"I spoke first, but she is Nor…, she is of Home and that is what they speak so I am trying to be polite. My English is perfectly acceptable, you empty debater. I use articles even. I have a question for you. The axle cap studs are not listed in field manual. How tight are they supposed to be?" When she finished speaking she laid her finger alongside her nose in the gesture Englishmen use to say –the fix is in.
"Ah my little pumpkin, I am looking it up as we speak. Hold on now." His arms went out of sight under the camera pick-up and Heather assumed he was typing an inquiry in a computer.
"They should be stretched .16mm and in an emergency only they may be torqued to 140 N*m. Both with compensation for temperature extremes. If torqued instead of tensioned to length they must be checked every fourth twelve hour shift of operation for loosening if not safety wired. I hope you make a manual notation in your pad rather than trusting this to memory." He made the same gesture with his finger along his nose as she had.
"Don't teach Grandmother to make cheese, Demetrius. Thanks for the numbers." When she signed off she jacked her own pad in the socket Heather had offered her and sat it where they both could see. She looked over at Heather smiling.
"He's not such a bad sort but it's better not to appear too friendly in public. He will be calling right back on his own pad and using our own encryption. I won't bother to put it full screen because we don't waste much bandwidth on video when we run this private system. Also - why did you welcome me to center of the moon out on field?"
"Zero-zero. It's smack on the equator and the prime lunar meridian. That's why this is called the Central Lunar Ranches." The incoming signal chirped interrupting Heather and Katia barked a command word Heather didn't recognize. The same fellow with the big eyebrows still looked pretty happy but he wasn't at the same desk anymore. Behind him big mesh net bags with space suits and helmets hung on a wall. The image was a quarter screen, but it looked fine to Heather.
"Demetrius, what are you trying to pull here?" Kathy demanded. Do you know to whom you are selling this surplus?"
"Indeed I do my little sugar plum. Why are you concerning yourself with it? I believe I am the one whose job description includes declaring items surplus and disposing of them." He spoke much better English than her, seeming to find articles natural and not hesitating over them.
"Because you are very handy to have in your position and all of… us," she stopped and looked at Heather obviously uncomfortable to define us, "depend on you. If that little mouse of an assistant you have is elevated to your position he will never have boldness to do anything. Certainly nothing as audacious as this!"
"What have I done my little chickadee?" he asked with faux innocence, spreading his hands. "They were surplused out and the lady asked after buying them. Her bank transfer went through just fine and I have gained a nice chunk of change for our poor outpost. Good hard currency too, EuroMarks."
"Don't play innocent with me Dima. You know there is a written agreement which binds you not to not sell heavy equipment or environmental equipment that can be used for development to residents of lunar stations. Only approved governments or reps and I doubt Home is on list. When our esteemed overseer sees what you have done he is going to ship your hairy hindquarters back to Motherland, probably in restraints under arrest!"
"Dear Katia, you complain my clerk is a timid little mouse and then in the next breath complain I am too bold. You should be out assembling rovers, instead of critiquing your supervisors, but just to ease your concern the list of countries and their citizens to whom I am not permitted to sell is not by approval, it is by exclusion. And by the most amazing coincidence Home is not excluded. For that matter if their independence is suspect to you neither is North America excluded or we could never trade with Armstrong. Now if that is not enough the rule about selling such things only applies to residents of the various lunar outposts. This lady and her partners are not residents of any signatories to the compact." He shifted his gaze to Heather and explained, "They want to make sure we cannot set up as independents and stay here when our period of employment is ended. They are quite firm about not allowing anyone to continue here as anything but an employee or a soldier. Your Armstrong has allowed some to stay as independent contractors, but they still have the contract to hold over their head and never allow them to build private shelter or gain ownership of their apartments or business cubic."
"So you don't have any retirees?" Heather asked surprised. "Every blessed one of you is forced to go back to the mud ball?"
"Yes - and the contracts are written so that if we complain about it in a public way or go to the courts for redress they can cut off our pension."
"Why didn't you tell us about this? We could be trying to help you."
He spread his hands again, embarrassed. "In your own way you have been doing what helps us anyway, for your own reasons and when you are under the thumb like we are you grow cautious. Everyone who knows your weakness is another person who can find some way to use it against you. I'm sorry if this sounds paranoid, but we have cause to be wary."
"Oh, Dima" – Kathy sounded sad - even if you are technically right when our administration finds out about this they are going to cut your tour short and send you home."
"Well, do not be so sure. Our administrator is very lazy. To him the rovers are two lines on a long list. And you can be sure I will make list extra long and difficult to understand next month. In any case once I would have fretted about that much more, but you see I bought Lot-9 of Plot 1 of the Central Lunar Highland Ranches from Miss Anderson. So if I am suddenly discharged unfairly I believe I will tell them to keep their free ride back to Earth."
There was an audible gasp from Kathy. She sat looking at Dima with her mouth hanging open.
"So my little turtle dove, why don't you stop arguing with me and get to work? If you need to take an extra day with all this delay and make sure all is well with the rovers… or any other equipment our customer needs your help with, feel free to give it your famous skills. I will not schedule you for anything until you report all is well and completed there."
"Yes, supervisor," she said with a completely different tone of voice. "I apologize if I seemed insubordinate. I will give it my closest attention and render any assistance I can to Miss Anderson. I thank you for your trust in me." She disconnected and looked at Heather stunned.
"I don't understand," Heather asked her puzzled. "You gave the man a hard time until you understood what he was doing, but at the end there when you accepted it you sounded like a very different person. All of a sudden you were very respectful. Why the big change?"
"Well of course," Kathy told her. "I have always had highest regard for Demetrius," she explained. "But now he's a landowner!"
Chapter 18
The second day of assembly, Katia and Heather had the wheels back on both rovers and the air supply filled, although the filters and carbon dioxide scrubbers needed serviced before they were taken anywhere far from their new base. Heather and Katia were taking a working lunch in the rover cabin. It was actually a bit roomier than the Home Again, especially under gravity and Heather noticed Katia felt safe to take her helmet completely off in the vehicle she knew intimately when in the ship she had only felt safe to raise her faceplate.
"These are our notes on undocumented modifications and ways to maintain your rovers," she told Heather pulling the big binder down from a rack behind the number two control seat. "I suggest you scan them into an electronic document and merge them with official repair manuals as soon as possible."
The old fashioned ring binder surprised Heather. What was even more surprising was they were in English as was the official manual on disk in a pocket on the front of the binder.
"I expected the documentation would be in Russian. Not that I'm complaining you understand, but why do you have these in English?"
"We probably have a dozen different languages or dialects to deal with at New Kirov and a lot of those people don't know Ru
ssian, but we all know English. What has been frustrating is we are specifically prohibited by bureaucratic stupidity from altering official electronic repair and service manuals. We had to keep a separate record of field fixes and errors. I would not destroy this paper copy however. If anything make a second copy so you have one to keep in each vehicle. I'd keep a paper maintenance log to supplement electronic one too. Use paper that is vacuum rated and if you have an extreme power breakdown or a computer system failure you can still read it with just a hand light.
Heather leafed through slowly getting a feel for what sort of entries were made. The first tabbed section said – Maintenance Variations:
02/13/2074 - Transmission lubrication interval must be decreased to 600 hours when usage is primarily during lunar day periods. ACEA Grade E-7 5/60 commercial lube substituted for mil-spec lube with nano-Moly additive. Trans otherwise will fail before official service period due to reduced heat exchange in full lunar. Units used in mostly dark conditions can follow official service specs.
She flipped a couple pages to – Field Service Specs:
07/01/2078 - Airlock wiring harness failure. Abrasion of sensor and stepper motor harness at opening to frame rail must be repaired as follows. After sections with exposed metal core are replaced or overlaid with insulation each separate component feed group must be fiberglass tape wound for 150mm each side of the hatch to frame break. The separate feeds formed must be taped as a bundle. The bundle must be covered with a plastic conduit at the frame/hatch gap. A suitable sleeve may be fabricated by cutting the tapered portions off a 300ml Coca-Cola bottle and splitting the resultant ribbed cylinder. The sleeve shall be applied and compressed with two worm screw steel hose clamps and by over-wrapping in an overlapping helix with fiberglass tape from the ends of the sleeve to 50mm beyond the opposite ends.
Note: Original repair inspected 11/17/2081 - No significant visible wear.
The binder had about 300 pages of such notes. Heather could see the big rovers were as complex to maintain as a shuttle.
"Would you like another sandwich?" Heather offered. The work was much more physical than she was used to but the Russian lady seemed used to it and perhaps she could eat more. Heather was sure she'd get sleepy if she had a very heavy lunch. She had a food service pack with roast beef and turkey breast with rye or whole wheat for them to assemble sandwiches themselves and various condiments and garnishes. Katia had seemed particularly fond of the sweet pickles.
"No," she declined, looking tempted, "that is kind of you. I have to ask – do you people always eat this well or are you making a special effort to impress me?"
"This is pretty much what we would eat at Home. I'm sure there is going to be a period after we have our community started that we will have less variety. It is after all about a third cheaper to import things to LEO than the moon. But once we have enough tunnels under pressure to have room for hydroponics and some dirt gardening I expect to have fresh salad things and vegetables. You can't grow your own tomatoes or strawberries under lights in your apartment in North America," she said, frowning.
"It's illegal without a grower's license and certification and inspections. We're not going to let that sort of foolishness start here. I'm sure things like meat or fresh fruit will be expensive for a long time. Even dwarfed and forced to fruit four times a year trees take a huge volume. I don't know if we will ever produce things like our own wine or honey. But neither do we intend to be poor. I certainly hope we can afford to import a few luxuries."
"You folks are so optimistic." She seemed like she wanted to say more but held back.
"We can save some time with the fuel cells," Heather informed her, getting back to business and bringing up a subject she had been avoiding for awhile until she got a sense what sort of person the Russian lady was beneath the surface. She went back and brought a small case foreword that she had brought in when they stopped for lunch. It was about the size of a carry on airline bag and she opened it and lifted one of the two identical units inside out and laid it on the deck.
"This is a replacement for the fuel cell system. We won't need it and since it is inside the pressure hull it will give us a nice bit of recovered cubic in the back of the cabin." The tiny assembly had a sealed module like a refrigerant pump and another smaller sealed unit attached by wires and tubing inside an open rectangular frame. There was also an insulated tank with a heavy threaded cap. The engraved tag riveted on the external framework by the filler cap said – " Add minimum 98% Heavy Water to fill line only." Another tag by a pipe fitting mounted on the frame said – "Must be open to hard vacuum during operation."
Katia looked at this dubiously. The fuel cell battery was the main power for the rover, assisted by solar panels. It was about the size of two big footlockers – say three cubic meters – and the fuel tanks on the outside of the hull were probably twice that volume. This unit by contrast was about the size of the small cooler pack that held their lunch.
"Does this connect to the existing external tanks then?" she inquired.
"No this is the fuel tank now," Heather said tapping the tank with the filling instructions. It was about two liters if the insulation was not overly thick. It wasn't because it had heating coils inside to protect it from freezing.
Katia finally stopped looking at it as a whole and read the tag. She looked back at Heather with a strange look on her face. "This is a hydrolyzer then?" she inquired, tapping the small case on the bottom of the heavy water tank with an index finger.
"Right," Heather agreed.
"And this…?" she leaned a little further and tapped on the larger sealed unit, but couldn't make herself articulate what she thought.
"Is a deuterium fusion reactor with an integral energy storage device," Heather explained deadpan. Katia seemed to believe her.
"I guess I was out of line complaining about your having the ballistic clothing if you have this sort of thing to share with us Loonies." That was the first time Heather had ever heard a moon resident call themselves that. She had thought it was an insult.
"I have to be honest with you, Katia. We've shared other things but this is a sealed unit. We have shared it by giving a few to use, but the actual design and how to make them we haven't shared. If you open one of the sealed units they're supposed to go 'BOOM'. Of course my suit liner is just a gift too. We haven't been told how to make them. Fair is fair I guess."
"Proprietary – I can understand why. Still just having the use of it would be a valuable asset even without manufacturing rights. I thought about what Demetrius said and decided over lunch I'll help you mount weapons. There is an area on this rover where we had a similar system mounted, that I removed before delivery," she admitted. "There are conduits for control systems and power in place that should make mounting pylons for your little birds easy. But do you feel comfortable with me knowing as much as I will learn about your weapons by helping install them?"
"Sure, no problem, the little missiles are actually based on a Russian anti-armor weapon we reverse engineered anyway and the big ones you still won't have anything that would tell you how to interfere with their command or guidance. You aren't working with the software."
"And you don't have a similar system to mount on flatbed rover? Katia asked innocently.
"No but we have another item to mount at the front of the deck on that rover if you want to help with that. I got the impression Dima was giving you a lot of leeway to decide when you are done. The French might even have it unloaded by now if you want to take a peek at it."
"I just might if it is within my ability. I'm just a mechanic, basically, with enough electrical and computer ability to get along with support for mechanicals. Don't expect me to deal with exotics."
"No, this is an old mature system," Heather assured her. "I've already reworked the electronics for lunar conditions and the systems you would deal with are straight forward electro-mechanical. I bought a surplus Bofors 57mm auto-cannon," Heather finally revealed.
&nbs
p; "Damn!" Katia exclaimed heartfelt. "Don't you people ever do anything subtle?"
* * *
Four days later they stood back and looked at the second rover they had designated the 'A' machine sitting with the turret for the cannon sticking up from the front of the deck. That put it almost in the middle of the rover and left a pretty good expanse of clear deck behind for hauling freight. Even in lunar gravity they had to pull help off the other crew to lift the tube into place and fasten it down. The original turret they left Earthside as too heavy to lift into orbit without spending a fortune. It had been much stealthier also with flat facets angled sharply to each side and tilted back like a chisel. The rover made no effort at all to have a low radar cross section so that would have been wasted.
Instead they had a slightly tapered wall rising from the deck and a hemispherical dome on top of the tapered cylindrical section. Two hatches opened to the rear to allow service and reloading. The servos were upgraded to a finer pitch to take advantage of improvements in both the accuracy of the LPS establishing their location and reduced variation in muzzle velocity and projectile weight with the newest ammunition.
The outside was covered with segments of the ceramic armor they could make from regolith. In this batch they had added a quantity of punch press scrap Heather had noticed and bought up at one of the fabricators they employed. The junk was about four millimeter thick titanium alloy sheet in crooked triangular pieces a bit smaller than her palm. Those internal pieces, randomly oriented, should help break up anything capable of penetrating the ceramic.
The white dome of segmented covering and the long snout of the barrel protruding over the low slung rover looked very much like a tank. Heather decided she wanted the rover to be run past whenever they had a foreign ship sitting on the pad. It wouldn't hurt for the grapevine to spread word around that they looked like they had teeth.
* * *
"Johnson, you scare me," Heather called on the com. "Are you going to bust up my rover driving like a maniac?" On the big thin screen hanging in front of her, the icon that depicted the rover speeding away to the north was much further along than the other rover icon following a similar path to the south. The topo overlay showed the southern rover if anything had smoother ground to cover.
April 3: The Middle of Nowhere Page 21
