Sasha looked a question at him.
“As in Murphy’s law.”
Sasha smiled. “You’ve got your sense of humor back, love.”
Three days later, they were on the top floor of the habitat replacing the air lock inner door seals. Tina floated in her net “cage,” and propelled herself around like a tiny rocket by throwing stuffed animals at the nets. Inspector McCarthy was in her usual humor, only this time, for once, her pique was not directed at Dolph’s work.
“How can they possibly send this stuff? Look at this pipe!”
Sasha’s hands were full of Tina, so Dolph floated over to take a look. He couldn’t see anything wrong, but knew better than to say that. Instead, he asked:
“What do you see?”
“Not see, feel. Longitudinal cracks; feel how the fibers bristle along this line. There’s a microscopic crack; I’m sure of it; the top layer of broken fibers pops out of the matrix in this stuff.”
She handed the air pipe to Dolph.
About two centimeters in diameter, the basalt fiber composite was very light and had good tensile strength—but otherwise it was very flimsy. In use, it would be stiffened by air and be almost indestructible. But limp? It could be cracked easily. He ran his fingers around the tube. Sure enough, while the clean white surface looked perfectly normal, he could feel the faintest bristling where Inspector McCarthy said it was.
“I don’t understand how this could happen in the manufacturing process,” he said. “The robots would catch it.” Something more was bothering him, however. Had they already used some of it? No, he hadn’t, he was sure of that. But something was nagging him.
McCarthy shook her head. “Probably happened later. Maybe the shipment got overstressed on deceleration. I swear some of the still loaders pile stuff on like they’re going on milligee ion rockets instead of quarter-gee beam riders. Tubing should go on end, not flat. Who knows what they did?” She shrugged. “But I strongly suspect this will fail a pressure test.”
“And you just happen to have some more in your rock hopper.”
McCarthy shot him a look. “In this case, young man, I don’t. But you might have an equivalent in your rock hopper s spares. As long as you aren’t flying anywhere, you can share spare stores until a new shipment gets to you. And there might be enough good stock in this lot to do what you need if you don’t have any more breakage. Just check it thoroughly, understand?”
Dolph swallowed his irritation. She was not the enemy. “Yes, Inspector McCarthy.”
Dolph looked down at the backup valve assembly in his hand. It was a simple job to replace the old electrical wire connector with the fiber optic replacement transducer, but an especially significant one. It was, after four weeks, the last class one item on Eileen McCarthy’s fix-it list. There were still forty-some class twos, but she’d been making sounds like she wouldn’t hold them up for those. Getting tired of her game, Dolph thought. Damn it, Sasha had been right—they ’d worn her down. Or maybe Inspector McCarthy figured she’d gotten what she wanted out of them—and it hadn’t, after all, been the asteroid. Compliance? Attitude? Maybe the whole thing was just the Belt government’s way to show him and Sasha who’s boss—to get them on their backs with their feet flailing the air like a couple of beaten dogs. Some people got off on power that way—the good news about that was that maybe they wouldn’t be run off the rock after all. No people, no power.
“Darling,” Sasha called. “Would you put Tina back in her cage?”
Dolph turned around and saw Tina crawling under the netting. He couldn’t hold back a grin. The kid had figured out how to work open the carabiners holding the net to the stick-on cleats—she was smart. “No Tina,” he said with some soft authority in his voice. “Go back. Inside.”
“I don’t want to. Want to see Mommy.”
Hungry, Dolph thought.
“Oh, I’ll get her, darling,” Mommy responded and anchored her tools to the Velcro work pad and pushed herself over toward Tina.
The bang was not particularly loud, but Dolph knew, instantly, that it meant trouble. The scene froze in his mind, then started to move forward slowly. What to do? What to do? A sharp keening built up from somewhere off on his left.
“We have,” Hopper announced, “loss of pressure in the external suit fill line.”
That’s what he’d been trying to remember. Damn. “That faulty pipe!” Dolph yelled.
“What faulty pipe?” Sasha said.
She hadn’t heard—she’d been busy with Tina.
“That white two-centimeter composite. It had cracks.”
“Damn!” she said, but softly. “I used it to replace the vestibule air lines—you said…”
As if to confirm that, there was a resounding clang as the vestibule’s external door slammed shut.
“Hopper,” Inspector McCarthy said, loud, but calmly, “shut down the suit fill circuit.”
“The break is upstream of the shut-off valve,” it replied.
“At the source, then,” she added quickly.
“I show no response to the valve command.”
“Crap!” Dolph shouted. “Of course you don’t. I have it off for testing.”
“The vestibule pressure has reached point four atmospheres,” Hopper reported.
That was a tenth atmosphere above the interior pressure, Dolph realized. Sasha’s gaskets were holding with a vengeance, but if it kept going on up to line pressure, the vestibule fabric would tear and it would explode.
“We’ll have to dump the air,” Dolph decided. “Hopper, vent the vestibule, and cut the general line pressure.”
“Wait,” Inspector McCarthy said. “It’s too—”
With a creak of its yielding motors, the outer air lock door, which was not designed to withstand pressure from outside the air lock, yielded, swung open a full half circle and hit the inner side of the air lock as a strong gust of air blew into the room.
Then Dolph’s vent command went into effect, the vestibule vents opened to vacuum and the air started rushing the other way-out into space.
“—Late!” Inspector McCarthy finished, as Tina went flying by her in the air stream, through the open inner and outer air lock doors and bounced off the balloon-tight skin of the vestibule.
“Whee!” she yelled.
“Tina!” Sasha cried.
“Stop venting!” Dolph screamed, then, more effectively, said, “Hopper, stop venting the vestibule.”
The scream of escaping air stopped, and for a frozen moment Dolph contemplated the bulging composite skin of the vestibule walclass="underline" the only thing left between him and interplanetary space.
Inspector McCarthy shot by him toward the air lock in a second and pulled the inner door shut behind her. It immediately started hissing, indicating that air was still escaping from the vestibule at an alarming rate. Shocked out of his paralysis, Dolph thought quickly. By closing the door while she went to retrieve Tina, Inspector McCarthy had insured that at least he and Sasha would survive. He had to do something to help her and Tina; give them more air, for starters.
“Hopper,” he directed, “start repressurizing the air system as needed to keep the vestibule above point three bar, understand?”
“Understood. I’ve established a feedback program to maintain vestibule pressure at point three eight bar. This is requiring an increasing amount of air pressure which indicates that the leaks in the vestibule are getting worse. Is that what you want?”
“Yes, do it!” He shouldn’t get impatient, he reminded himself. Now, more than ever, the computer software had to understand its commands.