Lieutenant Stanley Cook came in to the ship’s mess. In the room he found Captain Hendricks, Lieutenants Tim Brown, Ken Ishii and Lyle Shane having lunch. Lester McPike entered the room a few seconds later, getting some coffee.
“Captain” said Stanley, “Mister McPike and I went through the stuff they loaded aboard just before we left Gamma station.”
“What did you find?” asked Delilah
“In the main cargo hold we found lots of electronic parts of various types, things like integrated circuits, wire, capacitors, resistors, LEDs, light bulbs, speakers, microphones, switches, and batteries. It is like we are opening a Radio Shack store up here.”
“Hey I used to work at Radio Shack.” added Ken.
Everyone in the room just looked at Ken.
“Sort of strange to load that kind of stuff into our ship. Don’t we carry that sort of stuff anyway as spares?” asked Delilah
“I will need to check our normal spares and what was loaded.” said Lyle.
“It is not as strange as what we found in scope number three room.” said Stanley
“And you found what?” asked Delilah
“One hundred fifty boxes of a model rocket kit called the Mirage.” replied Stanley “One hundred boxes of another model rocket kit called the Arreaux. Two hundred engine casings, two hundred fifty bags of ahhhhh.”
“Solid propellant fuel grains” added Lester. Delilah looked at Lester kind of strangely “they are used inside the engine casings.” he added.
Delilah looked at Stanley and said “Go on.”
“What seems to be tools and supplies to build them.” said Stanley.
“We have to build them?” asked Delilah
“Well someone has to.” replied Lester “But there are some slight problems.”
“What is it?” asked Delilah
“The kits have no instructions,” said Lester “however I built a couple of Mirages in the past, I would guess from memory how to put one together, it would not be accurate but it would fly. That however is the least of our problems.”
“There are more?” asked Delilah
“Yes.’ replied Lester “The engine casings that were shipped with the rockets are of the wrong size.”
“Wrong as in?” asked Delilah
“The engine casings are wider and longer than either the Mirage or Arreaux can handle.” replied Lester.
“Are there anything else that is wrong?” asked Delilah
“Well the fuel grains that we have will fit into the engine casings available.” replied Lester
“Is that bad?” asked Delilah
“No that is good,” replied Lester “but that means the engines available to us are eight times more powerful than what the rocket is rated for and that is the bad part.”
“It is?” asked Delilah
“It is Captain.” replied Lester “Assuming one could modify an Arreaux to hold a rocket engine that powerful the stress of such a flight would break apart the rocket at launch.”
“Oh great!” said Tim. “This is what we have to work with in launching our counter-strike against those creeps who are in control of Earth.”
“Yeah mis-matched model rocket parts.” said Stanley “I guess I should start on writing that computer virus so that we can upload to the mother ship.”
“I find this situation not too good.” said Delilah. “I can not believe someone, somewhere screwed up big time by giving us the wrong stuff and removing the scope number three for this stuff”
“Well it fits in so far with we getting the wrong orders.” said Ken “So it is par for the course.”
“So what do we do?” asked Lyle.
“Maybe we should take one out of the box and build one.” suggested Ken “Maybe something will come to us.”
Everyone looked at Ken.
“What?” asked Ken “Did I say something stupid?”
“Maybe” said Delilah “but maybe it is something for us to do. It is going to be a long cruise so we might as well do something to pass the time. Lyle you and Ken go through the Radio Shack store see what we really got there. Tim, Stanley and Lester grab a couple of these rocket kits, bring it down here and let us see what we do.”
“Aw shucks” said Ken “I wanted to build one of those rockets.”
“You will get your chance.” said Delilah “Right now just check those electronic parts.”
Posted by Helen at November 26, 2002 10:49 PM