“I can provide enough power for you, but you will have to wait until I bring the drives online.” She brought up the bay systems on the control panel, then unlocked the four nearest large power feed positions, one each port and starboard in Bay 1 and Bay 2. She also unlocked a medium feed in Bay 1. She pointed them out to the assistants who hauled the arm-thick power cables over to the Sensor body and plugged them into the device, two on each side. They also connected the medium feed to the smaller pallet.
With that done, she made an announcement before she went to the bridge. “Welcome aboard the Silver Queen. You are free to enter the cargo bays, the entry area, the passageways, and the lounge, which is aft, on the upper deck. All other areas are locked and are off limits. There are autoprep outlets in the lounge and outside the galley, and meals are included with your charter. Please do not waste food, though, and you must clean up after yourself. Any cleaning costs or damage will be added to your charter. Professor, please let me know if you wish to visit my bridge; I'd be happy to have you as my guest.” She hoped he wouldn't take her up on that offer, but it was a polite thing to do, so long as he didn't interfere with the operation of the ship.
She wondered why all the assistants' faces lit up when she mentioned the meals were included. From what conversation she'd overheard so far, they all seemed to be quite knowledgeable about the Professor's work. Surely such highly trained research assistants were paid well enough that food wasn't a problem? It wasn't her problem to worry about.
Her priorities now were starting the drives and getting breakfast, so she wished everyone luck and headed for the bridge. Fortunately, the Dove had a food delivery system that supplied the captain's cabin, the crew cabins, and an outlet just outside the kitchen, although the main outlet and the automated food preparation system itself was in the aft lounge.
Whoever had designed this ship so the bridge could get food automatically delivered was a friggin' genius.
Anailu really appreciated it since she was crewing the ship by herself. Sure, the ship had an excellent piloting system, but she still preferred to be on the bridge whenever the Queen was underway. This morning, it meant she could be monitoring the drive checks and startups while getting breakfast at the same time. She also needed to keep an eye on the people aboard, especially in the cargo bay. Finally, she would also keep an eye on that big device. Anything that would pull that much power could definitely fail in a hazardous fashion.
As soon as the pre-start checks were going, she ordered sugary cereal doused in milk. It might be considered a childish breakfast, but it was her ship and she liked sugar cereal in milk. Besides, she thought she might need the energy to deal with whatever other surprises the professor had failed to warn her about. As she ate and checked the activity in Bay 1 on the cameras, she came up with a new personal goal – to have enough money to be free to reject a job if the client is an ass.
She was finished up her cereal by drinking the last of the sweet, sweet milk. At the same time, the pre-start tests completed. The drives were ready to start. They came up as sweetly as usual. She called the professor via the comm. “Professor, the drives are up and I'm ready to turn on the power feeds. Are you ready?”
“Really? I didn't feel a thing! Just a moment. Phillip, check that the power lockouts are engaged. They're good? OK, Captain, we're ready for power.”
Anailu activated the power to all five feeds. “They're on.”
On the screen, she watched as Untsala turned off his comm and went back to supervising his assistants.
Rude.
While they continued to work, clustered around the device, she checked the statuses of the rest of the ship's systems. Once that was done, she tried to figure what else to do. She needed to stay on the bridge and be ready, so she ended up doing some homework – a text about etiquette that Miss Prithers had given to her. Maybe if she read it enough, some of it would stick? She reminded herself that her skill with etiquette was now directly connected to a big increase in her ability to earn money, and money might be necessary to get the Queen to the stars.
Untsala and his assistants did complete their calibrations in about an hour, but it looked more like repairs and replacement. They even brought two carts of additional parts and equipment out to the ship. Fortunately, the carts were small enough to bring up the ramp and through the entry area, or it might have gotten complicated.
Finally, they started up the sensor. Anailu could definitely tell because the power use kept going up and up, and then just stayed there burning fuel for about a half hour. As she hoped, it was well within the capabilities of the drive as long as the professor didn't mind stopping every time he wanted to run the sensor, because there wasn't enough main drive power left to do much more than hover on CG. When the sensor run was complete, power use finally dropped and the researchers compared the new data with a previous scan taken at the same location. The professor declared they were a good match, and within expected variances. He gave Anailu the coordinates for the first scan location. She got clearance and a flight corridor toward the first location from the city flight control system. Before 7 AM, they were off the ground.
For this first flight, she kept the speed subsonic at the Professor's request. Even though the first location was close to the city, going this slow was boring to Anailu, and it was going to take a while. Once they were clear of the light traffic near the city, she went back to reading the etiquette book. The Queen's autopilot was more than adequate to managing this kind of flying.
When they arrived at the scanning location, Anailu made the final landing. There wasn't much to see; it looked like another boring patch of Doran's plains. Doves weren't really meant for rough field landings, but they had a precise autoleveling system. In addition, the landing system was designed to sense ground movement, so that the contra-gravity generators stayed on until the landing legs settled to a stable position. To keep the ship from settling once the ship went off CG, the system actually pushed down on the ground with a force equal to the current weight of the ship. The ground here was firm, so the ship found a stable position quickly and the CG generators automatically shut down.
Anailu decided to go forward to Bay 1 and see how things were going. When she got there, she saw the researchers high-fiving, and even Untsala smiling. Apparently the ship had maintained stability well enough for the researchers to start the scanning immediately.
Once the scanning began, Untsala came over to Anailu and shook her hand heartily. “Your ship is more stable than I hoped, Captain! If we can do this consistently, it might halve the time it takes us to complete our research.”
“That's great to hear! I hope we can work together to make that happen.”
Untsala glanced over at his assistants, then looked back at Anailu. “Ah, if you don't mind, I need to continue monitoring the scanning process.”
“Of course, Professor. I'll be on the bridge.”
This scan was another calibration point. When it came back as another clean match, the professor decided to skip the rest of the test points and start gathering new data. The next destination was farther away, so next flight was a much longer one. Again, the professor wanted to keep things slow for this flight. The only good news was that the professor wanted to do a test of stability at high speed on the way back home.
When the long flight was well underway, Anailu went aft to take a quick break in her cabin. As she walked down the corridor, one of the assistants in the lounge saw her and called out to her, “Captain?”
“Yes? Is there a problem?”
The young woman hopped up and came over briskly. “Oh, no, there's no problem. I just wanted to thank you for the beautiful coffee. I don't think I've ever had coffee so wonderful.”
“Well, you're welcome? You do mean the coffee from the autoprep, right?” Anailu wasn't sure what to think. As far as she was aware, she just had the coffee that came with the basic autoprep supply package.
“Yes, well, the imported gourmet coffee, of cou
rse. Oh, was it OK for us to drink it? I mean, you said we could use the autoprep, and it was in there, and I'd heard about Artullian Prime before, and I just couldn't resist trying it.”
“No, if you got it from the autoprep, then don't worry about it. Excuse me.”
Anailu didn't even know what “Artullian Prime” was. Hopefully it wasn't poison.
“Oh, thank you thank you thank you!”
Anailu thought it looked like the girl was just about ready to hug her, so she escaped into her cabin. As soon as the cabin door closed behind her, Anailu went to the autoprep outlet in her cabin and took a look at the menu. She pulled up “Beverages.” The one choice under “Coffee” now had a subtitle of “Artullian Prime, Second Grade.” Before, the coffee had said “Synthetic.”
Anailu didn't like coffee, and she knew she had bought only the basic load for an autoprep. She'd loaded the food supplies into the autoprep herself, two days after she left Orym's yard. The only coffee she'd put in was cheap synthetic coffee. She only put it in because it was included in the package, and maybe some guest would drink it eventually.
Her next step was obvious. She went to her command console in the cabin and brought up the maintenance and stocking records for the autoprep. There it was, last Sunday, loaded by Chef Cabirla, with the synthetic coffee moved to food storage. Now she realized how it had happened. She'd given Chef Cabirla access to manage all of the ship's kitchen equipment. The autoprep counted as kitchen equipment even though it was located in the lounge. That didn't answer why he'd switched the coffee, though. She'd have to ask him the next time she saw him. Maybe it was intended as a nice gesture. It seemed like every other spacer drank coffee. To her, it just tasted like burnt beans, and the caffeine did nothing for her.
On principle, she decided to try a very small cup of this “Artullian Prime, Second Grade.” The autoprep delivered it, and she took one careful sip, and then another.
Nope.
It wasn't as horrible as cheap synth coffee, but to Anailu, it was still the awful taste of burned beans. She put the rest of what was probably a terribly expensive cup of coffee into the recycler.
She took care of her errand to her cabin and returned to the bridge.
The next landing and scan went smoothly. They'd taken off again, headed for another point, when she got a call incoming to the ship. It was Mr. Torrell. “I know this is sooner than we planned, but I just got a group reserved for a three day outing. They wanted to start just a week from now, but I pushed them back as far as I could. That will mean starting two weeks from today. Can you and your ship be ready by then?”
Only two weeks to get everything done? Was there a way she could pull this off? Possibly. The medbay was scheduled to be reinstalled and certified in plenty of time, and the rest of the ship's equipment should be reasonably easy to buy and install. She guessed the uniform couldn't take more than a day to be done. Maybe if she spent more time on the etiquette training, she could get enough done to make the Torrells happy? “I think so, but I've only started on your list.”
“No surprise there. Just let me know if you run into any serious obstacles. And make sure you get to that clothing designer as soon you can! With that guy, there's no way to tell how long he'll take. But he's one of the best, no doubt of that. More importantly, he's the only one on Doran who's good enough, and in the time we have, that means he's the only one good enough.”
“I'm in the middle of a job right now, but I expect I'll be free later this afternoon, so I'll see if that guy's available.”
In one week, she'd gone from not enough work to maybe too much!
Anailu called Tombes & Tollas to set up an appointment with the clothing designer for later that afternoon. It seemed they were waiting for her call. Maybe one of the Torrells had called them first?
They ran three scans and then went on to the maneuvering tests. Heading back toward the City, they did several runs, adding speed for each one, with a pause and landing (but no scan) between each one. Finally, the professor OK'd a maximum velocity run, and Anailu pushed almost to the edge of the city's flight control zone. They slowed to the allowed approach speed and returned to the landing pad at the university for a final calibration scan.
This time, the sensor was out of calibration. After checking the data, one of the assistants said that from the moment they had started recording data in the morning, there had only been two causes for jitter and movement: during some high-gee maneuvers on the final, maximum velocity run, and movement while the ship was grounded. The ground movement was just minor ground shifts, wind effects, and background seismic activity; but while it did not take the sensor out of calibration, it added up. Anailu pointed out that she could just keep the ship on the CG generators for the entire trip. That would cost even more fuel, but the professor didn't seem to mind. He said the cost was worth it to ensure consistent data.
The professor was ready to charter her ship for the next six months straight. He even wanted to work through the weekends! Anailu's mind boggled, both at the potential income, and at spending that much time continually around the professor. Fortunately, she already had another obligation to the Torrells. “I'm sorry, sir, but I just can't do that. I'll do my best to accommodate you, but I do have other contractual obligations which I must fulfill. For example, I already have three days scheduled, starting two weeks from today.”
“Can't you just drop them? This is vital research!”
“Sir, I honor my obligations, and my previous contract stipulates that those assignments must take priority over any other contracts. You wouldn't want me to leave after accepting your charter just because I was offered a higher paying job, would you?”
“What if I increase your pay so you can subcontract some other ship to handle that less important job? Surely that would be sufficient to satisfy your obligations?”
“I'm sorry, Professor, but my other contract requires the presence of the Silver Queen as well as myself. There is no acceptable substitute on Doran.”
For the price, maybe not anywhere, but that would sound like a boast.
“In any case, my other contract should only require intermittent work, usually for two to five days at a time. It shouldn't be that bad. Surely, your assistants need time off, too?”
“What? They're just grad students. Why would they need time off?”
Anailu didn't know what to say to that. “Well, I will need time off, myself.”
Wait, he might not accept just that. Add a little more.
“I also need time to do maintenance on the ship. As you have seen today, it is a precision machine, and it takes work to ensure it continues operating with the same precision.” And that was true, too. He just didn't have to know that part of that time would be for Anailu, an important part of the “precision machine.”
“Well, I suppose that is true. I will need to take the W.A.S. back to the lab every week, anyway.”
“Even with breaks, we will still be working much faster than the schedule you were contemplating, right?”
“Yes. Yes, this will be much better than I was expecting, even with these annoying 'breaks.'” The professor considered for a moment. “I may not be able to get first priority, but I want to set up a charter that gives me the very next priority after that other commitment. You don't have any other contracts you haven't mentioned, do you?”
“No, just the one, but while it's intermittent, it is a commitment for the next year. Also, if you want to be even second priority, that will cost more.”
“Fine, that's fine. I will keep the equipment installed on your ship. Of course, you will need to keep your ship here at the university while the W.A.S. is aboard, and keep the cargo bays secured. I don't want anyone getting in and hurting it.”
“I don't let people board my ship without permission, so that won't be a problem. As long as you keep your equipment aboard my ship, that will extend your charter period.”
“Of course. I'll have the department's purchaser get in touch
with you shortly about the details of the new contract. Now, I have an important luncheon to attend.” The professor turned, waving dismissively, and left the ship.
Anailu shrugged.
The assistants took more time to shut down and close up the equipment, so clearly the professor had shared his intentions with them before even talking to her.
After another half hour, they completed their work. They took the two carts they'd brought with them, but the whole group waited in Bay 3 while Anailu sealed the large cargo hatch between Bays 2 and 3. When Anailu walked toward them, they all looked to the same young woman who had asked Anailu about the coffee. The woman looked a little embarrassed, then stepped forward to Anailu. “Captain, I'm Kara Sandifer. We wanted to thank you for not letting Professor Untsala have that crazy schedule he wanted. We couldn't have done it anyway, but he doesn't listen when we tell him we aren't able to keep everything running all day, every day. He just doesn't understand realistic limits sometimes. I mean, we're all grateful for the opportunity to work with such a brilliant scientist, and even more, to actually work with him to build the W.A.S.. It's just that sometimes, he treats people like machines.”
Someone at the back of the group added, “Unless they are giving him money, or they have something he wants, or he's sucking up to them.” Kara shrugged. “That's just the way he is.”
“Oh, I assumed he just had duplicate equipment and another crew to run it. You're the whole crew?”
“Yeah, this is almost everyone. Once Gracie told him about how smooth your ship was, he was pretty excited, so that meant today was 'all hands on deck' – literally.”
A girl off to the side waved her hand in the air. “Hi, I'm Gracie, remember me?”
Anailu hadn't noticed her before, but now that she looked more closely, she realized something. “Are you that girl who asked me all those oddly specific questions about the Queen's stability last weekend?”
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