Free Skykeep by Joseph R. Lallo Page A

please. Give yourselves the credit you
deserve. The two of you are easily the most capable and dedicated
people I’ve ever worked with,” Nita said. “You’re deckhands. Like
you told me, you do everything on the ship. I learned so
much more from the two of you than I did from the others, and far
more than you’re ever likely to learn from me. The question isn’t
‘What could you do?’ The question is ‘What couldn’t you do?’”
    “Well Nita… I’m fit to blush right now,” Lil
said.
    “I’m just telling you what you should already
know.” Nita took a bite of her sandwich and glanced over the
remaining parts. “If we keep going with this pump, we might just
get it done today. Would you like to keep at it?”
    “Let’s get to it!” Lil said. She stuffed the
remainder of her sandwich into her mouth and sprayed some crumbs as
she continued speaking. “You just sit and finish eating and tell me
what needs doing.”
    She wiped her hands on her pants and knelt on
the floor, picking up the next parts in the pile. Her nose
wrinkled. “Got a fresh whiff of the fug just then. They better plug
that hole right quick or it ain’t gonna be much fun to work here.
But what do we got next? This here’s just a pipe. Threaded on
either end. Nothing special about that. This is one of them input
valves. We already got some of them, so I guess this one is extra.”
She picked up a component that was a veritable contraption, pipes
leading in and out and a tall metallic cap sticking up from the
middle with a screw protruding from the end of it. “This is… what
is this?”
    “Think about it for a second,” Nita said.
    Lil turned it over and twisted it about.
“Well… oh… oh wait, this is one of them… it’s a valve, but a
special one. The… dang it, what is it… the relief valve!”
    “That’s right. And what’s it for?”
    “For letting steam out when there’s no place
else for steam to come out.”
    “And why is that important?”
    “Because steam’s got to go somewhere, and if
it can’t go somewhere, it’s gonna go everywhere . That’s when
the thing blows.”
    “That’s exactly right.”
    “So then that goes right here,” Lil said,
springing to her feet and grabbing a wrench.
    “Wait!” Nita said. “What are you
forgetting?”
    “… What?”
    “You need to inspect it.”
    “Oh, well I already did that. Look at this
thing. Good and shiny.”
    “I don’t care what it looks like on the
outside. The workings are what matters. I’ll put the ugliest piece
of mangled metal in that pile onto a boiler if the inside is sound,
but if one piece is out of place in a relief valve, the whole
boiler is a risk.”
    “So I gotta unscrew this top part then?”
    “Yes indeed,” Nita said, handing Lil a
screwdriver from her sash.
    The eager student carefully twisted free two
of the screws. As she started on the third, Nita issued a
warning.
    “Now you’ll want to put some pressure on the
top of that while you unscrew the other two screws. There’s a
spring inside there, and it is under compression. You don’t want
the top to pop off and send those screws flying. I found that out
the hard way.”
    “Hey, I was wondering,” Lil said, putting the
gadget down and pressing on the top with one hand while she worked
at the remaining screws. “Let’s say your papa does his thing, and
it turns out we’re allowed to go with you on shore in Caldera. What
do folks do there? What would you want to show us?”
    “Oh, it is a wonderful place, Lil. I’d have to take you to the Dell Harbor gallery. Our family has
a whole wing devoted to us. I never made anything worth
displaying there, but my brother has a sculpture, and a portrait of
my sister is hanging there as well. And my mother’s sculptures… I
tell you, she could have filled the wing all by herself. And did I
tell you? She’s back to sculpting!”
    Lil nodded and smiled. “Only about a dozen
times. Them fuggers make good medicine. That all you