After King got off on 3-Level, the third man, who had remained silent, spoke. “Yer barmy, mate,” he said. He possessed a fine, curly red beard, a respectable beer belly, and the shiniest head Flaco had ever seen. “If you’d kept yer fool yap shut, we’d have two less competitors to worry about now.”
Flaco shrugged. “What if you’d had an obsolete drawing, too?”
The bearded man snorted. “Think I’m stupid? I checked mine, just like you did. Here’s your stop, mate.” He pulled the cage door open. “See you ’round.”
“Yeah. You, too?…” He let the sentence lift into a question.
“Red Hawkins. New South Wales.” Hawkins’s handshake was a single, hard squeeze.
A Pegasus electrician and a pipe fitter were waiting for Flaco when he crossed the catwalk from the crane tower to the ship. The pipe fitter shook his hand and said, “Good luck.” They had their own drawings—wiring schematics and piping drawings, respectively—and the first thing Flaco did was check his drawings against theirs. Subassembly numbers and rev levels matched. “OK,” Flaco said. “Let’s find this sucker.” The two Pegasus mechanics knew where the module was located, but they were following his lead. They would not permit him to screw up the maintenance, though. Test or no test, the ship was signed over to their care.
But Flaco also knew that if they did intervene, he would have failed the test.
“Goddamn!” The voice came from floor level and the pipe fitter smiled.
“Guess someone down there just matched his mechanicals against the P-and-W’s.”
“You talk too much, Bob,” the electrician said.
“Ah, no harm done, Bob. Eddie here already got past that one.” Flaco looked at them.
“You both named Bob?”
Bob-the-pipe-fitter grinned. “Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?”
Flaco located a module that looked like 477JJK(3). The drawing said the module ought to have an asset tag, but when Flaco finally located it—in a different position than the drawing had indicated—the asset number failed to match. He looked at Bob-the-pipe-fitter.
“This puppy have a mate?”
“Could be,” the pipe fitter allowed. “Now, who’s being cute,” said Bob-the-electrician. “Port side,” he told Flaco. “These are regulator valves for the oxidizer tanks. Each tank got a main and a spare. Sometimes they get switched. like you rotate your tires.”
Flaco dusted his hands off and rose to his feet. “Let’s go find it.”
“Who cares?” said Pipe fitter Bob. “They both look the same, and they both gotta come out for PM. What difference does it make which comes out first?”
What difference, indeed? Yet, Flaco could not shake the feeling that he was still being tested. The devil did tempt me, and I did eat…
“Get behind me, Satan,” he said. But he said it with a grin to take any sting out.
“Hunh, fussy, are we?”
“No,” said Flaco, “but I am thinking that the last thing you ever want to do in space construction is disconnect the wrong module.”
The actual rigging was straightforward. A third man waiting for them on the port side was introduced as the regular rigger on that job. Flaco asked him if his name was Bob, too, and he winced. “Jesus, no. Call me Jimmy, eh?”
The two Bobs disconnected the piping and electricity and signed off on Flaco’s work order; then Flaco unbolted the module from the superstructure, pulling in a guy wire from the number two traverse crane to hold the unit in place until he was ready to lift. Then he checked out the structural integrity of the module. The drawing showed the support points but Flaco was taking little for granted. Be a hell of a thing if the module fell into two halves when he lifted, with only one half fastened into the tackle. Even after he had ratcheted the chains and lifted the module out of place, he called the crane operator over the two-way and told him to hold while he checked the balance and the security of the rigging. When he was satisfied, he signaled the operator and gave the thumbs-to-the-ground signal.
“Not too bad,” allowed Jimmy. “So far. You still gotta move it to the bay and unrig it.”
Flaco stretched his arms back as far as he could and arched his back. “You gonna teach me to kiss girls, too?”
Jimmy shrugged. “You could find worse teachers.”
“Watch it, down below! Crane coming.” Red Hawkins, on the ship’s 1-Level, was bringing across the number one traverse. The two cranes moved on parallel tracks, number one being somewhat higher than the one Flaco was using. “Hold up a few minutes, Chico. I need the crane operator for a while.”
“Name’s Flaco,” Flaco told him.
“Whatever.”
Flaco grinned and slid to the deck with his back against a bulkhead and his right leg dangling out the open side of the ship. “This is the part I like best,” he told Jimmy and the two Bobs. “Goofin’.”
Jimmy leaned out the side and looked down, holding onto the cross brace over his head. “You know,” Flaco told him, “that as soon as we get outside, we can clue in the afternoon group to these little tricks of yours.”
Bob-the-electrician smiled. “So, who uses the same tricks all the time?”
Flaco ran his hand along the inner skin of the vessel, by his head. “How come you guys aren’t trying out for this job?”
Bob-the-electrician shrugged. Bob-the-pipe-fitter said, “I don’t like the commute.” Jimmy-the-rigger said, “Been there. Done that.” Flaco looked at him.
“You been up?”
“I’m on the Gold crew. We lifted the first couple of ETs into 250-E. But the law says no more than six months up and then you get six months down, minimum, between stints. So O&P and the other contractors rotate crews. Blue crew is up there now. Red crew goes up next. You’re Green—if you make the cut. You’ll double up with Red crew for a while, until you learn the ropes.”
“Crane coming through!” Red bellowed from above.
Jimmy looked up. “Nose lock,” he said.
“Real bitch,” said Bob-the-pipe-fitter.
The nose lock shifted in its tackle and Flaco pressed the red button on his two-way. “Crane,” he said. “Load’s come loose!”
Jimmy cupped his hands around his mouth and hollered to the workers on the floor below to clear away. The nose lock swayed back and forth under the now motionless crane. Red’s face appeared from the next level up. “What the hell you playing at, Chico? You trying to screw me over?”
“The load’s loose,” Jimmy told him. Red tossed his head in annoyance. “Shit.” He spoke into his own two-way and the crane tracked back toward the ship. The nose lock turned and fell a few inches. Flaco made throat-cutting motions and Red stopped the crane.
“I can see underneath. A stay-bolt is working loose. Every time you move the load, it swings a little and pulls it out more.”
“Double-shit gum. I leave it hanging and it will by-Our-Lady drop sooner or later.” Red tugged at his beard. “How about I lower it real fast? I might get it to ground level before it comes loose.”
Or you might not… But it was Red’s call. “Try it,” he said. “I’ll watch from down here and tell Crane to stop if anything happens. Did you hear that, Crane?”
“Gotcha.” Flaco was glad to see the crane operator was taking things so well. But then, why shouldn’t he? It wasn’t him being tested. Flaco ran a hand across his brow It was one hell of a test.
The nose lock began to drop and almost immediately twisted out of true. “Stop the drop!” Flaco told the operator.
The entire rig was now level with where Flaco stood on the decking. He couldn’t see the loose bolt any more. “King!” he called. “How does it look?”