Just a note to say that the starship Lupine still roams human-settled space and some day I will get back to writing about the adventures of the ship's crew and others on the Hidden Frontier. I need a little more distance from the people and events who form a kind of distant model.
Showing posts with label Who's Flyin' This Thing?. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Who's Flyin' This Thing?. Show all posts
18 December 2024
06 January 2013
The Overnight Report
[This is way out of chronological sequence, as it comes after events on Frothup were...resolved. I'll get back to that.]
Might as well start with what I'm eating now: an omelet of genuinely impressive weight and density: filled with diced pork roast, carrots, chives, some leftover -- and sans dressing -- broccoli coleslaw mix and a little random hot pickle, topped with a slice of Swiss cheese. A truly fridge-clearing garbage omelet and I don't care what your option of it is. It's ambrosia!
And I earned it.
Some months ago, when the boys from the Power Room pointed out to Dr. Schmid, Lupine's 2/O and my boss's boss some irregularities in the assignment, designation and projected end-of-life of the UPSs (and one in particular) serving the Engineering control-type areas (Drive Control, RF/Reaction, the large electronics-rack compartment betwixt 'em and trailing off into Jump Control, that worthy nodded sagely and allowed as how we'd have to set a time to put it right after having made proper arrangements to, and I quote, "Minimize the impact."
The Chief decided that the "impact-minimizing" part of the three-ring foofraw should fall to -- or perhaps on -- Gale Grinnell (he's a tough old dude, don't be fooled by the gender-neutral name) and little ol' me. My first thought was along the lines of "Ejectejecteject!" but from out here where the starlight is runnin' thin it's still an awfully long trip home even if I were to steal a bicycle, so instead I tried to look sanguine, sagacious and mildly curious while asking if we were going to be doing this in Jump?
The Chief asked if I was taking up making faces as a hobby and allowed as how that would be a darned poor notion; the work scheduled for the run-in to approximately-neutral Smitty's World, next stop in our little show-the-flag tour and a little over six weeks away. Not a bad choice -- lacking the usual sort of star, Smitty's is a wandering planet, a frozen ball of (it says here) carbonaceous chondrite, thorium ores (!) assorted frozen gases accreted from Ghu knows where, and a whole lot of ice-type ice: it's hard to see, despite radio beacons, honkin' overpowered transponders and assorted other tricks you'd like to know about, which means starships drop out of 'Drive early and sort of feel their way in, leaving plenty of extra time.
Time for things like, oh, I dunno, shoving a huge lot of load from uninterruptable power supplies U4A and U3A onto U1C and "unprotected power." Because aw, hell, what's all that junk do besides help us avoid stuff we might run into? Plus U1C is nearly at capacity and U2FGP,* we do not even consider adding more load to.
So, plenty of time for prep, plenty of time for the job, right?
Riiiiight. Also, we're sellin' vacuum, two jars for $20, you want to buy in? I kept getting other "#1 priority!" projects, along with the usual parade of broken small things; Tech Grinnell (an old USSF hand, one of the men adrift in time from too much FTL service during the War) was in the same fix. Tick-tock, and suddenly there was a week left. I made a list, checked it twice, and handed it off to Gale, who added a half-dozen things and handed it right back. Along about then, Doc Schmid got in the act with another half-dozen items to add to the must-be-repowered list....
From there , it's a skip, a hop and a lot of cadging parts to me sitting at a bench, frantically wiring up receptacle strips to power cords for temporary use, making 1.5X as many of each type as I think we're gonna need, while the erstwhile Grinnel, G. and Conan the Objectivist scrounge extension cords.
Comes the day -- actually, an "overnight" watch, which means Conan (t. O.) gets swept up in fun, that being his normal shift, more or less -- and there we are, having already moved everything we could square with our consciences over to plain, un-backed-up power, checklists in hand, temporary power strips and quad boxes tie-wrapped and Velcro'ed in position, finishing up the last of the must-dos when a moon-faced kid from the Power Room shows up carrying two radios.
"Kid," I say, and Joe is young; but he looks younger and talks like the huntin', fishin' country boy he was and still is, and never you mind about the EE (power) degree, or the reactor-engineering certification. He's the 2200-to-0600 el Supremo down where the fusion roars and the MHD units run ripplin' to the stern, and he's here to put us in the loop, with a hearty, "Heya, tube-rats. Bobbi."
"That's us," I told him, like he didn't know. "Are your guys ready?"
He snorted, "We've been ready. Question is, are you?"
"Just about. Gale? Ask the big boss if we're good."
Doc Schmid himself came around the corner, looking as harried as he ever does (not much) and took a radio. "We're ready. Pull the switch."
...Of course something went "BLOOoooooop." Half the monitors went out and I heard Sol West in Drive Control splutter, "Hey!"
The 2/O didn't even blink, just keyed the radio, "Back on. Back on." He let up on the switch, fixed Gale and me with a beady eye: "Find it."
We did, stupid Dansteel data-buffer frame in rack 70 plugged into an unlikely circuit, and the go-command was given again.
Noting important went out that time, though a half-dozen alarms started beeping from the things with two power supplies we'd left half on the now-unpowered UPS. I made a quick walk-through of RF/Reaction and through the rows and rows of racks, ending up at Drive Control where Sol looked resolute but gave me a thumbs-up. The row of second-priority monitors at the top of the bulkhead his the DQ console faces were all out, items being monitored elsewhere or low-pri enough we were letting the slide. I made my way back through the racks -- meeting Gale, Conan (the Obj.) and the 2/O along the way, and through RF/Reax, across the passageway and into the Engineering Shop. Nothing to do but wait!
...I was just about snoozing when the seldom-used PA clicked on. "Need an engineer in DQ. Engineer to DQ!"
Strolled out the long way and met Conan and Gale at the hatch. Beyond, Sol was fuming. "I don't have no censoredly-deleted intercom! Navs says they've been yellin' at me for five minutes and there's no way to even tell!"
Couldn't be in his panel; that's just controls and some basic audio. Off to Rack 15, Operations-commo, and looky! A whole row of, oh, call them crosspoints, dark! --But don't they have dual power supplies per row?
No. No they do not. The have bright, shiny lights that I had assumed indicated dual supplies but really only let you know the two (count them, two) DC power rails are live -- and it takes both of them to tango. (I know that now.) Ah, but sometime long ago, we'd been careful! We'd moved the critical intercom stations to one row, and put it on -- guess, oh, just guess! -- the UPS. The the UPS, the one that is presently off. Easy enough to correct and so I did.
There were a few more brushfires and then Sol found me to announce he wasn't getting any data from the 'Drive finals, idling just enough to modulate Lupine's effective mass, and the other data he was seeing indicated a problem.
A real problem: "Are you feelin' kinda light, Bobbi?"
Maybe I was, at that. I sat down at the RF/Reax data terminal and started digging and eventually figured out a serial-to-ip tunnel interface wasn't talkin', a Harlington-Straker ESD1400 (if you're taking notes). The more I messed with it, the worse it got; and I was really feeling light. I went back to the Shop and grabbed a laptop, called up the manual, headed back to the terminal and dug in; about then the new, improved UPS configuration came online but I hardly noticed. I did notice when Doc Schmid slipped in behind me and leaned against a rack; when I looked back, he asked me how it was going.
"Not well, sir. Not well. It's got data coming in -- good data -- but it's not pushing packets out."
"So put in the spare."
Awkward: "D- Sir, that is the spare. The spare." He just nodded. I'll hear about that later, probably after The Chief has. Oh, my preemptively burning ears!
I finally thought to bring up the "Notes" tab. One line popped up on the page I was at: DO NOT REBOOT WITH SERIAL INPUTS ACTIVE. IT'S NOT SMART ENOUGH TO RESTART WITH LIVE DATA."
Could it be that simple? Really?
I tried. It was. You could feel the effective thrust pick up as the 'Drive finals resynchronized.
...After that, a couple of relatively-easy hours returning power plugs to the (new) normal condition, restowing and cleaning-up, and I was free.
And ravenously hungry.
The nice thing about being in Engineering is that your card key gets you just about anywhere it's safe to go unescorted (and many places that aren't). The kitchens, for instance. The kitchens where the chefs and lower food-service ranks were using up odds and ends to feed -- and amuse -- themselves.
Which takes me right back to the great big garbage omelet where started this tale of daring-do. It's down now, plate licked clean, coffee cup empty. I'm turning the dishes over to the dishwasher, hopping on a slidewalk and heading home, where I will sleep like a hibernating log -- sleep and with any luck, not dream of UPSes
___________________________________________________
* It doesn't really have ancillary letters but someone who didn't want it to feel left out very carefully painted "FGP" right after "U2" on the hatch not all that long after deciding to make her career on Lupine. Er, that is--
Might as well start with what I'm eating now: an omelet of genuinely impressive weight and density: filled with diced pork roast, carrots, chives, some leftover -- and sans dressing -- broccoli coleslaw mix and a little random hot pickle, topped with a slice of Swiss cheese. A truly fridge-clearing garbage omelet and I don't care what your option of it is. It's ambrosia!
And I earned it.
Some months ago, when the boys from the Power Room pointed out to Dr. Schmid, Lupine's 2/O and my boss's boss some irregularities in the assignment, designation and projected end-of-life of the UPSs (and one in particular) serving the Engineering control-type areas (Drive Control, RF/Reaction, the large electronics-rack compartment betwixt 'em and trailing off into Jump Control, that worthy nodded sagely and allowed as how we'd have to set a time to put it right after having made proper arrangements to, and I quote, "Minimize the impact."
The Chief decided that the "impact-minimizing" part of the three-ring foofraw should fall to -- or perhaps on -- Gale Grinnell (he's a tough old dude, don't be fooled by the gender-neutral name) and little ol' me. My first thought was along the lines of "Ejectejecteject!" but from out here where the starlight is runnin' thin it's still an awfully long trip home even if I were to steal a bicycle, so instead I tried to look sanguine, sagacious and mildly curious while asking if we were going to be doing this in Jump?
The Chief asked if I was taking up making faces as a hobby and allowed as how that would be a darned poor notion; the work scheduled for the run-in to approximately-neutral Smitty's World, next stop in our little show-the-flag tour and a little over six weeks away. Not a bad choice -- lacking the usual sort of star, Smitty's is a wandering planet, a frozen ball of (it says here) carbonaceous chondrite, thorium ores (!) assorted frozen gases accreted from Ghu knows where, and a whole lot of ice-type ice: it's hard to see, despite radio beacons, honkin' overpowered transponders and assorted other tricks you'd like to know about, which means starships drop out of 'Drive early and sort of feel their way in, leaving plenty of extra time.
Time for things like, oh, I dunno, shoving a huge lot of load from uninterruptable power supplies U4A and U3A onto U1C and "unprotected power." Because aw, hell, what's all that junk do besides help us avoid stuff we might run into? Plus U1C is nearly at capacity and U2FGP,* we do not even consider adding more load to.
So, plenty of time for prep, plenty of time for the job, right?
Riiiiight. Also, we're sellin' vacuum, two jars for $20, you want to buy in? I kept getting other "#1 priority!" projects, along with the usual parade of broken small things; Tech Grinnell (an old USSF hand, one of the men adrift in time from too much FTL service during the War) was in the same fix. Tick-tock, and suddenly there was a week left. I made a list, checked it twice, and handed it off to Gale, who added a half-dozen things and handed it right back. Along about then, Doc Schmid got in the act with another half-dozen items to add to the must-be-repowered list....
From there , it's a skip, a hop and a lot of cadging parts to me sitting at a bench, frantically wiring up receptacle strips to power cords for temporary use, making 1.5X as many of each type as I think we're gonna need, while the erstwhile Grinnel, G. and Conan the Objectivist scrounge extension cords.
Comes the day -- actually, an "overnight" watch, which means Conan (t. O.) gets swept up in fun, that being his normal shift, more or less -- and there we are, having already moved everything we could square with our consciences over to plain, un-backed-up power, checklists in hand, temporary power strips and quad boxes tie-wrapped and Velcro'ed in position, finishing up the last of the must-dos when a moon-faced kid from the Power Room shows up carrying two radios.
"Kid," I say, and Joe is young; but he looks younger and talks like the huntin', fishin' country boy he was and still is, and never you mind about the EE (power) degree, or the reactor-engineering certification. He's the 2200-to-0600 el Supremo down where the fusion roars and the MHD units run ripplin' to the stern, and he's here to put us in the loop, with a hearty, "Heya, tube-rats. Bobbi."
"That's us," I told him, like he didn't know. "Are your guys ready?"
He snorted, "We've been ready. Question is, are you?"
"Just about. Gale? Ask the big boss if we're good."
Doc Schmid himself came around the corner, looking as harried as he ever does (not much) and took a radio. "We're ready. Pull the switch."
...Of course something went "BLOOoooooop." Half the monitors went out and I heard Sol West in Drive Control splutter, "Hey!"
The 2/O didn't even blink, just keyed the radio, "Back on. Back on." He let up on the switch, fixed Gale and me with a beady eye: "Find it."
We did, stupid Dansteel data-buffer frame in rack 70 plugged into an unlikely circuit, and the go-command was given again.
Noting important went out that time, though a half-dozen alarms started beeping from the things with two power supplies we'd left half on the now-unpowered UPS. I made a quick walk-through of RF/Reaction and through the rows and rows of racks, ending up at Drive Control where Sol looked resolute but gave me a thumbs-up. The row of second-priority monitors at the top of the bulkhead his the DQ console faces were all out, items being monitored elsewhere or low-pri enough we were letting the slide. I made my way back through the racks -- meeting Gale, Conan (the Obj.) and the 2/O along the way, and through RF/Reax, across the passageway and into the Engineering Shop. Nothing to do but wait!
...I was just about snoozing when the seldom-used PA clicked on. "Need an engineer in DQ. Engineer to DQ!"
Strolled out the long way and met Conan and Gale at the hatch. Beyond, Sol was fuming. "I don't have no censoredly-deleted intercom! Navs says they've been yellin' at me for five minutes and there's no way to even tell!"
Couldn't be in his panel; that's just controls and some basic audio. Off to Rack 15, Operations-commo, and looky! A whole row of, oh, call them crosspoints, dark! --But don't they have dual power supplies per row?
No. No they do not. The have bright, shiny lights that I had assumed indicated dual supplies but really only let you know the two (count them, two) DC power rails are live -- and it takes both of them to tango. (I know that now.) Ah, but sometime long ago, we'd been careful! We'd moved the critical intercom stations to one row, and put it on -- guess, oh, just guess! -- the UPS. The the UPS, the one that is presently off. Easy enough to correct and so I did.
There were a few more brushfires and then Sol found me to announce he wasn't getting any data from the 'Drive finals, idling just enough to modulate Lupine's effective mass, and the other data he was seeing indicated a problem.
A real problem: "Are you feelin' kinda light, Bobbi?"
Maybe I was, at that. I sat down at the RF/Reax data terminal and started digging and eventually figured out a serial-to-ip tunnel interface wasn't talkin', a Harlington-Straker ESD1400 (if you're taking notes). The more I messed with it, the worse it got; and I was really feeling light. I went back to the Shop and grabbed a laptop, called up the manual, headed back to the terminal and dug in; about then the new, improved UPS configuration came online but I hardly noticed. I did notice when Doc Schmid slipped in behind me and leaned against a rack; when I looked back, he asked me how it was going.
"Not well, sir. Not well. It's got data coming in -- good data -- but it's not pushing packets out."
"So put in the spare."
Awkward: "D- Sir, that is the spare. The spare." He just nodded. I'll hear about that later, probably after The Chief has. Oh, my preemptively burning ears!
I finally thought to bring up the "Notes" tab. One line popped up on the page I was at: DO NOT REBOOT WITH SERIAL INPUTS ACTIVE. IT'S NOT SMART ENOUGH TO RESTART WITH LIVE DATA."
Could it be that simple? Really?
I tried. It was. You could feel the effective thrust pick up as the 'Drive finals resynchronized.
...After that, a couple of relatively-easy hours returning power plugs to the (new) normal condition, restowing and cleaning-up, and I was free.
And ravenously hungry.
The nice thing about being in Engineering is that your card key gets you just about anywhere it's safe to go unescorted (and many places that aren't). The kitchens, for instance. The kitchens where the chefs and lower food-service ranks were using up odds and ends to feed -- and amuse -- themselves.
Which takes me right back to the great big garbage omelet where started this tale of daring-do. It's down now, plate licked clean, coffee cup empty. I'm turning the dishes over to the dishwasher, hopping on a slidewalk and heading home, where I will sleep like a hibernating log -- sleep and with any luck, not dream of UPSes
___________________________________________________
* It doesn't really have ancillary letters but someone who didn't want it to feel left out very carefully painted "FGP" right after "U2" on the hatch not all that long after deciding to make her career on Lupine. Er, that is--
12 January 2009
"Who's Flyin' This Thing?"
Dropping out of transluminal travel is a nerve-wracking affair. I suppose it shouldn't be; we've done it often enough and the mathematics that purport to describe the process are smooth and elegant. At least that's what the Navs boffins tell me.
In practice it can be a bit...bumpy. They're pretty sure crossing the barrier is what did in the first experimental starships lost once they'd got the mass/power/field volume relations worked out. It doesn't have to be bumpy and that's a good thing -- a starship big enough for an economic cargo-to-power ratio is very large indeed, the ten-by-five miles by a thousand feet of my own dear Lupine being an average example, at which point "bumpy" is something more than a reason to keep the good china in a padded box.
Skill is what makes the difference between large pieces coming off and a transition so smooth the passengers never notice and Stores & Cargo barely do. To do the job properly takes at least an hour and up to three on our longest hop. It's no time at all compared to the weeks and months spent doing what amounts to outracing light[1] but a very long time if you're riding it through. Star pilots who can get the job done are star pilots indeed, combining a superlative grasp of seven-space behavior with excellent reflexes and the "people skills" it takes to coordinates a command deck crew and my boys in Drive Control and RF/Reaction Power (watched over by DQ outside transition times), especially under the critical eye of the captain or any of his XOs. Power room's fully staffed for this as well, mostly a holdover from the days of having a bank of Navy-type fusion reactors, our pair of triply-redundant fusion/MHD powerplants being both dependable under acceleration and not especially amenable to wrench-turning fixes on the fly.
Suffice to say good star pilots are rare. Genuinely outstanding ones are jewels indeed and all manner of personalities and types are made welcome if they've got the chops.
Such is the case of Sunny Grimm, chief pilot (but so very not boss lady -- nobody herds those cats) on the Lupine. A kind of life-sized, brunette version of Walt Disney's Tinkerbell, away from the bridge she talks like a double-speed playback when she says anything at all, usually the kind of delayed-reaction insights that detonate in the hearer's mind after the conversation's moved on, to her great delight. Barely 30, she's the youngest pilot in the entire commercial fleet (or at least the English-speaking side, the Russians and French still play it cagey about details). Originally trained by dear old Uncle Sam for the tiny military fleet left after privatization, her overwhelming aptitude for the job bid them ignore an essential unfitness for Service life...at least for a few years. When the Starship Company "found" her (Uncle Sam: "Hire this one, now. Um, please." SC: "Oh, yeah!"), she'd been let loose on the most prosperous planet of the Hidden Frontier (Kansas II -- aka Dullsville -- and don't the Junior Jayhawks just love to tell you all about the place) . And yeah, while female star pilots aren't unknown, there's a little heroine-worship on my part. Hey, the menfolk in Engineering are even worse!
The Starship Company did not so very much mind her breezily bohemian style and sensibility nor blank inability to comprehend what needed to be saluted when, so long as she could glide their wallowing vessels in and out of rational space without smashing the cargo; it was pure gravy if she could, at least on occasion, do so without making so much as a wineglass jiggle.
In the pilot's throne, front and center of the bridge, facing not a canopy but a wall of displays, graphics and marching columns of numbers, her high-speed hummingbird mumble slows and steadies to crisp precision, no command wasted, no time spent on anything but getting it done. It is not that nothing ever goes wrong or that Sunny never makes a mistake but that when such things do happen, her reaction is the right one, with no looking back in dismay. This is why bridge crews dote on her, vying for assignment, and why other star pilots, a notoriously proud and competitive lot, can be found observing at the back of the bridge or even "ghosting" her transitions on the simulator.
* * * *
Today's return to normal space was not going at all well. Sometimes it happens; not even the most skilled avoid every wonky patch of spacetime or recalcitrant bit of hardware. The three big phantasmajectors in the stardrive had been randomly overloading and cycling back on as drop-out time approached. "There's no impressing machinery," I said to nobody in particular in the Engineering Shop as we listened to the intercom while Drive Control handed off to Sunny and the bridge crew. Transitions are an all-hands affair for us, too, save whoever's in sleep cycle.
"Annnnd -- we're on line, DQ, thanks. Stand by on A, we'll load preset 12, Navs, are we go? Okay, load preset 12 in A, on my mark...mark. Ready B? One minute away from our window, oh! Reset B! DQ?"
Drive Control: "Not takin' the reset."
My toys, still acting up. Not what we in the biz would call a good sign. Yes, dear old Doggie[2] is A Starship, the most hyper-advanced tech you never heard about; but the fact remains, she first outran light before the Beatles (remember them? Mom's music) hit the pop charts and our super-duper Buck Rogers stardrive systems are cobbled together from the technology of several generations. It didn't start out that way; but when this ship was new, she carried 12AT7s and 6AU6s by the ton and the Navs computer alone took up nearly the space of a city block, three decks high, and was used as an auxiliary heat source. Back then, scurrying space-force lads in spiffy jumpsuits saluted one another smartly and everything was spit & polish, stencilled and baby-blue. It didn't last; the tech changed even quicker for them than it did for you and, eventually, so the the economics.
One of the stickier bits these days is a set of converters tucked in a rack bay off Drive Control, mediating between the techie-intensive DQ console, the delicate and precise Bridge systems, and the simple-as-a-hammer 1970's-vintage stardrives themselves. The converters work great most of the time -- the clever Canadian engineers at Horton Microsystems Ltd. can be counted on to come up with the right widget for the job, one of the very best windfalls from the tech-sharing between the Commonwealth and the States after the Crown could no longer afford to go it alone with starships and colonies (will they ever learn?) -- and when they don't work so great, a software reset from DQ usually does the trick. But the wrong kind of hiccup from the stardrive finals can lock them up so bad the only fix is PBF: force a reboot.
I was nearest the hatch to the corridor and managed to be on my way out it when Sunny asked over the 'com: "Engineering? Reset B, 30 seconds 'til decision. TD, Commit on A, now." And not a shiver as the preset ran its course, stepping A down and us closer to the more usual sort of reality. There's no quick way to do it; when we beat light, we sneak in and we sneak out.
It's not like missing the mark means we'll be a brief flash of bright light or smashed into a pile of goo. There's more than one way in and out of a stardrive field. Pilots and Navs sit down ahead of a transition and set up a series of scenarios, "presets," based on the best data, and they keep updating and adding to them right up 'til it's time. On the other hand, having to change a worked-out transition on the fly is when things are most likely to get...bumpy. Or worse.
I stepped as smartly down the hall as any of the Space-Force bravos of yore, strode through Drive control past Jonny Zed, near-somnolent over the RF/Reaction controls and got a wave from Eric, surrounded by the horseshoe-shaped console of Drive Control. Rounded the corner, up to Rack 94, cage 4, card 2 (not that any of us have 'em, like, memorized), opened the front of the card cage, yanked the card, waited just a tick and plugged it back in. Cluster of little leds went red, then, one by one, green, all but one.
"...Sixteen, fifteen, Preset into B? Ten, nine, eight, it's back!" as that last led went green, "Load B, okay? Commit on B! Three, two..." The ship fluttered the least bit as Sunny hit the Commit button and automation took over, phasing B and taking it down a big step on her, "Zero. Stand by for C in a minute-fifty, preset, mmmm, preset seven." I heard her from the various 'com positions as I was walking back through DQ (Jon at least appeared to nod) and making my way to the shop.
Big Tom lifted an inquiring eyebrow and I nodded, "Yeah, locked up."
I heard a "Feh," from the Chief's tiny office off the back of the room and Tom gave me a He's Not Happy Look. "Some excitement," he said, "That thing's gotta be settling down now. "
You'd've thought the Fates were waiting their cue: over the intercom, the tinny, twittering alarm of a 'Drive final dumping, the phantasmajector DC supply crowbarring and recycling (what's 37 kV at a few hundred Amps between friends?), followed by Sunny's mildly annoyed, "Need a reset on A, plea-- Reset C! About a minute away, okay, I see A back..."
It's always a long walk home; I turned and ran to the rack bay, trading a wry grin with Eric, who turned back to his console with a frown. Unplugged the #3 card (for C, oh how clever we are), slammed it back in and waited. No light...? Red LEDs came on. And stayed red. And stayed red. I reached up to do the idiot thing (if it didn't work once, it probably won't work twice,) hesitated and reached for one of the hot spares in the card cage, just as one green flicked on, and another, and...another.
"Ready on C? Preset seven, reload? No C. Engineering? We're gonna need C; next window's a couple hours off."
The final two leds went green, hey, it's talkin'!
"Got C, loaded, fifteen away." I just stayed put. It takes some exercise to keep my figure but I'd just as soon have it in the gym, when I'm planning on it. And just as well: "Ten, nine, another reset on A," I didn't even wait on DQ, just shucked the card out and back into its socket a little too fast and got away with it, green, green, green. "six, five, I'm committing," another shipwide shudder, not too bad but unusual for Sunny, "three, two, one, zero. And we're back in normal space. Systems checks, please...?"
It's fairly routine from here and unless somebody left a rock in the way, the bumpy parts are past. I headed back to the shop. Eric was busy with his checks but Jonny Zed looked up, blinking, asking, "So, Bobbi, what's up?"
"Do you even hear the pilot, Jon?" I shouldn't be so mean; Jon's a legacy, one of the original crew. But still, and even though RF/Reaction's pretty much a sinecure at transition, the new gear mostly runs itself, y'oughta at least be able to fake alertness, no matter how many times you've lived through the procedure.
"Welll, you've got no call t-" The rest of his reply was cut off as I slid the hatch shut. Some folks miss all the fun and then get huffy about it.
That many glitches in the drive is unusual even for us. This was a long jump but not that long. So I know where I'll be spending my time the rest of this inbound leg once we get the stardrive levels low enough to get into the Drive Room -- and I'm liable to be changing out a large and expensive tube or two once I get there.
______________________
1. Researching what and how much to say about the stardrive, I was tickled to find it's been rediscovered. Some clever lads -- probably Uncle Sam's boys -- have convinced the fellow to spin the theory just a bit, so it looks like a "you can't get there from here" proposition, but you can bet Dr. Alcubierre knows the real score.
2. You look like one of the bright ones; I'm sure it's obvious.
In practice it can be a bit...bumpy. They're pretty sure crossing the barrier is what did in the first experimental starships lost once they'd got the mass/power/field volume relations worked out. It doesn't have to be bumpy and that's a good thing -- a starship big enough for an economic cargo-to-power ratio is very large indeed, the ten-by-five miles by a thousand feet of my own dear Lupine being an average example, at which point "bumpy" is something more than a reason to keep the good china in a padded box.
Skill is what makes the difference between large pieces coming off and a transition so smooth the passengers never notice and Stores & Cargo barely do. To do the job properly takes at least an hour and up to three on our longest hop. It's no time at all compared to the weeks and months spent doing what amounts to outracing light[1] but a very long time if you're riding it through. Star pilots who can get the job done are star pilots indeed, combining a superlative grasp of seven-space behavior with excellent reflexes and the "people skills" it takes to coordinates a command deck crew and my boys in Drive Control and RF/Reaction Power (watched over by DQ outside transition times), especially under the critical eye of the captain or any of his XOs. Power room's fully staffed for this as well, mostly a holdover from the days of having a bank of Navy-type fusion reactors, our pair of triply-redundant fusion/MHD powerplants being both dependable under acceleration and not especially amenable to wrench-turning fixes on the fly.
Suffice to say good star pilots are rare. Genuinely outstanding ones are jewels indeed and all manner of personalities and types are made welcome if they've got the chops.
Such is the case of Sunny Grimm, chief pilot (but so very not boss lady -- nobody herds those cats) on the Lupine. A kind of life-sized, brunette version of Walt Disney's Tinkerbell, away from the bridge she talks like a double-speed playback when she says anything at all, usually the kind of delayed-reaction insights that detonate in the hearer's mind after the conversation's moved on, to her great delight. Barely 30, she's the youngest pilot in the entire commercial fleet (or at least the English-speaking side, the Russians and French still play it cagey about details). Originally trained by dear old Uncle Sam for the tiny military fleet left after privatization, her overwhelming aptitude for the job bid them ignore an essential unfitness for Service life...at least for a few years. When the Starship Company "found" her (Uncle Sam: "Hire this one, now. Um, please." SC: "Oh, yeah!"), she'd been let loose on the most prosperous planet of the Hidden Frontier (Kansas II -- aka Dullsville -- and don't the Junior Jayhawks just love to tell you all about the place) . And yeah, while female star pilots aren't unknown, there's a little heroine-worship on my part. Hey, the menfolk in Engineering are even worse!
The Starship Company did not so very much mind her breezily bohemian style and sensibility nor blank inability to comprehend what needed to be saluted when, so long as she could glide their wallowing vessels in and out of rational space without smashing the cargo; it was pure gravy if she could, at least on occasion, do so without making so much as a wineglass jiggle.
In the pilot's throne, front and center of the bridge, facing not a canopy but a wall of displays, graphics and marching columns of numbers, her high-speed hummingbird mumble slows and steadies to crisp precision, no command wasted, no time spent on anything but getting it done. It is not that nothing ever goes wrong or that Sunny never makes a mistake but that when such things do happen, her reaction is the right one, with no looking back in dismay. This is why bridge crews dote on her, vying for assignment, and why other star pilots, a notoriously proud and competitive lot, can be found observing at the back of the bridge or even "ghosting" her transitions on the simulator.
Today's return to normal space was not going at all well. Sometimes it happens; not even the most skilled avoid every wonky patch of spacetime or recalcitrant bit of hardware. The three big phantasmajectors in the stardrive had been randomly overloading and cycling back on as drop-out time approached. "There's no impressing machinery," I said to nobody in particular in the Engineering Shop as we listened to the intercom while Drive Control handed off to Sunny and the bridge crew. Transitions are an all-hands affair for us, too, save whoever's in sleep cycle.
"Annnnd -- we're on line, DQ, thanks. Stand by on A, we'll load preset 12, Navs, are we go? Okay, load preset 12 in A, on my mark...mark. Ready B? One minute away from our window, oh! Reset B! DQ?"
Drive Control: "Not takin' the reset."
My toys, still acting up. Not what we in the biz would call a good sign. Yes, dear old Doggie[2] is A Starship, the most hyper-advanced tech you never heard about; but the fact remains, she first outran light before the Beatles (remember them? Mom's music) hit the pop charts and our super-duper Buck Rogers stardrive systems are cobbled together from the technology of several generations. It didn't start out that way; but when this ship was new, she carried 12AT7s and 6AU6s by the ton and the Navs computer alone took up nearly the space of a city block, three decks high, and was used as an auxiliary heat source. Back then, scurrying space-force lads in spiffy jumpsuits saluted one another smartly and everything was spit & polish, stencilled and baby-blue. It didn't last; the tech changed even quicker for them than it did for you and, eventually, so the the economics.
One of the stickier bits these days is a set of converters tucked in a rack bay off Drive Control, mediating between the techie-intensive DQ console, the delicate and precise Bridge systems, and the simple-as-a-hammer 1970's-vintage stardrives themselves. The converters work great most of the time -- the clever Canadian engineers at Horton Microsystems Ltd. can be counted on to come up with the right widget for the job, one of the very best windfalls from the tech-sharing between the Commonwealth and the States after the Crown could no longer afford to go it alone with starships and colonies (will they ever learn?) -- and when they don't work so great, a software reset from DQ usually does the trick. But the wrong kind of hiccup from the stardrive finals can lock them up so bad the only fix is PBF: force a reboot.
I was nearest the hatch to the corridor and managed to be on my way out it when Sunny asked over the 'com: "Engineering? Reset B, 30 seconds 'til decision. TD, Commit on A, now." And not a shiver as the preset ran its course, stepping A down and us closer to the more usual sort of reality. There's no quick way to do it; when we beat light, we sneak in and we sneak out.
It's not like missing the mark means we'll be a brief flash of bright light or smashed into a pile of goo. There's more than one way in and out of a stardrive field. Pilots and Navs sit down ahead of a transition and set up a series of scenarios, "presets," based on the best data, and they keep updating and adding to them right up 'til it's time. On the other hand, having to change a worked-out transition on the fly is when things are most likely to get...bumpy. Or worse.
I stepped as smartly down the hall as any of the Space-Force bravos of yore, strode through Drive control past Jonny Zed, near-somnolent over the RF/Reaction controls and got a wave from Eric, surrounded by the horseshoe-shaped console of Drive Control. Rounded the corner, up to Rack 94, cage 4, card 2 (not that any of us have 'em, like, memorized), opened the front of the card cage, yanked the card, waited just a tick and plugged it back in. Cluster of little leds went red, then, one by one, green, all but one.
"...Sixteen, fifteen, Preset into B? Ten, nine, eight, it's back!" as that last led went green, "Load B, okay? Commit on B! Three, two..." The ship fluttered the least bit as Sunny hit the Commit button and automation took over, phasing B and taking it down a big step on her, "Zero. Stand by for C in a minute-fifty, preset, mmmm, preset seven." I heard her from the various 'com positions as I was walking back through DQ (Jon at least appeared to nod) and making my way to the shop.
Big Tom lifted an inquiring eyebrow and I nodded, "Yeah, locked up."
I heard a "Feh," from the Chief's tiny office off the back of the room and Tom gave me a He's Not Happy Look. "Some excitement," he said, "That thing's gotta be settling down now. "
You'd've thought the Fates were waiting their cue: over the intercom, the tinny, twittering alarm of a 'Drive final dumping, the phantasmajector DC supply crowbarring and recycling (what's 37 kV at a few hundred Amps between friends?), followed by Sunny's mildly annoyed, "Need a reset on A, plea-- Reset C! About a minute away, okay, I see A back..."
It's always a long walk home; I turned and ran to the rack bay, trading a wry grin with Eric, who turned back to his console with a frown. Unplugged the #3 card (for C, oh how clever we are), slammed it back in and waited. No light...? Red LEDs came on. And stayed red. And stayed red. I reached up to do the idiot thing (if it didn't work once, it probably won't work twice,) hesitated and reached for one of the hot spares in the card cage, just as one green flicked on, and another, and...another.
"Ready on C? Preset seven, reload? No C. Engineering? We're gonna need C; next window's a couple hours off."
The final two leds went green, hey, it's talkin'!
"Got C, loaded, fifteen away." I just stayed put. It takes some exercise to keep my figure but I'd just as soon have it in the gym, when I'm planning on it. And just as well: "Ten, nine, another reset on A," I didn't even wait on DQ, just shucked the card out and back into its socket a little too fast and got away with it, green, green, green. "six, five, I'm committing," another shipwide shudder, not too bad but unusual for Sunny, "three, two, one, zero. And we're back in normal space. Systems checks, please...?"
It's fairly routine from here and unless somebody left a rock in the way, the bumpy parts are past. I headed back to the shop. Eric was busy with his checks but Jonny Zed looked up, blinking, asking, "So, Bobbi, what's up?"
"Do you even hear the pilot, Jon?" I shouldn't be so mean; Jon's a legacy, one of the original crew. But still, and even though RF/Reaction's pretty much a sinecure at transition, the new gear mostly runs itself, y'oughta at least be able to fake alertness, no matter how many times you've lived through the procedure.
"Welll, you've got no call t-" The rest of his reply was cut off as I slid the hatch shut. Some folks miss all the fun and then get huffy about it.
That many glitches in the drive is unusual even for us. This was a long jump but not that long. So I know where I'll be spending my time the rest of this inbound leg once we get the stardrive levels low enough to get into the Drive Room -- and I'm liable to be changing out a large and expensive tube or two once I get there.
______________________
1. Researching what and how much to say about the stardrive, I was tickled to find it's been rediscovered. Some clever lads -- probably Uncle Sam's boys -- have convinced the fellow to spin the theory just a bit, so it looks like a "you can't get there from here" proposition, but you can bet Dr. Alcubierre knows the real score.
2. You look like one of the bright ones; I'm sure it's obvious.
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