8-194: Merchant Freighter Spanial – Cargo Hold
As Cargo Officer, the others leave the hitting of various buttons to Lia.
Gregar suggests she pressurise the hold and put the white lights on.
A reminder, Lia knows that Spanial’s life support systems can’t maintain a space the size of the Cargo Hold, pressurising the hold can make working in there convenient, but the air will slowly go bad. For comfort, everyone can work with helmets off but will need to leave or seal up if their suit’s alerts go off.
The atmosphere in here is too thin for Prrri, and he will have his helmet on all the time.
As Cargo Officer, Lia will be familiar with what’s in here.
She notes that the stack of crates holding the speculative cargo of Consumer Electronics is now much smaller.
The Trade Bureau shipping container is as she last saw it.
The Hopper is tied down to the floor with straps and there are a couple of crates next to it.
Gregar says, “OK, what we have here is a Horton Model 7 Hopper. A small space vehicle that uses small hydrogen rockets for thrust.”
As noted earlier, the Hopper is like an open-topped ute. There is a short nose, behind which is a passenger area with four seats that has a pair of protective collision bars over the top. Behind that is a cargo tray with low sides and a high mesh front and back. There are four pylons, one near each corner, ending in propulsion nozzles.
He walks over and taps a fat cylinder on the lower rear of the ship.
“Fuel is stored in four fuel tanks under the cargo tray. You’ll need to watch trim as the tanks empty. There are two main thrust nozzles at the rear and and two at the front, if the manual is correct, they can chew fuel fairly fast.”
He points to one the pylons, “These control pylons end in low power directional thrusters that allow you to control the craft’s attitude. You can also use these to move the Hopper at low speed.”
“I’ve loaded an operating system so it can theoretically be controlled now, and I uploaded the manual Lia has scanned. Ipan was useful in helping format that.
“I figure we should fuel it up and see if we can make the thrusters fire at low power,” he gestures toward Prrri, “Prri’s more of an expert on small craft than I am, so he’ll take the lead on the systems maintenance. I’m here in case there are software issues.”
He looks expectantly at Lia and Jennie.
She will do as requested for the cargo hold but is curious about the shrinking Consumer Electronics.
She will look at Jennie in response to Gregar’s expectation.
“Do you want the honours? My money’s on you not screwing it up…”