by Kate Rauner
Rica slowly propped herself on her elbows. "It's easier to go down than up. See that flat spot below me? Take the fliers and meet me there. Remember to tell everyone that I was the first skier on Titan, even if I am skiing on my butt."
"I'll tell them you won the gold medal in butt skiing."
He scrambled to the fliers, stood on one with the other hoisted on his shoulder, and flew wide around Rica, careful to avoid flattening her with the blower's downdraft.
When he landed, Rica was on her belly on the next terrace downhill, rubbing her rear end. She started to pull her legs in, then yelped and stretched out flat again.
Fynn's stomach knotted. "What's wrong?"
"Cold." She pressed her glove firmly against the suit. "Every time I start to get up, cold like a dagger stabs me right here."
"Flex so there's loose suit material back there." Fynn dropped to his knees and tugged at the suit with shaky hands. "You've got a slit in your suit."
"Damn. I thought I slid over something sharp."
"Dad told me Titan's cold makes ice hard as granite. Apparently, it's sharp as steel too. But good news. You didn't slice through any heating elements, so you should stay warm."
Rica pulled her knees in again. "Ouch. No way. If I get up, I'll have a frostbit tail."
"You viewed the video on emergency suit repairs, didn't you?"
"Oh, yeah. Sure. A while ago."
The tremble left Fynn's hands, and he swallowed a laugh. This wasn't so bad. "You have a choice, Rica. Keep your glove over the tear while I pull a patch kit from your pocket. Or you grab the kit while I hold your butt."
"Why don't you use your kit?"
"Kits belong to their suits. It's protocol. But, if you insist..."
"Never mind. You get my kit." She twisted her left leg to lift the cargo pockets on the side.
Fynn yanked out the thin plastic boxes and set aside one with a silvery cylindrical clamshell. That was for repairing glove fingers and air hoses. He snapped open the larger box.
"Okay. I'm going to pull material up loosely so the sides of the tear touch. Then you can let go." Fynn lay a square, blue patch over the damage, pressed a matching metal plate on top, and pushed a button on the control strip. "We're lucky. One patch covers the entire tear. All we do is wait until the button turns green."
A comm light blinked near his jawline.
"Fynn, where are you?" It was Drew calling from the Herschel. "Ben's trying to reach you."
Fynn looked around. Walls of orange columns loomed over them on both sides of the chute.
"Out of range, I guess. What's up?"
"Ben's got some weird readings on one of your furnaces. He wants you back at the dome."
"Tell him we're on our way, as soon as the light on Rica's butt turns green."
Drew sighed heavily. "You guys have all the fun."
Chap ter 14
F ynn stood at the furnace control console, one balled fist against his chin. "Yeah, I see it." A chart of the hot air outlet temperature showed a sharp rise.
With the crew on duty huddled around him, Ben frowned at the screen. "That happened in the last half hour."
"I can pull up a twenty-four hour chart," Rica said. "See if we missed this before."
Fynn frowned at her. "Shouldn't you go to the clinic? I'd hate to see anything happen to your pert little butt."
"I'm fine. Your patch saved the day."
Ben stared at the screen without comment, too worried to ask about their trip outside. "The temperature's stabilized, but it's a lot higher than usual."
"The intake valve for dome air could have vibrated closed and reduced the flow." Fynn sighed. "That would be an easy fix. I hope it's not a leak in the heat exchanger."
A crewmate hopped across the platform. "Sorry, Fynn. The intake valve is fine."
Ben scrolled on his sleeve pad. "There aren't any videos about leaks."
"I saw something like this when I interned back on Earth," Fynn said. "Good catch, Ben. You stay here and call me if things change. I'll start diagnostics. If CO2 levels are higher along with the temperature, that'll confirm combustion products are leaking into the hot air duct."
Fynn weaved between bins and half-unloaded pallets followed by the furnace crew. "I'll check levels in the Village dome. You guys, check around the Gravitron and greenhouse, right where the hot air duct vents to the dome. Oh, and let's switch coveralls to True Blue. No reason to draw fire."
He found the bin he was after, retrieved portable monitors, and they set out. Greenhouse vents were in the center aisle, so he paused to watch a crewmate drop the probe through the first grate while her partner glanced around, trying to look casual as he watched for anyone who might interfere. Here and there above them, an arm or leg poked through the dense vegetation, and a small group surrounded an aeroponics column farther down the aisle, but the greenhouse crew was occupied. Less happily, the carbon dioxide level was high. Same at the second vent. Not dangerously so, but Fynn ran a hand through his dark hair.
He'd have to take whichever furnace was causing this offline and let it cool completely. Cycling a furnace through cool-downs and reheats reduced the service life of key components, but it was the only way to repair a heat exchanger. He hadn't started up Number 4, but now it would have to replace whichever furnace was malfunctioning. The fuel depot used a lot of power to manufacture atmosphere and he didn't want to slow progress.
Fynn went on alone to the Village. They'd cut a shallow channel in the massively thick floor to extend a hot air duct to the edge of the tower. Better air mixing that way. Fynn grunted to himself as he remembered the video instructions for that simple job.
As casually as possible, as if he belonged - because, he did, he was Kin - Fynn knelt at the vent and suspended his probe in the airflow. Even dressed in blue, he stood out, with sleeves flopping around his thin arms and his unruly black hair fluttering in the current. A few Kin walked by, ignoring him. Then someone said hello and Fynn nodded a greeting. Not everyone was crazy.
Back in the Mechanics mess hall, Fynn stowed all but one of the monitors, and the crew gathered around. "We need to isolate the furnace with the leaky heat exchanger, and we have this handy device." He pulled a finger-sized cylinder from a pocket. "This is what we used to connect aeration hoses for our algae tanks to the main duct. It'll work just as well to poke a hole so I can drop a probe into the feeder ducts."
"You'll get a blast of hot air in your face," one of the guys said.
"Not if I'm careful. If you all help to cycle the valves, I can pull a reading one duct at a time and figure out which furnace is leaking."
Rica offered to standby, holding the monitor's probe ready, and crewmates found plugs to seal the holes when they finished.
Fynn straddled a junction box that connected to the main floor duct. "Okay guys. Shut the valves."
He closed his fist around the piercing tool, slammed it against a feeder duct to release the conical bit, and yanked it free.
Whummph
A pressure surge knocked Fynn over. His ears rang, and he gasped as he rolled, arms wrapped around his head. Cover plates flew everywhere. The floor heaved and bins toppled. He lurched to his feet, aware of crewmates flying around him.
In a staggering run, he raced to the greenhouse. Flooring lay peeled back around the vents, and people dropped around him from the hydroponic frames. Fynn galloped to the Village dome, to the vent at the tower. When he tried to stand still, the world spun, and he dropped to his knees. He felt around the grate but found no obvious damage.
The blast front had dissipated before hitting the end of the duct.
Because something had certainly exploded.
***
Greta knelt at her son's side. "Fynn, what happened? Are you alright?"
He rubbed his ears. "What? It's like my ears are full of water." Fynn sat back on his heels, brows arched above his dark eyes. "I can't hear."
Greta dug into the bag she'd grabbed on her rush out the c
linic door. "Do you hear any ringing, feel pain, vertigo?"
Fynn tottered halfway to his feet and dropped again. "My crew, at the furnaces."
"Medics are there now." She steadied him with one hand on his chin and raised an otoscope to his ear. "Your eardrum's intact. Scoot around..." She pushed his shoulder. "Both eardrums intact."
"My crew..."
Greta tapped her sleeve, asking Kumar for status.
Explosion of some sort. Bruises. No major trauma.
"Nothing serious." She repeated the words, looking straight into his face, hoping he'd read her lips.
If Fynn understood, he only frowned. "How did you get here?"
"Rica called me."
He looked bewildered but stopped asking questions. Off-shift Kin had spotted them and crowded around.
"What happened?" someone asked.
"Methane." Fynn slapped his hands against the gray floor. "I run excess oxygen through the furnaces, so this is impossible. But what else can it be? Hot methane in the duct, and I opened it up to oxygen. There's a leak from the flue gas, and all I thought about was CO2." He balled up his fists. "Dad would never have made this mistake."
Greta's shoulders knotted, and heat flushed her face. Yash had made mistakes. He and the other cohorts had dragged her family across the solar system, and now he was dead, leaving Fynn to pick up the pieces. Leaving her to pick up the pieces.
She tried to draw in a calming breath, but her throat tightened painfully. It's not as if Yash wanted to die, not as if he'd decided to leave her alone. She pushed her feelings away, deep down. As chief medic, she had a job to do, and that job protected her.
Fynn already seemed steadier, and she helped him to his feet.
"I heard something," he said. "Say it again."
A red-faced man panted his question. "I said... what happened?"
Greta glanced over her shoulder. Kin rushed out of the greenhouse tunnel, bounding over each other. Open space between the men's barracks and mess hall led them straight to her. With Fynn on his feet, standing on an intact floor, there was no sign of an explosion here.
People piled up at the tower, gripping each other for reassurance, shouting questions, and some called for Maliah.
A swirl of colored coveralls pushed through the crowd. The Mechanics had arrived.
Olsen's freckles disappeared against his flushed face. "That was awesome."
Rica had more useful news. "The furnace dome's hot as hell, but power levels are stable. Ben's gonna cut bins into plates to repair the floors."
"You did this?" A sharp-nosed trustee sneered. "Sabotage."
Greta slammed her otoscope to the floor and a scream burned her throat. "Are you insane!?"
Trembling, she took a step toward the trustee, who flinched backward, wide-eyed.
Maliah appeared from the crowd and wrapped her arms around Greta as Magnus gripped the trustee's shoulder.
Rica moved in front of Fynn. "A leak in the furnaces," she said. "Fire flashed down the air ducts, but look." She waved at Olsen, who'd lifted the vent grate to peer inside. "Look. Nothing. It's all over."
The crowd surrounded Maliah now, stunned and silent. Greta sagged as her anger drained away.
Maliah gave her a quick squeeze and then stretched her left arm overhead. The sleeve pad showed a white circle against blackness. "Liam just called. They started the ring thrusters. Started the station spinning."
"Hey, I heard something." Fynn gazed hopefully at his sister.
There should have been a cheer, but aside from people shifting in the crowd, the silence held. Greta slumped to the floor and hid her head in her arms. The scream had emptied her.
Chap ter 15
D rew walked across the floor. Yes, he walked. Didn't float, didn't bounce or bobble. Heel, toe, heel, toe, he walked.
He strolled along segment five, the green barracks segment adjoining his biology lab - that is, his piece of the manufacturing lab. Orpheus was spinning the station up gradually so it wouldn't tear itself apart and had reached a centrifugal force of... Drew tapped his sleeve pad. A centrifugal force of forty-two percent Earth gravity. In another couple days, the station would stabilize at fifty percent. The highest the ring could safely endure.
Plenty of gravity.
Drew took a little hop. Ouch, his legs ached in gravity, but they'd adjust. He'd claimed a bunk in the lower level as soon as the bots finished assembling barracks and slept better every night as the spin ramped up. Washrooms wouldn't be available until the Poseidon shuttled enough water up from Titan's surface, but a trip to crew quarters in the core was a minor inconvenience.
He extended his arms and spun on one heel, a sort of dance to celebrate. He wouldn't drop any balls to look for a coriolis effect, because he didn't care if they landed a bit anti-spinward. His feet were moving a fraction of a meter per second faster than his head, but not so much that he felt it. Life was looking up.
Segment five's upper level was a bright public space, the upper half of the ring's circular cross section, pleasantly wide and quite high in the middle. Drew liked the colors too. Teal and green borders patterned the floor around large salmon rectangles textured to mimic tile, a low wall along each edge made room for future plantings, and kiosks would someday serve food. Or maybe Kin would invent other uses. The station's ring was one hundred percent possibilities.
Drew stopped a quarter way along the segment and stood directly below the round, dark opening to its spoke. "Orpheus, I hear them coming. Drop ladder."
A vertical ladder silently telescoped down to the floor. Lights inside the spoke blinked on, but Drew could only see as far as an opaque plastic membrane that stretched across the opening with a panel like a round doggie door at the ladder's top. Here in a residential segment, the spoke was narrow and the membrane fit snuggly all the way around. A single bot had installed it, an easy trick for a creature built like a spider.
Someone's foot pushed the doggie door open, and a cool breeze hit Drew in the face. The station's spin pushed everything to the outer rim, even air. Rather than install huge impellers to move air uphill, membranes blocked the spokes to keep a breathable pressure inside the core with a modest ventilation system.
Drew moved out of the draft. With the entire crew descending for an exercise session, the doggie door was open for several minutes. Once they all stood on the floor, Drew glanced up to be sure the door had snapped closed and then turned to grin at his grumbling crewmates.
Evan wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. "I thought the spin-up was supposed to be gradual. I swear I weigh twice what I did yesterday."
"I feel great." Drew rapped both fists against his chest. "You should sleep down here too."
Tyra looked wistfully up into the spoke. "I'm used to my zero-g cocoon."
"Then do everything else in the ring," Drew said. "Use your flat pad to monitor your shuttle. Or if that's not satisfying, the bots have consoles to Orpheus hooked up in the labs. If you're worried about the shuttles, you can watch from there. What I'm really looking forward to is eating down here. Meals go better with gravity."
Liam seemed a bit slumped too. He let out a sigh before talking. "First water system will be charged in a few days. Schedule calls for us to move quarters then."
Evan moaned. "Bunk and mess hall, okay. But I'll do my shuttle monitoring from the dock. No schedule written on Earth's gonna tell me what to do out here."
"Then let's hit it," Drew said. "Get your bones and muscles back to par or you'll have the medics pestering you to stay out of zero-g completely."
Drew grabbed a pair of hand weights from a nearby table and hefted them overhead while the others selected weights. "Is it really only a kilometer loop around the ring?" Evan said. "Look at my feet. I'm still in zero-g booties because my feet don't fit my shoes. Too swollen."
"Better than if your head's swollen," Drew said. "Today's assignment is, one warm-up loop, then jog, walk, jog, and a cool down walk."
Rutger raised a heavy
pair of dumbbells. "Piece of cake."
"Easy for you," Evan said. "You've only been out of stasis a month. You still have Earth muscles."
Liam led the crew anti-spinward, westward. Drew aimed to pace beside Tyra, but Rutger started a conversation. "Evan says, Doctor Lund wants to send anyone with stasis sickness up to the station as soon as possible. And then any other Kin who've been on the surface the longest. That means the Advance Team."
What's left of them, Drew thought. He kept his smile in place as Rutger continued eagerly.
"I want to see the domes, see the surface, so when Evan shuttles down to pick them up, I'm going with him. Want to come?"
"No thanks. I've got a lot of work to do in the lab. Besides, I've seen the domes. The ring's better."
"You'll be bored without me around."
"Greta - Doctor Lund - wants Kin to spend one week a month on the station. I won't be bored. That's a hundred people onboard at any given time."
Plus permanent crews who'd staff the labs. Drew had read the assignment plans a while ago - he should really check again to see who to expect for his teammates.
Shuttle flights would bring people up and down every day and the space station ring would provide rooms, food, medical care, and entertainment. It'd be like running one of those Caribbean cruises where everything's included in one low price. Fun in the sun, or in this case, fun in the gravity.
They reached the end of the segment where a shallow ridge marked weld joints at a removed bulkhead.
Ahead was the orange utility segment, which included those water tanks that needed filling. Tanks, pipes, and banks of equipment were below, leaving the upper level where they walked empty except for a few cargo bins.
Next came the hospital segment. The medical lab was in the lower level, but no vestibule split the ring. Instead of an open top level, the bots had erected walls on either side of the central aisle for treatment rooms. Several doorways remained open so Drew caught glimpses of metal octopus arms unpacking boxes.
His mouth went dry and his heart raced faster than their walking pace required. He'd be busy in his lab, but most Kin would have nothing to do. Maybe they'd come up in units. Then the barracks leaders, like good cruise directors, would keep them busy. Keep everyone out of trouble. He hoped so.