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2593-23

Eric came awake at being shaken. He checked the time, not quite four in the morning. Now that he was coming awake he could tell none of the cribs were calling for attention, so why was someone waking him? He opened an eye. Gerald, Brick and Brack were next to his bed.

"If you're here to have sex, comeback later," he whispered. "I'm going to be busy with my kids in a few minutes."

"You saying no to sex is the weirdest thing I've ever heard," Brick whispered back.

"That isn't why we're here," The fennec also kept his voice low. "We're here to take over looking after them this morning."

"Why?" Eric sat up.

"Will asked me, and I roped those two in. I know better than to try to look after six kids on my own. I could barely handle them one at a time when I got them."

"What does Will want with me?"

"He didn't say, just that he'd need you for a few hours. So, go wash up, we've got this."

Eric sent a message to William asking what he needed him for.

'I'll tell you when you get here, don't eat before you see me.' William.

He showered quickly, dried and went with simple pants. When he left the bathroom, the three of them were already busy feeding his sons. He took a step toward them, but Gerald sent him on his way.

William was easy to find. He was leaning against the wall, next to the zero G room.

"What's going on?" Eric asked.

William opened the door and motioned for him to enter.

"Will, you know how I feel about that room."

"Don't worry, it's at standard gravity right now."

Eric eyed him, before stepping in the room, cautiously. As William said, he didn't start floating. The wolf followed him in and the door closed behind him.

"Why are we here?"

"Give me your arm."

Eric looked at him, but William didn't say anything more. With a sigh the tiger raised his right arm. William attached an armband to Eric's forearm.

The tiger looked at it. Hard gray plastic casing going up almost to his elbow, part of it was black, the section before him if he moved his arm to his face. It was about six-centimeter high, and covered the width of the band, except for a centimeter at each end.

"Okay, what is that?"

"That is a dedicated controller for this room."

Eric looked at it, then back at William. "So, what does it do?"

"When this little wonder is turned on, it's the only way to change the gravity here."

"Okay, but what's the point? I can connect to the controls and control it that way."

"True, but anyone can do that, so you can't be sure what will happen to the gravity while you're here. And let me tell you, it wasn't easy, ships systems come with a lot of redundancies to ensure you never lose contact with them. Even room controls are that way. It took me almost a month to figure out how to do it, then it was close to another month of research to figure out how to make a control that didn't go through our implants."

"What do you mean, not go through my implant?"

"You can't communicate with this."

"Then how do I control it?"

"With your fingers." William took hold of Eric's arm and tapped the black surface. Numbers and symbols appeared on it. "Believe it or not, up till two centuries ago or so, this was how most devices were controlled. This indicates the current gravity. These two chevrons are how you control with direction the gravity is. I've set it to change it in increment of point one G."

"Okay, this is sort of interesting. I can see why you might have wanted the challenge, but it doesn't explain why I'm here."

William sighed. "Because I think you need to get over your problem with gravity."

"Will I don't-"

"Hear me out."

Eric glared at him, but his kept his mouth shut.

"I can't do anything about your agoraphobia. Short of getting it removed, I doubt there's anything that can be done, but in here, I think your problem is just that you never got used to it. Shifting gravity plays havoc with your internal systems, but you can get use to them. You said one of the things that freaked you how was the lack of control. This gives you the control. Since the interface shuts down when this is on, no one can take that control away."

Eric eyed the device on his arm. "Will, I appreciate the concern, but I don't need to get use to zero G. All I have to do is avoid it."

"Eric, what are you going to do if the gravity plating fails?"

"It can't fail, everyone knows that."

"No, it can fail. The fact there hasn't been a failure in over a century doesn't mean it can't happen. The system used to alter gravity isn't as finicky as when it was first made, but it is still a system, it has components and it's possible for them to fail."

Eric looked at him dubious.

"Okay, forget that. Are you really going to let someone else teach your sons how to deal with Zero G? I heard you tell Tucker you'd see about getting more comfortable with it. I'm guessing it's so you can do it with him. This is going to be the way you do that."

"I don't think it's going to be that easy," Eric said, running a hand over the back. A finger passed over the down chevron and the indicator read point nine G.

"You have time. It isn't recommended for kids under twelve to be in zero G for extended period of time. I get the feeling some of your kids are going to want to start earlier, but you will have years to get used to it."

"Will, you don't understand. From the first time I was put in zero G, I freaked. I covered it up, but I have never gotten used to it, not even after the half dozen courses my dad had me take. I'm fine while it's one G, but to moment it's switched off, it's all I can do not to start screaming."

"Okay, then we're not going to start with zero G. We're going to start with micro gravity. Set it to point two G."

After a moment of hesitation, Eric did it.

His feet remained on the floor, but he felt the change, he felt lighter, his breathing changed, his heart rate accelerated-but that had to be caused by his nervousness.

"You okay?"

Eric nodded. "It feel weird."

"It does take some getting used to. We're not made to function in such low gravity. Back when we first went to space, way before gravity plating, people who spent a lot of time out here had trouble once they got back to Earth. When we started mining the asteroids, people were without gravity for so long, they couldn't handle getting back under normal gravity. And when people started giving birth out here, that created a whole new set of problems."

Eric eyed the wolf, ears tilted quizzically.

William chuckled. "Okay, not all the research I did was on the technical side of things. I knew I'd have to convince you to attempt this, so I wanted data. The bottom line is that it's normal for you to feel odd, but that isn't a reason not to practice it." He looked at the room. "Normally we'd do this in a much bigger room. But take a step."

Eric considered it. This wasn't zero G, but it had to be low enough he needed to be careful. He raised a foot, moved it forward and then down. His other foot immediately left the floor, and he began moving up and tipping forward.

His heart was in his throat. He wind milled, trying to get his body to straighten, but all he did was to start his body tilting to one side. His mouth was dry as he moved his arms even faster.

William grabbed on to him, and pulled, but instead of moving Eric down, the wolf moved up. He then wrapped his arms around the tiger, pinning his arms to his side.

"Calm down Eric. Breath. We're going to get back to the floor."

Eric didn't believe him, they were still floating. They'd hit the ceiling first. He looked down at his feet, but saw one of the walls.

"Look at me Eric."

Hands grabbed his head and forced it still. He looked into William's light brown eyes.

"Breathe Eric. You're in control of this, Remember that. You are in control."

"How?" How could anyone be in control when they were drifting like this.

William grabbed Eric's right arm and brought it into view.

"This way. You control the gravity."

Right, the armband controlled things. With a shaking finger he brought the gravity back to normal. And the fell half meter to the floor.

Eric panted and tried to get breathing under control. William laughed, and the tiger glared at him when he was able to move. He took off the armband and threw it at William's chest.

"This isn't funny."

William sat up. "It sort of is."

"Really? What about me drifting out of control did you find funny?"

The wolf picked the armband off his lap. "You could have stopped it at any time."

"You think I was even thinking about that? I was too busy freaking out."

William sobered. "Okay, then that's what we need to work on."

"No, I'm not doing this again." Eric got up.

"Eric." William grabbed his arm as he walked by.

"No Will. It should be clear I can't handle it."

"What's clear is that we started to fast. We need to get you to keep you head. If we can manage that, I think you'll have an easier time dealing with floating around."

Eric yanked his arm out of the wolf's hand. "No. You can keep that thing." He stormed out of the room and went to his. He needed to calm down, and spending time with his children would do that.

When he entered his room, he was almost bowled over by Brick, who crawled on all four, chased by Tony. Eric ordered the door closed, even if he was still standing in the sensor field. He wasn't chasing another one of his sons throughout the ship.

Once the two passed him, he headed to the mat. Brack was lying on his back, Tucker and Thomas climbing on top of him. Trevor was chewing on the mule's little toe.

Terrence was seated between Gerald's legs and the fox was moving his finger before his son's face, who was trying to grab them. Gerald looked up. "Whatever that was was handled?"

Eric picked up Tyson, who was pulling on Gerald's tail and then sat. "No, but it's Will's problem, not mine." He wasn't able to keep all his annoyance out of his voice, and Tyson tilted his head, eying him. "I'm okay," he told his son. "It's nothing you have to worry about." He bounced him and then snuggled him. He lied on his back holding his son on his stomach and helping him walk. Eric talked to him, telling him about the cargo they were carrying.

Gerald studied him for a moment and then went back to talking to Terrence.

Eric knew William was going insist on doing that again, and he'd deal with it then. For now, it was him and his son, who smiled at him.