Space Eater by David Langford

nodded. “Yes. 0820
    now. At 1400 we have a three-minute look through the gate to check Corvus clock sync and programming. Scrub up for Ngabe half an hour later if all’s OK, as it damn well should be. Ken goes on the table at 1500 sharp and we open the door for him at 1530, a ten-minute connection.”
    “Even that is absurdly expensive in power terms,” Ellan put in. “With raw materials it was often easier to fire items through the gate by explosives than hold it open to use the pusher piston and pour in energy to flatten the potential slope...”
    “Gather ye budgets while ye may,” said Wui. “Tomorrow the closing order may arrive ... Thirty-second opening at 1600 to check FACTOTUM has decoupled the tank and connected number two. Rossa on the table 1700 and through half an hour after, if all goes well. This is the fullest schedule we’ve ever had for the AP lab, but there shouldn’t be any problems.”
    “_How_ many regeneration tanks are there? I seem to remember someone remarking that you acquired two and broke one,” said Rossa.
    “Ah,” said Wui, “but with great furtiveness and illicitness we’ve programmed FACTOTUM to mass produce tanks as required. Can’t synthesize that disgusting fluid, worse luck, but there’s plenty in stock.
    We now have three tanks here, two built by FACTOTUM while we were testing it, and two out there manufactured on the spot. All in the interests of speedy transit, no taking it in turns.”
    I made a bit of a face at the thought. “What about testing the ones we’ll be using?”
    “You’re going to be the first person passing that way. You test ‘em ... Our test models work fine and they’re identical: one of the Security goons let himself be knocked about, you know they get bored down here and start fights. We put him in a tank and he came out good as new. Better than new. It seems he was terribly proud of an old scar down his cheek, nasty thing from eye to chin that he’d picked up way back. Now there’s nothing there for him to boast about, poor fellow. The tanks work fine.”
    “The tanks here work fine,” I said not too loudly.
    Wui grinned and slid off into something about a Central rep come to deliver an inspirational message to us. “Address before the battle, that sort of thing, stir your hearts to noble efforts.” And could we be back in good old room 17 by 0900?
    “Couldn’t they send us a letter?” I said. Wui grinned. Yes and no.
    “See you later,” he said. “Both of you: we might not get to talk again. This is a tip. You’ve had all the official briefings now; I just want to say that should you move to the contingency plan with the demonstration MT, it’s fantastically important that you monitor the demonstration personally from the Corvus station and nowhere else. That’s more than I should say. Bye for now—“
    He moved away quickly. With time to kill, we went back to our rooms wondering: I drank some more water and tried to decide whether the stuff in the room tap tasted worse than in the mess, or maybe the other way around.
    0900. Room 17. On the dais in front of the film screen they’d put a very expensive-looking desk in real polished wood, and behind it was a man in a very expensive-looking uniform that tweaked at a memory of mine. Again there was a ragged row of seats, Birch and Wui and Ellan and Ngabe and Rossa and me.
    Patel came in after us, looking like a prime candidate for the tank, and there were a couple of stray rankers from Security and Comm. The man on the dais drummed his fingers silently on the desk, over and over again, staring above everyone’s heads into the dimness at the back of the room.
    Birch stood up, face sagging with what looked like boredom. “Marshal Julius Taggart, Central Command executive planning chief.” He snapped his fingers, and the man on the dais twitched, stood up and started to talk. Yes, it was Taggart, half a square meter of ribbon on his chest—and he was supposed to be the guy who