I expected a long wait during the recharge, but it only took five minutes. I have to hand it to Toyota, they know how to make rapid-recharge batteries. The harvester lurched forward and just like that, we were on our way.
My plan was working! I giggled like a little girl. Hey, I’m a girl, so I’m allowed. And besides, no one was watching. I pulled an aluminum stock rod from the duffel, climbed to the top of the harvester, and held it out like a sword. “Onward, mighty steed!”
Onward we went. The harvester headed southwest toward the Moltke Foothills at the breakneck speed of five kilometers per hour.
I watched the smelter bubble and reactors disappear in the distance and grew uneasy again. Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t the farthest I’d been from the Shire or anything. The train to the Visitor Center is over forty kilometers. But this was the farthest I’d ever been from safety.
The landscape grew rocky and jagged as we entered the foothills. The harvester didn’t even slow down. It might not have been fast but damn, it had torque.
We hit the first of many boulders and I almost flew out of the basin. I barely kept all my gear inside. Harvesters are not luxury cars. How did the rocks even stay put on the trip back? The harvesters must’ve been a little more cautious on their way home. Still, the bumpy ride was better than walking. That incline would have killed me.
Finally, we leveled off and things got smooth again. I pushed the duffel off of me and climbed back to the top. We’d made it to the collection zone.
The wide, flat plain had been denuded of rocks over years of harvesting. Good. Finally some smooth sailing. The cleared area was roughly a circle. I spotted three other harvesters at the clearing’s edge, scooping rocks into their basins. My harvester rumbled to the edge and dropped its scoop.
I tossed my gear out of the basin and hopped after it. At this point there was no way to avoid nav cameras. I just had to hope some Sanchez employee hadn’t randomly decided to bring up the feeds to impress his girlfriend.
I collected the gear and dragged it under the harvester with me.
The first step was to attach myself and my gear to the undercarriage. Harvesters don’t stay still for long and I didn’t want to scurry after it. I upended the duffel to prep my equipment.
First was the tarp. It was heavy, fiber-reinforced plastic with grommets in the corners so you could tie it down. I laced nylon rope through the grommets and affixed it to some jack-points on the hull. Now I had a hammock. I crawled into my new secret lair and pulled my welding equipment up with me.
The harvester lurched forward. I guess it had loaded some rocks into its basin and decided to move forward for another bite. I had no warning because, hey, no sound. A minor inconvenience—I hadn’t loaded the spare oxygen tanks into my hammock yet.
I looked over to the spare tanks. Okay. Not the end of the world. I could come back later to—
A huge boulder, destabilized by the fresh hole at its base, tipped forward onto the tanks. A pathetic fart of air escaped from underneath, briefly kicking up dust. Then there was nothing. And that was the end of my reserve air tanks.
“Oh, come on!” I yelled.
I took a moment to calculate how fucked I was.
I checked my arm readout. Six hours of oxygen left in the main supply. Two more hours in the emergency reserve. I had another tank for welding. I could attach it to my suit’s universal valve, but that would defeat the purpose of the whole trip. I needed that oxygen for my nefarious plans.
So, eight hours of breathable air. Was this still doable?
Artemis was three kilometers away. The trip had a lot of rough terrain but it was also downhill. Call it two hours.
My original plan had been to wait until night (clock-night I mean, not actual lunar night) and then sneak in when everyone was asleep. But I didn’t have enough air to wait that long. I’d have to enter in the middle of the day.
New plan: the ISRO airlock. It led into Space Agency Row in Armstrong Bubble. There’d be a few confused nerds and someone might say “um…” but I’d just keep walking. With the sun visor down, no one would see my face. And, unlike the Conrad airlock, it wouldn’t be littered with EVA masters.
Okay, problem sorta solved. That meant I had six hours before I had to leave the collection area. Ninety minutes per harvester. Time to hustle.
I got as comfortable as I could in my hammock and assembled the welding gear. I laid the acetylene and oxygen tanks between my legs to keep them stable. On the harvester’s undercarriage, I eyeballed ten centimeters from the coolant valve and scratched a three-centimeter circle there with a screwdriver. That’s where I had to cut.
I flipped down my helmet’s sun visor. I’d duct taped a welding lens shade to the middle. I cranked the acetylene valve, set the torch mixture to ignition mode, sparked it, and—
…it didn’t start.
Um.
I tried again. Nothing. Not even sparks.
I checked the acetylene tank. No flow problems. What the hell?
I flipped up the visor and inspected the sparker. Dad taught me to use a flint sparker because an electric one is “another thing to break.” It was just a piece of flint and steel grooves attached to a springy handle. Nothing complicated about it. This was thousand-year-old technology we’re talking about here. Why wasn’t it working?
Oh.
Right.
When flint strikes steel, it knocks microscopic flecks of metal into the air. The metal burns because of some complicated crap related to surface area and oxidization rates. Basically, it rusts so fast that the reaction heat makes fire.
Fun fact: Oxidizing requires oxygen. Flint and steel won’t work in a vacuum. All right. No need to panic. A welding flame is just acetylene and oxygen on fire. I adjusted the valves and set the mixture to be a trickle of acetylene amongst a torrent of oxygen. Then I scraped the sparker right in front of the nozzle.
Sparks! Boy did they ever fly! That oxygen made the metal flecks go apeshit. But I’d got too far. There wasn’t enough acetylene to ignite the flame itself. I added a bit more to the mix and tried again.
This time, the shower of sparks managed to light a sputtering, inconsistent flame. I spun the valves back to a normal mix and the flame settled into a familiar, stable shape.
I breathed a sigh of relief and flipped my visor down. I held the torch steady despite the clunky EVA suit. Pain in the ass. But at least I didn’t have to deal with molten metal. This was a cut, not a join. When you cut, you aren’t melting metal. You actually turn it into an oxidized gas. Yeah, it’s that hot.
The actual cutting was a lot easier than I expected. It took less than a minute. The little three-centimeter circle of steel plopped down on my chest, followed by a blob of molten wax. The wax bubbled and re-hardened almost instantly.
My positioning was perfect. I’d cut into the wax reservoir without nicking the coolant lines nearby. I didn’t care about the health of the coolant system, but I didn’t want the harvester to call home about a coolant leak. The small daub of wax that fell on me wouldn’t be enough loss to worry the harvester. At least, I hoped not.
I pulled a pressure valve from my duffel. I’d bought six of them from Tranquility Bay Hardware the day before (one per harvester and two spares). Standard pressure connector on one side, three centimeters raw pipe on the other. I jammed the connector into the hole. I’d done well on my cut—it was a snug fit. I fired up the torch again (with the same oxygen-crazy ignition mix as last time) and grabbed a rod of stock aluminum. I needed a strong, airtight seal around the valve.
I’d done a million valve installations with Dad as a kid. But never in an EVA suit. And unlike the cut, this time I was melting stock metal to make a seal.