“Good morning, Doctors; what brings you out at this hour?”
The reflection from Wills white uniform was enough to show the features of her face and more than enough to cause her short, bright blond hair and pale blue eyes to glow, “The hour-r es no matter-r; ve haaf a job to do. Our-r cur-r-ent task es a r-egular ins-pection uf Watts.”
Bernard just stood there with a smile on his face; he knew how his wife affected other people.
Her eyes raked both of them from stem to stern, “You both r-require you-r shoes shined. Kap-i-tain, you need a shave.”
Helt stroked his chin, “Uh, well, I’ve been going at it for the last fifteen hours.”
“NOT an excuse, Kap-i-tain. You a-r-e a leade-r. You a-r-e an example.”
“Ah, yes, you’re right; I’ll take care of it immediately.”
“Gut! Und get some sleep.”
Katrin and Bernard walked past them and continued their energetic walk into town.
“I’m beginning to hate those two.” said Helt.
Wills watched them go, “Get in line. When we get back, I’m thinking of introducing her to Captain Weathers and get even with both of them.”
They turned and started walking back to the Weasel; they had tried teaching the Foresters a couple of human ball games on the game field, but the lights that they had set up to illuminate the field had not been enough to hold back the crushing psychological weight of absolute darkness. Life had moved indoors where it clustered around bright therapy screens, electric lights or fires; the only outside activity was the cutting of more wood to burn or movement from one group to another.
Wills put a hand on Helt’s shoulder and they stopped halfway back to the ship, “Ellias, there are still a couple of troubling thoughts bouncing around my head.”
Helt looked a question at Wills, “Like?”
Wills pointed the thumb skyward, “If that beacon goes unnoticed or comes apart, we are going to be a total surprise at Mallcott. Without being warned, I can have no expectation of there being adequate transport capability in-system. Even though we will take several months to transit past the Mallcott system, we will start losing heat the instant we come out of isolator drive. Right now, we cannot radiate heat, but the instant we break out, this planet’s heat is going to disappear in a rush. We may have a few days of easy operations, another week of difficulties, and perhaps a total of one or two months before everyone left is dead. I see our worst case scenario as us having to begin transporting on our own. I was wondering if you had given any thought to repairing the ring so that we can get some people off Forest.”
Helt nodded; they turned and resumed walking toward the ship, “I have located the needed materials and I believe I can have it reasonably functional in a week. The fun part will be digging out the struts, but we have the equipment and manpower to handle that too. The big problem will be the fact that you will have no isolator drive and will have to do everything at sub-light speeds with an even lower allowed power input to the ring; you would be pushing it to get back in time for a second load.”
Wills nodded, “It will be what it has to be. Repair the ring and get the pads dug out.”
This time, it was Helt that stopped and turned, “There is one more thing that you are going to have to worry about.”
Wills eyebrows went up.
“The normal procedure for breakout is to dump the power that is going to the drive to the accumulator stacks just after you cut the deuterium flow; fusion reactors are not instant-off devices. Our problem is that we no longer have accumulator stacks, and, even if we did, they were never sized for the magnitude of this situation. The only plan I have is to divert as many of the old Weasel reactors to the ship’s systems as I can and then just cut the fuel to the rest of the reactors. The drive will cease operating when the power input falls below some critical level.” Helt smiled grimly at Wills, “How that will work is something else that has never been tried. My most evil speculation tells me to expect the reactors to flash-back into the initiator chambers badly enough to permanently knock out a few of the reactors. Add in the fact that the power transfer will still be to the drive and not the accumulators and you had better pray that the Silverman has been staying up nights working on the shut-down problem.”
Wills closed his eyes and took a deep breath, “You are a fount of joy, my friend.”
They resumed walking toward the ship, “Admiral, I would recommend that there only be a big enough crew aboard during shut-down to handle any problems.”
Wills just nodded; there was nothing else to do but nod.
##
He should have been getting some sleep. He had been off watch for three hours now and had been wandering around the quiet ship since then. It was odd how many people were unable to sleep; well…maybe not so odd. After the initial panic building lighting systems, getting the crops harvested, and doing what they could to stabilize the Foresters’ daily routine, the military and civilian crew of the Weasel had settled into their own version of everyday life. There were groups gathered into small knots all over the ship but there was little noise; they just played card games or watched vids; at least, they sat in front of an active screen and looked in its direction. Wills got the idea that a form of hypnosis was substituting for sleep
