The Bright Black Sea (50 page)

'Damn,' I said.

'Damn, it is, Skipper, and just by the look and the
heat, it's a major one. At least two meters long, maybe more,' Riv
said, adding, 'A pin hole would be no problem. We'll just drill
through the two layers of casing and plug it with a rivet patch
we've on hand. This close to the end, it'll last for years. I've
served on ships with engines so old and eroded that hot spots had
to be plugged just about every time they were fired up. Had several
when we brought the
Lost Star
across to Azminn half a
century ago. Credits seemed a bit thin in the nebula in those days.
But a fracture's a star of a different color. I've never had to
deal with one myself, but fractures are very likely to spread and
get nasty very fast. It's a good thing this was caught in time, we
could've lost the stern of the ship if it had breached the outer
casing.'

Damn, indeed. I stared at the discolored spot in the
D-Steel casing along with the rest of them and glanced around at
the grim faces staring at the spot silently. This was not good, not
good at all.

I'll not go into too much detail, but briefly, a
rocket engine is largely build with D-matter alloys designed and
built from the subatomic level up to create characteristics not
found in naturally occurring elements. D-matter materials are a
result of the ancient discovery that elementary particles were not
pieces of matter but something analogous to small bits of code, a
description of a function rather than an object. In the centuries
that followed, a method of re-programing this cosmic code was
developed. It involves vast amounts of energy and rare elements and
extremely high temperatures, but D-matter materials are now
produced routinely, though because of the energy involved, on
remote moons and in the drifts for safety. The same process could
be used for naturally occurring matter, but mining those elements
is a lot less expensive with the almost unlimited supply that
exists in the drifts.

The inner liner of a rocket engine is a 3 cm thick
layer of one of these D-matter materials called
D-matter
radshield,
or simply D-Rad. It's designed to be impervious to
the full spectrum of radiation from thermal to cosmic. It lines the
rocket's combustion chamber preventing both the radiation and
intense heat of the plasma drive from escaping. The same D-Rad
alloy is also used to shield all the ship's atomic reactors and as
a layer of the ship's hull as well. It is not, however,
structurally strong enough to contain the pressures within the
combustion chambers of the engine and so there's an outer casing
made of
D-matter steel
, or D-Steel a super strong steel that
is designed to contain the intense pressure of combustion. A third
D-matter alloy is used in the rocket engine –
D-matter Therm
or D-Therm – which is an alloy that withstands temperatures several
magnitudes beyond that which would turn ordinary matter into plasma
and it is used to radiate the intense heat generated by atomic
fission to achieve a nearly complete conversion of our hydrogen
fuel into propulsion.

A small hole, and likely a crack has appeared in the
inner, D-rad liner allowing the intense hot plasma of combustion to
reach and begin melting through the outer D-Steel casing. This is a
known hazard and the outer casing is monitored by heat sensors,
which automatically shut the engine down before the plasma jet
burns all the way through – with luck. If the liner did have more
than a pin hole, if it was indeed a crack, the plasma would likely
work its way along the crack, vaporizing the underlying D-Steel
casing, rapidly extending the crack, creating a large fissure in
the outer casing allowing a powerful jet of plasma to be released
into the engine room under intense pressure, reeking havoc on
equipment and people, potentially destroying the ship as well as it
vaporized everything it touched.

A pin hole can be mended aboard the ship by drilling
out a small hole and securing a broad rivet-like patch over the
hole, but in the case of a fracture, it is rarely possible to get a
large enough patch to securely cover the whole of the fracture to
keep it from spreading. The standard remedy for a fracture is to
cover the affected part of the engine with a large D-Rad ring – a
second lining as it were – that allows a very generous margin of
coverage to make sure that the plasma under great pressure and
super-heat would not reach the fracture area under the patch. In
this case, the entire bell of the engine would likely have to be
have a second layer of D-Rad installed. It would be a fairly
expensive repair, and we'd need a shipyard to do it.

'Damn,' I sighed yet again. I turned to Min, but she
only shrugged. 'Nothing more to be learned staring at this. Send up
your report once your bot has had a look. We'll need to know our
options, if any.'

'Right,' said Riv, with a nod to Min and me. 'If it's
a fracture, there won't be many options. It's a shipyard for
certain.'

'Then let's hope it's just a pin hole after all.'

'If wishing works, it will be. But I'd not hold my
breath.'

Min and I turned away and hauled ourselves slowly up
through the maze of platforms along the lines of steep stairways in
silence. The good thing was that we were in no immediate
danger.

'You're quiet. What are you thinking?' asked a somber
Min as we reached the control platform.

'I'm trying to do the math in my head. I'm thinking
we should have time to decelerate using the balancing engines and
not end up deep in the Myzar Drift.'

Having just cleared the Anjur passage we had been
using our main rocket to shape our course for Zilantre. We had
another 24 hours of main engine burn left to make that course
change. Then we would've coasted for 36 days before firing up the
main rockets to begin our deceleration to match speeds with
Zilantre.

'The balancing engines flat out can provide about 30%
of the power of the main engine, so we'll need at least 70
additional days to decelerate and that'll extend our passage to at
least 90 days from this point, putting us a bit over two weeks
beyond our delivery deadline,' she replied. 'I think we can assume
it's a fracture and that we're not only going to be paying the late
delivery penalties, but the expense of relining the engine as
well.'

I glanced aside. She was calm, but grim. I don't know
her credit balance, nor did I know what a liner patch would
cost...

'Our insurance will not cover the cost of repairing
the liner – it's considered a consumable item, but we should be
able to claim the delivery penalties, since I don't see how a
meteor fracture could be considered negligence. It will, I suppose,
take time to see those credits though. Still, I'd think that
Zilantre as a gateway world to the deep drifts would have shipyards
capable of repairing the liner. I'd imagine this type of damage
happens fairly frequently in the drifts,' I said, as cheerfully as
I could manage.

Reaching the bridge, I briefly relayed what had
happened to the crew on watch, and Min and I retired to my
office.

'Any idea what the repairs will run?' she asked.

I shook my head. 'I was a mere pilot during our last
major refit and was on a long leave as well. I'll look in our logs
and Guild estimate tables, but in the drifts, who knows what the
going price is? We should be able to get by just re-plating the
bell section, since it's a very common N33 standard engine.'

'Oh, I'm sure it can be fixed. But at what price?
Delivering the boats late will put a big dent in our profits, so
it's likely at least part of the repairs will have to come out of
my contingency fund... which is not bottomless,' she added
grimly.

'Still we've insurance to cover the delivery penalty,
and two quarter boxes of trade goods that should bring in at least
fifty thousand credits. We might have to dip into the contingency
fund while we wait for the insurance credits, but I'm certain we'll
get by.'

'Oh, we'll get by... this time. I just hate the
thought of losing all those credits.'

'I don't see how that can be avoided. Still, it could
have been a lot worse – we might have been in the long boat with a
long voyage ahead of us or dead... As it stands now, it is not a
matter of life or death, just credits.'

'My credits,' she said grimly.

'Your credits,' I agreed.

02

'A fracture,' Lilm said, as she, Myes and Tenry filed
into my office (Riv had the watch), 'Runs close to three meters
long.'

No surprise. 'I suppose we'd best see Min,' I sighed.
I pinged her to see where she was, and pinged Vynnia to join us as
well. I rose to my feet. 'What do we need to do. Chief?'

'Get to a shipyard and reline the bell,' she replied
tartly as we stepped out into the passageway and headed for the
main access well to take us up to the owner's suite. 'Though Myes
has a drifteer option.'

I looked to Myes, 'A better option?'

'A drifteer option. Let's just say another option. An
old drifteer trick,' he replied.

'And what, would that... Oh, let's wait until we have
Min in on this. This isn't going to be my decision anyway.'

Min and Vynnia were waiting for us in the
companionway outside of Min's quarters, and after we'd filed into
the small office and found a place to sit or perch, I asked Lilm to
give her report.

'...so with the fracture running around the bell, and
no more than three meters in, we might be able to get by relining
only half of the bell. If we were in the planetary trade, with a
day or two burns at a time, I'd say we could go with that. But with
these long burns, well, it's an iffier call. A full bell reline
would be my recommendation,' she concluded, adding, 'However Myes
has suggested another approach. I've heard stories of it being
done, but have no experience with it myself.'

'Myes?' asked Min, turning to him.

'Well, Tally,' said Myes, shuffling in his seat a
little. 'I grew up and worked in the shipyards of Larvella in the
Alantium Drift,' he began. 'They're little drift shipyards which
devote most of their time salvaging and keeping wrecks of ships
semi-space worthy. The deep drifts are pretty poor so even the most
decrepit ships are kept operational until they no longer can hold
air, and only are they broken up for parts.

'One of the techniques we used to extend the life of
a rocket engine with holes or fractured nozzle chambers – pretty
common in the deep drifts – was to remount the engine so that the
damaged part of the nozzle bell extended from the ship. Then we'd
trim the nozzle to eliminate the fractured section. The profile of
the bell, after having been cut down is, of course, less than
optimal, but with the danger of fracturing removed, the engine
could be reliably operated as usual.

'Now I must say that all the ships I've seen this
done to were much smaller that the
Lost Star
. Small, drift
traders mostly, but I'm thinking that in principle, it should work
for a ship our size too. We're only looking at moving the engine
some 4 meters down and trimming off the last 4 meters of the nozzle
bell...'

'But can we do that in space? we don't have a
shipyard handy,' I asked.

'Well, that's the question. We'd have to look into
what it'd take to do it and make it work. Still, we have more than
a month to detach the engine – reactors and all – from the mounting
frame, move it down and reattach it. I don't think that would be a
problem in free fall. Of course, that's just the beginning. We'd
have to extend and jury-rig the fuel lines and controls again, and
cut the nozzle down – service bots can do that while the other
alterations are going on. And in the end, we'd have a rocket engine
that would be perhaps 10% to 15% less efficient but could go on
operating more or less as usual likely for years, if necessary. And
there's no reason why we couldn't save the section we trim off, and
when we wanted to re-plate the bell, bolt it back on and move the
engine forward again when the credits are available.'

'So what you're saying Myes, is that we could – if
we're willing to accept a less powerful engine – fix the problem in
transit and in time to use the engines to decelerate on schedule
and make our delivery deadlines,' asked Min, leaning forward over
her desk.

'In theory. We'd have to chart the whole process out
to see what would need doing, if we could do it, and how long it'd
take before I could say yes. Even if possible, it might be too iffy
to try it in transit. We could just wait until we're in Zilantre
orbit, where we'd have the resources of a shipyard to call on if
needed.'

I glanced at Lilm and Tenry. 'What do you two have to
say about this idea?'

'Oh, it works,' said Tenry, 'I've seen it done in
smaller craft anyway, and it should, in theory, work of a ship of
any size as well. But I can't say I've ever heard of it being done
on a ship like ours. Ships our size are worth the expense of
re-plating. And you're crippling the ship's engine and will have a
higher fuel bill because of it. So it has some serious
downsides.'

'So at this point you're not all in on this idea,' I
asked. The engineers would stick together once they settled things
amongst themselves, but they hadn't yet, so I wanted to get each
individual's opinion now, if I could.

Tenry shrugged, 'Do we need to be?'

'I'm not entirely sold on the idea either, Skipper,'
admitted Lilm. 'In part because we haven't had the time to look
into it. I'm sure there's a hundred big and little things involved
in moving the whole engine and reactors that we haven't had time to
consider yet. And I'm not sure we've the resources. Myes is talking
about a shipyard operation.'

'By resources do you mean things like tools, extra
piping, wiring and such, or hands to do the job?'