About Noon, Orba Organics research facility, L4, Sunday the 14th of March, 2055.

About Noon, Orba Organics research facility, L4, Sunday the 14th of March, 2055.

We exit into a room that could almost be a football (proper football, not that Yankee rubbish) changing room. It has what look like lockers down the side with benches along the opposite wall. We're told to slowly sit down, as we're not yet used to the low gravity. What follows is a briefing on what not to do in a low gravity environment. Things like don't jump and don't aim too high when peeing because the splash back can be ferocious in these low-G conditions. All really serious and important stuff.

We're told to remove our spacesuits, and that we'll be spending about 30 minutes in this room, while we adjust to being at just a third of the normal gravity. Water is available, in sealed drinking pouches, of course. Why do we have to stay here and acclimatise? Because of the easy-clean floor, should any of us feel queasy.

After the half hour has passed, a middle-aged woman walks in. It's Sheila. After introductions, she takes us out of the room and a short way down a corridor, to our quarters. We find that the few items of baggage we brought with us, but couldn't have loose in the spacecraft cabins, for obvious reasons, have already been put in our rooms.

Then she takes us to have a look at the main area of the station, the inside of the cylinder. This involves a trip in a lift to a 'train' station. Then we board a 'capsule' and spend a couple of minutes travelling somewhere. It's difficult to judge how fast we're going, but then I guess that they can't accelerate too fast in this low gravity, simply because there's less gravity holding the passengers to the floor.

We leave the capsule and after a short walk, go through some doors and onto a balcony. Now this is an impressive view. The balcony overlooks a fabulous garden, with all manner of plants and trees clearly flourishing (and growing taller than their Earth cousins) in the low gravity. Further afield, stretching along the cylinder (and up the sides!) are what Sheila tells us are agricultural stations.

All of this plant life is thriving under the harsh glare of enormous lights that are attached to a large tube running along the centre of the cylinder. The tube prevents us seeing the cylinder directly above us, which I guess is a good thing as it stops our Earth-centric brains from worrying about people and tractors falling on us from above!

Now to business. Sheila explains the tests they need to run on us in their quest for a cure for the blue goo infection, and we explain the healing that we need. And that's what the next few days are spent doing, giving samples of blood and being wired up to monitoring equipment.

Shen and Roland make known their desire for more cyberware, so Sheila gets that arranged and implanted for them. While they're being assimilated and recovering from the operations, the rest of us are just enjoying some R&R.

Sykes and Crash seem to be having some sort of pull-a-pig competition. They both succeed magnificently as far as I can tell. Before we know it, three weeks have passed, and the good news is that a cure has been found.

Before we go, Sheila asks us if we can do Orba Organics a small favour...