Live Free or Die-ARC

by John Ringo

  "I won't even ask what we're doing," Steve said. "And I guess so. I've got a doctorate. But that was just so I had a shot at the space program. I'm much happier getting my hands dirty. And we need a longer lever. But there's no room."

  "Nope," Diw said. "Hate this design. Okay, one more time. With feeling."

  Steve repositioned himself to push on the wrench with his full body and applied steady pressure with a grunt of exhalation.

  "Saaaah!" and the wrench slipped and nearly broke his hand.

  "That's got it," Diw said. "Right, one more and we'll have this baby open. Go over and grab the grav lift. I'd rather this thing not fall on my head."

  "Sorry," Steve said, looking at some racked articles on the wall. "I'm not sure . . ."

  "Looks like a mop," Diw said. "Blue with a yellow end. Grab the blue end, drag it over here."

  Steve picked up the 'mop' and found it to be surprisingly heavy. He dragged it across the floor as carefully as he could.

  "Grav it," Diw said from somewhere under the machine. "Oh. No plants. Gravity is on."

  The lower part of the 'mop' suddenly became light as a feather. It still had the same mass, though. Steve was careful moving it over to the separator.

  "Slide it under," Diw said, sliding out from under the machine. "And we increase power . . ." the Glatun continued as the grav-lift lifted and touched the underside of the machine. "And release the brackets and . . ."

  The plate on the bottom of the machine dropped out.

  "Do me a favor and pull that over against the bulkhead," Diw said.

  As soon as Steve had it out of the way, Diw was up underneath. Steve noticed that the plate was just about covered in bits of metal.

  "Oh, this is just great," the Glatun engineer said. "The plates ate themselves!"

  "Excuse me?" Steve said. He had the bottom plate against the bulkhead but he wasn't sure what to do with it then.

  "I'm going to need the lift for this," Diw said, sliding out again. "I'll get the plate off. We're going to need to pull all the plates and their brackets and . . . Hellfire. Take a look. It's a mess."

  Steve pulled himself under the machine and just scanned for a bit. He also realized he'd really like some safety glasses about now. Because the inside of the separator looked like a plane crash he'd been an investigator on one time.

  From the small areas that were not totally mangled he could get a feel for what the machine should look like. The separator apparently consisted of overlapping plates of what looked like bronze. From the way that metal had flown, they apparently spun in counter direction to each other, one plate spinning clockwise, the next down counter clockwise and so on. It looked as if one of the plates to one side had lost integrity for some reason and then proceeded to, yes, eat the rest of the assembly.

  He wasn't sure how exactly you would fix it. It looked as if it needed an entire rebuild.

  "This is going to take a while," Steve said as Diw slid in next to him.

  "Tell me about it," Diw said.

  "I can see one of the plates went and caused a chain reaction," Steve said, pointing to the offending corner. "Any idea why?"

  "Probably the plate just separated," Diw said. "I checked the log. It's nearly seventy years old. Metal fatigue builds up. If the plate either threw a piece or bent against the stator bearings and made contact with the counter . . . Well, once it got out of balance that's pretty much all she wrote. At full power, these babies spin at three hundred thousand RPM. Get a back hair in there and they'll go plooie."

  "We'll need a clean room," Steve said, looking at all the spalled metal in the casing.

  "Nah," Diw said. "Machine shop and a grav vac'll do. I've called for a couple of heavy lift bots to come over as soon as they're available. We'll flip this baby on its side, pull out the bits and refab it. Take a few days but no sweat. Grif knows I've done it before."

  "How does this . . . work?" Steve asked.

  "The plates create a gravitational gradient," Diw said. "A high one. That's why they have to spin at such a high RPM. And it's over a very small area. If they ever get some plates that are robust enough we'll be able to make neutronium. It's not that high of a gravitational gradient, you understand."

  "Glad for that," Steve said.

  "Under that much gravity, and there's another set above, the material separates by densities," Diw said.

  "Makes sense," Steve said.

  "The lighter stuff comes off first," Diw said. "Gases and such. Those are then reprocessed in additional separators to refine them. Then the metals and such start coming off. They're not pure you understand . . ."

  "Got it," Steve said. "But do it again and again . . ."

  "Right," Diw said. "Fortunately, this separator is concentrated on the low volatiles. And since you've already pre-smelted the material it's not really important. We can keep it out of service while we fix it rather than calling Gorku to come bring a rebuilt one."

  "How do the plates generate gravity?" Steve asked.

  "Dunno," Diw said. "I mean, I had the class in school but it went right over my head. Something about quantum reactions of the materials. Get a plate of the right kind, counter spin it with another plate and you get gravity. Direction of spin is for or against. Speed of spin determines the gradient and you can flex the field to extend. Grav drive is a pressor beam. Against what confused me, too. That's about all I need to know. Oh, and the material has to be in a particular matrix. Just making the alloy isn't enough. So you sort of need grav controls to make grav plates."

  "I suspect if Dr. Chu thought about it long enough he could probably figure it out," Steve said.

  "He the little guy?" Diw said. "I mean, the little guy who's not the boss? The cook?"

  "Yeah," Steve said. "The cook. He can think his way around all the rest of us combined. So he'll probably be able to figure out the theory. Me, I'll go with your position. As long as I can make it or fix it, good enough."

  "Good enough for space work, anyway."

  "You're looking chipper, Steve," Dr. Chu said, putting down a large bowl of white rice and sitting down to dinner.

  "How can you tell?" Nathan asked. "He always has that 'Me astronaut' look on his face."

  "I am feeling rather better," Steve said. "One of the separators ate itself and I've been helping Diw rebuild it. Which is giving me a lot of practical knowledge of Glatun gravity systems. When we're done, we're going to do a rebuild of one of the drive systems. That should be particularly interesting."

  "How long on rebuilding the drive system?" Tyler asked.

  "About a week, according to Diw," Astro said. "Why?"

  "We're just about done stripping the silica," Tyler replied. "Then we're going to have to figure out how to stabilize the orbit. Once that is done, we'll be making the VBFM for a couple of days at a guess. Or at least spinning up the silica. We'll have to leave it to cool. We're also about full of metal. I'm just going to vomit the iron into orbit for later use. We'll get it nice and stabilized. Then we'll need our full drives. We'll drop off the important metals on earth before heading out to Connie. That is the point at which people should say if they want to stay in this tin can or go. I want to go on out to start the work on Connie. I'm just too interested not to. But nobody really needs to come along. I mean, Dr. Chu, no offense, but I'm pretty sure I can find a decent Indonesian to cook. And you're a fricking professor at MIT. Bryan and Nathan sort of need to get back to the work I actually pay them to do. Steve . . ."

  "I'm handing in my resignation right after my report," Steve said. "If I never have to take another ride in a space shuttle or a Mir I'll be a very happy man."

  "And I have done some very interesting work on particle interactions while I've been cooking," Dr. Chu said.

  "I get your point," Tyler said. "You all love space. I get it. But this isn't the last trip. Dr. Chu, you're a brilliant theorist. I finally looked you up. We, sorry, need people like you learning Glatun theory so we can make our own space ships. Steve, you need
to be testing and designing those ships. Nathan . . ."

  "I'm ready to get off this tin can," Nathan said. "I don't mind space, but I'm ready for some real air if you know what I mean."

  "And you've got people you're supposed to be managing on earth," Tyler said. "So do I. This has been a nice little idyll and, Dr. Chu, I'm glad as hell we brought you along. You not only are one damned fine cook, but you figured out the glass eye problem. But, sorry, there's going to come time to put down the rifle."

  "Agreed," Dr. Chu said, spooning up some Cheng Du chicken. "But . . . not yet if you don't mind," he added with a grin. "I rather like the relative solitude. It is very good for thinking. Less so for doing experiments but until I am caught up on Glatun theory I don't think they are particularly worthwhile."

  "I don't mind a bit," Tyler said. "As long as you can put down the rifle at some point."

  "I'll take the shuttle," Steve said. "You're right. But I'm getting the feeling that I'm going to need a set of plants."

  "Turn in your resignation," Tyler said. "As soon as you've submitted and argued your report. At least the first phase. It will still be being argued when we've created the first real space station. But as soon as you're ready, call my people. Or, hell, me. And I'll have you on a ship to Glalkod so fast it will make your head swim. I know a good plant guy there. Terrible neighborhood, but he knows what he's doing. Then maybe you can get Boeing and McD off their butts. I need ships, damnit!"

  "How about me?" Nathan asked. "You can do my job better than I can with your plants. One thing about this whole thing is I'm feeling sort of . . . redundant. And, you're right, I can do this from earth. I've seen space. It's cool. It's big. The stars are great. I want to find better asteroids to melt and I think I can do that better earth side."

  "I'll put you and Bryan off when we get back," Tyler said. "Probably over Bryan's screaming objections. We'll get you both plants. Well . . . I'm going to require a contract extension since they're expensive as hell. And I can't do your job better because my plants only know to pull up the information I know. You know about minor planetary bodies. With plants you'll just be ten times the functionality."

  "And what do I have to do to pay for them?" Dr. Chu asked.

  "Do you one better," Tyler said. "Pick one or two of your more open minded grad students who are willing to rent their souls to an evil corporation for, say, five years. I'll send all of you to Glalkod for plants and put you through school again. When you get back, I'll fund any research you wish to do as long as I can use you as the center of a think-tank. But I don't think we're going to be able to replicate Glatun tech any time soon. We're going to have to build based on not only Glatun theory but human imagination and practice. This is, compared to Glatun methods, a relatively low-energy, low-cost, method of orbital mining. I've looked up the relative reports and done the math. If we were using Glatun techniques we'd have burned through three times as much fuel as we've used for this amount of metal. Even if you include boosting the mirrors which I take as a capital cost. They're not going to take much maintenance."

  "Speaking of which," Steve said. "What have we gotten?"

  "Seventy-five hundred metric tons of iron," Nathan said. "Six hundred of nickel. Twenty-two of aluminum, of which we plan on using two to make the big mirror. Seven and a half of copper. And about two hundred kilograms of various high value metals including gold, platinum group, lots of osmium comparatively, and silver."

  "Damn," Steve said, whistling.

  "It didn't actually pay for this trip," Tyler said. "But as an applied science project it was very successful. Especially given the low metal content of the asteroid. Now we have to figure out how to pay for this ship on an ongoing basis and keep doing it. One reason to get, frankly, the grunts up here instead of you guys is that it's time to take that step. It's time to get people off the mud ball and up in space. And this is how we're going to pay for it."

  Seven

  "This is going to be interesting," Dr. Foster said.

  All four tugs were positioned alongside the spinning ball of nearly pure silica. There was still some admixture but it was pretty pure. Pure enough for a decent mirror.

  The problem was, it was spinning very much like spinning a ball of yarn. As long as there were multiple vectors to the spin, the ball would never spin out into a plate to make the mirror. And it was going to be a big mirror. Even with the blown off volatiles and extracted 'other', the ball was still nineteen million cubic meters, a sphere three hundred and thirty-one meters in diameter. The resulting mirror, depending on the thickness they eventually got, was going to be about seven thousand meters in diameter and able to pump nearly a million watts of sunlight.

  That all assumed they could get it down to a precisely single vector of spin. And even then they were going to have to 'push' it up to a higher speed on that vector to get the mirror to spin out. Last problem was that if they spun it too hard, it was liable to break up into a thousand spinning pieces of glass.

  It was a tricky problem.

  "Before we do this," Tyler said. "Is there any way we can use the array to help? I'd like to cut down on fuel costs."

  A Gorku tanker had dropped by earlier in the week and tanked up the Monkey Business. The price tag had caused Tyler to nearly have a screaming fit. Pure He3 cost like crazy. And even with the efficiency of the conversion plants, they were using a lot of He3. Somewhere down Tyler's 'space-stuff to-do' list was a refinery around Jupiter. And not far down the list.

  "Well, not that I can think of," Dr. Foster said. "We can use the BDA to put some photon pressure on the eyeball. But it's a zero sum game. Actually, a losing game. Because we're having to recharge the BDA capacitor as it is. So the net energy is a loss."

  "It's even losing heat," Dr. Bell said. "It's pretty pure silica in amorphous state. The SAPL tends to go right through it."

  "Well, here we go," Dr. Foster said. "Engaging tractor on Paws Two and Four . . ."

  "Huh," Steve said, rubbing his chin.

  "Huh at a time like this is not a helpful comment, Astro," Tyler said. " 'Huh' is right up there with oops."

  "I was just thinking about the eyeball," Steve said. "It sort of looks like a gemstone."

  And it did. The silica ball was an immense blob of glass with only the slightest trace of color. And most of that was from diffraction of the laser that was keeping it warmed.

  "It is," Dr. Bell said. "It's the biggest damned almost quartz crystal anybody has ever seen. If we just let it cool it would be the biggest damned quartz crystal anybody has ever seen."

  "Be fun to carve it into a skull," Tyler said with a chuckle.

  "I was just thinking," Steve said. "The separators pull stuff apart practically at the atomic level then stick it back together using gravity and heat. If we just took the monatomic aluminum and a bunch of oxygen . . ."

  "Add enough heat and you've got the biggest sapphire in the universe," Dr. Bell said, excitedly. "Speaking of a really good material for mirrors."

  "We'll take transparent aluminum under advisement," Tyler said. "What's the status?"

  "I've attached One and Three," Dr. Foster said. "This is something that the comp has done before. Based on the results we have so far, it says the secondary rotation should be out in about an hour. You don't want to know how much fuel it's going to use."

  "An hour is better than I'd expected," Tyler said. "I hate waiting."

  "And all the secondary motion is out," Dr. Foster said. "We now have a ball spinning in a flat plane."

  "More like an expanding disk," Nathan said. "It's already starting to expand."

  "Hit it with the full SAPL," Tyler said. "You'll need to . . ."

  "Run the laser over it carefully," Dr. Bell said. "Or we'll get tumbling again. Full SAPL . . . on."

  "And that's got it," Dr. Foster said. "We're not even going to need more spin to it."

  That was apparent on the view screen. With the additional thermal energy the already molten glass was becoming les
s viscous and quickly shifting from a blob to a very definite disk. And as the edges spread out and the rotational velocity increased the 'pull' on the glass got stronger and stronger.

  "Do we have any clue if this is going to hold together?" Tyler asked. "I'm starting to worry that when the rotational momentum gets high enough it'll just pull apart."

  "I'll slow it with two and four," Dr. Foster said. "They're in the best position."

  Slowing the disk caused the center to start to flatten out but the expansion was still increasing.

  "We can . . . shape this," Tyler said. "Like a potter shapes a pot. Use Two and Four to apply some pressors to the outside edge. See what happens. Carefully, mind you. Also we'll want to be careful with the SAPL. Both deconfliction and to not heat it too high or too low."