By Mike Muzzy · © 2026 Mike Muzzy. All rights reserved.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

THE SECOND POWERHOUSE

Camp One, early 1981

The second powerhouse arrived in three separate cargo landings. By the time the last shipment was unloaded, Han had already found problems with the first two.

The colony's original reactor had kept the first landing crew alive and continued to supply the growing settlement. It had not been designed to run a machine shop, an agricultural complex, a spaceport and several new residential sections at the same time.

Every proposed expansion came with a calculation of what would have to be switched off elsewhere.

The second reactor was meant to change that.

Its components had been ordered from several countries. No participating government wanted another to control the colony's principal power expansion, so the supply agreement divided the work among manufacturers who had not always agreed on how their equipment should connect.

Han called the arrangement politically balanced and mechanically irritating.

The reactor vessel arrived from one consortium. Control equipment came from another. Turbine and conversion machinery came from a third. Cabling and connectors followed several national standards, each supported by documentation that assumed the reader had the rest of the manufacturer's equipment.

Li laid four incompatible plugs on a workbench.

“Which one are we supposed to use?”

“All of them,” Han said.

“On the same machine?”

“Not at the same connection.”

“That is not much comfort.”

They built adapters where adapters were permitted. Where the specification required a particular connection, Han insisted on the correct part.

One crate had shifted during unloading. The casing looked undamaged, but a mounting bracket inside had bent far enough to put a distribution assembly out of alignment.

The supplier's instructions called for replacement.

The next shipment from Earth would not arrive in time.

Li took the bracket to the Mechanical Dome. He measured it, made a new one and brought both pieces to Han.

She compared the dimensions.

“You've changed the radius here.”

“The original had a stress point.”

“Can you prove the new one is stronger?”

“I can test it.”

“Then test it.”

Li looked at her.

“You don't trust me?”

“I trust you to tell me when a part is ready. You haven't told me that yet.”

He returned to the workshop.

The new bracket passed inspection two days later.

Assembly took two months. The powerhouse stood beyond the main habitat zone behind shielding berms, with a pressurised service connection to the control room nearer the central spine. The construction teams worked around scheduled shutdowns, supply delays and a persistent shortage of qualified hands.

Han had arrived just before Morozov's departure, when preparations were already underway. She inherited the engineering drawings, the outstanding problems and several folders of correspondence between Earth-based contractors who blamed one another for the mismatched equipment.

She read every page.

One evening Shaw found her still in the control room, comparing two sets of diagrams.

“Anything serious?”

“Not yet.”

“That sounds encouraging.”

“One manufacturer calls this an emergency inhibit. The other calls the same signal a permissive input.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I need to find out whether they agree about what happens when the wire breaks.”

“Do they?”

“I'm not letting anyone energise it until I know.”

Earth wanted a commissioning date. The colony administration wanted one too.

Alina had plans for more growing area and additional lighting. The Mechanical Dome needed longer production shifts. The spaceport wanted heating capacity for equipment that could not be left cold between operations. Civilian housing had increased the demand on the existing grid before the new arrivals had even left Earth.

Shaw asked for a realistic schedule.

Han gave her one with a week's allowance for faults.

“Can you make it shorter?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“By leaving out the allowance.”

Shaw kept the original schedule.

The first commissioning attempt began with the control room crowded by people who had little reason to be there.

Han sent most of them outside.

She kept the reactor crew, the electrical distribution supervisor, Li and Shaw. Everyone else could watch the status reports from their own departments.

The reactor's startup sequence proceeded normally. The cooling systems responded, the controls passed their checks and the conversion equipment began delivering power to the test circuit.

Han watched the instruments for several minutes before authorising the first transfer to the colony grid.

The new powerhouse accepted a modest load.

At the Mechanical Dome, a bank of machinery switched over without interruption.

Han increased the transfer in stages.

Then an alarm sounded.

A protection relay opened the connection to the distribution bus. The load fell back onto the original powerhouse. The new unit remained stable, but its output was isolated from the settlement.

Nobody spoke until Han had confirmed the reactor and cooling systems were safe.

“Stop the test,” she said.

The distribution supervisor examined his display.

“Overcurrent?”

“That's what the relay recorded.”

“The measured current never reached the limit.”

“I can see that.”

Li leaned over the printed event log.

“Could it be a faulty sensor?”

“Possibly. We find out before we try again.”

The original powerhouse had carried the transferred load without difficulty. The settlement had lost no essential service.

That did not make the test a success.

Earth received the preliminary report after the usual delay. Its reply urged the colony to complete commissioning promptly and suggested that the relay threshold might be set too conservatively.

Han read the message twice.

She wrote back that no protective setting would be changed without identifying the cause of the trip.

A second message requested a timetable.

She sent the same answer with the inspection schedule attached.

The investigation occupied three days.

The relay had done exactly what its input told it to do. The difficulty was that the current-monitoring assembly supplied by one manufacturer and the protection equipment supplied by another did not interpret the same transient signal in the same way.

When a large motor started elsewhere on the grid, the brief change in current was being amplified by the interface electronics. The relay saw a condition that had not actually occurred.

It was an incompatibility hidden in equipment that had passed its individual factory tests.

Li's technicians checked the wiring and shielding. Han reviewed the interface specifications with the distribution supervisor. They replaced the unsuitable signal-conditioning module with an approved assembly adapted for the actual input range, then tested it against simulated disturbances before reconnecting the powerhouse.

The protection relay remained in service. Its safety limits were unchanged.

On the fourth morning, Shaw entered the control room and found Han checking the final test sheet.

“Ready?”

“For another attempt.”

“You nervous?”

“No.”

“You are tapping your finger.”

“I am counting seconds.”

“Eun-ju.”

“Yes.”

“Are you nervous?”

“Of course.”

Shaw looked at the completed inspection forms.

“Good. So am I.”

Han began the sequence.

This time there was no audience beyond the people needed to operate the equipment.

Cooling and control systems passed their checks. The conversion machinery came online. The distribution supervisor confirmed that the test bus was ready.

The first transfer held.

Han increased the load.

At the Mechanical Dome, the machines switched over again. The largest motor started. The monitoring equipment recorded a brief transient and returned to normal.

No alarm sounded.

Han waited, then authorised the next transfer.

Agriculture brought additional lamp banks online. The spaceport activated its new heating circuits. Other loads followed in the order agreed during planning.

The colony's original powerhouse continued operating, but it no longer had to supply nearly everything.

Alina called the control room.

“Are these lights staying on?”

“If your equipment behaves,” Han said.

“That's not an answer.”

“It's the best one you're getting until the test is finished.”

The full-load trial continued through the shift. Technicians checked temperatures, vibration, power quality and the behaviour of the distribution network. Han refused to announce success until the scheduled test period had ended.

When she finally signed the commissioning sheet, Li looked at the figures.

“Now can I say it works?”

“You can say it passed.”

“That's close enough.”

Shaw sent the report to Earth.

Across Camp One, the change was less dramatic than the commissioning team might have hoped. The corridors did not suddenly become brighter. No new dome appeared on the horizon.

But the Mechanical Dome could schedule machines together instead of taking turns. Ore processing could run for longer periods. Agriculture had room to expand its lighting programme. The new residential modules could be heated without demanding another reduction elsewhere.

Projects that had been waiting for electrical capacity could finally be assigned dates.

Before leaving, Han checked the load forecast one more time.

She reduced the output of the original powerhouse in the model and watched the remaining capacity figure.

The colony could now lose a major generator without immediately shutting down half its operations.

She printed the result and placed it in Shaw's folder.

Then she went to get some sleep.