“Check,” Gloria answered agreeably. “Make it so, guys.” The fact that she was already monitoring these things suggested that she’d expect me to want such precautions. I wasn’t going to disappoint her.
“I’m heading for the terminal now,” I said, knowing she was watching me on the video feed anyway.
It was at the far end, the oversized keys on the suit-adapted manual board easily worked with gloved hands. I punched in my name, the letters appearing on the screen above the keyboard, then cautiously hit enter. That’s a habit most abnotechs have. Hitting that particular key is always a diceroll.
The display changed to read:
JTL/CBTO TEST SERIES #1 OF MERCEDES-MOTOROLA NT-BASED AIRLOCK. SUBJECT DAVE WATSON MURPHY, JTR 7, ARE YOU IN TROUBLE?
A bland, mechanical voice recited these same words in my helmet. It had even gotten my name right. I tapped the NO bar. THANK YOU, it replied. YOUR WORK ACCOUNT WILL BE CREDITED FOR PARTICIPATING IN THIS TEST. YOU MAY NOW EXIT THE TEST CHAMBER. THE STAFF MEMBER OUTSIDE WILL ASK FOR A VOICE VERIFICATION TO PROVE YOU SUCCESSFULLY EXITED THE DEVICE BEING TESTED. PLEASE GIVE IT, OR YOUR PAYMENT WILL BE VOIDED. HAVE A NICE DAY.
“You too,” I told it, watching the screen expectantly. ITS ALWAYS A NICE DAY WHEN YOU GIVE ME INPUT, DAVE, AND I’M SO GLAD YOU WERE THE FIRST.
Just like I’d thought, that damned Gloria had known I’d insist on testing the lock.
As I said before, we knew each other all too well.
Half an hour later we had our pressuits off and were working on another round of coffee while finalizing the test protocols.
“All right, Anna,” I said, “Read them back. I want to make sure I didn’t miss anything.”
“OK.” She peered down at the screen of the pad on her lap. “ ‘At least one test oversight tech is to be on duty here at all times. If not, the chamber must be under full security lock. The outer door is to be closed during testing, but need not be locked. The on duty tech must be wearing a pressuit when nonstaff people are testing the lock; the helmet need not be worn, but must be within easy reach. Monitoring of surface deflection and int-ext pressure will be automatic, with manual verification every half hour. Double redundant sniffers in the evacuated chamber will be active at all times, auto/manually monitored and set to maximum sensitivity to scan for leaks pressure readings might miss.’ ” She looked up from her pad and grinned at me. “Rubber Bend worry you, Dave?”
I had relaxed enough by then to grin right back at her. “You bet your ovaries it does, Anna.”
Looking at the computer records through the lens of Jameson’s discovery had turned up all sorts of interesting information. One juicy bit was that heterosex pairings where at least one partner had a rating of 7 or above had a pregnancy rating higher than the statistical norm. The reason? Failure of birth control, of course—especially barrier methods. The data-sucker who had stumbled across this bobbleup in the graphs had dubbed it the Rubber Bend.
She went back to reading. “ ‘No youths under the age of ten will be allowed to test the lock unless accompanied by an adult guardian. In such cases where such youths are testing the lock, both the guardian and on-duty tech must be in full pressuit and helmet. Passive monitoring for emergencies and anomalies will be carried out by Crater Billy’s AI at all times, notification of an emergency sent to CSO Dave Murphy, DSO Jeff Handel, CTO Gloria Lunden and CMO Dr. Bob Ross if a Code C or above.’ That’s it. Anything else?”
I looked over at Gloria. She was slouched back in her chair watching me, a feather-mouthed cat’s expression on her face.
“Not that I can think of at the moment.” Her smile got wider and a little smug. “—But I’m sure I’ll come across other gaping holes in your methodology which will have to be patched.”
By the look on Gloria’s face you’d have thought I’d given her roses. There were times I wondered if she regarded me as an especially quirky and troublesome device for her to work on.
I stood up. “Post and implement the rules and you can begin testing. I’ll be checking up on you every so often, so don’t get lax.” I headed for the door to let them get on with it, and let me go back to my office and fix a stiff drink. It was still early, but it had already been a long day.
“Don’t forget that you’ve got a hot date tonight,” Manny called as I reached the threshold.
“And remember, the Rubber Bend never sleeps,” Anna added with an evil chuckle.
I hoard food.
Most of us here in Crater Billy do. We also tend to maintain personal supplies of bandages, pain pills, candles, battery lamps, and emergency air and water bottles. Almost every abnotech here owns his or her own personal crowbar. If you had our luck with powered doors you would too.
We had been testing quite a few commercial and consumer food transformers. They were a hot item then—and still are—because they theoretically provided an easy way to transform such cheap and readily available—if completely unappetizing—components as basicalgae, fungamax, yeastmeat and sewage grown aquasoy into something edible and even occasionally tasty. But as the Detonating Limburger Mishap illustrates, some models weren’t quite perfected yet.
Figuring I’d used up my luck for the day testing the airlock, I played it safe with that night’s dinner and assembled a pizza from frozen, fresh and stabilized components. Gloria showed up just as I was putting it into the oven, a Jameson-tested electric I could trust as well as I could trust anything.
I checked the pie every five minutes until it was done. We ate by candlelight, washing it down with a nice synthetic red wine made right on Luna from materials that didn’t bear too close examination, syrupy orchestral versions of the whakmuzik popular in our youth playing in the background. Very cozy and romantic. We made a point of not talking about work.
Jeff was on duty as Safety Officer, but I was still on call. So was Gloria. Being dedicated professionals, we left our wristlets on. But before we got to the point where that was all we had on, I went around and covered every video pickup in my cubby.
As Ted and Cindi had proved just that afternoon, many accidents happen right in the home. I didn’t want us to become another statistic.
Again.
Time passed, the days piling up like paperwork in the Out Basket of Life.
I was busy with the usual disasters and near-disasters, test speccing, report review and the rest of the pulse-pounding minutiae of a Safety Officer’s life.
Gloria and her crew were testing dozens of items other than the airlock, but we both kept a closer eye on that project than any others. Me because I didn’t trust it, her because she was fascinated by the damn thing.
One thing I’ve always had to give her. When she tests something, she tests the living hell out of it. Testing had been going on around the clock since day one, and at the end of three weeks well over a thousand trips had been made through the lock. Billyites had used it singly, in pairs, even three 10’s at once. She had abnotechs stand in the middle of the entie barrier and make calls on their suit radios, play with hand-held games, work pads, and operate kitchen appliances. She herself had stood there mid-barrier and powered up a restricted usage wideband entieprogwiper.
When people weren’t going through it she and her staff shot first rocks and then bullets into the barrier, squirted the control pad with soft-drink, whiskey, solvents, boiling water and liquid nitrogen. She ran a big piece of pipe through it, then taped twelve chairs together and ran them through to see if something that long would confuse the thing. When it didn’t, she tried it with a conga line, complete with musical instruments.