Stowaway

by Robert E Colfax

  Geena frowned. “Surely you must have a suitable movie for us to watch?”

  With a frown of her own, Lexi said, “I think Passengers with Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt might come close. They have to do bizarre things to deal with an overheating reactor. We can’t waste the power to show it, though. I enjoyed it, although the ending bummed me out a bit.”

  Geena smiled. “We need to re-refine the fuel we have. You’re the science officer, Lexi. I doubt either Ron or I have the knowledge to do this without you. Do you have any ideas?”

  “Nothing practical at the moment, although I keep coming back to the fact that the ramjet scoops are still configured to feed the refinery we cobbled together. Let’s regroup at dinner time.” She paused. “At this point, we’re blaming dirty fuel. It is all gaseous, however. With no gravity, nothing is going to settle out. Can you guys diagnose the components Ron replaced. I’d like to know if there is actually a problem with them, or if this all happened in the reactor core itself.”

  She hesitated. “I’m going to waste some more power and take another rubric. Urania, can you find me something on nuclear chemistry?”

  ***

  “I don’t like this, Lexi,” Urania said. “I know you’re not feeling any ill effects from the Rose, but we decided to lay off of the rubrics for a while.”

  “Yes, dear, and I agreed with you. The situation has changed. We’re all dead, and that probably includes you, when the batteries give up in under thirty-eight hours. None of us knows how to correct the problem. If another rubric on top of the Rose kills me, then I just don’t get to be with my three best friends at the end.”

  Urania sighed. “You’re probably right. And we will all miss you. Even Geena seems to have come around. But, honey, how do you think nuclear chemistry is going to help you to solve the issue? It isn’t really pertinent to the problem.”

  “That’s most likely true. But it is at least somewhat related. At this point I would take a rubric on gourmet cooking if it was the only one left. You think rubrics boost my brain function. I’m grasping at straws because I can’t see a way to correct this issue. It’s there, on the edge of my consciousness, but I can’t pin it down. I might get it eventually, but can’t take the risk that I don’t. Right now, I need that boost. This is all I can think of that might help. And Urania, have the other chemistry courses queued up. After that, just find things I haven’t taken yet, even gourmet cooking if we have something like that. This time, we’re not stopping until I can’t take it anymore.”

  Chapter 28

  Refinery 2.0

  Lexi swatted at the area near her neck where something just stung her. “Ow! What was that?” Damn it hurt. Her hand only irritated the spot further. She didn’t encounter any biting or stinging insect.

  “Ron just gave you a stimulant, honey,” Urania said.

  “Do you think you can hold a mug of coffee, kiddo?” he asked. Lexi opened her eyes. Her vision was slightly blurry and she had a killer headache. If given a choice, she would curl up in bed until she felt better. Considering why she had the headache, that wasn’t an available choice.

  Lexi considered that. “Let’s give it a try. Did anybody think to bring painkillers?”

  “I’ve got them right here, Lexi,” Geena said. “And a couple of breakfast bars.”

  Lexi sipped the coffee, then swallowed more with the painkillers Geena handed her. Wow, Ron made really great coffee even when we have no power. Crap! “How much power do we have left?”

  “Just over fifteen hours,” Urania answered. “You’ll get to die with the rest of us after all.”

  “Oh, goody. Can’t wait. Can I have one of those bars, Geena? And more coffee, Ron.” Ron handed her the second mug he held staged for her as Geena passed her a breakfast bar. They waited her out while she ate the bar and drained the coffee. By then, Ron had a third mug on standby. Geena already had a second bar unwrapped.

  Lexi smiled, despite the pounding going on in her head. Worse hangover ever! Well, first hangover ever, too. At least the blurriness is clearing. “You guys are being really kind. Thank you.”

  Geena grunted, which was not a noise Lexi heard her make before. It didn’t sound very lady-like. “This is the type of situation every crew on a small starship has nightmares about, a breakdown in deep space when no one on board has the expertise to fix it. Starships are solidly built and most carry spare parts for almost anything that might go wrong. Still…” She paused. “Urania explained what you were doing and why you were doing it. I would like to say you shouldn’t have risked yourself, but there wasn’t really an alternative was there? And Lexi, even if you still can’t solve this problem, we all appreciate what you did. I just wanted you to know that.”

  With a sigh, Lexi said, “I can’t let my first job with you guys be a failure. We have an absurdly ancient, freakingly impossible artifact we need to return to its owners. I’m going to need another mug of coffee though. Damn, my head hurts.”

  Ron got up, retuning momentarily with a fourth travel mug of coffee. “That sounded almost positive,” he said. “We’ve analyzed everything. There isn’t anything wrong with any of the components we replaced. It has to be the helium three itself. Can you fix the fuel?”

  Lexi started to nod her head but thought better of it in the nick of time. “I am positive my head hurts. I also think we can fix the fuel situation. Are their any rubrics left, Urania?”

  “Fourteen. Even if my decision kills all of us, I’m not letting you take any more. Maybe not ever.” Her tone of voice booked no argument about that.

  “Why did you stop running them? Why didn’t we finish all of them?”

  Urania sighed. “It turns out even you have limits. You were moments away from lapsing into a coma, Lexi. I don’t think that would have done any of us any good. Do you?”

  “No. I was just curious. So the question is do you guys want to fix the problem as soon as possible or wait until the last few seconds like they always do in the movies?”

  “As soon as possible,” Geena stated. “How long will that leave us before the batteries are completely drained?”

  Lexi couldn’t help it. She laughed despite the pain. “A few seconds.”

  Geena groaned. “That is so not funny! What do we do?” She watched as Lexi tried to stand, then as she abruptly fell back into her chair.

  Once the room stopped spinning, already being in zero-gee made it worse, Lexi said. “Wow! Major vertigo. OK, then, Ron, it seems I need help getting up. Can you help me to one of the other stations. I need to redesign our refinery.” Unlike the other consoles, the one in front of the educator was blank. She needed to access what on Earth would have been called a computer aided design program, CAD for short. Urania could help, of course, but Lexi still needed to see what they were doing.

  Before Ron set her down, she said, “Maybe we should stop by the toilet first. I think I should make use of it. Listen, I really hate asking you guys to wait on me, but I’d like a couple more of the breakfast bars and two more mugs of coffee staged up where I can reach them. Even with Ron holding me I’m so dizzy that if he let’s go I’ll be flopping around uselessly.”

  Geena said, “Special circumstances, darling. We’ll be your arms and legs for a while. It’s your job to think our way out of this mess.” Once Lexi and Ron had time to get all the way to the head, Geena asked, concern in her voice, “Is she going to be OK, Urania? Were the rubrics too much for her?”

  “I only have the cabin sensors to go by, but I stopped the educator before I saw any damage forming. Yes, she was close to dropping into a coma, but I don’t even really think that would have done her permanent damage. I’m worried about her, of course. I don’t like the vertigo. Despite which, I think she’ll be fine.”

  “Good,” Geena said softly.

  ***

  When Lexi was again seated and strapped in on the bridge, she said, “When this first happened I was imaging exhausting the tank into space and sucking the gases back in
through the ramjet scoops. I still can’t figure out any way to make that work. For one thing, we would need to be moving really fast and we can’t access the fuel at all so that’s not an option.” She picked up a breakfast bar and started on it. “Sorry, I’m starving.” While she chewed, she pulled up a schematic of the fuel tank on the main viewscreen along with the reactor and the connections to the refinery.

  “It’s OK, Lexi. We can talk while you eat,” Ron said. He looked up at the schematic. “We should be able to pull fuel from the tank and pipe it directly into the refinery if we make additional connections.”

  “Yes,” Lexi agreed. “You’re going to have to fabricate the main runs, which is going to sharply reduce how long we have on the batteries, but we don’t have a choice. In addition to the existing connection from the refinery to the storage tank, you’ll need to add one to feed what’s in the tank to the refinery. You should be able to reuse the original components you removed from the reactor feed for that. We want to wind up with a closed circuit loop between the refinery and the tank. Do you need more detail than that to get started?”

  Geena looked at Ron, who shook his head. She said, “No, that’s relatively straightforward. Anything else?”

  “No. I think you should get started. When it’s ready, pressure test the system, but don’t start the refinery. We’re going to have to open it up and rebuild once I figure out what was missed the first time. Since we don’t have spare tanks, we’ll be reprocessing the same fuel over and over until it registers as clean. What winds up in the tank won’t be completely pure. The goal is to get it pure enough so it doesn’t cause issues. I’ll add monitors to the refinery for monitoring that.”

  Urania spoke up, saying, “Hold up. Plan on reprocessing the standby tank first. Whatever we wind up doing, it’ll take more time than we have to reprocess the main tank. If we’re have the standby available, that will leave us enough time to fill the main.”

  “She’s right,” Geena said. “You OK with that, Lexi?”

  “Absolutely. She’s right. Thanks, Urania.”

  The Samues left for the rear of the ship. Urania said, “Frankly, Lexi, and I’m still marveling about it, not only do I not want to lose you guys, I’d rather not be dead either. Never thought about it before. So what do we do?”

  “Take down the schematic and throw up an exploded view of the refinery. The original theory was sound. Like Geena said, it got us this far, but clearly I missed something.”

  “Unfortunately, we don’t even know what the contaminant is.”

  “True,” Lexi said ruefully, with most of her attention on the viewscreen. “Does it seem to you like a design flaw that there’s no way to bleed off a sample from the tank for testing?”

  “I’m a hundred-and-forty years old, Lexi. There’s never been any reason to test a sample. However, when we get to a maintenance bay, I certainly won’t object if you want to add a valve.”

  ***

  Ron and Geena rejoined Lexi just under three hours later. “We’ve taken care of the plumbing. How are you feeling, Lexi?” Ron asked.

  “Headache’s better. I’m out of bars and coffee, but I’m so full, that’s a good thing. I can almost stand by myself, so that’s getting better. I’ve just a little more work to do on this, then you can build us a new, improved refinery.”

  “That’s great,” Geena said. “How much time do we have left, Urania?”

  “The fabricator put a huge drain on the batteries. We’re going to have to use it some more to put together Lexi’s design. At least, they’re small pieces. At the moment, we’re down to two-hours-twenty-six-minutes. I think Lexi was right. We’ll be down to seconds before we can bring the reactor up.”

  Still making changes to the design, Lexi asked, “How long can you guys survive in a space suit? You do have space suits, right?”

  “Of course,” Ron said. “Twelve to fourteen hours depending on what else we’re doing and how much effort we’re exerting. But we don’t have an extra one for you, kiddo.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You’re my arms and legs, remember. Go get suited up. I’ll be done this by the time you get back. Urania, shut off life-support.”

  “Lexi!” Ron objected, appalled.

  “We need the extra power, or we’re not going to make it. We’re cutting it too close. We need power for the fabricator, the refinery and to perform a cold restart of the reactor. We do not need to keep the ship livable when you guys can be in suits. Sorry I won’t be able to help, but I’ll be taking a nap in the med-bay wrapped in thermal blankets with an oxygen feed.”

  Geena stared at her for a moment, finally saying, “That will work. Come on Ron, we need to change our outfits. Damn it, I hate space suits. Lexi, you could wear mine?”

  “Thank you for the offer, dear. I’m still too dizzy to be of any use.”

  When they got back to the bridge, already a degree or two colder, Urania said, “We don’t have time to go over the redesign with you. I’ll have to talk you through it. I’ve started the fabricator on the new parts. Ron, take Lexi to sick bay, make sure she’s comfortable. Then let’s do this. Without life-support, we have time to fully reprocess the standby tank and restart the reactor with it.”

  Lexi floated calmly on the surface of the medical bed, the straps holding her gently in place. She was scared, yes, but she trusted her partners to get the refinery rebuilt in time to save all of their lives. She was comfortably warm, certainly more so than she had been for the last several hours dressed in her sweats in the command bay. Ron made sure she was securely wrapped, head to toe, in thermal blankets with the slow, soothing air-flow of the rebreather mask the only sound. The diaper she had on wasn’t uncomfortable. She was guilty of drinking a hell of a lot of coffee. She might need it. She still felt bloated from all of the breakfast bars she ate today.

  She had a bottle of water, a breakfast bar, and a small personal heater with her, although she knew that if Ron and Geena didn’t get her out of her cocoon before she needed them it meant they were dead. If they were dead, she would shortly be joining them. She had a small knife to cut her way out with and a watch in case she lost track of time. There was no power on anywhere else in the ship, other than to Urania and the fabricator. Even the lights were off. Ron and Geena would be working by the headlamps of their suits.

  Her last thought before she dozed off was there was nothing more she could do.

  Chapter 29

  Royal Flush

  Lexi, Ron and Geena sat at an oval conference table on the top floor of a building so tall Lexi found herself looking down on the tops of clouds when she looked out the wall to ceiling windows along one wall. It was raining on the city below them but up here the building gleamed in bright sunshine. For the last twenty minutes they had been waiting on the arrival of Ad Boc Seckan, the Plicora or Head of State of Ackalon. His starship, a fast courier, was docked at one of the space stations. Currently he was en route to a landing pad on the building’s roof from the orbiting station aboard a diplomatic shuttle.

  Waiting with Aeolus at the table were Jackson Meeham, President of Universal Underwriters and Rene Tancer, Universal’s chief authenticator. Meeham and Tancer had the look of men oonly slightly older than Ron, almost certainly due to anti-geriatrics similar to Geena’s; both wore the mien of men of more maturity than their appearances suggested. Both men were pleasant, engaging even, asking questions about the team while they waited, especially about Lexi once they learned she grew up on the Level-Two world where the Rose was found. They seemed genuinely interested. Somewhere in the discussion about life on Earth, Ron mentioned the Honor Bout with the Helgans, which started a whole other discussion.

  For this meeting, Geena tamed her wild hair with a light gel. Lexi thought it looked better than the dust-mop hairdo the woman had worn since Lexi first met her. In the ground car on the way to Universal, noticing Lexi eyeing the change, she remarked, her voice relatively low, “It’s never a good idea to attend a meeting with planetary
leaders and company presidents looking like you just got out of bed. It encourages a tendency for them not to take you seriously. Your braid looks very precise this morning.”

  Lexi smiled at her, and asked, “Where do you get your hair done?”

  Geena laughed. “I programmed the medical bed. I don’t know how common that is, but hell, if it can repair a failing heart, it can trim my hair from time to time. I’ll help you set it up for yours.”

  Ad Boc Seckan, the aging patriarch of the Boc Seckan family finally arrived, accompanied by his daughter and heir apparent, Jis Boc Seckan. The third member of his party was Wenachi Bon, the high priest who would oversee the succession of authority to the younger Boc Seckan, assuming the real Rose of Light had been found. All five people already at the table stood respectfully until the new arrivals were seated.

  Boc Seckan took the empty seat at the head of the table, his two companions sitting to either side of him. Lexi got the distinct impression that Jis Boc Seckan subtly forced their priest to sit to the left of her father by placing a hand on his shoulder and nodding slightly toward the left-hand seat. From her position on the Plicora’s right, she was able to directly observe the Aeolus team without leaning forward and twisting her head. Lexi could only wonder if that had been her intent and if her partner’s caught it too.