Saturn Rukh by Robert L. Forward Read Free Book Online Page A

have some privacy. I hear someone coming ... Gotta go now ... Bye…” There was a heavy sigh.
     
    Rod spoke up to break the strained silence that followed, his voice surprising him with its loudness in the reverberating confines of the capsule. “It’s time to set up the habitats!” he said, giving the aluminum tube beside him a bang with his knuckles. The cylinder rang like a bell at the blow. “Seichi! Get out the checklist and take us through the procedure.” Seichi exited the airlock, and avoiding Chastity’s eye, went over to the engineering compartment and opened a hatch. He took out a checklist, a three-pronged holding fixture, and a tube of lubraseal.
     
    “Remove grating between upper and lower compartments and store in the airlock ...” he started, reading the first item on the checklist. The red square on the plastic sheet turned green as he pressed it. Dan, being above them, loosened the grating segments and passed them down to Rod and Pete, who passed them to Sandra and Chastity, who stored them in the back of the airlock.
     
    “Remove console seats and store in the airlock ...” continued Seichi. Soon the three console seats and their swivel arms had been removed from in front of the consoles and also placed in the airlock. Rod, having been through this routine many times before, took the three-pronged holding fixture from Seichi, and floated up to the upper deck to join Dan. With the console chairs gone, there was now a surprisingly large amount of room.
     
    “Insert holding fixture inside inner habitat tube and turn central knob on fixture until it is firmly grasping the inner tube wall ...” read Seichi. Reaching down from the upper deck, Rod inserted the fixture inside the aluminum tube on the lower deck and turned the knob. He was slowly lifting the massive tube as Seichi read the next instruction.
     
    “Slowly remove the inner habitat tube...”
     
    “The smallest one goes under the pilot console,” Chastity reminded Rod, as she had gone through this routine many times too. Dan reached under the pilot console and removed a cover ring around the viewport window there and passed it down to Chastity to add to the stuff stored in the airlock.
     
    “I see,” said Sandra, watching things from inside the airlock. “The six habitat tubes are stacked one inside another.”
     
    “This is one time we discriminate among crewmembers,” said Chastity. “The big ones get the big-diameter habitat tubes and the little ones get the smaller tubes. You’re the shortest, Sandra, so that’ll be your tube.”
     
    “Shitsurei shimasu ... excuse me, Ms. Blaze,” said Seichi, speaking directly to Chastity for the first time since their unfortunate initial meeting. His face was controlled and devoid of emotion as he explained his objection. “The smallest habitat tube is properly mine, for it is sufficient for my purposes, and I am sure that Ms. Green would appreciate more room.”
     
    “You are a true gentleman, Seichi,” replied Chastity with a bright smile, seeing her chance to open up dialogue with him again. There was a flicker of response in Seichi’s eyes, but then the curtain fell and he turned back to the task at hand.
     
    “Easy does it,” said Rod, as Dan moved to help him extract the smallest inner tube from the stack. “Don’t nick the seals. That tube masses eighty-five kilos and with that much inertia, it can get out of control if you let it build up too much speed.” The two got the cylinder out—it reached almost to the top of the control deck. Chastity pulled herself up the ladder, and locking herself in place on the rungs of the ladder with her knees and ankles, added her muscular strength to the task of moving the tube horizontal so one end was pointing toward the viewport window underneath the pilot console. While the three held the massive but weightless habitat tube in place and rotated it, Seichi applied lubraseal to the elastomer seals at both ends of the tube