Riddled Space Page 12

  Olaf grunted, and handed her something to dry her eyes. Kiki grasped the handle of the hatch, checked the gauges, and pulled open the thick metal door to The Factory.

  The music wasn't your standard club scene on Earth. For one, the amplifiers and speakers weren't very loud or powerful. For another, the tenants were doing some exacting manufacturing processes in some of the cubics that lined all six walls of the hexagonally-shaped central axis, and they didn't want pressure waves from thumping music to mess up their expensive materials. So The Factory was not very large, people talked quietly, and the music was more thought provoking than thundering.

  Panjar was floating in the midst of a rigidly connected arrangement of sound equipment. Actual musical instruments were non-existent on the Chaffee, with the exception of a couple of harmonicas. When musicians jammed in The Factory, it was either with synthesizers, samplers, or other audio equipment. Nobody strummed a guitar.

  Odd-sounding melodies emerged from the speakers surrounding Panjar. He had adopted a theater-in-the-round approach, where the listeners drifted in a globe with him in the center. Here and there, thin lines of cable stretched from one wall to every second wall, producing secondary hexagons that the audience could hold or clip to or use to launch themselves into a slow glide across the space.

  New spacehands, just up from Earth, were warned away from The Factory, as the bewildering array of listeners arranged every possible way and tumbling through the air invariably led to vertigo. It was only when they could easily talk to someone upside down were they allowed in. Some people never saw The Factory.

  Panjar was a fan of chaotic 'found sound', regular sounds endemic to the Chaffee—the suction of the shower bag hose, the low rumble of a functioning airco, the hum of electrical cables. He integrated this with something he called 'the structural music of the Chaffee'. He had found a package of spare strain gauges, glued them onto the main load-bearing members of the station, and recorded the vibrations the station made as it orbited the Earth.

  “I once asked him what made the noises,” said Olaf. “Twenty minutes of my life I will never get back.”

  “You have no romance in your soul,” said Kiki. “I did the same thing. Did you know that when we fly over the night-side of the Earth, the station contracts from the cold? A lot of the high-pitched sounds are from that. More is from solar wind currents rushing past the recording wires.”

  “Shhh!” said Lois. “He's doing something new.”

  Indeed he was. Panjar, sensing the restlessness in his audience, switched things up. A syncopated beat pulsed from the speakers. “This is a year of Chaffee,” he explained. “Each beat is one orbit, vastly sped up. Enjoy.”

  To Lois, it was perfect for acrobatic dancing amongst the cables. Olaf knew his limitations, and rather than chase her through the webwork, opted to stay in one location, adrift in the air, and turn to meet her in a freefall pas de deux. He had 'danced' with her before. Massing so much more than she led to some interesting moves. Panjar noticed and altered the music pouring out of the undersized speakers. He was a master, one with his machinery, coaxing out just the right sequences for the dancers.

  The rest of the audience gathered on behind Panjar, leaving a large clear space in front of him, to give Lois and Olaf more room to work. Panjar was in his element, crooning to his audio gear, living five seconds in the future, his hands a blur as he pulled sound samples and wove them together in a seamless whole. This odd little man who talked to machinery and had names for each major piece of gear on the station was also a technical audio and entertainment wizard, abetted by the athletic Lois and her partner Olaf.

  He wound the composition down, and Lois, panting with effort, reduced her dance moves until everyone was at rest just as the sound ended. There was a pause of two beats, and applause broke out from the crowd. Lois assayed a sweeping curtsy. Olaf, suddenly embarrassed, gave a short nod. Kiki had found some shop towels and had squeezed bulbs of iced tea waiting for them both when they sailed to meet him where two cables met.

  All in all, a typical Friday night in orbit above the Earth. Inside The Factory, Lois and Olaf and Kiki and Panjar, along with all of the other attendees, gave little thought to the sudden death that lurked just outside the airlock, or the speeding pebbles whose impact just might let all their air out.

  Commanders' Call

  UNSOC Space Station Roger B. Chaffee, November 12 2081, 1400 hrs

  Lisa Daniels tucked the wayward strand of hair back behind her ear and leaned forward into the camera in her ready room. The laser-based photophone was the most secure way to talk to the UNSOC Lunar Colony Michael Collins.

  “Commander Jeng, it's nice to see you again.”

  The three second delay to the Moon and back had long ago ceased to annoy her. She used it to multitask, an essential trait for the commander of the only space station in orbit. She looked away from the camera to the Station Status monitor.

  “Ah, Commander Daniels. Likewise. Your smiling face lights up my day. To what do I owe this happy interruption to my tedious life?”

  Lisa smiled. Jeng Wo Lee and she went way back, to when they were newly commissioned officers on this very station. He was well married, as was she, but they both realized that while what she called 'the courting game' was completely innocent, it added needed humor and good cheer to what was, in reality, a hard and dangerous business.

  “I wanted to thank you for the latest upgrade on the MoonCans you've been sending us. It is using far less LOX to make rendezvous, which means more for us on the station.” LOX was one of several essentials to life on the space station. “How's the computater holding up on your end? Ours is fine.” Reminded, she checked the LOX storage numbers. Everything was within limits.

  Lee chuckled. “We're green at our end. Again with the computater?” The encryption software that allowed them to speak privately was working as designed.

  “Good. I’m still nervous about these sleds. How did everyone manage to keep them secret from UNSOC for so long?”

  “UNSOC is concerned with one thing and one thing only: lining their pockets. You know that. They couldn't care less what happens up here, so long as the money spigot keeps flowing.” His eyes darkened. “So, when my Chief Engineer gets killed, all that damned Subby could think of is how it would affect LOX delivery to his golden goose.”

  “Lee, please! You know that he's the exception. The rest of UNSOC isn't as corrupt as the Director-General Subramanyan Venderchanergee.”

  “You say it so well. I can never make it through all those syllables. I will say that I trust the ground controllers utterly. At least they've been up here, working, same as us. But the rest of those fat-bottomed, danger-shy bureaucrats...” he controlled himself with a shudder. “But enough of that. We were talking MoonCans.”

  “Yes. I never realized how much better steel is than iron. Congratulate McCrary for us here. Roque is badgering me to have you make up a special MoonCan - with just enough LOX to get here, and packed with asteroid material. Can you do that?” Lisa dragged a file from her outbound folder, adding it to the send queue. It was a joke image, with Roque's specific request hidden in the pixels.

  “I'll have to ask McCrary. And we'll have to make some alterations to the Can's guidance. Rock's denser than LOX, and the guidance computer's going to have a breakdown if we don't tell it. Still, it shouldn't be long. What's he got in mind?” Lee showed a thumbs up, indicating that he had received the file.

  “You aren't going to believe this. Plastic.”

  “Plastic.” Lee stared into the pickup, his face dubious.

  “He thinks he can make nylon out of the asteroid. High carbon content, and there's probably some hydrogen compounds in it. Roque's all fired up to make plastic.” Lisa tried to keep still on her perch. Floating around when others could not was rude.

  “Nylon, huh? You know, that might solve the sled's final phase problem.”

  “He seems to think so. Best of all, he thinks that once he gets it g
oing, he can send you guys the specs, and you can do it there and just send the finished product down here.”

  Lee scowled slightly. “As if we don't have enough to do.” He brightened quickly, though. “Has he made any headway on the KREEP material we sent him last month?”

  Lisa chuckled. UNSOC was screaming for the rare earth elements found in the KREEP terranes on the Moon. Made up of Potassium (K), Rare Earth Elements (REE), and Phosphorus (P), KREEP minerals from the Moon would revolutionize many industries on Earth. The main bottleneck was the location of the deposit on the Moon—a thousand kilometers from the Collins. Eddie had made a special run with a couple of Moondogs in OTV Betsy to do some quick prospecting a few months ago. Eddie flew a couple of hundred kilos of KREEP rock back to Roque on the Chaffee during his last run.

  “Lee, he's beside himself with joy. I swear he can pull a rabbit out of a hat, even if the only thing he has is a fez. See this?” She held up a crystal rod, fifty centimeters long, ten centimeters in diameter, and tinted light yellow. “This is the main fusing element to a YAG laser, made entirely from Lunar materials. Can you imagine what this means to Earth, especially since we can grow YAG rods of almost any shape, size, and with absolute control of crystal structure? Low cost, high efficiency YAG lasers will revolutionize the manufacturing industry back home. Roque's even thinking of using them as a way to speed the breakdown of CO2 here on the Chaffee. Run laser light through a glass pipe full of CO2, and you get carbon nanotubes and oxygen.”

  “Impressive. But, the nearest KREEP is over a thousand miles from here,” said Lee. “No way we can mine it and transport the raw ore with Betsy.”

  “You might have to start a new colony,” Lisa said.

  “UNSOC will never fund that, even if we were mining gold there. Haven't you heard the rumors? They're thinking of scaling back the Collins, just keeping the oxygen works and shipping everyone else back home.”

  “Don't you believe it for a second, Lee. I had to attend the budget hearings a few months ago. There's not a trace of truth to that rumor, so rest easy. Besides, when this little rod falls into Subby's hands, he will fight tooth and nail to keep the Collins up and running.” Lisa swatted her left hand with the rod, looking for all like a school teacher surveying a class of unruly kids.

  “If you say so, Lisa.”

  “If there's money in it, ole Subby will keep it alive. Look at the Chaffee,” Lisa said, slapping the bulkhead beside her. “A lot of this is original ISS. It's coming up on one hundred years old, and UNSOC keeps pumping money into it. Why? Because it rents space on it to the folks who do microgravity manufacturing.”

  Lee chuckled. “Teach your grandpa to suck eggs, Lisa. Been there, remember?”

  “Sorry, Lee,” she smiled. “I'll never get those budget battles out of my system. I feel like I have to keep justifying my existence.” She sighed. “It's the only game in town, though. If the Chaffee closed, microgravity manufacturing comes to a halt. It's too expensive to live and work up here, especially starting from scratch. If the US and Russia hadn't put this white elephant up here in the first place, we might never have gotten any kind of space manufacturing.”

  “Lisa...” he warned. “You're preaching again. How are the sleds?”

  “Right, the sleds. We've finished with everything but the terminal phase. And Roque thinks the nylon is the answer to that.” Lisa smiled broadly. The sleds were a perpetual worry spot for her.

  “Environmental, avionics, propulsion? All done?” Lee was astounded.

  The lack of lifeboats for the two hundred souls up on the station had been worrying commanders of both the Chaffee and the Collins for decades. Each commander had consistently appealed to UNSOC for a way to evacuate the Chaffee in the event of a disaster. Subby abhorred spending money on anything that he didn't have to—and that included gear that might never be used.

  About twenty years ago, the commanders changed tactics. The onset of Solar Cycle 28 in 2052, and its projected overabundance of solar flares, helped them sell UNSOC on the idea of the sleds as storm shelters during periods of high solar activity. Once they got the approval to build the sleds using only Lunar materials, construction on the sleds started immediately. The main elements were no sooner fabricated that Commanders and engineers surreptitiously upgraded the shelters to become escape vehicles should the Chaffee ever have to be evacuated. Now they were nearly complete.

  Lisa put her hands on her hips and stretched out her lower back. “Even without the terminal phase portion, we think they could survive an ocean splashdown at 250 miles per hour. The passengers could be in a bad way. It's a nine-gee hit, but it would be better than nothing, which is all UNSOC would give us.”

  “We can thank our lucky stars we've never had to use them yet,” said Lee.

  “Yes we have. As solar shelters during the last Solar Max sunspot cycle.”

  “You know what I mean,” said Lee in mock frustration. “Use them as reentry vehicles.”

  “Yes, I know. The image of those big fat tubs blasting back into the atmosphere gives me the chills.” Lisa shuddered. “I better stop thinking about it.”

  “Anything else, Lisa?” Lee looked at the screens around him.

  “We're still getting good telemetry on the tether launch. It's almost two-thirds of the way there now, so keep an eye on it.”

  “Tell Panjar we're on the lookout for it.”

  Lisa smiled, thinking of the eccentric engineer. “That man is uncanny with the way he understands systems.”

  “Is he still talking to the machinery?” asked Lee. “I remember half the Engineering staff was laughing at him and the other half trying to learn from him when I transshipped through Chaffee two years ago.”

  “He's got almost everything up here named. He eats up all kinds of reading material. You should see his ebook collection. He showed me a story about a novel about how a Space Shuttle saved itself and its cargo through the use of a tether.”

  “They played with that technology in the later years of the US Space Program, didn't they?”

  “Yes, they were trying to launch satellites without upper stage rockets, but the tethers kept getting jammed in their spools. Eventually they gave up on the whole concept.” Lisa took a squeeze bulb of tea and sipped it. “Panjar talked to Roque, and they melted down one of your old iron MoonCans to a single crystal iron rope about three hundred kilometers long. They ran it in and out of here three different times before I agreed to allow them to put a test capsule on the end.”

  “Doesn't that lower the Chaffee in orbit?” Lee asked.

  “Panjar and Roque fitted the attachment point for the test capsule with all kinds of spiky points, then connected the tether to the main power bus of the station. As they reeled the tether out, they pumped current through it. The whole thing became a motor, making up for the slight lowering of the Chaffee in orbit by pushing against the Earth's magnetic field.”

  “Elegant!” Lee said, delighted.

  “Even better, they reversed polarity right after they released the test capsule, draining out the energy they had pumped into the Chaffee until its altitude was the same as before. There was no net change in Chaffee's orbit that UNSOC could detect—and I had the CAPCOMs looking for it, too.

  “Amazing.” Lee sat back in awe.

  “Panjar was hugging himself with delight, patting the housing of the tether reel and chattering to it. I am trying to figure out how to reward him.”

  “The best thing you can do for him is to let him do it again,” said Lee. “For someone like Panjar, that is reward enough.”

  “When we have a load of YAG crystals, we'll send you some.”

  “I thank you in advance. Well, Lisa, it's been wonderful as usual, but I have to figure out how to get you a Can full of rocks so Roque can make those crystals. And nylon, too.”

  “Lee, always a pleasure. Say hello to the family for me. Discon.” Lisa toggled the window closed on her computer console, and the background image of her family reapp
eared. She absently kissed her index finger and touched the image of Shep.

  Never Be Alone

  UNSOC Space Station Roger B. Chaffee, December 12 2081, 1754 hrs

  Life on the Chaffee was fairly routine. Celine would leave her shift in pretty much the same condition she was at the beginning: in a snug-fitting coverall, hair pinned back, cool, and collected. John, on the other hand, would be dirty and disheveled, his coverall spattered with lube and fluids. They would occasionally pass in the hall and nod to each other. John always felt like something spun out of the zero-gee toilet.

  Three months since the last time he had to work on her deck, John was tracing out a defective control circuit. Celine was there, giving him a ghost of a smile as he settled into a space above and behind her.

  “Sorry about bothering you again,” he started out. “I'll be careful not to grease up your area.”

  “Do what you have to do, John, I'll clean it up later. No worries.”

  “You have the cleanest work area on the Station,” he commented, poking in the conduits with a probe. “Nice habit to have. You should see some of the spaces I have to crawl into.”

  He felt a hand on his ankle. “John, really. It's fine.” She had never touched him before.

  Celine was waiting in line at the galley when one of the self-appointed studs approached her. Mr. Big would not take no for an answer, and he was really getting on Celine's nerves. She slipped a banknote out of her coverall, laid it on the table.

  “One hundred bucks to the first one to knock this guy out,” she announced clearly, then pushed back. It took a few guys, but finally, Mr. Big was unconscious. She paid, and sat with the winner for that meal, silently. The point was made.

  John smiled at the memory. Celine misinterpreted it.

  “I knew I shouldn't have touched you,” she said, angrily.