Ken Redmond had expected to have difficulty finding an adequate supply of replacement tubing for Agriculture’s latest problem. As it turned out, once he had the specs, it was easy to have a company over at Grissom City to run up an adequate supply. With food being a vital resource up here, it hadn’t been that hard to find it a place on a suborbital hopper, rather than having to send it overland via the Ice Train.
However, now that it had been delivered and sanitized — an easy job when hard vacuum was just outside the settlement — he had the problem of getting it installed. And that was proving a lot more difficult than he’d expected.
It had taken a lot of restraint not to ask Alice Murcheson what the hell the designers of those planter towers had been thinking when they’d set them up with the irrigation tubing worked through the structure in a way that it was effectively impossible to replace it without disassembling the whole thing. Something that would’ve been doable if this mess had been discovered right after harvest, but with the plants in question right in the middle of their growing season, not exactly advisable.
However, there was one person down here in Engineering who might just be able to work out a solution. Ken still remembered all the flak he’d taken when he decided to put Harlan Lemont in charge of the robotics shop. The kid was sharp, and he was meticulous, but everybody was certain that giving him that kind of responsibility was just asking for a major screwup.
Ken had finally put a stop to it by pointing out that they were all doing the very thing the Flannigan Adminstration had been encouraging. Instead of looking at Harlan’s actual abilities, they were looking at his geneset and assuming that, simply because his ur-brother had completely screwed the pooch on that icy winter day and crashed a T-38 into the very building where the Gemini spacecraft had been being built, he too would be a screwup.
Ken found Harlan busy explaining to one of the newest trainees how to swap out RAM modules on a standard trackbot’s motherboard. It was fairly basic work, not that much different from doing the swap in the sort of computer you had on your desktop, but it did require a steady hand and patience to get done right. Fortunately the kid was a quick learner, and soon was replacing the rest of the modules.
Harlan turned, met Ken’s gaze. “Hi, boss. How are things going?”
“That was sharp thinking on your part, setting up those bots to carry water to those planter towers down in Agriculture. “
“So it did work? The programming was still pretty shaky, especially since all the big brains down at IT were covered up with other stuff.”
Ken knew that Harlan had been hoping for full autonomous operation. Better put the best face on that failure.
“We ended up having to teleoperate them. But this way we’ve got a bunch of tweens with spex and haptic feedback gloves running the bots form a standard-environment room, instead of a bunch of highly trained people with breathing rigs carrying buckets of water, when we need them working on a dozen other projects that actually require that level of expertise.”
Harlan’s expression lightened. “And I bet those kids are rapidly becoming expert bot wranglers.” His smile quirked a little oddly. “But I don’t think you came here just to tell me how well things are working.”
“No, I didn’t. It may be working well, but it’s still a stopgap solution. We need to get the irrigation tubing replaced, and I’d rather not have to wait until those towers are ready to harvest.” He explained about the problem with the way the tubing was installed in the tower, his hope that perhaps a robotic solution could work better than having people trying to work the new tubing in by hand.
Harlan considered the problem. “I think it should be doable. It may take us a couple of days, and we’ll probably need to talk with some of the people in the other departments.”
Ken caught the hint that there’d been trouble with IT on the development of the water-carrying bots. “This is a top-priority job, on my authority. Anyone gives you trouble, let me know.”