Back at her temporary space, Rifka sat up with the fabricator as it finished assembling the implanting device. She carefully unfolded the surgical suite set it on a table. She started the calibration sequences.

  Without a hard deadline—like an impending invasion of treasure hunters—Rifka could let the machine take its time. She reasoned that she’d set it to calibrate and then pack it up after. The surgery would happen in the medical facilities instead of rushing things in the cramped space.

  “This wouldn’t be a bad place for a second workshop,” she said. Erasmus couldn’t help themself sometimes. If they were awake, they might still respond. They didn’t.

  Rifka grabbed a laser caliper and started measuring the space. It was an excuse to look for cameras. Not that Rifka expected to find them all. The Company liked to keep a close eye on its workers without being obvious about it. Rifka had seen feeds in just about every spot in the mine. And, she knew Erasmus installed some of his won, because he always seemed to know where she was.

  If she could find the cameras, and then disable them at the right moment, it could be a huge advantage. Some of her portable fabricators were already here, as well as the precision assembler. That could form the core of the equipment for a transmitter.

  As she measured she started memorizing the dimensions through habit. “Twenty oh oh. Three oh eight. Ten oh four.” She found saying it aloud helped her remember. She moved to the makeshift bedroom. “Three oh eight. Nine oh oh.”

  Rifka stopped. These numbers told an unexpected story.

  The walls between the bedroom and the room beside it were too thick. Much too thick. The station had been largely dug from the rocky asteroid, but interior walls were fabricated on site using polymer and compressed rick dust. It made for panels of rigid pre-sized material that could make rooms by just slotting the material together and using a sealing polymer for air-tight construction. Specialty metal bulkhead doors slotted in place to provide bulkhead seals for vacuum failures.

  So, the station designers standardized interior wall thickness. This wall was more than a meter off.

  ‘There’s a space here,’ Rifka reasoned. ‘Erasmus suggested this spot for me to live. If they think of me as part of their hoard, would the dragon be nearby?’

  Nothing obviously opened into the space, and Rifka wasn’t ready to dismantle the walls on a hunch. Rifka needed a sensor to look through the walls. There could be all sorts of reasons this little security station had this configuration. But, her curiosity wouldn’t let her stop thinking about it.

  She’d barely slept, she was hours beyond her scheduled sleep, and yet she almost ran up to her workshop’s computer workroom to find a schematic for a gamma camera for fabrication.

  Then she realized she didn’t need to go to the trouble, she already had a gamma scanning camera: her cybernetic eyes. She and Erasmus designed them to be sensitive from low infrared frequencies all the way up to gamma radiation.

  She couldn’t install her cybernetic eyes yet because it would involve surgery, but she could do the next best thing: connect them to her auto-coverall’s helmet, use a small amount of the gamma emitting material from the surgical suite to image the wall. She could look through the wall and see what was there. She wouldn’t even need to take the eyes out of the case; she would just use the NFMI connection.

  Rifka set it up. It took longer than she expected, and her helmet was a lousy screen, but she had an image of the interior of the wall. She found metal hinges, and a pressure seal. The wall had a hidden airlock. She couldn’t tell where it ended, but she could find the latch. It was simple; a seamless panel blended in with the composite wall. She could press on it and a hidden hinge popped it open. Behind it, a metal numerical pad appeared to be the access port for the door.

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  Rifka had reach an impasse. She couldn’t think of how to guess the code. She didn’t know anything useful about the people who worked in the mine.

  She stared at the panel and considered how she would open the door without the code. The thing was, none of the doors locked this way normally; it was too dangerous. The risk that a power failure would trap workers in a space that was losing air too great. There should have been a crank or handle to open it.

  She was missing something. If a door couldn’t be opened with the power off, then logically the door wouldn’t be closed if the power failed.

  Rifka had a simple way to check it. She needed to cut the power. She just needed to find the right wires.

  Her little trick with a gamma camera wouldn’t work without being able to put the gamma source on the far side of the wall, which presumably would be solid rock.

  But, the power conduits were predictable. Rifka just looked for the outlets, found the spot directly above them, and pulled down the ceiling. The designers wanted electrical maintenance crews to have access points to replace or expand electrical supply conduit. Tracing the wires, Rifka found the power junction.

  Some electronic circuit breaker somewhere could be thrown to turn off the power. Rifka had no intention of looking for it.

  Rifka stared at the nest of wires, and realized she’d want her equipment packed up before she ended up cutting the power to the lights. She took a moment to pack up everything, including her eyes, automated medical cybernetics installation suite, tools and fabricators, clothes and spare suites.

  Once she had her equipment in cases, Rifka just took a laser cutter from her workbench kit and sliced through the wires.

  The rooms’ lights went out. Rifka’s helmet light was all the illuminated the room.

  She couldn’t hear it, but she saw a seam open on the too-thick wall. Rifka set her auto-coverall to the safety setting. She hoped she wasn’t putting herself in danger of a loss in atmosphere, but her curiosity compelled her to proceed.

  Prising the door open, she peered into the dark beyond. She found an airlock on the other side. She stepped carefully through into the lock.

  “Advanced Propulsion Laboratory Section, Authorized Personnel, ONLY,” a metal placard warned above the inner door.

  “I’m authorized,” Rifka told it. “By reason of me being the only human resident of Lonely Mountain.”

  The sign didn’t reply.

  This could be her chance to escape. Or, to find Erasmus’ weakness.

  Rifka would have to cycle the lock to move forward. To her shock, the dial read only 2 millibars of air pressure on the other side. She could see through the transparent porthole; there were lights on beyond. Her power cut only effected the section near the hidden door. The airlock itself had power.

  ‘The lab is in a vacuum?’ Rifka wondered. ’Why? How?’

  In the skintight auto-coverall with the helmet on, Rifka had air enough for over an hour of exploration in a null atmosphere. She might even be able to re-pressurize the area. The auto-coveralls weren’t meant for the radiation in outer space, but they would be fine in a section like this. They were buried deep underground; it would be fine.

  Rifka went through the secret door and checked her luggage for supplies. She popped open her primary toolkit’s case and clipped a few useful tools to her coverall, a wire to connect her suits systems to any terminals she came accross, a light, and a multitool. She flexed her fingers in the gloves; her sense of touch wouldn’t be as good, so she’d have to be careful about using them.

  Rifka returned to the airlock, shut the outer door, and cycled the airlock. It seemed to work fine. There were lights, but no gravity panels beyond the airlock.

  She would conduct her investigation in the low gravity of the Lonely mountain, and without any air. She put her air levels at the center of her helmet’s display. At 50% she would head back. If she found a way out, all the better. Propulsion implied vessels. Something she could use to leave might be just as good as finding someone to rescue her.

  Prepared as well as she could with the time she had, she stepped into the silence beyond and drifted down the passage.