Rocket! An Ell Donsaii story #4) (16 page)

“OK, just a sec.” He unrolled the burrito, scraped off some of the filling, tore a strip off the tortilla and rolled it up smaller. This time the ring slid over it. He laid it on a piece of paper and rolled it up, handing it to Sheila. “OK?”

She picked up the ring and slid it over the burrito and paper. “Yep. I think your salsa is a little watery though. These shouldn’t be ‘sloppy’ at all, OK?”

“OK,” he said, again sounding dubious. He took the two burritos back and put them in the microwave to warm them up. “They’re gonna want more to drink with dry burritos. I
sure
don’t have any
cups
that’ll fit through your ring.” Jose raised an eyebrow at her.

“Hmmm, I’ll have to ask about drinks, but we may not be able to use them.” Sheila took the two burritos and headed back into D5R.

Ell had been working out some issues with connecting the astronauts, through PGR Comm’s servers, to the rest of the net and world when Sheila came in with the two burritos and set them next to her. She glanced at them and then said, “Dr. Slager, I believe we have a treat for you. I’m going to activate one of the 5 cm ports and push something through to you.”

Ell had Allen energize the port and she slid the burrito through it.

Slager grabbed it as it floated out his end, noting the warmth. He unwrapped the end and the smell broke out into the module. “Whoa! A hot burrito?!”

Taussan turned toward him, eyebrows lifted. “Really?”

The second burrito floated out. Slager passed it to Taussan then took a bite of his, “Awesome!” he mumbled around a mouthful.

Ell said, “We have a ‘taco truck’ outside D5R ready to make burritos to order for you astronauts as long as I’m right that you’re able to eat burritos when you’re weightless?” She picked up the menu, rolled it into a tube and slid it through the port too. “You can pick from the menu but the guy has agreed to roll up anything in a tortilla that you want him to.”

Slager looked at the end of his burrito, “Whoa, fresh tomatoes in this! Awesome! It has been sooo long since we’ve had anything fresh!” He turned and bellowed to the Space Station in general. “Hey! A taco truck’s pulled up outside, come place your orders!”

Sheila turned to the grinning Ell, “Jose is making the burritos a little ‘dry’ so that they won’t squirt or dribble juice out into the Station. He suggested that they would need more to drink with drier food. I can’t think of a way to make a coke fit through this sized port though.”

Ell frowned, “Ohhh, they don’t drink carbonated beverages in space anyway. Without gravity you can’t burp out the carbonation and all the little bubbles just travel through your intestines. Maybe lemonade?”

A female voice in the background said, “Oh yeah! I’d love a fresh lemonade. Could you send a hose through and we could fill some drink bags with it?”

Ell frowned, “Maybe? I’ll talk to the guy.”

Ell went out to talk to Jose and after a bit she and Sheila came back in with his soda dispenser set up without its carbonation tank. It had a water line and a syrup dispenser that dispensed several different syrups for different flavors of soda. It also dispensed un-carbonated lemonade, limeade, several juices and tea. Sheila went back out to the truck with the astronauts’ burrito orders. Ell hooked up a water line and fed the dispenser nozzle through the port tube. The nozzle was a tight fit for the 50mm port. Ell shoved and wiggled it into the tube leading up to the actual port on her side. For a moment she thought she’d have to pull it back out and shave off some of the plastic but then it suddenly slipped through the port. Ell felt a burning, stinging sensation as the finger she’d had been pushing it with plunged momentarily into the port behind the dispenser. At first she thought her finger had struck something on the other side that had injured it. Then she realized that the finger had crossed the port interface into the Station and something about crossing the interface had caused the burning. When she pulled the finger back out it continued to burn for a moment, even though it looked completely normal. Ell shook the finger a few times as the burning sensation faded away.
Hmmm, if it always feels like that to go through a port, it wouldn’t be very pleasant to travel that way,
she thought.
Maybe that’s why the ant was so excited?

Roger had arrived and he, Ell, and Sheila watched the take from Slager’s AI video camera as the delighted astronauts filled drink bags with lemonade, OJ, tea and even one bag of flat Coke.

Ell told Roger about the burning sensation when her finger had gone through the port momentarily and he said, “I put a mouse through a port like you suggested and he flopped around for a bit, then seemed pretty excited for another minute or two. He seems fine now though.”

Ell said, “Well if your whole body felt like it was on fire like my finger did when it went through, I can imagine you’d be pretty excited alright.”

Roger said, “What am I gonna do with the mouse now? I didn’t think of that when I bought him at the pet store.”

Ell frowned, “I think you need to get whatever we need to keep him around the rest of his life. We need to make sure that going through a port doesn’t make you sick or shorten your life span. Call him ‘John Glenn.’ He’ll be famous as the first ‘port traveler.’ How long do mice live anyway?”

Roger said, “I don’t know. I guess I’d better get back to the pet store for a cage and food etc.”

Allan said, “Mice live an average of 18 months.”

“I think you really ought to get twenty mice. Put 10 mice through a port and keep 10 as controls so we can compare average life spans between the two groups and to be sure they all stay healthy? Someday we may want to put a human through a port and we’ll want some idea whether it’s OK.”

Roger said, “18 months is a long time to wait. I’ll find some shorter lived animals to put through the ports too.” He paused, then said, “My AI says worker bees live about 4 weeks. I’ll see if I can get some freshly hatched workers from a beekeeper and put half of them through a port. Hmmm, I’ll have to figure out what to feed bees…”

Roger wandered off and Sheila came back in with a bag full of fresh, hot burritos and started shoving them through the port to the delighted astronauts.

Slager said, “Ms. Donsaii…”

Ell said, “Please call me ‘Ell.’”

Slager said, “Well, you should call me ‘Dave’ then.”

“Ouch! That makes me uncomfortable. I’ve been taught to respect my elders.”

“Now you’re making me feel old. That’s not respectful! Anyway, I wanted to again express our gratitude for your rescue.”

“We were so excited to be able to help. We’d been working on these ports for quite a while and when we suddenly realized they might be able to help you guys in a time of crisis it really gave us something to work towards. The group had been working long hours and sleeping here on cots trying to get this whole thing to work before you ran out of air so I hope you don’t mind them taking the day off yesterday?”

“Oh, my goodness no. I’ve worked to a few deadlines in my time too. You’d completely stabilized our situation here by Saturday afternoon.”

“Well, we want to make sure we’ve done everything we can to make you safe and to make things better for you guys. We do appreciate, even more now, the risks you’ve been taking in our name out there on the Station. So, are you fully bunkered up with water and oxygen in case something should happen to our ability to supply you?”

“I
think
we’re full up, my AI’ll check. But what in the world could happen to you?”

“Well, I don’t know, but personally I’ve been kidnapped a few times and we were the victims of some industrial espionage a while back. Maybe, a fire? Who knows, but if something
should
happen to us we don’t want you guys to immediately be back in desperate straits.”

“Thanks for your concern. My AI tells me that our gauges are reading full for all of our water and oxygen storage systems now. We’re a little iffy on food but the flat packages of preserved food that NASA normally sends up here won’t fit through a two inch port.”

Ell said, “Sheila got you some stuff at the store. Let me pull back the soda nozzle and hose.” Ell tugged on the hose. “Can you push from your side. Be careful not to stick your finger through the port, it hurts.”

Slager said, “Let me brace myself so I can push.”

Ell put her hand on the port so she could pull harder. Suddenly with a snap the hose came loose and fluid started spraying everywhere! Ell realized something had cut the hose. She turned the spray down into a wastebasket and reached over to the main line, turning off the valve there. Sheila turned off the water at the sink and Ell cut power to the pump for the syrups.

Slager was saying, “What happened? Something cut the hose right across. Is there a sharp edge in the port?”

Ell wiped off her end of the hose. It was sheared cleanly across. “Um, I think I wiggled one of the wires supplying the field to the port down here and the port shut off. Glad I didn’t do
that
when my finger was in the port! Did it make a mess up there?” she asked, looking at the water and syrup dripping off the surfaces in front of her.

“No, just a few drops here and there.”

Ell leaned down and looked into the port, seeing Slager’s eye looking back at her on the other side. “I guess wiggling the wire only cut it off momentarily and it’s back working again. We’ll send some food through now and clean up our mess in a minute.” Ell gestured Sheila at the port. “Don’t touch the wires.”

Slager was astonished to see a banana wiggle through the 5 cm port, followed by ten more. Then packets of beef jerky held together with rubber bands, followed by bundles of sweet peas, little baggies full of blueberries, blackberries, cherries, strawberries and several salamis and pepperonis.

Ell said, “We’re getting some dried fruit and more preserved meats that come in narrow diameters. We really don’t know much about supplying you guys though, so we’re thinking you should make some requests. Also you could talk to NASA about sending us some of the ‘space food’ they’ve worked out for the station. Well, that’s if they can package it to less than a five centimeter diameter anyway. Then we could send you a ‘back up’ supply that you could store in case you were cut off again for some reason.”

“Oh, but we’d
so
much rather eat the fresh food you’re sending us!”

“We thought you would, and we’ve contracted with Jose to bring his taco truck every day to make you whatever you want that can be rolled up into tortillas. If you give us ‘grocery lists’ of food you want—if it will fit through the port we’ll send that up too. I’m just talking about a backup plan of preserved food from NASA in case the ports fail or something happens to us.”

“Well, I appreciate your concern but I sure hope nothing happens to you guys! I’ve been thinking about how the ports change everything to do with space science. For starters we’ll be able to send up materials for research experiments and send the results back down. Also, with an endless supply of fuel we could fire up the thrusters and move the Station to a higher or otherwise different orbit. Is five centimeters or two inches the limit on the size of port you can make?”

“Well, no. But a port’s energy requirements go up as the square of its diameter. These five-centimeter ports require about 8,000 watts to keep them open and quite a bit more power just to transfer stuff through because of the relative velocity of the Station. Also about five watts of power have to be supplied up on your end to energize the field of the port components that’re up there. Right now we’re doing that with a fuel cell that has its own pair of small ports supplying oxygen and hydrogen to it. That fuel cell and its own tiny ports are a big part of the size of the port ‘devices’ you have up there. However, a ten centimeter or four inch port should require about 30,000 watts, plus the velocity change watts, and need 10 watts supplied at your end. We’ll have to build power conditioners and electronics to supply that much power in the correct format to energize the port on our end.
And
we’ll need to make a much bigger fuel cell to supply your end. We’re working on it, but it’ll take us a while.”

“Hmm, we could supply 10 watts up here. We have plenty of energy from our solar cells.”

“Maybe? It has to be very smooth DC power, which I expect the solar cells could supply though the fuel cells do provide a great source. The biggest problem is that the port has to be constantly supplied with a little bit of power to ‘stabilize’ it, even when it isn’t open and transferring materials. The fuel cell does that, even when the port is in transit, so it’s easier for us to make the fuel cell and send it up. But, we’re working on it. Then we could send you canned food!”

“Oh boy! We’re looking forward to that!” Slager said in a facetious tone. “But canned food would be a great back up.”

“Well, we’re also working on how to send your replacement nozzle for the CRV up there so you’d have a way to escape if you had to.”

“You can’t put that through a port! It must be about a half meter in narrowest dimension.”

“Well, no. We’ve ordered larger rocket nozzles and are trying to work out methods for launching our own larger rockets. Hopefully ones that would be big enough to carry the CRV nozzle up there to you.”

“Oh! Yeah! That’d be great! Have you talked to NASA about it? I think ILX currently has an exclusive contract on deliveries to the Station.”

“We’re currently finding NASA a little hard to talk to. We’re never sure
who
to talk to and they view me as just a kid. Every time we call them we get the run around. But we’re building the rocket anyway and can just drop the nozzle off on our way to somewhere else, free of charge. It shouldn’t impinge on the ILX contract if we don’t charge for the service. We
would
need to get them to let us
have
the nozzle to take up there though. I guess I’ll
have
to talk to them once we’ve gotten to that point.”

“How are you financing all this if you won’t even have a contract for delivery?!”