A headache's mingling with the hum of the ship. I'm going to risk opening my eyes now.

"Hey, sleeping beauty." The pilot's voice startles me. What's his name? Dan. He's rubbing my arm. "Come on Mister Eldron ... Kal. Time to get up and at 'em."

Wow, it's bright. Reaching above me I can tell the lid on my pod is open. I sit up, feeling dizzy. "Are we there yet?" My eyes are adjusting and Dan's grown a dark beard since he put me to sleep. It suits him.

"We certainly are. You'll feel better after a shower." He points to my left. I can see through a portal: the stars are all streaked and weird looking. We must still be running at full tilt.

Dan says, "Just shout for me when you're ready. It'll be about another hour before you're transferred. Here have this - you'll feel better" He hands me a small bottle of clear liquid.

"Okay, will do. And thanks, Dan."

"No problem." Dan's white smile lingers a while after he's gone.

My throat rasps as I clear it. I take a swig. The liquid feels exquisite and cool flowing round my mouth and down my throat. I sniff my armpits and yes, I do need a shower. Five weeks snoozing in a pod has left me just a tad funky. My head's starting to clear and I can feel excitement building in my belly. This is where I get to earn that five hundred thousand bucks. Twelve months from now I'll be rich. Just a chilly little worm of doubt wriggling in. Will I make it on my own, way out here, for that long? Even with monthly visits from the likes of Dan and other support vessels? Of course I will. I've been trained and tested and examined and read just about everything on these stations ever written. I conjure up a rather romantic image of the charging station I'm about to take over. An immense golden torus hanging in space, discharging huge white arcs of energy. My charging station orbits close to a binary star system and uses the massive magnetic fields to power huge metallic coils. As tall as the old Eiffel Tower and twice as wide apparently. Standard power cells of all types are containered there by the billion, streams of them are flown through the coils and recharged by induction. Quite a set up. Mostly done by cleverly chucking the containers along gravity valleys so they end up whizzing through the charging coils with minimum course corrections - and minimum cost, of course. The round trip for each battery takes years but now there's a steady flow of tens of millions heading out and back to these stations all over the rim. Pretty amazing. Pretty damn near one hundred percent automated, but even the best robots break down. So they need some poor sod out there. On his own. On my own. Five Hundred Thousand bucks though. That's five years pay in one hit! And it starts today.

*

I'm dressed in The Star Co regulation grey overalls and just slinging my backpack over my shoulder when my stomach tells me we've slowed down dramatically.

"Kal?" Dan's voice comes from a speaker somewhere.

"Yes?"

"Come up to the flight deck. You're gonna love this."

"On my way."

Dan is sat in the single seat on the surprisingly spacious flight deck. He's prodding at buttons and twiddling knobs in a pilot-like fashion. It's the view that's got my attention though. My binary stars, Anthony and Declan, are to the left and right of us. Though I don't know which is which yet - I think Declan is the slightly brighter of the two. They're shining enough to make me squint even through the tinted screen. Dead ahead, revolving gently on its axis, is the charger. Light reflects in intermittent flares of white brilliance off  irregular features on its surface. Lightning arcs silently along invisible, powerful magnetic lines of flux as it turns. It's very hard to judge the scale of the device, but there's a stream of containers - holding thousands of dead fuel cells each - flowing at tens of thousands of klicks per hour, looking like trails of dust as they fly through the barrel shaped device, emerging from the other end with fully charged cells, then going off into space following lines of gravity valleys defined my masses and relative velocities. I happen to know those seemingly speck-sized containers are bigger than most people's houses.

"Woa," is all I can manage.

The scene dips as Dan pulls the ship up towards another object hanging in space.

I recognise it from the simulators. "Home sweet home," I say. It's like a gigantic bicycle wheel: a central hub, spokes, and a round tyre running round the circumference. Only this tyre is not rubber. It's fifteen feet in diameter and my living quarters. The whole wheel is rotating so when I'm inside my body will be pushed to the outside by centripetal forces and it'll feel just like gravity. Very cool. Will help keep my bones in good condition for the next twelve months.

"Yes indeed," says Dan. "Let's hope you have more luck than the last guy."

What? "What? What happened to the last guy?"

"You didn't hear?"

"Er .. no. Do tell."

Dan's heading towards the central hub of my new home, starting to match the rotation, and explains, "Stu Potts. Nice guy. He was found dead by another shuttle crew on the monthly supply run."

"Dead?"

"As a doornail. Died of dehydration. Thirst. Seems one day he just stopped drinking."

"He ran out of water?" I ask, feeling a bit alarmed something like that would be allowed to happen.

"Oh, no," says Dan. "Lots of water left on board. They checked. It was one hundred percent fine and dandy. He just stopped drinking it. Weird thing is, he had a towel tucked into the back of his shirt collar - like a cape, you know - and his underpants on over his trousers."

"Wow."

"Yes," continues Dan, "Seems he just went stir, or should I say star, crazy, and flipped."

"Poor guy." Poor guy indeed. I'd be okay though. They'd really tested the bejeebers out of me. Probably tightened up the psychometric tests since then.

Dan's skill is impressive. We're rotating at exactly the same rate as the accommodation wheel and have docked so softly with the hub I didn't even feel it.

Okay. Let's get to it.

***

I see it'll be seven days before the monthly supply shuttle comes back. I've been here three weeks already.
Okay, what's on today's to-do list. Wake up, check. Exercise. Hmm. I should do something. Getting a bit lazy lately. Right, let's jog.

Running on this jogging machine belt thing is dull. I could run round the station, see how many circuits I can do.

This is weird. Like running through a brightly lit tunnel that's forever curving upwards. Odd sensation. There's my bunk. That's one circuit already. Wonder how fast I can go. Damn that's hard. The faster I .. go the .. heavier I get. Jeeze! Gotta stop. Oh wait. I'm running in the same direction as the wheel is rotating. Obviously I'm rotating faster overall so I'll feel the effects of centripetal force more and feel heavier. Duh!

So what if I run the other way? Hey, how cool is that. The faster I go the lighter I feel. I wonder, if I run fast enough will I become weightless. Jeeze! That's hard work .. felt lighter definitely but the thin air in here .. am running out of breath too quickly. Almost got it though. Could feel my feet get less and less purchase on the floor. So if I run as fast as I can, opposite to the wheel's rotation, and maybe dive forward as hard as I can ... maybe I'll glide a little ... come down gently? Okay. Got my breath back let's give it a go .. running at full tilt .. losing traction .. dive headlong .. Woohoo! It works! I'm flying. Right in the middle. Oh, I know it's really the wheel's rotating round me, but this is awesome. I got it perfect first time! Give me a cape and I'd be like Superman. Woohoo. Timed to perfection. How long could I last like this? Minutes? Hours? Days ... weeks? Like Superman ... Oh hell!