She had forgotten the damn airstream. It came churning up from the floor, following its loop, then streamed down along the walls from the ceiling rim. The designers had made mischief with the air to “improve the game,” somebody had said. It did. For experts, maybe. For Rachel, the added torques and turns were too much. She clean missed the little ball as it whizzed past like an annoying hornet. She swore she could hear it humming.

It thumped into the floor, and Rachel was down another point.

She managed to angle sideways a bit, using the air current, and land on both feet. Ruby smirked. “That’s thirteen to seven.”

“I can count.”

“Oh yes, you counted plenty with that creepy Sagittarius, I hear.”

“Don’t believe—” Rachel stopped herself. No point in delving into gossip. Someone had gotten snatches of her converse with the Sagittarius Architecture onto a private site. Digital sex fandom. Then they charged people to tap into it. Nothing particularly salacious, but enough to feed the gossip petri dish with dirty snacks….

Ruby tossed the ball with a smirk. “Your serve.” She was burly and a tad sullen at even the best of times.

Rachel slapped the ball into a one-wall bounce that then zipped sideways after it hit the ceiling, going into a crouch. Ruby went after it on a long lurch and nearly overshot. But she swiveled and caught a piece of the ball in midair—not strong, maybe too anxious. Rachel jumped at a steep angle and rebounded off one side of the tube, about halfway up the cylinder. She coasted across, watching that squash ball bouncing back from the forecourt, one eye on the ball and the other on the tube wall approaching. She could reach it. But by the time it was within range she had to be halfway through her somersault. She had to turn over in midair and get her legs out in front to brake velocity when she plowed into it.

She should have been able to swat that ball and then flip with plenty of time to spare, if she had judged it right. Only she hadn’t.

“Ah!” she cried. Ruby laughed.

Automatically she stretched her arms to the sides and rotated them, to spin head over heels. Partway into the somersault she had a reflex. She flailed around awkwardly, aiming at a spot behind her back where she knew the ball must be passing.

Thunk! The ball hit the plastic rim of her racket. She had messed up her flip and cocked her head around just in time to see the ball drift lazily away. Taking its own sweet time, she thought. Ruby missed the ball, flailing around.

Then the wall smacked her and she felt a hard rap to the neck.

Rachel woke up staring at the ceiling. Ruby’s face loomed. “You okay?”

She went fuzzily back to looking at the ceiling forecourt. Better than Ruby, for sure. “Tsk,” she said mildly. “Looks like you… don’t get that point… after all.”