Down Under Crater Billy

Sorry has a running program to passively watch for anomalous activities. He called me, and when I got to the pool I found Frankie and his swim class gleefully bouncing up and down atop the water, the abnaddled Hydrofilm having turned the pool into a giant trampoline.

This story illustrates another reason companies willingly pay the heavy freight it takes to have their products abnotech tested. The Serendipity Factor.

Sentiease took Frankie’s discovery and ran with it. This led to a whole new fuel and water storage technology, self-sealing hull coatings for ships and boats and tankers, and a hundred other spinoffs. Other manufacturers started working on their own versions of Super-hydrofilm, but Sentiease was there first, and grew from a smallish maker of industrial/ commercial NT products to one of the Big Kids on the Block by the time they got there.

Frankie’s bonus was big enough for him and his family to retire on, but they’re still here.

Because it’s home.

And because not one in a hundred of us wants to risk the trip back to Earth.

One hour and two cups of coffee later I was about ready to pull on a pressuit’s helmet. Once again Leak’s Law had proved itself; only moments after I suited up, I had to take one. I was going to make myself wait, the suit’s grimly functional facilities being what they were.

Gloria and I had argued about this, of course, me insisting that as Chief Safety Officer and one of the ten most cautious people in Crater Billy it was my duty to be the first one to test this new airlock. She wanted to do it because she’s Testing Chief and believes herself to be indestructable.

I finally won, but it was pyrrhic victory that left me feeling more like a wiener who had volunteered for the fry pan, bun and mustard treatment, than a winner.

“All you have to do is walk through,” Gloria assured me once again. “The enties are progged to part enough to let you out, yet stick so close to each other and the intruding surface—that’s you, my sweet—that no air escapes at the same time. The hole your body creates will close up behind you like it was never there. Now remember, there will be some resistance, so be ready for it.”

I was already in resistance, so I guessed I was as ready as I’d ever be. “I will,” I promised, picking up the helmet.

“We’ve put a good setup together, Dave. There shouldn’t be any problems even if something goes wrong.”

She was theoretically correct. I’d insisted that the outer chamber’s door be closed and locked, and that Gloria, Manny and Anna suit up in case the lock failed, even though worst-case pressure drop probably wouldn’t cause anything worse than earaches and maybe a nosebleed or two. She’d continued to go out of her way to stay on my good side, agreeing with every precaution.

“Once you’re on the other side, go to the terminal at the far end of the room. All you have to do is type in your name. The time, date, your rating, and all the rest will be logged automatically.”

“OK.” I pulled my helmet on and locked it onto its ring. It all sounded easy enough, which of course only increased my gut-level conviction that it probably wouldn’t be.

“Commcheck,” Gloria’s said over my suit’s radio.

“Loud and clear,” I answered, Anna and Manny echoing me.

“Then let’s begin.” If she were only this businesslike all the time we’d fight a lot less. At least while we were working. That’s not what a man wants to hear a woman say before lovemaking. Makes it sound like a test or something.

I took a deep breath, a totally pointless exercise in a pressuit. “Here goes nothing.”

Up close the surface of the lock looked even more like a finely woven metallic cloth, a macro effect of the microlattices the interlocking enties formed. Gloria had called it a “smart solid.” I preferred die dumb kind.

I’d spent part of the two hours between when I’d first seen the thing and this visit having Sorry soothe me with statistics on Mercedes-Motorola Microwerks. They were tied with Blafrica NT and Little Josie’s Tiny Critter Factory for the lowest rate of flakiness in devices we tested. Not one single injury could be laid to their account.

Hoping I wasn’t the first, I reached out my gloved left hand—the fingers I figured I could most afford to lose—and touched the lock’s surface. It felt firm, yet with an inherent give to it, something like human flesh. I found it kind of creepy.

“How’s it feel?” Gloria asked. She was standing right behind me, ready to drag me back if it tried to eat me. If you don’t think that’s possible then you’re not an abnotech who has tried to go through a revolving door or use an elevator.

“It’s kind of, um, strange. I feel resistance, but the harder I push the more give there is, and it—oh—”

The surface gave and my gloved hand slipped into the black stuff fairly easily, like it was something thick but not solid; a bucket of honey for instance. I felt my fingers come out on the other side. “How thick is this crap, Gloria?” I asked in a reasonably calm voice.