Chapter 3: My name is Fred and I graduated near the top of my engineering class two years ago.
I'm just one of the junior supervisors, but I have access to the complete set of the plans. I determined to know every section of the new habitats. The more I study them, the more I'm positive that we're building two giant warships. There are many more lasers than can be justified for navigation hazards. Plus the interlocking patterns of fire are wrong. Even for a habitat this size, we don't need nine control rooms. Seven control rooms control bands of lasers around the circumference of the habitat and the last two cover the ends. That isn't the strangest thing. Not only are there docking facilities on the ends of the habitat, but there are rings of docking ports around the circumference.
We're over a year into the construction. After last shift I noticed additional plans on my computer. From my first look I see that there are additional interior walls with airlocks dividing the interior into 20 independent sections. Also the south end was modified to allow three additional larger rockets to be installed, however I could not find any plans for them.
Shannon has finally agreed to be my wife and the ceremony is set for next month. We both will be given 7 shifts off for what my grandfather calls a honeymoon. We plan to use it to rest and study.
It's been a blissful 6 months and Shannon announced that the doctor confirmed that she was pregnant and her duty assignments were moved to inside the outer hull. That's a laugh, because in two years all we have are gigantic frames with the interior end caps.
We all got the alert at the same time. Habitat 2 finally made contact and would be to our location in about 3 years. The council declared a 1 day holiday starting at the end of this work shift.
Well the last hull section was placed last shift. At the end of 3rd shift today we start a 3 day holiday. The estimated arrival of Habitat 2 is only 5 months from now and already there are rumors of a 5 day holiday planned. I've gotten an appointment with the chief construction engineer after shift today. Shannon is worried that if I state my concerns about the construction, I'll be demoted.
Not only was one of the chief engineers present, but a council member. After laying out my concerns and conclusions they just sat there and looked at me for a few minutes. Then the council member opened his computer and turned it around so I could see the screen. My conclusion was correct, we are building two giant warship habitats.
Then the chief engineer told me that he was sorry to loose such a talented junior engineering supervisor, but I was now reassigned. I was to talk to no one about my reassignment. I would be escorted to my quarters and isolated until I was moved to my new quarters. He then handed me several computer disk and told me to study them. My escort turned out to be an aide of the councilman. She kept pestering me with questions the whole time until I closed my quarters door in her face. Shannon gave me the strangest look and informed me that she'd received orders confining her to quarters for 2 shifts. I told her that she could either start packing to move or sit down and help me go through the stack of computer disk I had.
It took 6 hours to go through the disk. The last file on the last disk wasn't related to ship construction. It was our reassignment order to habitat 2 including a 1 grade promotion upon completion of training for both of us. We were reassigned to a department named torch construction.
The training lasted 7 weeks. It covered subjects that I'd never heard of. Half of them were from the computer archives. Shannon is extremely worried that if what we learned was applied incorrectly the torch rocket fuel manufacturing section could consume the habitat in an atomic reaction. I realized that the torch rocket itself could be used as a weapon, because it produced a stream of energy more powerful than all the lasers on both ships.
It took us 3 weeks to prove to ourselves that the south end of the ships had to be redesigned from 3 torch rockets to one, and it and it's fuel manufacturing section needed to be detachable. With a rough draft we approached our supervisor and he looked over the plan and then called a meeting for us to present the facts we'd come to.
The meeting went well until one of the other junior engineers stood up and loudly proclaimed, I told you all just about the same thing last year. Then another stood up and asked if we'd taken into account the magnetic fields that were needed in the fuel manufacturing section and around the torch itself. Shannon then whispered in my ear, what have we done?
As I turned to look at her I noticed the chief engineer smiling and then he informed all of us that we had 7 days to turn in an updated draft or else. Then he just got up and left the room. Only to 5 of us were left. I introduced Shannon and myself, and told them that we didn't know anything about what they'd done, but if we worked together we might avoid whatever the chief engineer meant by or else.
Then Tom started laughing and stated, so you are the or else we were threatened with. Making the torch section separate from the main habitat is something we hadn't thought of but it makes sense for safety, but that separation raises a whole new set of construction problems along with where and how do we mount the ion drives so they don't cook the torch section. Hank's wife was an excellent cook and it wasn't until she was stacking dishes that Tom's wife told her to freeze and for us to look at how she'd stacked them.
Tom looked at us and said, you said that the torch could be used as a weapon right. Then he grabbed Hanks computer and started sketching with a stylus. We all started talking at once and realized that putting the torch on the north end solved the problem and by re-positioning the north end laser cap to a ring it would cover the same field of fire.
Shannon then asked, can a physical object penetrate the torch when it is firing or will vaporize anything. That stopped the conversation and Hank reached for the communicator. After a few words he turned it off and said, we should stop now and report to the conference room. The chief will be there with someone to answer Shannon's question and give us additional instructions.
Six months later we had our redesign approved. The old locations for the 3 torch rockets on the south end had ion drives mounted. The north and south caps were redesigned into a rings. The torch assembly was mounted on stilts on the north cap. Additional chemical rockets were added at both ends for maneuvering control. The only design change the women didn't like was the fact that the north and south rings also became giant ring magnetic field generators.
Tom's wife firmly believed that if the ring field generators were activated the ion drive rockets and the torch would loose their focus and just swirl around the ship and follow the magnetic field lines. Finally the chief brought in an expert in magnetic fields and he set up a scaled model. The first time he activated it the ion sprays flowed around the ship and then cut the model in half. Two weeks later we had another demonstration only this time there were five magnetic rings. They activated from the middle out and the field was stable. Shannon picked up a metal cup and tossed it at the model and it hit the field and then moved to the end of the model and hung there suspended. After tossing several more metal objects at the model she finally pulled off her slipper and tossed it. It went through the field and bounced off the model. Then she said, OK you've convinced me the model works, will it work full size? That needs to be tested before we put our children there.
It's been eleven years and the first torch ship is completely operational. The protocols for lighting the torch are redundant. There is a separate shielded computer system just to manage the magnetic rings, ion rockets, and torch. The dedication prayer included the phrase that we all hoped we never had to use the torch as a weapon.
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Scout Expedition Page 3