A bubble of glee burst up Lira's throat as she unlatched her harness and her body floated slowly upward.

Weightless.

Beside her, Uchenna unbuckled and bumped into her. They grabbed each other's forearms for stability, and Lira looked around at the rest of the crew getting their bearings. Not all of them were experiencing zero G for the first time. There were several veteran astronauts on the shuttle. But it was certainly a novel experience for Lira and the other formerly Earthbound scientists onboard.

"Watch this," a dark-haired geologist said, tucking her knees into her chest and hurtling herself forward into a midair somersault. She came up laughing, and Lira was shocked to see Uchenna give it a try next. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes glittered when she came back upright.

Or, well, what currently passed for upright. Physical orientation was entirely relative now, and would be for the next six hours until they docked with the Exodus and made their way to the artificial gravity there.

"Let's go check on the rabbits," she suggested.

Uchenna nodded, and after a few trials and false starts, they figured out how to push off the walls and propel themselves where they wanted to go. Lira led the way, excitement inflating her chest when she realized she could change orientation and simply pull herself by her hands along the ladder rungs she'd had to laboriously climb when they were still in Earth gravity.

In the rabbit compartment, she burst out laughing.

"What?" Uchenna asked, floating through the door behind her.

Lira pointed to the wall of cages. Where she'd left forty-eight peacefully sedated juvenile rabbits, there were now little balls of fluff floating and bouncing off their polycarbonate walls.

"Are they still out?"

Lira pulled up her overlay to check their vitals. The interface that the computer engineers had designed for them was a rectangular grid just like the wall. Each cage was color-coded for quick reference, and Lira could select any one of them for a more granular view. 

"All green," she reported. Then she shoved off the wall in the direction of the bottom right corner of the cages, looking in on number thirty-five. "Here's our troublemaker from earlier, Buzz."

The rex was floating like the rest, gently bumping into one padded wall, then another, then the clear polycarbonate door, like that ancient video game with the single pixel for a ball, but in 3D. He seemed just as oblivious as the pixel.

"Gonna be fun transferring these guys," she said, reorienting herself to Uchenna with some difficulty. "Man, am I glad the weightless part is only going to last a few hours."

"I think it's pretty awesome."

Lira couldn't help grinning at her coworker. "You are totally different in space than you were back on Earth." 

Uchenna's cheeks colored and she asked, "So, what's the game plan? To get these guys into artificial gravity, I mean."

Lira’s brows twitched. "Umm, you mean the procedure we spent all last week drilling? …You do remember it, right?"

"Of course." Uchenna cleared her throat, gesturing to the release levers at the sides of each cage. "We're going to transfer them in their cages. I just meant… I don't know, it feels different now that we're actually here."

Lira nodded. "It does. I'm looking forward to seeing the space they designed for us."

That was a new addition too. The engineers had removed one set of crew quarters to make room for the rabbits on the Exodus, which would take them the rest of the way to Mars. The rabbit compartment would contain a wall very much like this one, with slots to insert each of the cages in the same order they were in here. There would also be a play area for the rabbits to stretch their legs, an exam space with veterinary supplies for Lira, and a lab for Uchenna to continue her research during the trip. Lira had trained in a mock version of it back in Houston, but so far, none of her training compared to the reality.

"Can you read Buzz's vitals for me? I still haven't gotten the hang of switching windows and I want to note them in his chart."

"Umm…"

Lira shook her head. "Rabbit thirty-five, I mean."

"I think there’s something wrong with my implant," Uchenna said.

"Double-blink to open the overlay?" Lira reminded her.

Uchenna did it, then shook her head. "I don’t know what’s going on. Probably need to run an update or something. I’ll just use the computer." She pushed off to a console mounted on one wall and tapped around for a few minutes. So long that Lira nearly told her to forget it. 

"You need help?"

"Heart rate two-thirty," Uchenna finally read off.

"Slightly elevated, but we're in space right now," Lira said. "My heart rate's been elevated since liftoff."

"Same," Uchenna added. "Temperature is thirty-eight-point-eight… BP is ninety over forty."

"Respiratory rate?"

Uchenna frowned at the screen for a while longer, then shook her head. "I can't figure out this display. We're gonna have to see if they can send us a software update so we can customize it."

Lira pushed off the floor and joined Uchenna at the computer terminal. She tapped the screen with her fingernail. "It's right there, forty-two BRPM. Normal."

"Oh. Duh. I've had a full bladder since pre-check, I can't concentrate," Uchenna announced. "They told us not to drink much before launch but I didn't listen. Be right back."

She grabbed a ladder rung and pulled herself down and out of the room, and Lira looked at the computer display. The screen was a little overwhelming, certainly not shiny and pretty like the overlay, but the stats were all right there, clear as day. 

First the smiling and the jokes, and then acting like she didn't remember the transfer protocol for the rabbits… If Dr. Bello was cracking up under the pressure of space travel and they hadn't even docked with the Exodus yet, it was going to be a long trip to Mars.