April (26 page)

"You don't have to 'Sir' me if you are comfortable with something else. I know I probably look older than the rocks to you, but my coworkers all called me Happy, or if you want to call me Gramps like April it's fine too. Not many white haired oldsters around, so I'm comfortable with it. Right now is between shifts and the corridors are not very busy," Gramps mused with pursed lips. "You don't want to advertise this little project either, do you?"

"No," April quickly agreed. "It's sort of confidential."

"I guessed it might be," he said with a smile. "Why don't you meet me up at the bearing gate and I'll help you move your stuff in and place it now. We're going to be working on the scooter your brother is getting soon, so I want to keep things clear, to bring it inside the room. Say an hour? Or do you need more time?"

Jeff nodded yes to an hour and April agreed and closed her pad up.

"Can you two get these boxes packed up and I'll finish these other two lasers so you can take them?" Jeff asked.

Heather assured him she had it under control and sent April off to enlist her mom, while Barak showed up eager to see Jeff do the assembly.

Tucked in one of the low overhead areas was a stack of collapsed foam board boxes, with various shipping company logos. A few moments work with some tape hid the nature of their cargo from prying eyes and checked them clean for inventory chips and bar codes. Sylvia disappeared to the far side of the suite and came back riding a two-wheeled scooter, such as postal workers and security people used dirt side. It looked well worn, but moved silently and stood balanced firmly on its gyros when she stepped off.

Loosening a catch on each side, she pulled each wheel out so the platform between them was wide enough to stack the boxes between the wheels, instead of just space to stand. Heather sat high on the boxes as if they were a seat, grasped the handlebars to drive and was anxious to go.

The corridors were as deserted as April's gramps predicted. Mostly it was automated delivery vehicles and the few people they did see, they gave no reason to remember them. The corridor outside Heather's door ran up station all the way to the end bulkhead. They left the scooter parked beside the elevator, after tucking its wheels back narrow. There was little chance anyone in M3 would bother it and it was too stupid to find its way home without a rider.

On the elevator they silently drew a couple Velcro straps across their boxes and hooked a toe under one of the foot loops, before April hit the button for the center line stop. The elevator moved very slowly and a voice message reminded them their apparent weight would be disappearing at the stop selected. When the door opened at the axis of rotation, April was gratified to see her gramps had changed into a bland work shirt, which would not vividly imprint itself on anyone's memory they passed.  They each herded a taped together pair of boxes out of the door.

The rotation this close to the center provided so little acceleration it was hard to notice even near the edge of the room. The gate into the nonrotating section looked like a big clothes dryer drum, wide enough to allow some fairly big pieces of freight to be guided across. Much bigger than the passenger gate at the other end of the station. Both ends of the cylinder had a handrail around it. In the middle, near the seal, were some recessed points for a rigger to clip lines on anything so massive it needed to be spun up, to match the section it was being moved into. Some scrapes and dings in the wall, showed where such jobs had proved difficult. There were ghosts of graffiti layers washed away all along the line separating the two sections. The opportunity to have your graffiti animated along the seal line was too much for some to resist.

"I'll go across and you can toss your stuff to me," April's gramps offered and jumped. Sylvia had taped the boxes together in pairs and April noted approvingly how Jeff anchored himself with one foot and gave each box a twist as he propelled it across so it arrived at her gramps hands matching his rotation. Her gramps grabbed two between his knees and took off down the corridor before Heather and she had even gone across. Jeff had jumped across with the last of the two mated boxes, but when the three of them followed they found it difficult to keep up with her grandfather. His experience at working in zero G showed in his smooth motions, with no wasted corrections or bounces off the walls. Some of his show of speed had to be a guy thing, because they had a young man with them. He had always held back and gone slow when he was just with her, but he never got out of sight ahead.

When they came to the cubic, he took long enough unlocking they caught up. He had both an old fashioned keyed lock and a taste pad to satisfy. When the door opened Heather and Jeff were both surprised it was a regular full airlock, not just a safety door like at a residence. Although it was a fairly spacious lock, they had to cycle through two people and a box stack at a time. The first cycle was pretty snug. April and Heather came through to find Jeff asking about the reason for a lock.

"If you have a pressure safety door, it means you have an inspector snooping in your cubic once a year for the insurance and have to get permission to evacuate the room," Gramps explained. "With a triple redundant controls on a Mitsubishi door, instead of residential level seals, we do our own inspections and drop pressure anytime it pleases us. We're going to have April and Bob's scooter in here soon and probably work on it in vacuum on occasion."

Jeff looked over the room appraising. "I'm not sure you can fit a scooter in here and seal it back up." The room was about ten meters deep and half the dimension square on the end. There was a structural brace around the entire outside wall and the studs and nuts were marked with a safety yellow paint, marking them as life critical components, just like the hand wheel on a valve which went to vacuum.

A single person coffin lock was mounted in the corner of the plate, making up the outer wall skin. There was an old-fashioned keypad lock in the inner door of the tiny lock. Someone could get in for safety sake and get to pressure and com, but they could not enter the room unless they were family and had the combo.

"You're right. You can't get the whole thing in here. What most people don't know, is almost all the scooters are built with a joint in the middle. The frames have flanges at the middle point and most of the lines and cables have a joint of some kind at the middle. Now it's true, when they run a new line or wire, a lot of the maintenance guys will just run it right through and not put a splice there. They figure it is one more connection to go bad and if they need to split the scooter they can cut it when the time comes. Still they are pretty easy to split."

"There are a lot of scooters bumped real hard and often either the front or the back is smashed and the other half is salvaged. Bob and April are getting or old freight pusher engine, with a VIP cab on front. One fellow we see, once in a while here, is out of the Chinese station and he has two center sections, an extra fuel tank section and an extra cargo hold, with a four man pressurized cabin in front. The thing is as long as a space plane and jury-rigged every which way, but it makes him money for sure."

"Why don't you bring those boxes over to the corner there opposite the coffin? We have a little manifold in the bulkhead there," Happy pointed out. "Just a thicker plate welded in with a variety of pipe taps on both sides so you can get vacuum inside or route stuff under pressure out to a scooter docked outside. If you just tack your boxes in place with a couple balls of epoxy, or double sided tape they should be fine. Just stay in the corner and leave the middle of the bulkhead open."

"I can hook them with 4mm stainless tubing. All I need is one line and I'll tee to each box," Jeff told him. "They're all loaded now with reels of foil and they will go through a heat up and purge and then process the material. It should be ready to reload in about 3 days. Do you think you can come back and let me service them?" Jeff asked.

"Oh sure. Let me know and we'll meet up here. Maybe by then you'll get to see April's scooter, if her brother gets the delivery pushed ahead like he's trying. 240 volt power?" Gramps asked, offering a power extension.

"Yeah they don't pull much power after they bake out." Jeff seemed embarrassed to be mooching power. He took the offered box and plugged the cords into it twisting the connectors until it clicked and locked in place. The boxes all displayed an amber light blinking and Jeff seemed satisfied.

"So what is this scooter like?" Jeff asked. "Are you going to do much work on it?"

April saw her chance. "If you could look at the plans with Gramps I'd really appreciate it. Bob and I want the scooter for a courier business, but any changes to make it better for the business, would also make it much more useful and survivable, if there is trouble like we think. If you can give it better delta-v or ability to protect itself, that would be great. It might be an important asset for the three of us."

Gramps looked concerned. "If there is fighting over the rock, the best way to be safe with any small craft is to stay out of it, or head for some neutral spot and lay low 'til it's all over. No matter what you do, a construction scooter is no match for a military space plane."

April decided now was a good time to explain what the boxes were going to be producing. She pulled one of the extra lasers off her belt and stated how it was powered and explained  how Jeff's fusion device might benefit their scooter. "We'd like you to have this," she finished and handed him the open laser she had been demonstrating.

Her gramps took it and folded it shut, than opened it again obviously pleased. "Thanks little gal. I'll set up a target here to try it. He slid his hand down inside his baggy pants past his crotch to the inside of his leg and came up with a flat very slender gray pistol. "I better leave this here in my tool box. If Jon catches me with
two
pistols on me, I'll never talk my way out of it."

April was laughing so hard they had to let her run down before she could speak. "I can't tell you how many people I am finding out have weapons squirreled away, I never would have suspected. Don't ask who else, but it's hilarious."

"Well a lot of us who grew up groundside saw things get pretty rough before we came up." Her gramps explained. "We don't feel too comfortable without at least access to a gun stashed away, but I imagine every time they talk on the news about trouble with the Rock, they make somebody decide to move 'em where they are handier. I do appreciate the new pistol. I have my doubts if my little .12 caliber could punch through an armored suit, but from what you say, this thing will fry one," he said happily, patting the case on his belt.

"What kind is it, Happy?" Jeff asked of the slim gun and tried the new name out awkwardly.

"It's a Russian gun, takes 3mm caseless ammo. They usually are tipped with depleted uranium but that makes it too easy to detect passing security, so this is loaded with malleable tungsten bullets, which have a tungsten carbide tip to help it penetrate. One nice thing is it holds 36 rounds in a cassette."

He pulled the clear plastic clip from the handle. The slender black projectiles had a creamy white propellant rod attached to the back of each by a short ceramic band. Happy went to a workbench and opened a toolbox to put the gun away.

"And this is wood!" Jeff said in disbelief. Reaching out and feeling the side.

"Yeah, it's my own grandfather's tool box. He was a machinist all his life and left it to me. I promised I'd keep it and I have. It's Oak," he added. The tag said Gerstner, Dayton Ohio. There was a little diamond shaped mirror on the inside of the green felt lined lid when he opened it. He opened a plastic fitted case and put the pistol in and secured it with an elastic strap, before closing the lid with several latches.

Happy put his pad on the bench and told it to talk to a big film screen unrolled on the wall. A drawing of a scooter with various sections and sub-assemblies showed. "Take a copy of this on your pad and you can study what we have to work with. If you had to make a fusion generator about two or three times the size of the one you have already made, could you do it? Or link several of them together to get at least a megawatt? If you can, I would be interested in an auxiliary propulsion unit for this scooter, using them."

"I have the dies and everything made for the size we already have. I can make them bigger or smaller within limits, by how long I make the strip. Of course when you roll it up it will be bigger around. Like this - Jeff demonstrated with his hands around a circle in the air, about 100mm across. After we run off this batch, I can stock it to make a roll which will generate a couple hundred Kilowatt each and I should be able to get four from one box loading. You'd want to run them all full blast and save the excess in one of my accumulators for peak demand."

"How about shielding? Deuterium - deuterium can react two ways I remember and one reaction creates a neutron. If your generator sheds neutrons we'll need to keep it far from the cabin which will be tough to shield and after it has run a bit all the stuff around it will be hot."

"The way the generator works the reaction is all the one which makes neutrons or all the other clean one. So obviously I made it to promote the safer reaction. It may occasionally have an event go to the other form, but so very rarely it would be hard to detect the flux. Much less build up a noticeably hot mechanism."

"Okay, if you give me four and the storage for them, how much power can I draw to use for propulsion, either to heat reaction mass or to run a plasma drive?" Happy asked.

"Well, you'd have about a megawatt to pull continuously and say about another 20 Meg you could pull for a half-hour at a time max. Is it enough power for everything?"

"Twenty one megawatt," April's grandpa said, punching some numbers in his pad. He seemed stunned for a moment. "Yeah, even if we don't have a real efficient drive, the frame is only designed for 9 G on a straight line thrust and most of the sub-assemblies are not mounted for the same level of thrust. The frame is really over engineered.
Was
over engineered." He corrected. "We are going to have to examine every system added since the original design and see if it is bolted or bonded on the frame well enough and if it's own container is strong enough. I'd hate to see somebody really twist this thing's tail and have something rip out of the instrument panel and hit them in the chest after a meter fall at 7 or 8 G."