Master Piece
“You’re kidding!” Emma Koenig exclaimed. “You can’t possibly be my co-pilot!”
“You’re right,” her brother Alex replied, tossing his jump back to her and heading aft to stow the box he was carrying. “You’re my co-pilot.”
“Not bloody likely!” she snorted. “What’s in the box?”
“Something for Mom’s baby.” Alex rolled his eyes. One thing the older Koenig children agreed upon was that Richie, the youngest, was spoiled rotten. “And Mom says you’re to be nice to him while we’re there.”
“Be nice! He’s the one who broke my arm.” Emma waved the offending appendage in the air, fully healed two months later. That scuffle had banished Richie to C-2 for a year, something even Emma thought was an extreme punishment. Her father had a temper too, and Emma was certain that one squeak from her could wind up with walking behind a tractor picking up rocks on Loki for the remainder of the season. She reached for a clipboard. “Is that on the manifest?”
“Should be.” Alex checked the label. “Box C29B, Personal for R. Koenig,” he read. He weighed it in his hands. “Feels like books.”
“Probably medical books. Richie is welcome to them.” She checked off the box and noted the checks by all the other items. The cargo Eagle was packed to the gills with items for C-2. It was a quick and routine run. Four Eagles were lifting for C-2 today, two filled with flour ground from Loki grain and other foodstuffs the smaller colony did not produce for itself. The others held certain building materials needed for a planned expansion. The Eagle Emma and Alex had drawn carried held boxes of electronic equipment and wiring for the new section and any personal items or mail from friends here on Alpha. It was very unusual for the siblings to be assigned to the same Eagle.
Emma headed for the command module, Alex close on her heels, both trying to claim the pilot’s seat for their own. It took all the self-control the two teens contained to keep from scuffling in the access hallway, but both knew Alan would ground them if they were caught.
“Pax.” Alex declared, hand on her wrist. “Why don’t we take turns? I pilot out, you pilot back?”
Emma glanced at the large slate she had already stowed next to the pilot’s chair. The comm panel chimed and she gave a curt nod, snatched up the slate and slid into the co-pilot’s seat to answer the call. Alex was in the pilot chair in a heartbeat.
“Well, ready to go?” Alan Carter’s grinning face appeared on the screen.
“All ready.” Emma replied. “You could had given us some warning.” She glanced significantly toward her brother.
“And listen to you whine and complain and scheming to switch? I think not. You’re both highly qualified pilots. If you can’t put aside your personal differences and work together then we need to rethink having you on the pilot roster.”
“We’ll be fine,” Alex insisted, giving his sister a firm look that made him look even more like a blond version of his father. She gave a nod of agreement.
“Glad to hear it,” Alan replied cheerfully. “Em, you have your slate with you?”
“Right here. Alex will be piloting to C-2 while I work.”
“Good to hear you have it all worked out. See you in a couple of days.” Alan gave a cheery smile and cut the connection.
Mission Control contacted them almost immediately, and for the next hour both pilot and co-pilot were engaged in lift-off and joining the convoy’s formation. Once the initial activity was accomplished Emma secured her board and turned to her slate. Alex pulled his puffball out of the net sling where he had been stowed for liftoff and set the pet in his lap.
“Isn’t that Dad’s slate?”
“He never uses it. It’s a prototype. They gave him one, and he tried it once, but thought it was too big to drag around. I don’t think they plan to make any more, but I like it.”
“What are you working on?” he asked.
Emma sighed. “Well, I want to work on a re-design of the Eagle. We need a larger version that transports more people, perhaps has room for four in the command module and can lift additional weight, to get cargo back from Loki more efficiently.”
“Wow, that would be great.”
“Yeah, except Alan says I have to prove I’m ready to start something like that.”
“Prove? How?”
“By making a master piece.” She said with a sigh.
“A what?”
“I have to come up with a device that will perform a function of benefit to Alpha, design it, oversee the building of a prototype and make reproducible plans. He says he got the idea from some old earth concept of people being admitted to a guild, becoming a master of their trade, by building one master piece that shows their skill in their craft.”
“Is this something engineers did on Earth?”
“Evidently it’s older than engineers. Mostly it was something from way back in the days of King Arthur or something.”
“I don’t think King Arthur was real.”
“Whatever. Anyway. If you built furniture, you had to prove you could design and build something all your own. Evidently wheel building was another important trade then.”
“Wheel building? Just wheels?”
Emma shrugged. “They must have needed a lot of them then, and they made them all by hand.”
“So what are you going to make?”
Emma sighed. “I have no clue. First I have to figure out something that’s needed. Then I have to build something that will work for it.”
“You do that stuff all the time. Weren’t you working on something Mandy needed just last week?”
“Yeah, but she just told me what she wanted and I looked it up and found some plans in the library and modified them. That’s not good enough.”
“
“Good luck.” Alex’s tone conveyed that he was glat it was her, not hom with this assignment.
“Yeah, thanks.” Emma sighed and settled in with the slate, determined to figure out something. After an hour or two she sighed and closed the slate, her research coming to naught.
“You hungry?” she asked.
“Yeah, I could eat.”
“Good, why don’t you go fix us something.”
“Hey, I’m the pilot here.”
“So what? Does that mean your butt is glued to that chair?”
“Who nominated you queen?”
“All right. I’ll go burn something for us both then. You always complain when I cook.”
“That’s because you always forget what you’re cooking. I can’t believe you can pilot Eagles and even think about redesigning them but you can’t manage to set a timer on the warmer right.” Alex unbelted and stood, deciding in self-defense, he might as well be the one to fix dinner. “Di made me some spice bread. Want some?”
“Mmmm, yeah. Sounds good. She’s such a good cook. You should marry her.”
“I will as soon as she turns eighteen. You guys have a year to go yet. Who do you think is going to marry you if you can’t cook?” Alex teased, digging into his jump bag for the carefully wrapped loaf of fresh bread. There was a displeased silence from the command module. He shrugged and pulled out two of the ready-to-eat meals, slid them in the warmer and set the timer. “You know, Hilly is a good cook too. Josh likes her cooking.”
“Good for Josh,” the reply wafted back to him.
Alex moved back up the aisle to the door of the command module. “Em. You can’t really still think…”
“Shut up, Alex. Just don’t say it.”
“Em.” He sat down on the door jam to the command module, handing her a chunk of the bread he had just unwrapped.
“Alex.” She frowned, but took the offered bread.
“I’m not your enemy on this. I just don’t think you’re being realistic.”
“I wish I’d never said anything to you.”
“You’ve never said anything to anyone else, either. Have you?”
“You haven’t told anyone?”
“No. I swear.”
“Just keep it that way, okay. Besides, I know I’m too young to be taken seriously. Everyone seems to freak about anyone marrying before they’re eighteen.”
Alex gave a soft chuckle. “Don’t I know it. I thought Bill was going to have heart failure last year when I told him Dinah and I planned on getting married.”
“She’d marry you tomorrow if she could.”
”I know. I’d marry her too.” Alex smiled a lazy smile and shrugged
philosophically. “It’ll happen.”
His slate chimed and he pulled it from his belt and checked the message. He frowned and tapped the screen to respond then hooked the slate back to his belt. He stood and headed aft to retrieve the rest of their dinner from the warmer, poured them each a mug of coffee and returned with the sectioned platters for each of them.
“What was that message about?”
“Oh, the strawberries are beginning to bloom. I’ll be on pollinating duty for a while now. Want to help? Good way to score some volunteer hours.”
“A good way to bore myself to death, you mean.”
“Boring, but necessary. And you like the end result. They bloom and fruit continuously for about three months. If you sign up for an hour a day they usually look the other way if you eat a few.”
“I’m not sure I’m cut out for that much boredom. Can’t you find some other way to do it?”
“Like what?”
“Like some automated means?”
“On earth they used bees – insects. I wish we had something. But blooms like oranges, apples and berries are too delicate to be blundering around with machines.
“Really?” Emma drawled thoughtfully. “Too delicate, hmmm?” She speared noodles on her fork and twirled them slowly before her. “Tell me about these blossoms, Alex.”
“You think you could really come up with something?”
Emma set her dinner aside and pulled her slate back into her lap. “Could be. Machines don’t have to be big and blundering.”
For the rest of the trip, Emma asked questions about pollinating and blossoms and the plants that needed help to fruit. Alex provided answers, some quickly, others after his own slate research. She had a file full of additional questions and another folder of tentative drawings and plans. During the next couple of weeks, she volunteered at least an hour a day to help with the pollinating, and she frequently brought along Josh, Davy or Dinah. She took pictures as they pollinated plants, putting small metallic dots on their fingers and brushes to get pictures on only the vectors made by their motions. She returned frequently to measure the plant containers, some of which were in horizontal rows in long tunnels while others were on the surface in vertical containers that went from floor to ceiling.
She also researched bees and other pollinating insects. At one point she sought out the librarian, holding a tattered paperback printed on earth. “It says it’s the Secret Life of Bees, but it doesn’t seem to have much to do with bees.”
The librarian gave her a sympatheic smile. “It’s fiction, Emma, and not really about the insects at all.”
“I know that now. Do you have anything about bees at all? Maybe something on their physiology?”
“I thought that was your brother who was interested in biology.”
“I’m working on a special project and I need to know about their movement.”
“Let me see what I can do. I may have an old nature video. If so, I can send it to your slate.”
“That would be terrific.”
Helena arrived home at two in the morning after an evening of classes, and an emergency surgery. A trauma case of a young technician who had tried to make a repair and got his hand caught in the machinery. She thought with real regret about a former colleague who had specialized in hands. She could have used his expertise as she tried to do her best to save the crushed hand. The boy was only fifteen, and might never regain the full use of his hand. She heard a sound from her daughter’s room and turned to check on her, as she had done so many times when the children were little.
“What’s all this?” She asked, opening the door to Emma’s small room to find it filled with tubs of plants.
Emma sat tailor fashion amidst the plants. She turned at her mother’s voice and smiled. “Hi Mom. I’m working on a project.”
“Do you know what time it is?”
“Um…” Emma thought for a moment, leaning over a tiny machine on the floor in front of her with an even tinier screw driver. “No. Not really. But I’m not flying tomorrow, so I’ll probably work here all day anyway.”
“What are you working on?”
“Well, I wanted it to be a secret, but I guess I can show you.” Emma picked up the little machine and showed her mother. Helena settled on the corner of the bed, fascinated by her daughter’s invention.
“So, do you think Alan will like it?” Emma asked as she finished her explanation.
“It works?”
“Well, it does what I tell it to do. That’s why I’ve borrowed these plants. I’ve been trying it out, and if they bear fruit, I’ll know it worked, because I didn’t pollinate them any other way.”
“When do you plan to show it off?”
“As soon as I see some sign of fruit. Alex knows about it. He’s helping me watch for fruit. Another few days, he says.”
“I think Alan is going to be very impressed,” Helena said with a smile. She stood and bent down to kiss her daughter on top of the head. “When you demonstrate it, I think everyone will be impressed.”
Emma basked in her mother’s praise for a moment, but by the time Helena had made her way back to the door, she was once again bent over her little device, deep in thought.
Five days later Emma arrived at breakfast in the cafeteria, still damp from her shower after her regular run in the gym, holding a large carton. She sat it on the floor before going to collect her breakfast. When she returned Alan asked her what it was.
“That’s my master piece.”
Alan raised his eyebrow. “Really? How are you coming with it?”
“I’m done.”
Alan looked surprised. “Done? You just started two months ago.”
“It’s ready to demo. I have an appointment with Mr. Gurdy in hydroponics this morning. Can you come?”
“Alan told me about this assignment,” her father said. “Mind if I come too?”
“Of course not. I’d love to have you there. Mama, you want to come too?”
“I wouldn’t miss it. I’ll call Medical Center and rearrange my schedule. I take it your tests worked.”
“Yes, they did.” Emma stated proudly. “Mr. Gurdy has given me clearance to use Hydroponics field room 17 for a test. It’s filled with strawberries right now.” She continued to tell Alan and her father about the project through breakfast and as they made their way to hydroponics. Other than Alex, her mother, and the hydroponics supervisor she hadn’t told anyone what she had been working on. She had worked quite independently, no matter how much she had wanted to tell Alan all about it.
Once they met Mr. Gurdy just inside the field room, a long low cavern filled with rows of hydroponics units designed for small fruits and vegetables, she sat the box on the floor and carefully removed her pollinator.
Rather than looking like a mechanical bee, it looked more like a black metal spider. It was a small round box no bigger than the palm of Emma’s hand. Eight appendages draped from it, each nearly a half meter long with multiple joints. It stood on the jointed legs as Emma pulled a set of small data cards from her pocket.
“Each type of plant requires different instructions. The actions for a number of plants are very similar, but the pollinator has specific parameters to check regarding the blossom. This one is for strawberries. We also did instructions for peppers, tomatoes, squash and melons. Those are the crops you grow simultaneously here, right Mr. Gurdy?”
The hydroponicist looked skeptical, but interested. He took the other cards while Emma kept the card for strawberries. “That’s right, Emma. As you should know. I’ve seen you in here almost as often as your brother the last couple of months.”
Emma smiled at him and inserted the card. The pollinator had two arms that immediately began to move. Emma picked it up and gently placed it at the end of a row of plants. She watched carefully to make sure each leg found a purchase on the flat top of the plants’ container then moved her hand back. The two flexible arms performed a search pattern over the plant beneath them. There were three blossoms currently open. As each was spotted by an arm, the arm flexed close to the blossom and a brushed past the stamen with a little flick and onto the pistil. Once the three blossoms were pollinated the eight legs carefully moved one at a time until it was repositioned over the next plant.
Mr. Gurdy and John both moved to kneel on either side of the row, watching carefully as the four open blossoms on this plant were passed over. They could see tiny brushes on the ends of the arms.
Alan watched with fascination. The pollinator moved on to the next plant.
“How does it find the blossoms?” John asked his daughter as two blossoms were pollinated on that plant while three buds were not even giving a passing hesitation. The small device gently picked up its feet and moved on.
“There are fiber optic cameras at the end of each arm. It’s programmed to find the white of the blossom, compare the image to a strawberry blossom and brush past the blossom at a height calculated to catch the pollen and fertilize the blossom.” She looked at Mr. Gurdy. “Alex explained that its better to pollinate from one plant to the other, but pollen is sticky, after the first plant, there should always be pollen from two or more previous plant’s blossoms on the brushes.”
“How does it find the right height?” Alan asked. Like everyone else on Alpha, he had helped with pollination. It was something they had all done to make certain they had enough to eat.
“Each arm carries two of the cameras. The stereo vision allows a calculation to determine distance and the program indicates the optimum distance from the petals for the brushes depending on the species. That’s why the programming is specific to each kind of plant.”
Mr. Gurdy was shaking his head. “This is… this is…” he stammered. “For years we’ve been…” he couldn’t finish his sentences. He looked across the row at John. “Commander, with these we could vastly increase the amount we could plant.”
“Remember, you still have to harvest by hand.” John said with a smile, but he looked at his daughter with pride. “This is really something, sweetheart.” Emma stepped closer and he stood and put his arm around her.
“Can you make more? Is this the only one?” Mr. Gurdy was still crawling along the floor, eyes on the pollinator.
“I can give the plans to technical today,” Emma said. “They’re all ready to go.” She looked back at Alan. “I sent a copy to your slate a few minutes ago. You can look over them before we ask for more.”
Alan nodded. “I’ll do that this morning. Gurdy, how many do you need?”
“How many?” Gurdy finally stood, but his eyes remained on the little device stepping delicately from plant to plant. “How many? How many strawberries should we plant? And peppers, and melons? I’m … I’m amazed! We could use dozens! We could use them on Loki as well.”
“Power source?” Alan asked Emma.
“Rechargeables. They last about four hours before needing to recharge, using the same hook-up as the slates. The charge doesn’t last as long as with a slate because of all the mechanical movement it’s powering. I’d like them to last longer, but the bodies would have to be bigger, and therefore heavier, so the overall efficiency is not increased. We would be better off to have more, set them to work for their four hour shifts, then charge that group and bring in another group.” She watched the little device move forward again then looked back at Alan. “So, what do you think? Does it qualify?”
Alan nodded slowly and the pollinator made its way delicately through the foliage. “It does at that. I’ll want to see the plans, then you can take it to technical and get them to make a dozen to start with. “Gurdy? Will twelve do to start?”
“That would be marvelous! Will we be able to order more?”
Alan nodded. “Let’s see how well these do. If there are any changes you need to make, get with Emma.”
“Shall I pack this one up?” Emma asked.
“Oh, do you have to? Couldn’t you leave it?” Gurdy asked.
Emma looked to Alan for confirmation. “It’s our prototype, and we’ll need it when the techs start putting the new ones together. But it can stay for now. Emma will come back for it when we need it.”
Gurdy nodded, still pleased as a kid in a candy shop. Emma moved over beside him to show him how to change to the other plant programs and John came to stand beside Alan.
“Didn’t you tell me this project should last her a couple of years?”
“I thought so.”
“So now what?”
“I guess now I let her re-design the Eagle.”
September, 2006
ECL
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