"No injuries, despite Mr. Long's best efforts," Rosemary quipped. "Now if you boys are done faffing about up here, there are two crew members who could use some help getting to the medical bay."
As the lights of Westward's docking bay transitioned from red to amber, indicating that the airlock had been sealed, Lamont forced his fingers to slowly release their vice-like grip on the thinly-padded copilot's seat. To his left, Lazarus leaned back in his high-backed pilot's chair, the lips of his wide mouth pressed tightly together, both hands combing through his mop of curly black hair.
"That was some top-notch flying," Lamont complimented him.
"Si," agreed Rico weakly from behind them. "I do not think that Señor Spratt could have done better."
Glancing back at the security specialist, Lamont could see that Rico was struggling to maintain composure. His dark skin had taken on a greenish cast that was not entirely attributable to the amber lighting inside the cockpit. Lamont suspected that the two dense protein bars Rico had wolfed down during the course of their flight were no longer agreeing with him after the aerial acrobatics that Lazarus had employed to match the lopsided spin of the ship.
The small hatch separating the cockpit from the cargo area opened to reveal Rosemary. She had lost her headband and her strawberry blonde hair was hanging in disarray over her face.
"Are you hurt, señorita?" Rico gulped.
"No injuries, despite Mr. Long's best efforts," Rosemary quipped. "Now if you boys are done faffing about up here, there are two crew members who could use some help getting to the medical bay." She looked scrutinizingly at Rico. "Make that three."
Ten minutes later, Lamont was on the command deck, having nearly been bowled over more than once by a crew member sprinting headlong through the narrow corridor. Whatever had gone wrong had luckily not affected the local gravity—however that worked—and inside Westward Lamont was able to ignore the fact that the ship was spinning as long as he avoided looking out the side portholes. This became much more difficult when he encountered the command deck's panoramic front window. Despite the floor's actual stability beneath him, he immediately felt a sense of vertigo at the site of the stars tumbling wildly in front of him when the sliding doors opened, and he quickly stumbled to grab hold of the central console a few paces beyond it. The lights of the command deck had been switched off, presumably so that its occupants were not distracted by their flickering, and the only illumination came from the red emergency lights along the edges of the deck, powered by battery backups. In this sullen crimson glow, he saw the slender form of Captain Carter standing in front of the command bench, gazing in the direction of the spinning stars, hands planted on his cane before him. To all appearances, he was unaffected by the disorienting spectacle. Lazarus had managed to arrive before Lamont and was standing beside the stool of the pilot's console, intently examining the instruments along with Sandra Ucan, who had been manning the console in his absence. At the navcom console to their right, Abigail Bishop was frantically switching between internal communication channels, her dark brown hands a flurry of activity.