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  "Hey," the guy said. "You helped me watch. I really appreciate it. I don't get much EVA time. In fact, the last time I was this close to vacuum, I ended up sucking it. So to say I'm not a big fan of EVA is accurate."

  "You don't sound like you sucked vacuum," Butch said neutrally. He'd run across lots of people on the station who swore they'd been in death pressure. It was one of those things that supposedly made you a big man. And this was a little guy.

  "Eh," the guy said. "Light. The ship got a leak. I didn't have a suit. We got picked up before it really did any damage but it was a pretty freaky experience. Not one I want to repeat."

  "You didn't have a suit?" Butch said.

  "I said I've been doing this a long time," the guy said. "And we have full thermal expansion, hopefully. If it gets any worse on the inside, the One-Forty-Second is going to go home to a crispy experience."

  "You're getting a feed?" Butch asked.

  "Yeah," the guy said. "So, since this is going to take a few minutes. What would you like to see to make working on the Troy easier or better?"

  "Not sure what you mean," Butch said. "You taking a survey?"

  "I'm not doing anything else at the moment," the guy said. "And I'm insatiably curious. Seriously. More bars?"

  "Can't really drink much," Butch said. "If you're even a bit hung over you don't want to be in vacuum."

  "Absolutely agreed," the guy said. "So... what? Anything you can think of?"

  "More girls," Butch said. "I mean, even the people working in the food court are all guys."

  "Hmmm..." the guy said. "There's a real problem with recruitment. Women simply don't sign up for space jobs the way guys do. But we could make it an EEOC thing. Special recruitment. What do you think of not having an EVA qualification as a requirement for working on the Troy?"

  "Not sure," Butch said. "What if there's a failure?"

  "The next civilian area is going to have so many blast doors between it and the main bay you could literally set off a fifty megaton nuke in the main bay and it wouldn't even blow out half of them. We'd have to have a delimiter point somewhere. No non-EVA qualified personnel past a certain point. But it's doable. In fact, it would cut down, a lot, on the employee costs. Hmm..."

  "And more girls?" Butch asked.

  "And more girls," the guy said. "The big part is getting them through EVA qual. They don't sign up as much as males and they fail at about the same rate. Right now even the support personnel are EVA qualed. Striking that qualification would open up all sorts of things. I thought about it a couple of years ago but I never got around to exploring it. And... Stand by. Paris? Could you retrans to Mr. Allen, please?"

  "Models say expansion in about thirty seconds," Paris commed.

  "Any idea if we've got the size model working?"

  "Probability is ninety-eight percent that we will be within three centimeters."

  "Roger. Thank you, Paris."

  "You are welcome, Mr. Vernon."

  "And it seems to be working."

  "Duh... uh..."

  "You okay, Mr. Allen?"

  "You're... Yer..."

  —|—

  Tyler tried not to sigh. He really should have told Paris to not use his name.

  "Mr. Allen," Tyler said. "As I said, I thank you for stabilizing me. I really don't get out in EVA very much. And your comment on the lack of female companionship triggered a memory node that had been dormant for far too long."

  "Uh... Yes, sir."

  "So you've probably saved the company money and you helped me watch this burn," Tyler said. "I am doubly thankful. Which, along with a buck fifty, will get you a ride on the subway. I put my pants on one leg at a time. Unless I'm sitting down, then I put them on two at a time. Mr. Allen, this is Houston, over?"

  "Yes, sir," Allen said, trying not to snort.

  "There," Tyler said. "That's better. And... Yes!"

  —|—

  Butch's astonishment that he was holding Mr. Vernon was momentarily put in the backseat as the wall of the Troy seemed to buckle outwards.

  What had, a moment before, been a blazing white hot inward curve of metal suddenly bulged out, expanding in front of his eyes into a hemisphere. It expanded quickly at first then slowed and slowed until it wasn't moving. At which point the SAPL shut off.

  What was left was a blister in the side of the main bay that was still cherry red.

  "I think the problem of the temperature being too low in the One-Forty-Second quarters is fixed," Mr. Vernon said. "Paris is having to pump in AC. Fortunately, there are other areas that are quite cool. So, Mr. Allen, I have another question. First, is it James or Jim or...?"

  "Uh," Butch said, taken aback. "Most people call me Butch, sir."

  "Butch, then," Mr. Vernon said. "I'd tell you to call me Tyler but it would probably throw you. So, Butch, what's it like being a welder?"

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  "That is a sight for God damned sore eyes," Admiral Kinyon said.

  The commander of Troy had accepted Mr. Vernon's invitation to observe the arrival of the Wolf Mother. And he was glad he had. The view from the Starfire was spectacular.

  Wolf Mother was the newly minted tanker for the Terran system, a kilometer-long, four-hundred-meter-wide mass of nickel-iron just packed with helium. Apollo was planning three of the He3 carriers to handle the output of the gas mine. What had once been a near entire lack of helium was about to be a glut. The Wolf Mine had been designed and constructed to not only supply the Sol system but the Glatun. With trade cut off, it was too much for Earth to absorb. At the moment.

  Wolf Mother was only half full, but even that was enough to fill not only the Troy's tanks but the Fleet and civilian needs. The rolling blackouts on Earth were about at an end.

  "She won't be able to top off your tanks," Tyler said. "But with the present state of the power system, you've got fuel to spare. So, now that that problem is settled, I've got some issues I'd like to bring up."

  "I still have plenty on my plate," the admiral said. "I should have figured you had a reason to bring me onto your territory."

  "The Troy being yours," Tyler said. "Which is what this is about. First, you've never opened up the water testing area to unauthorized personnel."

  The "water testing area" was an "accident" during the construction of the main water tank for Zone One. According to contract specifications, Apollo had to supply an area to test the water in the tank. The area had to be at least one hundred meters square, three meters high, accessible to the water and with Earth normal gravity, temperature and air.

  Due to an "accident with the SAPL," what Apollo had delivered was an area sixty acres across and two hundred meters high, cut so that the water flowed into it to various depths, shallow, medium, deep enough for, oh, diving, and walls that climbed up like hills to the overhead and which had what looked suspiciously like water slides built in.

  "It's not usable as a pool at present," the admiral noted. "All it is is water. And it's pretty cold, by the way."

  "You went swimming," Tyler said, shaking his head.

  "I tested the temperature and conditions," the admiral said. "And it's pretty darned cold. Also no safety equipment, no circulation, no ready exits, no vacuum safety systems..."

  "All of which I will install on my own dime," Tyler said. "Well, mine and LFD's. With the agreement that military and civilian personnel will have access thereto."

  "Agreed," the admiral said.

  "Good," Tyler said. "Because all the gear has been sitting on the ground waiting for an okay and fuel for lift. I can have it up and running in about two weeks."

  "Figures," the admiral said. "Second?"

  "Apollo has agreed to meet military standards for all personnel working on Troy," Tyler said. "I saw the reason for that when Troy was in its infancy. But we need to free it up. And I'd like to free it up a lot."

  "I'd rather be overrun with job seekers," the admiral said. "What do you mean 'free it up'?"

  "I want to r
emove the EVA training portion of the employment qualifications," Tyler said. "Such personnel will be restricted from movement in any area near vacuum. But we've got space in the civilian side that we could use if we had the people to man it. And we can't afford the people to man it if all of them have to know how to use suits."

  "And if there's a failure?" the admiral said, then shook his head. "You're talking about the Tertiary Zone civilian side."

  "The mall area," Tyler said. "And the new areas that we're bringing in. They're going to be so far back in the walls that absent something that can crack Troy, and I don't see anything in the Rangora inventory that can do that, it'll be not much different than living in a skyscraper. We need more support people, we need to get this feeling less like a military base and more like home. If for no other reason than your sailors need somewhere to let off steam."

  "There is that," the admiral said.

  "And there's another part to lowering the requirements," Tyler said.

  "I'm going to love this, aren't I?" the admiral said.

  "With your agreement," Tyler said, "and I do mean only with your agreement, I'm going to set my lobbyists loose on Congress. I want the Troy designated as a base, not a ship, and an accompanied PCS slot."

  "Accompanied?" the admiral said, his eyes wide. "Are you nuts?"

  "People keep saying that," Tyler said. "Admiral, Sixth Fleet was deployed when the Horvath hit San Diego. How many people lost dependents there?"

  "Many," the admiral said. "Too many."

  "I remember your story about your XO," Tyler said. "I hadn't really thought of it until then. Admiral, which would you prefer? Your dependents sitting in a city on the ground or up here with Troy wrapped around them?"

  "My wife lives at what we'd intended as our retirement home in Deland, Florida," the admiral said. "Which is about as far from anything worth hitting as we could find and still like the area."

  "Everyone does not have the same luxury," Tyler said. "So... do I have your support?"

  "Yes," Admiral Kinyon said. "Although I'm not sure my wife will be willing to move."

  Tyler looked out the crystal window as the tanker, being carefully positioned by tugs, hooked up to the ten-meter-diameter valves on the main tanks and started spewing fifteen billion barrels of fuel into the seven-hundred-meter-diameter main tank.

  "She may not be," Tyler said. "But now things can really start to."

  —|—

  "I'd rather be doing this than salvage," Butch said.

  "This" was being part of the large team that was installing the new "civilian side" bay. Five times the cubic of the original civilian side, which was still not full, it was set up as a miniature city with much of the cubic designated as "organic fill." In other words, it was designed to grow in a chaotic manner like a regular city rather than being the carefully laid out and organized initial civilian support zone.

  "Fricking Indonesians," Price commed.

  Apollo had contracted with E Systems to take over the salvage of the Horvath scrapyard. E Systems, which had long done every kind of contracting from oil platform support to "hostile zone" security, had responded by pulling in experts in the oil field and anyone who was barely qualified to wear a space suit. They'd converted one of the marginally habitable derelicts into quarters and were running nearly a thousand people on the salvage operation, most of them in conditions that would make a sardine scream for room.

  Many of them were from developing countries and their training level was, to say the least, not Apollo standard.

  "I hear they're dying like flies," Butch said.

  "Not like flies," Price commed. "But fast, yeah. Guys from countries like that will keep signing up. Anything to fill the rice bowl and so what if there's still bits of the last guy in the suit? How's your bead?"

  "Good," Butch said.

  The crew quarters were modular and designed to be exposed, briefly, to vacuum.

  But modular didn't mean quite like Legos. Stuff had to be connected and connected tight. Which meant welding.

  Butch wasn't even sure what the parts he was connecting were for. They were just two flat bits of metal to be joined. Currently at regular time, but he figured by the end of the week he'd be on double time. Especially since it was inside work and they weren't taking rad exposure.

  The working area was tight, though. They were "above" the new module in the small space between its insulation and the cut-out walls of the battlestation. They had had to run in laser lines and wear suits just to get to the working area. After they were done welding the parts together, another crew was coming in to fit in the final bits of insulation. Still another was hooking up the plumbing and air systems. Altogether, about six hundred people were floating around in space suits working on quarters for six thousand.

  "Fourteen Alpha, Welding Control."

  "Go Purcell."

  "How long?"

  "'Bout done. Fifteen minutes, give or take."

  "When you're done, head over to sector one. The next module, as usual, doesn't fit."

  "Roger. Sector One. Cut to fit."

  "Don't over cut."

  "Try not to."

  —|—

  When the pair got to Sector One, the area right next to the main bay, they found a cluster of suits surrounding one of the massive modules. From their body language, they were clearly flummoxed.

  "What you got?" Butch commed.

  "You Fourteen Alpha?" the super commed.

  "Last time I checked," Butch replied. He wasn't in a great mood. They were having to tow around the laser emitters and power systems, which was no fun at all. "What you got?"

  "Last module," the super commed. "But it won't line up. Problem being, we can't figure out what doesn't fit."

  The module was a quarter the size of a cruise liner, a cube fifty meters long and thirty high with "bits" sticking off, built by the Finnish company that had once had a lock on that market. From the outside, all that Butch had seen during the job, they were all standard.

  "We can just cut bits off until it fits," Price offered.

  "We'd prefer to avoid that," the super replied.

  "We can weld back on the parts that we weren't supposed to lop off," Butch said.

  "You're not helping," the super commed.

  The module had fifty-centimeter joints of steel that were designed to line up with wraps from the other modules. Those were the main things that Butch and Price had been welding. When they were done on the exterior they were scheduled to do some interior welding between the modules, mainly hatches. But they couldn't do that until they had the modules installed and the exterior nickel-iron "cap" installed. Installing the cap was a tug and SAPL job.

  "Are we sure all the wraps are right on the other modules?" Butch asked.

  "We already checked that," the super commed. "And the hole has to be right since the other modules slid in just fine."

  "Getting in there is going to be a bitch anyway," Price commed, considering the job. "What we need is some really humongous crowbars and hammers."

  "Welders," the super commed.

  "Seriously," Price commed. "We just plane down the joints a bit all around. Then we'll stuff stuff back in to get them to fit."

  "Got any idea how much load this thing has to take?" the super said. "Try sliding it in again."

  There were angled slats of metal that permitted the tugs to move the module into position and slide it into the supposedly perfect gap. The module slid about halfway in and then stopped.

  "I don't suppose the tugs could just, you know, push really hard?" Butch asked.

  "No," the super commed. He slid downwards and flashed a light up into the gaps. "I can't even see up in there."

  "And we're supposed to get in there and weld how?" Price commed.

  "There's an opening," the super commed, sliding over to it and flashing a light up into the gap again. "You can get through. It'll be tight, but it's doable."

  "What happens if somebody goes up in there whil
e it's like this?" Butch asked.

  "If the module slips and they're between one of the joints and another module?" the super replied. "They get cut in half. Then they get freeze dried so we can hang them up on a wall as a warning to other welders. I don't want that on my safety record."

  "Looks pretty stable," Butch said. "And I'm small."

  "Dude, you did not just volunteer to do this," BFM said.

  "Can you think of a way to get it done?" Butch asked.

  "You're not getting paid extra for this, Butch," Price pointed out. "You never volunteer unless you're getting paid more."

  "BF, we got about a million other jobs to do," Butch said. "There's the shuttle bays, the new military module... I want to get this one over with."

  "And I still don't want it on my safety record," the super commed.

  "I'm not going in without permission, that's for sure," Butch said. "So what you gonna do?"

  It took about thirty minutes for somebody, for all Butch knew it went up to Mr. Vernon, to give permission.

  "Butch," Purcell commed. "Be goddamned careful in there."

  "I'll try not to get cut in half," Butch said.

  "And we're going to hook you off to a safety line," BFM commed, clipping a line to Butch's suit. "That way we can pull your legs out when you do get cut in half."

  "You are just a ray of sunshine, BF," Butch said, pulling himself through the gap.

  The opening through the first set of joints was tight. A meter by meter area had been cut out of the joints "above" and "below" so that the space between the modules could be entered. It was tight but doable, even by BFM. Although he was going to have more trouble.

  The area in the middle was no better. Wide, yes, but not much room to maneuver between the two modules. Fortunately, Butch could use the navopak to maneuver. Pulling himself along was out of the question.

  The strips of metal the module was sliding along extended all the way to the back of the section. Butch was careful to avoid the edges since they looked razor sharp. And he had to slide past them to examine every bit of every joint looking for the part that didn't fit.

  But it was watching out for them that gave him his first clue about the problem.