The Gagarin Project
an excerpt

This excerpt contains some strong language! You have been warned!

The cargo hold was the first part of The Gagarin to have been assembled. It had double doors that opened out into space where spacecraft had been able to dock and unload parts for the station. It had rarely been used since the station had been completed and the shuttle launch area built, but it was still there in case emergency repairs needed to be carried out to the exterior of the station. A specialist craft and people could be sent from Earth for this purpose if needs be. The cargo hold was also equipped for space walks, but none of the crew had ever had to perform one, and aside from Commander Hughes and Durand, none of the crew had any training to do so either.
Gradually this area had become less and less used, it’s once shiny whiteness turning a matted dirty grey. The storage cupboards it contained had become a dumping ground for unwanted and broken equipment that hadn’t been sent back to Earth with the shuttle.
Putting the GravTrolley’s into ‘locked’ mode, Durand studied the pieces.
‘They wouldn’t perchance have left instructions did they?’ he queried Rashid.
Rashid passed him the data chip that he had removed from the shuttle earlier.
‘This was in the databanks.’
Durand took the chip and inserted it into a slot on the front of a touch screen by the cargo hold door. Schematics of the Lander scrolled across the screen, and a strange glassy look misted briefly over Durand’s eyes as he read.
‘Excellent’, he muttered to himself before saying aloud ‘For once the buggers have actually made my life easier. Seems they do give a shit about this centenary after all.’
‘You’re always so cynical.’
Ajit gently shook his head to himself. He didn’t dislike Durand, but he didn’t really like him either. He respected him, he clearly was brilliant at his work, but he was just so hard to get along with. Ajit Rashid had met similar people at university, brilliant with everything bar people. A couple of students had displayed these traits, and several professors were masters of it. But Ajit himself was far too much of an optimist and just couldn’t be that grumpy. His parents has always assured him that being approachable by others would always stand him in far better stead, along with a First degree of course. He’d got to pretty much the Moon with those two. Not really possible to go much further these days, at least not physically.
‘They’ve fucked me over enough times, figure I have every reason to’, Durand replied to Rashid’s comment. ‘Seems easy to forget we’re human when we’re so far away. What do they think this place is run by, fucking robots?’
‘Suspect it might be one day’, Ajit said as they modified the launch system for the Lunar Lander in the cargo hold. ‘They’ve come along really far in Japan now. They were talking about manning a craft to Mars with one in the next ten years when I was last on Earth.’ He paused for a second thinking about what he’d just said.
‘Well I say manning, but you know what I mean. Who knows what developments have happened since I’ve been up here?’
Durand let out another of his derisory snorts.
‘Wouldn’t trust one of those things as far as I could throw it.’
Ajit frowned at this statement from Durand.
‘But you’re an engineer’, he said, ‘I would have thought that kind of thing would be right up your street?’
Durand sighed as he took a screwdriver out of his tool belt. He admired robotics engineers. What they could do now was impressive. The last time he’d been on Earth he’s seen the first, truly humanly proportional robot built, and kudos to them for doing so. It really had moved like a human being. They had solved the balance and motion issues that had plagued robots for so many decades, but it was just the artificial intelligence issue that Durand had a problem with.
‘The engineering’s fine, but it’s the AI. Anything programmed by man to act like man can only be a disaster.’ Durand gestured around the cargo hold. ‘Imagine a robot up here trying to do what we’re doing now, building this ancient Lander, controlling these computers and systems. I barely trust the damn things to work operating them myself, let alone by a supposedly self aware thinking machine.’
‘But you’re up here controlling the same said computers. A self aware thinking machine’, Ajit raised a knowing eyebrow.
‘Yeah, but I know when I’ve fucked up.’
And with that Durand turned his attentions back to the Lander, affixing the next piece to finish building the base and legs.
Ajit continued to assist in silence as they put together the rest of the Lander.
‘That’s the main problem with Durand’, he thought to himself, ‘he’s just so coarse.’
Within an hour the Lunar Lander was fully constructed, ready for it’s star role in three days time. Durand and Rashid stood back from it and considered the object now sitting in front of them.
‘It seems a lot smaller than I had imagined’, Ajit said. ‘I always thought it would be bigger.’
Durand shrugged his shoulders.
‘At least it wasn’t too hard to put together. It could’ve been worse.’
Rashid walked over to the touch screen where the schematics were still scrolling and removed the chip.
‘I noticed there was some trajectory data on it’, he said in response to Durand’s questioning look. ‘I’m guessing for the re-enactment but I need to stick it in the CC’s computer to check it thoroughly.’
‘Bet you you’ll still have to program it though.’
‘Fine. Bet accepted!’ Ajit said in exasperation at yet another example of Durand’s cynicism. ‘There are times’ he thought ‘when I cannot wait to get off this station. And in less than six hours I will be.’
‘No need to get so bothered’, said Durand, a slight smile on his face.
‘Oh fuck off Durand’, Ajit finally blurted out. Three months he’d been waiting to say that.
‘Ha, knew you couldn’t always be that agréable.’
And now he had he was mentally kicking himself as he realised that’s all that Durand had wanted all along; for Ajit to crack. ‘Was that all the bloke wanted out of people?’
Durand clapped him on the shoulder.
‘When do you get to escape this place, eh?’
‘Erm, five and a half hours’, Ajit said, having to mentally shift gear.
‘Enough time to pack, say your goodbyes and have a farewell beer right?’ said Durand as he switched the GravTrolley back into ‘move’ mode and began pushing it out of the cargo hold and into the station corridor.
Rashid shook his head in disbelief before following Durand. The guy was quite clearly nuts, but then, you probably would be if you’d chosen to live on a space station for the last three years.