Trojan Orbit (UC), page 11
part #4 of Lagrange Series
"You'd be surprised how similar diving suit work is to working in a spacesuit. Some of our best lads are deep-sea men. Oh, well, you can't ask for every—oh, the devil! I'm Davis. Freddy Davis, Rick; your supervisor. Should've said that first, eh?"
They had moved over to the benches that lined the long metallic table in the center of the sleeping room. Davis looked around and said, "A helluva place to pad out, this. As soon as possible you'll want to team up with a buddy or two; get an apartment or a house. They aren't much better, but at least you get privacy. At least they're someplace you can take a mopsy—if you can find one."
"I'll keep it in mind/' Rick said. "Where'll I be working?"
"Ah. Outside on the hull, at present. Lots of bugs out there, lad. Whoever designed this thing down Earthside may have been a great pastry cook, or tap dancer, but he was sure as hell no engineer, for my money."
"I can hardly wait to get to it," Rick said, hoping it was what the older man wanted to hear.
Davis, beaming at his new assistant, shot a glance at his wrist. "I'm between shifts now. You can get processed and suit-fitted and start tomorrow. Meanwhile, long as you don't have to work a full shift in a bad fit, we can rustle you a borrowed suit so you can go outside the hull." The gleam in Davis's eyes was that of a teenager. "Want to pop outside for a look at the job? Lunch isn't for a couple of hours."
An excuse was on the tip of Rick's tongue, but it was high time he learned what those pills really did. "Wizard," he said, "soon as I get a drink of water." And the pill that goes down with it.
* * * *
An hour later, after the brief excursion outside multiple airlocks and the pill-induced nightmare, Rick Venner found himself half-dragged to a metal stool in the innermost airlock. He struggled to sit up, his face greenish, panting like a dog. Tears ran down his cheeks, and those weren't the only signs of distress.
Freddy Davis unsealed a gauntlet and laid a friendly hand on Rick's shoulder. "You'll be all right, lad," he soothed.
Rick managed to say, "Jeee-zMs!"
"Let's get you out of that suit and clean it—and you—up."
Rick followed the other to the suit-up room, staggering. "Holy Jesus, Freddy; what happened?" It shamed him that he knew.
"Just a touch of space sickness. Somebody once said if you combine vertigo with paranoia, this is what you get. Not all that uncommon for a first-timer, lad. Go on, get into that shower. You know how spacers shower?"
"I'm not sure."
"Like showering in a ship in the old days when fresh water was short. First wet yourself down. Turn off the water, lather up good, then rinse it off quick."
Rick stared at him. "Water shortage? Up here?"
"Durn tootin'—we're short on everything good up here," said Davis grimly. "Oh yeah, we were supposed to have plenty of everything, soon as the closed ecosystem recycled it all. Wizard; only they haven't got it working yet. We get oxygen from refining lunar ores, but to get water we have to combine it with hydrogen, and that has to come from Earthside. And large-scale recycling isn't quite perfect. Sometimes it reminds you that you're drinking recycled piss. You earn your pay up here, lad."
Rick cleaned up. The effects of the pill weren't quite as bad as Meer, the Penman, had warned. But he'd vomited and was drenched with sweat. His bowels, at least, hadn't come unglued. So far, everything was going as planned, discounting a nagging guilt that Rick seldom knew.
He returned to the dressing room to find that Davis had found him a fresh set of coveralls. As he dressed, the other tried to reassure him. "This isn't all that rare, lad. Hell of a lot of guys got space sick when we first started this project. These days, Earthside medics and at the Goddard catch most of those too prone to it. They get rotated back fast. But cases like yours usually get adjusted after two or three tries."
"Two or three?" Rick's anguish was plain. "I have to go through that several times? I mean—you're out there without anything solid under you, and there's Earth with nothing between you and it but about a million miles of falling."
Davis's smile was on a bias. "Actually only a quarter-million miles. Just rest up, and in a couple of days we'll give it another try. You'll be surprised how much easier it'll be."
"I can't believe I'm a flop," Rick said. "After looking forward to this for so long, and now look at me."
Davis patted his shoulder roughly, in man-to-man affection. "Don't believe that. You'll make out. I know a good worker when I see one, and Lord knows I need some good electrical engineers. You'll get used to free fall."
"It didn't bother me on the way up. But out there…" He shook his head. "A hundred dollars says I can't hack it."
"I'll take that bet," Davis told him, "just to show I believe in you. Come on. Let's get back to your dorm so you can get some lunch, such as it is."
Back at the induction center dorm, Freddy Davis pointed out the dining hall. "I won't be eating there," he said. "I've got my family here and we have our own place."
Another coveralled man, already seated at the long community table, looked up sourly. "You forgot to mention that you're a supervisor, so you don't have to eat this swill."
Freddy Davis, a veteran at handling construction workers, pretended to take the slur as a joke, though there was an unhappy element of apology beneath his words. As Rick took a place at the long metal table, Freddy said, "You know how it is, lads. It took me a good many years to work myself up to supervisor."
"Yeah," the disgruntled one said around his food.
"And things aren't so bad for you bosses. From what I hear, they live like fucking gods over there in the L5 Hilton."
Freddy Davis ignored him and gave Rick a last clap on the shoulder. "I'll see you in a couple of days, Rick," he said. "Get yourself oriented and try to line up some buddies so you can get into a private pad."
"Wizard," Rick told him, making his voice sound embarrassed. "Sorry I made such a spectacle of myself."
"Forget it." The other turned and left.
About twenty were eating. The places were set with aluminum plates, knives, and forks. There were large metal bowls and plates in the center of the table. Rick reached out for one of the bowls.
Across from him, a fellow diner said sourly, "Eat hearty, mate. Today's treat day. We've got shit-on-a-shingle for the main course. At least it's better than everlasting stringy rabbit and scrawny chicken."
Rick looked at him.
"Shit-on-a-shingle," the other said. "I can see you've never been in the military. Dried beef, cut tissue-paper thin, and cooked up into a gravy with dehydrated milk and flour. You get it on toast. I sure as hell never thought I'd live to see the day I'd think it was a treat."
One of the other said, his voice just as lemonish, "Stop your whining, Jeff. When you signed up, did you figure there'd be a branch of Antonio's New Orleans restaurant up here? Shucks, today we've got fresh carrots from the hydroponic farm."
Rick filled his plate from the unappetizing-looking bowls of food and set to. He had never eaten dehydrated food before in his life, save a small amount of it on the spaceship coming up. Except for the carrots, which proved to be on the tasteless side, this was all dehydrated, save for the bread. He assumed that there was no manner of dehydrating flour beyond its already dry state. He looked down at the food in dismay and realized, upon looking up, that the other newcomers, including the Texan whose bunk he had done him out of, were doing the same. A universal laugh came up from the older hands seated. Seemingly, it was a standing joke, watching space tyros eating their first meal in Island One.
Projecting his usual good humor, Rick said, "It's obviously pretty rugged here in Island One, but I imagine when the larger islands get built, things will soften up."
"What larger islands?" one of the old-timers scoffed.
Rick looked down the table at him. "Islands Two and Three, and, later on, even Four. The big ones. Holding millions of space colonists eventually."
Almost all of them laughed at that.
The one named Jeff, a scrawny little man with complaint built into his wizened face, said, "Island Two, ha! We'll never finish Island One. They can keep pouring money down the drain until the Sahara floods over, but they'll never finish this one, let alone ever get around to starting Island Two."
The Texan, who was seated across from Rick, was scowling. He said, complete with a drawl that could only have come from the vicinity of San Antonio, " What-all's wrong with the way this island's going? I can see there's a lot of work to be done, but…"
He'd set several of them to chuckling anew.
Jeff, who seemed to be the most talkative, shook a fork at the larger man and said, "Everything's wrong with it. And most of it shoulda been seen before it was ever started. The eggheads who dreamed this whole Lagrange Five Project up were a bunch of college professors and scientists. Damn few, if any of them, had any practical experience. When they got out of their own fields, they supplied the missing parts off the tops of their heads. Everything's gone wrong. That moon base where they're supposed to lob up raw material for us to smelter up here and use to build everything is a laugh. The Solar Satellite Power Stations aren't reliable. At least, not yet. The microwaving of power down to Earth has so many bugs in it they oughta spray it with insecticides. The ecology system here in the island hasn't gotten off the ground and practically everything has to be shipped up from Earth; hydrogen, food, nitrogen. The ore smelter here in space don't work. The radiators can't get rid of all the heat they generate. In short, everything's fucked up."
The Texan was looking unhappier by the minute. He said, "What's wrong with the moon base? I'm supposed to go over that way."
One of the other complainers took over. "We call it Siberia," he said. "From the first, it was a balls-up. The plans set by Doc Ryan and the others called for 200 men to run the moon base. Two hundred men, shit. First they were supposed to be landed there and set up a community. Then they were to build that eleven-kilometer mass-driver monorail, all lined up to a fraction of a fraction so the packages of lunar ore they lobbed up would hit the Catcher, 35,000 miles off. The Catcher is only 100 meters across, about three hundred feet. How'd you like to hit a target that small from 35,000 miles away? That gives you an allowable error of .00017 percent."
"What went wrong?" Rick asked. He was irritated by all this. Damn it, if he was going to be out here for five years, he didn't want the project to be a fouled-up mess.
"Everything," the other said. "Take that figure of 200 men. Break it down. Say you have a steward department of a dozen people. They cook the food, they serve it, they make the beds, they do the laundry, they sweep the floors, and all the rest of it, like on a ship. Then you have the medical department—the doctors, the nurses, the clinic attendants, the X-ray and other technicians. You think you could get by with a smaller medical department on a danger spot like the moon? Don't kid yourself. They have to be ready for everything. On an oil rig, off the coast, if a man gets hurt or sick and they don't have the facilities to take care of him on the rig, they send him by helicopter to shore and to the nearest hospital. But not at the moon base. He'd be dead before they got him to Island One or Earthside. They've got to take care of every medical eventuality on the spot. Then there's the office workers, including the communications people, also working three shifts every 24 Earth hours. There's a lot of paperwork, computer work, supervising, and all involved. That's another 25 people, at least. Then there's the maintenance people, maintaining everything from the computers and the communications equipment to the vehicles and all the equipment devoted to air, water, solar power, the nuclear plant, and even the electric typewriters and kitchen stoves. Don't think there isn't a lot of machinery involved in that damned moon base. And don't think that just anybody can repair it. A lot of it's awfully sophisticated. There goes another 25 men."
"Holy smog," the Texan protested. "You've already hardly got anybody left."
"Yeah. And there's another small item or two. How about broads? Are you going to have two hundred men up there for periods of at least a year or eighteen months at a stretch, as the egg-head saw it, without any kind of relaxation? You know what happens to guys who are locked up without mopsies in prison or in concentration camps, or labor camps like in Siberia? They go queer, that's what happens. Hell, even sailors have a bad reputation. You'd better have at least ten broads up there, willing and able to put out. Maybe some of them could double as waitresses and so forth in the reception hall, but they'd have to be available for getting laid when a man wanted some nooky."
"Jesus," Rick laughed.
"There's another item," the other pursued. "With two hundred men, you better figure on five percent being on the sick list. That's a conservative figure for a dangerous location like the moon. That means you've got ten men in the sick bay at any given time, some of them waiting to be shipped back to Earthside, some of them waiting for broken arm or leg to heal. Oh, ten men is a conservative figure."
"Is there anybody left at all to mine the ore and send it off?" Rick said.
"Add it up," Jeff told him. "But just a minute. That's not all. We're not through yet. How about the spaceship field? There's one hell of a lot of space shuttles, space tugs and so forth, coming and going from the moon base. You've got to have pilots, engineers, mechanics, men to handle the freight, refuel the ships, control tower technicians, and all the rest. Let's say twenty-five again, which is low, always remembering that everything goes on a three-shift Earthday basis. Now that totals 145 people, including the broads who are working at things other than mining that ore, freighting it over to the mass driver, packaging it and loading it into the mass driver buckets. So we've got 55 men left to handle the basic operation, lobbing ore into space. Working three shifts, that's 18 men on a shift. Remember that monorail, so carefully calibrated, is 11 kilometers long—about 6.5 miles. If you had your men stationed along that delicately balanced, carefully aligned monorail, one every third of a mile, for adjustments, lubrication, and troubleshooting in general, you'd use up all 18 of your men. You could also use up the whole number packaging and loading up the mass driver."
"How about automation?" the Texan said unhappily.
"Sure, automation. Everywhere it makes sense. But machinery on the moon is another thing. Big swings in temperature, one-sixth gravity, and so forth. Lava dust all over the place to gum up anything mechanically delicate. If you boost your automation, you're sure as hell going to have to boost that 25 maintenance men."
A newcomer lowered himself into the place next to Rick. Rick glanced over at him. A man about his own age and physical build, seemingly a bit shifty of dark eyes but with an ingratiating little smile.
He grinned and whispered to Rick, "The usual beefing brigade in full voice?"
Rick said, "Yeah. I guess so."
"I'm Tony Black."
"Rick Venner," Rick said. "I just got in. Is there anything in what these characters are saying?"
"Some. You'll hear it all, a hundred times over." The other reached for food. "How're things going, Rocks?" His voice was still low, as though avoiding disturbing the controversy.
Rick's face froze.
Tony Black grinned a small grin and whispered, "I'm your contact up here. We'll talk after lunch."
Rick had nothing to say to that. What contact? He hadn't known anything about contacting anyone in Island One. He thought that he was completely clear now.
The Texan was still bravely holding forth. He demanded, "Why not just up the crew working on the mining and the mass driver? Send in, say, another fifty men?"
A newcomer to the conversation, who had finished his food, or, at least, that part of it that he managed to get down, said with a bitter laugh, "Sure. And when you do, you up everything else. First you've got to construct bigger living quarters, make arrangements for more grub, air, water, and all the rest. You've got to increase the size of the hospital, the steward department, everything, including the number of broads. To feed all these new additions, you've got to send up more spaceships from Earth. And an extra fifty still isn't enough men."
"Why not?" one of the other space tyros, who hadn't spoken up thus far, said. He was the youth who had pointed out on the street on the way to the dormitory that Lagrange Five City wasn't exactly as portrayed in the Tri-Di shows.
Jeff, who seemingly carried half the conversation load at the community table, took over again. "Because the fucking mass driver doesn't work, and the fucking smelters here in Lagrange Five don't work. Practically nothing the eggheads dreamed up works. We've had to improvise. First of all, the ore doesn't get to us, because the catcher doesn't catch it, even when it gets off the moon okay. Not all of it, at least. Some gets through. But with the smelters a disaster, we've been doing the smelting at the Luna base, then shipping up sheet metal by rocket to moon orbit, and then pushing the stuff over here to Lagrange Five by space tug. And if you think that's not a damn sight more expensive than they originally figured, you're drivel-happy, and if you think that it involves less than a couple of thousand people, you're crazier still. It's still cheaper than sending everything up from Earth, but it's nothing like the original idea."
The Texan was flabbergasted.
Rick said, ignoring his new contact for the moment, "you mean out of the ten thousand workers up here, two thousand are on the moon base? I never heard that down Earthside."
"What ten thousand?" one of the others growled. "That's another one of those egghead goof-offs. They said there'd be ten thousand people here; four thousand would be employed building additional colonies, while six thousand would be producing satellite solar power stations. Wizard, but who was supposed to be running the island? Who was going to be keeping the hydroponic farms going, regulating the air and water, running all the equipment involved in maintaining a space colony? Who was going to be teaching the kids? Who was going to be taking care of the hospitals? Who was going to handle the office work? It's the same story as the moon base; you're lucky to get half of your people out doing the actual work you came to do. But there's something else involved here in Island One. The original dream Ryan and his Lagrange Five Corporation sold us on was that we were going to be space colonists, not just temporary contract workers. We could bring up our families. Wizard, some of us did. And when you bring a family, it includes kids and even some old folks. Swell. They don't work. They eat, but they don't work. And neither do quite a few of the wives. Supposedly, the married couples that came up were both to have jobs. But many women can't do anything but white-collar jobs, medical jobs such as nursing, or maybe restaurant work. And when they're pregnant, or the baby's small, they can't even do that. And, like Jeff said, there's always five percent or more of everybody on sick call." The speaker snorted. "If anybody thinks there's 10,000 highly trained workers up here, all working their asses off building more space colonies and SPS's, he's around the bend."
