“What the hell?” he asked the sky.
“Maybe nobody’s home?” Megan asked humorously. “I can open it easily enough…”
“No, let me take a look around,” Herzer said, walking around the side of the building. Near the far end was another door on which he also bruised his knuckles. It was eventually opened by a dwarf. Herzer had seen a few prior to the Fall but the only ones he’d seen since were at Raven’s Mill. Dwarves were a Change, not a genegineered race like the elves, but they tended to reproduce as families. And, even before the war, they were considered odd.
“Yes?” the dwarf asked suspiciously. He had a heavy accent.
“You’ve got a council member cooling her heels at your front door,” Herzer noted angrily.
“Well, what in hell is she doing at the front door?” the dwarf asked. “I’ll go open it. Who’re you?”
“Herrick,” Herzer said, waving the badge.
“Right, the new meat,” the dwarf said, stepping back and closing the door in his face.
Herzer opened his mouth to retort, realized it was pointless and walked back around to the front.
“There’s apparently…” he said as the door opened.
“Councilwoman Travante,” a different dwarf said, holding out his hand. “Angus Peterka, Chairman of Dwarven Mining Consolidated. A pleasure to make your acquaintance at last.”
“Dwarf Peterka,” Megan replied, shaking his hand and stepping in the room. It was small, with only the door to the outside and an equally heavy interior door. There was a dwarf manning a desk by the door and two more, in armor, holding large axes, guarding it. The day outside was hot but the room was pleasantly cool.
“Sorry,” the dwarf at the desk said. “Gotta check the badges.”
When the badges had been duly presented and checked the dwarf opened up a communications tube and whistled in it.
“Travante, Megan. Herrick, Herzer. Van Krief, Amosis. His Nibs.”
There was a muttered response from the tube and the door opened from the inside.
“Sorry about all this,” Peterka said. “But this was one of the few buildings that the damned scorps didn’t penetrate, so there’s that for it.”
“I can see why,” Herzer replied. The door led only to a small room with another door.
“Man-trap,” Peterka noted. “The inner door can’t be opened unless the outer door is closed. Interlocks and such.”
“Very heavy security,” Megan said.
“Well, it’s where we’ve got all the plans for our systems,” Peterka said. “We insisted, built the thing ourselves. Not because of the mission, mind, although that’s important. But these are dwarf systems. We don’t let just anyone look at them. Primary production’s at the mines, of course, but the security’s tighter there. Nobody but dwarves allowed.”
“And if I wanted to see it?” Megan asked jokingly.
“We would, with all due respect, tell you to go to hell,” Peterka said gruffly.
“I see,” Megan replied dryly. “You and my father would get along splendidly.”
Finally, they were in the building proper, but there wasn’t much to see. The corridor they were led down had doors to either side but they all had locks on them. Near the end, Peterka pulled out a ring of keys, fumbled through them, and opened up a door like any other.
The room was oval and had several chairs around a table. At one end was a dais with some covered equipment. At least two of the pieces had to be man-shaped statues but the rest were a mystery.
“Right,” Peterka said, taking the head of the table and gesturing for them to take seats. “You’ve seen the plans for the ship and you’re finding new techs and cannon fodder. You’ve a plan to take the ship, yes?”
“Yes,” Herzer said, raising one eyebrow.
“And you’re ready to start training, eh?” Peterka continued. “You’ve got the mission licked, right? You’re bloody screwed, lad.”
“Why?” Megan said, sharply.
“I’ll show you why,” Peterka said, standing up and going over to the covered statues. Removing the cloths over them revealed two space suits on manikins. One was a suit something like an ancient wet suit with a bulbous, clear, helmet. It was mostly bright silver with bands of blue. The other was a complicated set of armor, somewhat close fitting, with odd joints and broad fins on the shoulder and back. It was a dull bronze in color.
“This is what we made for the first team,” Peterka said, gesturing at the armored suit. “The fighters and commanders. The skin suit was for the techies, eh? Well do you know how many dwarf hours went into making those bloody armored monstrosities? We’d just completed the last suit. Making forty of them took us two bloody years!”
“Ouch,” Herzer said.
“And all the people they were fitted for are six feet under,” Peterka continued, angrily. “Two bloody years of hard work by the best dwarven wrights and it’s down the drain!”
“So you’re saying no armor?” Herzer asked.
“Not good bloody armor,” Peterka said. “We’re brainstorming ideas. Have been since the team went down. The skin suits are semiarmored themselves; we’ve thought about throwing standard armor on top. But there’s heat regulation problems, bloody bad ones. And we need armor now so your team can start training now.”
“How fast to produce the skin suits?” Herzer asked.
“Slow enough,” Peterka noted. “Some of the ones we’ve stored can be cut down and restitched, although that’s going to take long enough. We’re gathering more fabric; the goats are damned pissed, I’ll tell you.”
“Goats?” Megan asked, biting her lip to keep from laughing. “They’re made from wool?”
“Spider silk,” Peterka snapped. “It’s a bloody ancient technology, but it’s still around. The goat milk has spider silk strands in it. Milk ’em, extract the silk, spin it, weave it and you’ve got spider silk cloth. Six layers of thin spider silk cloth bonded with a sealant then a plasteen insulator layer. Six more layers of silk and the heat transfer layer. Had another bit of luck there, there’s an old tech that’s basically a giant tree leaf mod. Bond that in, hook up to the vascular system and run liquid through it for heat transfer. You understand the problem, there?”
“No clue,” Herzer said, shaking his head. “I spent the last couple of weeks reading up on the damned ship. I saw the armor design specs and the skin suits, but it didn’t cover how they were made.”
“Space ranges from bloody hot to bloody cold and naught between,” Peterka said. “And I’m talking three hundred degrees Celsius in the sun and damned near zero in the shade. Those suits are made from beryllium bronze modified so it’s not particularly heat reactive and they were still going to expand and contract like mad. We’d worked around that, especially at the joints. But you can’t let that hit the human body. So the suits have the plasteen insulator, just about as close to a zero transfer insulator as you’re going to find. With me?”
“So far,” Herzer said.
“Problem is, the human body generates one hell of a lot of heat,” Peterka pointed out. “Enough that you’ll drown in your own heat in no more than fifteen minutes if you don’t get rid of it. Can’t sweat, can you? Not and not blast yourself into space.”
“Okay,” Herzer said. “Thus the leaf thing.”
“Right,” Peterka said. “Run fluid through it and it carries away the heat. Actually absorbs a bit of the sweat as well so you’re not drenched all the time. Problem, space is a lousy conductor itself. Air carries heat away on Earth. Ain’t none in space, soldier boy. Getting rid of heat is the A-Number-One problem in space.”