by Alan Black
Sno admitted to herself that she did like it. She could still smell the flowers. She wasn’t sure she wanted to give Lee the satisfaction of admitting it to him.
He continued, “Did you like the feel of that towel after you showered? Yes, you did. I can see it in your eyes. I wasn’t going to mention the condition of your panties, but child, what was that?! They were practically two toned: gray and some other color we won’t mention. Bleach keeps white clothes white and bleach for color keeps colored clothes the color they were intended to be.”
Sno snapped back, “Yeah, well it’s my underwear. Why should I care? Nobody sees it but me.”
“Yeah,” Lee snapped back. “I just saw it.”
“That and a lot more, I should add,” she replied.
Lee did not answer. He turned blush red and turned to go back to the bridge.
“Wait,” she said. “That was uncalled for on my part. I do appreciate how my clothes were cleaned, how they smell and look. Who do I have to thank for doing my laundry and sewing?”
Lee said in a grumpy tone, “I don’t know what you are talking about. Look, Sno, just fill the machine with water, then put in the detergent. Don’t worry; the button meters the exact amount you need. Bleach for whites and this other bleach is for colored clothes. Put in softener, and then add any smell you want. Then put in your clothes. Come back when the bell rings and take them out. Okay?”
She nodded and grabbed her t-shirt at the collar. Bending down she held it out to Lee. “What kind of flower is this smell?”
Lee said, “Honest to pete, Sno. That isn’t a flower smell. That’s vanilla. It’s a flavor smell.”
Sno said, “Okay, thanks. That confuses me to no end. Vanilla isn’t a flower? How can it be a flavor and a smell at the same time?”
Lee shook his head. “Nope, that is not my department. You need to ask Doc the next time you talk to him.”
Sno said, “Doc? Okay, I will ask him. It must be nice having a medical man with you. Medboxes are good for what they do, but it-”
“No,” Lee interrupted. “He isn’t that kind of doctor. He has a PhD in journalism and political science. He is smart about a lot of other stuff too. If Doc can’t answer any question you can think of then you could always look it up on the Winkin’s library database. Graham has it loaded for Joey’s schooling.”
Sno looked confused. “A real smart fellow in journalism, whatever that is. Why is he out here chewing rocks?”
Lee said, “Journalism means he’s a media writer. He wrote stories for the news-nets and for e-zines. He said he got tired of writing about other people and decided he wanted to do; just do. Anymore than that and you have to ask him for yourself. Oh, and don’t put bleach in with your suit liner. It is contra-indicated by the recommended instructions.”
Sno gritted her teeth. “I don’t know why I am talking to you. It is ‘contrawhatsis’?
Lee said, “And your Honor. That is when I killed her. It is,” he spoke the word slowly, “contra-indicated. It means that you shouldn’t use it.”
Sno spat back, “Then why didn’t you just say no bleach on suit liners? Why do you have to throw ten dollar words at me? I think you are just trying to make me feel small.”
Lee turned to go, but said over his shoulder, “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.”
When she was alone, Sno said to herself, “And what is that supposed to mean?”
She followed the instructions Lee had given her, adding a shot of vanilla, and then adding the liner. She went back to the suit locker to continue the PM on all three suits. She pulled out and washed each liner in turn.
After six hours she finally got all three suits up to maximum efficiency. They were clean and ready to use. She had tested each toggle, relay and connection. She completely adjusted a series of pressors in Lee’s suit that would have caused the muscle enhancements to require more effort to work than necessary. She sprayed silicone lubricant on everything that moved and contact jelly on everything that did not. She filled every pocket, bin and cubbyhole with the day-to-day tools of mining, including a full load of blasting putty, detonators and suit sealant patches. She also straightened up everything in the room, making sure everything was put away in its place, sweeping up and then mopping the floor until it shined.
When she finished, she stopped at a closed door in the corridor between the bridge and the galley. On the Sedona it would have held the weapons locker. The door was not locked, so she slid it open. It held cleaning supplies, a few extra food stuffs and little else.
Sno wandered back to the bridge. Jackson had since replaced Lee.
Sno asked, “Mister Jackson, do you have any weapons on board?”
Jackson shuddered, “Good heavens, no. What would we need weapons for? We don’t have to shoot an asteroid before we mine it.”
“Haven’t you ever heard of pirates?”
Jackson looked startled, “Pirates! Oh my word! I thought that was just a tale used to scare little kids.”
Sno looked contrite, “Yeah, it is a tale that we use to scare kids and earthers. Sorry. Let me ask it this way: have you ever needed a hammer and not had one, or had a hammer and then didn’t need it?”
Jackson said, “I see. It is better to have a tool and not need it, than to need a tool and not have it.”
Sno grinned, “Got it in one.”
Jackson continued, “But guns aren’t tools, they are only good for killing living creatures.”
Sno nodded. “That is the function of that particular subset of tools. There may not be pirates in vacuum…yet, but you never know about strange ships that go bump in the night or what you might find when you pull into a strange dockyard. Besides, most weapons aren’t worth a damn in vacuum, but the same tool rule applies.”
Jackson said, “Well, we don’t have anything, sorry.”
Sno replied, “That’s okay. It is too far back to try and pull anything off Sedona anyway. So, how much longer to your site?”
“Just a couple of hours now,” he answered. “We are coming in pretty slow. Would you like to take over? I am sure you have much more ship time than I do.”
She shook her head, “No. I do have a lot more time piloting mining ships around these rocks, but it looks like you are doing well enough. I am going to grab a quick snack before we get there, if that is okay. It has been a while since my last meal. Can I get you anything?”
“Oh, no thanks. I’ll drop by the galley later and grab some of that pie, if there is any left.”
“No problem,” Sno said. “If Mister Lee hasn’t eaten it all, I can bring you up a piece, if you’d rather.”
“Oh, no,” Jackson said looking away. “That is one of Doc’s rules, no food on the bridge.”
“What? Okay, I can sort of see why you want someone on the bridge most of the time, but no food? That is just wrong. I’ve eaten more meals on the bridge of a ship than in the galley.”
“But Doc says that if we spill something on the console we could damage it.”
Sno stepped up next to Jackson and slammed her fist on the console. “The only way you could damage one of these consoles by spilling something,” she slammed it again. “is if you are drinking sulfuric acid. Planning on drinking that on the bridge?”
Jackson smiled shyly, “I wasn’t really planning on it.”
Sno grinned, “Well, don’t. It is a good appetite suppressant, but not much good on the bridge. It is great for widening deep cracks on asteroids, but dead-on-wheels damaging on anything else.”
“But we all did agree to no food on the bridge.”
Sno shrugged, “Your house, your rules. I will save you a piece of the pie, if I can.”
“Miss Whyte, before you go, we do have a message from your office that just got here.”
“Great.” Dad must have been working late to even receive the message since it would have gotten there well into Arizona City’s middle of the night. “What did he have to say?”
Jack
son looked shocked. “Why, it is coded for you! We wouldn’t have read your mail.”
“Oh, well I will keep that in mind if I ever get mail coded for you. Can you zap it down to the galley?”
Sno was well into her fourth flan by the time she finished listening to her father’s message. There was a set of headphones attached to the vidscreen in the galley, but she had let his voice come through, not caring if Lee or Jackson eavesdropped.
Her father’s face had appeared on the screen: big, red and angry.
“Sorry for taking so long to get back to you, Princess. We, that is Vittie and I, have done some initial digging. We have just scratched the surface of some situations in AZ City.
“First things first: I want you to know how really livid I am about this. And I want you to know how grateful I am that you are all right. I love you and I don’t think you know how much it would hurt me to lose you. Please be careful. I never told you before, but I worry every time you go mining on your own. I am sure Grandpa felt the same way with me when I went out, but I always went with a partner.
“Let the crew of the Blinkin know how grateful I am that they picked you up. You sounded worried that I might be upset that you agreed to double the rescue fee. Princess, I would pay double the double rate to keep you safe; even to twice again as much. Believe me, none of the gentlemen on any of those ships will lose monetarily because they helped you, I swear it. It is just money and I owe them more than money.”
Her father looked away from the vidscreen for a moment. Vittie was there and stepped into the camera range. “Hello, Sno,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind, but I kept your father from attacking Queene Mines. Hold on, let me explain. I know you are ready to blast me for being an earther gravity dweller, but hear me out. I agree with your father that we have got to go after Queene Mines with both barrels. But Willem, or should I say, His Majesty King Willem the First, was ready to go down there with a pickaxe and when he was done with that he was going to burn the place to the ground.”
Her father did not smile, his face was serious. “I would have, too. I was ready. I would have killed everyone wearing a Queene Mines nametag. Honest to God, I would have, and forget the consequences. But, Vittie calmed me down, thank God. It would have been a mistake to go off half-cocked, taking everyone down with me. I was so angry I wasn’t thinking straight.”
Willem continued, “Vittie convinced me we need to take down Queene Mines. But, we need to be smart about it. She is right, if I had jumped in with both feet, not looking, Queene would have called in Sheriff Bob. We believe Evelyn Queene has him sewn in her pocket. He wouldn’t have listened. I don’t think he would have fabricated or destroyed evidence against Queene, but he would have hindered us at every turn. So if we keep our investigations quiet, we can slam them all with enough evidence that they can’t buy their way out of it.”
Vittie interrupted. “We did contract to bring on Abramsohn and Son Investigations. They are the most discrete firm in Arizona City. They have a reputation for digging information out where no one else could find it.”
Her father smiled grimly, “What she means is that we hired the sneakiest guys we could find. As to the Sedona, we bought a brand new off-the-shelf computer core and applications package. The Phoenix’s jump engines are not up to the task of getting all the way out there. Larry has them down for overhaul. I wanted to rent a runabout and bring you the new software myself, but Vittie told me to hold off. She heard from some ladies over lunch about a new ship’s captain at General Divisions, Chalmer…something. Yeah, Prentiss Chalmers was heading outbound. I talked with him. He used to be a ranger, so I think we can trust him. I hired him to bring you the package. He left about an hour ago, so even if he boosts heavy the whole way he still won’t get to you for a couple of weeks.
“I want you back on Ceres as soon as you can. I told Prints not to take any unnecessary chances to get to you. I do not want you to take any chances either; I want you home, Princess.
“Now, there is some bad news. It is about those four men you had problems with in Mario’s. They stole one of Queene’s ships. We didn’t think anything of it at the time. We had dinner with Evelyn Queene and Sheriff Bob before we heard from you. Queene seemed really upset. She was the one who told us about the theft. She said she was concerned they would come after you for humiliating them like you did.
“Bob and I agreed it was pretty unlikely four warehouse lumpers could track you down in space. We both thought they had no way to even know what direction you had taken when you boosted outbound. I didn’t even think it was strange Vittie kept silent through the whole meal. She decided she didn’t like Evelyn Queene even before the dinner. I had to insist that she go that night.”
Vittie smiled, “Well, Miss Queene’s luster has lost some of its shine. I kept quiet because I didn’t want to say anything stupid. I am prone to do that when I am angry! Queene visited us at the office just after you left to apologize for her lumpers attack on you. This boob, your father, didn’t realize when she came to visit the office that day, she hadn’t come alone. I wasn’t sure, but I don’t think she ever goes very far without some assistant or other.”
He father picked up the story. “When we got back from dinner Vittie insisted we run through the office security vids to see who had been with Queene. Sure enough, that little weasel of her’s, Wallace, had been with her and he scanned the boards for all of our ships, your’s included. Sure enough, the beacon you planted gave him precise information about where you were headed.
“We still don’t know for sure if they are headed your way, but if they are coming after you they won’t be but a couple of weeks or so behind you. These idiots got handed their heads the last time they tried a frontal assault on you. Unless they are dumber than they look, they won’t try that again. I don’t think we need to alarm the Nod’s crew or the Winkin and Blinkin because I think it is still only a very remote chance they will come after you, but you need to be aware and alert.”
Chapter 14.0
“No,” Sno shouted in frustration, “stop it. What in the wild world of sports are you doing?”
Doc answered, “Going to work, what does it look like?”
She shook her head, realizing he couldn’t see her over the open comms. “It looks like you are wasting time. You don’t even have your ships in synchronous orbit over this rock.”
Lee snapped back. “Yeah, but we don’t have to do that. There are enough of us that some of us can dig up the rocks, put it in the nets, and push it into space. A second crew snags the nets and empties them into the materials bin. It is simple and quick. The manuals say that is the easiest way to set up operations.”
Sno snorted, “Manuals! Of course it is the easiest way to set up. But it is more time consuming in the long run and wastes more man hours than snugging the ship up directly to the rock.”
Doc’s voice asked, “Snuggling what?”
Sno replied, “Okay, Lee, give me the command seat.” She moved into the chair on the bridge of the Blinkin quickly familiarizing herself with the controls. “Okay. This rock doesn’t have much spin and a negligible tumble. This should be a breeze. Nod and Winkin, stay put. I am going to move the Blinkin into place.”
Sno called up a few commands on the computer screen, but there wasn’t a response.
“Oh, cram it!” she said. “I have this program set on a short cut so I can hot button it on Sedona. Well, we will just have to do this the hard way.”
She searched a list of navigation programs, calling up each in turn dropping them into a new command file. She then ran a quick simulation on the computer. Satisfied with the results, she looked around at Lee and Jackson. It had taken her about fifteen minutes.
“Okay, ready for magic? Blinkin: commence mining program Whyte Alpha 11.13.”
Doc said, “Can you talk us through what you are doing?”
Sno said, “Yeah, sorry. No sense in moving the rocks any farther than we have to move them. First, we put each of
your three ships, butt-end, snug up against the rock. Blinkin is here.” She flashed locations for the other two ships, marking each area on a digitized three-dimensional chart of the asteroid. “The Winkin and the Nod should be parked as marked.”
She did not feel any movement on the Blinkin as it swung around, matching velocities and rotation with the asteroid, but she was able to see the movement on the chart. She flash transmitted her hastily assembled program to the other two ships.
“All right; we don’t really set down on the rock, but we settle into a synchronous orbit about fifteen to twenty feet from the surface. Then, we lock down the inner hatch to the feed chamber and open the outside garage doors. We can then string out gravity nets from the ships to the surface of the planet, creating an enclosure.”
Doc replied over the comms. “I see. We can then work inside the enclosure and only have to move the raw materials a few feet up.”
Sno answered. “Not ‘up’, earther. You aren’t in a gravity well. Pushing rocks up takes effort we don’t need to expend. We reset the grav-stat in the feed chamber so the back wall of the feed chamber is set to ten percent gravity. The gravity nets are multi-grav capable. We set them to one percent gravity where they contact the surface of the rock and increase the gravity in increments until it contacts the ship at nine percent gravity. Any rock, pebble or speck of dust that we knock loose from the big rock will float ‘down’ into the chamber or be trapped by the net and flow along the net until it falls ‘down’ to the back wall. The back wall is now the bottom or floor of the chamber. We will be chewing rock and pushing it down the hold into the hopper. Down got it?”
“Harold Ortiz here…um, why don’t we set the grav-meter to greater than ten percent? It seems to me we could move more rock up…I mean, down faster.”
Sno snorted, “Okay, your grav-stats on these old POS can still be set to, what…five or six gravities?”
Doc answered. “Actually, they are rated for seven and a half, but I wouldn’t trust the Nod’s systems to more than three.”
