Falling Free

1988

Leo Graf is a highly skilled safety engineer working for GalacTech when he is called to the Rodeo system to act as a trainer for a special project.

When he gets there, he's startled to find that the 'Special Project' isn't his training course, it's the people that he's training.

People? When he meets the team leader, the first thing that he notes is the age. The boy is only just in his mid teens. As there's no gravity, the fact that the child is floating in the middle of the corridor was not an issue.

The fact that he had a double set of arms certainly did make Leo take note!

When he learnt that there were over a thousand of these Quaddies, he is initially... disconcerted. However, he throws himself into the task of turning his apprentices into the top welding team in space. Born with none of their legged compatriots' discomfort with zero gee they're all set up to clean up (for GalcTech, not themselves!) on the booming station building spree.

Then a Beta Colony technical demonstration completely blows away the whole operating base of the Quaddies. Artificial gravity has made it's appearance!

The boss of the project is determined to make a name for himself within GalacTech and when the wrap orders come through, he determines that the best thing is to exile beings born to space and zero gee to the crushing poisons of Rodeo's surface.

Leo really hates the boss, a former subordinate who he had to promote to get him away from anywhere he could do harm so the scene is set for a fur flying final confrontation as Leo finds himself siding with the Quaddies in their plight. For the Quaddies exist as nothing more than 'plant and equipment' in GalacTech's books with no recourse to human rights.

In order to save the Quaddies from the fate worse than death that has been decreed for them, Leo decides that their only hope for a future is the heist of the millennium!

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