Broken Wing: A million deaths were not enough for Cassandra!

by Konig, Artor

  He went down into the cabin of the craft where further fumbling occurred. I stood at the controls carefully keeping an eye on what went on below.

  “Cassandra, take the slack, please.” His voice came faintly but clearly to my ears. I pulled the appropriate lever gently until the rotor lifted slightly. Almost as I did so the rotor came adrift at its base. I increased the tension in the cable, lifting the wide blade clear of the hub. I moved the blade to one side and set it gently down on the concrete next to the craft. It was hard labour on his part, but it didn’t take us too long to remove all four blades and the two heavy hubs. The craft looked horrible without their primary flight surfaces; the hole in the peak of their roofs made them look maimed. When all four rotors and the two hubs were safely on the concrete floor, I switched off the pulley just where it stood and trotted importantly down the stairs from the catwalk.

  The work which followed was largely examination; the Doctor went over every inch of hub, housing and the tang of each rotor. Whether or not he found anything to confirm his suspicions he didn’t say but he was obviously not happy with the state of either hub. I had to admit to myself that the whole setup was not all that conducive to confidence. The tangs of all four rotors were alarmingly worn; the circular seal on which the hub rotated was half an inch thinner than it should have been. The main shaft from the twin drive shafts to the hub was twisted slightly; it shouldn’t have been twisted at all. The gear train was missing teeth and those that remained were looking the worse for wear. I for one could not decide what wear was understandable and what was deliberate damage. If the Doctor could tell the difference with all his instruments I could not decide either; he let no hint of what he was thinking leak out. He had obviously decided that there was going to be a wholesale replacement of parts.

  To this end we laboured long and hard at removing that which was to be replaced and detaching it from that which was to remain. So intent was he upon this labour that the hour of lunch passed unheeded but not unfelt. By teatime I was feeling distinctly out of phase. It dawned upon me at this point that if I wanted to have regular meals at this stage of the game it was up to me to ensure that they were prepared. I mentioned this rather loudly to the Doctor and he grinned up at me from the wreckage of the second rotor where he was busily removing the damaged tang. “I thought you’d never suggest it; come on, lunch was hours ago. Let’s nip upstairs for a bite and a break, then.” He replied, standing up from his grim labour on the cold floor, “We ought to dig up some really old blankets from somewhere to spread on the floor while we are up in the kitchen.”

  “It is rather chilly down here.” I agreed, leading the way to the stairs. I glanced behind at the busy and somewhat chaotic scene on the floor. Like the desolation up in the castle there was here a frantic emptiness; two trying to do the labour of many, with the shades of many blowing idly in the dust and cold that swept around this vast room. And vast it was; containing both our craft and all the tools and parts on the floor with contemptuous ease; the vast emptiness all around our suspended activity a mockery of the hugest and cruellest kind. For all our combined strength and skill was great the emptiness and the task we had set ourselves was too terribly huge.

  I turned away from the desolate scene, feeling cold from more than the wind. Lunch, the belated meal that it was, made up for its lateness with the generous hand we both applied to it. The Doctor then extracted from me a promise that I would at least try to keep our eating habits more or less sensible; he was inclined to go on for days without eating when he was otherwise occupied. I told him that I would from thenceforth pack a picnic basket for us to take down with us to the Nest; it seemed likely that for all the progress we had made that day we would still be spending a good deal of time down there. He agreed that this was a sensible seeming idea, “But we’ll need a jolly big thermos to take with us.” He told me.

  “There is a kettle down there; mugs as well.” I replied, “A recent innovation of June’s since she became fed up with requests that tea be brought down at all hours of the night.”

  “She was a very smart lady.” The Doctor said sadly as he refilled his mug, “I’m going to miss them all very much.”

  “Me too.” I told him quietly, “But at least we’re not alone.”

  “Mind yer blerry business.” Byrtle told us sleepily from his post upon the washing machine, “Can’t think what’s wrong with yer.” He was annoyed with missing his traditional lunch-time bit of fruit and had hurled away the biscuit I had offered him in a fury. He had picked it up when he thought I wasn’t watching him and he was nibbling it even as I turned to look at him.

  “No,” The Doctor agreed, “We’re not alone. And I’m very glad that of all my crew to have been spared, you are the one who made it. Although you don’t have the scientific expertise of June or Jim or one of the others, you’re the best all-rounder and by far the best pilot. For that I’m thankful; piloting is going to be the cardinal aspect of the next stage when we’ve put the Wrens back together that is.”

  “We’ll have to set off after those blighters soon.” I agreed, packing our supper into a satchel. It was largely sandwiches; enough to keep us going until fairly late. I found some powdered milk in a sealed packet and some sugar. There was a packet of tea lying around; I took that as well.

  “How long have we got before they draw sights on us?”

  “Just under six weeks, as I told the Master.” The Doctor replied, “This gives us ample time to set up the Wrens and maybe to design a few of those laser-stations as well just in case we don’t make it back.”

  “Automatic stations set onto a search and destroy programme?” I asked at once, wondering how I could have attributed any but the noblest motives to the Doctor.

  “Something like that.” He agreed, taking the heavy satchel from me and leaving me with only the teapot to carry.

  We made a call at a storage depot on the third level of the cellars to pick up the rotor tangs and drive shafts that were to be replaced. The various other parts we needed the Doctor put into a pile to be collected on a second trip. The wide ring seals of the hubs I looked at dubiously; they were nearly a yard across; rings of glassy, vitreous substance a good three inches thick. The two tangs and single drive shaft that I was carrying along with the extra gear trains and the teapot made for quite a burden. The boxes of smaller components that the Doctor wanted would be easy enough to deal with, I supposed; I would simply empty out the satchel and use that with which to carry them down. I followed the Doctor meekly down the long stairway; as I had once confided in June a long time ago, I was rather fed up with those stairs. Her reply, prophesying indirectly that I would become more fed up with the corkscrew seemed long and far away; I had not used that tortuous trail often enough to develop an antipathy to it.

  But the stairway to the Nest; I was learning to mislike it the more I saw of it. When I had been on duty, hurrying down to one of the craft or down to lower control, the stairway hadn’t seemed to be so long, but now it was definitely becoming burdensome, especially with the heavy loads I found myself carrying down its gloomy length. The Doctor then reminded me of the blankets we were supposed to fetch and would it be helpful to bring them at the same time I was bringing down the hub seals; I could use them to pad my shoulders maybe?

  I wasn’t too sure how to take this suggestion but the moment we had offloaded our burdens he at once went back to the removal of the second rotor’s tang with great attention and vigour. I sighed to myself, emptying out the satchel and leaving the pile of food on the pilot’s couch of Number One, where they were likely not to be squashed and fairly safe. I didn’t think about being unsafe on my own going back up to the castle but I was reassured to see that the Doctor had his pistol tucked into his belt. It struck me that lower control was too close to where the Master had lurked for it to be really safe even now. I went over in my mind the list of things the Doctor wanted me to fetch, including the chemistry disc from the laboratory file; the one that Alex had com
piled. I mapped out my route in my mind, deciding that the blankets were the first stop; they would be in the kitchen; somewhere in the scullery, I decided.

  Byrtle was fast asleep on his washing machine; he didn’t stir so much as a grey feather as I trotted importantly past him. The weather beyond the window was still loud and foul; the scullery murky and damp from all the washing hung there. I opened the small window facing into the courtyard in the solemn hope that it would help matters. Two tatty blankets I found, heaving them over my shoulder. I trotted out of the kitchen again, clattering down the stairs to the first cellar level. Back into the cold laboratory I went, nosing about in the disc library for the disc the Doctor was after, fetching a portable gamma source at the same time. The radioactive wedge was rather heavy, sitting at the bottom of the satchel and bouncing aggressively against my lower back as I moved. The disc I tucked into my belt. I shut the door carefully behind me, trotting back down to the aircraft stores. I looked doubtfully at the two huge seals, wondering how much trouble they were likely to give me. I packed the boxes of small parts into the satchel, almost filling it. With this back over my shoulders, I draped the blankets over as well then took the whole mess apart.

  I shoved the blankets over my shoulders and put the satchel over them; that was somewhat more satisfactory, though not perfectly so. At last I took up the first of the ring seals and draped it over my shoulder. It was almost as heavy as I had expected but not quite. I took a few moments to settle it comfortably before heaving up the second ring. With a small sigh I trotted out of the stores back to the spiral stairway.

  The Doctor was lying at full length on the cold concrete floor of the Nest when I returned there, peering into the depths of rotor One, which he had propped up with the damaged tang. He was poking about within the murky depths of the rotor with a very long-hafted tool; some sort of precision wrench. I laid down the two ring seals with due care, heaving off the satchel and removing the two blankets quickly. I placed one of the blankets flat on the floor next to him and poked him out of the way while I arranged it under him. He ignored this intrusion almost completely, hardly taking his eyes off whatever he was doing and moving in response to my prodding absent-mindedly. I trotted over to rotor Two, saw how it had been unclipped and moved off to Number Three with my blanket and a small pack of tools.

  It was by no means easy to remove the tang of the rotor even after I had got the hang of it; the whole assembly had been designed to resist removal by the force of multi-mach wind speeds and it didn’t stick at resisting me. It took me a long time finally to remove the tang, prying at the cunningly situated bolts and clips that held it securely in place. There I discovered an advantage that I had over the Doctor; whereas he was generally much stronger than I was, I had a distinct edge in terms of manual strength. My hands could give that little bit extra pressure that bit more precisely; once I found just how the combination of clips and bolts worked together, the tang came out rather easily. Number Four rotor, when its turn came, took me less than forty seconds to pull apart. I shoved the damaged tangs to one side and then by dint of a mighty effort, raised the rotors so they rested on the tangs. That small exercise brought it home to me just how large and solid the craft were, that they could fling these massive blades around so fast.

  I turned my attention to the hubs after that; they had already been turned over onto their smooth, domed upper surfaces. I peered carefully at the ring that I had placed next to hub number One then at the hub itself, identifying the ring seal quickly. It took me a while longer to decide just how to remove the ring; no small task in itself. The seal was a cunning bit of work, I decided, when I had identified all the clips that held it into place. The glassy ring formed a gas-tight seal capable of inhibiting the passage of almost anything even when rotating rather fast. I peered into the hub, seeing the flat-faced glass Taurus around the drive shaft that transmitted the photonic signals from the pitch and joy sticks to the pitch-control motors within the rotors. The surface was smooth, unmarred; there wasn’t so much as a fingerprint on the polished surface. I turned my attention back to the seal, unzipping the seals as I had learnt how, pulling the old ring off after a struggle. I treated the other hub to a similar round of dismantlement then stood back, wondering what to do next.

  “Please put the new seals on, will you, Cassandra.” The Doctor told me from his comfortable spot on the floor next to rotor number Three, “If we carry on at this rate we should be able to reassemble the craft before we knock off for today. Just as you took them off; that’s right.” He turned back to his mysterious labours within the depths of the rotor. He was shining a small torch within, his wrench poking and prying then his laser-pointer stabbing its fierce red dot at some photosensitive point. I turned my attention back to hub number One. I hefted up the new seal, peering at the old one and shaking my head at the degree of wear. But then the seal had been in place since the craft had first been assembled a good six or seven months ago. From my own experience I knew that the hubs of all-metal craft seldom saw a week past without some replacement of parts.

  I positioned the seal carefully, lining up all the marks and pressing it firmly into place. One after another the series of clips snapped home. I replaced the bolts and tightened them up with a torque wrench. I spun the bottom of the seal against the weight of the hub, pleased to see the way it kept on spinning for ages after I left it, running on its nearly frictionless track with barely a whisper of sound. Feeling a bit more confident about the whole thing, I trotted over to hub number Two. By the time I had tightened the last bolt, the Doctor was by hub number One, lashing the chains of the pulley into place. I went quickly up to the pulley controls. It was barely ten hours since we had started on the job; fairly good going, I felt. The Doctor secured both hubs into place before starting on the rotors. I was by that point sufficiently at ease with the controls of the pulley to obviate the need for a third person to guide the tangs into their sockets.

  When the last rotor was clipped and bolted firmly into its housing, I told the Doctor in a loud voice that it was time for supper.

  “Seems like a very good idea.” He conceded, “It’s midnight; we started at ten this morning; not too bad for a day’s work. We’ll take the Wrens out for a test in the morning after I’ve had a look at Alex’s notes and seen just how to irradiate the hull.”

  “That should keep us busy for a bit.” I told him, looking over the two Wrens and the tiny gamma source.

  “It is a big job.” He conceded, “But according to what he told me, a second dose of radiation on a specific frequency makes the material translucent and alters its inner diffractive index to the point that it appears to be nearly invisible, especially against a dark background. The material is also strengthened by the second dose, but weakened by any further treatment on that frequency; the only frequency that seems to affect it. I preferred to have the craft silver for terrestrial work as they were less easy to spot in atmosphere. However since we’re to go into space with them we’ll want them as discretely coloured as possible.”

  He followed me into lower control where I set up the kettle and shoved the tea leaves into the pot. We made a good meal of it while he browsed through the disc, reading the monitor of the local system over his cup and a sandwich. Whereas I had found Alex to be a perfectly straightforward and easy-to-understand sort of fellow, his treatise on rare-earth carbo-nitrides didn’t convey much to me. Apparently it did convey a lot to the Doctor for when he had put away the last of the sandwiches he was all for getting on with the job and would I mind fetching the other gamma source and the specific radiance filter; the electrostatic one; there were two or more of them? I mentioned in a half-hearted sort of way that it was rather late, but his new vigour seemed to enliven me somewhat. I went so far as to go all the way up to the kitchen to fetch more tea and a tin of cake. On the way down I picked up his nuclear gizmos and trotted down bearing almost twenty pounds of equipment.

  I plonked his gear down next to the other gamma sou
rce and trotted back into lower control to place the tea and cake out of harm’s way. He had been rather busy while I was upstairs; he had closed all the inner panels exposing the hub and had given the anti-torque rotor of each craft a good looking at. There at least the wear was within normal parameters, showing that the late Master hadn’t tampered with them. The Doctor had also found a couple of A-frame ladders to facilitate our work, sweeping the radiation-source over the surface of the Wren’s hull. He affixed the electrostatic frequency filter over the gamma source’s aperture, opening the nozzle up carefully. He took up the heavy tool and swept it swiftly but smoothly over the hull of the Wren.

  In a swath where those deadly rays had passed the silver of the hull became a dull but smooth black. This he did a second time, creating another swath, looking at me to see if I had the idea, “Don’t go over a patch twice; this is a bit more exact than painting. If you do overexpose it, the surface will go white, then silver then black again, so mistakes can be corrected once. If it’s overexposed a second time, it will revert back to its component state; rather like fireworks but more so. Ready?”

  He passed the heavy tool over to me as if I had already said yes, bubbling with enthusiasm. I set to work at once, going over every little bit of the craft I could reach from the ground up, crawling under the Wren’s belly and changing the fish-silver to that deep and brooding black. It was easy but delicate work, massively tiring as well. The gamma wedge wasn’t light; the filter was a cumbersome contrivance and the hand had to be firm and smooth in its movements. I had a look over my craft, Number One, seeing that there was nothing left to reach from ground level, that I would now have to use the ladder.