Hyper
Chapter 4 – A Cross Between Rotten Eggs and Oranges

[Location: Decontamination Depot t3rm1nu5 - Charlie and Linda’s Quarters, Earth Year 2061]

Charlie felt the caffeine kick in as the chemical began to stream through his arteries. He took one last drink, slid his handheld into his breast pocket, and headed for the door. Last night—just like every night when Charlie returned to their living quarters—Linda had cleaned the hydrogen soot from his safety helmet. He knew she did it as an act of love as much as to try and keep some of the contamination from their home. He lifted the helmet from the hook by the door and inspected it. A wisp of a smile crossed his lips as he thought about how loyal Linda was and how much she loved him.

Charlie put on the clean white safety helmet with the letters C.F.O. on the front and adjusted it for comfort. He covered his eyes with a pair of safety glasses and then turned to look at Linda one last time before he left. He could see the shape of her body underneath the pile of blankets that had been pulled up close to the top of her head and shoots of her blonde hair sticking out around her pillow.

He whispered, “Love ya, honey-pot.”

He silently closed and locked the door behind him, pulled on his work boots and walked down a short hallway about fifteen feet in length. The corridor was built with concrete blocks and had been installed to buffer some of the sounds and smells of the hydrogen facility from their quarters. The windowless electric door glided into the wall as he pressed a glowing red button mounted to his right. He stepped forward across the Home Sweet Home doormat Linda had laid out, then turned and closed the door from his side by entering a six-digit code into a keypad. He moved his ear muffs into place and walked forward into the plant heading for dock door three.

A hydrogen fuel condenser facility was a loud and smelly place. A twisted forest of pipes ran in every direction with a walkway of metal grate that meandered between them. Condensation from the pipes mixed with the hydrogen soot in the air to create a thin slimy black film on everything.

The most important part of the facility was the condenser system and it was a mechanical beast. It weighed over twenty tons and had eleven compressor motors driving the main screw. This iron monster generated a large rumbling sound that could be constantly heard and felt throughout the entire depot. Since the enormous structure was too big to ship as one piece, it had taken one hundred and thirty-four freighter trips to get all of the parts onto D.D.315. It took a team of seventy-five mechanics a little more than four months to assemble and commission the entire system.

Hydrogen was extracted from the vastness of space, condensed, stored, and then transferred to ships that were docked at the depot. The compacted gas was the fuel that powered the energy-cells that generated propulsion for modern space craft. Condensed hydrogen has quite a distinctive fragrance—sort of a cross between rotten eggs and oranges. And even though Charlie had lived on D.D.315 for a number of years, he still had not gotten used to it.

It took Charlie about ten minutes to make his way to dock door number three. His path led him between the enormous tanks of the mineralization separator as well as numerous clouds of vented steam and sweating tubular heat exchangers. He listened to his favorite song play through his head as he walked.

I-yiyi…wanna rock and roll all nnniight… and party every day.

Each docking bay had a separate equipment room that housed the dock door drive, an atmosphere generating compressor, and a fire suppression system.

Even though the station floated in the near vacuum of space that contained no oxygen, the threat of fire was a constant thought in everyone’s mind. If a fire was to erupt somewhere inside the depot and could not be put out, it would devour enormous amounts of oxygen. The station’s internal respiration system would try to keep up with the demand, which would eventually cause it to overload and then shut down. A fire that could not be contained and extinguished inside of D.D.315 would eventually die out having consumed all of the life sustaining gas onboard, but by the time this occurred, the overall oxygen level inside of the station would have been depleted well below the threshold for human life to exist.

The hydrogen pumping through the compression process was always a fire threat and the facility had an emergency foaming system that would immediately snuff out a flame anywhere in the plant. But it was also very common for a fire to be sparked by a visiting ship’s overheated propulsion drive or repulsor engines after the dock door had been closed and the area filled with oxygenated atmosphere. An additional system had been installed as a safety measure to try and extinguish a fire in the docking bay area before it spread to the rest of the depot.

Charlie turned the metal knob, pushed the heavy door of the equipment room open, and walked over to a large gray metal cabinet filled with multicolored wires and electronic machinery. The door slowly crept back into place while he noticed a few of Roy’s tools lying on the floor and a plastic cover and circuit board that had been removed from the drive unit that controlled the dock door. He flipped his muffs from his ears, folded his arms across his chest, and stood there inspecting Roy’s work and the machinery in front of him.

The drive unit was an electronic piece of equipment that controlled four, one hundred horsepower induction motors. Each one was connected to an oil filled gearbox that mechanically raised and lowered dock door number three. This specific drive unit had been in service for about ten years, which was well within its expected life span, but it had a history of problems. While the drives that ran dock door one and two ran flawlessly, the drive on dock door three had experienced a bad cooling fan, a blown bus fuse, a shorted input diode and now a bad control board over the same span of time. Charlie kept a healthy supply of replacement parts for the drive unit and every piece of equipment on D.D.315 for that matter. His worst night mare was having a piece of equipment go down and not being able to repair it because of a lack of parts. In space, there was no such thing as Next-Day-Air.

The smell of cutting oil caught his attention as he glanced over and saw a pipe threading station had been set up in an open area about ten feet away from the drive cabinet. Yesterday, he had assigned Roy the task of piping in a relief valve on the mineralization byproduct line and it looked as if he had almost finished the job before being interrupted by the malfunctioning bay door.

Then he heard it—felt it might be a more accurate description. Charlie held his breath and tension squeezed his chest as he perceived a small vibration beneath his feet. Within a few seconds the tremor grew in intensity along with his concern. The compressor was loading up and causing fits for the rest of the process control.

Condensing hydrogen was like the flow of a meandering stream in the forest. The hydrogen went through seven different stages in the process being filtered, cracked, and finally compressed. If you threw a monkey wrench into any point of the stream, the whole process goes catawampus and things get dicey. The least that could happen was the out of spec product being wasted and vented back into space. The worst that could happen was catastrophic equipment damage that would lead to an explosion. If the blast was severe it could rupture the hull of the ship and cause the oxygen rich atmosphere to escape into space.

Without the breathable environment, all of the inhabitants of the decontamination depot would suffocate within a few minutes. D.D.315 had experienced numerous situations where product was vented back into space but never an explosion. After a few nerve wracking seconds, the vibration subsided and then disappeared. Charlie exhaled and let his rapid heartbeat go back to normal.

Roy walked through the door with a circuit board in his hands and a smoldering cigarette hanging from his bottom lip. He had been the chief mechanic since the place was built. He knew every bend of pipe, every slurry tank valve, and every motor starter like the back of his hand.

Early on in life, Roy had been a successful P.L.V. (Powered Land Vehicle) mechanic for a number of years back on Earth. He was an expert on microprocessor controlled drive schemes and electronically controlled suspension systems. A majority of his skills transferred directly to the equipment he had to work on in D.D.315 so he was an excellent fit for the job.

Roy had two junior mechanics under him. Stan and Julio were also good mechanics but their skills were not as advanced as Roy’s. Both men had been sent to Decontamination Depot u4sn2ov6 for the next three Mars months to assist with a hydrogen core replacement in the condenser facility. Due to the lack of qualified maintenance people, moving mechanics between depots to help with large workloads was common.

He was an Army veteran just like Charlie. He had achieved the rank of Specialist Mechanic during his six-year stint in the service. Roy was about fifteen years older than Charlie, somewhere in his early fifties. He had a continuous five-o’clock-shadow and always smelled like a combination of nicotine and Kentucky bourbon.

Roy noticed that Charlie had arrived and he balanced his cigarette on his lower lip as he spoke. “Sounds like the argon scrubber is doing its job.”

The reason for the compressor loading was the impurity of the hydrogen being harvested from space. Large intakes on the side of D.D. 315 sucked in huge amounts of the gas and whatever else happened to be floating around in the area as well. Debris from broken asteroids and dust from comets was spread all across the universe and some of it would make its way through the intakes and into the condensing process. An argon scrubber was used to filter out the debris from the hydrogen so the process would run smoothly and safely.

It was common knowledge that the argon scrubber was the most critical component in the entire hydrogen condensing process. Lose the argon scrubber and you lose control of the condensing process. Lose control of the condensing process and you run the risk of an explosion and a vent into space. If you vented your atmosphere into the depths of space, your life would be going along with it.

Without looking at Charlie, Roy took the cigarette from his mouth and exhaled a plume of smoke. “This is our last spare. I’ll contact Central and order a couple more.”

Charlie nodded. “Might want to order a few more cases of Marlboros while you’re at it. I’m sure you’re running low.” Then he gave Roy a sly look as the mechanic re-hung the smoldering stick of tobacco on his lower lip.

Hydrogen is a highly flammable substance and can combust with as little as four percent concentration in the atmosphere. Roy had been informed that smoking in the hydrogen facility was violating safety rule number one, but he did it anyway. Charlie had repeatedly scolded him about his aberrant behavior and after a while, considered it futile to try and make him stop. Roy always gave the same bullshit excuse that the large amount of condensation hanging in the air would prevent a fire from occurring, but Charlie knew this explanation was simply not true.

But in the grand scheme of things, what was Charlie going to do, fire him? They were a million miles from Mars and it wasn’t as if there was a line of replacement candidates forming at the front door. Chief mechanics were hard to come by and trying to replace another one as good as Roy, would have been almost impossible.

Roy began to install the new circuit board into the drive unit, rolling his eyes at Charlie’s comment. “Ya know, if those fuckers from Astral-Express hadn’t filled bay one and two with barges, we could’ve had the transport dock in one of those spots. Three’s a piece of shit. It always has been. Something’s always wrong with it and that’s why I hate to use it.”

Charlie didn’t respond; he just nodded in agreement. He knew that nothing in life was ever perfect and over the years he had learned to live with some things being just the way they were. He always thought he had better things to spend his time on than sweating the small stuff, and installing a new control board on a dock door drive was definitely considered small stuff in his mind.

Even though his internal compass wasn’t deflected by minor annoyances, it didn’t mean that he wasn’t concerned with attention to detail and the completeness of a task. Charlie had earned the score of nine point eight out of a possible ten when Central did their facility wide inspection of D.D.315 last year. The only demerits were for a slight leak in one of the evacuation units and a burned out indicator lamp on the vacuum system control panel. Charlie’s father had always told him that Any job worth doing, is worth doing well and Charlie continued to follow this motto.

After a minute or two, Roy finished installing the circuit board and plastic cover. Then he hit the breaker to apply electrical power to the unit. Green L.E.D.s blinked and cooling fans spun to life as the electronic unit powered up.

Roy winked and snapped a quick nod at Charlie for a job well done and closed the cabinet door. “Looks like that did it.” He pinched the hot ash of his cigarette between his fingers to extinguish it and stuck the half burned roll of tobacco behind his ear to enjoy later.

“I’m gonna get back on that relief valve. I’m almost finished.” He walked toward the pipe threader, grabbed an oily orange rag, wiped his hands, and then tossed it on the floor.

Charlie put a mental check mark next to this problem and called it finished. That was the way he liked it: orderly and organized. He liked to plan his work and then work his plan as some would say, but he always left the door open a crack to take care of any emergencies that might unexpectedly erupt.

It was his job as C.F.O. to manage the work schedules and lead the maintenance crew. He would get his hands dirty every once in a while, but the majority of his time was spent on schedules, work orders, and planning. It wasn’t that he disliked working with his hands—and in many cases he actually enjoyed it—but he knew if he had his head inside of a machine, the proverbial pilot seat was vacant.

After Charlie had earned his driver’s license in his sophomore year of high school, he talked with his parents about getting a car to drive to school and his part-time job as a bag boy at the supermarket. Following the family meeting, Charlie and his father went to the scrap yard to see what kind of vehicles had been discarded as junk.

After a few hours of scouring through acres of old rusted cars, they settled on a 1986 Pontiac Firebird. Charlie liked the car because it was sporty and looked fast. Charlie’s father liked the car because it seemed to be solid, had little rust, and would make a great candidate for a restoration.

For the next three months, Charlie and his father worked side by side on the car every night after supper. His father was good with his hands and wanted to impart this knowledge to his only son.

Before Charlie’s father turned over the keys for the Firebird’s maiden voyage, he had a serious discussion with him. He explained how important it was to be a sensible and mature driver. He stressed that Charlie was never to drink alcohol, not even one sip, while driving the car.

As Charlie’s father placed the key into his son’s hand, he looked him in the eye. “The engine in your car has more than three hundred horsepower and it requires a responsible young man to keep all that power under control. You and I had a great time over the last few months working on the car and putting it back together. Don’t disappoint me and your mother by taking this privilege for granted and getting yourself hurt.”

Charlie listened to the instructions closely and promised to be careful and always do the right thing. He was thrilled to drive his newly restored hotrod to the first day of his junior year in high school and his parents were happy that their son had a sound and reliable car. And he kept his solemn promise into adulthood and never touched a drop of alcohol while he was driving the Firebird or any other vehicle for that matter.

Charlie walked over and slapped Roy on the shoulder. “Nice work, pal. You finish up that valve and I’ll get the dock door open and message the transport.” He reached up, ready to move his ear muffs back into place. “I’ll spin up the sniffer system and call Linda and ask her to get the cafeteria up and runnin’.”

His face lit up as he smiled at Roy. “My stomach always looooves when a transport shows up. Know what I mean?”