by Martin Tays
Everybody except the sandwich man, who was still sitting, astonished, in the same position. Leo dodged a box labeled ‘zero gravity dinnerware’ and reached him just in time to pull him out of the way of a… well, he wasn’t sure what it was, actually. But it was big and it was pointy and it smashed the stool, leaving a dent in the alumicore wall just behind where the man had been sitting.
“Everybody!” Moses screamed, standing up and scattering pressure suit fittings everywhere. “Please, stop trying to help, thank you. Also, duck!” The latter was aimed at Doug, who launched himself straight up out of the way of a six month supply of Breakfast Bricks (assorted flavors). He bounced off the ceiling and grabbed a shelf support to steady himself on the way back down.
“Okay, then.” Moses looked around at the group, who had scattered to the walls to try to avoid the largest of the logistics based missiles. “Everyone grab something as it goes by and secure it. Try to avoid anything more massive than you. That’d be fun to watch, sure, but it’d probably be counter productive.”
Leo looked down at the man he was still carrying, who was still clutching his sandwich. “Say.” He finally asked. “If you’re not planning on finishing that, do you mind if I have it? It was a long flight.” The man looked up at Leo, down at his sandwich, and then finally out at the group as they gradually fielded the bits bouncing by. He glared back up at Leo and slowly brought the sandwich back up to his mouth. There was a resolute if muffled ‘crunch’, and he began methodically chewing.
“Leo? Trade you.” Moses kited a small package marked ‘Muffin, Blueberry’ toward Leo, who obligingly straight-armed the man like a shot put in an arc back toward Moses.
The put shot responded by waving his arms and legs frantically and shouting “Mrpfphhh!!!” Small bits of half chewed sandwich joined the stately low gravity ballet.
“Ewwwww!” Mattie said, as she dodge a pickle. She grabbed a stanchion and halted by Leo, who was examining his new acquisition.
“Hey… since when do you need a straw to eat a muffin?” He shook the package, which gurgled obligingly. “I think I got gypped…”
The sandwich man had finally reached Romula Firma. Discarding his meal to latch onto a shelving unit, he chewed heroically, swallowed, and finally spoke coherently. “Who, I mean, what the hell, I mean… out! Everybody out! And you… drop those muffins!”
Moses stood and worked his way toward him through the debris. “Why don’t we start this over again? Hi, I’m Moses!” He extended his hand toward the man, who responded by scuttling back to put the shelving unit between them.
Moses blinked, then advanced again. “Um… hi? I’m Moses?”
The man grabbed something off the shelf beside him and pointed it threateningly. “Alright, just get out, right now! I’m not afraid to use this!”
“You’re going to…” Moses tilted his head sideways and looked at the unit in the startled man’s hand. “… lube me to death?”
The man glanced down at the hand unit, and replied with all the dignity he could muster: “Erm…”
“Once again, as I said, let’s start this over.” Moses said, in a placating tone of voice. “I’m Moses.”
The response was a blank look and a small dribble of grease from the end of the unit.
“Dunn?” His grease-gun wielding would-be assailant shrugged. “I’m your new boss?”
This seemed to get through. The man looked at the unit in his hand, startled. He glanced up at Moses, then turned to stare at the chaos in the room around him. Finally, he turned back toward his new manager, shrugged, and slapped the greasing unit into Moses’ outstretched hand. “Then I guess you’re just the person I needed to talk to, then.”
“Excellent.” Moses smiled. “So how may I help you?”
“You can start by blowing me. I quit.” He reached out and carefully wiped the lube on his hand on the front of Moses’ tunic. Then he stalked, as much as it was possible to do so in the low gravity, toward the door.
Moses stared at the grease gun for a moment, nonplussed, then turned and spoke. “Wait!”
The man paused at the door and looked back. “Yeah?”
“You forgot your sandwich.”
He screamed inarticulately and left, slamming the door behind him. Moses looked over at Ami, whose expression could have scorched paint, and shrugged defensively.
Mattie, sampling Leo’s liquid muffins, spoke up. “Well, that went well.”
☼
“His name’s Cranston, I think.” Ami was going through the center’s system, and had finally located the personnel records. She looked up from the terminal, where she had a half dozen data windows open and surrounding her. Moses, at another station in the small office, was going through the inventory.
“Wow. You’d be amazed at what’s here.” He pushed a window to one side and motioned another closer. “You’re going to love some of this.”
Ami looked up. “You’re not getting out of it that easily.”
“Oh, come on.” Moses replied, exasperated. “He was an ass.”
“Yeah, but he was your ass. Wait…” She waved her hands in the air, frustrated. “Oh, damn it, you know what I mean.”
Moses sighed and sat back. “Yeah. I know. I blew it.”
“Yes, you did.” Ami looked over at his slumped shoulders. She hesitated a moment, then pulled open a drawer beside her and reached in. “Here, I found this.”
Moses fielded the pouch she threw over and looked at it. It was a single serving margarita. He pulled the activation tab, and it began to cool off in his hand. He pressed the flexible package against his forehead with a sigh and spoke. “Well, that’s one point for our Mister Cranston, anyway.”
“Arnie. Arnie Cranston. You need to find him, you know.”
“Yeah.” He examined the package, pulled out the built in straw, and took a sip. “Bleah. Never understood people liking these things.”
“You could always not drink it.”
“I suppose.” He took another sip and returned to examining the inventory. Ami started to say something, hesitated, then just silently returned to her lists.
☼
Outside, the rest of the group was clearing up the mess. This time, they made sure that the items that went on the shelves were properly strapped down.
“That’s about the last of it, I think.” Mattie had taken charge of the reordering effort, pointing and instructing on what to grab and where to put it. Everyone else had looked at each other, shrugged, and set to work.
Sher, carefully positioning a case of self-sealing stem bolts, spoke up. “So… are we having fun, yet?”
“Sure. Someone has to.” Leo replied from the other side of the room. “Besides, you’ve got to admit that that was pretty funny.” He gestured around the now clean area.
“Well, okay, yeah…”
Fiona looked over at Mattie. “I can’t believe you ate that stuff.”
“Drank.”
“Even worse.” Fiona made a face.
“It was actually pretty good.” At Fiona’s disbelieving look, she amended her statement. “Well, it wasn’t that bad. Okay, fine, it tasted like a blueberry threw up.”
“If you liked that…” Doug interjected, “You’ll love the cherry pie!” He winged another food pouch at her.
Mattie caught it and carefully set it under the netting on the shelf beside her, shuddering. “No, no. That’s quite alright. Thank you.”
“Coward.”
They were interrupted by Moses, who had emerged with Ami from the inner office. “Okay, got it.”
Leo looked over, excited. “You found where she is?”
“Yep. T.P…. sorry, I can’t say that with a straight face… T.P. has a zero-gee storage area out at L2. That’s the Lagrange Point on the outside
of the moon’s orbit.” He shrugged. “Guess they wanted to keep the junkyard out of sight.”
“Like they could see it from Haven.” Leo looked slightly offended.
“Still, it works out for us. It’s just a brief shuttle ride out to the yard.”
Mattie spoke. “And since we don’t have a shuttle, what difference does that make?”
Moses smiled. “And who says we don’t have a shuttle?”
“You’re kidding, right?” said Leo, grinning.
“Nope. Belongs to the Center. Got three of ‘em, actually, one for personnel and two for cargo.”
Leo pumped his fist. “Oh, man! That is just crinkled!”
Moses blinked. “It is?”
“Yep!”
“It’s not farb, then?”
“What? No, of course not.” Leo replied. He shared a commiserating look with Ami. “Farb. Please.”
Ami grinned over at Moses, who shrugged and said “Okay, you were right, okay?”
“Just so you understand.”
“I understand.”
Ami nodded. “Fine.”
“Groovy.”
“What?” Ami replied, confused.
“Never mind.” Moses sighed. “Okay, let’s find the shuttles.”
☼
The shuttles turned out to be docked in the facility itself, on the far end of the yard. This necessitated pressure suits for all.
“Units with current inspections only, people.” Moses was digging through a box of suit gloves as he talked. “There’s an inspection tag built into each piece. Just query it with your pcomp.”
“Now, why are we wearing these things, again?” Sher was stripped down to just a pair of remarkably diminutive panties as she stared blankly at a pair of pressure suit pants.
Moses glanced up at her very brief briefs and then looked away again quickly as he replied. “Ahem. Well, I don’t know about you, Sher, but I’ve kinda got used to breathing over the years.”
Ami laughed and looked over at her friend. “I think your underwear is scaring him.”
Doug spoke up. “You think hers are scary, wait’ll you get a load of mine.”
Mattie winced. “You know, on principle I’m not sure I’m entirely comfortable with a sentence that includes both the words ‘underwear’ and ‘load’”.
“It is not scaring me.” Moses said grumpily. “I’m just being a gentleman.”
Sher put her hands on her hips, bouncing distractingly in reaction. “You realize that a real gentleman would tell me I look good standing around in my underwear.”
“You look good standing around in your underwear.” Leo piped up.
“You see?” She turned to her boyfriend. “Thank you, dear. Now, shut up and help me put this damn thing on.”
Eventually they had assembled enough current rated suits for all. They stood in a cluster around Moses in the outer office as they finished dressing. He selected a private comm channel and instructed his pcomp to pass the information along.
Moses looked around at the suited group. “Okay, folks, bear in mind these are not the tourist models. You’re going to join Darwin in a New York nanosecond if you do something stupid.” He quickly but thoroughly went through the controls on the flexible idiot pads embedded in the suits’ sleeves. “Also, remember that none of you chose to hook up the plumbing. We’ve a biological time limit before they get, um, messy.”
Fiona laughed. “Guess you shouldn’t have drank that last Muffin, Mattie.”
“Oh, quiet, you.” Mattie was just sealing her gloves to her suit. “And let me check you out.” Fiona obligingly bounced over to let her go over her suit.
Moses looked up. “Good idea. Everyone get someone else to vet ‘em.”
Ami looked over, puzzled. “To what?”
“Check their suit integrity.”
“Okay.” She replied. “Then why didn’t you say that?”
“I did. Now come here.” He helped her settle her helmet on her head and verified that the suit was ready to go.
Once the suit checks were completed, they went through the pressurized warehouse and cycled through an airlock big enough to handle a cargo shuttle.
“Wow,” Leo said, looking around at the various pieces of equipment secured nearby.
“Gawk later.” Moses looked around at the group. “Right now, everyone look at your idiot pads.” He gestured toward his sleeve. “Watch the pressure and air mix tell-tales. We are not walking away from a perfectly good airlock until we know all of the rebreathers are functioning properly.” The suit’s nanotech based osmotic rebreathing systems could theoretically keep them in fresh air for months, but they’d been in storage. It never hurts to be a bit paranoid.
Everyone, including Moses, stood obligingly around staring at their wrists. After a bit, No spoke. “Is the paint dry yet?”
Moses laughed. “Just about. Any problems? Anyone?”
“You know,” said Mattie, looking up, “… we’ve worn pressure suits before.”
Moses glanced over. “And that means it’s okay to screw up this time… why, exactly?”
“Yeah, okay. Point to you, I guess.”
“Excellent! That means I’m even with Matthews. Let’s go.” Moses led them to a nearby groundcar. It was unpressurized, but the only one there big enough to hold the whole group.
They found the shuttles after a brief drive, and everyone offloaded. Moses walked up to the nose of the closest and patted it affectionately.
“I’ll be damned, it’s a Mitsubishi. They went out of business years ago, you know.” He turned, grinning. “Cool.”
“Just how old is this thing, anyway?” He wasn’t sure who spoke over the radio.
“No more than a hundred, hundred and fifty years.”
“Feh.”
Now he was sure. “Come on, No… you got something against old things?”
“Nope. But I do have something against old things maintained by idiots.” No waved his pressure suited hand at the shuttle.
“Can’t fault you there, actually.” Moses turned from the nose of the shuttle and made his way down the hull toward the lock. “Come on, people. Let’s check this puppy out.”
The shuttle actually turned out to be in pretty good condition. Moses, aided by Leo, worked his way through the power up and preflight procedures. It took them close to an hour, but they let everyone take their helmets off after he’d okayed the life support system about halfway through.
Ami spoke, her breath sending a cloud of fog into the air. “Um, isn’t it still a bit cold?”
Leo turned to her from the co-pilot’s seat. “It’ll warm up. Just give it a few minutes.”
“Yeah.” Moses added. “You’ve got to remember this thing’s been powered down for what looks to be several months.”
“Fine. Great. Whatever.” She turned back to the engineer’s console, where she was sitting, and began idly going through the systems. She paused. “Hey… this says that there’s an auxiliary power unit in the bay.”
“Good. I was hoping there would be. It makes sense to keep one available.”
Ami looked at Moses, questioningly.
“The Endeavour has been cold steel for, um… well forever, really. For at least a hundred years or so, anyway. We’re going to need that to get her systems going, again.”
Ami looked puzzled. “But doesn’t she have a fusion power system?”
“Yep. And we’re going to start it up without any power source at all how, exactly?”
“Oh.”
Moses blanked the startup list and leaned back, sighing. “The deuterium bunker’s probably empty, anyway… I would assume, in fact, that it was drained as part of the long term storage procedures. But we should be able to get ho
usekeeping going with the APU, and that’s all we should need.”
Mattie stuck her head in through the diminutive bridge’s door. “Okay, everyone’s strapped down.” She entered, came over to the one remaining seat and started doing the same. She then pointed at the panels in front of her and said, “So. Where am I, anyway?”
Leo looked over. “That’s life support. Please, as a personal favor to me, don’t start punching buttons at random.”
“You have no adventure in your soul.”
He shook his head. “I have no stupidity in my soul.”
“They’re not exclusive. No worries… I’ll just sit here and look mysterious. Watch, here I go.” Mattie leaned back and crossed her arms. “Am I mysterious, yet?”
Leo nodded. “Just about.”
“Good. You know, I’ve practiced that.”
“Now you’re just trying to scare me.” He grinned. “Won’t work, you know… Ami’s my sister. I’ve been scared by the best.”
Moses looked over at Ami. “Do me a favor, will you? Never tell me where you found these people.” Ami grinned.
He turned back to the communications panel, studied it for a moment, then reached out to reset the frequency. “Hello?” He called out. “Anyone out there? This is TP… heh… TP Shuttle Alpha Mike Papa 749 to Station City departure control, heading for L2, that's El as in Lima, two as in... two... for TP storage primary. Are we clear?”
After a brief pause he was rewarded with the voice and tiny image of a bored tech. “Yeah, yeah, keep your pants on. You’re cleared to depart via sector niner five zed alpha, please stay clear of zone bravo. Now go away and leave me alone.” She then uploaded their flight corridor and signed off grumpily.
