Kitra by Gideon Marcus

Author:Gideon Marcus [Marcus, Gideon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-951320-03-4
Publisher: Journey Press
Published: 2021-09-03T00:00:00+00:00

The refinery looked intact, at least from the outside. Getting in wasn’t a problem. Like with the warehouse, the doors were unlocked. Once we got in, we found there were no windows, nor did the lights work. All we could see was what our suit lamps illuminated, circles of brightness in a lot of dark. I couldn’t make much of all the pipes and encasements and other bits; none of them matched my shaky understanding of what distillation machinery should look like. A little of my fear returned. I was no engineer. Maybe I should have gone on the food and supplies patrol. Fareedh could have gone with Peter.

On the other hand, there had been considerations beyond the practical in play. It was good for Marta and Peter to get some time alone together off the ship. Maybe that’s why she was so cheerful now. And, well, I’d been avoiding being alone with Marta since the day she’d visited my room. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her, exactly. Maybe I didn’t quite trust myself. It was frustrating. Intellectually, I knew why we’d broken up. It just hadn’t been the right fit. But after the day we’d hugged, every so often, I’d get a flashes of memory: Marta with her cute dresses, jokes we’d shared, her smile…

I shook my head and blew out my breath through wobbling lips in a wet raspberry.

“You alright?” She’s gone crazy, Fareedh’s tone seemed to say. Well, maybe I had, a little.

“Yeah. Just clearing cobwebs,” I said.

Fareedh idly clanged one of the pipes lining the concrete corridor as we walked. It echoed with a hollow sound.

“What are we looking for, exactly?” he asked.

“Either the catalytic chamber or the electrolysis chamber,” I said, picking my steps carefully through the rubbish.

Fareedh spread his arms. “I have only a vague concept of what those are.”

“Oh! Sorry…” I paused, composing my thoughts. “If you shoot enough electricity into water, it breaks down into its atoms, two hydrogens and one oxygen. Hydrogen’s what you want for fuel because you can compress it,” I clasped my palms together and squeezed, “and fuse it into helium. That’s how stars work, and also our engine. With me so far?”

He nodded. I went on, “The thing is, a star can use plain old hydrogen just fine because a star is huge and has lots of gravity to squeeze it. For a small engine, you need a heavy kind of hydrogen, one that fuses more easily. Luckily, any batch of hydrogen has actually got small amounts of heavy hydrogen mixed in.”

“So you filter the heavy stuff from the regular stuff.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Electrolysis for breaking down the water, catalysis for filtering the deuterium and tritium fuel out of the hydrogen.” I smiled. When Fareedh talked about sayar stuff, he always seemed to know everything. It felt good to be able to explain something to him.

We walked a bit further down the corridor. Up far ahead, I thought I saw a sliver of light running parallel to the floor.

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