The public announcement system blared out across the huge cavern.  'Ladies and Gentlemen, please take your seats.  The first Zero G soccer match of the season begins in fifteen minutes.'

Miranda felt panic as she passed through the door, and left behind the artificial gravity of the rest of the LaGrange space station.  Here at the hub, the gravity generators had been turned off, to allow for the most exciting sporting spectacles ever seen.  In the most innovative tourist trap ever devised, games like soccer, squash, table tennis, gymnastics and synchronised dry swimming pulled in the crowds.  And the dollars.

'What do I do?'  Floating helplessly, Miranda asked her husband, who was an old hand on the space station, for help.

'Just be careful not to let go of these loops in the wall, and you'll be OK,' he advised his nervous bride.  'Pull yourself along gently now from loop to loop until you reach our row of seats then grab the seat loops instead.  Don't worry, I'll be right behind you.'

Miranda wasn't too sure she would make it to their seats, as the weightlessness made her feel definitely queasy, but she'd die before admitting that to Travis.  She'd take another motion sickness tablet when he wasn't looking, and she'd damned well cope.  She wasn't about to be shipped back to the Earth in disgrace, and be known as a groundhog forever.  Travis mustn't be forced to leave the station he'd grown up in.  No marriage could survive that kind of stress.

Forgetting that although she had no weight, she still had heaps of momentum, she managed to pull herself forward too hard, and banged into the man floating in front of her, sending him in turn into the stern of the woman in front of him.  Scarlet faced, she stammered her apologies, and accepted the steadying grasp of Travis's hand on her trailing foot.

Just when she felt she could take no more, they found their seats, and the nightmare was over, at least that part of it.

'How do I sit down, dear?' she asked.  'I can't lower my bum to the seat.'

'It's easy, sweetie.  Just slide your feet into the loops down there to steady yourself, then grab the seat arms and pull yourself down.  If you fasten your seat belt, you'll stay in place with no problems.'

As soon as he had seen his bride settled into her seat, Travis zipped away, ignoring the loops.  He made a graceful sight as he soared above the heads of the seated spectators, and Miranda wondered if she would ever achieve that easy familiarity with the lack of gravity, as she surreptitiously swallowed a tablet.  Travis returned a few minutes later with their drinks in squeeze bulb containers designed to prevent the contents from floating around the arena in messy liquid blobs.  

He tucked them into the string pouches on the backs of the seats in front of them so they wouldn't float off, and fastened his seat belt just as the audience lights lowered, and the tiers of seats completely surrounding the arena faded into the darkness, leaving only the globe shaped playing area in the centre of the cavern brightly lit by the banks of floodlights.

The public announcement system came on again, and introduced the teams.  'In the red strip, we have our own LaGrange Larrikins, while in the blue shirts, our visitors, the Rings of Steel from Titan.  They've come a long way for this match, so Ladies and Gentlemen, please give them a big hand.'

Travis whispered, 'Each team member has a waist belt with a dozen tiny propulsion motors set in it, so he can control his speed and direction.  The game has much the same rules as normal soccer, except that penalties are thrown, not kicked, as it's not easy to kick in Zero G.  The offside rule is a nightmare for the linesmen to watch out for because of the depth of the playing area, that's why there are three linesmen on each side of the pitch instead of the usual one.'

Miranda was feeling somewhat better now, and whispered, 'What happens if those motors fail?  A player could come sailing into the crowd.  At least in ordinary soccer you don't end up with a lapful of centre forward!'

Travis laughed, partly in appreciation of the humour, but mostly because he hadn't been blind to Mirandas struggles on the way to their seats.  He admired her fast adaptation to the strange circumstances, and knew that with her strong spirit, she'd soon fit into life on the station.

He grabbed for her hand.  'Sweetheart, I think you're going to enjoy this,' he said, just as the whistle went for the game to get under way.