by Gary Weston
'It happened. We fixed it.'
Another pause. 'But if that pipe had breached the outer wall...'
'Well, it didn't. Don't worry about it.'
'It's my job to worry about it. I'm having all the buckles tested before we use them.'
That had Dillow thinking. 'Could any more buckles be suspect? I don't fancy having the ship destroyed because of a few dodgy parts.'
Moore had been wondering the same thing. 'I can't rule out any more bad buckles. I'd suggest you spend some time checking them out, but if the cracks are fine, even microscopic, you probably won't be able to see them, not without some magnification.'
'I kinda wish you hadn't said that, Jay. Now I feel like I'm sitting in a ticking time bomb.'
'Just telling you how it is, Fawn. Best you're aware of the facts. I'll get back to you once I've had the engineering report.'
'Thanks. Just don't beat yourself up over this. It wasn't your fault.'
'I appreciate you saying that. I'll get right onto the buckle testing. Bye.'
'Bye.' Dillow sighed. One thing she didn't need was another headache.
Chapter 72
Dillow settled in for the last half of the trip. Craggy had done it again. Yet another space walk, finding the problem and actually fixing it. And yet to him, it was just one of those things. If she had simply accepted the computer check and not done a “Craggy”, she would have missed it. And Craggy found the problem simply by touching the side of the ship. How mad was that? But that pipe had done serious damage. Had it pierced the outer shell...It didn't bear thinking about. That he had been destined to be a glorified toilet cleaner was ridiculous.
She smiled at the idea he was on his way to his lover. Misty was a lucky lady, having a man like Cragg. She should be so lucky. But she had been lucky in love, once upon a time. As Big Bird hummed along, she had time to reflect on times long ago.
He was Security Sergeant Hank Dale. One of her father's officers. It had been her father's fortieth birthday. There was a special celebration for the man nicknamed Armour Dillow.
She had been a couple of months off her eighteenth birthday. Naturally, there had been no alcohol. But that didn't stop a good time. Her dad had dug out some old farts music. It was a wild, manic sound that surfaced after the war of seventy seven. It represented what was supposed to be the rebirth of Earth. It wasn't.
Hank was wearing something called a Hawaiian shirt which shouldn't have been allowed out in daylight. He was twenty two. Not regulation handsome. But the cocky smile and the way he was always laughing, cracking painfully bad jokes, did something to her. There was only one problem. Armour Dillow.
Widowed fathers were always overprotective of their daughters. Few boys ever had anything to do with her. A father who stood over seven feet tall in his helmet, who could kill a man with a single blow and was deadly with any type of weapon, tended to keep potential suitors at a very long arms length. Multiply that fear by a hundred for a father who was also Space Security Commander and that Hank had actually asked her to dance was impressive enough.
It turned out her father wasn't the ogre everybody thought he was. He hadn't been blind to the way other teenage girls had dates while his own daughter never did. He had never tried to look intimidating whenever a boy had shown any interest, but even smiling and saying hi was enough to have them running for the hills.
Lance Dillow liked Hank. Not just as one of his officers, but as a man. They shared the same humour of bad jokes. He trusted Hank. They had seen action where their lives were on the line. So when Hank actually stayed around and love blossomed, Lance kept a discrete distance, but with a naturally fatherly eye. Her father had told her if he was ever going to like a boyfriend of hers, she couldn't go far wrong with a Space Security Officer.
And he'd been right. Nearly three wonderful years. She was in ship maintenance, Hank was dealing with crime, on Moon and around it. They had discussed things like living together, maybe even a baby sometime in the future. Hank was kind, romantic and affectionate. Between keeping Moon moving and safe, they spent all other hours together.
Moon was still very much under the control of Earth. Things were pretty bad on Earth. The wars had created strange situations on the planet. The West had a prisoner of war camp, as did the East. The trouble was, the West stopped feeding their prisoners. It could have had something to do with the top politicians who having caused the wars whilst keeping themselves safe, had planned a one way trip to Moon.
The four huge ships were jamb packed with them, the ships being built for that very reason, years before the Hydrogen War. It had no doubt been something of a surprise to them when several hundred starving prisoners stormed the ships prior to take off. Many politicians had their careers suddenly terminated that day.
The pilots, actually fairly indifferent to politicians in general, were only too happy to take off for a new life on Moon. And had it happened years later, the outcome would have been much different. The Earth demanded the apprehension of those violent criminals the moment they landed. Moon had no authority to ignore the commands from the governing planet.
Nobody understood quite what happened that day the four ships had landed on the Moon. The prisoners, from many different countries, had pleaded their plight, telling of how they had been locked up to starve to death.
The Moon Commander of the time had offered the prisoners a fair hearing and a promise to be dealt with fairly, providing they came out without weapons. This had been accepted. The Space Security officers were heavily outnumbered but didn't expect trouble from prisoners seeking amnesty. Perhaps hunger had snapped a few minds. Three crazed prisoners came out all guns blazing, and the officers reacted. Other prisoners, thinking the officers had fired first, also came out shooting. Three officers died, including Hank. Her father had ordered his officers to retreat and he finally persuaded the prisoners to lay down their weapons if the officers did the same. No more on either side died that day.
It had been just a regrettable and in hindsight, preventable tragedy. The doctors confirmed during the medical examinations that some of the prisoners may have had their mental faculties affected by starvation. Earth went quiet. Moon stopped listening. Those prisoners became free and solid citizens of Moon. The ships were used for making more useful ships, where trips back to Earth became less of a priority.
Dillow had been inconsolable for a month. No one was ever buried on Moon. All were cremated, and traditionally, their ashes were added to the grey sand of Moon, to become a part of the whole. The three officers were cremated with full service honours, and their colleagues in full black armour, stepped slowly as the ashes were taken outside to what was known as Moon Ash Hill, and Fawn Dillow had been allowed to cast Hank's ashes to mix with the sand. She used to go there sometimes, and she would pick up a handful of sand and throw it down the hill, which had become another tradition.
Dillow's thoughts returned to the ship. The face of Hank faded. An oppressive loneliness enveloped her, drowning her, crushing her.
'Ship. There had better be a man out there for me somewhere. The poor shmuck has no idea what he's in for.'
Chapter 73
'Okay. I want to see that pod finished before the shifts over,' said Engineering supervisor Luke Landers to one of his team. 'Oh, Jay. What can I do for you?'
'I think we may have an equipment issue.' Moore passed Landers a typical buckle. 'One of these fractured on Captain Dillow's ship. A pipe got loose and breached the internal wall.'
'Damn. Is she okay?'
'Yes. Thanks to Craggy. Luke. I'm not loading another thing on that ship unless I know the buckles are safe.'
'Fair enough. You want these tested?'
'Right away, please. Luke. I'm worried about Dillow. What if there are more bad buckles?'
'This becomes priority,' said Landers, waving the buckle. 'How many have you got?'
'Not in use, a little over four hundred.'
'Jeez. Okay. Get your people to bring them over
to the engineering workshop. I'll get the technicians onto it right away.'
'Thanks, Luke. On my way.'
Chapter 74
Two weeks out from Mars, Dillow had decided to stay with the convoy, rather than use the ship's extra speed to reach the red planet sooner. The incident had unsettled her and she took comfort in having two other ships on her tail. The others made a point of contacting Dillow regularly, just to chat and keep her spirits high. Rocky said perhaps some modification could allow for a crew of two.
Dillow had replied that anything delaying the relocation project wasn't an option. Rocky even offered to be the one to take the ship on her return trip to Moon, feeling the hot glare from Amethyst at such a suggestion. She had been relieved when Dillow had declined the offer. To have their flying island of love for just the two of them was something special the other teenagers would be rightly envious of. She wasn't about to give that up if she didn't have to.
On Cragg's freighter, the old timer was going over the controls for the nineteenth time with Morgan.
'Can I take the blindfold off, Sir?'
'No. You almost had it that time. One more go. Gently. I don't want any switches accidentally triggered.'
Morgan took a deep breath and slid his fingers across the controls. 'Left thruster. Right thruster. Landing thrusters.'
'Correct.'
'Speed control slide. Thruster balance regulator. Air regulator. Temperature control. Computer systems check. Radio controls...'
Morgan scored one hundred percent on control identification.
'Well done. Now, if for any reason you lost lights in here, you could still work the controls.'
Morgan proudly removed the blindfold. 'Is that how you learnt?'
'Not really. Unlike you, I didn't have such an enlightened teacher. I had Freight Captain William Croxford. Big Billy he was known as. The trouble with Billy was he didn't like rookies messing with the controls. I mean, come on. How else is a rookie to learn? All I was good for was all the dirty and menial jobs. I could only mess when he was snoring his head off in his pit. The old codger went and had a heart attack. Pretty much just dropped dead.'
'Jeez. What did you do?'
'I managed to get him in his suit to keep the stink in. But that left me on my own to get the freighter home. To do that, I had to learn the controls damn fast. I hadn't a clue what I was doing. I ended up on a heading that would have me crashing into Venus. I focused on those damn controls, figured it out, and got the old bus turned around and heading for home.'
'Wow.' Morgan picked up the blindfold and put it on. 'One more time, hey?'
'Good man,' said Cragg, grinning.
Chapter 75
Tim Reynolds, chief engineering technician stepped aside. 'Take a look through the magnifier.'
Jay Moore looked at the offending article. 'I see a luminous line. Is that a crack?'
'Yes. The luminous ink penetrates the cracks making them more visible. It would be impossible to see them with the naked eye. There isn't much depth to the cracks either. Just a surface crack. But the tension applied during loading is enough to open it right up. I have done a tensile test and it failed miserably, well below specification.'
'We work to a specified tension. Webbing and buckles are designed to exceed that tension by three times.'
'It's a faulty batch. See this number stamped on it? B79xIA. That is for a batch of twenty, a rubbish delivery from Earth. I tell you, I reckon the less we have from those cowboys, the better. All the buckles with different batch numbers have been tested okay. I've found fourteen with this batch number having the same cracks.'
'My God. Where are the other six?'
'You don't have more buckles?'
'No. They are all here. It could be the other six were used on Dillow's ship. We know at least one was.'
Reynolds stared at the fourteen faulty buckles. 'I think you have some damage control to do.'
'Bloody great,' said Moore, hurrying away.
* * *
Dillow took the call. 'Jay. Nice to hear from you again.'
'You might not feel the same way when you have heard the news.'
Dillow closed her eyes, mentally preparing. 'Go on.'
'We have identified the batch of dodgy buckles.'
'That's a good thing, right?'
'Sort of. But we can't account for six of them. Fawn. It's possible they are all on your ship.'
That was hard to swallow. 'One's already broken. There could still be five somewhere.' She multiplied the damage caused by the wayward pipe five times. That could wreck the ship and threaten her life.
'Will they all be in section eleven?'
'No. Fawn. We reuse webbing and buckles over and over. The faulty batch from Earth was one of the last batches we got from them. We have never had an incident like this in ten years. There was simply no reason for us to suspect components that should exceed all specifications, so there is no coordination of stamp-marks identification as to where they are used. They were all mixed up.'
'This keeps getting better and better. How many buckles were used to secure my load?'
Moore said, 'Three hundred and sixty five.'
Dillow counted to ten. 'I have three hundred and sixty five buckles, five of which are potentially dangerous?'
'Potentially. Yes.'
'Okay. What's the batch number I have to look for?'
'B79xIA.'
'Got that. Thanks, Jay. I have to get busy.'
Chapter 76
'Craggy?'
'Dillow. How are you this lovely morning, afternoon, evening or whatever it is.'
'Evening, Moon Base Time. Bad news.'
'Is there any other kind? What is it now?'
Dillow said, 'Jay Moore has just told me there are probably another five of those bad buckles on my ship. Five in three hundred and sixty five and they could be anywhere.'
Cragg whistled. 'Don't we ever get small problems? You need help over there.'
'Music to my ears. Are you coming over?'
'Not me. I'm too long in the tooth for crawling along inspection ducts and climbing in and out of all those hatches. My back's only just got straight again. I'll send Morgan.'
'As he space walked before?'
Cragg chuckled. 'Always a first time. I'll get him suited up. Can't wait to see his face. Morgan? Where are you? I got a little job for you.'
'I'm here. You need a syncoff? A beer?'
'Nope. I want you to jump out of the ship.'
* * *
'I'll stay in our airlock and see you are safe,' said Cragg. 'Now you have all the spare line to tie up anything needing it. Those hand-shears will cut it, but don't waste any.'
'Okay, I'm ready.'
'Take a deep breath. When you jump, go hard and aim for in front of the hatch. Dillow. Morgan's about to come over. Open the outer airlock for him. Okay. Morgan. Have fun.'
Morgan gritted his teeth, fixed a line to his belt, stood on the edge of the airlock and dived over enthusiastically to the ship, and he hit it hard.
'Urgh!'
'Morgan. Are you okay?'
'Urgh. I'll live.'
Cragg snapped, 'So stop messing about and get in the damn ship.'
Morgan climbed through the hatch and was swallowed up by Big Bird as the hatch closed behind him. Cragg reeled in the safety line and stowed it for later. He went back in the freighter and sat on his seat. Finding the rogue buckles would take hours. All they could hope for was that the buckles could be found before any more broke.
Chapter 77
'Feeling energetic?' Dillow asked.
'Not too bad. Better get going, I guess.' Morgan was through the hatch into the inspection ducting. It was cramped, and only passable on all fours. 'At least we have lights.'
They started with section one and found no dodgy buckles. Two and three were the same. In section four, they found one buckle.
'It hasn't broken,' said Morgan.
'That doesn't mean it couldn't go at
any time. We leave it as is, just wrap some line around the whole thing as a backup.'
Morgan tied off one end and made a single loop around the building sections. He pulled hard and tied the free end close to the suspect buckle. 'Done. Section five.'
'After you,' said Dillow.
They spent the next two tiring hours until they reached section ten. No more bad buckles had been found.
'We're over half way,' said Dillow. 'Something to eat and drink before we carry on.'
'I could use a break.'
'Back to the pointy end.'
It was a basic prepack washed down with simfruit juice. A toilet trip in the cramped wash-room and they were ready to continue. They had a call from Cragg before they started.
'Are you winning?' he asked.
'We only found one so far,' said Dillow. 'It hadn't broke, but we tied a length of line around the load just in case.'
'How far along are you?'
'About half way. We'll take another look at eleven and just keep going.'
'Okay. Keep me in the loop. Good luck.'
'Thanks, Craggy.'
Dillow entered the inspection duct and Morgan followed her half the length of the ship until they reached section eleven. The line she and Cragg had tied around it was still secure. They looked for more buckles but found none. It was hard going in and out of hatches and the inspection duct was draining their energy.
They still had four buckles to find. Knowing the risks to the ship, they pushed themselves. In section fourteen they found one bad buckle. On close inspection, they could see it had opened up along the crack. It had held, but only just. Again leaving it in place, they added an additional length of line to keep the load together.
They were in section nineteen all buckles were good. They were about to get out, when they heard a bumping noise.