The twins giggled, and both of them flipped over, so they were floating upside down, looking at the three women.
“I know upside down is not a great term to use in microgravity, but relative to where I’m standing,” Ajda said. She smacked the twin closest to her on the back of the head.
“What about the iris?” Catie asked.
“Amazingly, it works,” Ajda said.
“What’s the iris?” the twins asked.
“You remember how long we had to wait for the flight bay to pressurize?” Catie asked.
“Yes!”
“Well, this space is way bigger and would take even longer to pressurize. So we designed the iris so we could bring in cargo without having to depressurize the bay.”
“How’s that work?”
“Like the shutter on a camera, you turn it, and the hole in the middle gets bigger.”
“But how does that keep the pressure in?”
“Each blade in the iris has a bunch of small polysteel plates attached to it. They’re magnetized and connect to the metal cargo container and seal the air in.”
The twins frowned as they tried to imagine that. “But that means the container has to be round.”
“Right, actually, it has to be shaped like an egg,” Catie said. “Or like this ship, egg-shaped on the ends and round in the middle.”
“That seems weird,” Aalia said.
“It sounds impractical,” Prisha added.
“You only use it for last-minute deliveries,” Catie said. “We’ll keep some containers like that just in case.”
“I’ve also designed a portable eggshell,” Ajda said. “You can have a bunch of them of various sizes. They unfold like an accordion around the crate, so you can just open it up, slide the crate in and then close it and push the crate through the iris.”
“Way cool!”
“This way, and I’ll show you the bridge and crew quarters and accommodations,” Ajda said.
“Were you able to fit in enough capacitors to manage the hull if we get hit by a plasma cannon?” Catie asked as they boarded the lift.
“Yes, these ellipsoid hulls have an amazing amount of unusable space, or at least only useful for sticking things like capacitors in.”
“Good,” Catie said.
“Seems like a big expense to go through for a cargo carrier. And the second flight bay seems excessive too,” Ajda said.
“We can always put cargo in the second bay,” Catie said. “And since we don’t know what we’re going to run into out there, I’d rather be over-prepared.”
“You’re paying for it,” Ajda said, “so no skin off my nose.”
“Alright, you have sixty crew cabins, and they all have double bunks. Captain’s cabin is twice as big and also has the day cabin. Same for the owner’s cabin. Nice big rec area here. These rooms can be configured for passenger cabins or for cargo storage. You have a galley big enough to handle five hundred people or more, although why I don’t know.”
“We can carry one hundred passengers with the extra cabins, and we’re going to build passenger pods,” Catie said. “They’ll be right up against the front, so they’ll match the shape of the forward section. They’ll replace one of the cargo pods, and have an airlock to access the crew area and galley. Each pod should have about five hundred fifty cabins. We’ll need to feed them.”
“So, with four pods, we could carry one thousand?” Liz asked.
“Two thousand if they double up,” Catie said. “But I’m estimating about seven hundred fifty per pod.”
“How many pods are you thinking about?”
“I think we could do two deep, so eight,” Catie said. “And remember, the Paraxeans have decided to keep the cabins. So, we’ll sort of be exporting them. But it’ll be a lot easier to send the pod down to the surface than to tear the cabins out.”
“Good planning,” Liz said. “I wanted to strangle Governor Paratar by the time they were done pulling the cabins out of the Sakira.”
“Now you’ve got two elevators to traverse the spine; they operate in opposition, one goes up the other down,” Ajda said.
“Why do you need elevators?” the twins asked.
“Remember, I told you we have to accelerate along the long axis?”
“Yes.”
“So that means you have to use a ladder to get from the front of the ship to the back, which is really the top to the bottom.”
“Yes, oh, that’s kind of weird. But that means you have to climb down the spine to get to the engines.”
“Right, that’s four hundred meters, or two if you’re just going to the jumpdrive. That’s a lot of climbing.”
“Yeah. Let’s check out the elevator.”
They spent the rest of the day going through the bridge stations, engineering, and examining the jumpdrives and the power plants. The twins wandered off after the second hour. They found them in the rec area playing tag when they finished the walkthrough. Scotty Murphy, the system engineer for the airliner, and Chief Hopkins, had joined them when they were reviewing the more technical aspects of the ship. They were also going to ride along on the test flight the next day.
◆ ◆ ◆
The next morning, they were ready to take the ship out for its test flight. Scotty Murphy and Chief Hopkins joined them for breakfast.
“What in the world are you going to do with that big flight bay on that ship?” Chief Hopkins asked.
“Time will tell,” Catie said. “But right now, five Oryxes can fit into it. So, we’ll be delivering them to the colonies. We can put cargo in them on the way back.”
“Oh, I didn’t think about that. I guess they couldn’t fit one in the Sakira.”
“Especially after they piled all those cabins in her,” Liz said. “I’ll bet those colonists will be happy to have a few Oryxes around.”
“Yep. They’re big enough that you can set a printer up in them and print some critical items. You can even make a solar array in them.”
“Oh, like a mini space station,” the twins said.
“Yeah. It’s a huge investment to build a space station, but an Oryx can take care of most of what they would need one
