Load Bearing Member

By Sean Monaghan

Coral Daimeer lugs her wrench around the deep space vessel the Derlater. Sensors tell her what to fix. Coral fixes it. Coral's intuition makes her great at her job.

 

Mostly.

 

A story that explores the question of what can a single crew member do when faced with impossible odds millions of miles from the nearest hardware store.

 

 

From Sean Monaghan, author of Lydia's Mollusk and The Ergs.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Triple V Publishing
• Release date: Dec 20, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201923204

Sean Monaghan

Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music. Award-winning author, Sean Monaghan has published more than one hundred stories in the U.S., the U.K., Australia, and in New Zealand, where he makes his home. A regular contributor to Asimov’s, his story “Crimson Birds of Small Miracles”, set in the art world of Shilinka Switalla, won both the Sir Julius Vogel Award, and the Asimov’s Readers Poll Award, for best short story. He is a past winner of the Jim Baen Memorial Award, and the Amazing Stories Award. Sean writes from a nook in a corner of his 110 year old home, usually listening to eighties music.

Book preview

Chapter One

Coral Daimeer tapped with a number thirteen wrench at the errant fitting. A bell-like sound echoed around the chamber. Almost pretty, except for the situation.

Coral hung weightless. Derlater, the vessel, lay twenty million kilometers from Earth. A fair chunk of the distance to Mars.

The chamber was Ac2R6. A sphere, two meters across. Most of the cabins and spaces in Derlater were spheres. Spheres or cylinders. Easy for pressure systems. The space between was mostly filled with high-porosity plastic. Insulation and radiation protection.

Hard, though, to imagine the vessel as anything other than a coiling string of soap bubbles. Ready to burst at the gentlest touch.

Ac2R6 gave access to the propellant system. The chamber reeked of machine oil and of Piaar. It was her job, really, to take care of this kind of thing. There were sixteen of them aboard, from newbies to people well into their second decade of cycling back and forth between Mars and Earth.

Piaar didn't smell worse than any of them, really. But hers was a distinct B.O.

The fitting was a .15 pipe that carried conduits with data readings inside. There was no way into the propellant tanks, but they had so many sensors inside they could have been repurposed to map Mars down to millimeter detail.

Tiny as they were, the sensors must have taken up a noticeable percentage of the tank.

Ac3R6 had dozens of the fittings, brass pipes, cables and conduits. All of them led through a steel control box with good old reliable gauges on the face. There was a standard plug in for a display too, so you could download the data.

The circles of the regular gauges was kind of reassuring, though. Reliable, and not dependent on the flow of electricity.

Coral rolled her shoulders. Pins and needles. Had to watch that out here. She exercised more than most—and she got that; two hours strapped to a treadmill? Most people would rather risk the bone atrophy. Or play Stupid Block Game V.18.2 or whatever.

She was wearing standard ship overalls, in a nice dark blue, with some stylish epaulettes and tight cuffs. Her pair were getting on a bit. Oil stains on the sides and wear patches at the knees. It was hard to look your best when you had to spend your days coaxing reluctant equipment to continue functioning.

She tapped at the fitting again. It had shifted slightly out of alignment. Which meant that there might be bum readings. There had been. The sensor analysis readings had logged the job.

Come fix it.

It looked about right now. From her waist belt she took a handheld scanner and ran the lasers over fitting. The scanner would read, extrapolate and build a virtual three-D model which the ship's computer would then compare to how the setting should look. Not as if this made a whole lot of difference.

The ship was so old now she was mostly held together with string and gum and a dash of good luck. Maybe a lot of luck.

The scanner chirped that it had completed the readings and sent the data off to central.

Now she just had to wait for the results. Frustrating, really, having to adjust non-critical systems with less than millimeter precision.

Rollins would give her a lecture about safety protocols, of course. That was her job. Imugu Rollins. Executive Officer. She was always ready to give anyone a lecture about Derlater's history. Tell you how good of a vessel she