Free Portal-eARC by Eric Flint, Ryk E Spoor Page A

they’re pulled to the right distance and tension levels, that gray square will turn bright green. Pull too far and it’ll go red. If you’re too far off angle, determined by the way the spikes and other walls are set, it will start going either yellow for an angle that’s too acute, or blue for one that’s too obtuse. So you want to get each square as perfect bright green as you can before I lock it down.”
    “Understood.”
    The process took another hour and a half, by which time Helen was starting to feel awfully tired. Low gravity reduced the weight of the suits, but the mass remained, and it was actually in some ways a lot harder to move around in low-g with extra mass all over you—especially if you were trying to pull or drag things that didn’t want to move to begin with.
    But as soon as the last spike was in place, she heard Maddie signal A.J. “Okay, A.J., check status. If everything’s green, pull the trigger.”
    “Checking now…nice job, everyone. That thing’s within a very small percentage of being perfectly straight on all sides.” A pause. “Maddie, the third spike near the center of the far wall—away from Munin —didn’t set right. For some reason the anchor points didn’t deploy.”
    “I can’t move the hold-down, though. What do I do?”
    “Pull the first spike, then take a new one and just disarm the charge, then put it down the hole and I’ll trigger it; hopefully it will deploy the anchor points. Normally I wouldn’t really care about one being not perfectly set, but we’re still not sure how heavy the quakes are going to get, and I don’t want to take chances.”
    Neither do I, Helen agreed silently. A few minutes passed before A.J. confirmed the substitution had gone well. “A.J.,” she began, “what if there’s a big quake—one that really rearranges the landscape?”
    A.J. shrugged. “Honestly? We may be totally screwed. Imagine one of these cracks opening up for a second. I think we have to assume we won’t get something really big—like Richter 8. A 5 or 6 we can probably handle, though it’s possible it would hurt something . But we need the space—for work, and for our sanity—and that shelter’s built tough; I think it can take anything the rest of us can.” He spoke more loudly and was broadcast to the whole group. “All right, I’m activating the shelter.”
    Helen stepped back; almost instantly she saw the almost shapeless mass, staked out in a rectangular pattern, begin to stir.
    “Active composite elements responding. Constructing first level wall grid.” The sides of the perimeter began to rise systematically, a low wall coming up almost as though being elevated from below. It reached a height of about one and a half meters before stopping. “First level wall grid complete. Interlocking supports connecting…connected…locked. Structure is solid! Looks like the design’s working! Starting second level wall grid with reinforcement elements.”
    The shelter continued to raise itself under A.J.’s direction; the main walls were three meters high, with the roof curving gently to a maximum height of four and a half meters. “That’s deceptive, though,” A.J. noted. Insulation, structural flex capabilities, internal wiring and such, plus lots of cushioning and redundancy in the structure and leakproofing, make the walls about half a meter thick now that it’s assembled.”
    Completed, Helen had to admit it looked pretty impressive up close; spaced-out transparent aerogel-filled windows would admit light and a view to the rooms that made up the interior (it could be divided up several ways). This was going to give them large, open, brand-new spaces where all of them could go around without suits. But most importantly…“A.J.? How long?”
    “After you get the power line connected? I’d say…about an hour and a half.
    “But for you, it’s probably going to be at least another hour after that,” he continued, and she could see him