CHAPTER 119: Form Up

It did not take long for Minerva to set up the first portkey on the space station. It took even less time to get everybody up there. Of course not being in immediate danger leaves plenty of time to think.

Saying their long-term position wasn't good was an understatement.

Having their primary defense being based on the dark lord not being able to figure out where they were or how to get there was less than ideal. Had any of them known the dark lord had talked about the Pioneer plaque would have unnerved them. Imperiating himself onto a shuttle flight wasn't out of the question. Checking all incoming shuttles would be tedious. Alastor was seriously considering suspending them just to keep word from getting out; but that in itself might get the word out. Or maybe not.

In any case there were a few things to do, but first a curiosity. He retrieved the elder wand from his robes and released it. The wand promptly floated over to Professor Michael Evans-Verres, who grabbed it. "Mmm hmm, I thought so."

Minerva said "What happened there?"

"The dark lord defeated Dumbledore. He defeated the dark lord, not vanquished completely, but defeated enough that the wand has switched alliegence to him."

"He can't even use a wand."

"Perhaps not. Or perhaps this will prove vital. In any case, he should be able to brew potions with it. Not that I'd try brewing here. Anyway, time for you to get out the books and see if you can find the secret to Harry's transfiguration. I have a lot more than a hunch that will prove vital."

Housekeeping was going to get interesting. There weren't spare bedclosets for all of them, so some of them had to sleep in the storage units, where the places where stuff was already unloaded from would have empty tiedowns. Light sleeping bags could be had, but that meant hauling more stuff up, with more stuff floating around. All of the smaller items went into pouches, but floating pouches were just as bad and they really weren't designed to be tied down.

Hermoine was getting worried. Where was Harry? Where was Professor McGonagall for that matter? Flitwick was in a tizzy and she could tell something had gone horribly wrong. She started going through the pouch. It didn't take long to discover it was Harry's. The acetylene torch gave that away. Besides that, she found dynamite, a fifth-year potions textbook, a first-year potions textbook heavily marked up, a GPS receiver, several gallon bottles of sulfuric acid, blasting caps, a bag of loose black powder (shudder), before she stopped at the diary of Roger Bacon. The page shoved inside the book was ominous, and it seemed to be about her. Then realization caught up with her.

The librarian on duty that day was not happy. "I need a book on horcruxes" is not a normal request, and on asking at length and getting little more than "it has something to do with coming back from the dead" wasn't helping. Hermoine had, of course, the good sense to conceal what she had.

Not long after that, Moody's patronous found her. Ten minutes later she had repacked Harry's pouch, grabbed a few books and notes, and was on the space station. At least she didn't have to deal with Professor Flitwick finding out why she was asking about horcruxes.

Minerva McGonagall was repeatedly portkeying in and out with a chestful of supplies each time. Several oxygen bottles had been hauled up, quite a lot of food, a random grab-bag of textbooks, a lot of sheet metal, and quite a few brooms. She was a little bit grouchy because Michael Evans had insisted on getting the sheet metal and Alastor Moody had agreed and neither of them wanted to tell her why yet.

Hermoine had a good idea. "Why not use an air freshening charm and dispense with the oxygen bottles?" Moody felt silly and quickly set about doing just that. It took quite a few charms to cover the space station but it's not like they were in a hurry.

NASA was getting annoyed at the loss of communications with the ISS. Moscow, on the other hand, was furious. They had already discovered the cameras were disabled, but the telemetry told a crazy story. Oxygen consumption had gone way up but had now apparently dropped off to zero. Waste water generation was up, but fresh water consumption was down. Then they noticed the cooling water consumption was up. Despite having an unexpected amount of water in the tanks, this was unnerving. With so many instruments reporting crazy values, they had taken the conclusion that its most likely none of them were broken and the cosmonauts were up to something. The lesson of Apollo 13 had been driven home: multiple independent instrument failures do not happen; therefore it is wise to believe them. Even Moscow had managed to learn that one. The guess that the cosmonauts were up to something was right of course, but Moscow had no hope of guessing what was going on.

NASA, on the other hand had gotten something out of their astronaut. Not what they wanted to hear, but what they needed to hear most, that the space station was in good shape and in no need of supplies anytime soon. They also received that the astronaut had certain knowledge that a fringe uprising was taking place in Britain with some kind of power behind it, and the USA had better look into it.

This was, of course, very disturbing. The belief that the astronaut had gone mad appeared to make the most sense, but that didn't explain the nonsense telemetry. There just wasn't any to fake consuming zero oxygen.

All the diving purchases and oxygen bottles had attracted attention in London. The unprecedented demand had sold out all the bottles in half the stores before it went away again. Espionage wasn't required to learn about it as it made the news. After the previous priming, this got NASA's attention. This was, of course relayed shortly to President Bush. Not that he knew what to do either, but briefing him made sense, and if you're going to ask for an out-of-cycle shuttle launch you had better have a good reason.

Even bypassing the math, timeless physics is not the easiest thing for an old brain to learn. Michael hadn't been all that good at explaining it, but Hermoine did a better job. While Moody was trying partial transfiguration for the fifth time, Hermoine set down to studying the note labelled 42.

With Hermoine busy with Moody, this left Michael and Minerva going over the warp field equation. Minerva was getting worried. Transfiguring something high-energy was a bad idea. It finally dawned on her why Michael kept on insisting using partial transfiguration everywhere; you can set a new shape permanently by transfiguring the part you don't want to motor oil and allowing it to flow away before finiting it. Slowly the second piece of realization set in. Heavy motor oil evaporated too slowly to present any significant risk from inhaling bits of it, so long as the material it started as wasn't toxic. This meant the originals had to be of the right material; hence all the sheet metal. And if you were in zero gee and bothered to use a weak hovering charm to get the oil to take on a new shape wonderful things were possible.