Yuen-Mong's Revenge Read Free

between 30 and 45 degrees.
          He could not see any living thing, not even insects, but the air tasted
sweet and pleasant, a welcome contrast to the recycled air of the craft that
always had a hint of disinfectant. He took a few deep breaths, filling his
lungs and then emptying them completely, suddenly aware of every cell
in his body. It felt good to be alive.
          Back inside the craft he was again struck by the stale air and noticed
that the recycling unit was silent. If it took him more than a day to get the
AI unit back on, he would run out of oxygen unless he kept the hatch
open, but would that be safe on this world? He would deal with that
problem if or when it came to that. Hopefully he should be able to get the
craft ready for liftoff before then. There were still some ten hours of
daylight left of the twenty or so hour day on Aros. He switched on his
wristunit. Its small holoscreen — a three-dimensional image projected
by the unit into a sphere — failed to open. How odd? He would have to
be guided by the sun to guess the time or any other data monitored by
unit, such as outside and body temperature, heart rate, until he could get
the shuttle’s AI unit working again.
          Moving the webbing out of the way—it was supposed to retract automatically once the release button had been pushed—he seated himself at
the console. He again tried unsuccessfully to get a response to various
voice commands. Maybe he had to go back to the bare basics, namely the
keyboard hidden under the top of the flight console. When had he last
typed on a keyboard? He could not remember.
          But, he had no more luck with keyboard commands. They did not
even register on the screens. Maybe a vital connection had come loose.
He hit the outside of the walls of the flight console firmly several times.
Nothing. He tried again. Maybe he should power up the AI unit from
scratch. He turned the power off and waited several minutes before
turning it on again. The power light duly lit up, and the screens became
active, flickered, but the AI unit still refused to respond to any commands. And these devices were supposed to be failure-proof.
          Maybe the service manual might help. Without the AI unit, he would
have to use the tablet — another gadget from a few hundred years back
still used as a backup. But that even refused to turn on.
          Hadn’t that old navigation instructor joked about each craft having
a paper manual as the final back-up? They had all laughed then. But now
this was not funny anymore. Thank God they still included that as part of
the equipment. After searching through various drawers, he finally found
it behind the panel giving access to the interior of the flight console. He
took it out, almost gingerly. It felt strange holding a book in his hands.
The last time he had done that was at the Academy of Science, five years
back, when one of the professors had arranged a guided tour through the
physical scientific library that held remnants of books and journals
published four or five hundred years ago.
          Over the next two hours, he went through that manual, page by page,
studying and trying a score of basic checks and procedures listed under
faults. Nothing even provoked a response of the AI unit. He quickly
scanned through several of the more advanced maintenance procedures.
They all involved dismantling parts of the unit for individual testing and
promised to be lengthy affairs that would take him more than a day. It
might therefore be prudent to explore first his immediate physical
environment, to ensure his safety and, particularly find drinking water
and possibly food. With the AI unit not working, he could not even
operate the food dispenser or get water, unless he dismantled both units,
nor did he know how long the recycled water would be safe to drink or
how long the ingredients of the food units would keep without the
continuous testing done through the AI unit. The