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Even though they were in dire straits, Alex felt a little better knowing he hadn’t foolishly forgot to check something as simple as their oxygen supply before they had taken-off. Forgetting that this model tapped into the liquid oxygen supply for added power was something he easily could have done too.
“It’s not your fault, Cameron,” Alex said, trying to console him.
Cameron simply shook his head. Alex started to think about his studies regarding the A model. He couldn’t remember anything specific to the liquid oxygen. It wasn’t really his responsibility as a WEP Navigator. Several minutes went by without either of them saying a thing. Cameron looked resigned to his fate.
“Cameron, think back to your training. Do you remember anything about the liquid oxygen system? It seems odd to me that using it for only three minutes would deplete the system so quickly,” Alex reasoned as he looked over to the carbon monoxide monitor, which was slowly creeping into the caution area.
“I don’t remember,” Cameron said softly, barely audible.
“C’mon, Cameron! Think!”
Just then, he saw Cameron sit straight up. “Captain, do you have a control panel over to your left, just below your radar circuit breakers?”
“Hold on,” Alex said as he moved his left leg over to reveal a section he had never seen in his model Talon. Above the panel had the letters LOSS stenciled into the top. “Yeah, I see a panel. It has the letters, L. O. S. S on the panel. What does that mean?”
“I’m so stupid,” Cameron said, ignoring Alex’s question. “You should see a dial that has two options: Primary and Secondary. It’s probably on primary; change it over to Secondary.”
Sure enough, the dial was set to Primary. Alex quickly changed the setting and he saw the indicators on the oxygen sensors start to quickly climb back to not only a safe range, but enough to continue their planned route to the radar contacts 287,000 miles away.
“Liquid Oxygen Supplemental System,” Cameron said triumphantly.
Alex was glad his friend had figured it out, but now they had to deal with their battery power problem. Thirteen minutes had passed while they were dealing with the oxygen problem, which meant they had about forty-five minutes left before they were out of power.
“Good job. Any chance you can figure out this power problem, too?” Alex asked half-heartedly.
Alex knew he had to figure this one out on his own. He started checking all the normal causes for generator malfunctions based upon his in-flight troubleshooting training. Nothing obvious was wrong. He also noticed a couple of circuit breakers were in different locations. This gave him an idea.
He decided to run his hand across every circuit breaker he could see or feel. It was a long shot, but if some of the circuit breakers were in different locations than he was used to, then it might be possible that there was another breaker that he didn’t know about, and that it might be popped. Sure enough, behind his seat and to the right, his hand felt a breaker that was open. There was no way he would be able to turn his body to check the label to see if it was related to the generator system.
“Okay, Cameron. I feel a circuit breaker behind me that’s popped. I have no idea what it’s for since I’ve noticed that these breakers are not all in the same location as in our model Talon. I don’t remember any generator breakers back there in our model.”
“Do you feel any other breakers that are open?”
“Nope. I’ve run my hand across all of them. This is the only one.”
“What do we have to lose? Push it in.”
Alex knew that if there was a real reason for the circuit breaker being popped, like a short, then there was a real possibility of causing a fire, or worse an explosion. But Cameron was right; they didn’t have much of a choice.
“All right, here goes.”
Alex held his breath and pushed in the breaker, holding his finger in front of it, half-expecting it to pop out again. It stayed in, and all the lights in the cockpit grew bright again. Alex saw the generator gauges come back to life.
“Excellent work, Captain.” Cameron let out a sigh. “How about trying out that sensor test now?”
“I’m on it,” Alex replied to Cameron, finally focusing his full attention now to the gravity-sensor experiment. He knew if they were to have any chance at surviving against this alien threat that they were going to need to find the Legacy and Stinson and figure out how to detect the alien fighters.
After what seemed like eternity, they were finally in communication range of the radar contacts they had first seen when they left Earth. Throughout most of the trip, Cameron had been asleep, giving Alex all the quiet time he needed to try and solve this gravity-sensor problem. He thought back to the programming he had done for the communications problem the Legacy had with the orbital satellites and smiled. If it wasn’t for that, he wouldn’t have been able to make the progress he had made here.
Cameron was wide awake now, and had been since Alex woke him up a few hours ago; when they were in closer radar range and could determine that the two contacts were in fact the Legacy and the Stinson.
“Stinson, this is Captain Steele from the Stinson and Captain Gonzalez from the Legacy. Do you copy?” Cameron said into his radio mic.
After the third try, they were rewarded with a reply.
“Captain Steele, welcome back. This is Colonel Withers. Please proceed over to the Legacy. I will meet you over there for your debriefing.”
“Yes, sir.”
As they flew past the Stinson, Alex couldn’t believe how much they had repaired already. He remembered how when he first passed the burning Stinson, he thought that the massive behemoth had been lost. It was impressive.
“Looks like we might have a chance,” Alex said to Cameron, not really expecting a reply.
“Yep, especially now that you’ve figured out how to detect them.”
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