Children of the Fleet (Fleet School #1)(71)

Monkey grinned. “They’re not supposed to, but I’m called Monkey, right? They have invisible palm panels, and our palms aren’t keyed in to open them. So they shouldn’t open for us.”

“But they do?”

Monkey nodded. “They put the palm panels up high, so only full-size humans can reach them. But some of the teachers aren’t all that tall. And if there were ever a hull breach and we had to get to spacesuits really quickly, those locking systems might kill us all. So I think that sometime along the way—maybe after it became Fleet School, maybe for most of the school’s history—they keyed the palm panels to open to any warm hand.”

“You’ve done this?”

“I got a friend to brace herself against the wall and I scrambled up her body and slapped my hand in the upper right-hand corner of the panel, and it popped open. Only a few centimeters, but it was enough to get my hand in and open it the rest of the way.”

“You did this once?”

“We did it to every panel that looked like it might be a door. We were bored and it was fun to explore. We closed them all up tight again, or the adults might have gotten wise to us and rekeyed the palm panels to keep us out.”

“Does everybody know about this except me?”

Monkey looked at him ruefully. “I don’t know. We didn’t tell people, but I’m sure people saw me do that scramble-up-and-palm-the-corner thing. And I can’t swear we always reclosed the doors. It’s a useful thing to have people know—for safety. Most of the doors have a dozen child-size atmo suits just inside. And a couple of adult ones.”

“So when these intruders arrive we could just get everybody to suit up and shut down the atmo,” said Dabeet.

“Not so easy,” said Monkey. “If the system is designed right, it can’t be shut down because it’s designed with redundancy to make sure nobody can sabotage the station.”

“Fine,” said Dabeet. “I never thought it would be easy.”

“You also never thought a door would look like a wall,” said Monkey.

“If I can get inside, maybe I’ll think of something that might actually work.”

“Maybe if we get inside the mechanical spaces, we’ll think of something that might work,” said Monkey.

“Yes,” said Dabeet. “We. Sorry.”

“I know how ships in space function,” said Monkey. “I know all the machinery and what it’s for. Not this machinery, but the kinds of machines.”

“And I don’t know any of it, except theoretically.”

“So you promise me,” said Monkey. “You will not change anything, you will not break anything, you will not touch anything unless I have explained the machine to you and I agree with whatever your plan is.”

It felt deeply wrong to Dabeet to have somebody else assert authority like that.

But she knew spaceships and Dabeet couldn’t even function well in null-gee. There was no arguing with that. “Agreed,” said Dabeet.

“No,” said Monkey. “Words from your mouth. Whole sentences.”

“I vow on my mother’s life—because all of this is on my mother’s life—that I will not make any alterations, I will not do any sabotage, I will not break anything, I will not touch anything—except to keep my balance—without your giving me the go-ahead.”

“And you’ll explain your plan to me every single time, very specifically.”

“I will. What you said. I’ll tell you my whole plan, and then you’ll tell me why it won’t work the way I think, and then we’ll improve it together until it does work, or we’ll give up and think of something else.”

“And until I agree,” said Monkey, “you don’t do anything.”

Dabeet said, “Yes. I swear to that.”

“Then let me show you how to open the secret doors that everybody probably knows about except you.”





13

—Cynthia Munk’s response to the essay question “Please list and comment upon the five primary duties of an expedition leader.”

The leader of a planetary exploration team must be aware of the nature of every specialist’s work. The leader is not part of the redundancy system, because nobody can be a fully skilled practitioner of every specialty. But the leader has to know everyone’s work well enough to:

1.??Understand all reports from every specialist.

2.??Make sure specialists are attending to all their duties and not just the most interesting ones.

3.??Know how and when to assign tasks and portions of tasks to others in the redundancy system when a particular specialist’s workload becomes too heavy to be competently performed.

4.??Refrain from intervening in other people’s decisions and workload as long as they are performing competently.

5.??Recognize when issues and problems are beyond the leader’s competence and then either consult with the entire team to work out solutions or determine whether the only viable solution is to shut down the station and return to space.

My only question about the leader’s responsibilities is this: What training will prepare the expedition leader to make the determination in situation 5? What are the consequences to a leader who pulls the plug, as per 5, when examination of the data by superior officers reveals that the leader made a wrong or unnecessarily costly decision? Are there careerist incentives to avoid taking any of the steps in 5? Likewise, are there careerist and/or ego incentives to cause a leader to incorrectly violate 3 and 4?