SWNOVELS Chapter Ship noticed them 6th Sept 2180 daybreak
SEG002
“I see you’ve put the mauve spacesuit on today,” Gabriel said. “It looks good on you.”
Ginny spun around slowly, utilising the small Ramstat boosters in her suit.
“And thanks to Vicky thinking to make me more suits, tailored to fit my requirements, I’ve even got a choice. Thanks, Vicky,” Ginny said.
“It was a pleasure,” Vicky said.
“But I don’t think I’d look so good if the suits were like the old Apollo astronauts,” said Ginny. “These ACME suits with their crumpled leather look, and their tight fitting, I think they make a girl look a little better ... don’t you?”
She smiled over at Gabriel whilst running her hands over the soft curves of her body, encased as she was in the tight-fitting mauve faux-leather.
Gabriel gulped, then looked back at the monitors they were using to observe the extraction plant.
“I’ve still not seen a fraction of time that we could have used to get onto the teleport,” he said. “And this is after five days of watching the bloody thing. Maybe we will have to risk flying to another mining planet ...”
“Or go back to the Earth directly,” Ginny said.
“Hey guys,” Ship said. “It looks like we have guests.”
Gabriel and Ginny turned to the monitors. A spaceship was touching down in the plant’s landing bay.
“God, it looks like a bunch of green shipping containers bolted together, with a set of rocket boosters stitched on the back,” observed Gabriel.
“I guess it was built for function, not for style,” Ginny said.
A ramp lowered from the tail of the spaceship and three men appeared. They were carrying gear across to a building at the centre of the mining complex.
“It’s a maintenance crew,” Ship explained. “A three-man maintenance crew. They will be SEG employees.”
“How long are they likely to stay here?” Ginny asked.
“Probably several days,” Ship said. “I’ve transported such crews, myself. Sometimes they might stay for a week or more, but never less than two or three days.”
“Presumably,” Gabriel said, “they would be able to pause the automated processing long enough for us to use the teleport ... do you think?”
“You would hope so,” said Ginny.
As they watched, two vaguely human-like forms exited the maintenance craft. They weren’t wearing spacesuits, and they looked bigger, bulkier than most people.
“What are ...?” Ginny said.
“They’re robots, Ginny,” Ship said. “SEG uses them a lot for maintenance work. They are probably ROB3 models. They are very strong. And they can work in any environment.”
“What controls them,” Ginny asked.
“They are controlled using WORM-LYNK. Probably the guys in the maintenance building are controlling them. The ROB3s have primitive AI features, so they can be given simple instructions ... fairly high-level instructions even, and then they can be left to get on with it.”
“Why does SEG bother sending real people, then?” Gabriel asked.
“SEG still needs real people ‘on the ground’ so to speak,” said Vicky. “The robotics were a really useful adjunct, and they were ideal for running maintenance on the explorer vehicles, but for a complex mining / extraction operation, SEG really needed people. People have intuition. The ROB3s wouldn’t have that capacity.”
The two robots made their across to the building that the three maintenance guys had gone into. The large sliding door on the outside of the workshop slid closed behind them.
“So, now what do we do?” Ginny asked. “Just go over and ask them if they could help us to teleport back to Earth?”
“It’s got to be worth a go,” said Gabriel. “I mean, what’s the worst that could happen?”