Read The Apprentice Starship Engineer: Book One The Link for Free Online Page A

the farm, but nothing compared to this.
    He toured me through the environmental control center and brought up schematics of the air flow system. It was as complicated as the power system. With high pressure ducts running throughout the ship, every branch had its own flow controllers and monitors. Environmental alone was a study that would take years to understand.
    As we headed to maintenance, my head spun. We hadn’t even gone over the heat extraction system. This ship was a furnace inside. Extracting the heat was very important, and took a lot of equipment.
    Bob looked over at me and frowned. “Ah, that was a lot of stuff, wasn’t it?” I nodded. “Too much too fast, huh? Don’t worry. You don’t have to know it all. Get a good functional idea how it works. The computer will get you to the area in a system that has failed.”
    Practice with Sandra was really tough. My head wasn’t in it. I was still trying to put the environmental system together in my mind. She got a bit frustrated with me, and I had to apologize. We stopped and did some breathing exercises, and that helped get me through the practice. 
    Later, Vivian met me at the door. I wasn’t very good company with my head buzzing with power and environmental systems.
    After the main course, and as she served desert, I realized how bad I was being. “Vivian, this has been a wonderful meal. Thank you.”
    After dinner, we moved into the living room.  Bob told me how he and Vivian met, and how Vivian had knocked him cold. She kept interrupting and correcting him. Finally, he stopped.
    “Women. This is my story and I’ll tell it my way,” Bob said.
    “Yes, dear, but you make me sound like a monster. Drake, I didn’t knock him out just senseless. What was I to think when someone I’d never met patted my bottom? Well hell, I turned around and belted him.” She looked at Bob. “You looked so cute lying on the ground, except for the blood around your mouth.” She gave him a warm smile. “I took him home, and we’ve been together for over thirty years.”
    “I’ve been patting your bottom now for thirty years,” Bob said.
    “You keep on patting it or I’ll knock you cold,” she said with a smile.
    The way they looked at each other I thought it was time to go. I thanked them for the meal and wished them a good night.
    As I walked to my dorm, I thought about the systems that made it possible for us to cruise through space in comfort. The ventilation, electrical distribution systems, and oh, don’t forget about the plumbing, fresh and the other. It was so much stuff to understand, and I hadn’t even started to study the power reactor or main engines.
    At my dorm, I started my next course. A man with a bald crown lectured on transistor theory. A large one appeared next to him. Different colored balls moved through the display, representing base emitter and collector current flow. Another group represented the minority current caused from heat. Something clicked. The audio and visual display made sense and explained everything in a way I could grasp. Of course basic transistor theory was review. My dad had taught me about it for as long as I could remember, but this lecture brought it together and made it clear to me. I studied long into the night.

Chapter 4: Tests
    Jack looked over my shoulder as the data streamed across the screen. It was close, but the controller was still hunting, not settling on the set point. I’d just changed out a damper servo in the aft main ventilation duct and was having a hard time getting the controller to settle. I increased the gain, and it started leveling out.
    “Very good, Drake. Good work,” Jack said.
    Wow, that was the second time he’d told me I was doing a good job. You don’t get many of that from Jack.
    “There you are,” Kathy Shelling said as she entered the shop. “Drake, you must have made a mistake.”
    “Mistake,” I repeated.
    “Yeah, you’re asking to take your first-year exam. That