WORK AGENDA
“Serious work?” Josie asked, her teasing grin fading away.
Pulling up one of the little wheeled chairs from the next console, Grant said, “We’ve got to lay out roads between here and Korolev and Gagarin.”
“And improve the road to Mendeleev?” Rivera asked.
“No, that won’t be necessary,” said Grant.
Oberman huffed. “Hell, you couldn’t even get that mirror over the ringwall.”
Again Grant fought the urge to smack the nasty little snot. Keeping his voice even, he told them, “We won’t be transporting mirrors. We’ll be hauling construction materials in regular tractors. No need to tow big mirror rigs.”
“The mirrors are going to be built at the craters, then?” Rivera asked.
“Right,” Grant replied. “By nanomachines.”
Oberman whistled softly. “So you’ll be hauling nanobugs out to the three craters.”
Grant nodded. “It’ll be easy to get the loads over the ringwall mountains and onto the sites for the telescopes.” Then he added, “Nanos are tiny little things.”
“I just hope you don’t spill any of ’em,” Oberman said.
“That won’t be a problem. If they’re exposed to ultraviolet light they’re disabled, and there’s plenty of UV in sunlight.”
“Yeah, but if you’re moving them at night…”
Rivera suggested, “Maybe we should schedule moving the nanos only during daylight hours.”
Grant thought about it for a few seconds. “Makes sense, Josie. Probably unnecessary, but an extra safety precaution wouldn’t hurt.”
“So how’re the bugs going to work once you’ve got ’em at the sites?” Oberman asked.
“We build temporary roofs over each site. No big deal, just lightweight honeycomb metal sheets. That’ll protect the sites against incoming micrometeoroids as well as solar UV.”
“And once the ’scopes are completed we can take down the coverings, right?”
“Right,” said Grant. “The nanomachines’ work will be finished by then. They’ll be deactivated.”
Oberman rubbed his long jaw as he asked, “You’re claiming that those nanobugs’ll produce mirrors shaped to the tolerances you need?”
“Probably not. We might have to do some final polishing.”
“That means hauling the measuring equipment to the craters,” Rivera said.
“To Selene first,” Grant said. “We’ll have to check the demo mirror that Cardenas is building there.”
“Yeah, but sooner or later you’ll have to lug the polishing equipment out to each one of the craters,” said Oberman. “Christ, you’ll have to haul the whole turntable from here to there. Three theres!”
“Maybe,” Grant conceded. “But the turntable’s a lot more robust than the damned mirrors. Should be no sweat to haul it back and forth.”
Oberman looked totally unconvinced.
“That’s a lot of outdoor work,” Rivera said.
“I know,” said Grant. “That’s why we’ve got to automate the work as much as possible. We need to adapt the robots to do as much of the job as they can.”
“Robots,” Oberman muttered. “You’ll wind up spending more time maintaining the damned robots than anything else.”
“I’m going to put Harvey in charge of robot maintenance,” Grant told them. “His foot ought to be fine by the time we get started on this.”
Josie nodded, accepting Grant’s decision. Oberman looked cynically doubtful.
“Okay then,” Grant said. “Now, the first thing we need to do is get those roads scraped out.”
* * *
Once Grant had finished with Josie, he walked down to Farside’s little cafeteria. The place was nearly empty; dinner hour had long passed.
As he stood before one of the food-dispensing machines, wondering which of the meager packaged meals he wanted to select, Trudy Yost came up beside him.
“Hi,” he said, happily surprised. “I didn’t see you come in.”
She gave him a grin. “You were studying the machine’s display as if your life depended on it.”
He shrugged. “Well, it does, sort of. Don’t you think so?”
“I guess so, if you put it that way.”
“The Ulcer let you go?” Grant asked.
“No way. I’m here to pick up meals for the four of us and bring them back to the prof’s office. We’re eating in there.”
“Oh.”
“The professor’s burying Dr. Palmquist with facts and figures,” Trudy said. “The poor guy’s eyes glazed over an hour ago but the prof is just plowing ahead, telling him how we’re gonna produce images of New Earth before anybody else can.”
Grant banged one of the buttons at random and stooped down to grab the package that slid into the tray at the bottom of the machine.
Her voice softening, Trudy said, “I’m sorry he cut you off like that.”
He straightened up and looked into her gentle green eyes. “That’s okay. I’m used to it. I’m just a crummy engineer, far as he’s concerned. Dirt under my fingernails.”
Trudy said, “You’re much more important than that, Grant.”
“It’s nice of you to say so.”
For a moment they stood facing each other, close enough to touch. Feeling awkward, almost like a teenager on his first date, Grant shifted his dinner package from one hand to the other.
“Maybe we could have dinner together some time,” he heard himself say.
Trudy smiled at him. “That’d be great.”
“Uh, my quarters aren’t all that much, but I could microwave a meal for you. It’d be more private than the cafeteria here.”
“I guess,” she said, a trifle uncertainly.
“I’ve got some old movies, Hollywood classics. Or we could watch video from Selene.”
“Sure,” said Trudy. “But right now I’ve got to get dinners for the professor, Mr. McClintock, and Dr. Palmquist.”
“And yourself,” Grant added.
She laughed. “Yep. And myself.” After a heartbeat’s pause, she said, “But I’ll look forward to dinner with you. Real soon.”
“Sure,” he said. “Real soon.”