“Here’s the chamber we’re in now,” she said, pointing to a rectangular green box. “It’s 10 meters wide, 8 deep and 4 high. That’s 320 cubic.” Her finger moved to a smaller red box at right angles to it. Red means vacuum. “That’s the other chamber. It’s 2 wide, 10 deep and 3 high—60 cubic. So even if the lock blew there’s still enough air in here for both chambers.”
She looked over at me, trying to hide a smug smile. “But I wanted to make our poor mistreated CSO happy, so—”
Her finger pointed out four white circles at the corners of the chamber. “You know what these are.”
“Barometric Popper valves. A radical change in pressure will trigger them.”
She nodded. “Releasing the pressurized air they’re holding back. Enough air to repressurize the room to Billy Ambient in ten seconds.” She hooked a thumb in one biballs’ strap, self-assured verging on cocky. “I’d say that’s pretty bulletproof. Wouldn’t you?”
“So far,” I said, studying the diagram. The chamber she’d vacced was a dead end. It had a gumby mounted in the ceiling to automatically plug any leaks, which were highly unlikely since there were several meters of solid rock surrounding the chamber except on the side facing us.
I had to admit that Gloria’s design looked fairly well worked out so far. She’s a 7, and her capacity for imagining trouble is almost as finely honed as my own—when she uses it. If there was going to be a weakness in her setup it would be in the safety of the testing staff and subjects. Knowing her cavalier attitude, I planned to go over every detail.
“So what are the test protocols?” I asked, punching in the command to bring up VIEW 2, which was listed on the menu as video from inside the vacced chamber. The schematic vanished.
Manny and Anna had been watching us go over the test plan, remaining uncharacteristically quiet. That ended with Manny going “Whoo-ha!” and Anna squealing “Yuk! They left their socks on!”
There on the screen before us, instead of a video feed from inside the chamber, were Cindi and Ted Nakamura, indeed wearing socks—only socks—and engaging in some quite spirited early-afternoon sex. Cindi was on top. She seemed to stare up at us from the display, eyes widening and face paling when she saw the red active light on their bedside communit.
“Not again!” she wailed. That was my thought exactly. It had only been a month or so before that I’d finally stopped covering all the video pickups if I was doing something I didn’t want broadcast publicly.
“What?” Ted moaned thickly, squinting up at his spouse.
“Sorry!” I said, hastily keying in the command to cut the connection. Instead we were rewarded with an extreme closeup of the action. And I mean extreme.
“How can I help, Dove?” Sorry chimed in, thinking my apology to the Nakamuras had been a call to him.
“Check out the tattoo,” Anna giggled. She and Manny leaned over the terminal for a better look.
Gloria had been trying to keep a straight face, but at this point she lost it, doubling over with laughter.
“Comm-glitch!” I snarled at Sorry. “Fix it!”
Back at the end of the previous century they’d been blithely unable to imagine the sort of potholes, washouts, snarl-ups, side-swipes, sudden detours, strandings, roll-overs, highjackings and head-on collisions possible on the Information Superhighway. If Cindi and Ted were lucky this was only being broadcast Luna-wide.
The table-top display blanked, a final bewildered “What?” from Ted, the last we saw or heard of the Nakamuras that afternoon.
“Erroneous feed stopped. Dove,” Sorry said. “Anything else?”
“Yes,” I snapped. I raised my voice. “Command Mode Invoked. Authorization C-S-O 1 D-W-M. Verify and await instructions.”
“Ready.” Sorry replied, his voice gone toneless and robotic.
“Terminal privacy override invoked. Extract and report on instructions given this terminal in the last five minutes.”
“First command at 1321 hours 42.3 seconds: Display test schematic designated filename—”
“Skip the filenames and times. Next.”
“Second command: Display Menu choice 2, video feed from pickup in area designated Test Chamber 5B. Last Command: Cut all inputs and go to standby. Report concluded.”
“Command mode off.” I let my voice soften. “Thank you very much, Sorry. That’s all for now.”
Gloria had got herself down to where she was only chuckling. I gave her the hairy eyeball. The look on my face made her swallow the rest of her mirth, and she made a face like it had gone down like a bad oyster. Anna and Manny faded back out of blast radius.
Before I could erupt she sighed and held up her hands in surrender. “OK Dave, I get the picture. Never assume anything will work properly.”
“Not when abnotechs are involved.” I glared at the entie airlock as if it was a personal nemesis. “Your setup has been pretty well planned so far, but I’m not going to be satisfied until we have every possible problem covered six ways to Sunday. All right?”
A meek nod. “Safety first, that’s my motto.” Then she peered at me slantwise, brown eyes half hidden by her long lashes. “I’ll follow you sixteen ways to Sunday if that’s what it takes to make you happy.” She laid a hand on my shoulder. “How about a nice cup of coffee while we’re trying to get there?”
It was my turn to sigh. I had to admit that she really was going out of her way to work with me on this and avoid an off-mode-provoking fight, and the airlock was making me more than a little jumpy and short-fused. She hadn’t done anything wrong, and nothing bad had happened. To us, anyway.
“Sure.” I raised my voice slightly. “Sorry, regrets to the Nakamuras. Authorize and notify them of a hazard bonus.”
“Acknowledged.”
“You’re a nice man, Dave,” Gloria purred approvingly. “Just for that I’ll make sure you get a clean cup.”
While she went to pour, Anna and Manny brought chairs over to the terminal, doing their best to look serious.
“So how does this horrible thing work?” I asked, once I was sitting down with a covered cup of coffee in my hand.
Gloria sat down next to me. “To begin with, the enties are derived from M-M’s own version of Hydrofilm.”
Water is a fairly scarce, quite valuable commodity on Luna. And yet most downs have a swimming pool of some sort.
This isn’t quite the extravagance it might seem at first glance. It’s a fairly handy way of storing some of your reserves and yet still getting use out of them. Its presence is reassuring to creatures evolved on a watery world like ours. A pool offers recreation, exercise, and a community focal point with games and events like Wimmens’ Night and the Teen Splash. Swimming is something families can do together here not too differently than back on Earth.
But because of the lowish air pressure most downs maintain, evaporation can be a bit of a problem.
Protecting an open water source is not a problem unique to the Moon. Seeing potential markets both on and off Earth, a company named Sentiease developed and sent us for testing something they called Hydrofilm.
It wasn’t really a film. It was a strain of enties designed to interlock with each other tightly enough to keep water molecules from passing through. The control unit that came with it instructed the enties to maintain different levels of cohesion. They could be made to bunch up and uncover the surface completely, or hang together tightly enough to keep small objects out—a setting which would keep bugs and other airborne contaminants out of a reservoir—but let a swimmer or diver pass through unimpeded. The increased surface tension also helped damp down the waves and splashing, once again a problem in low g.