Copper - Alexey Volokhov

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huge torn hole in the hold lining. The Endeavour was laterally lit by white moonlight that even more emphasized the chaotic nature of the body destruction.

      – Teddy, what was that?

      – I don’t know, John, – Teddy said – Nothing was seen by the radars, visually too, however the starboard hold suddenly lost a half of its lining in the body caused by large kinetic effects.

      – Hmm… – John himself was at a loss, as he piloted the Endeavour himself from his “hovel” where he had just repaired it for Perry's office. – Damn, now I need to say something to Perry…

      John spat an oath and asked Teddy:

      – Would we fly back anyway?

      Teddy paused and said:

      – Actually, we would, as your on-board computer, I don’t need oxygen, so I would have gone back, indeed. But you wouldn’t, unless you will stay in your spacesuit all the flight long. Some air left in the pilot cabin, but that will not last long, maybe half an hour. The regeneration system is broken. As a result of this accident, our ship doesn’t have the main radiator itself. The reactor will not live long without cooling, though we have a few hours.

      John shook his head in the suit as if someone could see his gesture. Scrape.

      – So, I am going back to the pilot cabin, we will fly back to the “hovel”, ask the tower for a free reverse trajectory, say that we have suffered damages.

      – Ok, John.

      Grunting, John climbed through a narrow gateway and crawled into the cockpit. He did not depressurize the spacesuit, only strapped to the first pilot seat and muttered irritably:

      – Well, what’s up, Teddy?

      Teddy replied in his deep bass voice:

      – The trajectory is confirmed, you can turn around.

      John touched the levers of the steering motors and flipped the switches on the main panel. The Endeavour started, the moon floated on the screens to the right and stopped in another perspective.

      We'll have to restore this junk at our own expense – John muttered, grimacing.

      The fly to the “hovel” would take three more hours, so John asked Teddy:

      – Could steer yourself on the way back.

      – Sure, John.

      John pursed his lips and asked:

      – And I will read the yesterday’s book, it was funny… Oh, and put on some cheerful music.

      John got the yesterday text of an old detective writer on the secondary monitor and, after hearing cheerful chords of a starting rock composition, nodded in time with the music and immersed himself in reading.

      The next day, John was up to his neck in work.

      Fortunately, a climate control and a regenerator were found in John’s stock. One day, John got that half-dead Endeavour instead of the consideration for some work, and slowly dismantled it. So it came useful.

      Getting in touch with Perry, John, at the top of his voice and crying out the noises, nearly shouted into the microphone:

      – Yes, Perry, I know I am disrupting the deadline.

      After a moment, the image of Perry, a 50-year-old solicitous and disheveled man, sipped coffee from a cup, disappeared for a moment because of the noise, appeared again and said:

      – John, there's probably not the question of the Endeavour that you have to repair, this is not so scary, a small “cargo aircraft” doesn’t have little clout, but here, on the base, directly at the landing site, the Emission exploded. It's much worse than your broken Endeavour.

      John shook his head in the spacesuit and said:

      – Yeah, two hundred thousand tons of capacity … What happened?

      Perry paused, shrugged and said:

      – Well, a strange kind of story. Nobody really could say anything, the cameras went blind at the time of the explosion. Although it was really impossible to understand whether it was a blast or not. Eventually, a half of the hold is torn apart, the reactor cannot be run, it is sad in general. And I have to send it to Mars maximum in a week. You know, how “nice” to talk to the Mars Corporation about deadlines and default.

      John pursed his lips, thought for some moments of his chats with the “Martians” and said:

      – Sorry to hear that, Perry. But I'm stuck around here for one day exactly, maybe I would left the Endeavour for a while, and get to you on something else and quickly start fixing your Emission?

      Perry chewed his lips and, cocking his head, said:

      – I would greatly appreciate. Henry has already begun to deal with what happened, but your help would be very welcome.

      – Ok, Perry, that will do! You’ll be owing to me something…

      Perry smiled and asked sarcastically:

      – Who has killed my Endeavour yesterday? Should I exchange kisses with you for that?

      – What an old grouch you are! Well, see you, I will be in three hours.

      Perry hung up without saying goodbye.

      In fact, the conversation with Perry went surprisingly seamless; usually, for such failures, Perry gave a good deal of dressing down to everybody who got him in trouble. Here’s something's wrong of course, but, oh well, I would figure that out later.

      – Teddy, we are moving to our Endeavour.

      – Ok, John, we are.

      John gently pulled out the kernel of the Teddy system form the Perry’s Endeavour and carried into his Endeavour.

      Carrying a large suitcase, which was light-weighted in the low gravity of the Moon, John thought that Teddy is even comfortable to some extent not to be a boy dying from radiation sickness but this suitcase with a battery. You can connect to where you want and be yourself. Teddy certainly had his own thoughts on this matter, he has lived as a computer for ten years, it is not that naive Teddy as he was first.

      After inserting the kernel of the Teddy system into the server cell, John took off his spacesuit, changed into flight coveralls and occupied his place in the first pilot seat, flicked the tumblers, made sure of serviceability of the main systems and asked:

      – Teddy, have you already uploaded?

      Teddy wrote in big letters on the main monitor:

      “Daddy, two minutes more and I am getting up!”..

      John smiled, leaned back and relaxed. Having fired the main engines for a minimum warming, John reached out to the control panel of the communicator and turned on a cheerful electronic music composition without words. Mumbling and puffing his cheeks in tune with the rhythm, John boosted for launching. The Endeavour shuddered all over, the moon dust blew up in the overview screen. John thought it wouldn’t be a bad thing to clean the area from dust, but still no time, no time.

      The Endeavour took away from the landing site and, along a beautiful path, blinking with marker lamps, went smoothly toward the Perry’s transport base located in the outskirts of the huge lunar station “Columbia”.

      Looking at the torn side of the Emission ship, John got a strange feeling that he had seen something alike somewhere. The Emission was a huge cargo spaceship which dimensions were three hundred times bigger than the size of the Endeavour. Such ships could land solely on the Moon because of the lack of atmosphere and low gravitation.

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