Chapter 2 — The Star Growers

Mien fixed the receiver by listening to it through the table top. I removed the cover, placed a fingertip on the aluminum case and pressed my ear to my wrist, where vibrations passed through the bones more clearly than sound. Lam stood opposite, arms crossed, trying not to grab the screwdriver.

“Not listening,” Lam said.

Mien wrote: "I don't listen."

“I mean you don't need to pretend.”

Mien looked at her, then continued writing: "I'm not pretending."

In An Cu's workshop, the sound of the air compressor turned on and off rhythmically, and the smell of motor oil lingered in the clothes. They placed the V-18 receiver on a wooden table that was once used to repair the transmitter. Cu was removing the fuel filter, but his eyes were still on Mien.

“If you can fix it, fix it,” he said. “Don't need Miss Lam to speak for you.”

Mien doesn't like adults talking like they're defending. I bent down and used tongs to pick up a blue string. The wire is not broken, but the covering is pressed under the screw. When touched, the receiver emits a humming beat.

Lam held the electronic board and opened the signal log. "V-18 didn't shut down completely. It still sent the last data packet."

“But there are no coordinates,” Cu said.

“Because the bulb lost power.”

Mien shook her head. I pointed to the box and drew a straight line, then a circle was cut out. Lam understands you are saying the power cord was shorted before the bulb went flat. It wasn't the wind that caused a complete loss of communication; There is a problem with the connection under the cover.

“You think the joint is salt water?” Lam asked.

Mien wrote: "The water hasn't come in yet. There are signs of heat."

Lam took a magnifying glass. Around the base of the capacitor there is a dark area, as small as the tip of a toothpick. The V-18 did not fail due to strange air currents. It failed because a cheap component overheated, but the previous wind data could still be correct.

Cu put the filter down. “So is the northwest wind real or not?”

Lam did not answer immediately. “Don't know yet.”

“You say this well.”

“Because it's right.”

“A correct sentence that doesn't help anyone decide is like a sentence not said.”

Ha walked in with two boys carrying water barrels. She put the box down, saw everyone around the receiver and asked if there had been a warning. Lam said no.

“Good,” Ha replied. “But I need an internal announcement to the medical station.”

“What announcement?”

"If there is low-level salty wind, the asthma team needs to close the sea-facing door. I don't need an alarm level, just monitoring."

Lam took a form. Ha filled in the name of the person to call, the house number and the signal to be transferred to the station. She did not write "if possible". She wrote down the deadline: before 5 p.m., if there is no new data, call back.

“Are you doing your own process?” Lam asked.

"I'm doing my job. The medical station can't wait for the engineer to call a cloud."

Thao Nhi brought a plastic map tube. She placed it on the table and said that the 2019 paper map recorded salt winds from the northwest, but the person who drew it annotated it as "local, not maintained".

“Northwest orientation in tidal flats is not uncommon,” she said. “It's rare for it to appear on the third floor.”

Lam looked at her. “Whose third floor is it?”

“Of the atmosphere.”

Cu burst out laughing, but Thao Nhi did not laugh. She spread out the map. The brown lines depict the dunes, salt flats, and reflector canopy of the Thin Clouds program. On the edge of the lagoon, a note reads “the wind changed direction after the reflector operated”.

“This map is old,” Lam said.

"Old doesn't mean it's wrong. It just means people have stopped asking about it."

Mien took the signal board and tapped two fingers on the table: long beat, three short beats, long beat. I'm simulating a V-18 data packet before it crashed.

Lam opens the raw recording. The packet has four axes: pressure, temperature, humidity, salinity. The salinity axis increases in a repeating rhythm, not continuously. If it is a sensor error, the increase rate will follow the power source. If it is salt rain, it can follow the wind layer.

“Mien, can you filter source noise?”

I nodded, but pointed at Cu.

“The factory's power source?” Cu asked.

Mien wrote: "The compressor makes noise when running."

Cu understands. He turned off the compressor. The workshop suddenly quieted, only the sound of dry rain tapping on the corrugated iron roof. The receiver outputs a more steady beat. Mien uses a wire connected directly to the battery, bypassing the voltage regulator.

On the screen, a graph line appears. No more false peaks due to the compressor. But the northwest wind was still there, lasting eleven minutes before the shadow lost power.

Lam feels her throat is dry. An eleven-minute sequence was not enough warning, but it was too long to be called a blip.

“Record both,” she said. “One filtered, one original.”

Mien looked up and wrote: "Will you keep the original?"

"YES."

“This time?”

Lam looked at me. Mien doesn't ask for no reason. Six years ago, Lam erased the faulty measurement chain after determining the sensor was wet. She kept a screenshot, but the raw copy is no longer available. Later, when people asked why the station was wrong, she could only come to the conclusion that it had been cleaned.

“Keep it this time,” Lam said. “Even though it makes us look bad.”

Cu took the old phone and put it on the table. "My ship has a camera facing the lagoon. There are no sensors, but there is wind video. I'll show you if you record it correctly, it's my video, it won't turn into standard data."

He opened the recording at 3:22 a.m. The surface of the lagoon was flat, but the oyster buoys were pulled back toward the land. Floating seaweed gathers in thin strips, not following the ground wind.

“The wind upstairs has changed,” Lam said.

“Or change the country.”

“Both need measuring.”

“You want to release more?”

“Six seeds.”

Cu shook his head. “The V-18 hasn't been fixed yet.”

“It's not enough to fix six.”

“Where are the materials?”

“Station warehouse.”

“The station warehouse only has four balloons left.”

Kha walked in, carrying a bundle of bamboo and a box of plastic bottles. "There are two more shells from the water plant. But the membranes are not the same type."

Lam check the label. The new material is thicker and heavier and is unlikely to reach the third floor.

“Used as a low station,” Mien wrote.

Lam looked at me. “I want to plant six seeds but two of them don't grow high.”

Mien draws a triangle: three low stations, three high stations, then connects the lines. "Compare."

Cu held the sign, understanding before Lam. “She wants to take the difference between the low floor and the high floor.”

“It is not possible to compare directly if the sensor is different.”

“Maybe if calibrated at the same time.”

Lam looked at Mien, then looked at Cu. They don't need the same type of equipment to ask different questions. The star network is not a perfect machine, but rather many measurements looking at the same sky from different locations.

Thao Nhi rummaged through the map tube and took out six numbered bamboo cards. Each card lists the name of a roof that volunteered to receive the station.

“Mrs. Mui's house, old school, residential workshop, medical station, dome and salt watchtower,” she read. "Don't leave Mrs. Mui's house because the seeds fell on her vegetables."

Lam burst out laughing. “Mrs. Mui will ask for his name.”

“She named it Falling Star.”

In the afternoon, they repaired the V-18. Mien replaced the capacitor, Kha re-tied the frame, Lam wrote down each step in the diary. When they turned on the power, the star did not fly, but sent the last data stored in memory. The increase in salinity precedes the decrease in pressure by thirteen minutes.

“If this sequence repeats,” Lam said, “the salty wind is preceded by a pressure fluctuation.”

“So we will forecast?” Cu asked.

“We would say it could be a sign.”

"Lengthy."

"Correct."

Ha wrote an internal notice Ministry: “Monitor the possibility of increased salt particles in low-level winds; close seaside doors when there is a metallic odor or white dust; no evacuation warning is required.”

Lam read and changed "grains of salt" to "dust and salt vapor", because the form was unknown. Underline the sentence “not a warning yet” so that no one uses it as a guarantee.

When the sun is tilted, the six stations are divided among six roofs. Mien is in charge of the medical station, where Ms. Ha wants to test the tactile signal board. Cu kept the station at the factory, just because he didn't want others to hold the wrong screwdriver. Kha brought two low seeds to the salt hut.

Before releasing, Lam told the children: "If the data contradicts, no one can choose the version they like. Record everything."

Ti asked: "What if both versions are wrong?"

“Then we have one more thing to measure.”

The star particle V-19 flew up at 4:07 a.m. V-20 flew seven minutes after it. Two small spots of light flicker in the bright sky. No one calls them stars because they are difficult to see with the naked eye.

Signal receiving station screen. Low level: southeast wind. High floor: northwest direction. The salinity at the salt hut station increased before the old school station.

Before Lam could take notes, a strange packet appeared, without the star seed code. It consists of just five pressure spans and a coordinate three kilometers offshore.

Mien looked at the screen, then looked at Lam. I touched the table top. The vibration is transmitted into one long beat and two short beats.

“Someone else is measuring,” Ha said.

Lam launched coordinates. That is the area outside the lagoon where the Thin Cloud project places floating reflective roofs. On national records, that district has no community stations.

Cu held the phone and turned on the camera facing the sea. A strip of silver light lay on the surface of the water like a tilted mirror.

“I know they installed that thing,” he said. “I didn't know it was growing too.”

No one laughed. Strange packet sent one more time, then lost.

Lam opened the book and wrote down the unconfirmed coordinates. She did not issue a warning. But this time, she didn't delete it.

Mien stayed in the equipment room until the lights in the yard were turned off. I removed the V-18 shell, placed each screw on a piece of cardboard with a circle drawn on it. A screw was out of thread, two sensor pins were covered with salt, and someone had plugged the backup battery with the wrong polarity. I'm not complaining. To Mien, each error is a device that says it has been touched by someone in a hurry.

Lam turned around and gave me a dry towel. “You don't need to fix it all overnight.”

Mien wrote: "The wind does not wait for morning."

“But those who fix the wind need sleep.”

I thought, then placed the towel on Lam's shoulder. Then the two divided the work. Lam tabulates what is known and what is not known. Constantly re-measure the battery, solder the sensor pins, and stick a yellow piece to the part that may cause errors. Cu sent a video from the lagoon, in which a layer of water ripples runs in the opposite direction of the kitchen smoke on the shore.

Near midnight, V-18 sent a new packet. Wind direction remains the same, but salinity decreases as the grain rises higher. Lam no longer sees it as just a warning. She saw it as a thin slice through a large room, where many layers of air were moving at the same time.

Before locking the door, Mien placed a piece of paper in the storage box: "If you don't know if the packet is real, keep the question mark." Lam signed below. The next morning, they'll need more stations, more people, and maybe one more debate. But the data was no longer in Lam's memory.