Motherload | Page 6

cordless vibrosaw and began cutting through the reactor housing. She wasn't kidding about Value Powers not being meant to be fixed! As she worked, periodically having me hold or fetch something, she explained how the small reactor would normally have been serviced and rebuilt in the factory: giant automated prying tools would pop off the housing case; other tools would extract each integrated component and test it; the faulty emitters would be replaced; and the whole thing would have been reassembled in a matter of minutes. An easy process, apparently, for a robotic factory. Not so easy for people using hand tools, and who were weightless, in the dark, and had a really final deadline hanging over their heads.
Despite our best intentions, we did end up taking a ration bar break after a few hours. We'd made coffee before the shut-down, and had insulated cups of hot joe to wash the dry, tasteless things down. A little-enough reward, maybe, but it picked up my spirits some.
Bayern had popped in periodically over the previous few hours, always saying something inane meant to bolster our morale, and then withering fast under Sally's sarcastic responses. He chose this moment to float in again for an update.
"We've opened the array," I told him. "Now we have to start working on the emitters themselves."
"Well, that's pretty good," he replied, pleased. "Sounds like we'll be up and running soon."
"This was the easy part," Sally corrected, burning her tongue as she checked her coffee. "Ouch! Dang it! We have days of hand-machining and testing ahead of us yet, so just hold your water! We'll be done when we're done, and not 'til we're done, savvy?"
"You know, Sally," he said, trying to sound like a concerned manager, "we would all get along better if we could just be a little more polite to each other."
"What's this 'we', Bayern -- you have multiple personalities? If so, do you have one that's not an idiot?"
"See, now that's what I'm talking about..."
"If everybody in this tub just did their fornicating jobs, and let everybody else do THEIR fornicating jobs, we'd all get along just fine! Keep bothering us down here, and none of us -- not one person -- will have to worry about getting along with anybody ever again! Is that polite enough for you Captain Bligh?"
Bayern looked at me, but I just held up my hands. As he turned to go, he motioned me to follow him out to the companionway.
"I'm concerned about Sally," he stated grimly, once we were alone, still in manager mode. "Do you think she's up to this?"
"Look, don't take it personally," I replied, steading myself in the weightlessness, "you just get under her skin."
"It's not her engineering skills that are in question here," he went on, as if I hadn't spoken, "it's her ability to work under pressure. Can she handle the stress of our current situation, or should I be thinking of change?"
"Think whatever you want. Our lives are riding on Sally right now, because nobody else aboard -- myself included -- can hand-machine those spheres without ruining them. Just give her some space, Bayern, and she'll get us home."
He chewed it over like he had a choice and then shook his head with a sigh.
"Okay, Ejoq. But I want you to watch her closely. If she starts to crack, we have to be ready to take action."
He shoved off and floated down the companionway until he had to take a corner, then smacked right into the bulkhead with a painful oomph. After that he floundered off out of sight. I'd known bigger fools in my time -- even ones who were ostensibly in charge -- but this was an emergency. If he kept bugging Sally, we'd have to tie him up and gag him.
She was still fuming when I returned to Engineering.
"Is Bayern talking fecals about me, Ejoq?! I'll space him, I swear it!"
"Sally, please don't sweat a moron. I mean, why does he bug you so much?"
She grumbled inarticulately, and turned away to the exposed magnetics. I thought that would be her only reply, but after nearly a minute of silence, she spoke again without turning around. Her voice was quiet and sounded fatigued, as if she'd been running a marathon.
"Every time I look at Bayern, I see my first husband. He was shorter, maybe, and with dark hair instead of fair, but I'm telling you, they could be brothers. I come from a gravity well named Waverley. I met Binn when I was fresh out of school and still a kid. I had stars in my eyes and vacuum in my head. Binn was born in jumpspace, and had never lived on a planet in his life. He was everything I wanted to be -- if you could overlook a