Distant Thunders by Taylor Anderson Page B

experience with, they had more trouble. He’d been forced to set up a few grade-school demonstrations to let them see electricity before he could convince them it was real. He also let them feel a little now and then, but had to caution them very carefully about feeling too much of it! He still wasn’t sure how much most of his ’Cat electrician’s mates and strikers really grasped, but they knew they had to make gizmos to create and harness the semimythical electricity, and they were good about scrupulously following safety regulations. The fact that he’d threatened to give them to Laney if they goofed around with the juice probably helped in that regard.
    He waved his bandaged hand at the ’Cat with the unpronounceable name and moved along. He wanted to check on the progress of the portable DC generators they’d been working on when he hurt himself. He was surprised to find Steve Riggs waiting for him at the benches they’d set aside to assemble the things.
    “Mr. Riggs! Good to see you, sir.”
    Steve laughed. “You mean it’s good to see me without Laney for a change. Otherwise, you’re probably wondering what I’m doing here, getting in the way.”
    “Well, yes, sir.”
    “How’s the hand?”
    Rodriguez raised his hand and flexed the fingers in the bandage. “Fine.”
    “Good. Look, I really don’t mean to pester you, but these transmitters we’re putting together are pretty simple affairs. They don’t have tubes and their voltage requirements are somewhat critical. I just wanted to see for myself how you’re coming along.”
    “Fair enough.” Rodriguez motioned him to a bench where several ’Cats were cleaning up a stack of short, pipe-shaped objects. “Those are the frames. They came out of Laney’s shop and they’re rough as hell. I have to have the guys file the burrs—with shitty files out of Laney’s shop. . . .”
    “I get the picture. Laney’s a piece of work. Skip it.”
    “Aye-aye, sir. Anyway, those are the frames. These guys over here are wrapping the field coils.” He stopped, self-consciously. “That’s how I cut myself. It’s great the ’Cats can make wire; I just wish it was a little more, you know, round.”
    “We’ll get to that someday,” Riggs said patiently. “For now, just be thankful. We’re starting to get a lot of wire out of Amagi , but we need it for other stuff.”
    “Yes, sir. Anyway, there’s the pole shoes. We screw ’em to the frame on the inside and it holds the coils in place.”
    Riggs gestured at a bin with a number of internal assemblies. “Those armatures look like they came out of the Delco factory.”
    “Thank you, sir. They’re a bitch. First we have to turn the shafts on the one little lathe we have. . . .”
    “It is one of the ship’s lathes.”
    “Yes, sir, thank you, sir. It would be nice if we could get the guys in the ordnance shop to make those, though. Them and the core. We can’t make those like they do at Delco. We have to mill the slots on the rotary table. It’s still not a huge job, but we’re going to need more capacity. We have to make the big generators one at a time, mostly using crap from Laney, and we can’t work on those at all while we’re doing this.”
    “The guys at ordnance have their hands full. I’ll see if I can get you one of the new, bigger lathes, and maybe a bigger mill. You’ll have to make motors for them, though. This isn’t a belt-drive shop, and it isn’t going to be.”
    “I understand. Motors we can do.”
    “So, what are you insulating the coils with?”
    “Fiber. Just like the real thing, only we mulch up some of Mr. Letts’s gasket material and mix it with some other stuff. Mikey’s in charge of that.”
    “How does it hold up? What about heat?”
    “So far, so good. We haven’t had the glue-up issues Ben has, for example, and it does insulate well. It’s kind of like putty. We cram some in on top of the coils in the core slot too. Anyway, the coils are soldered to the