On the third day, Flaco and the other riggers were taken to Pegasus Hangar Number Two for their practical. The hangar, twenty stories tall, loomed over the rest of the complex just off the far right end of the horseshoe. Massive, square, and metallic, it was the only structure on the grounds that made no concession to adobe or the southwest.
The orbital ship that Flaco had noticed on Monday had been brought inside. The ship’s dingy, scorched-gray fuselage had been partly disassembled. One panel still in place near the nose bore the large block numbers “RS64” and the name Harriet Quimby. The orbiter—they were called Planks for some reason—was two hundred feet tall, with a shell made largely of titanium-sheathed smoke. “Solid smoke” was light—“structural aerogel,” they called it—but it could be difficult to handle because of its very lightness. The size of smoked structural pieces could fool you into thinking they were heavier than they were, and you wound up moving them a little too fast and a little too hard. Not that that would damage the smoke. By volume, it was mostly air, but it was strong, like honeycomb, and could withstand extreme loads and stresses. But it would sure as hell damage anyone in the way of it. Flaco had handled the material occasionally in construction work. The Wilson Tower in St. Louis had smoked its upper stories to gain height without putting too much weight on the load-bearing beams.
A crew of men and women in grease-stained red coveralls stood by and watched the riggers. “You dudes are crazy,” one of the Pegasus mechanics shouted. “Me, I’m keeping both my feet on the dirt.”
“Never said I wasn’t crazy,” Flaco told him. The man laughed and shook his head.
Three other men, olive-skinned with trim mustaches, stood a little apart from the mechanics, drinking thick coffee out of Styrofoam cups and talking to one another. The Pegasus people seemed to ignore them. These men wore brown coveralls, and their shoulder patches bore a winged sun rather than a winged stallion.
A third group, dressed in O&P blue with two stacked triangles on their badges, watched from a walkway a hundred feet overhead. Flaco recognized Meat Tucker, and figured the men with him were the other rigging crew bosses and their superintendent. Flaco rubbed the palms of his hands against his own denim coveralls and hitched his tool belt and harness a little higher. He’d had people watch him work before, but never so many and never with so much depending on it.
“Wonder how many of us will be left after today,” Tonio whispered to him. “Figure they want to cut as many as they can before spending money on weightless and orbital training.”
“Don’t forget to cup the water in your hand,” Flaco advised him.
“What?”
“Judge Gideon, in the bible,” he said absently while he scanned the setup. “He tested thirty thousand volunteers and picked three hundred of them.” Tonio grunted, but made no reply.
Two overhead cranes on traverse beams with blocks and tackle dangling from them. No, three, and the third one way up there was a pivot crane with an operator’s booth. Did O&P expect them to be operatives as well as riggers? Probably. LEO would never lift featherbed. There’d be multi-tasking, for sure, on this contract.
A fiftyish man wearing a white hard hat and a long dust-coat was waiting for them. He had a cliputer tucked under one arm. “Gentlemen,” he said (and inevitably some wit in the back of the group said, “Who came in?” White Hat ignored the comment). “I am your examiner. I have your work orders right here.” He flourished the cliputer. “The O&P crew chiefs up there on the balcony will observe and judge your work and will advise me, but I will have the final downcheck. There are no appeals from my decision.” He turned and pointed toward the partly disassembled Plank with the cliputer. “Your assignments are to prepare this equipment for its regularly scheduled preventive maintenance check. The Pegasus crew is on hand to assist you in tasks outside the rigging craft boundaries.”
Flaco pursed his lips in a silent whistle. Van Huyten Industries was famous for its never-waste-a-mission frugality, so why not use the practicals to get some real work done? But that meant there was more riding on this test than just his own performance. The Harriet Quimby’s performance on its next flight could also depend on him. He wondered if that extra pressure was deliberate. LEO’s multinational investment was in the billions and the consortium meant to regain those expenses. There would be conflicting priorities for flawless work and for cutting costs and maintaining the schedule—with the workers caught in between, as usual. So, this trial might be more than to test their rigging skills. It might be to see how they would react to stress.
They tested in groups of five, with the others escorted to the maintenance conference room to wait. Those who went out did not come back, and Flaco pondered that thought while he waited.
Flaco went out with the fourth group late in the morning. The examiner printed a work order from his cliputer and gave it to Flaco, and Flaco read it carefully. His task was to remove module 477JJK(3) from the forward superstructure and move it to the electrical bay. The CAD print that came with the work order highlighted the module and showed the anchors where he could hook on with the overhead tackle. It didn’t look like a hard job; not one that would separate the real men from the wannabes.
He had taken two steps toward the crane elevator when he noticed the date on the drawing. Revision D. December 20, 2005. Three and a half years old… He glanced at the Harriet Quimby. Could be the gal was that old. He didn’t know one model from another, and Planks of one sort or another had been lifting for nine years, now. But who was to say that there hadn’t been retrofits? Flaco turned and faced the examiner.
“Hey, ’mano,” he called waving the print. “This the current rev?”
White Hat looked up from his cliputer and, without a change of expression, held out his hand. Flaco gave him the drawing and he looked at the drawing control block, then checked something in his database. “No,” he said, wadding the print into a ball. “Quimby’s to Rev F.” He touched a button on his cliputer and a new drawing emerged, which he handed to Flaco.
Three other men in Flaco’s test group looked at their drawings, and two said, “Shit,” and brought their sheets back to the examiner, too. That was when Flaco knew this would be a different sort of test, and that he could take nothing for granted.
Harriet Quimby was tall enough that the five examinees could work independently at different tasks. Three of them, including Flaco, were on the upper levels. The other two, including the sole woman among the rigger-candidates, drew ground-level assignments.
Flaco and the two other men entered the bright orange elevator cage. Flaco pulled the gate shut and latched it, and a short, black man engaged the lift motors. As the cage rose, the short man stuck his hand out to Flaco.
“Thanks, dude,” he said. “Never thought they’d give us bad prints for a test. Name’s King Boudreaux, from Nawlins.” He shook Flaco’s hand like a pump handle.
“Eddie Mercado, Washington Heights. People call me Flaco.” He studied the young man. Light tan. Only five-four, but with the shoulders of a weight lifter. Flaco lifted an eyebrow. “King?”
“Pa thought ‘Martin’ was a sissy name, and Ma was a Methodist and didn’t care for ‘Luther.’ ” He shook his head. “Thanks again. About the rev, I mean.”