Although Spruance Del Curtin was a reasonably decent assistant in the process of troubleshooting the main mixing board, his skills really weren’t to the point that it made sense to have someone else cover his air shift so he could continue helping. Ken had told him to go ahead and sign on, since the Timeline Brothers both had other obligations in the afternoon.
However, the process of tracing and testing the circuits was not going nearly as well as she would’ve liked, even with a couple of the younger kids. They were good about handing up tools upon request, but they really didn’t know electronics well enough to interpret what they were seeing and offer any insight.
Ursula Doorne wasn’t exactly sure where it became clear the problem was much larger than any single component. By mid-afternoon, it was becoming increasingly clear that continuing to trace the circuitry in hope of isolating the problem was a hopeless task.
Ken had just come back to see how things were going, and it was clear he’d been dealing with some other issues somewhere else in the settlement. No, he was not going to like the news.
But there was no point wasting further time just to spare his temper. Especially since she had projects on her desk back in the Astronomy Department, and not just the more abstract and abstruse ones involved with using dishes on both the Moon and Mars to create an array on a baseline that dwarfed all previous efforts.
“Whatever’s wrong with this, it’s not just one component. We’re going to have to completely tear it down and rebuild it.”
Ken muttered a word he didn’t ordinarily use in the presence of civilians. “That’s going to be a lot of work.” He met her eyes directly. “But if you’re right, it’ll save us a lot more work in the long run. However, we are going to have to make sure that the remote rig gets a complete maintenance cycle as soon as we get a working main mixing board. That thing was never designed for the level of use we’re putting it through, and we cannot afford to have it give out on us.”