Chewing Rocks (16 page)

“
I want you back on Ceres as soon as you can. I told Prints not to take any unnecessary chances to get to you. I do not want you to take any chances either; I want you home, Princess.

“Now, there is some bad news.
It is about those four men you had problems with in Mario’s. They stole one of Queene’s ships. We didn’t think anything of it at the time. We had dinner with Evelyn Queene and Sheriff Bob before we heard from you. Queene seemed really upset. She was the one who told us about the theft. She said she was concerned they would come after you for humiliating them like you did.

“Bob and I agreed it was pretty unlikely four warehouse lumpers could track you down in space.
We both thought they had no way to even know what direction you had taken when you boosted outbound. I didn’t even think it was strange Vittie kept silent through the whole meal. She decided she didn’t like Evelyn Queene even before the dinner. I had to insist that she go that night.”

Vittie smiled, “Well, M
iss Queene’s luster has lost some of its shine. I kept quiet because I didn’t want to say anything stupid. I am prone to do that when I am angry! Queene visited us at the office just after you left to apologize for her lumpers attack on you. This boob, your father, didn’t realize when she came to visit the office that day, she hadn’t come alone. I wasn’t sure, but I don’t think she ever goes very far without some assistant or other.”

He father picked up the story. “When we got back from dinner Vittie insisted we run through the office security vids to see who had been with Queene. Sure enough, that little weasel of her’s
, Wallace, had been with her and he scanned the boards for all of our ships, your’s included. Sure enough, the beacon you planted gave him precise information about where you were headed.

“We still don’t know for sure i
f they are headed your way, but if they are coming after you they won’t be but a couple of weeks or so behind you. These idiots got handed their heads the last time they tried a frontal assault on you. Unless they are dumber than they look, they won’t try that again. I don’t think we need to alarm the Nod’s crew or the Winkin and Blinkin because I think it is still only a very remote chance they will come after you, but you need to be aware and alert.”

Chapter 14.0

“No
,” Sno shouted in frustration, “stop it. What in the wild world of sports are you doing?”

Doc answered, “Going to work
, what does it look like?”

She shook her head, realizing he couldn’t see her over the open comms. “It looks like you are wasting time. You don’t even have your ships in synchronous orbit over this rock.”

Lee snapped back. “Yeah, but we don’t have to do that. There are enough of us that some of us can dig up the rocks, put it in the nets, and push it into space. A second crew snags the nets and empties them into the materials bin. It is simple and quick. The manuals say that is the easiest way to set up operations.”

Sno snorted, “Manuals! Of course it is the easiest way to set up. But it is more time consuming in the long run and wastes
more man hours than snugging the ship up directly to the rock.”

Doc’s voice asked, “
Snuggling what?”

Sno replied, “
Okay, Lee, give me the command seat.” She moved into the chair on the bridge of the Blinkin quickly familiarizing herself with the controls. “Okay. This rock doesn’t have much spin and a negligible tumble. This should be a breeze. Nod and Winkin, stay put. I am going to move the Blinkin into place.”

Sno called up a few commands on the computer screen, but there wasn’t a response.

“Oh, cram it!” she said. “I have this program set on a short cut so I can hot button it on Sedona. Well, we will just have to do this the hard way.”

She searched a list of navigation programs, calling up each in turn dropping them into a new
command file. She then ran a quick simulation on the computer. Satisfied with the results, she looked around at Lee and Jackson. It had taken her about fifteen minutes.

“Okay, ready for magic?
Blinkin: commence mining program Whyte Alpha 11.13.”

Doc said, “Can you talk us through what you are doing?”

Sno said, “Yeah, sorry. No sense in moving the rocks any farther than we have to move them. First, we put each of your three ships, butt-end, snug up against the rock. Blinkin is here.” She flashed locations for the other two ships, marking each area on a digitized three-dimensional chart of the asteroid. “The Winkin and the Nod should be parked as marked.”

She did
not feel any movement on the Blinkin as it swung around, matching velocities and rotation with the asteroid, but she was able to see the movement on the chart. She flash transmitted her hastily assembled program to the other two ships.

“All right;
we don’t really set down on the rock, but we settle into a synchronous orbit about fifteen to twenty feet from the surface. Then, we lock down the inner hatch to the feed chamber and open the outside garage doors. We can then string out gravity nets from the ships to the surface of the planet, creating an enclosure.”

Doc replied over the comms. “I see. We can then work inside the enclosure and only have to move the raw materials a few feet up.”

Sno answered. “Not ‘up’, earther. You aren’t in a gravity well. Pushing rocks up takes effort we don’t need to expend. We reset the grav-stat in the feed chamber so the back wall of the feed chamber is set to ten percent gravity. The gravity nets are multi-grav capable. We set them to one percent gravity where they contact the surface of the rock and increase the gravity in increments until it contacts the ship at nine percent gravity. Any rock, pebble or speck of dust that we knock loose from the big rock will float ‘down’ into the chamber or be trapped by the net and flow along the net until it falls ‘down’ to the back wall. The back wall is now the bottom or floor of the chamber. We will be chewing rock and pushing it down the hold into the hopper. Down got it?”

“
Harold Ortiz here…um, why don’t we set the grav-meter to greater than ten percent? It seems to me we could move more rock up…I mean, down faster.”

Sno snorted, “Okay
, your grav-stats on these old POS can still be set to, what…five or six gravities?”

Doc answered. “Actually, they are rated for seven and a half, but I wouldn’t trust the
Nod’s systems to more than three.”

Sno said, “Three. Okay,
college boy, how big is the feed chamber from garage door to back bulkhead, sixty maybe sixty-five feet, right? Add onto that, twenty to thirty feet from Nod’s ass to the rock face. Suppose you break off a chuck of rock that weighs six hundred pounds earth standard. Remember, when you break it off, it is going to fall down past you. What kind of damage will a six hundred pound rock do against the back wall of Nod’s feed chamber from a ninety foot fall into a gravity flume at three times your Earth’s gravity?”

Doc hesitated, “Well, I would have to do the math, but
we have to calculate the inertia and mass-”

Lee interrupted. “We don’t have to calculate squat. We are going to start damaging our ride home pretty quick if we start throwing big rocks. I see that part. But, I don’t relish the idea of hanging upside down for four or five hours.”

Sno looked over at the short earther; then she rolled her eyes upward and said in her best grumpy voice, “Honest, your Honor, it was self defense. The ignorance was contagious.”

Sounds of s
mothered laughter came over the comms.

“Think
, would you?” Sno said, “You set your own EVA suits to whatever gravity you feel is comfortable. You will feel like you are working right side up. The loose rocks will look like they are falling up. Keep you suit’s boots set to stick to the surface. Everyone must, and I repeat, must keep themselves attached to a well grounded tether or you may fall down into your own rock pit.”

Chapter
14.1

“No. No.”
Lee shouted. “Oh, my…what are you doing?”

Sno shrugged. “You said it was my turn to fix lunch.”

Lee shivered until his whole belly shook. “You are supposed to cook lunch. Tossing a box of something into the microware is not cooking. That is just reheating.”

Sno replied, “Yeah, well, it is either this or we send out for pizza, because if it doesn’t come in a box with ‘reheating’ instructions, then I don’t know what to do with it.”

“Amazing grace, girl, didn’t anybody teach you to cook? At least, someone should have taught you about food values.”

“
Why should anyone teach me to cook? No one has starved around me yet. Besides, the nutritional values are on the side of the box. And don’t tell me you care about eating healthy, mister jelly belly.”

Lee
poked himself with a stiff finger in his ample belly. “This is flavor. Someone should have taught you to cook because food has more value than nutrition and eating is more important to the human soul than just keeping the body’s fires stoked.”

Sno said, “I see that. I know bonding over a meal. It’s
a ‘breaking bread together’ thing; like sharing a beer. But that is eating; this is cooking.”

“True
,” Lee said. “However, the amount of effort you put into cooking amplifies the bonding result of the dining experience. It has an affect on your attitude to your companions. If the effort you expend is no more than a quick moment with no real thought, then you, as the hostess, have not and will not give any great thought to your guest.

“Besides,”
he continued, “I am not sure I trust your microwaving skills. I don’t think I would even try anything called mandarin orange squid. I don’t think we have anything like that in our pantry and I am not sure I want to find out.”

“It wasn’t that bad
-”

Lee interrupted, “Doesn’t matter. Fi
rst, let me introduce you to this piece of equipment. It is called a stove…”

Chapter 14.2

“No. No. No.” Sno shouted across the engine room. “Marlon, freeze! What are you doing?”

Jackson shrugged. “Just getting ready to hit the transmit button on the
transmission chamber to send this load to the warehouse. See, I just set the chambers grav-stat back to zero gravity like you told us.”

“That is good,
Marlon. Where is Allan?” Sno knew Lee was still outside the ship.

Jackson looked puzzled. “
He is outside. See the garage door light indicator. He just shut and locked the door from the outside. We have a full chamber, so we send it right?”

Sno shook her head, “We have been chewing rocks for four days now. This is our twelfth chamber.
You should remember to check the location of every crew member before you hit the button. Allan won’t survive a transmission to Ceres.”

Jackson said, “Yeah, but he just shut the door right? So, I know where he is, why ask him?”

“Right,” she said. “But if he hit the door closed button and you hit the grav-stat at about the same time, he could have been drawn off balance and fallen into the chamber, with the door closing behind him. If you can’t see your partner, then you don’t know where he is. Call him.”

Chapter 14.3

“No. No. No. No.” Lee shouted. “You may be wheels on fire in a mining camp or the bridge of a ship, but you are all thumbs in here. First you put the thread through the needle and then re-set the bobbin…”

Chapter 14.4

“No. No. No. No. And above all, no.” Sno shouted through the comms in frustration. “This rock is shrinking fast as we chew through it. If you blast where you marked, then you risk fracturing the whole thing and sending the pieces spinning off on who knows what trajectory.

“We can’t work this way with repulsar fields on because of the contact by the nets between the asteroid and the ships. Shattering this rock might spin off chunks big enough to hole the hull.

“We can’t bust it up completely until our nets can connect…”

Chapter 14.5

“No,” Cooper said. The fat man had slipped aboard the Winkin since everyone except Joey was on the asteroid. “Sit right where you are, boy.” He had even been able to make his way to the bridge of the ship without anyone realizing he was on board.

Cooper
pointed a gun at the teenager sitting at the bridge controls. But the boy hadn’t been close to any of the ships functions. A zombie appeared on the screen and slashed viciously. The screen appeared to bleed and turned red with oozing letters reading ‘game over’.

Cooper
chuckled; his fat double chin jiggled and said, “Sorry boy, I think you lost. This is the mining vessel the Winkin, right? And you are Joey?”

Joey nodded
, anger and courage showing in his eyes. “How did you know my name? And how did you get in here? My Dad is coming right back and he is going to be mad-”

Cooper
reached across and slapped Joey hard across the face sending him sprawling onto the deck. “Shut up, Joey. It is easy enough to figure out who is who with the eight of you chatting over the comm units like you’re in an old ladies quilting bee chat room. But now it is time to shut up. Hunter, lock this ‘zoid into a closet somewhere.”