“Whenever I hear that word, I’ve learned to cringe,” the XO said.
“Sir, I can safely say that we have the finest blagers in this entire solar system,” Weaver replied.
“As far as we know, we’re the only life in this solar system,” the XO said.
“That, sir, was my point.”
“The ship is running low on consumables,” the first sergeant said, walking down the compartment before the assembled Marines. “The commander’s trying to find some source of air and water. In the meantime, the water ration is cut in half and no showers. Personal hygiene issue is one pint of water a day. Use it for shaving your filthy beards. If we can’t find it, we can head back to Earth easily enough, we’re less than a day away. I’m told that one of the options may cause some pressurization issues. If so, we’ll spend some time in the racks until they get things fixed. For now, get back to training. Second, you’re up on the PT schedule next.”
“Oorah!” Crowley said. “More PT, First Sergeant! I need to let my brain clear.”
“Unfortunately,” Top said, grinning maliciously, “no water means no PT. When you can explain the characteristics of a fermion you back off the quantum physics. Two-Gun, see if you can help him out with that. Make sure you cover why they can’t form Bose-Einstein condensates.”
“It is the reverse of an ion drive,” Tchar said, holding one massive hand out. “Mangon wrench.”
“So you polarize the molecules, then pull them in different directions,” Mimi said, handing the Adar a wrench that was about half as long as she was.
“Yes,” Tchar said. “Fortunately, we have spare electromagnets for the drive system. Both for stabilizing the sphere and for the electric propeller drive. Gibmak screwdriver.”
Mimi handed over the tool, which looked very much like a Phillips head if about three times the size of any screwdriver she’d ever seen before.
“What are these tubes from?” she asked.
They were working in a small space to the port of the main engine room. The reason she was having to handle the tools is that while the space was plenty large enough for a human, Tchar had to lie on his belly and crawl into it.
The space was also packed with very large piping, bigger around than Mimi.
“A portion of the water coolant system for the reactor,” Tchar said. “Not radioactive. It was the intake system for the reactor. We’ll use this point to polarize the molecules, then extract them further on. The big problem will be installing the fans. The ship, essentially, doesn’t have any. Fortunately, they left some pumps in place so we’ll try to use those. The human machinist mates are working on that. Can you move that very large circular magnet?”
“I would be able to if it weren’t stuck to the floor,” Mimi said, tugging at the big magnet. “But not now.”
“I suppose I shall have to,” Tchar said, working his way out of the narrow gap. He grabbed the magnet and yanked it upwards, breaking the hold it had on the deck, then rolled it in ahead of him. “I could use some help with this. Nothing too heavy, but I’m not sure most people on the ship could fit.”
“Not a problem,” Mimi said, squeezing past him.
“If you could stand there,” Tchar said, pointing to a narrow gap and handing her the large wrench. “I’ve disconnected the pipes as you can see and installed a mount for the magnet the machinist mates made for me. Now we have to lift it into position and attach it. I will lift it, you will attach it.” He pointed to several large screws.
“Got it,” Mimi said, picking up the wrench that was nearly as long as her arm. One of the screws, the size of her hand, went on the end and was held in place by another magnet.
“You will probably have to start it by hand,” Tchar said, lifting the heavy magnet with a grunt and sliding it into the mount. “Now, if you will.”
Mimi slid in the first screw and started it by hand, then slid three more in.
“And on the other side,” Tchar noted.
She scooted under the magnet and picked up the screws on the other side, sliding them in. Then she got the screwdriver and tightened them as well as she could.
“That has it,” Tchar said. “The pipes are braced at this point so they can hold the weight of the magnet.” He picked up a communicator and pressed the button. “Red?”
“Here, Tchar.”
“Try the pump.”
A whistling sound started up after a moment and Mimi felt her hair blowing in a breeze.
“It’s sort of… leaking,” she pointed out. “That’s going to the outside of the ship, right?”
“Currently it is bypassed to the internal air,” Tchar said. “But, yes, that is a problem. But for this we have a human solution.” He slid back and rummaged in his massive toolbox, finally lifting something out.
“You humans have the most amazing inventions,” he said, holding up the roll of silver tape. “This is something called ‘duck tape’ which has, I have counted, over two hundred and sixty-seven uses. This makes two hundred and sixty-eight. I have always wondered: Why is it named for a water bird?”
“The ions can be selectively separated, but it won’t be one hundred percent,” Weaver said, gesturing to the large makeshift gas flow and separation system. “We’re going to have to pump it down and separate it that way secondarily. This will just reduce the pumping problems.”
“Commander, for once pretend I’m a fighter pilot with an English Lit degree and an interest in stars based mostly on how pretty they are,” Spectre said.
“When you apply a magnetic charge to air molecules, it makes them sticky in different ways,” Weaver said, grinning slightly. “So when you apply another magnetic charge to them, they pull away from each other. But they don’t do it real well, unless you have a more elaborate setup than we can build. However, they will also turn into liquid at different temperatures and pressures. So we’ll put them under pressure and some of them will become liquid before others. Nitrogen becomes liquid at a higher temp and lower pressure than oxygen. Oxygen goes liquid at a higher temp and lower pressure than hydrogen. So we’re going to need three very high pressure, cryogenic pumping systems. Cryogenic means—”
“Really cold,” Spectre said, nodding. “Know that one.”
“So what we should get is mostly oxygen after the ion separation; then we’ll pump it down to ensure we’ve separated it. Now, there’s an alternative, if this works really well, to getting the water from ice. But it’s kind of crazy.”
“This entire mission is crazy,” the CO said. “And I haven’t had so much as a shower in a couple of days. Gimme crazy.”
“Burn it,” Bill said. “Put oxygen and hydrogen together and set them on ‘fire’ and you get water.”
“Fire in a sub is not something most people like,” the CO pointed out. “In a spaceship with nowhere to set down, it’s even worse.”
“Duly noted, sir,” Bill said.
“So let’s table that one, Commander Weaver,” Spectre said, grinning. “And let’s not tell the crew you even thought of it.”
“Yes, sir,” Bill replied.
“When’s this going to be ready?”
“About four hours.”
“We’ve got about sixteen hours of O2 left.”
“Also duly noted, sir.”
“Stable orbit around Sirius Echo,” the pilot said as the ship coasted to a stop in an orbit around the gas giant.
The Saturn-sized planet was twelve AU from the AO class star, well outside the life zone and, like every gas giant they’d seen, was striped in broad bands. In the northern hemisphere there was a large spot, similar to Jupiter’s Great Spot, that indicated a stable gas giant “hurricane.” In addition to this gas giant, there were two rocky inner planets, either one massive asteroid field or two slightly larger than Sol’s and four more gas giants in the system. But this one’s atmosphere, Dr. Dean had assured them, was the one most likely to have a broad water belt. The rocky inner planets both resembled Venus with a fiery atmosphere and little or no water. The other gas giants were far enough out that water would be deep in the atmosphere and harder to extract.