by Andy Weir
“Where would you get the oxygen?” I asked. “You don’t have a smelter.”
“No rule says it has to be smelted. The city doesn’t give a shit where the oxygen comes from, so long as it comes.” He steepled his fingers. “For the last four months, I’ve been collecting oxygen and storing it away. I have enough to supply the entire city’s needs for over a year.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You can’t just take city air and keep it. That’s monumentally illegal.”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Please. I’m not an idiot. I bought the oxygen fair and square. I have standing contracts with Sanchez for regular deliveries.”
“You’re buying oxygen from Sanchez so you can take over the oxygen contract from Sanchez?”
He smirked. “They make so much oxygen the entire city doesn’t breathe it fast enough. They sell it cheap to anyone who wants it. I bought it slowly, over time, through various shell businesses so no one would know I’m hoarding.”
I pinched my chin. “Oxygen is pretty much the definition of flammable. How’d you get the city to let you store so much?”
“I didn’t. I built huge holding tanks outside Armstrong Bubble. They’re in the triangle formed by the connector tunnels of Armstrong, Bean, and Shepard. Totally safe from idiot tourists, and if anything goes wrong, they’ll just leak into the vacuum. They’re connected to Life Support’s systems, but they’re separated by a physical valve outside. No harm can come to the city.”
“Huh.” I spun my glass on the table. “You want me to stop Sanchez’s oxygen production.”
“Yes, I do.” He stood from his chair and walked over to the liquor credenza. This time he selected a bottle of rum. “The city will want a fast resolution and I’ll get the contract. Once that happens, I won’t even have to build my own smelter. Sanchez will see the futility of trying to make aluminum without free power and they’ll let me buy them outright.”
He poured himself a fresh drink and returned to the table. There, he opened a panel to reveal a bunch of controls.
The room lights faded and a projection screen came to life on the far wall.
“Are you a supervillain or something?” I gestured to the screen. “I mean, come on.”
“Like it? I just had it installed.”
The screen showed a satellite picture of our local area in Mare Tranquillitatis. Artemis was a tiny blob of circles brilliantly illuminated by sunlight.
“We’re in the lowlands,” Trond said. “There’s plenty of olivine and ilmenite around. Those are great for making iron, but if you want aluminum you need anorthite. It’s rare around here, but the highlands are littered with it. So Sanchez’s harvesters operate in the Moltke Foothills three kilometers south of here.”
He turned on his Gizmo’s laser pointer and pointed to a region south of the city.
“The harvesters are almost completely autonomous. They only call home for instructions if they get stuck or can’t figure out what to do next. They’re an essential part of the company’s operations, they’re all in one place, and they’re completely unguarded.”
“Okay,” I said. “I see where this is going….”
“Yeah,” he said. “I want you to sabotage those harvesters. Take them all out at once. And make sure they can’t be repaired. It’ll take Sanchez at least a month to get replacements shipped here from Earth. During that time they’ll get no new anorthite. No anorthite means no oxygen production. No oxygen production means I win.”
I folded my arms. “I don’t know if this works for me, Trond. Sanchez has like a hundred employees, right? I don’t want to put people out of their jobs.”
“Don’t worry about that,” Trond said. “I want to buy the company, not ruin it. Everyone will keep their jobs.”
“Okay, but I don’t know anything about harvesters.”
His fingers flew over the controls and the display changed to a picture of a harvester. It looked like something from a catalogue. “The harvesters are Toyota Tsukurumas. I have four of them in my warehouse, ready for use.”
Whoa. Okay. Something the size of a harvester would have to be shipped in chunks and assembled here. Plus, it would have to be done in secret so no one asked awkward questions like “Say, Trond, why is your company assembling harvesters?” He’d had his people on this for a long time.
He must have seen the gears turning in my head. “Yeah. I’ve been working on this for a while. Anyway, you’re welcome to examine my harvesters for as long as you want. All in secrecy of course.”
I got out of my chair and walked up to the screen. Man, that harvester was a beast. “So it’s my problem to find a weakness in these things? I’m not an engineer.”
“They’re automated vehicles without any security features at all. You’re clever, I’m sure you’ll come up with something.”
“Okay, but what happens if I get caught?”
“Jazz who?” he said theatrically. “The delivery girl? I barely know her. Why would she do such a thing? I’m baffled.”
“I see how it is.”
“I’m just being honest. Part of the deal is your word that you won’t drag me down if you get caught.”
“Why me? What makes you think I can even pull this off?”
“Jazz, I’m a businessman,” he said. “My whole job is exploiting underutilized resources. And you are a massively underutilized resource.”
He stood and walked to the credenza for another pour. “You could have been anything. Didn’t want to be a welder? No problem. You could have been a scientist. An engineer. A politician. A business leader. Anything. But you’re a porter.”
I scowled.
“I’m not judging,” he said. “Just analyzing. You’re really smart and you want money. I need someone who’s really smart and I have money. Are you interested?”
“Hmm…” I took a moment to think. Was it even possible?
I’d need access to an airlock. There are only four airlocks in the whole city and you have be a licensed EVA Guild member to use them—their control panels check your Gizmo.
Then there was the three-kilometer trip to the Moltke Foothills. How would I do that? Walk? And once I was there, what would I do? The harvesters would have cameras and film everything in a 360-degree arc for navigational purposes. How would I sabotage them without getting spotted?
Also, I smelled bullshit in the air. Trond had been squirrely and evasive about his reasons for getting into aluminum. But it was my ass on the line if something went wrong, not his. And if I got caught I’d get exiled to Earth. I probably couldn’t stand up on Earth, let alone live there. I’d been in lunar gravity since I was six.
No. I was a smuggler, not a saboteur. And something smelled off about the whole thing.
“I’m sorry, but this isn’t my thing,” I said. “You’ll have to find someone else.”
“I’ll give you a million slugs.”
“Deal.”
Yo, Kelvin,
What’s new? Haven’t heard from you in a few days. Did you get into the chess club?
What kind of junior high chess club has entrance requirements, anyway? Are they so impacted with applicants they have to turn some away? What, like they don’t have enough chess boards? Only so many tables? Limited number of pocket-protectors?
My school is trying to put me in the gifted classes. Again. Dad totally wants me to go, but why should I? I’m probably just going to be a welder. I don’t need differential calculus to stick pieces of metal together. Sigh…
Hey, so what happened with Charisse? Did you ask her out? Or talk to her? Or indicate in any way that you exist? Or are you sticking with your brilliant plan to avoid her at all costs?
Jazz,
Sorry, I’ve been busy with extracurricular stuff lately. Yes, I got into the chess club. I played several games to establish my skill level and they rated me at 1124. That’s not very good, but I’m studying and practicing to become better. I play against my computer every day and now I’ll get to play against pe
ople too.
Why don’t you join the gifted classes? Academic achievement is a great way to honor your parents. You should consider it. I’m sure your father would be very proud. My parents would love it if I could get into the advanced classes. But math is hard. I keep my grades up, but it’s hard.
I have resolve, though. I want to make rockets, and you can’t do that without math.
No, I haven’t talked to Charisse. I’m sure she wouldn’t be interested in a boy like me. Girls like boys who are big and strong and who beat up other boys. I’m none of those things. If I talked to her, I would just get humiliated.
Kelvin,
Dude.
I don’t know where you’re getting info about girls but you’re WRONG. Girls like boys who are nice and make us laugh. We DON’T like boys who get in fights and we don’t like boys who are stupid. Trust me on this. I’m a girl.
Dad has me helping out around the shop. I can solo the simpler jobs. He pays me, which is nice. But he stopped my allowance now that I have an income. So now I’m working for a little bit more than I was getting for free. Not sure I’m on board with that plan but whatever.
Dad’s having problems with the Welders’ Guild. Around here, you can either be freelance or part of the guild. And the guild doesn’t like freelancers. Dad doesn’t have a problem with guilds as a rule, but he says the Welders’ Guild is “mobbed up.” I guess they’re pretty much owned by Saudi organized crime. Why Saudi? I don’t know. Almost all the welders here are Saudis. We’re just the people who ended up controlling the welding industry.
Anyway, the guild forces people to join with bullshit tactics. Not like in movies where they threaten you or anything. Just rumormongering. Floating stories that you’re dishonest and you do shitty work. Stuff like that. But Dad spent his whole life building a reputation. The fake rumors just bounce off. None of his customers believe them.
Go Dad!
Jazz,
That’s too bad about the Welders’ Guild. There are no unions or guilds at KSC. It’s a special administrative zone and the normal laws that help unions don’t apply. KSC has a lot of power in the Kenyan government. There are many special laws for them. But KSC is a boon to all of us and they deserve special treatment. Without them we would be poor like other African countries.
Have you ever considered moving to Earth? I’m sure you could become a scientist or an engineer and make a lot of money. You’re a citizen of Saudi Arabia, right? They have lots of big corporations there. Lots of jobs for smart people.
Kelvin,
Nah. I don’t want to live on Earth. I’m a moon gal. Besides, it would be a huge medical hassle. I’ve been here more than half my life, so my body is used to ⅙th of your gravity. Before I could go to Earth I’d have to do a bunch of exercise and take special pills to stimulate muscle and bone growth. Then I’d have to spend hours every day in a centrifuge…bleh. No thanks.
Talk to Charisse you chickenshit.
I slinked along a huge corridor on Aldrin Down 7. I didn’t really have to sneak around—at this ungodly hour, no one was in sight.
Five a.m. was a largely theoretical concept to me. I knew it existed, but I rarely observed it. Nor did I want to. But this morning was different. Trond insisted on secrecy, so we had to meet before normal working hours.
Barn doors towered every twenty meters. The lots here were few and large, a testament to how much money these businesses had handy. Trond’s company workshop was labeled only with a sign reading LD7-4030—LANDVIK INDUSTRIES.
I knocked on the door. A second later, it slid partially open. Trond poked his head out and looked both ways down the hall.
“Were you followed?”
“Of course,” I said. “And I led them straight to you. Turns out I’m not very bright.”
“Smartass.”
“Dumbass.”
“Come in.” He gestured me forward.
I slipped in and he immediately closed the door. I didn’t know if he thought this was stealthy or what. But hey, he was paying me a million slugs. We could play 007 if he wanted.
The workshop was effectively a garage. A huge garage. Seriously, I’d kill to have that space. I’d make a little house in one corner and then, I don’t know, install fake grass in the rest of it? Four identical harvesters, each in its own bay, filled the room.
I walked over to the nearest harvester and looked up at it. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” Trond said. “You don’t realize how big they are until you see one up close.”
“How did you get them into town without anyone knowing?”
“It wasn’t easy,” Trond said. “I had them shipped here in pieces. Only my most trusted people even know about it. I pieced together a staff of seven mechanics who know how to keep their mouths shut.”
I scanned the cavernous workshop. “Anyone else here?”
“Of course not. I don’t want anyone knowing I hired you.”
“I’m hurt.”
The harvester stood four meters tall, five meters wide, and ten meters long. Reflective material coated the hull to minimize solar heating. Each of the beast’s six wheels was a meter and a half across. The bulk of the machine was a huge, empty basin. Powerful hydraulics on the front and a hinge on the rear provided the basin’s dumping mechanism.
The front of the harvester had a scoop with associated articulation. There was no passenger compartment, of course. Harvesters were automated—though they could be remote-controlled when necessary. A sealed metal box rested where you might expect a cockpit. It bore the Toyota logo, along with the word “Tsukuruma” in a stylish font.
Roll-around toolboxes and maintenance equipment surrounded the harvester wherever the workers had left off at the end of their shift.
“Okay,” I said, taking in the scene. “This is going to be a challenge.”
“What’s the problem?” Trond walked over to one of the wheels and leaned against it. “It’s just a robot—it doesn’t have any defenses. Its only AI is for pathing. I’m sure you and a big tank of acetylene could figure something out.”
“This thing is a tank, Trond. It’s not going to be easy to kill.” I walked partially around the harvester and got a closer look at the undercarriage. “And it’s got cameras everywhere.”
“Of course it does,” said Trond. “It needs them to navigate.”
“It sends video back to its controllers,” I said. “Once it goes offline, the controllers will roll back to footage to see what happened. They’ll see me.”
“So cover up any identifying marks on your EVA suit,” Trond said. “No problem.”
“Oh there’s a problem. They’ll call the EVA masters to ask what the hell’s going on, and then the EVA masters will come out to get me. They won’t know who I am, but they can drag my ass back inside and have a Scooby-Doo moment when they pull my helmet off.”
He walked around to my side of the harvester. “I see your point.”
I ran my hands through my hair. I hadn’t showered that morning. I felt like I was a wad of grease that had been dipped in a vat of dirtier grease. “I need to come up with something that has a delayed effect. So it’ll happen after I get back inside.”
“And don’t forget, you’ve got to total the things. If there’s anything left to fix, Sanchez’s repair crews will have them up and running in days.”
“Yeah, I know.” I pinched my chin. “Where’s the battery?”
“In the forward compartment. The box with the Toyota logo on it.”
I found a primary breaker box near the forward compartment. Inside were the main breakers to protect the electronics from power surges or shorts. Worth noting.
I leaned up against a nearby tool cabinet. “When they’re full, they take their stuff to the smelter?”
“Yeah.” He picked up a wrench and threw it into the air. It lofted toward the ceiling.
“Then they…what? Dump their load and go back to Moltke?”
“After they recharge.”
; I ran my hand along the sleek, reflective metal of the basin. “How big’s the battery?”
“Two point four megawatt hours.”
“Wow!” I turned to him. “I could arc-weld with that kind of juice.”
He shrugged. “Hauling a hundred tons of rock takes energy.”
I climbed under the harvester. “How does it deal with heat rejection? Wax state-change material?”
“No idea.”
When you’re in a vacuum, getting rid of heat is a problem. There’s no air to carry it away. And when you have electric power, every Joule of energy ultimately becomes heat. It might be from electrical resistance, friction in moving parts, or chemical reactions in the battery that release the energy in the first place. But ultimately it all ends up as heat.
Artemis has a complex coolant system that conveys the heat to thermal panels near the reactor complex. They sit in the shade and slowly radiate the energy away as infrared light. But the harvesters had to be self-contained.
After some searching, I found what I was looking for. The heat-rejection system valve. I recognized the type immediately—Dad and I had attached many of these in the past while repairing rovers.
“Yeah. It’s wax,” I said.
I saw Trond’s feet approach. “What’s that mean?” he asked.
“The battery and motor housings are encased in a solid wax reservoir. Melting the wax takes a lot of energy, so that’s where the heat goes. The wax lines are surrounded by coolant pipes. When the harvester comes home to recharge, they pump cold water into those pipes to re-chill the wax, then pull the newly heated water back out. Then they cool the water off at their leisure while the harvester gets back to work.”
“So can you make the harvesters overheat?” he asked. “Is that your plan?”
“It’s not that simple. There are safeties to prevent overheating. The harvesters would just shut down until they cooled off. Sanchez’s engineers would fix the problem right away. I have a different idea.”
