Read Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7) Online
Authors: Laurence Dahners
Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7) (21 page)
Carter nervously watched the huge 747 based space plane maneuvering closer to the habitat. He waved, or, actually had his waldo wave, at the plane. Eventually the space plane stopped moving relative to the habitat. A couple of Carter’s waldo crew jetted over to open the cover over the large airlock adaptor that had been built into its nose. He jetted into the small airlock on the habitat and pressed the button to close the outer door. He saw the ports open and watched air blasting into the airlock, visible because it fogged a little as it shot into the vacuum in the lock. Once the gauge said the pressure was up, the inner door slowly swung open. He jetted into the habitat and told his AI to close the lock again. He glanced at the main readouts:
Temperature – 24
o
C
Pressure – 1.0 atmosphere
Oxygen – 21%
CO
2
– 0.035%
The atmosphere pretty much had to be rig Shad habitat. ht since there were a bunch of open ports connecting the habitat to North Carolina, but the readouts were up in big lights so
everyone
could be certain that things were OK.
He turned the waldo to wait for his guests.
When nothing happened for a while, he switched his “presence” momentarily to one of the waldoes that still hung outside. The spaceplane was just puffing into place, the airlock fitting they’d uncovered on its nose seating against the outside of the habitat’s big cargo airlock. Switching back to his inside waldo, he watched the airlock readouts and after a moment saw that the outer door had opened. Shortly afterward it closed again, the inner door cracked open and people in emergency suits with their helmets thrown back began to drift inside.
Carter grinned as he saw their eyes widen
. Taking in just how huge the space inside the habitat was
should
confound them. At 100 feet long and 120 feet in diameter with no intervening walls it just felt enormous. The sense of “huge” was probably enhanced by the relatively featureless walls. Their lack of anything to focus on made it hard to tell just exactly how far away they were. Chuck Lane and Annie Jones, the two experienced astronauts on the trip immediately grabbed onto grab bars on the wall near the airlock. They moved from bar to bar to make room for those behind them.
Carter smiled without surprise when Guy Spaulding, the engineer from the company that fabricated the habitat
, pushed through the door without grabbing onto anything and shortly began flailing around with nothing to hang onto. Chuck and Annie shook their heads in amusement. Spaulding was enthusiastic and a sharp engineer, but seemed sorely lacking in common sense. Carter began jetting that way.
When Carter had nearly reached him he said “Dr. Spaulding?” When he’d first found out that the waldoes had speakers on their torsos he’d thought it was pretty silly for something meant to be used in space. But, of course they
could
be used inside too where a speaker was a great help.
Spaulding continued making spastic, panicked movements, eyes rolling a little like a cow in a terror.
“Dr. Spaulding!” Carter barked at him, “Hold still!”
Spaulding
suddenly froze in place, eyes spastically darting to look at Carter, or actually at his waldo—same thing to Carter’s way of thinking nowadays.
“It’s me, Carter. You met me down at the D5R facility yesterday. I’m operating this waldo in front of you. Remember,” Carter said patiently, “you have a reaction
pistol in the holster at your right hip. Pull it out, point it away from the airlock and squeeze the trigger. It’ll push you toward the hand holds near the lock. Try to aim it through your center…”
Stiffly, Spaulding had
jerked out the pistol shaped jet and, without letting Carter finish, had squirted some compressed air out toward the middle of the habitat. Unfortunately, he did it at an angle to his center of mass, which imparted some spin. The spin panicked him. Then, he kept his finger on the trigger too long which really started tumbling him.
e s>
“Dr. Spaulding! Keep calm. I’m going to catch you and stop that spin. Then I’ll take you to the wall. Try not to move your arms and legs.” Carter jetted closer and grabbed a passing arm, then used it to pull Spaulding to him until he had him in a bear hug. Rather than try to do it himself, he just asked his AI to stop the tumbling, which it did with a few judicious puffs of the waldo’s jets. “OK,” he said, “Now we’re going to the wall. If you’re dizzy, it should get better in a few seconds.”
Carter used just a few puffs from his jets to move Spaulding to the wall. Unfortunately, just as they got there, Spaulding threw up. That didn’t surprise Carter. After all, even without the tumbling, just being in a weightless environment made quite a few people sick. Carter had come prepared though. He pulled a port off his torso that connected to the vacuum outside, snapped it on, and quickly sucked up the barf. Even though the vacuum port was only two centimeters in diameter, the amount of vacuum it had pulling to the outside made short work of the mess.
Spaulding gradually settled down and eventually started moving around the inside of the habitat, though he was careful to keep his hands on the strap grips attached all over the inside. Lane and Jones, with their extended experience in weightless environments, were soon bouncing from one place to another and using their reaction jets to scoot around the huge cavity. Carter thought they were doing much of it in pure delight. Not to say that they neglected their inspection; just that they delighted in flying from one spot to another.
The large “cargo” airlock opened and several of Carter’s waldo crew came in with a
huge bundle of material. With a little work, Carter and the other waldoes stretched it out at the far end of the habitat, attaching it at the anchor points it had been designed for. The material had been folded carefully enough that they didn’t have much difficulty with tangling. Once stretched tautly, it provided a series of hexagonal chambers like a big honeycomb that could serve as a “dorm” of sorts for visiting researchers.
Each hexagonal chamber was airtight when its door was closed
and they all had their own ports connected to sea level air pressure back on earth. The idea being that if the habitat suffered catastrophic decompression, but if you were in a chamber with the door closed, you could ride out the emergency in your chamber until rescuers arrived. Besides, having fresh air constantly entering each room ensured that atmosphere didn’t get stale. Air was exhausted from the habitat near the ends and entered through numerous ports scattered everywhere. Until there was more experience with the habitat, personnel would also be encouraged to wear “emergency suits” which had open ports by each person’s chin. Then if catastrophe struck they could close their helmet, pull on their gloves and be relatively safe wherever they were.
There were even “shower” chambers in each
“room” that astronauts could climb into, wearing goggles and a ported snorkel. A port on one end sprayed water and air in, while high altitude ports at the other end sucked it out, keeping a high enough air flow to keep the water moving along. In theory, at least. At the end of your shower, turning off the water port left warm Caribbean air blowing through to dry you. Chuck Lane happily tried it out, having been on many missions where sponge baths were all that were available. He came out proclaiming his delight at getting truly washed in a space environment. The fact that SThephic water and air were no longer precious commodities in space was changing life out there.
The next mission was slated to bring up another set of hexagonal chambers. These would be larger to provide work spaces for various microgravity labs and the first synthesis and manufacturing concerns that wanted to rent space on board.
After an extended examination, Spaulding, Lane and Jones proclaimed the habitat ready for occupancy. They had taken “Lifeboat 1” out for a spin. Carter felt proud
as they admired its construction.
To Carter’s surprise
, before leaving even Spaulding became semi-proficient at jetting around with his reaction pistol.
Chapter Seven
Hanson stepped out into the post-surgical waiting room. She glanced around and found John Parker’s wife. Stepping that way she saw Donsaii again waiting with the woman. She said, “Ms. Parker?”
The woman looked up from her book.
“Everything went fine Ms. Parker. We installed the stems and checked the osseointegration implants. The implants were fine.”
“And the ‘neurotrode?’”
“We put it on the median nerve. Of course we have no idea whether it’s going to work or not yet.”
“No… but I have faith. Thank you Doctor.”
***
Warren Newton said, “Ms. Varka, Mr. Marsden, Mr. Short, thank you for meeting with me. As you know the FBI’s main tasking for me has been to discuss how hardware modifications might be able to diminish the potential of your devices to be used for terrorism. Before we begin talking about that, I’d like t
o express my relief that you were successfully rescued after your kidnapping, Ms. Varka.”
Vivian nodded at him. “We’d love for you to
also advise us on how we might protect our employees from such temptations and threats.”
“Well your little speech to your employees about ‘offers’ that seem too good to be true was a great step in that direction. I’d like to suggest that you offer a substantial reward for reporting such offers.”
The three leaders of Portal Tech looked at one another, then at him, “Do you think that would work? I mean, I would think that avoiding the danger involved in getting mixed up in that kind of thing would be a
much
more powerful impetus.”
“
Imagine you were someone who’s been offered a large bribe to do something like steal plans, or circuits that haven’t been embedded yet. Or something similar? On the one hand, they have an offer of ten thousand dollars to sneak something out of the plant. Something they figure they could get out without getting caught. On the other hand they have, what?”
“We’ve already offered to match or better any offers someone might make… but I guess that was directed at someone offer
ing them money to defect. You might have something there…”
Newton leaned back in his chair. “Now about making ports safer, I think I saw that all the big ones have GPS in their electronics?”
“All the ones over 5mm, yes. The GPS circuit is tiny but the little ports are often used for things where
everything
needs to be really small.”
“Could
the FBI give you lists of GPS coordinates for high risk terrorist targets like the White House and have you set the ports so they wouldn’t work in the vicinity of those targets without an FBI approved code being entered?”
The Portal Tech people looked at each other with raised eyebrows.
***
Carter watched again as the huge 747 based space plane crept up on the habitat. It had some of their first scientists on board as well as the scientists’ equipment and the hexagonal “work cells.” Like the “dorm” from the first trip, much of the equipment was too large to carry on the small space planes.
Carter and his waldo team had been welding together an adaptor for the airlock at the other end of the habitat. It attached to the habitat via the airlock and had attachment points for tubes to go to the smaller “bedroom” habitats that would swing around the weightless one. The rotation would provide the living quarters with centripetal simulated gravity to prevent diseases of weightlessness in longer term residents. The adaptor they were building contained the bearings that would allow the rotation. They were constructing it from very heavy steel to withstand the large loads from the rotation.
Chuck Lane and Annie Jones had been living on board the habitat since they had evaluated it earlier. They’d been trying out the facilities and had offered a number of suggestions for further additions to the habitat to make it more livable. Watching them, Carter suspected that the two astronauts were more than just friends and coworkers. They looked like they were truly enjoying their time alone in the weightless environment.
Once he could see that the space plane had successfully attached to the habitat airlock, Carter jetted over and entered through the small airlock. A couple of the other waldoes followed him. Once inside they found Chuck and Annie waiting by the big airlock as well. Though they’d been having fun alone, they were probably going to enjoy having some other people there for company.
Once the lock was open, the two astronauts took charge of shepherding the new personnel in and showing them how to use their reaction pistols to get around. A few of the new folks spun out and got sick but everyone
had been pre-armed with vacuum ports to clean up the floating messes.
Carter and the other waldoes brought in the new people’s luggage, taking it to the hexagonal living cell that had been assigned to each person. Once
the belongings were put away, the waldoes unloaded the big bundle that would be tensioned into place and would contain the hex cell work areas.
Carter’s shift finished about then and he passed on the work list to the second shift leader who took over his waldo. As he and Alex walked out, Alex turned to him and said, “Why are they sending actual people out there? There isn’t anything they can do out there that
us waldoes couldn’t do better… and safer.”
Carter had often wondered the same. “I think that a lot of people believe we need to get real people out in space to learn how to live there. Maybe for when we run out of room down here?” After a minute he followed up with, “You know, I’d kinda like to actually go out there
myself sometime. Not to stay, you understand, but just to see what it’s really like. Try a reaction pistol in my flesh and blood hands.”
“Hah,” Alex said, “you’re too late. Didn’t you see the reaction harnesses they brought up this trip?”
Carter raised an eyebrow, “Harnesses?”
“Yeah, it’s a harness that you strap on, has compressed air jets in a bunch of locations. A little “joyball” lets you move yourself around without having to line the pistol up with your center of mass. Twist the ball one way, you turn that way, move it a direction and you move that way. In fact, unless you’re purposely trying to rotate, the AI uses your jets to keep you in the same orientation and location you were in when you let go of the joyball.”
Carter snorted, “Sounds like they took all the fun out of it.”
When Carter got home Jenny met him at the door. “Hey Daddy, I need help with my science project.”
Looking down at his daughter he said, “That sounds like fun. What are you doing?”
She grinned up at him, “I’m making a model of the space habitat you’re building.” She tilted her head and looked at him with her typically serious concern, “Do you still like your job out there?”
“Yes I do. But you know I don’t really go out into space, don’t you?”
She shrugged, “
I
feel like you do.” She wrinkled her nose at him, then tilted her head and studied him seriously. “Is it a good job?”
Carter nodded, not knowing how to tell her that not only did he love what he was doing
, but that they paid him a
lot
more than he had expected. The excellent salary and Abby’s frugality were going to let them get his loans paid off in just a couple more years.
***
Ell and Emma were walking over to the Quantum Research labs when Emma said, “Did you hear about Michael Fentis, the sprinter?”
Ell shook her head,
taken back once again to the time he’d been so rude to her at the Olympics.
“Someone interviewing him for a Track and Field event asked whether he’d met you, ‘cause you
know, you were in his last Olympics.”
asked whedth="3em">
“Oh?”
“Yeah. He said no, but his face closed up when he did… Then he volunteered that he thought you’d, ‘just gotten lucky,’ winning those gold medals.”
Ell grinned, thinking that she could
picture him doing just that. Fentis was so arrogant. He would find anything that directed the spotlight away from himself and his own achievements really irritating.
Emma glanced at her, “I can’t believe you’re smiling about it, the guy’s
such
an ass.”
Ell shrugged. “Well he is arrogant, but
he kinda has a right to be. He’s an amazing athlete.”
“
I
think he’s an ass. I guess the interviewer felt the same way because he said, ‘Luck?! No one’s come close to replicating any of Donsaii’s new elements in the years since!’ In response, believe it or not, Fentis said he didn’t know anything about gymnastics because he ‘didn’t really consider it to be a sport!’”
Ell shrugged
and grinned, “His prerogative, I guess.”
Emma
raised an eyebrow. “The interviewer jumped him for it though. He said, ‘I believe that analysis of the video of her run up to the vault showed that she runs faster than you do?’ Fentis purpled up like he was going to explode and said that ‘those videos had technical problems’ and besides, ‘everyone knew that gymnastic equipment was sprung to let gymnasts do things that couldn’t normally be done.’”
Ell smiled again, “Well, that’s true, there
are springs under the floor exercise area.”
“But not the vault runway!”
Ell chuckled, “No.” They came into the QR area and she turned her head, “Hey John, how’s it going?”
Parker was sitting in front of a touch screen with pictures of the front and back of a
right hand displayed. He held a stylus in his good left hand and every half second or so would touch a place on the displayed hand. Saying, “Halt,” to his AI, he turned. “It’s going good,” to them.
Ell glanced at his right arm. He had on the new myoelectric hand they’d fitted him with over at the hospital. She nodded at it, “How’s that working?”
He looked down at it and opened and closed the hand. “It’s a mixture of amazing and total crap. You see that the hand just hinges open and closed which means that it really doesn’t fit a lot of objects you might try to pick up. It has a little sensory feedback built into it, but that’s
so
limited that if I pick up something soft I’ll likely crush it because I have very little idea how hard I’m squeezing.” He held it up and looked at it with some loathing. “At least this is the new model with the power coming in through ports so I don’t have to carry batteries around.” He shrugged, “Also it’s pretty cool that they make these gloves to go over it. Look, they’re printed to match my other hand so I don’t look like such a freak.”
“Yeah,” John said, sounding more enthusiastic. “Ryan apparently has some kind of math genius roommate that ran up this
software program in no time. Ryan’s neurotrode feeds a signal to one of the axons in my nerve and then I just mark on the screen where I ‘feel’ the sensation. The stylus has these little buttons that I press if I feel pain, or cold, or heat rather than just touch. Some of the axons give me weird sensations that the finger’s moving or suddenly in a different position. Right now I’m not identifying them. Just trying to write down what kinds of feelings I get from them. Then, after we’ve come up with a list of the ‘position sensations’ I get from them, I’ll go back and note those sensations on the ones that I skip this time.”
“What happens when it stimulates the ones that control muscles?”
“Oh, I already identified those. Really, that was easy. The program showed me a finger moving and I tried to move that finger the same way on my ‘phantom hand.’ Then it identified the axons that fired to try to cause that motion. Now, since the program already learned which axons control muscles, it isn’t trying to stimulate those axons during today’s session.”
