Stowaway

by Robert E Colfax

  Geena added, “About our only option is to go back to Earth and shut down almost everything. We can send a signal to the monitoring station after the Helgans are long gone.”

  “Where do we normally refuel?” Lexi asked.

  Geena answered that one. “Usually at depots in systems having Level-Three worlds. Cardin has two, one on its larger moon and a second one on the moon of one of its outer planets. We can’t get there. Ackalon is closer, but we can’t even get there if we can’t use the hyper-drive. There are some uninhabited systems, those with mining operations, that usually have their own depots. But, Lexi, without our hyper-drive we can’t get to any of them.”

  “After dinner tonight,” Lexi began, “we’re going to sit and watch a movie called Swiss Family Robinson. We should have the 1960 production on board. It’s about a family shipwrecked on a deserted island. They have to do everything on their own to survive. I think, considering our current circumstances, you’ll find it interesting.”

  “Sounds, fun,” Geena said. “You’re drawing a parallel with our situation, aren’t you?”

  Lexi replied, “Yes. I know where we can get He3. It’ll take time and we’ll have to work for it, but we can do it.”

  Ron asked, “You’re thinking of Saturn? You mentioned Saturn before. Honey, we don’t have anyway to suck helium out of Saturn’s atmosphere. Even if we could, it would have too many impurities to burn.”

  Lexi had a distant look in her eyes as she began working out the details in her head. “I said we’d have to work for it. We filter it and refine it. I need white boards. Do we have any? And do we have markers for them?”

  “No,” Geena said. “No boards. What’s on your mind?”

  “We need to figure out how to suck the atmosphere of Saturn into our helium three tanks. Does anyone here know how to do that?

  “I certainly don’t,” Geena said. “Ron?”

  “No. We can suck up atmosphere with the ramjet scoops, but after that, I’m lost.”

  Urania spoke up, “I don’t either. Do you Lexi?”

  “No, I don’t. That means we’re going to need a brainstorming session. I want a white board, probably a lot of them, to plot out ideas on. If we don’t have boards, can I write on the walls?”

  Ron chuckled. “Yes, however, I think we should be able to fabricate something that would serve your purpose. Not really white boards like what we had in the classrooms, but something in about thirty-inch strips we can tack up on the walls.”

  “Good,” Lexi responded. “Urania, I’m also going to need printouts of the ramjet schematics. I think we’ll have to modify them for this. That should be our simplest approach. Not that it’s going to be simple. We’re also going to want drawings of the fittings on the storage tank.”

  “Do you really think this is feasible, Lexi, without being at a fueling station?” Geena asked.

  Ron answered for her. “I follow what she’s thinking of doing, Mom. It’s feasible. We’re just not designed for it. I don’t know of any ships that are.”

  Urania added, “While you’re discussing this, keep in mind that we’re on the backup tank now. Even if we’re careful, if we’re using the fabricator, it’s only going to last about two weeks. Then we’re down to battery power. That won’t last more than two days. With that in mind, I’m shutting off gravity now. Sorry about that, guys.”

  Lexi said, “Once we figure out the mechanics, we can do it. So let’s get started. Urania, I want to work out how to process a planetary atmosphere into useful fuel with you. Ron, Geena, while the two of us are brainstorming, would you guys mind making and installing the white boards. Once we’re all set up, we’re all going to sit in the room with the boards and work this out.”

  “I’m willing to help, of course,” Geena said, “but engineering isn’t really my thing. I’m not sure how much help I’ll actually be. I know this is kind of a weird question, but do you know anything about this Urania?”

  Urania laughed. “It is an interesting question, Geena. What I find even more interesting is I don’t know the answer. We’ll have to see.”

  “Listen, guys,” Lexi said. “I know this was my idea. Yes, I’ve taken lead on it. I want all of us involved. Even if you know nothing about engineering, which isn’t the case, your observations could be very helpful. My entire knowledge of this comes from the rubrics. Yes, the rubrics are comprehensive, but you all have practical experience maintaining a starship. We’re playing around here with fueling a nuclear reactor of a type that on Earth is only theoretical. I’d feel bad about blowing us up because I came up with something stupid that the rubrics didn’t cover. Frankly, I have reasons for suspecting they’re not a hundred percent accurate.”

  Chapter 24

  Gassing Up

  That night, while laying together in bed fully clothed for a change due to the chill, Ron said, “Lexi, it’s fortunate you were able to take all of the rubrics you did. I might have been able to cobble this together without you, but I’m honestly not sure about that. I’m handy enough for most things, but I’m not really an engineer. Mom’s even lighter on the engineering stuff than I am. It’s not that we’re untrained. We know how to run and maintain a ship, but what we’re doing now goes beyond that. Plus, and I’m honestly embarrassed to admit it, but no one does this. No one collects their own fuel. We all go to a depot to refuel. It wouldn’t have occurred to either of us to do anything else.”

  Lexi smiled as she stroked his cheek. “It goes back to what I said a few days ago, lover. It goes against my nature to be helpless. If a situation looks hopeless, think outside of the box, try approaching it from a different angle.” She kissed him. “I’m going to roll over now. I’m cold, even sleeping in sweats. Would you cuddle up to me.”

  As Ron wrapped an arm around her, he said, “Hmm. Does that mean I get a second date?”

  She snuggled in closer, reaching behind her to pat his shoulder. “Once we gas up you can have anything you want.”

  ***

  The team spent five days on reduced power, designing and constructing the refinery, rerouting the ramjet scoops to run through it, and connecting it to pipe the output into the empty He3 tanks. Because of the volume of gases passing through it, the refinery was the size a sleeping cabin. At one point, Geena remarked, “If this works, we’ll never need to pay depot prices for fuel again. We’re almost always somewhere with a gas giant. We can collect our own. That should help our bottom line.”

  In theory, a refinery was simple enough. Urania would surge through Saturn’s atmosphere sucking the gases in through the scoops. The refinery would take care of separating them, with He3 being passed through, under pressure into the tanks, and the remaining atmospheric components vented outside of the ship following the same path the ramjets forced air through during atmospheric flight. Saturn is about twenty-five percent helium and seventy-five percent hydrogen by mass. Unfortunately, the atmosphere is only around seven percent helium, implying that most of the heavier helium atoms have settled through the more predominate hydrogen. Urania was going to have to dive deep to collect her fuel. He3 is a stable isotope of the more common standard helium, having one fewer neutrons in the nucleus. There are other elements mixed in Saturn’s atmosphere, including molecular hydrogen, methane, ammonia, oxygen and trace amounts of water ice. All of them, including standard helium, had to be processed out.

  ***

  “Are we ready to do this?” Lexi asked, looking around the bridge at her two friends.

  “We’ve triple checked everything,” Ron replied. “Let’s do it.”

  “Urania, how are we doing with power?”

  “We’ve got another week on the standby tank before we’re down to the batteries. Using the dampeners and the ion drive in Saturn’s atmosphere is going reduce that, of course.”

  “Good enough. OK. Everyone keep in mind we’re going to be flying through winds having a velocity exceeding a thousand miles per hour. I’m not making that up. The atmosphere on Saturn is
violent. Urania, full power on the dampeners and then take us down.”

  Even with the dampeners running, descending through the atmosphere was a tumultuous endeavor.

  Geena remarked, “I wasn’t expecting it to be pitch black. Foolish. Of course it is.”

  It was twenty-three minutes before Urania said, “I’m picking up traces of He3.”

  “Let’s keep descending,” Lexi said. “It might be more concentrated further down.”

  Twelve more minutes went by. Ron wryly remarked, “I’m still not seeing the correlation between this and building a tree-house or training a baby elephant.”

  Lexi chuckled at that, but didn’t have time for a comeback before Urania said, “No change in the helium three density for the last forty miles. I think this is as good as it gets.”

  “This will have to do, then,” Lexi said. “Cut us over to battery power and start processing.”

  Urania’s calm voice came over the speakers no more than a minute later. “The good news, ladies and gent, is that we are refueling. The density of the helium three is less than we projected. It’s going to take four to five hours just to fill up the standby tank. The refinery is putting out a steady flow of clean hydrogen to the ion drive. With the both the ion drive burning and the dampeners on high, the drain on the batteries is enormous, but I don’t think that’s a concern. They’ll still be good for another twelve hours. You should all stay strapped in where you are in case the turbulence worsens.”

  “I’ll unstrap long enough to get us dinner bars and wine,” Geena said.

  Ron immediately said, his voice booking no argument, “Absolutely not. You stay seated. The last thing we need is for you to be thrown into a wall and shatter some bones. We know you’re a bit fragile at the moment. If I get thrown into a wall, the wall might shatter but I’ll only feel stupid afterward. Lexi, you don’t roam the ship either. If something goes wrong, we’ll probably need you to figure it out. I’d rather you not be struggling with a concussion.”

  Lexi looked at Geena. In unison, they said, “Yes, sir.”

  He nodded at them, looking pleased. “I’m going to hit the head while I’m up. Back in five.”

  They spent the next the next four hours and fifteen minutes just chatting. Mostly about growing up on Earth until Lexi asked Geena about growing up on Cardin’s Paradise. Ron got to talk about being a kid on a starship. They only went out on their starship a few times before he was thirteen, his parents still operating as insurance investigators but only rarely taking cases not local to Cardin’s Paradise. He also had some interesting stories about helping his mother as an insurance investigator after the death of his father. Lexi got the distinct impression that some of his revelations took Geena by surprise, at least to a small degree. About halfway through their enforced idleness, Ron got up to refill the sippy cups with more wine and to grab a desert bar for each of them.

  It was a rough ride. Certainly worse than anything Lexi so far experienced in hyperspace. She smiled. She had suffered through worse flying cross country on more than one occasion.

  Finally, Urania, who had interjected comments and questions into the conversations about growing up announced. “Secondary tank is topped off, guys. I think, all things considered, I’d like Ron to standby at the reactor controls in the back while I bring it back online.”

  “Sure,” Ron said. “Makes sense.” He got up and headed carefully for the power plant. Despite the gripper-soles on his shoes, he had to be careful walking due to the extra intense turbulence even though they were in Saturn’s gravity field.

  It wasn’t much longer before they heard his voice come over the speakers. “Everything down here looks normal, Urania. The reactor is ready.”

  Lexi said, “Switch us over dear. First priority while we’re filling the main tank is to recharge the batteries. After that, I don’t know, maybe crank up the heat in here a little bit?”

  Ron pretty much bounced back into the control cabin, strapping himself into his seat. “How long to load the main tank, Urania?”

  “In the neighborhood of three days. Sorry about that.”

  “Really?” he remarked. “That’s fewer than I expected. I suggest we all go to bed. The netting will be sufficient to hold us in place. I don’t think we need to be strapped into the command chairs.”

  “I agree,” Lexi said. “Wake us if anything untoward crops up, Urania. I think we can get back to a normal routine tomorrow. I’m already fantasizing about hot water for a shower.”

  Chapter 25

  Diagnosis

  Lexi woke up early the next morning and headed out for her morning chat with Urania. She briefly wondered if they could come up with a different design for the socks, like metallic lace. That might look really hot. So much to do.

  As she sat down in her accustomed chair, Urania said, “Good morning, dear Lexi.”

  Lexi never really knew where to look when talking to Urania. The woman was everywhere on the ship. It seemed foolish looking at any of the sensor bulbs in the cabin. She settled on looking at hyperspace swirling on the view screen. “You really like us, don’t you, Urania?”

  “Of course.” She laughed. “I couldn’t discuss it with anyone before, partially because I didn’t realize it, but I was damn lonely. Then you came on board. You changed everything, Lexi. I even seem different somehow; like I have more depth or breadth than before. You’re smart and you’re funny and you really think.”

  She laughed again. “Because of your influence, Ron and Geena have an entirely different level of interaction with me than in the pre-Lexi days. I think I might be a little jealous of the two of them for being able to interact physically with you. But on the other hand, none of you really knows what it is like to fly through hyper, so I suppose there are compensations for being non-biological.”

  “You’re a terrific partner and friend, Urania.” She laughed. “You’re the team’s back-office. Geena, Ron, and I are your remote assets. I’ve seen that arrangement on TV and in the movies hundreds of times. If we’re going to be doing jobs the way I picture, you’re going to be a critical member of our team, even if you can’t physically get in the shower with us.”

  “Thank you, dear. Do you want to discuss your medical analysis or do you want to have coffee first? I know you must be wondering about it. I’m surprised you didn’t bring it up while we were refueling.”

  “I thought about it. Since you kept quiet about it, I figured it could wait. So, let’s go ahead. I don’t drink coffee to wake up; I drink it because I enjoy it. As far as I can tell, neither caffeine nor the lack thereof has any effect on me. Ron makes better coffee than I do, anyway. I’ve watched him, Urania. He doesn’t do anything special. I don’t get it. I could almost believe he’s using magic, but I don’t really think that’s possible.” She sighed. ”What did you find?”

  “First, dear, I don’t think you have anything immediate to worry about. OK? Unfortunately, I don’t have a baseline scan for you and no way to get one now. I would love to have a scan from when you first came on board and after each round with the learning device. Unfortunately, I didn’t think of it, considering the unorthodox method in which you joined the crew. I guess I’m still getting used to decision making too. It would even help if we could go back, kidnap one of your fellow Earth women and scan her. However, all I have to compare you with are Ron and Geena.” Lexi nodded her understanding.

  “There are minor differences, of course. Their brains are marginally larger. Yours has more interconnections. There are indications that you’re building more, which suggests a response to the Wraixain educator. Two weeks ago your brain may have been more similar to theirs than it is today. And of course, there is now a structure in your brain alone that is queerly analogous to the fracture pattern in the Rose of Light. It is currently inert. While it looks like there may be new pathways in your brain, there are not any energy flows along them. It is not doing anything nor is it affecting you in any way.”

  “You can actua
lly see it on the scan? What is it?”

  “Just an arrangement of neurons. Without invasive surgery, which I’m not recommending by the way, I can’t tell more than that. My medical scanner is good, but it’s not state-of-the-art. It never was. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s the original model, designed with a bias for Vankovian patients. If you have any unusual symptoms we should check you again immediately, of course. Because I can’t say with any certainty what’s going on with your mental environment, I’m not going to let you use the learning tool at all for at least four weeks. We’ll scan you again then. If there are no worrying changes we’ll see what else we can shovel into that lovely head of yours.”

  “That’s not too bad,” Lexi decided. “I am going to need to recognize and understand aliens and their cultures. I was pretty much at a loss confronted with the Helgans. Fortunately, I didn’t need to know squat about them.” She shrugged and rubbed her ribs, which were starting to itch. “Might have been nice to know ahead of time that they’re faster than they look.”