Erica squinted at the graph, but was a little too far away to read the axis legends and she was too tired to come closer. “I sure hope that shows our rate of progress, but somehow I doubt it.”
Raul nodded. “How very perceptive. This is an index of backlog. In most production industries, a steady order backlog is healthy. In our case, we’re supplying ourselves, and the backlog is increasing. That’s deadly. After yesterday, you can take that literally. We’re down here, right where the curve starts to go seriously up.”
Erica made the effort to come closer to the screen. “Oh, bloody hell. You mean it gets worse?”
“Yeah. Geometrically. And remember, the computer just works with hard numbers. It can’t factor in morale.”
“So how do we fix it?” Erica asked, with panic rising in her voice.
“Beats me,” Raul replied. “You’re the program manager. I just plug in the numbers and report the bad news.”
Erica glanced at Raul suspiciously. “You some alien death-zombie body-snatcher from space? The real Raul Otoya never was stingy with advice.”
Raul shrugged. “You’ve got the zombie part right. This is like some damned computer cave game where the passages keep rearranging themselves. You think you’ve finally mapped out the maze, and, zing, the rules suddenly change. Like you’ve said many times, I don’t have the big picture. That’s your job. But you can take a peek in my crystal ball, if you think it will help. If I were you, I’d spend a day or two playing around with this thing, try resetting some priorities and testing some options.” Erica clicked a few menu options from the joystick on the arm of her seat. “You be around to help if I get stuck?”
“Sure. Uh, Dr. Thompson, remember GIGO. Garbage in, garbage out. Like I said, this model is short on data. First step is to get down to basics and find out what’s going on in the salt mines. Mind if I ask if you’ve been there lately?”
Erica hadn’t had her work grubbies on in months. She tried to remember the last time she had visited the project decks, or done anything but administrative work. It seemed like years, but she suspected it was only a few months.
The station was comprised of eight spokes rotating about a central hub. At the hub was the main construction hangar, Erica’s destination. Two pairs of spokes were capped with habitat modules, offering approximately full Earth gravity for the crew during their off hours. Another pair was partly developed and awaiting the incoming habitat modules. There were two stubs where the final pair of spokes would be attached. Along the spokes were a series of shop decks where smaller components and assemblies were made. Each spoke also had a reflector/concentrator and greenhouse for growing part of the crew’s food, to supplement the output of the nearby agricultural station.
The differences in construction between the habitat modules and the rest of the ship were obvious as Erica climbed up toward the hub via a series of ladders. The habitats were assembled in Earth orbit from highly refined lightweight components shuttled up from Earth’s surface at great expense. Similar to Earth-orbiting space station modules, they were the product of a bloated system of contractors and government bureaucrats who had been refining the design for perhaps half a century. All told, probably a couple of million people had a hand in the design and construction of the habitat modules.
Climbing through the docking hatch into a spoke was like stepping backwards in time. Instead of lightweight aluminum alloy ladders with carefully molded composite treads, the ladders on the other side of the hatch were made of heavy asteroid steel rods bent and welded like something from a depression-era battleship. They were nicely hand-crafted though, and every bit as functional, which wasn’t at all bad when you considered the tiny labor force that had built them. The battleship effect could be seen in most of the structure, although it was moderated by a light and cheery paint scheme. The structure had a satisfying solid feel to it.
Reaching up to climb another deck, Erica caught a whiff of something, glanced around to see if anyone was looking, and checked her underarms.
“Nope, it’s not me.”
She sniffed the air around her.
“Geez, this place smells like a damned locker room!”
She climbed through the hatch to the next deck and spotted a technologist.
“Hey, how come it smells so bad in here?”
“Oh, hi Dr. Thompson,” the fellow replied, a little startled. “Uh, sorry, but the reprocessor in this spoke is busted.”
“Well, I hope they fix it soon. This is terrible.”
The man shrugged. “We’ve kind of gotten used to it. I guess it does smell a little worse than the rest of the station, but frankly, the whole place is a little ripe.”
Erica grimaced. “Gotten used to it? How long has it been down?”
“A couple of months, I guess. It still makes good air, you understand. Just doesn’t get rid of the odor of dirty laundry and good, honest sweat.”
“It may be honest, but it stinks.”
The fellow gave Erica a long, tired look. “I’ll drop what I’m doing and see if I can fix it if you want,” he offered.
Erica glanced back at his lab. “What are you working on?” she asked.
“Nothing but the flow regulators for the main engines. Before that it was the APUs for the personnel decks. I dropped work on a new fastener fabricator so I could do that. Doesn’t matter to me, though. I’ll work on whatever you say.”
Erica shook her head. “Stick with what you’re doing. I’ll see if I can find somebody else.”
The fellow maintained the same tired stare for a few seconds. “Sure,” he said, as if he were not, and went on his way.
Erica climbed through the remaining decks, feeling the centrifugal artificial gravity gradually decrease. It felt great, and she could hardly wait for the weightlessness of the hangar deck. The thought of almost effortless flight energized her, and the weight of her administrative duties seemed to disappear with the gravity.
Not everyone around her seemed to feel the same, though. Most of the techs labored in stony silence, broken only by an occasional outburst of profanity. Erica thought she understood how they felt, but would have swapped her duties for fighting with a stubborn bolt in the blink of an eye, if she could.
She reached the spoke airlock and labored through the two hatches to the hub. The hub was a large cylindrical compartment with one wall which appeared to turn, although, in fact, that wall was stationary while the spokes turned around it. She was about to close the second spoke airlock hatch when she rubbed against a black, gummy mass on the wall, staining a cuff of her jumpsuit. Erica clambered back through the airlock to the shop below, hung by one arm from the top rung of the ladder, and looked around until she spotted a familiar face.
“Kara, could you come over here for a minute?”
“Sure, Dr. Thompson,” the woman answered. She bounded across the deck with two graceful leaps. “What’s the problem?”
“What’s this black crud all over the inside of the hub?”
“Oh, be careful!” Kara answered. “The only way that stuff comes out is with scissors.”
Erica glared at the stain. “Now you tell me. So what is it? Two-day-old coffee?”
“Comet grease. The rotating seals were starting to break down, and we didn’t have time to replace them. We couldn’t spare the synthesizer capacity to make extra silicone grease to seal them with, so we distilled that stuff from comet tar. Plenty of it available from that little comet we snagged a couple of years ago. Seems to be working, so far.”