117: TUBE

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We all, of course, gather in Engine Ring 1 for the reading. It’s a tense moment. I find myself shifting from foot to foot, holding my breath, exchanging looks with –

“Yep, there’s an ozone layer,” Sam says almost immediately.

I blink.

“That was fast,” Lina says.

Sam shrugs.

“Atmosphere?” Captain Klees asks.

Sam fiddles with some settings. “I can only see information that makes it through the ozone and the magnetic field, so it’s possible to miss some smaller components. Major component is… neon, it seems. At approximately sixty per cent. Twenty three per cent nitrogen, twelve per cent oxygen, two per cent water… there’s argon and carbon dioxide in there, I think, but I can’t quantify the amounts. Everything else is too small a percentage to detect.”

“Decent amount of water in the air,” the Friend notes. “Is there liquid surface water?”

“The Kleiner array can’t detect that.”

“Has to be,” I say, “with what we know of the pressure and temperature, at that humidity. Has to be oceans. Which means a lot of oxygen to work with, tied up in the water, as well at the hydrogen but you can find hydrogen everywhere… we can equally assume a decent supply of carbon, if there’s carbon dioxide.” Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen – the building blocks of Earth life. Same building blocks for life here? Maybe. No need to get too excited. No need to assume too much.

“Is there radiation?” Captain Klees asks. “In levels hazardous to us, I mean?” (I hope not. All the dome canvases and soforth are shielded, of course, but manufacturing new stuff is so much easier if we don’t have to worry about radiation.)

Sam shrugs. “We’re in space. We’ve been travelling at high velocity through space for over a hundred years, by Earth’s clock. The Kleiner array itself is probably radioactive at this point. The planet’s barely past the star, which pours radiation into space constantly, and very far away, and protected by ozone and magnetism. The air could be full of Thorium-229 dust and we probably wouldn’t pick it up from here.”

“When does the captain make his big speech?” Denish asks.

“Tomorrow.” Captain Klees rubs his neck and dances on his feet a bit. He’s taken his neurostims recently, and I can see why he doesn’t want to make such a historically important speech under their influence. He seems perfectly reasonable and in control to me, but it’s probably a nerve-wracking speech to make, knowing that thousands of years worth of descendants, everyone born in our isolated little branch of humanity, will hear and learn and study and be inspired by it.

“I want to check the aft engine again,” Denish says, “and confirm all our information about its current performance. Then have Sam run some acceleration tests to confirm its ability with our current mass and no AI. This will be important for piloting into orbit.”

“Take someone with you, going back there,” Captain Klees says.

“Yes, always.”

“And give us about twelve hours’ warning on the acceleration tests, so we can secure loose items and soforth. I’m sick of stuff flying everywhere on this ship every time we change something.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Looking forward to piloting us into orbit in a couple of months?” Tinera asks Sam.

“Mmm-hmm. Not a terrifying prospect at all. I’m sure enough training and drills will make it super easy and not at all the most nerve-wracking experience of my life.”

“You’re doing fine on those sims I made for you,” Tal says.

“Yes, but see, if I get a simulation wrong, we don’t all die horribly and bring the colony with us.”

“Will be fine,” Denish says. “Big ship, big planet, lots of spare fuel. Very big chance for mistakes.”

“Margin of error,” Tinera says.

“Very big margin of error. We take as long as it takes, no hurry! Stay far enough away not to get dragged down by gravity, and is fine.”

“Far away to not get dragged down by gravity is also far away to not really be in orbit.”

Denish shakes his head. “No, engine is quite powerful. And we are much lighter now.”

Three whole rings lighter. Hopefully no more than that, by the time the journey is over.

“I’m sure you’ll do fine,” Captain Klees says. “You’ll have the crew at your disposal when the time comes; I’m sure Denish and Tal will be capable of handling any calculations you’re unsure of. That reminds me, Denish, I need you to start looking over the drop pods and verifying that they’re properly capable of deploying. I want to be sure of enough for an initial landing crew and initial supplies by the time we get into orbit. Tinera, start cataloguing and organising initial drop supplies; coordinate with Aspen and Denish on what’s most likely required. If we’re lucky on revivals, Captain Kae Jin and her surviving crew can handle final decisions on what to drop down and when, but we should be prepared for the worst. Everyone else, we’re all at Denish and Tinera’s disposal for helping with those jobs, except for the two doctors, who I want focused on finishing up any medical tests and prepping for the new revivals when we’re in orbit.”

“Why not just wake them before we reach orbit so the trained astronavigator can pilot the ship in?” Sam asks.

“Because that’s the AI’s job, and he’s trained to work with the AI, on a ship that works and is fully staffed. Frankly, I think if we wake any of that crew now, they’ll just get in the way. “

So we all get back to work. Only to gather at dinner time, where Tal announces, “We’ve got a problem.”

“Of course we do,” Captain Klees sighs.

“Is the problem gonna kill us?” Tinera asks.

“Proooobably not.” Tal grins. “But if it does, we’ll die in a really cool spaceship crash, right into Hylara.”

“Navigation problem or engine problem?” Captain Klees asks.

“Engine,” Denish says. “Well… engine connectivity. Aft engine cannot be controlled from up here.”

“Why not?”

“Faulty coupling between Rec Ring 2 and Storage Ring 5.”

“Where Chronostasis Ring 5 used to be.”

“Yes.”

“We think some things didn’t hook up right after the ring ejection,” Tal says. “There’s a whole bunch of pipes and things in The Tube that have to disconnect and reconnect without the ejected section. They’re supposed to be pretty foolproof, but our rotation was all over the place and Amy had just died and rogue bits of her programming were interfering with all kinds of stuff, so we think some of them didn’t connect properly.”

‘The Tube’ is the central axis of the ship, where the coolant and supply lines and ventilation shafts and soforth run. I’ve never been in there.

“I checked all life support related systems in there after the AI ejection,” Denish says, “but just today started running aft engine tests from the fore of the ship. The connections are not seated properly, the front cannot talk to the rear engine. I went in there to have a look, and many relays and tubing in one section are not properly connected. Many such problems in the past; normally, I just plug back in, is easy fix. But…” he blushes and mumbles something in Texan.

“What was that?” Tinera asks.

“He can’t fit,” Tal says. “The crawlspace sections are misaligned and the gap’s too small for him.”

“Can anyone fit?” Captain Klees asks.

Denish nods. “Any of the small people, I think. But the job would take two people, probably; one of you would not have the reach alone.”

‘The small people’ means Captain Klees, Tinera, Tal, or me.

“Is it difficult? Dangerous?”

“Is not difficult. Is just some tubes and plugs; you match them up and plug them in. Might need to bring spare wire. Takes dexterity and strength, but not hard.”

A ‘dexterity and strength’ engineering task by Denish’s standards disqualifies Tinera, on account of her bad hand.

“How much strength? Could I do it, if we go before the drugs wear off?”

“Yes. Tal… might be able to also. But somebody needs to check the computer connections down here. I could probably do that, but without the AI to manage files, if we find anything strange…”

“We need Tal on the computer. Is it dangerous?”

“No more than anything else. Little bit more dangerous than normal, because a space suit will not fit through the gap.”

I wince at that, but Captain Klees just nods. “I hate wearing space suits anyway. I assume there’s air in there?”

“Pressure of 1atm of nitrogen. You would need to wear an oxygen mask.”

Captain Klees and I, the two people on this ship who have almost died from oxygen deprivation, exchange an uneasy glance.

“Can we pump a breathable atmosphere in there? Would that break anything?”

“It should not be high risk. Nothing is overly volatile in there. Some risk of electrical arcing if you are not careful when working and don’t shut things off properly.”

“Potentially fatal?”

“Not unless you are very, very unlucky.”

“Right. What’s the risks if we don’t do this?”

“If we do not fix, it means pulling into orbit with one engine. Is doable; is putting a big stable mass around another big stable mass at slow speeds, math is not hard. But fore engine is not fully reliable, and attitude engines are very unstable. Chance of small mistakes, yes? And with one engine, to correct mistakes means turning whole ship around, with unreliable attitude adjusters. Is not likely to be a problem, but if it is… would be a very stupid way to die.

“Otherwise, we simply put second pilot in back of ship with other engine, talk on radio. They can use computer in Engine Ring 2 to pilot aft engine. Should work better, but still carries some risk. Also, this will need to be done eventually, to help with any problems once ship is in orbit; cannot avoid task forever. But, if you want, we can pull into orbit with either one pilot or two working by radio, and make it Captain Kae Jin’s problem.”

Captain Klees bites his lip. We’ve all been trying to get the ship as presentable and functional as possible, at least in the part we’re occupying, before waking up the other captain. It’s a disaster zone no matter what we do, but we don’t want to look less competent than absolutely necessary.

“Doesn’t sound like there’s any reason not to do it. Aspen and I will go. I’m sure you can talk us through it, Denish.”

And so, an hour and some brief instruction later, Captain Klees and I climb into The Tube.

I do not like The Tube.

Lighting is minimal, just pale spots for us to orient ourselves in a crawl space bordered with pipes and tubing. Most of the light comes from the torches we’ve strapped to our heads, in lieu of space suit lights. We do each bring a small air tank and breathing mask, just in case there’s some problem with the newly pumped-in breathable air or some contamination leak or something; we’ve been hit by too many unforeseen problems not to take that precaution. The straps holding the tank on my back cut into my shoulders a little, but not too much – gravity is much lighter, so much closer to the centre of the ship.

I glance back at Captain Klees. He’s double-checking the readouts on his tank. He glances up at me; I give him a thumbs up.

We make our way through the tunnel.

We can’t stand up straight, so we crawl, which isn’t particularly difficult in this gravity. The space is wide enough to accommodate Denish in a space suit, which means its wide enough for the two of us to move side by side without any real difficulty. It’s not long before we come to the problem.

It’s essentially what Denish described. The tunnel continues through to the next ring, but doesn’t quite match up, so there’s an area with a pretty small gap to squeeze through. Some cords are similarly mismatched, hanging bare-ended or still in the arms of the tiny armatures meant to connect them to their other halves which aren’t where they’re expected to be. Just looking, I can see that most of the cords managed to find their opposite halves, and we don’t have any mismatched pipes or anything that could leak, so… pretty impressive that the system did as well as it did immediately post-lobotomy with an erratically spinning ship, honestly.

Denish is right; the positions and angles are such that neither of us has the armspan to reach both ends of a cord by ourselves. One of us has to squeeze through the mismatched tunnel to the other side and feed the cords through to the other to plug them into their counterparts. Denish had said the plugging was what might require a fair bit of strength, so it makes sense for the currently neurostimulated captain to do that part; I squeeze through the tunnel, being extra careful of my air tank (some kind of tank rupture in here would be the stupidest possible way to die and quite possibly take my captain and multiple ship systems with me) and reach for a cord.

It’s time to get to work.

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