Metafire

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"I have to get on the other calls. Anything else?" Erisa was going to make Jane happy.

"No, thanks." And Wendy hung up.

Chapter 23 Scooter Burbank

Just as Jane was preparing to comment on Erisa's call, Frank spoke out loudly, "The cavern's coming in!"

A tug was approaching with one of the Metafire supply capsules. This one contained the 3M/Dupont inflatable cavern.

"We'll attach at the top," Angela said. "Frank, continue contact with the tug. Jane, you and Dave prepare entrance to the top latches. The tug will maneuver the capsule's top to our top." She was saying this because there was so much gear on board that stuff had to be moved about to clear an entrance way to the top door. "Oh yeh, Frank, have the tug move our rear assembly to the side station and have it move the other capsule's rear assembly to its side station."

"OK." Frank started typing on the purchase request form on his terminal. "This is going to cost about sixty thousand. That includes the tender from the capsule's orbital position."

"OK." Angela was not surprised. The tug was a specialized capsule that contained large windows, two robot arms, two people, and a lot of fuel for getting around. It was well suited for moving about on the periphery of New Boston or any other cluster. Tugs were brought up in Shuttles. Each had exactly one pressure door on the side. The door on the top end was replaced with the arm assembly, windows, and maneuvering rockets. People did not live on tugs. They worked on them. None of the standard capsules had enough rocket power to do more than make small positional corrections using their nitrozine rockets. Orbital decay had to be corrected by the tugs.


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