orienting the
axis of spin against the true axis of the wheel.

The wobble became a wiggle; the wiggle became the slightest of sways;
and under the computer's gentle ministrations, the sways disappeared
and Space Lab One rolled true.

Slowly Mike inched the jet power up, and the speed and "gravity" of
the rim rose--from 0.009 to 0.039 to the pre-scheduled 0.15 of a
gravity--two RPM--at which she would remain until a thorough test
schedule over several days had been accomplished. Later tests would
put the rim through check-out tests to as high as 1.59 gee, but
"normal" operation had been fixed at two RPM.

In the background, the susurrus of the air jets rose slightly to the
soft lullaby-sound that the wheel would always sing as she rolled.