Farlost: Arrival

Part 2

Chapter 3


'The Toad's fine, D. Let's go!"


"Keep your panties on, Raj!" Dina Rodriguez called over her shoulder to the two men tugging themselves free of their armored space suits as she tapped through menus on the screen mounted on the oversized airlock door.


On the screen, blocks of green halo'd the wire drawing of the anchors safely locking her ship into its cradle. She looked out the window and made a second pass with her flesh and blood eyes.


The short range maintenance craft with the fancy name Bullfrog, and the nickname Toad, took up almost every inch of space in the massive craft and equipment airlock. Sure enough, the chunky anchors beneath the two heavy-duty equipment pods at the rear were engaged, and the two lighter front arms were fully extended, with their heavy-duty articulated hands locked around support struts built into the rear wall of the EVA craft storage tank.


She really did look like a toad, Dina admitted to herself. All the sam e, she gave the craft a motherly nod, and began unzipping her own space suit.
She directed her gaze to the mechanized EVA suit stored under the close side of the Toad - Mur's mech. "How was the balance this time out, Mur?"


She heard the airlock beep and hiss behind her and turned to see Murray tugging on the ugly plaid lumberjack he insisted in wearing over his Haskam issue jumpsuit. Pilots and EVA experts were expected to be a little crazy. She supposed that extended to fashion sense, too.


"Frick's not moving so stiff, since I took a hammer to his right ankle." Murray scratched his patchy beard and grinned.


She took another look at Frick. The mechanized EVA suits were fifteen feet tall, blue and white workhorses, built to provide both muscle and fine strength. Each had two sets of three-fingered hands and feet: one set capable of bending alloy and one set capable of carefully manipulating wires in enclosed spaces.


The mental image of five-foot-nothing Murray cursing and wailing on the armor-plated mech was made more ludicrous by the crude happy face he'd painted across high, circular plating that passed for it's head: a smiley face in a circle, painted carefully around the various sensors and lights.
"That there is proof Frack's a more advanced mech," Raj taunted. "He doesn't need any of that rough stuff."


Frack sat under the rear 'foot' on the far side of Bullfrog. Both had been designed in the same factory at the same time, and were materially the same except for their paint jobs, but don't tell that to their drivers.
"Advanced, right," Murray said. "Is that why you gotta pipe that silly jazz through the group channel when you're working?"


"Kenny G is a master of improvisational jazz, and Frack's a sensitive machine," Raj grumbled as finished zipping up his work suit and draped a hat over his long, pony-tailed black hair. "He works better with the right mood music. Man, I need a nic-fix Murray, what have you got?"


Murray froze, his rolled up knit watch cap halfway to his head. "I thought you had the patches!"


Raj winced. "Murray! We're going into the cellar! For. Days. Now you're telling me we're going cold turkey too?!"


Dina laughed, killing the lights in the vehicle storage tank and grabbing a black backpack floating on the hook with her name plate. "Relax, kids," she drawled. "Mama packed for the trip."


She pulled out a shrink-wrapped carton of nicotine gum and waggled it in front of their eyes. Her crew whooped their appreciation as she cracked the carton and tossed a pack to each of them. They tore into the packs as she bounded past them through the open airlock. "Okay now, I promised Dwyer we'd haul ass, so hurry up!"