Space, Inc

by Julie E. Czerneda

  After he straightened up, he gave Harley a speculative look. “So, Ace. What made you want to come into space? The pay? Running away from an ugly girlfriend?”

  Harley flushed. “You’ll laugh at me if I tell you.”

  “No. I won’t. Trust me,” Cap encouraged and grinned benignly.

  Harley chuckled. “Okay. I came into space because I wanted to be a part of it. I mean here we are, human beings expanding out into the universe, going out to explore the galaxy! This has got to be the grandest time in history.” He paused, and his face fell. “But most of the people down there don’t even pay attention to it anymore. We’re just part of the little lights in the sky. They don’t care.” He looked directly at Cap. “I want to be part of it. I want my kids and their kids to be able to say that their dad was up here doing something to help us get to the stars!”

  Further small talk was suspended when the creeper lurched as it hit the end-of-radial stop block, which automatically shut down the grabber-gears and engaged the safety clamps.

  Cap reached down and reengaged the stay-brake. “Well, here we are, Ace; the end of the line. Concentric Stiffener Ring #20, home of random effects, edge monsters, and the place voted most likely to need repair. You now know what it’s like to be on the edge of one of those toy disks the kids throw around.” He double-checked the safety equipment’s indicators, and his voice grew serious. “On this trip your primary function will be just to watch me. Next time, if you’re really polite and beg a lot, I might let you handle the waldos.”

  The Master Rigger stood in order to reach a contraption that was all wires and joints with two gloves on the end. Then he leaned his body back and pulled until the contraption started to move toward him. He quickly put his forearms on the gloves and bore down with his full weight. The machine rode smoothly to just above his chair and then he sat down, putting the gloves on while Harley watched. Cap reached with the gloves to take hold of a helmet that was also wired and put it on. A display screen automatically folded down in front of Harley so he could see what Cap saw in the helmet, and Cap began giving voice commands.

  “Butthead. Access C3. Repair arm to gross position nine zero degrees left, SS plus max extension.”

  Then he started teaching Harley. “As you may be aware, waldos are remote manipulation units that allow us to work with things that are in hostile environments. To use them you need several things. First you need the computer’s name, which in this case is Butthead.” Harley grinned as Cap went on in a dry tone. “The next time we come out you’ll be sitting here. There will be an initialization sequence and, if it suits you, you can name the computer whatever you want. If you rename it, you’d better remember the name. It won’t work for you unless you do, and you can’t rename it.

  “Second you’ll need an access code. When I tell them to, the central office will issue you one. No need to worry about someone else using it. It’s keyed to your voice.”

  Harley looked puzzled. “Then why have a code? If it’s keyed to my voice, why can’t I just tell it what I want it to do?”

  Cap sighed at the familiar question. “Because when they designed these systems, they didn’t think being ten million miles from Earth and moving at over 1.5 million miles a day just to keep up with the ball of dirt was sufficient security. The waldo is top secret equipment that has only been around since Adam and Eve got caught with their fig leaves down. How should I know why they did it? Sometimes I think they do things like this just to give us something to bitch about. So, of course, we oblige them.

  “Third, you need to learn the abbreviations we use with the computer. For example …”

  “I know them,” Harley interrupted. “They’ve had us memorizing them for the past two months and practicing with waldo simulators. You just told the computer to swing the arm out ninety degrees and as high as it would go over the sail surface.”

  Cap turned so Harley could see his face through the helmet and winked. “You got the basics. There are some commands we taught the computers that the boss doesn’t know about. You’ll learn those in time.” As soon as he had the waldos in position, he nodded his head toward the screen. “Now watch this real close. The sail is thin enough to slip between one second and the next, and as fragile as anything ever made. That’s why we have to be out here fixing it all the time. If God so much as farts, we get a hole in it.

  “Butthead, Access C3. Hold access code to terminate. View equals three meters squared.” The view on the screen widened until it showed the requested area. The reason the sensors were reporting slackness in the sail became readily apparent. They could both see that it had torn loose at the corner and was slowly flapping in the solar wind.

  “Crap!” Cap said to himself. “The bugger is loose. There’ll be no safe, secure job today.” He put the waldos away and then called the ship. “Bridge, C3.”

  The bridge answered, “C3.”

  “Bridge, we have a corner tear at R3/C20.”

  “Roger C3. I hear a corner tear at R3/C20. What do you recommend?”

  Cap responded, “Recommend forty percent reduction of spin and five percent reduction of area, then EVA to reattach.”

  “Roger. I hear a request for four zero percent reduction of ship spin and take in the sails to reduce total area by point zero fiver, then EVA to reattach. Stand by, C3.”

  Cap turned to Harley. “They will, of course, deny the request because to reduce sail area means to slow down. To slow down means to fall behind the Earth. To fall behind means that they’ll have to fire the ion engines to catch up … which means they’ll have to spend a lot of money. The question our Captain and CEO is now asking himself is why he should spend a lot of money and risk his performance bonus just to make a sail rigger’s job easier. The answer will be that he shouldn’t, that’s what we get paid for, and he’ll say no. Which should take him about … five … four … three … two … one … zero seconds to do.”

  Exactly when Cap said zero, the radio scratched to life. “C3, Bridge.”

  “C3.”

  “C3, it has been determined that the repair as described can be effected without reducing area or spin. You have permission to go EVA and proceed with repair while observing all safety regulations and procedures. Space weather is in a no-warning condition.”

  “Roger, Bridge.” Cap turned the radio off.

  Harley brightened. “Actually, this is something I’ve always wanted to do. To be outside with nothing between me and the stars but a sheet of plastic over my face!”

  Cap smiled grimly and nodded his head. “Well, a sheet of plastic and a couple of million miles of vacuum. Helmet on, Ace! It’s time you and Daddy went for a little walk, and we have to hustle. If we don’t get that beast fixed in short order, it could shred the whole sail. In the time it takes to mount a replacement sail, the whole ship would be unbalanced. To prevent that, they’d have to roll all sails, which would get really expensive! Then, since it will no doubt be our fault, you and Daddy will be out of a job No brave new galaxy for you. No comfy retirement for me.”

  “Ace? Take hold of this sail clamp.” Cap handed Harley a device that looked like a spring clip that was six inches wide with padded strips where the clamp faces would come together on each side of the sail, squeezing it between them. “Clamp it there. Yeah, good. Now, pull! Harder!” Waving a hand at Harley to ease off, Cap stopped pulling. “Crap. It’s not going to work. Whatever tore through here must have taken a piece of the sail with it. Take your clamp and tie it off with a snap line so it will hold that piece of sail about where it belongs.”

  “Does this mean they’ll have to let tension off the sail so we can fix it?” Harley asked.

  “Not in this life,” Cap laughed cynically. “No. What that means is that instead of taking us half an hour to fix, it will take two hours. See, we have to get another piece of sail from the patch box on the back of our sailcreeper, then fuse it to this one and seal it down with the sealing kit. The glue stuff takes a long time to set, and
we have to hold the sail in place until it does. One screwup and we start all over.”

  Cap heard the sigh in Harley’s suit-to-suit microphone. Then Harley said, “Well, it’ll give me more time to look around, I guess.”

  Cap laughed. “Yeah. That’s about all you’ll be able to do while it sets.” Then he called the bridge. “Bridge, C3.”

  “Bridge.”

  “Bridge, mere is a piece of sail missing here. We plan to effect a patch. Estimated repair time is two hours. Submitting modified recommendation.”

  “C3, stand by.”

  On his suit-to-suit radio Cap said, “Why don’t we go ahead and get the patch gear out while they’re dithering. It’ll save us some time.”

  Harley answered, “But don’t they have to authorize us to use that stuff?”

  Cap shook his helmeted head. “So what else are they going to do? Tell us to forget it; the ship is beyond repair and to call a tow truck? Come on. This thin stuff is really hard to corral if it gets away from you. And grab a couple more snap lines. We’ll use them to tie the stuff down until we’re ready for it. You set something down out here on the rim without attaching it to something and ka-zing! Off it goes into the dark, and your pay gets docked for the replacement. Ever price a wrench that has to come ten million miles?”

  Once all the equipment and supplies were gathered, they settled back to take it easy until the official go-ahead. They were lying on the inner surface of the concentric ring looking “up” toward the rest of the ship. The inner rings and sail supports blocked the ship itself from view, and the glare of the reflected sun on the sails blotted out the stars on the sunward side, but they could see the stars streaking overhead on the shadowed side of it as they wheeled through space.

  Bored, Cap decided to tease the kid. “If someone was on the top of this thing up there and fell, could we catch them before they dropped past us into space?”

  Harley responded, “Nope.”

  “Why not?” Cap asked.

  “Well, I could give you the long-winded answer that they would go the other way because of centrifugal force, but that wouldn’t be as much fun. I think that if someone fell this way instead of that way, it would have to be Fat Jim. Fat Jim is so fat I doubt that even centrifugal force could budge him if he didn’t want to go. So, if he fell this way, it would be on purpose, and I don’t know about you, but I’m not getting under him!”

  “Fat Jim?” Cap asked, thinking perhaps the teasing had been turned around.

  “Yeah. He’s a guy I met on Earth who really wanted to come up here. He got perfect scores on all his tests, but he just couldn’t make weight. I heard a Company guy say that no matter how good Jim’s scores were they could spend the same money and boost three riggers up here instead of just one. Last I heard, Jim was still down there trying, but they might have changed their minds. Let’s face it. There are only just so many crazy people around.”

  The radio call intruded on their stargazing. “C3, Bridge.”

  “C3.”

  “You are authorized to proceed with the repair plan as modified. Bridge out.”

  “C3, out,” Cap said. Then in the suit radio he said to Harley, “Okay. Time to get to work.” He grabbed a sail clamp and held it up for Harley. “Now this is a sail clamp. If it looks familiar and the name sounds familiar, that’s because I just showed you one of these and told you about it a little bit ago. You even used one. It is not a doohickey. It is not a thingamajig. It is not a dweedle-bob. Learning proper nomenclature is important.” He handed the sail clamp to Harley.

  “Now, you take that sail clamp and clamp it onto the sail, but not just anywhere. You must first locate an imaginary line-segment that runs from one edge of the sail to the other edge of the sail with no tears intersecting that line.” He took a marker from a pocket in his suit and eyeballed the sail material. After several false starts, he put the soft marker point on the sail and made a decisive line across the corner. “So. Then you apply your sail clamp anywhere on the tear side of the sail material.” He watched as Harley did so.

  “Good. Next, you take another sail clamp and do it again only at a different spot. When the entire line is ‘edged’ with sail clamps, we take the snap cords and snap them to the little snaps on the sail clamps, so, and then pull them until our guts pop out, then hook the little hook on the other end of the line to a cleat. Then we tighten the cord with the little ratchet provided for that purpose, thereby stretching the material until it is as firm as a board.”

  They hooked the snap cords to the sail clamps, then hooked the other ends to the cleats and tightened them down. “Next, we measure the size of the hole, add a factor of fifty percent, and cut the material.” Cap took a small cutter from another pocket and expertly slashed the sail material before returning the cutter to the pocket and reclamping the unused material to the ring.

  “Then we just lightly stretch the material over the sail to make sure it will fit; smooth that little corner over there.” Cap pointed to the errant material. Harley ran his gauntlet over the spot. Cap nodded the upper half of his suit. “Yeah. That’s good. Now we glue it down.” The “glue” was a tube of sealer. He rolled the material back, smeared the glue over the joint area, then replaced the patch material and pressed it down into the glue. The operation was completed when he took out a small electronic tool and slowly passed it over the joint, fusing the materials together much like a welder fuses metal. Then he stood up on me ring. “Now we put the material and tools away except for the cords and clamps that are in use, and wait. It takes approximately an hour for the sealant to achieve maximum strength.” Cap looked at his wrist chrono. “Tie yourself down if you’re going to take a nap,” he warned. “Keep in mind that although your safety tether will stop you from flying off into space, it won’t make you lighter. If you fall off, when you reach the end of your tether centrifugal force will make you weigh an apparent 1.5 to 1.75 times your Earth normal weight. Then a shuttle will have to go after you, as you won’t be able to climb the rope—especially in a suit that weighs as much as you do. All the tether really does is make you easy to find and hard to catch. Any questions?”

  Harley was looking closely at the shiny sail material. “How do you see the edge of this stuff? It just kind of disappears into nothing.”

  “With a microscope. We don’t worry about the actual edge too much. We just grab it where we can see it and go with it.”

  Harley looked out over the sails. “So the sunlight hits the sails and pushes us along. Pretty simple, huh?”

  Cap agreed. “Yeah. When a photon hits the sail, it bounces off and gives us a teensy push. The part I don’t get is they tell me that when it does that it gives up twice the momentum it had coming in. It’s like getting something for free. At least that’s what the physicists claim.”

  Harley went on. “I don’t know how it does it either, but I know about the bouncing thing. When I was a kid, I had one of those solar cookers. You know, the ones where you stab a hot dog on a spike and the little curved dish focuses the sunlight on the dog and burns a hole in one spot while leaving the rest of it raw?”

  Cap laughed, “I had one of those, too!”

  They sat down on the ring to wait for the patch to set and watched the stars for a while without speaking. Then Harley broke the silence. “Are we there yet?”

  They both laughed again and Gap looked at the kid. “Ace, you know? You’re all right. I think we’re going to get along.”

  Harley looked out at the stars again and said, “I don’t know. I was looking for a rich wife. I don’t think you qualify.”

  They both laughed as the stars wheeled overhead and they waited.

  The radio instruments aboard the Inner Space first detected the CME as a slowly drifting type II radio emission, which was indicative of a CME heading their way. The onboard weather staff was rousted and sent to their computers and instruments to determine the severity and probable threat level and duration to the ship and its crew. Within fifteen
minutes of the radio detection, the first highly-energized particles arrived. The weather section supervisor called the bridge on the intercom and suggested protective measures be taken just in case it turned out to be a bad storm. The watch officer called the Captain, who verbally approved the standard potential CME measures. The watch officer, after logging the series of orders, stuck his finger on the button for the external radiation storm warning light and then activated the GEMS unit, the Generated Magnetic Shield that mimicked the Earth’s own geomagnetic field and captured the ionized particles to keep them form getting to the main body of the ship.

  Cap was thinking about his family dirtside when the radio intruded.

  “C3, scratch skurtchh.”

  Cap was puzzled. He keyed his radio. “Bridge, C3. You need something?”

  The only answer he received was more noise. “Something wrong?” Harley asked.

  “Don’t know. I think the bridge just tried to call me, but they were eaten by static. Maybe if I stand up I’ll get a better signal.”

  The second Cap’s head cleared the thickness of the inner rings he knew they had trouble. A red strobe light was blinking on the top of the factory. “Ace, I want you to do just exactly as I say, no response, no argument, no bullshit. Got it? Now stand up and follow your tether to me.”

  Harley did as he was told. As he was moving toward Cap, Cap raised his arm and pointed to the blinking red light. “Do you know what that is?”

  Harley knew. They’d talked a lot about it in the classes. It was the radiation storm warning light.