“Lava,” said Boney. “From when the crater was made?”
Berne nodded. “They hung a framework shell inside the lava dome,” he said. “There’s crawlspace, access rungs, subsurface.”
“And you’ve checked all the connections.”
Berne drew himself upright. “Every piece of hardware and every line of code that has anything to do with how the sun panels work has been reviewed, repaired, replaced, rewired, or rewritten. It’s all in working order now, except for the eleven o’clock panel.”
“How do you check your wiring?” Shorty asked.
“Diagnostic applications,” said Berne.
Shorty cocked his head. Berne waggled his com panel. “Cellophone,” he said, slowly and deliberately.
“So that thing told you the other things are okay,” said Shorty.
“We verified the diagnostic software, if that’s what you’re implying. We also checked the physical connections.”
Shorty rubbed his hands. “Now we’re cooking with gas,” he said. “So how do you know when the voice that comes from the cellophone is on the level?”
“We debug the source code,” Berne said wearily. His fingers drummed the desk. “We verify hard cabling with a tap. We test conductive filament with a circuit tracer.”
“A circuit tracer?”
“You only need one.”
Shorty grinned. Even Boney had a bit of a smile going. Shorty put his hands behind his back and ducked his head and twisted a toe like a schoolgirl. “And could we see it?” he said coyly.
Berne started to argue, then stopped. He threw his hands up. “Sure,” he said. “Why not? Like you said, what else do I have to do?”
“That’s the spirit,” said Shorty.
The cable tester was the size of a key fob. It had a socket for bare wire and a clamp for insulated wire and it lit up when it got a good connection. Shorty wasn’t especially worried about the cable tester misreporting results—a dead wire wouldn’t make the light glow—but he checked it out anyway.
The circuit tracer was another story. It was the size of a pack of cigarettes, with a slide-out zoomable screen for doing fine work with an attached stylus. Berne demonstrated, touching the conductive stylus to a circuit panel. The little screen immediately showed a schematic, then showed the tested connection as a bright green tracing in the pattern.
“You do realize that the circuitry on holofilaments and microprocessors is too fine for human hands, yes?” Berne asked. “And there are millions and millions of them. We have to trust the diagnostics at some point.” He lifted the wand and the screen faded. “As you can see, this one’s good,” he said.
“Put it on a bad connection,” said Shorty.
“There are no bad connections on this board.”
“How do you know?”
“Because—” He waggled the tracer stylus.
“Because you checked ’em out already,” said Shorty.
Berne nodded. “Really,” he said, “there are other things I could be—”
“Here’s the thing,” said Shorty. “Any time I get a good reading on a tube I know for a solid fact is bad as a headline, I start wondering who fixes the tube checker.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Do you have another circuit tracer?” asked Boney.
Berne raised his eyebrows. “Not here.”
Shorty waved impatiently. “You got a spare one of these boards?” he asked.
“The one I just tested is a backup.”
“Okay,” said Shorty. He picked it up and flexed it, testing its strength. Then he put it on the floor and set a foot on it and bent it until it snapped.
“What if we need that?” Berne demanded.
Shorty handed it to Berne. “Test it again.”
Berne didn’t bother to hide his contempt as he touched the stylus to a thin silver line in the broken circuit board. The little screen glowed to life and a bright green path lit through the maze.
Berne flinched. He touched it to the circuit board again. Another silver pathway glowed green. He tried again. The broken connection showed as good.
Berne looked at the tracer stylus in a way that made Boney think the technician was considering stabbing Shorty in the eye with it. Then he set it down and covered his face with a hand and slumped in his chair. “False positives,” he said miserably. “I don’t believe it.”
“And so,” Shorty said in his Announcer Voice, “at the end of a grueling inning it’s Cave Men one, Dome Men nothing. And now a word from our sponsor.”
NINETEEN
The room was small, clean, subtly lit. A crammed work cubicle took up one corner, with a desk that looked like a junior version of the dark glass conference-room table. Working before it was a balding, gray-bearded man, a little heavy, his loose-fitting khaki jumpsuit drawn with intricate designs and concentric patterns. He saw Wennda and beamed. Then he saw Plavitz behind her and his expression grew serious. It wouldn’t take a genius to figure that Plavitz must be one of the Helpful Savages from the Metal Sky God.
“I was going to hug you,” the man told Wennda as he got up, “but this looks official.”
“It is official,” she said. “But hug me anyway.”
The man grinned and took her up in a bear hug. Plavitz was amused to note that he was a good four inches shorter than Wennda. He lifted her off the floor and she squealed and pretend-beat his shoulder. He set her down and let her go, and she stepped back, delighted as a six-year-old.
Then she remembered Plavitz and blushed. “Uncle Jorn, this is Sergeant Plavitz,” Wennda said. “He’s the navigator on the aircraft that brought these men here.”
“Oh, sure, blame me,” said Plavitz. He held out his hand. The man looked at it as if he were uncertain what to do, then shook it. “I’m really just a glorified map reader,” Plavitz told him.
“Jorn is in charge of data storage and retrieval systems,” said Wennda.
Jorn smiled. “I’m really just a glorified librarian,” he said.
“That’s just ducky,” Plavitz replied. “Because I’m here to check out some maps.”
“I’d be happy to show you,” said Jorn. “What maps would you like to see?”
“Got one with a route back to New Bedford?” asked Plavitz.
Jorn looked uncertainly at Wennda. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Maybe if you—”
“He’s joking,” said Wennda. “They do that a lot.”
“We do,” Plavitz admitted. “So, Uncle Jorn, huh? Are you the commander’s brother?”
The ensuing silence was very awkward.
“I’ve spent a lot of time here,” said Wennda.
“She had a cot,” Jorn confirmed.
Wennda colored again. “Jorn practically raised me,” she said.
Plavitz sensed they were trying to back out of a thicket. “Yeah, I just saw him do that,” he joked.
They looked confused, and Plavitz felt his ears get hot. “Raise you,” he explained. He mimed lifting.
“Ah,” said Jorn. He smiled. “You do joke a lot.”
“Let’s get to that map,” said Wennda.
Plavitz’s hand flicked around on the lighted panel as if he were brushing off crumbs. He chuckled as items on the display slid on and off the desktop.
“You seem to be enjoying our system,” Jorn said behind him.
Plavitz grinned. “It’s a gasser once you get the hang of it,” he said.
Jorn looked pleased. “It’s good to see someone who appreciates it. People take for granted that information like this is available, but storage and retrieval is quite difficult to maintain.” He shook his head. “So much has been lost.”