Delta Green - страница 34
McKenna stopped himself by grabbing the edge of the hatchway and eased into the corridor. Benny Shalbot was tethered by Velcro straps to the hangar control console below a window that overlooked the inside of the hangar cell. He was double-checking the content of the atmosphere he had pumped into the cell and shutting down the control systems.
Shalbot looked like a weight-lifting leprechaun. Nearly bald, with a bulbous nose and a large head, he was muscled and fit. And beneath all that pate was a brain that not only remembered most of the formulas and schematics involved in radio, radar, computer, and weapons systems electronics, but also understood them.
“How you doing, Benny?”
“This fucking job is driving me crazy, Colonel.”
“Maybe it’s time to go Earth-side for awhile,” McKenna suggested.
“What! And lose my hazardous duty pay?”
Shalbot was among the first to bitch about the Air Force, the station, and his chores, but he would also be the first to stand ankle-deep in the gore and blood running from his wounds, and defend it.
“You okay, Colonel?”
“Fine, Benny.”
“Grapevine says an actuator relay cut out on Blue.”
“That’s what they told me.”
“Goddamn it! I should have caught it.”
Shalbot ran the electronics diagnostics tests on all of the aerospace craft, every time they docked at Themis, updating Brad Mitchell’s centralized computer maintenance files.
“It was probably fine when you tested it, Benny. Hell, you can’t catch all the glitches.”
“I can damn sure try”
“Don’t sweat it, Benny.”
McKenna grabbed a handhold on the console and pushed off toward the “down” end of the corridor. “Down” was toward the outer rim of the hub, and toward the spokes, and “up” was toward the core.
The hub was divided like two onion slices into the hangar/storage half and another half that was a maze of corridors, offices, and more storage spaces. Technicians swam along the corridors, appearing from and disappearing into labs and maintenance areas.
McKenna waved through a window at Mitchell as he went by the maintenance office, then slowed to peek into the exercise room. It was Compartment A-47, but outside of the station commander and the maintenance officer, McKenna didn’t know anyone who called it that.
It was fitted on all walls with specialized equipment for maintaining muscle tone. On the wall opposite the door was a small centrifugal weight machine. All of those aboard who did not regularly return to the Earth’s surface were provided with an exercise regimen by the station’s doctor. And everyone spent ten or fifteen minutes a day spinning in the artificial gravity of the centrifugal weight machine.
As he watched, the centrifugal machine spun down to a stop, and Polly Tang unbuckled herself from the seat.
“Hi, Kevin.”
“Want to come along and watch me change out of my flight suit?”
“No.”
“Want to join me for lunch?”
“Sure. My treat.”
Tang was wearing the blue jumpsuit with built-in boots that everyone aboard Themis wore for its practicality. It did not disguise the trim curves of her petite figure. That view, however, would be as close as he would get. Though the two of them had enjoyed their repartee for a long time, Tang was married to the chief HoneyBee engineer at Wet Country and had two children she adored.
She waited while he slipped into the pilots’ locker room, doffed his environmental suit, and pulled on a fresh jumpsuit. Aboard the space station, no one wore insignia or badges of rank.
He pulled himself through the curtain back into the corridor. “Ready, lover?”
“After you,” she said.
“The view’s better if I follow you.”
“After you,” she said.
McKenna grinned and asked, “Do you have a dining preference?”
“The Skylight Room in Sixteen today, I think.”
“A charming place,” McKenna agreed, and shoved off the hatchway jamb. Tang followed.
The corridor bisected the hub, and when McKenna reached the curved hallway that went clear around the outer diameter of the hub, he caromed off the outer wall, pushing off again. He heard Tang’s feet slap at the bulkhead as she pursued him.