Margaritifer Basin (Margaritifer Trilogy Book 1) (115 page)

“Really? That must require a bit of
philosophical juggling.”

She laughed softly, “Honestly, I
don’t pay much attention to the street signs, I just follow the path.”

“Ah. So, your parents are
Catholic?”

“Yes, that’s why they fled China.”

“To avoid religious persecution?”

“Yes.”

“So what draws you to Taoism?”

“I’m still Chinese. You can take
the girl out of the country, but...”

Jeff chuckled, “I’ll buy that.”

Susan took a deep breath and bowed
her head in thought. “Do you know the words
qi
and
jing
?”

“Sorry.”

“For the Taoist,
qi
is the
essential life force that exists in all living things and is related to
jing
,
the energetic essence contained within the human body. Indeed, the belief is
that one possesses a finite amount of
jing
, which can be lost in various
ways. And when it’s all gone, you die.”

“So, losing one’s
jing
would
seem to be something to avoid.”

“You might say so.”

“No refills, huh?”

Susan smiled softly, “There is one.”

“Oh? What’s that? Sounds like
something good to stock up on.”

“
Jing
is created through the
joining of essences.”

“Huh? You lost me.”

“The physical union of man and
woman.”

Jeff swallowed hard at the sudden
impact of Susan’s philosophical smack up the side of his head. “Uh, did we just
arrive at the point of this tea party?”

Susan slowly opened her eyes and
smiled at him. “You know, sometimes you’re a little slow.”

Wednesday, November
22, 2017

MSD 51151.332 (Sol
401)

 “Jeff? Sue? Somebody answer the
damn phone.”

Jeff was startled by Abby’s voice
on the comm PA. He untangled himself from Susan. “I’ll be back.” Rolled out of
bed, trotted into the commons, and sat at the comm console. “Yeah, hi, good
morning. What’s up?”

“We have a problem.”

“A problem? What kind of problem?”

“We’re stuck.”

“Okay. Define ‘stuck’.”

“
Andy
won’t start.”

He wiped his face with his hand.
“Oh great. Does the engine turn over?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, so you’ve got battery power
and the starter’s working. Fuel?”

“Tanks are full, we just refueled
him from the Genesis.”

“Hmmm. Alright. Sounds like fuel
injection or ignition.”

“I pulled the spark plugs, they
look fine. I can pull the fuel injectors, but if there’s something wrong with
one of them there’s nothing I can do about it. And the fuel injection and
ignition are black boxes – a mystery to everyone except SRT.”

“Right. Okay, we’ve got spares
here. Hang on a second, let me see where you are.” He brought up the
navigational screen on the main computer. “Jeez, you’re clear up near that
fossa? What the hell are you doing up there? That wasn’t on the itinerary.”

“Uh, yeah. Well, Gabe wanted to see
it. Thought maybe we could get some samples and figure out what created it.”

“What did I tell you two?”

“That doesn’t much matter now, does
it?”

He sighed and shook his head. “No, I suppose not.”

Susan came into the commons and
placed her hands on Jeff’s shoulders. “What’s up?”

“They’re stuck.
Andy
won’t
start. We’re gonna have to go get them. They’re about 60 klicks from here.” He
turned around and looked at her. She was naked, fidgeting a bit, and squeezing
her thighs together. He looked her up and down. “Oh lord. Go get dressed.”

“Okay, but first I have to use the
bathroom. I have, um…
jing
running down my legs,” and she took off
toward the utility room.

He grinned and called after her.
“Would you characterize that as
jing
overflow?”

“You think?!” She slammed the hatch
behind her.

Jeff started laughing, then quickly looked at the
mic to make sure they weren’t on VOX.

Abby’s voice came over the speaker
again. “Jeff? Are you there?”

He took a moment to get his
laughter under control. “Um, yeah Abby, I’m here. Sorry, um, Sue and I were
just discussing a logistical matter. Are all of you alright?”

“Yeah, we’re fine. We’re in the
Genesis, no problem.”

“Okay. We’re gonna suit up, grab
the spare parts bin, hop in
Amos
, and head up your way. It’ll probably
take us six or seven hours to get there, so with luck we’ll see you sometime
this afternoon. In the meantime just hang tight.”

“Roger that. What if we can’t get
Andy
started?”

“Well, we’ll just disconnect him
from the Genesis and leave him there. Let
Amos
tow us back, then go back
up there and collect
Andy
at our convenience, tow him back down here and
try to figure out what the hell’s wrong with him.”

“Got it.”

“Say, while Sue and I are getting
ready and making our way up there, fire off an email to SRT and ask them if
there’s some secret developmental diagnostic handshake in the rover engine
software that we don’t know about. Something that’s not in the manual.”

“Got it. Gabe’s nodding her head
like there may be.”

“Okay, good. Well, the good lord
willing and the creek don’t rise, we’ll see you this afternoon.”

“Roger that. We’re not going
anywhere.”

“Okay. Just stay cool. We’ll see
you a little later. Out.” He returned to Susan’s room and collected his
clothes. A moment later Susan came in.

“Are they okay?”

“Yeah, fine. They’re in the
Genesis. They can stay there for weeks.”

She walked up to him, hugged him,
and began rubbing her body against his.

“Oh lord, don’t do that.”

“Why? If they can stay there for
weeks, they can afford to wait another half hour.”

He dropped his clothes, gently
shoved her backwards onto the bed, and smiled. “Okay, you’ve got 30 minutes.”

She hopped back up. “No. We’re
going to do something different.”

“What?”

She took his hand. “We’re going to
shower together.”

Jeff grinned. “Okay.”

Susan smiled. “We can wash each
other’s nether regions. And besides, we probably shouldn’t go up there smelling
like this.”

“Um, good point.”

“And then we’re going to brush our
teeth and rinse with a liberal dose of mouthwash.”

He chuckled. “Another good idea.”

Wednesday, November
22, 2017

MSD 51151.739 (Sol
401)

Jeff keyed the radio. “We’re here.”

A moment later Abby came back.
“Took you long enough.”

“Sorry, it took us a bit longer
than I’d thought to get going, and rather than follow your tracks we decided to
take a shortcut and had to make a few detours. You know, road construction and
such.”

“Right. What you mean to say is…
you got lost.”

“Not exactly but, um, yeah.”

“Uh huh.”

“Look, we’ve been in these suits
for nine hours, and need to get out of them. And we’re both hungry. So, we’re
gonna park and come in, and we’ll deal with
Andy
in the morning. That
alright with you?”

“Sure. We kind of figured that’d be
the case. Gabe’s already started on supper.”

“Excellent. See you in a few.” Jeff
parked
Amos
just behind the Genesis, grabbed a duffle bag out of the
back that held their clothes, and he and Susan climbed into the airlock, got
out of their suits, cleaned up a bit, dressed, then climbed into the Genesis.
“Hi all.”

Gabe and Abby greeted them. Gabe
kissed Jeff and said, “It’s about time. I was getting worried about you.”

Jeff frowned. “You guys weren’t
supposed to be clear up here. It’s a long damn way from the station.”

She pouted. “I know, but I really
wanted to see what’s down in there, and try and figure out what created it.”

“Jesus, Gabe, from this side it’s a
thousand meters to the bottom. Please tell me you weren’t planning on hiking
down there. Christ, it’s the Grand Canyon. Besides, it’s just a crack in the
crust, probably resulting from the impact that formed that big ass crater just
to the east.”

“You mean the big ass crater that
we named ‘Jeff’, and put up a sign.”

“You didn’t.”

“We did. We also put up road signs
to the large one to the south of ‘Jeff’ and the small one to the southeast of
‘Abby’.”

“And what did you name them?”

“The big one is ‘Gabriel’ and the
small one is ‘Susan’.” She winked at Susan.

Susan shook her head. “You named
that little crater after me?”

Gabe shrugged. “Well, we named them
in order of magnitude.”

Susan rolled her eyes. “Figures.”

“And we named that very little one
northwest of ‘Abby’, ‘Ghita’.”

Jeff sighed. “I’m sure she’ll
appreciate that when she grows up and turns out to bigger than all of us. By
the way, where is she?”

“She’s asleep in the truss.”

“Okay, that explains why it’s so
quiet in here.”

“I just fed her. She’ll sleep for
at least a few hours. In any case, no, we weren’t planning to hike to the
bottom of that fossa. But we did want to get some samples from the rim, but
that plan was cut short by
Andy
’s demise. But we did get a lot of good
pictures.”

“Oh, alright. Well, like Abby said,
I suppose it doesn’t much matter at this point. Sue and I are tired and hungry,
so how about supper?”

“On the stove… so to speak.”

“Excellent. Abby, did you get a
reply from SRT?”

“Yeah. There’s a thorough engine
diagnostic program on the prototype for developmental purposes, but it was
omitted from the final design because it complicated matters and they figured
if there was an engine problem there was nothing they could do about it.”

“Well, duh! Of course there was
nothing
they
could do about it, but what about
us
?”

She shrugged. “We approved the
design.”

Jeff groaned. “Yeah, we did, didn’t
we? Did they have any suggestions?”

“Yeah, if the plugs are okay, which
they seem to be, start replacing black boxes. They don’t think the problem is
fuel injectors. The thing runs on CO and O
₂
gas, so what’s to muck
up? It’s not like it runs on diesel fuel.”

“And you already checked the plugs.
Right?”

“Yeah. I wish the plugs in my car
looked that good.”

“Um, you don’t have a car.”

“Okay, the plugs in your car.”

“I thought you liked my car.”

“I do.”

Thursday, November
23, 2017

MSD 51152.375 (Sol
402)

“Abby, hand me that Phillips
screwdriver.”

“Here.”

“Thanks.” Jeff went to work
affixing the ignition black box in place on
Andy
. After attaching the
spark plug leads he said, “Okay, that’s it. Try starting it.”

“The engine is cranking but it still won’t start.”

“Ah, shit! We’ve replaced damn near
everything but the whole damn engine. I don’t believe this. What the hell is
wrong with this son of a bitch?”

“Maybe you should stop swearing at
it.”

“Why, you swear at stuff all the
time.”

“I’m a woman. Men don’t mind being
sworn at by a woman.”

“I mind.”

“And when was the last time I swore
at you?”

“I don’t know, I’ll get back to you
on that. Okay, we’ve replaced all the black boxes, we’ve got good plugs, the
injectors should be fine, the batteries are good, and we’ve got full fuel
tanks.”

“Right.”

Jeff thought for a moment. “Um,
fuel tanks…”

“Yeah, they’re full. Filled them
myself.”

“Uh huh. The cutoff valves from the
tanks that prevent over-pressurization of the fuel injection system during
refueling. I don’t suppose you remembered to reopen them after you refueled?”

Abby’s groan was audible.

“Uh huh.” He walked to the back of
Andy
and checked the valves. “Abby, they’re closed. The tanks are full, but there’s
no fuel flow. Nice goin’.”

“Oh shit!”

“You know, that’s why we have
manuals for procedures.” He opened the valves. “Alright, try it now.”
Andy
started up.

“Oh god!”

“Abby, you may be the best pilot in
this solar system, but sometimes you just need to follow procedures.”

“Oh, I can’t believe I did that.”

“Why didn’t you flag them?”

“I dunno.”

“Would you do that on an F/A-18?”

“No.”

“Well then, let’s try not to do it
again because it’s a long fucking way back to Earth!”

“Oh god, I’m sorry.”

“There’s a lot of moving parts to
this mission and neither you nor I can remember them all. Maybe Gabe can, but
not us.” He took a deep breath and sighed. “Alright, no harm done and lesson
learned.”

“You’ve got to help me.”

“Huh? With what?”

“Gabe’s gonna put my head in the
wall again.”

“Not here. The walls are too thick
and too hard.”

“Oh god, I’m dead.”

Jeff chuckled. “Alright, I have an
idea.”

“What?”

“Get in
Amos
and take him
back to the station, that’ll give her time to cool off.”

“God, that’s eight or nine hours,
and I’ve already been in this suit for two hours.”

“Yep. But somebody needs to take
him back, and the only reason he’s here is you. Call it penitence.” He chuckled
again. “Besides, it might save your life.”

“Ah, crap.”

“Keys are in the ignition and
you’re burnin’ daylight.”

“Shit.” She trudged off toward
Amos
.

Jeff waved. “See you tonight.” He climbed back into
the Genesis airlock, removed his suit, dressed, and climbed inside.

“Where’s Abby?” said Gabe.