“Busted!” the twins said. “Let’s go!” They each had an overnight bag with them.
“Does your mother know?” Liz asked.
“Sure, she just dropped us off ten minutes ago. She wanted to thank you for taking us off her hands for the weekend.”
“Alright,” Liz said, giving in to the inevitable. “But we don’t have time for games, this is a working weekend.”
“Fine by us.”
The four of them boarded the Lynx and prepared to fly up to Delphi Station.
“I can’t believe you were spying on me,” Catie said.
“We knew you were getting ready to test fly her,” the twins said. “We think we deserve to be on her maiden flight.”
“And what possible reason did you come up with for deserving to be on the flight?”
“We helped launch the probes that found the planets. It’s because you found the planets that you came up with the idea for the StarMerchant. Ergo, we deserve to be part of the next step.”
“I think they’ve got you there,” Liz said. “Now, get seated, we’re cleared for takeoff in one minute.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“It looks weird,” the twins said as they approached the ship. They were watching the feed from the forward camera as Liz flew the Lynx toward the cargo ship.
“That’s not a very nice thing to say about our new ship,” Catie said.
“It looks like something ate its middle. Why are there two big gaps?”
“That’s where the cargo pods go,” Catie explained. “The big bulb on that end is the front. It has the bridge, crew quarters, the flight bay we’re going to land in, and four cargo bays; that disc in the middle is the gravity drives and power plants; they have to be extra big to work as jumpdrives.” Catie didn’t mention the missile bay, figuring she’d keep that secret.
“If the power and drives are in the middle, what’s in the back?”
“We have a big flight bay, engineering, and another two cargo bays back there,” Catie said.
“If you have cargo bays, why do you need cargo pods?”
“Because we want to carry lots of cargo. The pods are supposed to carry cargo for one customer, or one kind of cargo. That way, you can just drop the whole pod off, and they can empty it on their own time. Hopefully, they’ll fill it with cargo they want to ship back, and we’ll pick it up on the next trip.”
“What about the first trip?”
“We send the design of the pods ahead; they have to make a pod so we can exchange with them. After that, we just keep exchanging pods.”
“So then why do you need cargo bays?”
“For last-minute cargo, for extra cargo, or for things that have to be under environmental control while they’re shipped.”
“Hey, we’re going into the ship sideways?” the twins exclaimed.
“Yeah, because we have to be accelerating all the time and want to jump while moving, we have to align gravity along the long axis. We don’t want to try and rotate that ship before we go through a wormhole.”
“We’re here,” Liz announced. “Thank you for flying with us, even if you ignored your pilot for the entire trip.”
“Sorry, we were distracted,” Catie said.
“Oh, I heard them distracting you.”
“Let’s go!”
“No, we have to wait for the bay to pressurize,” Catie said. “Think of it like a big airlock.”
“Oh, we forgot.”
It took five minutes to pressurize the flight bay. During that time, the twins pestered Catie with question after question, all while donning their exosuits.
“ADI, why don’t you answer these questions? You’re the one that leaked my location, so it’s your fault that they’re here.”
“They aren’t asking me,” ADI replied. “Besides, I’m busy.”
The light above the hatch finally turned green, indicating that the pressure was equalized.
Catie opened the hatch and pushed both twins out. They both flapped their arms to help them drift toward the deck, where the magnetic coupling in their boots connected and held them down.
“Hi, Ajda, sorry for throwing a couple of bodies at you,” Catie said.
“Don’t worry about it. I know the Khanna twins, and I also know how adept they are in microgravity,” Ajda said. “Are you ready for your walkthrough?”
“Yes, we are,” Liz said as she pushed Catie out the hatch. She immediately jumped down after her.
“You’re in flight bay one, which is forty-five meters deep and fifty meters wide. You have over eighteen meters of height, so since this is a space only craft, you can fit four Foxes or three Lynxes in here,” Ajda said. “You just have to use thrusters to get them above the other spaceplanes so you can rotate them and fly out. The rear bay will hold twelve Foxes and Five Lynxes. You have to maneuver around some support beams, but it shouldn’t be too bad.”
“That shouldn’t be a problem. A little trickier if we’re under acceleration, but a good pilot can handle it,” Liz said.
“Through here is the lift; cargo bays one and two are just above us,” Ajda said as she led them into the lift. “These bays are forty-nine meters high at the peak then follow the hull curve down to sixteen meters. They’re forty-eight meters deep by seventy-five meters in width, again, they follow the hull curve. The two are side by side with separate airlocks and separate cargo doors.”
“Wow, it’s big,” the twins said.
“Yes, you can certainly carry a lot of cargo in here,” Liz said.
“We’ll put racks in here eventually to hold the containers. That way, they’ll be secured in place, and you’ll be able to get to the ones you want.”
“Doesn’t that make half the space aisles?” Liz asked.
“Twenty-five percent,” Ajda said. “You have racks on both sides of the aisle. You can put stuff in the aisles if you’re confident about your load and unload order.”
“Good,” Catie said.
“And cargo bays three and four?”
“The same except they start at sixty-four meters in height and follow the hull curve down to thirty-five meters tall,” Ajda said.
“And cargo bays five and six?” Catie asked.
“They’re the same as three and four, except they start at fifty meters, then
