Claws That Catch

CHAPTER SEVEN

All machinists on a nuclear boat were “nukes.” That is, they had been through the Navy’s brutal Nuclear Power School after learning their other craft.

Thus PO Gants had been through a course that was the near order of a bachelors in nuclear engineering. Even if most of the time he felt like a glorified plumber.

However, that meant that most of his time was not taken up with glorified plumbing: It was taken up with watching the many readouts related to the power system of the Blade II. Eight hours out of every day everyone on the ship stood “watch” with an additional four hours of “duty.” (Glorified plumbing.) What “watch” meant depended upon the speciality. But in Gants’ case it meant watching a large number of readouts from, on this watch, Fusion Engine Two, which were not supposed to be fluctuating.

With a nuclear power system, such as had been on the original Nebraska, Gants would have known not only what any fluctuation meant directly but the thousands of additional issues it would cause.

However, the Blade II had fusion engines. He’d read the manual on fusion engines, understanding a surprising amount, but he could not really be called, in his opinion, fully certified. Then again, there were no humans that he considered “fully certified” on Hexosehr fusion engines.

So when one of the waterfall displays, vertical colored readouts that ran from green at the top through yellow then red, started flickering, he wasn’t positive if it was the first signs of cataclysm or just something “hinky.”

The whole fusion conversion system was a bit of a mystery, frankly.

In nuke boats radioactive fission released heat which boiled water which turned turbines which made electricity. Which was why one name for nuke boats was “tea kettles.”

The way that fission works is a “slow” neutron is captured by uranium 235 turning it into uranium 236. This destabilizes the uranium atom which then breaks apart, fissions, into, usually, barium and krypton gas and energy. Lots of energy. The fission releases 200 times the amount of energy in the neutron and, notably, gamma rays and more neutrons. The new neutrons continue to break up more uranium, thus the “chain reaction” part. The excess energy is mostly in the form of heat.

The heat is transferred to water (or in some cases sodium or helium) which in turn is run via pipes through other water. That water, turned to steam, drives massive turbines. The turbines directly drive the propellers and also produced electrical power.

In a fusion boat, helium three (He3) atoms were fused together. Like a fission reaction, that produced heat. It also produced plasma, atoms that had been stripped of their electrons. He3 was used because, unlike deuterium and hydrogen, it produced no secondary radiation.

Instead of boiling water, a secondary Hexosehr system grabbed the stripped electrons for electricity as well as used the generated heat to produce more through the “heat converter” unit. About 90% of the generated energy was captured and turned to electricity. Which was good since too much heat in a spaceship was a bad thing. Using the Hexosehr systems gave them four times as long between chills as the Blade I.

The whole thing was encased in a magnetic containment bottle. The containment bottle was, in fact, bottle shaped, having an opening on one side. That led to the plasma conduits and the heat transfer system, which had their own magnetic containment. The helium 3 that fueled the thing was inserted through rapidly opening and closing “holes” in the magnetic containment bottle.

Input: the He3. Output: the total power released in the fusion bottle. Throughput was how much electricity was scavenged. There was an “input” side of throughput from output that was measured as well.

What he was seeing, every five seconds more or less, was a slight drop in thoughput. Just a flicker. Fusion Two was set at 80% output, a good level for fast cruising. Every now and then throughput dropped about two percent.

What was bugging him was that if the throughput was flickering, the output should have been. And there should have been other systems showing a fault.

But only throughput was flickering. Actually, input power of the throughput systems. Which meant about two percent of the output was disappearing. Somewhere. To be specific, somewhere in the bottle. Given that the power contained in the bottle was nearly as much as destroyed Nagasaki, two percent of it disappearing was… problematic.

He reached up and touched a control, bringing up the numeric readout of output for the last few hours. Sure enough, he could see where the output started flickering. About ten minutes ago. It wasn’t visible with the waterfalls or the numeric readouts.

He sat back and contemplated that for a bit.

“Got a problem, Gants?”

The lieutenant of the watch was a nuke. He had a degree in nuclear power and had been through the same school, albeit for officers, as Gants. He had more theoretical knowledge than the machinist and Gants acknowledged that. But, like Gants, his training was in fission not fusion. They were not the same.

Gants, therefore, didn’t answer directly. He called up the same screens while he thought and pointed to the changes.

“How can you have a two percent drop in throughput but less than one in output?” the lieutenant mused.

Gants had started off thinking the same thing. But he was bugged by something.

He pulled up a detail of the containment bottle. The readouts were designed for fairly large-order changes and he was looking for very slight ones.

Dialing down he finally found what he was looking for, thought about it for a moment and reached out like a cobra to hit the SCRAM button, shutting down the fusion reactor.

“What?” the LT shouted. “What are you doing?”

“We were about to lose containment, sir,” Gants said, calmly, as alarms started to scream throughout the ship.

When Weaver reached the engineering compartment, the Eng, the lieutenant of watch and Chief Gestner were bent over the panel for Fusion Two while Gants was standing off to one side, his arms folded.

“What happened?” Bill asked.

“Gants SCRAMed the plant, sir,” Chief Gestner replied as the CO trotted into the crowded compartment.

“Why?” Prael asked.

“He says we were about to lose containment,” the Eng said, looking at the readouts. “I don’t see it. We were getting output fluctuations and one of the bottle cells was two percent out of alignment, but I don’t see that causing a containment failure.”

“What do you have to say, Petty Officer?” the CO asked just as Weaver said: “Which one?”

“XO,” the CO said. “I have this.”

“Yes, sir,” Bill replied.

“PO?” the CO asked, looking at Gants.

“There was a drop in throughput intake with a lower drop in output, sir,” Gants said, shrugging. “And the number three containment series was down two percent. Only the number three…”

“And that caused you to SCRAM the reactor?” the Eng asked angrily.

“Damned straight,” Weaver said, turning pale. “Oh, hell, yeah.”

“Okay, sir,” Commander Oldfield said, grabbing his head. “What am I missing?”

“Gants?” Bill asked.

“Pinch bottle reaction, sir,” the PO replied, his face stony.

“Pinch bottle…” the CO said, then turned pale as Weaver. “Damn it!”

“Pinch bottle…” Gestner muttered, flipping through the manual. “M… N…”

“Try looking for ‘discontinuous lobular reaction series,’ Chief,” Bill said, furiously. “Look under ‘Critical Emergency Conditions.’ The bottle was out of alignment, causing the primary reaction mass to form in a non-smooth fashion. The whole thing is a hydrogen bomb trying to go off. It’s a barely controlled sun, Chief Petty Officer! The magnetic containment prevents the power from destroying the ship. It only works if the power is maintained uniformly across the interior of the bottle. When you get a pinch bottle reaction, you’ve got most of your power forming in a small area that places undue stress on the local containment cluster. And when that portion finally fails, as it will, the whole thing goes ‘boom’ in a very unfun fashion. But a two percent drop in the third series doesn’t explain that.”

“I know, sir,” Gants said, clearly tuning everyone else in the room out. “The only thing I can figure is that the primary optical drivers are out of alignment, but they show as aligned.”

“Well, my recommendation is that the system remains down until we figure out the fault,” Bill said.

“Concur,” the CO said. “Eng, I want my fusion plant working. Which means fusion explosions going on inside the containment bottle not outside. Soon. We’re going into a partial chill while you work on it. If you can’t get it up, this mission is a scrub.”

“Okay, sir, I’m buggered if I can figure this out,” Chief Gestner said quietly.

The portions of the fusion bottle that could be taken apart had been taken apart. The compartment that held the actual fusion reactors was a “clean” room since the slightest contamination would just make the problem worse. In fact, the first check they’d made was for contaminants in the injection series and the fuel. Both had come up clean.

“Unfortunately, Chief, so am I,” Commander Oldfield said with a sigh. “And with it down, we’re going to take nearly twice as long to get back to earth as we did coming out.”

“Injectors are cleaned,” Red Morris said, walking over. “Lasers are aligned. Software is nominal. Mags meet specs and are aligned. Fuel is to spec. What next, sir?”

“Put it back together and see if it comes up properly,” the Eng said confidently. “If not, we’ll go to secondary methodology.”

“Which is what, exactly, sir?” Gestner asked as the machinists got to work putting the fusion reactor back together.

“Damned if I know,” the Eng admitted.

“And we have ignition,” Gants said, his clean suit still on.

“Power to ten percent,” the Eng said, looking over his shoulder.

“Power to ten percent, aye,” Gants said, bringing up the power on the system. “We’re going to need somewhere to put it soon, sir.”

“Somewhere to put it, aye,” the Eng replied. “Route power to main engine. Chief, tell maneuvering they’re going to have to start running for us to see if this is back in spec.”

“Got it, sir,” Gestner said.

“Forty percent, sir,” Gants said.

“Shut it — !”

Before the words were out of the officer’s mouth Gants had hit the cut-off switch.

“Bigger surge than before, sir,” Gants said, pointing to the replay. “That one was close.”

“Concur,” the Eng said, then sighed. “I need to think on this one…”

“Gants, tell me you put this thing together right,” Gestner said.

Gants was attempting to carefully insert the injector bore into the fusion engine’s wall. The injector wasn’t actually secured, it simply slipped in. Various jokes were made about it, especially since it very definitely could not be lubricated.

But the point was that it had to fit precisely. Which the petty officer could not do with his hands shaking in anger. So he set it down very carefully; the slightest scratch on its surface would make it impossible to insert.

“Chief, with all due respect, you carefully and completely supervised the disassembly of the fusion engine,” Gants said, breathing deeply and trying not to lose it. “You then paid just as close attention to the checks, the adjustments, the tests and the reassembly. Not to mention the second disassembly. If I did anything wrong, please feel free to tell me right now as I’m doing the most fiddly part of the second reassembly, Chief Petty Officer!”

“We’re all frustrated, Gants,” the chief said, for once placatingly.

“You know why I’m really frustrated, Chief?” the petty officer asked, picking up the injector.

“I don’t supppose it has something to do with a certain linguist,” the chief said, sighing.

“If there is one person on this ship who could maybe figure this out, Chief…”

“Fine,” Gestner said, throwing his hands up. “I see nutting! I hear NUTTINK!”

“Oh, no, Chief,” Gants said, finally getting the damned thing aligned and slipping it in. “Not this time.”

“Gants…” the chief warned.

“What? Are you suggesting that I disobey a direct order of the captain, Chief Petty Officer?”

“You’re going to push this, aren’t you?” Gestner said.

“I’m not pushing, Chief,” Gants said, getting the injector seated. “The manual is very clear on that. Just ease it in, don’t push.”

“Grapper,” Gestner muttered.

“That would be Petty Officer Grapper, Chief Petty Officer,” Gants said with a grin as the chief stomped out.

“I don’t know,” Miriam said.

The chief had brought with him all the records of the repairs, which in true Nuke Navy fashion meant every single step had been documented and recorded. What had taken nearly a day to accomplish and what the chief had to admit to himself would have taken a professional nuke officer an hour to review had taken the linguist twenty minutes.

“That’s not good to hear,” Gestner replied.

“I would have thought you’d be happy to hear I’m stumped,” Miriam said, flipping back through the pages.

“Not when the ship is on the line, miss,” the chief said. “You’re sure you don’t know…”

“Oh, I know what was happening,” Miriam said. “The injector had gotten misaligned. It probably was misaligned from when we left and slowly shifted out of position more as it was used. There’s a record of a strip-down and repair, normal maintenance, done two weeks before we left. I’d guess it wasn’t properly aligned then. That caused a bubble reaction. What I don’t get is why it’s still malfunctioning. Realigning the injector should have fixed it. Could you do me a favor?” Miriam asked, looking up and grinning winningly.

“Of course, miss,” the chief said. “What do you need?”

“Bring the injector to the science section,” Miriam said. “Oh, and the third sector battery of electromagnets. I think I might know what is going on.”

“Miss, this is the last magnet,” the seaman said, setting the fifty pound device down carefully on a table.

Miriam had opened up the clean room in the science section and was bent over the electron microscope.

“Thanks,” she said absently. “Can you get Chief Gestner and PO Gants for me, please?”

“Yes, ma’am,” the seaman said, darting back through the blower.

“Odd…” Miriam muttered.

“Hey, Miriam,” Gants said as he stepped into the clean room. He and the chief had both donned new coveralls, masks and hoods before being swept for any remaining particles.

“Catch,” Miriam said, tossing him the injector.

“Holy shit, ma’am,” Gants said, catching the priceless item carefully. “Without that…”

“Since it’s useless, even if you dropped it we wouldn’t have a problem,” Miriam said, grinning like a cat. “Okay, you had one problem. That caused another problem and that caused a third. Ready?”

“Go,” the chief replied.

“The injector was almost certainly misaligned before we left,” Miriam said. “You need to be clear that tolerance is in the micrometer range. More like nanometer range. I’ll come up with a better aligner for it so we don’t have the problem again. I think the Hexosehr use a microsonic system that’s better than what we use for alignment. But I’ll come up with something.”

“Okay,” Gestner said. “But what are the other problems?”

“When the injector shot the He3 into the fusion bottle, that put undue stress on the third magnet battery. Among other things, it meant that some particles were getting through the magnetic bottle. Those, in turn, degraded the material of the magnets and their support. What happened then was that as the magnets had to work harder, they started… pulsing. They weren’t designed to put out the extra power continuously so they were putting it out in fluctuations.”

“That loss of power I was seeing?” Gants asked.

“That was very late in the process,” Miriam replied. “It was actually a sign that things were about to go critical. No, this would have been indetectable to our instruments. But that caused a blowback condition, particulate mostly, which was hitting the injector. Which in turn…”

“Degraded the material of the injector,” the chief finished.

“Yes,” Miriam said. “It’s only noticeable under electron microscopy and even then I had to use a crystal flux spectrometer. But the edge of the injector is heavily degraded. So. You’re going to need to replace all the third sector magnets, all their supports including feedback systems, physical supports and power supports. And the injector. That should fix the problem.”

“I’m not sure we have all that in stock,” the chief said.

“That, Chief Gestner, is why you should be glad the XO found the fabricator you nearly left on Earth. It has every part small enough to reproduce in its database. Go see if you can figure out the shiny buttons.”

“Humming along nicely,” Captain Prael said, looking at the fusion reactor. “Good job, Eng.”

“Thank you, sir,” the engineering officer said blankly. “Chief Gestner and PO Gants were critical in determining the nature of the fault and methods of correction.”

“What was the problem?” the CO asked.

“Misalignment of the injector system led to a chain failure, sir,” the Eng said. “We’re doing up an SOP change and… personnel are working on a new alignment system that will prevent a recurrence.”

“I’ll make sure you get a letter on this,” the CO continued. “And do some up for the critical crew.”

“Yes, sir,” the Eng said, wondering if he dared slip Miss Moon into the pile. Probably not.

“Now if things will just hold together for a little while longer…” the CO muttered as he left the compartment.