"Go on down." His tone is a little more forceful.
Varese is waiting at the Engineering hatchway. He wears a smile that's painted on. "Good morning, sir. Glad to have you. We'll give you the best show we can. I do want to ask you to help by staying in the background." He talks like that most of the time, like he's trying to keep his temper, and still I get the feeling he did invite me, that I'm not here entirely at the Commander's insistence. Varese doesn't want me underfoot, yet wants me to watch his crowd in action. A quaint character. A proud papa. "This's a good place here, sir. The view will be somewhat limited, but it's the best we can provide."
His strained affability and politeness is more disconcerting than his usual hostility.
The seat is a good eight meters around the curve from the center of action. Still, I could be trying to follow the fueling from Ops.
"Take notes if you like, but save your questions till we finish. Don't move around. There'll be some hairy moments. We can't be distracted."
"Of course." I'm no moron, Varese. I know this will be delicate.
The anti-hydrogen has to be transferred without losing an atom. The tiniest whiff might pit or scar the Climber's CT globe. Even if the tank weren't breached, the risk of its being weakened is so feared we would have to return to TerVeen for repairs. Command has geniuses creating new miseries to inflict on crews who make that sort of mistake.
Varese will command the Climber during fueling maneuvers. He's closer to the action, knows best what needs doing.
We commence our approach before the general alarm. Varese opens communications with Ops.
"Range one thousand meters," Ops reports. That sounds like Leading Spacer Picraux speaking. "Range rate one meter per second. Activating spotter lights. Secondary conn stand by to assume control."
Varese responds, "Secondary conn, aye." He surveys the idiot lights on a long board, points to one of his men. Engineering's one viewscreen lights up. Outside, directed by Fire Control, searchlights are probing the tanker. She's too close for a good overall view. She's a huge vessel.
Her flanks show luminescence in coded patches.
Our computers guide the approach with a precision no human can match. They have us in a groove that's exact to a millimeter. And every man here is sweating, holding a hand poised should Varese order manual control. No spacer ever completely trusts a computer.
"Range, five hundred meters." That's the First Watch Officer. "Range rate one meter per second.
Secondary conn assume control."
"Secondary conn, aye. This is Mr. Varese. I have the conn." He lifts a spring-hinged safety bar, trips three safety switches. Diekereide repeats the process on his own board. Varese inserts a key into a lock on a dramatically oversized red switch handle.
All that redundancy says even the ship's designers respected the hazards of CT fueling.
The computers, communing with their tanker kin, ease the Climber into position beneath a vast, pendent flying saucer of a tank.
"Second Engineer. Commence internal magnetic test sequence."
"Aye, sir." Diekereide bends over his board like an old, old man trying to make out fine print.
"Shahpazian. Activate first test mode." He begins a litany which includes primary, secondary, and emergency tubes; elbows; valves; junctions; skins; generators; control circuits; and display functions. Most involve shaped magnetic fields like those containing the plasma in a fusion chamber. I note that this system is also triply redundant.
"Activate second test mode." The litany begins anew. This time Diekereide counterchecks the test circuitry itself.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Varese satisfies himself that his Climber had adopted the most advantageous attitude in relation to the tanker. "Stand by the locking bars," he orders, speaking to someone aboard the other vessel. "Extend number one."
I lean forward as much as I dare, trying to see the viewscreen better.
A bright orange bar slides out of the tanker's hull like a stallion's prang, gently touches the Climber's globe. Varese studies his side displays, gives a series of orders which move us less than a centimeter. The locking bar suddenly extends a bit more, penetrating its locking receptacle. "Number one locked. Extend number two."
There're three bars. They'll hold the Climber immobile with respect to the tanker.
"Maser probe. Minimum intensity," Varese says. In seconds his boards show a half-dozen green lights. "Maser probe. Intermediate intensity." More green. The pathway for an invisible pipeline is being created.
Varese double-checks his board. There'll be no redundancy to the ship-to-ship. "Bring your probe up to maximum. Mr. Diekereide, how do you look?"
"All go here, sir. Ready to flood." He returns to his ongoing checklists.
"Stand by."
"Aye, sir. Shahpazian. Arm the hazard circuits."
"Achernar, Subic Bay, we have a go on one. I say again, we have a go on one," Varese says. "Subic, standing by for your mark."
"Subic, aye," a tinny voice replies. "Clear from Achernar.
Thirty seconds. Counting."
The flashing lights have me hypnotized. I stop taking notes. There's little enough to record. Too much takes place out of sight.
"Thirteen seconds and holding."
"What?" The hypnosis ends. Holding? Why? I stifle a surge of panic. Print data rush across the viewscreen. It says another Climber is maneuvering nearby, approaching another tank. Achernar wants her a little farther along before letting the tanker nurse us.
"Thirteen seconds and counting." Then, "... one. Zero."
"I have pressure on the outer main coupling," Diekereide says.
"Very well," Varese replies. "She looks good. Open her up. Commence fueling."
"Opening outer main valve. I have pressure on number two main valve. Opening number two main valve. I have pressure at primary tank receiving valve."
"We're looking good." Varese moves across the compartment, toward me. "This's a tricky spot. His first time doing it himself. Got a good go, so I'll leave him to it." He grasps a cross-member and stands beside me, watching his apprentice.
"He has to bleed it to a few moles at a time to begin. To annihilate any terrene matter inside the tank. No such thing as a perfect vacuum. It'll be hotter than hell to there for a few minutes."
"You travel with the tank open?" That hadn't occurred to me.
He nods. "Space is the best evacuator. Another reason we fuel so far from anywhere. Not much interstellar hydrogen around here. Comparatively speaking."
I try guessing how much energy might be blasting around the tank's interior. Hopeless. I don't have the vaguest notion of the hydrogen density in this region.
Deikereide opens the final valve. We all tense, waiting for something to go boom.
The tanker constricts her internal tank field. Diekereide bombards the compartment with a barrage of pressure reports. And then it's over. Almost anticlimatically, it seems. I was so tense, waiting for something to screw up, that I feel let down that it hasn't.
Disengagement reverses the fueling process. The only tricky part involves venting the CT gas still in the ship-to-ship coupling.
The cycle, from Varese's assumption of the conn till he yields it again, takes a little over two hours. When we finish, he and Diekereide shake hands. Varese says, "Very good show, men. The best I've ever seen." He must mean it, so seldom does he have anything positive to say.
"We were lucky," Diekereide tells me. "Usually takes three or four tries to get a go. The Old Man will be pleased."
The Engineers commence operational routine. I don't pay much attention. Diekereide has launched one of his long-winded and rambling explanations. "When it comes time to Climb," he says, after telling me things I already know about the tank atop the vane and the magnetics which prevent the CT from coming in contact with the ship, "we bleed the CT into the fusor, along with the normal hydrogen flow. Instead of fusing, we annihilate, then shunt the energy into the torus instead of the linear drives."