Scene 3.08 - The Jiffy Tube
EST: INT. Indigo section, Eliza
(SIMAK and HEINLEIN are busy sodering, cutting and bypassing panels inside the Jiffy Tube. There is no gravity and little friction inside the well-lit tube. It is barely large enough to accomodate the two, who are working on panels on opposite sides of the tube’s interior, yet the tube is roomy enough to ensure the men never accidentally back into each other. While cutting sheilding for some fiber-optic-looking wires, HEINLEIN’s laser torch sputters out against a plasma firewall, and a small shard of amber-colored waffle-plastic flies outward, hitting the wall above and to the right of SIMAK, who takes notice and turns off his welding pen, watching it bounce upward, out of the tube and then shoots outside of the ship, where it is caught by the wind. HEINLEIN double clicks his laser-emitting pen, thinking it had something to do with the pen’s angle on the metal, and continues, creating a noise that SIMAK had only heard from training films concerning safety in the workplace. SIMAK momentarily hears a high-pitched whine like a saw blade cutting a board and hitting a nail and slowing to a stop over several, long seconds. SIMAK takes a quick breath, thinking they were about to be separated into about a billion-and-a-half particles of energy, holds the breath, feels nothing, exhales and then calmly continues sodering with a pocket-pen welding torch. SIMAK’S pen/welding torch snapped off just before the onset of the long, long whine and resumes as soon as he wipes a bead of sweat from his brow and adjusts his hard-core, black-mirrored, welding goggles.)
SIMAK
(Calm, as if he hadn’t nearly deficated his trousers; without looking:) Easy, Mr. Heinlein, keep those gravometric pulses away from them open plasma circuits...
HEINLEIN
Aye, aye, sir. (He quickly and carefully executes three more quick cuts and patches the wires with soder and slaps the fixed panel shut and shuts off the humming, laser-emitter tool. He looks at the plasma display on the front of the panel. It’s of the ship within a moving gyroscope:) The ship’s beginning to rotate. We should be onshore and mobile within minutes.
SIMAK
If she doesn’t right herself properly, we’ll have an even tougher time getting her to launch from the shore. Good work, you're done here. Move on and check the other parts of the ship.
HEINLEIN
The Eliza wasn’t designed to land in the water. If there was flooding, it means the hull’s been breached. The ship may not keep her integrity or balance if we attempt to stand her up and walk her. There is a lot of extensive, structural damage that we didn’t anticipate.
SIMAK
Aye. Romeo section’s hanging on by a thread. Robbie, I’ve got the offline computer’s damage analysis cross-referencing the online sensory data. Hold up a second. Only one hallway and two damaged bulkheads are holding the ship’s tail section secure. Don’t even go near there. Sooner or later, I think the weight of it will cause it to collapse and we may lose some or all of the tail section. Hotel’s half underwater, Quebec looks okay, but-a she won’t be after we’re on dry land, and Papa looks highly unstable. Short-cut or no, don’t-a be going through any of the tail section of the ship to get to the lift. It might-a been the way we came in, but it won’t be the way we go out. The tail could break off any minute now.
HEINLEIN
Aye-aye, sir. She’ll be hard to balance without a tail. I’ll take the Delta Corridor and check the plates.
SIMAK
Good. While you’re there, see if you can get the ship’s gravity going again, I can’t-a do it from ‘ere. These relays are all shot along with the gravometric induction cylinders. I’ll report our progress to Mr. Clarke when I've got this all sized-up. Call you from the bridge.
HEINLEIN
Aye, sir.
SOFT WIPE TO: