As the meeting broke up, Jeff turned to leave also, but Jamie, closer to the doorway, cut him off from that escape. She stood directly face to face with him, throwing her towel over her shoulder in passive defiance. “I believe I am owed an apology from you, sir.”
“Look Ja…” Jeff began weakly.
She put a finger across his lips and closed the distance between them. “You will do everything you can to make it up to me tonight, and I’ll be taking your gym slot at 20:00 hours as well, and rest assured Commander, after that you will still owe me plenty.”
“Okay” Jeff said, gulping and thinking that he had gotten off easy. He had for the moment.Had she been really upset she wouldn''t have stopped him. It wouldn''t be the first time that they had a disagreement on the ship and it was certain to not be the last. Jeff really hoped Jamie wouldn’t stay mad long but he was looking forward to seeing her later, whether he would be vilified for interrupting her or not.
Inside ‘Terra Twins’ receiving bay, hoppers One and Four stood on four splayed legs over their floor conveyors. The ore gathered by the hoppers could be carried from there to any one of eight storage bays. Each of which could hold four thousand cubic meters of load material, in whatever conditions were required to store it, temperature, pressure vacuum, radiation, humidity, even lighting. Russel and Shawn Hampton piled into OH-#4 and started its preflight cycle. Charles Midden and Owen Reed were doing the same in OH-#1. The hoppers were built in several ways similar to a primitive space lander used on the first lunar missions in the 20th century. Like their predecessor, the lunar excursion module, they stood on four angled legs each terminating in a large round pad with a spike on the groundside. The upper section was crew space and control. The lower was heavy, engines, fuel and storage space made up most of the bottom end of these ships. Unlike the L.E.M. their legs were rigid not retractable, and the upper half could separate from the lower for emergency purposes, but did not carry enough fuel for a prolonged flight. Mounted in the belly was a core sample drill, plasma cutter and a pneumatic tube, for injecting explosive charges into core holes. Where the L.E.M. had its engines in the center, the hoppers engines were mounted between each leg and its neighbor on the ships hull. Sensor arrays and test instruments took up the rest of the space. The crew compartment in the upper half was about eight-foot square inside much roomier than the L.E.M. Also, like the L.E.M. hoppers had four, four way attitude jets mounted radially and could maneuver in tight spaces very well. There the similarities end.You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
Hoppers could land on bodies with triple earth’s gravity, load with 1.8 times their own weight of mass, and still escape with enough fuel to reach and enter the receiving bay of their mother ship. When it was more feasible to move an asteroid rather than mine it, hoppers had been used as apace going ‘tugs’ to cable tow their goods to market. Two mechanical servo arms were located on either side of the hopper, so crews could manipulate objects without leaving the ship.
As #4 finished its preflight cycle, Russel addressed Shawn and #1’s crew. “P.E.C. complete #4”
“#1 complete” came Chuck Midden’s response.
“Depressurizing bay compartment.” Russel said as his hand hit the pressure control panel. Bay compartment lights changed from white to red. The external pressure gauges in the hoppers counted backward to zero from 30”Hg bar. “Opening bay doors” Russel said. This ships receiving bay reminded Russel of a picture in the history records, of an old rail transport building called a round house. Each hopper entered a single bay door from space and straddled a conveyor track under itself. Four hoppers and four doors arranged like spokes of a wheel. The compartment was 50 feet in diameter and all the conveyors ended at four pneumatic shafts in the center of the floor. When mining in earnest, all four doors would be open, with the ships entering, unloading and leaving independently of each other.
Beneath the floor or behind this bulkhead in ship orientation was the aft section of the ‘Twin’ 320,000 cubic meters of load storage compartments, 5,000 cubic meters of liquefied hydrogen fuel, 2,000 cubic meters of reserve fuel, and the ships fusion and ion drive pods. Forward or over their heads were the survey section, communication room, gym, crew quarters and commissary, equipment lockers and lounge. On top of these or furthest forward was the command cell, a round nosed cone thirty feet at its base tapered to five at its point. Two thirds of this space was taken by the components of the computer. The center of which was the commanders control cell a ten foot diameter room with a real time display of the stars against the inside of the five foot diameter parabolic screen in the nose cones tip. Eight additional screens lined the walls of the cell and could be opaque or display anything from recorded pictures, to data telemetry, to star fields. If desired, the commander could sit in his chair and be surrounded by the stars as if he were standing on the hull of the ship outside.