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.Whoever it is will get a small dose of radiation; that can’t be helped.The medical people tell us that the dose should be minimal, no worries.”“Great.Just great,” McPherson muttered.Brice continued, “From the telemetry it looks like the pump is malfunctioning.We think one of its blades might have cracked.If that’s the case the system’s performance will continue to erode until the blade fails entirely and the reactor automatically shuts down.”Dropping the schematic, Brice told them, “Now, the system is modular, and it’s designed to be repairable.That means you can get the pump and bring it inside your habitat to check it out.But before you do that you’re going to have to power down the reactor, and that will cut off the electricity it supplies to your habitat.”Ted’s mind raced.We’ll have to do this in daylight.Clean off the solar panels before we shut down the reactor so we’ll have electricity to get through the day.Take out the pump, check it out, and repair the bad blade.Get it all done before the sun goes down again.Brice was going on, “We’ve uploaded the full schematics for the pump and the CAD files you’ll need to make spare parts with your 3D printer.” He took a breath.“We had planned to send backup parts for the nuke system on the follow-on flight.We didn’t expect a failure so early in the reactor’s life cycle.Bad decision on our part.”“Yeah,” Ted whispered.“The time delay between us,” Brice resumed, “means we won’t be able to coach you through this in real time.But we’ll definitely watch on the monitors and answer whatever questions you have as fast as the speed of light allows.”With that, Brice looked around at the people surrounding him and finished with, “Good luck, guys.”Connover hit the transmit button and said tersely.“Message received.Thanks.We’ll do our best.”He clicked off the communicator and got up from his chair, stiffly, as if he’d aged ten years overnight.As he looked at the faces of his three comrades, he said to himself, All right, you’re supposed to be the leader around here.So start leading.“All three of you start prebreathing, right now.Hi, you and Amanda read and memorize how to remove that pump and get it in here so we can repair it.Catherine, you’ll have to clean off the solar panels and the tops of the gardens.And the radiator panels, too.I’ll download the CAD files they’ve sent and start the 3D printer going.”“But we don’t know if the pump blade is really the problem,” Amanda objected.“Yeah, but we don’t have time to do things in sequence.We’ve got to do ’em in parallel, without wasting a minute.We can’t afford to have the reactor totally shut down when the Sun goes down.”“How much time will we have without the reactor?” McPherson asked.“If we can get the solar panels operating at full capacity, we should be good during the daylight hours.The batteries will give us another six hours, maximum.”“Not enough to get through another night,” said Catherine.“That’s why we’ve got to get moving.Now!”December 19, 203510:21 Hours Universal TimeMars Landing Plus 44 DaysElysium PlanitiaIn their excursion suits and helmets, Hiram and Amanda approached the nuclear reactor module.It stood twelve feet tall on the red Martian sands, looking like any other aerospace “cylinder,” except that it rested on three sturdy legs and had massive black panels protruding from its top, the radiators that got rid of the heat the reactor produced.“Radiation level’s increasing,” Amanda said, her eyes on the scintillation meter strapped to the wrist of her suit.“Just a tad over Mars background, but it’s getting higher as we get closer to the reactor.”“That’s to be expected,” McPherson said.“Nothing to worry about.”“Why do people keep saying that?”They trudged to the big cylinder, then stepped around it to find the hatch that covered its pump.“Let’s do this right the first time,” McPherson said.“Quick and smart.”Amanda nodded.“No unnecessary exposure to radiation.”“Exactly.”They checked the heads-up displays in their helmets, then McPherson took the power screwdriver from his belt and started unbolting the panel.“Ted’s purged the pump with nitrogen,” Amanda said as she watched him working, swiftly, methodically, “so there won’t be any NaK leaking from it when we take it out.”“Good thing,” said McPherson as he lifted the panel off and let it drop languidly to the ground.“Don’t want any NaK droplets on my suit when we go back into real air.”“Spontaneously bursting into flames could ruin your whole day.”“Right you are.Let’s get this puppy out of here.”As they undid the connectors holding the pump in place, Amanda thought she could almost feel the nuclear radiation penetrating her suit and attacking her body.Like Marie Curie, she remembered.She and her husband discovered radium and characterized the properties of the radiation it emitted—and she got a lethal dose over the years and died slowly of radiation poisoning
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