Live Free or Die, Second Edition, page 40
“A new tug system,” Kelly said. “This is purely for Apollo Mining at the present. It has four hundred gravities of acceleration but, of course, can’t actually use that for internal delta-V. It also has a very wide angle for pressor or tractor beams. Apollo has been doing a lot of space shaping and they needed something that could generate a wide pressor beam. The tug is capable of maintaining a one-hundred-gravity pressor over a three-hundred yard band.”
Tyler didn’t see the military application and raised an eyebrow.
“Purely for Apollo?” Tyler said.
“Nobody else needs them,” Kelly said, shrugging. “Apollo gave us the specs and we figured it out. Didn’t we, Granadica?”
“It was different,” the AI said. “Most races don’t mine the way that you do.”
“Anything else?”
“Last, we have a support ship for the emergency shuttles,” Kelly said, smiling slightly. “The problem was making a ship capable of keeping up. That required conformal systems throughout the ship as well as acceleration modifications.”
“I’m not sure how long I’d want to take ten gravities,” Tyler said. “I took seven for twenty minutes one time and it nearly killed me.”
“Hopefully not for long,” Kelly said. “The ship has launchers for small…buoys. Remote sensing platforms. Those have been designed for six hundred gravities of acceleration for…rapid and widespread dissemination.”
“Better hope they don’t run into anything,” Granadica said. “Because they’re an awful lot like missiles. That’s what I based them off of. An old missile design. Slap a heavy warhead on them and they’re going to play merry hob if they, for example, run into a Horvath ship. Just the kinetic impact after thirty seconds running will blow through Horvath screens.”
“But since they’re…sensor buoys?” Tyler said, frowning.
“All good,” Granadica said. “Hey, how you humans want to do search and rescue is up to you. And what you want to mount for sensors is also up to you. The ship has hard points for mounting more big flash-lights. And you can point the spotlight on something at up to three light-minutes. Very accurate spotlight. Since that’s a long way away, it can be dialed up to a three megawatt laser. And gravitic sensors to spot anything that needs rescuing. Up to seven light-seconds out. They’re very sensitive. With a little triangulation, which the system can do using sensors on multiple ships, in movement or with the sensors on shuttles or remotes on the buoys, they can spot even a hypercom node that’s active within two light-seconds. Or, say, something accelerating on a collision course. They also can handle up to one hundred sensor buoys in movement at the same time.”
“An Aegis search and rescue ship,” Tyler said, nodding. “Very nice platform.”
“More of a frigate,” Kelly said. “They’re smaller than the Constitution class. Also faster and more capable.”
“BAE is just going to love the hell out of that,” Tyler said, grinning. “Not that it’s a warship, of course.”
“Of course,” Granadica said.
“Granadica,” Tyler said musingly. “How big are the fabbers you made to make nanotubes? No, let me say this a different way. Can you make some fabbers to pre-separate the carbon from a carbonaceous asteroid?”
“I can do it,” Granadica said. “There’s going to be a fairly significant energy penalty. It’s going to cost more. And I’ll have to rearrange the schedule.”
“Do it,” Tyler said. “Anything else?”
“That’s about it,” Kelly said, suddenly looking nervous.
“That’s all good,” Tyler said, nodding. “All good. Thank your team for me.”
“Permission to speak freely, sir?” Kelly said.
“What is this, the military?” Tyler said, smiling. “Of course.”
“You look tired as hell,” the manager said. “No offense. But you look as if you could use a break.”
“I’ve got a lot of pressures,” Tyler said, shrugging. “I can take it. I’ve learned to take it. But, Granadica, between you, Kelly and me, I’m serious about doing the fuel mine in three years. I’m hoping we have three.”
* * *
“How was Wolf?” Bryan asked.
Dr. Foster had stepped down as head of Apollo Mining nearly three years before.
There was a progression to management. Some people were great with small start-ups but couldn’t handle big business. Others were best at handling large scale operations and were driven crazy by start-ups.
Apollo and LFD Corp. were, without question, big business. Tyler and Bryan had talked it over and then three people had taken over various bits of the management. There was an MBA with extensive experience of terrestrial mining and materials sales as the CEO, an Army general as chief of operations, mostly devoted to the increasingly complex task of moving light around, and even a chief science officer who oversaw production of the SAPL components and an increasingly large team of people who studied better ways to move it and use it.
Bryan’s title was now “Chief of Special Projects.” That way he always had new things to wrap his head around and Tyler had somebody’s head to throw them at.
“Busy,” Tyler said. “I think I need to get a ship made.”
“You have…a lot of ships,” Bryan pointed out. “I mean, if you count all the tugs…”
“I mean for me,” Tyler said. “I’ve been putting it off for forever. But if I’m going to be running back and forth between here and Wolf, running around poking my nose into people’s business…I think I need a ship. A shuttle at least. The Night Wolves have a pretty good design. I think I may have one sent to Burger Boat.”
“They know anything about space?” Bryan asked.
“Not a thing,” Tyler said. “Time they found out. And taking the shuttle not only takes time I can’t afford, I’m just getting too old to sit next to a hulking miner who’s looking forward to getting back to mamasan and some real showers. Okay, we’ve got a problem.”
“I live to serve,” Bryan said, grinning.
“Steel.”
“Hard,” Bryan said. “We’ve been looking at making a smelter. Problem is, most of our stuff is mobile enough to run if the Horvath come through the gate. A smelter…isn’t going to be really mobile.”
“Right,” Tyler said. “And what I’m talking about is going to be too big for a smelter, anyway. You’ve seen the general design for the Wolf mine, I take it.”
“Yep,” Bryan said. “Those support plates are going to be fun to make. They’ll have to be welded.”
“Not if we can cast them in one piece,” Tyler said. “I was thinking about it on the shuttle back. What’s steel?”
“Iron,” Bryan said. “Carbon. Various trace elements. If you want stainless—”
“Which we do.”
“A bunch of chromium or nickel. About forty percent by weight if I recall the class.”
“Okay,” Tyler said. “Think of a McGriddle.”
“A what?” Bryan said, chuckling.
“A chupaqueso, then,” Tyler said. “Take a plate of iron, more or less pure.”
“Which we have,” Bryan said, nodding.
“Then layer it on both sides with crushed carbon. Mix in the trace elements you need. Then on the outside, smaller plates of chromium or nickel. Heat, melt, let collapse into a ball through microgravity.”
“May work,” Bryan said. “Except the carbon’s going to get very kinetically active and tend to move away.”
“Ah,” Tyler said. “Why I mentioned a McGriddle. Seal the edges of the outer plates. That will keep the carbon contained.”
“How big we talking?” Bryan asked, making some notes.
“Two kilometers,” Tyler said. “The final form. Sort of like a washer with a one-hundred-meter hole in the middle. And about thirty meters thick. Two of those. We can figure out how to make the bracers if we can do the washers.”
“That’s an interesting project,” Bryan said, grinning. “We ordered these new tugs from the Night Wolves…”
“Yeah,” Tyler said. “What’s up with that?”
“We needed bigger fields for shaping,” Bryan said, still making notes. “We’re doing a lot of spin processing. We needed wider fields to handle big projects. This is a good example. To get this thing even, we’re going to have to shape it in three dimensions. But with the tugs we can do that. We’re calling them Potter’s Hands. I’m not going to start with two kilometers, mind you. But BAE has been screaming for steel for the Constitutions. We’re having to carry it up out of the well. This might be the answer.”
“Call me when you’ve got the material spun up,” Tyler said. “I’d like to see that.”
“Will do. Anything else?”
“About a thousand things,” Tyler said. “Oh, Steren’s getting married. You should be getting an invitation. I put you down for one.”
“Steren?” Bryan asked, confused.
“Younger daughter?” Tyler said. “The tomboy?”
“I…don’t think you’d ever mentioned her name,” Bryan said. “I knew you had two daughters. But that’s about all.”
“Really?” Tyler said. “Not even when we were melting…”
“Icarus,” Bryan said. “No. And we talked about a lot of things. But not family. I’d sort of wondered.”
“Ah,” Tyler said. “Two children. Christy and Steren. Christy’s getting her MBA at the moment. Wharton, which makes me very proud. Steren…wasn’t big on school. She also wanted to be her own person. Which meant she was working as a vet’s assistant. She’s marrying a guy named Thomas Schneider. He’s a mechanical engineering grad student. I’d guess he’s going to want a job, which is no big deal.”
“You haven’t met him, have you?” Bryan said.
“I’m supposed to be meeting them this weekend,” Tyler said. “We’re having dinner.”
“When I met you they were still kids. I really hadn’t realized it had been that long.”
“But interesting,” Tyler said. “As in we live in interesting times. And on that note, I now have to catch another shuttle so I can make a meeting in St. Louis.”
“Have fun,” Bryan said. “And, Tyler?”
“Yeah?”
“All work and no play?”
“When I find somebody who’s willing to think big, I’ll think about taking a vacation,” Tyler said. “In the meantime…I’m managing.”
EIGHT
“My dad is going to already be there.” Steren Vernon had, fortunately, gotten her looks from her mother. And her stature, since she was pushing six feet. The name meant “Star” in Cornish. And it fit her eyes, which were dark but with a usually bright sparkle. Even more so when she was mad. “He’ll probably be talking on his plant, and probably shouting at somebody, which means he looks like he’s raving.”
“You told me.” Thomas Schneider was taller than Steren but had the same general looks. Dark hair and eyes. They looked a good bit like brother and sister rather than an engaged couple. “Several times. Vernon party?” he said to the maitre d’.
“And you are?”
“Steren Vernon,” Steren snapped. “The heir apparent.”
“Yes, miss,” the maitre d’ said, nodding. “Right this way. I’m sorry for asking, but we do try to keep people from bothering our more prominent guests.”
It was a very nice restaurant, one of the best in Pittsburgh. And that was saying something.
Pittsburgh, as one of the larger surviving cities in the U.S., had become a major financial and industrial hub. It always had been, just overshadowed by bigger names like Detroit, New York and Philadelphia.
With all three of those gone, the money and industry had moved to places like Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Indianapolis. They had major traffic problems, though. People were willing to work in and around cities. Nobody wanted to live near them, much less raise the increasing number of children.
Western society was still coming to terms with the first baby-boom since the post-WWII generation. The Horvath changes took time and technology to eradicate. The full course of treatment was six four-hour visits to a clinic that had the equipment. There were still less than two thousand of the clinics in the U.S. and Europe. They were cycling through about ten thousand cases per year.
Over ninety million children, mostly in the U.S. and Europe, had been born from mothers with Johannsen’s Syndrome in the two years since the attack. The approximately forty-five million daughters all inherited it. Absent a huge increase in the supply of advanced medical equipment, and technicians trained to operate it and doctors qualified to deal with the occasional problem, there was no way to catch up.
Worse still, girls who were prepubescent when they were infected were still at risk. As soon as they hit puberty they went into heat. Coupled with the prevention of regular contraception, it was a nightmare. Society was just starting to come to grips with a teen pregnancy problem that was simply astronomical.
The effect had been studied and, to the sometimes amusement of males, it turned out that the “heat” effect was functionally identical to male arousal. Just more varied. For about seven days during the four-week cycle, essentially during their menstruation period, women had about normal arousal. During the remaining three weeks they were, in the oft quoted words of some medical pundit, “Seventeen-year-old males with choice.”
And there were secondary effects. Since people tended to follow trends, even women who were not affected by Johannsen’s were having babies in large numbers. Prior to the attack, “native” Germans had a birthrate of one point five. Since replacement was two point one, they were slowly going extinct.
Last year there had been one child born for every single female with Johannsen’s in Germany. Which was a good bit of the population. That, right there, was seventeen million of the ninety. And the trend was projected to continue until there was a fix.
The situation was much on Tom’s mind as they entered the restaurant and he saw his prospective father-in-law for the first time. Steren had stated, in no uncertain terms, that she wasn’t going to be the only girl she knew without children. She wasn’t sure about the dozens some of them seemed headed for—a friend of hers had the genes for multiple birth and already had six—but they were going to get started more or less on their honeymoon.
He’d said “Okay” and tried not to wince.
Tyler Vernon was, as anticipated, apparently talking to air.
“Did Gorku give his okay? Okay, then… Well, I don’t care if the authorizations have to be hand carried. I don’t care if you have to hand carry them. Get them to Granadica now! Because we’re going to have the plates by the end of the month and I want spinning to start the day they arrive, that’s why! Yes, the end of the month… Because we are very good. I’ve got to go. I’m serious, Ujo, they’d better be there in no more than three days or I’m going to cite failure of contract… Because I can be. Buh-bye.” Tyler snarled and then looked up and smiled. “Pardon me while I try not to scream.”
“Hi, Dad,” Steren said, giving him a peck on the cheek.
“Hi, honey,” Tyler said. “You must be Thomas,” he continued, holding out his hand. “Thomas or Tom?”
“Uh…Tom, sir,” Tom said, shaking Mr. Vernon’s hand. He’d been told he was short but it was a bit of a shock. A guy who had done all he’d done, changed the world, should be…taller. He’d heard the snickered references to Napoleon—SNL and other comedy shows had used it as a stock joke for years—but he was still surprised.
“Call me Tyler,” Mr. Vernon said. “Since we’re gonna be kin. Sit. Stay a while.”
Vernon paused and seemed almost to fall asleep for a moment.
“Communing with your plant, Dad?” Steren asked.
“No, just trying to adjust to family time,” Tyler said, looking up and smiling. “I’ve gotten so little of it I’m sort of out of practice.”
“I’ve been available,” Steren pointed out. “Christy’s busy, I’ll admit.”
“I haven’t,” Tyler said, shrugging. “I quit apologizing a long time ago.”
“You’ve been busy,” Steren said, shrugging. “And…in case I haven’t said it. Troy?”
“Oh,” Tyler said. “Did that finally break?”
“That you’re making a humongo habitat?” Steren said caustically. “Uh, yeah. Months ago. And I’ve been getting jokes from my friends since it didn’t come out as large as it was supposed to. ‘I guess your dad came up a little…short.’”
“Oh,” Tyler said, then smiled. “Ah, yes. Troy. Yes, it did come out a bit smaller than we’d planned. Still…plenty big enough, don’t you think?”
“It’s a very interesting project,” Tom said. “We did a study of it in my orbital engineering class. But it was apparent that you’d started with too few volatiles.”
“A bit, yeah,” Tyler said. “But do you have any idea how hard it is to drill into nickel iron?”
“One point two seven four megajoules per cubic meter of melting energy,” Tom said. “And then you have to consider dissipation. The thermodynamics are fascinating.”
“You two are not going to talk shop,” Steren said.
“Just a bit more, honey,” Tyler said. “Orbital engineering? I wasn’t even aware that was a class.”
“It’s hard to get,” Tom said. “There aren’t that many qualified professors. Master’s level only at this point. Penn State has a class, though. Dr. Mires. He worked for you, well, for Apollo, for about five years on the Connie project.”
“Eh,” Tyler said. “I’m glad the data’s getting out there. We’re dying for qualified people. Between Troy and what we’re going to be doing with her, and the Wolf projects… We can use every damned engineer we can get our hands on.”
“Was that a job offer?” Steren asked.
“Can I ask what is causing the somewhat sarcastic mode?” Tyler said.
“I’m sorry,” Steren said. “I just… We never get to see you and you’re talking shop.”
“Unfortunately, shop is about all there is in my life, honey,” Tyler said, shrugging. “Has been since… Well, since you were ten. I’d much rather talk about orbital engineering than war. Which has been my other preoccupation. So since we’re not going to talk about either, what’s the plan for the wedding? Are we talking wedding of the century or a private little ceremony at the house?”
