“I’m not sure that’s going to—”
“Fit?” Miriam asked, setting down the grinder. “Bet you a dollar.”
“I’ll be damned,” Macelhenie said.
“Told ya.”
The problem was that the primary motor for the tub fit, he had thought, flush against the face of the recycler with just enough room for the inlet point. But there was more room than he thought. They’d gotten the recycler installed and hooked up but he was confident that the motor wasn’t going to fit. But it had. By a clearance probably measured in nanometers, but…
“I’d figured out the same fix but I didn’t think it would work because of the clearance,” the LPO said. “In fact, I’d been told that somebody had tried it and it didn’t work because of the clearance.”
“It wouldn’t if you used a number sixteen ring fitting,” Miriam said. “At least a standard one. I ground it down by one hundred and fiftieth of a millimeter. Just one turn on a lathe. That gave enough clearance and it’s structurally sound. Bring it down much more, you’re going to crack the entire face. I can show you the equations…”
“No, ma’am,” the LPO said wonderingly. “If you say so, I’ll take your word for it. You know how to use a lathe?”
“I took a class,” Miriam said. “And welding. And basket weaving. And painting. And… Well, I’ve taken lots of classes. My problem is I can never settle on just one thing. I like to learn.”
“You want some help putting it back together?” Macelhenie asked, looking at the parts scattered around the room.
“You’re probably busy,” Miriam said. “I’ll get Bobby to hand me the parts now that the heavy stuff is back in. Go on. I’ve got it.”
The glory of space and an efficiently running ship, the stars sweeping past in all their maj—
“CO?”
Spectre rolled his eyes but didn’t turn around.
“Yes, Engineer? Everything running to spec? Pumps pumping, warp engine warping?”
“Actually,” the Eng said, walking around so the CO wasn’t facing away. “Better. You know the secondary controller for the engines?”
“The one that is the brainchild of someone who’s never been in a boat before?” the CO asked. “The one that looks like a crabpus mated with… something it shouldn’t mate with?”
“That would be the one,” the engineer said. “Miss Moon and Machinist Mate Gants got in there and completely redesigned it. So it works. So far. And if it breaks down again, it’s going to be easier to repair.”
“So setting her on your department is not going to raise an official complaint?” the CO asked. “If so, blame the COB.”
“Actually, sir, can we keep her?”
“Please,” Spectre replied, then paused. “Really?”
“Oh, yeah,” the Eng replied, nearly moaning in happiness. “The girl’s a grapping genius, sir. She can’t lift some of the heavier manuals, much less some of the parts and tools, but she’s great. Even with assigning somebody to help her, stuff’s getting fixed I’d despaired about! I don’t know what we did without her!”
“Okay,” Spectre said. “She’s all yours. But tell her only twelve-hour shifts, like everybody else in the boat.”
“I’ll try, sir. I’ll try.”
“…the set of group elements must have smooth structure and topology and therefore the group operations are smooth functions of the elements. The vector fields in the adjoint representation of the color gauge group describes the distribution of the flavor neutral…” the voice whispered at Miriam.
She had been ignoring it for days by keeping her mind on her work. Had the COB fellow not brought her down to the engine room to help out and had Machinist’s Mate Gants not had things for her to do she might have been going mad by now.
Miriam carefully placed the blade of the paint stripper tool under the heavy coat of heat resistant paint. The flecks of gray paint fell to the floor in chunks the size of corn flakes. The chipper didn’t drown out the voice.
“…the first excited state of the flavor neutral must have the required rest mass of three zero nine six point nine million electron volts in oscillating flux density but the half life of the up-type pair must be longer, frame relative, than the rest frame seven point two times ten to the minus twenty-one seconds. The modulation and control of the flux density and pair half life can increase or decrease the flat space metric within the motivation metric to accommodate potential well suitability…” the whisper continued.
“Maybe the sander will work better,” Miriam thought, not sure if she meant for removing the chipping and peeling gray paint on the pipe or to drown out the whispering voice in her head.
“Miss Moon?” Weaver asked as he turned the corner of the passageway.
The linguist was up on a ladder, laboriously sanding off the paint on a pipe.
“Hi, Bill,” Miriam replied, still sanding. “How you doing?”
“Fine,” Bill replied. “What are you doing?”
“The primary heat transfer pipes were supposed to be repainted and stenciled during the break,” Miriam said. “They never got to it so I’m doing it. There’s only four hundred and twenty three of them. Robby, you know the engineer guy? He wanted to pull me off to work on the recyclers but I told him I’d do it when I finished this. I figure I’ll be done by the end of the week.”
“Oh,” Bill replied. “Uhm, isn’t that a little… boring?”
“I like it,” Miriam said. “Besides, it keeps me, uh, occupied.”
“Oh. Well, have fun.”
“I will. You do the same!”
“T’at the las’ one,” Portana said with a sigh.
“Thank God!” Berg added. “Yo, Fill-Up. You’re done.”
“Thank God, man,” Lance Corporal Fuller said, cracking his suit open. “That didn’t take long.”
“Portly is a genius,” Berg replied. “Take off.”
“Hey, Portana,” he said as the armorer was racking his tools. “Mind doing me a little favor?”
“You help me ou’ alo’,” Portana said. “Sure. Wha’ you go’?”
“Let’s suit up,” Berg said. “Chill’s a coming. I want to take a little stroll to the dark side.”
“Conn, EVA One,” Berg said over the suit radio.
“EVA, Conn.”
“Request exit on Airlock One.”
“Airlock unlatched,” the Conn replied. “Go EVA.”
“Roger,” Berg replied, then switched frequencies. “Come on, Portana.”
“Where we going?” Portana asked nervously as he entered the lock. They were only wearing pressure suits and Berg hadn’t explained what mission required them going out on the hull.
“For a walk,” Berg replied. “I promise you’ll come back with me.”
“Okay,” the Filipino replied.
Berg cycled the airlock, hooked off a safety-line, then stepped out onto the hull, his grav boots holding him down.
“Follow me,” he said.
Airlock One was just abaft the conning tower. He moved from safety point to safety point, resetting his lines each time until the two of them were on the underside of the hull.
There, holding between two of the landing jacks, he gestured outwards.
“What do you see, Sergeant Portana?”
“Pocking stars,” the armorer replied. “Why?”
There was nothing but “pocking stars.” A massive sky full of them stretching in every direction. None of them were close enough to count as “suns.” They were just a welter of points of light, light so dim that it was as if the two of them were in a star-filled cave.