Rick’s question about it produced no more than a shrug and a dismissive “Historical interest only” from Jigger. Tait would have continued back around the planetoid toward the training facility quarters, but Rick stopped in front of him and swung open the heavy door.
“Hey! Padded floor and walls. What’s the deal?”
“Bolt-hole.” Jigger followed him inside. The interior lights had come on automatically. “Before the mining work produced the deep interior tunnels, the miners always faced a radiation danger. Our suits aren’t enough to protect us.”
“Solar flares?”
“Yeah.” Jigger stared at Rick. “I thought you couldn’t read.”
“Videos. Show it as a standard hazard for space travel.”
“Well, for once they got it right. If you’re out on the surface of an asteroid and a big flare hits, you have three choices: you can move to the interior tunnels, if there are any, or you can head for a special shielded chamber like this one. Me, I’ll take this any day. Your own air, see, the interior fills by itself when the door is locked. And there’s plenty of reserves of food and drink. Stay here for a week if you had to.”
“But there’s no airlock.”
“There is on the inside. That was put in later. When they built this they figured anyone coming in from space might be in one hell of a hurry.”
“You said there are three choices?”
“Sure.” Jigger was already moving back through the thick door. “You can stay outside and fry if you want to. Freedom of choice. Isn’t that what people back on Earth are all so proud of?”
“Freedom to die?”
“Sure. Most basic right of all.” Jigger started around the planetoid, swinging easily along on the fixed network of cables. “Hell, you should be free to die when you want, where you want, how you want. If you’re not, your body and your life don’t belong to you at all. They belong to your keepers.”
“You can die any way you want to?”
“Sure I can. Anyone works for Vanguard Mining has that right. But dying is a right, no more. It’s not an obligation. So watch your step, Rick. Space is more dangerous than you think.”
Chapter Seven
Rick remembered Jigger Tait’s words about the dangers of space, more or less. But what he thought about a lot more in the next few days was that shielded chamber. Radiation-proof—and soundproof. He visited it a couple more times when he had no other duties. Thick walls, padded floor, and tight-fitting door. Total privacy. Just what he needed.
It took four days before he could trade with Monkey Cruse for her next one-on-one training session with Gina Styan in the interior of CM-2. Fortunately Monkey had her own hot ideas about Jigger Tait. She didn’t tell Rick what this particular training was for, and Rick didn’t ask. He’d be willing to move a lot of rocks for a chance at Gina.
This time his job turned out to be both easier and harder than manual labor. Rick had to learn to operate remote-controlled cutting equipment, and Gina proved to be a hell of a tough teacher. She ran him through scores of operating steps again and again, watching him with that slightly mocking, sexy and intimate look on her face whenever he messed up a sequence.
“There’s a lot to this.” Rick felt obliged to defend himself when the session ended with the cutter under his control waltzing wildly sideways to gouge a hole in the tunnel side wall. “How long did it take to remember all the variations?”
“I’m not sure I ever did.”
“You have a pictorial prompt in your suit helmet? Then why in hell didn’t you give me one?”
“No prompt.” Gina waved a small red book at Rick. “The control steps are in here, along with a lot of other stuff. But it’s all in words and formulas. Once you can read well—”
“This is really dumb. A few simple pictures, that’s all it would take.”
“You think so? Listen to this, then you tell me how you would put it into pictures. ‘Pressure equalization between old and new drilling is best achieved by releasing stored air into the evacuated chamber. The cutting equipment normally produces a straight cylindrical cavity three meters in diameter, so the volume to be filled is simply 2.25-TrL cubic meters, where L is the length of the new drilled tunnel in meters.’ You know what n is?”
“I think so. I’m not sure.” Rick was actually quite sure. Sure he didn’t.
“It’s a mathematical constant. Draw me a picture of that if you can. Do you know its value?”
Rick shook his head. This wasn’t going the way he had imagined it, but he’d bide his time. Let Gina feel superior for the moment. She would find out soon enough who was the real boss.
“Why should I bother to know any of that math stuff? If I ever need it I’ll pull it up on a calculator.”
“Pi is equal to 3.14159.” She didn’t seem to have heard him. “That’s to six significant figures. It’s as accurate as you’ll probably ever need unless you get into orbit work, then you’ll want it to twelve. You’ll have the value of n engraved on your brain stem and your butt before you leave CM-2, along with a lot of other numbers you’ve never heard of yet. And while we’re at it, let me tell you what happens to a calculator or an electronic prompter during a blow-out or a big radiation storm: they die, or they become totally unreliable. But this"—Gina held up the red book—"it can stand more radiation, heat, and cold than you can. By the time a book like this became unusable, you or I would be long dead.”
She tucked the book into a pocket on her suit. “You’ll learn, Ricky boy. Let’s go.”
Rick had learned, at least some things. He had spent most of his few free hours studying and committing to memory the network of passages and chambers that criss-crossed the interior of CM-2. Without saying anything to Gina he headed for the surface along a particular set of passages. He emerged, just as planned, right beside the shielded chamber. The door was as he had left it, slightly ajar.
He stopped when he came to it, and led the way inside.
“You ever been in one of these?”
“Ages ago. This, or one just like it.” Gina had followed him and was glancing around her with no particular interest. “I don’t know why they keep this place in working order. It has no uses since the interior was excavated.”
“It does.” Rick swung the heavy door into position and pressed the sealing button. Interior lights came on at once and there was a hiss of released air. He went across and checked that the inner door was also sealed.
“Not needed for radiation protection,” he went on, “but it has other uses.” He took off his suit helmet and gestured to Gina to do the same.
“You’re wasting air.” But Gina did not sound much concerned by that, and she followed Rick’s lead and removed her own helmet. “Other uses? Like what?”
“Like this.” Rick had been sizing up their positions and rehearsing his own next action. He knew the moves and he was pretty experienced, but that had been back on Earth. He had to do things differently in freefall.
The smart thing was to make a first move that he knew he could manage. He was close to the chamber wall. He kicked off from it, drove hard across the room, and pinned Gina against the opposite wall. He had to use both arms and legs to hold her there, but they finished face to face.
“Gina.” He spoke in a whisper, though he could have screamed and no one else would have heard a thing. “Gina, you’re really something special. Let’s get out of these dumb suits and have some fun.”