Star Wars_ MedStar 02_ Jedi Healer - Michael Reaves [34]
Sometimes, on a particularly hot and humid day, they would get some condensation under the dome, but nothing like this. The osmotic exchangers were fairly efficient, letting in air and even rain, while keeping out a lot of less desirable things. But for it to be snowing, the temperature differential had to be far outside normal limits. Short of parking a battery of refrigeration units on null-grav sleds up there, he had no idea how it could happen.
Zan would have known. Zan had worked for a relative on force-domes when he’d been young.
“Never saw anything like this before,” Teedle said, adding that gum-popping sound her vocabulator sometimes made. “Of course, I’ve only been operational for six weeks, so it’s not like I’ve seen all that much.”
Jos walked away from the cantina, toward the OT. The cold was increasing, and the snow continued to drift down. The ground and most of the other exposed surfaces were still too warm to allow it to pile up, but if the temperature kept dropping like this, it wouldn’t be long, he estimated, before they would have to start shoveling the stuff.
He remembered hearing or reading somewhere that the dome was in fact a spherical bubble, rather than a hemisphere, with half of it underground. He wondered if that would have any effect on the soil temperature.
Jos shivered. He needed a jacket. Had he even brought one to Drongar? Had anybody? The sticky wet heat that had hit him like a personal insult the moment he’d stepped off the transport had never stopped—it had remained body heat and hotter during the days, maybe three-quarters that at night, and a humidity factor of less than 90 percent was big news.
Even so, the current ambient temperature, in defiance of all the laws of thermodynamics, was fast approaching freezing. He needed a coat, at the very least. A heavy-weather parka would be even better…
“Attention, all personnel,” came Vaetes’s voice over the public address system. “There has been a heat-exchange malfunction of the camp’s osmotic force-dome. There is no cause for alarm—the shielding aspect of the dome remains in effect. Technicians are working on the problem and will have it repaired shortly. Until they do, you are advised to don warm clothing or to remain indoors.”
Jos stared around him. The flakes were turning to slush and mud upon contact with the still-warm ground—even so, the sight was pretty unbelievable. He’d seen this place in the lowlands practically every day for the past year and a half, and it had looked no different after the move here. Yet it now seemed completely transformed. He wondered what it would look like with the buildings covered with snow, with it piled up in drifts on the roads and against the sides of structures.
Jos couldn’t help but smile. Zan would have loved this. Almost a pity things’ll be back to normal before it has a chance to accumulate, he thought. I’d like to get in one good snowball fight with someone …
“Hey, look at that,” he murmured aloud. There’d been less residual heat than he would have thought—the snow was starting to pile up already.
He might get his wish after all.
Barriss stood in the falling snow, which was coming down quite heavily now. It lay piled at least finger-length deep, turning the camp into a glistening white tableau that was quite beautiful. She’d always loved the sight of a snowy landscape. It transformed even the ugly durasteel and plasticast structures of the Rimsoo into something fresh and clean and new. The temperature was near freezing, cold enough for the stuff to keep falling, and, somewhat to her surprise, the ground was now cold enough for it to stick.
Along with her appreciation of the snow, Barriss also felt vindication. That cold draft she had felt, the impossible chilly breeze that had contributed to her accident, had been real. And, she knew, if the force-dome’s power had fluctuated at just the right frequency, the resulting pulse could have affected