She didn’t really ask Barak anything, so he found it easy to ignore her.
* * *
April didn’t need an umbrella. They were provided. What was even more surprising was she didn’t need to hang out the ladder they carried for a vertical landing. Jeff dropped them exactly on the X as a matter of pride. Their exhaust raised a cloud of blown water and steam from the tarmac. When it cleared an odd vehicle lumbered up to them. It was one of the bucket trucks the port kept for servicing lights and building exteriors. It lifted a rectangular work basket that could hold all four of them comfortably and drop them to the ground level. There was even a little gate so they didn’t have to climb in. The umbrellas were hanging over the gate.
Pierre Broutin and Irwin were standing with a slightly older fellow who must be the Prime Minister, Joel Durand. They had guards holding umbrellas and a second row of other officials behind the guards with uniformed officers. Behind them all April noticed there were other guards and uniformed police facing away from them, surveying the hangers and a few other planes and shuttles. It seemed a little overkill. Uniformed men took their umbrellas and sheltered them as soon as they stepped out of the bucket. It bothered April that the men holding their umbrellas were exposed.
Jeff suggested Otis and Mackay wait to unload their baggage until later since a lot of it suggested weapons just by their shape. He promised they would arrange it but he and April took the small soft bag each had along. They were pretty sure they would be offered overnight hospitality and if not they were easy to take back.
By the time they reached the ground, there was a line of barricades with bright yellow and black strips extended around their ship. Outside those barriers were three armored vehicles. April wasn’t sure what you’d call them, they weren’t your classic tank with a turret and cannon on top, but they had road tracks with rubber cleats, sloped fronts and helmeted soldiers on top manning an open turret with a stubby weapon that looked formidable. The critical component to it all as far as April was concerned was that the guns were pointed out away from their ship. There were extra barricades and another vehicle she assumed would be moved into the gap when their reception committee left.
Broutin introduced the Prime Minister and Jeff was a little shocked and stiffened for an instant when Joel took him firmly by the shoulders and kissed him on both cheeks. He managed to recover in time to turn his head and lean into the second peck and reach up to mirror his loose embrace.
April knew Joel for a bit of a fan, romanticizing her role in the rebellion. Seeing her as a throw-back to a simpler age he found more attractive than his own. Knowing that, she didn’t allow the formal stand-off embrace with hands on shoulders. She stepped inside that to hug him closely. It obviously delighted him and while she was close April thanked him quietly for helping her friend Irwin.
“I was happy to,” Joel said. “They obviously delight in framing mischief by decree. Who exactly is harmed by the coins in a distressed traveler’s pocket? I assure you that won’t happen in France. Now, you’ve come a long way, surely you can accept our hospitality for at least a night. Your friend Irwin declined to stay as an official guest. I suspect in his mind more to protect us than him. So he is invited to stay at a local hotel as our guest. He objected but I insisted on that much at least. Will you stay the night in my official residence or do you see a need to stay separately as he did?”
“We’d be happy to accept your hospitality, but we also need to install our security people with Irwin,” April said, inclining her head to Otis and Mackay. “I’m not at all sure he will agree to come back to Home just yet. He has unfinished business in Europe he may insist on finishing. So they will remain with him. We need to speak to him about that tomorrow. Can you have your security help them retrieve their equipment from our shuttle and find rooms near Irwin or install them all in a suite? Notice they have Tasers if that requires any special permission.”
“I will tell my people to aid them and allow them to be the first tier of defense in case they are jealous of their jurisdictions. They will be deputized to bear arms at need. He will join us and you can speak with him tonight if you don’t mind talking business after dinner. Our own security can watch their rooms so I can have the pleasure of all of you for dinner.”
“I’m afraid I didn’t bring very formal wear,” April said.
“Bah, no need to make it a stuffy affair. I shall forgo formal attire to set the standard,” Joel said. “I may even prevail upon Pierre to forgo a tie.”
“If you insist, I’d hate to outshine you at your own affair,” Pierre said with a smile.
“See what insolence I get constantly?” Joel said.
“What happened to the North Americans who delivered Irwin?” April wondered, looking around like the plane might still be in sight.
“They are off somewhere being refueled,” Joel said with an indefinite wave. “You don’t really have any need of them, do you? No packet of papers or anything to be returned with them to their government?”
“No. I was just curious. Their agent in trade for Irwin is being sent to WHOOPS. The Larkin shuttles travel a little slower than we do.”
“So I understand,” Joel said lifting his eyebrows. “Come, let’s get out of the rain and let these fellows close their perimeter and help your men. These fellows get all twitchy the longer I stand in one place. They imagine assassins are rushing to any public appearance from kilometers away.”
“You are probably in more danger from standing next to us,” April said. “I’ve never heard anyone say a harsh word about you.”
“You flatter me, but I’ll accept it,” Joel said, handing her into the limo first.
* * *
“What you been reading?” Alice asked Vic after he turned the phone off.
Eileen didn’t put her book down but listened carefully. She wondered what Vic had been studying so intently too. He was taking quite a few notes in a Moleskine journal he used for important observations about planting and daily weather. He kept a record of their mining area and where they had success and found concentrations and larger nuggets. So it wasn’t just a casual interest whatever it was.
“The fellow who is going to bring us fertile eggs and hopefully establish our own chicken flock had us bring him some old fashioned thermometers from Nevada.”
Alice nodded her head yes. Vic hadn’t been sure she even knew what one looked like.
“We had an old tin advertising sign on the back porch with a glass thermometer in it,” she said. “Mom said it was an antique. It had red stuff in the glass.”
“That’s similar to what we have now, but the chicken guy had electronic thermometers. Before we got him new ones he jury-rigged some homemade batteries to run them with pieces of metal for electrodes hanging in electrolyte in old food jars. I’m trying to see if I could make something similar but better. Eileen would like to use a bigger monitor than the little screen on the sat phone and it would take more power than what he cobbled together. All he had to replace was a little button battery.”
“That’s shiny. I didn’t know you could make batteries without like a big factory,” she said, showing with a double-handed gesture how big she thought it would be. “Are you going to make it run the big monitor on your desk?”
“That’s a little bit more than I think I can make work,” Vic admitted. “We have a tablet though that I think I can charge up,” Vic said, showing with his hands how big it was. “If it won’t charge up it may be within the capacity of the batteries to just run it directly.”
“So will you have jars with metal hanging in them? I can picture that.”
“Not exactly, I don’t have much copper around the ranch and even if I could make the cells, the individual batteries, big enough I think it would eat up the metal too fast. But I have been reading about batteries that use one metal and air instead of two kinds of metal. You can use iron and I have a whole lot of rebar leftover from doing concrete work and other pieces of angle iron and bars to
last a long time. I’ll try it tomorrow.”
“If you say so, I don’t know much about that kind of science stuff,” Alice admitted.
“I hadn’t thought, but you aren’t getting any schooling at all. That’s something we need to correct,” Vic decided.
“Hey, I’ve read a whole bunch of your books and I’m learning stuff from them.”
“Yes, but I’ve seen which ones. Fiction isn’t always accurate about things. You need some real history. Some stuff like Mark Twain you need to know the real history to be able to understand it.”
“Eileen has been teaching me stuff too,” Alice protested. “I’ve learned how to sew a little and cook much better than before. Of course, it helps to have something to cook.”
Alice had that worried look that said she was afraid Vic was going to make her do all kinds of things she really didn’t want to do.
“I’m sure we can find lots you want to know and will enjoy,” Vic said. “When I make these batteries I’ll show you how to use my hand tools. That’s something everybody should know. I have bicycles ordered we’ll get in the spring and if they need to be worked on all of us should be capable of doing that. When we start planting in the spring we will show you what we are doing and explain why. Raising food is something else everybody better know how to do now.”
“You ordered a bicycle for me too?” Alice asked, stunned.
“Yes, if we have to travel, like back from the spring fair or to the fall festival do you think you could run all that way and keep up with us?”
“No, but I didn’t know you were getting bikes either.”
“We arranged that in Nevada,” Vic said, “and I added an order for you to Cal in text on the phone. So you wouldn’t have heard, but I didn’t really mean it to be a secret.”
“There’s something else you are going to have to teach me,” Alice said.
“What’s that?”
“I don’t know how to ride a bike.”
Chapter 21
The walking mill was still approaching when they opened the lock. Like and ungainly insect it didn’t move a new leg until it sensed the other was touching ground. In the weak gravity it moved in slow motion that was exasperating to watch and wait on.
Deloris opened the hold hatch on the deck below them and deployed the crane out the opening remotely from the bridge. Given the weak gravity Barak didn’t use any of the take holds on the outside to lower himself. He just stepped out and easily landed in a crouch. At about three percent g it was easy to look like a gymnast acing a landing. It took a half minute to fall fifteen meters and he was going less than a meter a second.
“Drop our stuff to me,” Barak said. He grabbed them and placed them carefully on the extended flanges of the landing pad.
Laja was more cautious. It still looked like a big drop to the way her brain was trained. She stepped off but reached out and grabbed the crane cable as she passed and let it drag through her glove.
Barack hooked the cable to the walking mill once Laja was clear and rode it up with one hand around the cable. The walker was far lighter than the tracked machine and once it was in the hold he again just stepped off and landed easily beside Laja. She followed his example and inserted her boots in the toe cup of the slider and pulled a strap across them.
“You go ahead of me,” Barak said. “I want to keep an eye on you and help you if you have any trouble with the sliders. I’ll be behind you but to your right so when we try the thruster you won’t be right in my path.”
“Alright,” Laja agreed. She turned with tiny steps to aim at the machine. She leaned forward and slowly crouched before pushing into the ground behind her with the poles. She went forward but still came off the ground for about three meters. Fortunately she had good balance and landed evenly. It was slow going, and hard to make every motion gentle and controlled. It just looked stupid too.
“We need long telescoping poles,” she immediately decided. “The angle you push should be almost parallel to the ground so you don’t lift.”
“Good idea,” Barak commended her. “I’ll have them fabricated before our next visit.”
Laja managed to stay in contact with her next shove, but it was going to be really slow. She looked up at the machine and then back at the ship. It might take ten or fifteen minutes to get to the machine. Barak hadn’t come along with her at all. He was still standing just barely off the landing pad.
“Are you going to come along? Laja asked him.
“I’ll let you get a little bit ahead. I want to try pushing with the suit thruster.”
“You better lean forward a little or tilt it up a hair. It’s really easy to lift off the surface,” she warned.
“I think leaning will be enough. I’ll give as short of a burn as I can and try to just catch up with you,” Barak said.
Laja could see him lean forward, poles behind him off the ground. He used his helmet controls to fire a short burst. The exhaust wasn’t visible at all. He moved forward sharply and let off quickly enough. However, his right slider seemed to be pointed off to his right from the left one. As he passed her he was doing a slow-motion split and his forward lean was increasing. About three meters past her the split widened until the sliders went sideways and the sideways drag of them threw him forward.
“Oh, oh, oh… Oh crap, I’m past my balance point,” Barak had plenty of time to say and he pitched forward in slow motion. He crossed his arms in front of him and managed to keep his helmet and gloves up out of the slime. The front of his suit and arms back to his elbows were all smeared though. On the plus side the whole movement took him two-thirds of the way to the machine.
“I’m coming,” Laja called. “Don’t try to get up yet.”
It took her five minutes to reach him.
“Are you hurt?”She worried when she pulled up beside him.
“I may be a little sore later. I don’t think I’ve done a split like this since I was about eleven years old. Once the slider was running straight it just went off with a mind of its own. I should have turned the fronts towards each other so they’d run together.”
“Is that what you did before?” Laja asked.
“This is the first time we’ve tried them,” Barak admitted.
Laja just looked at him, put out.
“What is this… stuff?” Laja demanded. “Plain old regolith on the Moon is bad enough, and even being dry it can cling nearly as badly from static, but this is nasty.”
“It’s liquid ammonia with a bunch of organic garbage dissolved in it and basically clay. There are a bunch of gritty silicates and water ice mixed in it too. I suppose somebody will figure out uses for it if people ever live out here but it isn’t worth hauling home.
“I’m going to push off with my arms and see if I can get back vertical without pushing off the surface or flipping on my back.”
“Why don’t you plant a pole right in front of you and lift yourself up it hand over hand? It seems to me that would be a lot more controllable,” Laja advised.
“That might work. It’s a good thing they are on lanyards.” Barak levered himself up enough on his left arm to get his right hand pole out from under him. In the light gravity, he worked his way up the pole with both hands until he could drag his right slider back in and get some weight back on top of it. Lifting himself on both poles he got the sliders both back together under him.
“I’m going to skip the thrusters until we have some way to steer better,” Barak said.
“Do you need to go back?” Laja asked. “Don’t risk yourself.”
“No, no. I just stretched a few things further than they enjoyed. Let’s go on.”
Going even slower, they arrived at the machine. The side facing the shuttle was caked with slime thrown up by their exhaust.
“The splattered stuff is lighter in color because our exhaust dug up water and melted it. You have detectable water vapor at the surface because it is constantly sublimating,” Barak said. “As hard as it is to move arou
nd, it still might have been easier to sit down further away to avoid coating it like this,” Barak decided.
“It’s really not that thick,” Laja said scraping at it with a pole. “Is it stuck here?”
“It wasn’t when it shut down, but it looks like it might have sunk a few centimeters. I will have Deloris command it to back up. It’s already pointed straight at the ship. See the track marks in the muck? Deloris landed almost right on top of them.”
Laja kept quiet while Deloris and Barak made sure what they intended to do. The tracks on the machine started turning dead slow, but it didn’t move.
“Hold on a second. It doesn’t have a lot of clearance. I think maybe it sank until it is dragging bottom. Laja and I will go around the front and pry with our poles.”
After much side-stepping and careful maneuvering, they were at the front with their sliders jammed up against it.
“Ready?” Barak asked Laja.
“On your word,” she agreed.
“Pry as soon as you see Deloris engages the tracks,” Barak said. “Go ahead, Deloris.”
The tracks started again and they pried, but it didn’t move.”
“Speed the tracks up please,” Barak requested.
The tracks sped up once and again. They pried a little harder and the front of the machine started to lift. It massed as much as a small pickup truck, but it only weighed a few hundred kilograms here. The machine backed up hard and started for the ship. Barak had leaned into it too far and fell forward again in slow motion between the sliders, his toes still in the straps. This time he got his poles positioned to stop his fall.
“It’s rolling,” he called. “Do you have it on camera to stop it short of the ship?”
“Yeah, I have a good view. Don’t worry, I’ll stop it before it bumps us but close enough to get the crane cable on it,” Deloris promised.
“I know the drill on this now,” Barak said before Laja could be helpful. He lifted himself on a pole until he was on his knees and then repositioned the pole and got all the way upright. When he looked over the spinning track had sprayed Laja from head to toe with a sticky mess. She wasn’t saying anything but she didn’t look happy.
All in Good Time Page 33