Starplex

Keith swalloed once. Of course the report had to be dealt with right away; they needed to solve the overcrowding problem quickly. But where to meet Lianne? Gamma shift would be on the bridge now; no need to disturb them.

Keith's office would be the natural place, but… but… did he really trust himself to be alone with her?

Christ, this is stupid. "I'm in the Drive-Through, having dinner. Can you bring the report here?"

"Sure thing. On my way. Close."

Keith had a sip of wine. Maybe this was a mistake.

Maybe people would misconstrue, tell Rissa that he'd had a rendezvous in a booth with Lianne. Maybe — Lianne came in, escorted to his table by a robot. She sat down opposite him and smiled. Geez, she'd arrived quickly — almost as if she'd known where he was before calling, almost as if she'd planned to catch him alone at dinner…

Keith shook his head. Get real. "Hi, Lianne," he said. "You've got a report for me?"

"That's right." She was dressed in a cyan suit, crisp and professional.

But on her head, crowing her lustrous platinum hair, she was wearing a smart replica of an old-style railway engineer's cap.

Keith had seen her wearing it before, whimsical and stylish and sexy all at once. '"There are techniques," she said, "for cleaning up radiation damage. But they're all time-consuming, and—"

The server arrived, bringing Keith's dinner. "Stir-fry," said Lianne, smiling. "I make a mean one of those. You should let me do it for you sometime."

Keith reached for his wine, thought better of it, picked up his napkin, and, in so doing, sent his fork tumbling onto the rubberized floor. He bent down to retrieve it — and saw Lianne's shapely legs beneath the table.

"Um, thank you," he said, straightening back up. "That'd be nice."

He indicated the steaming platter between them.

"Did you — did you want some?"

"Oh, no," she said, patting her flat stomach, causing the fabric of her suit to pull tight across her breasts as she did so. "I'll have a salad later. I've got to watch my figure."

No need for that, thought Keith. I'll be glad to watch it for you.

"About the radiation?" he said.

She nodded. "Right. Well, as I said, we can clean it up — but not quickly, and not without putting into drydock for several weeks."

"Weeks!" said Keith. "We can't afford that kind of time."

"Exactly. Which brings me to my suggested solution."

Keith waited for her to go on. "Which is?"

"Starplex 2."

Keith frowned. Starplex had been built at the Rehbollo orbital shipyards, and its sister ship — currently carrying the prosaic name of Starplex 2, although something else would likely end up being the official name — had been under construction now for close to a year. It was being built at Flatland; two such prime contracts couldn't go to the same homeworld, naturally. "What about her?"

"Well, she's not yet ready for launch, or I'd say simply commandeer the whole thing. But she's being built from identical blueprints to Starplex 1 — and five of her eight habitat modules are already completed, according to the last report I received. We could pop through the shortcut to the Flatland shipyards, dump our lower-four habitat modules there, and replace them with four of the completed ones for Starplex 2.

The modules that we leave off could then be cleaned up at leisure.

Starplex 2's central disk won't be ready for another five months; the four hyperdrive generators have to be extensively tested before the engineering torus can be built around them. That should give plenty of time for the cleanup. When the time comes, our four old modules could be incorporated into the new ship. Of course, all the individual furnishings and equipment we had in our lower four will need to be cleaned up, too, but at least we'll have quarters and lab space for everyone right away."

Keith nodded, impressed. "That's brilliant. How long would that take?"

"The specs for habitat-module power-grid deconnection and reconnection call for three days, but I've devised an improved method that doesn't require powering down the couplings. I could do it in fifteen hours if we didn't need to wear radiation suits in the lower modules; in this case, eighteen hours should do the trick."

"Excellent. What about the lower part of our main shaft and our central disk?"

"Well, the shaft is three quarters fixed up already. We can't clean it easily, but I've had nanotechs laying down extra shielding on its inner surface. As for the central disk, we'll have to completely replace the water in the ocean deck, of course. And not just with plain water, either. It has to be a full seawater formulation, with dissolved salt and other minerals, plus, if possible, plankton and fish stocks.

Also, I'd like to replace all the shipboard air, just to be on the safe side. The docking bays are no problem — they're heavily shielded. Same thing for the engineering torus; its shielding kept it from getting too much of a hit of radiation, as well."

Keith nodded. "How long till we can safely maneuver through the shortcut?"