The Ship: The New Frontiers Series, Book One

by Jack L Knapp

  He was still thinking , mumbling to himself, as he left the building.

  “Mr. Sneyd? If you have a few moments, I’d like to talk to you. Call me Frenchy.”

  Chapter Six

  Sol fretted on his way back to the office. What to do? The potential payoff was so huge as to be incomprehensible, but at the same time, the risks were enormous. If he used his considerable private fortune to bankroll this Morty person, he might end up broke, even lose his position as head of the company. There was no question about using company funds; that option was no longer available.

  The transportation industry and the independent businesses that supported it made up the largest manufacturing segment of the national economy. If Sneyd’s invention proved to be all he claimed, then a revolution in transportation would certainly happen. That flying device Panit saw would kill surface transport, no question about it. For one, Sneyd had made the device himself, which meant that it could be manufactured cheap and sold for less, far less, than cars were selling for now. Why would anyone even need an airport or a pilot’s license, since the device could fly slow and low? When revolutions take place, new companies take the place of those on top.

  No; Sneyd was a threat, to the economy, to the company, and to Sol himself. The prospect was frightening. Of what use had a clear superiority in buggy whip manufacturing been at the start of the automobile age? Join him, try to ride along, or oppose him? Could his invention be suppressed, as rumor claimed had happened to similar revolutionary developments? It wouldn’t be easy, but...

  There might be a way. It might be possible to slow Sneyd down, perhaps even force him into bankruptcy. Clearly, he needed money, that’s why he’d approached the company in the first place, so cutting off funding would slow or maybe even stop him. After all, he wasn’t a young man. It might be enough to slow him down until he died.

  Too bad, but considering how much of a threat Sneyd posed, sentiment couldn’t be allowed to play a part. He would have to be stopped, but how?

  The board had refused to support him, but that wouldn’t stop the man. Where would he turn next? Railroads? Shipping? Aircraft? Would someone like Boeing be interested? They were certainly big enough, but like Sol’s own company, they had long term contracts to consider. Would they be willing to take the risks?

  Smaller companies might, but probably not one of the majors. They stayed in business because they had the huge industrial plant needed to manufacture something as big as a jumbo jet. Even so they faced stiff competition from Airbus. No, they had too much to lose. But maybe one of the smaller companies would be willing to take the risk?

  Well. The thing to do was to keep his, Sol’s, nose in the wind. There were a number of small manufacturers who had cut back on production recently, and if one began hiring people and reopening plants, then that was enough of a clue to see whether Sneyd was involved. Sol might need to directly intervene if that happened. But for now, Sneyd needed money and Sol knew a thing or two about finance. Best of all, he could work behind the scenes, avoid direct involvement, and by so doing avoid risk-taking. After all, investors were by nature nervous. It wouldn’t take much, no more than a word in the right place, to convince them that Sneyd’s venture was too risky.

  #

  “So you claim to have all this money available, Frenchy? Who would run this plant you’re offering to build?”

  “The money is available, some of it immediately, the rest after the investment consortium liquidates investments. I’m not alone, the money will come from several sources, but there’s more than enough money pledged to get started. I’ll be the chief executive officer, but I’ll answer to the board of directors. The other investors will be represented on the board, as will you. We’re prepared to offer you a substantial initial payment for access to your invention, but the rest of what you’re asking will be in the form of common stock in the company. We’ll work out the details later, after we form the company, but the investors will own sixty percent among us. We’ll reserve ten percent of the stock for employees as incentive payments. You’ll not only have stock in the company, you’ll serve as a consultant, and we’ll negotiate a reasonable salary for your work. I know how much you asked for, but you’ll not get that, nowhere near that much. You won’t be poor, but if your invention is as promising as you say you’ll still get insanely rich.”

  “I mainly figured to set the askin’ price high so they’d take me serious. They’ve been ignoring me for weeks. I tried telephoning, sending faxes...I even sent ‘em pictures of me flying the prototype! But nothin’ worked.”

  “Where is the prototype, Mr. Sneyd?”

  “Call me Morty, Frenchy. I ain’t saying any more until I see the color of your money.”

  “How about I deposit a million dollars into your bank account for access to your prototype? I’ll have an engineering staff ready to examine the drive units--you did say they’re relatively simple?”

  “They are. I’m surprised nobody came up with it before now. But yeah, it’s simple in concept. Development will require precision machining, mechanical engineering, electronic systems, and materials science people just for starters. You plan to go right for the spaceship, or you want to develop one of the other ideas first?”

  “We’re interested in the aircraft propulsion system as the first major effort. We may build prototypes of your railway car and surface ship propulsion system too, but I don’t think there’s enough short-term profit for us. The maritime system shows more promise; some of our investors have extensive interests in shipyards, so they’re in a position to profit from such a system. We’ll see how that looks before making a final decision. You intend to equip the railcar you mentioned with propulsion units and computerized controls, is that correct?”

  “Right. No need for a big old engine up front. It should be possible to use half a dozen units like the four on my flying prototype, just attach them directly to the frame of a flatcar. I figure that people who own cars, motorhomes too, might be interested in parking on a flatcar and just kick back while the flatcar takes them to wherever they’re going. Leave the driving to us. They’d drive on, snooze until they get there, drive off. No need to rent a car, no need to worry about traffic or bad weather, just relax and read a book.”

  “How would you control the flatcars?”

  “Chuck says it could be done using computerized controls. A central computer would do the scheduling, command the car when it’s time to pull onto the main track--you’ll need two sets of tracks at least, you know, one east and one west, or one going south and the other north--so when you’ve got a car loaded, it powers up, then slides onto the main track. When the car gets to where a passenger is going, the car gets sidetracked just long enough to let him drive off.”

  “An interesting concept. A second set of tracks for each railroad would cost billions, you know.”

  “You invest money to make money, Frenchy.”

  “So you do, but you’re asking us to spend money a lot faster than your proposed railway system would earn it back! No, that’s probably for the future, if ever. A ship, that’s doable now. A diesel-electric generator and multiple propulsion units, you said? No exhaust, no propellers needed?”

  “That’s it, Frenchy. Mount the impellers on gimbals so the ship can go forward, backward, sideways...you might even be able to lift it off a sandbar if it got stuck! That would probably take a lot more impellers, though. You would need backup batteries for safety, though. Design the generator to feed the battery bank, or maybe it powers the batteries and the impellers at the same time. That way, if the generator fails, you’ve got an immediate backup system. Maybe use two or three smaller generators for reliability.”

  “What if an impeller fails, Morty?”

  “If you’re using, say, thirty of them, you can afford to have failures. Just pull a defective unit offline, fix whatever went wrong. If you’ve got a spare on board, just bolt it in place when you pull the busted one. Power them back up and you’re down for may
be an hour, tops. That’s the beauty of electric drive, you can gang as many impellers together as you want. Instead of huge, expensive, maybe even failure-prone units, just use smaller ones and hook on as many as you need.”

  “What about efficiency, Morty? Wouldn’t larger units be more efficient?”

  “Maybe, but that’s something we’ll find out by experimenting. In the meantime, use lots of smaller units for safety and reliability.”

  “And you wouldn’t need external motors or propellers at all, would you?”

  “Nope. You can put the impellers inside the wings of an airplane, so there’d be no more problems with a bird gettin’ sucked into the jet intake.”

  “But wouldn’t you need to use something like a turbojet engine, the kind they use for turboprops, to spin the generator? There’s no battery pack right now that’s light enough and has the capacity to power long-range flight.”

  “No, you’re right. That spacecraft, now, that’s going to need nuclear power. I figure maybe three of them small reactors Los Alamos is developin’ would do it.”

  “Three? Why three?”

  “Safety, Frenchy. One would provide plenty of power, but I’m a believer in safety. If you’re out in the asteroids, you don’t want to try hitchhiking home!”

  #

  Two months went by. Manufacturers began seeing changes.

  “Send him in, Miss Porter. Then hold my calls.”

  “Yes sir, Mr. Goldman.”

  “Ben, you’re resigning? Why? I thought you were happy with us. Is it that last raise? You know why we had to limit that, of course, you’re the comptroller! Really, you’ve done well with us, so why are you resigning now?”

  “I’ve decided to move on, Mr. Goldman. I’ve got a job already, working for a venture capital firm. The salary isn’t the whole issue, of course, but after that last negotiation, I decided I should keep my options open.”

  “So it is the salary! But I explained why we couldn’t afford...”

  “So you did, Mr. Goldman. But I noticed that you and the board members were rewarded with a considerably better package than the one you offered me.”

  “I see. Well, you understand that our corporate interests aren’t yours to reveal? Are you going to work for one of our competitors?”

  “No. As I said, I’ll be working for a venture-capital startup. This serves as my two-week notice.”

  “Thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Counter.”

  #

  Panit Jindae sent Mr. Goldman an email that same week. Two of his senior design engineers had resigned. Hiring new ones would take time, and inevitably there would be slowdowns until their replacements could be brought up to speed.

  Sol mentioned it later to two of his golf buddies. Frenchy had canceled; something had come up, he said. But the others were there, and Sol broached the subject as they approached the third tee.

  “Something strange is going on. I’ve had an unusual number of resignations. Granted, the last raises weren’t great, but...”

  “Other companies are hiring too, Sol. I haven’t heard anything definite, but Boeing’s offering bonuses to engineers, according to the trade papers. But no one’s reporting new sales, not enough to justify opening another plant or even put on another shift. So what’s going on?”

  “No idea. Something else, did you check the stock indexes this morning?”

  “No, I didn’t have time. I intended to, but the V.P. in charge of the design offices had a crisis. I think it’s time for new blood there.”

  “You’re talking about Jindae? I thought you were happy with him?”

  “I was, but he’s talking about pushing completion dates back, and that will slow the launch of the new vehicles. Some of the resignations were in his department. You’d think some insider was poaching our best people!”

  “Ridiculous, Sol.”

  “So how about other companies? You’re on their boards, are they reporting problems?”

  “No, Sol, we’re not having problems. You should consider offering bonuses or higher salaries to keep your key people happy. Who’s up first?”

  Things were not exactly as Kenneth reported. Still, no need to tell Sol. He’d figure it out, soon enough. Meanwhile, if Sol’s employees were looking for better offers, perhaps a few discreet approaches would provide replacements for Ken’s companies? Senior engineers, people with managerial experience, those didn’t grow on trees.

  Perhaps it was time to have a quiet word with personnel?

  Sol would understand. It was just business.

  #

  “Come on in, Morty. I’ve saved you a spot at the end of the table. Would you introduce your companion to the board?”

  “Sure. This is my grandson Charles, Frenchy. He’s watching out for my business interests.”

  “Welcome, Charles. But no one here is trying to take advantage of your grandfather. We’re trying to come to an agreement that protects all our interests.”

  “Call me Chuck. That’s good to know, Frenchy. I wouldn’t want to invoke our fail-safe position.”

  “And what position is that, Chuck? Like I said, no one is planning to cheat Morty.”

  “For our part, Frenchy, the company gets exclusive rights to grandfather’s impeller. We’ll negotiate how much of the company Morty will own in terms of stock, but he is interested in seeing that humanity benefits from his discovery. He considers the money secondary, an incentive to make sure than his invention isn’t held back. If he ever feels he’s being treated unfairly, he retains the option to release his invention to the world. He’ll put the key portions of the technology on the internet where anyone who wants to can start tinkering in a garage workshop. That’s how my grandfather started, working on an idea that Nikola Tesla had.”

  “That’s right, Chuck, but don’t forget that Tesla never developed it. I did that. Lots of people have thought about antigravity, but nobody has managed to fly a ship using it!” said Morty.

  “Right, Morty. Anyway, if it goes out to anyone who has a computer, the secret is out. You would lose your lead time, which is what you’re really paying for. China, India, Vietnam, Russia, they would soon be heading to space in a ship driven by direct impulse, where the only fuel needed is electricity. They’ll figure out the impeller drive eventually, but the company should have maybe twenty years to perfect the drive before the secret leaks.”

  “We’re paying a lot for not much, Chuck,” Frenchy said.

  “Twenty years, or maybe only ten years, Frenchy? Ten years of flying the only electrically-propelled spaceships that exist? Ten years of engineering development to work out the bugs in the system? Ten years to plant a colony on the moon and Mars? Ten years to start mining the asteroids? How much income will you gain just from doing that? What about claiming major moons, asteroids, even planets? What about actually putting settlements in place? Earth’s nations may argue that space belongs to nations or the UN, but possession is possession. It allows the company to tie up counterclaims in court while we keep exploiting what we find, and profiting. And you think you’re paying too much for that?”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but we’re bearing all of the development costs, doing the engineering, building the propulsion units...I wanted to talk to you about the name, too. We don’t think Sneyd Impellers will sell. Eventually, we’ll be mass-producing and either leasing or selling impellers, and our people with experience in marketing believe that we’d do better if we named it the Tesla Impeller.”

  “They do, do they? Grandpa, what do you think?”

  “Don’t matter to me as long as I get my share of the credit. How about the Sneyd-Tesla Impeller?”

  “Frenchy?” Chuck waited.

  “We’ll go with that. Next on the agenda, I’d like to introduce the other prospective members of the board and the department heads.”

  “Sure, go ahead. Grandpa will be doing most of our talking from here on out. I’ll just listen in. I’ll need a chair, please.”

 
Morty sat down at the foot of the table. A chair was brought and Chuck took his place at Morty’s side.

  “We’ll make sure you have a seat at the table next time, Chuck. Meantime, I’ve got an agenda to follow. Help yourself to coffee or water.

  “Next item, the company will have a board of directors. It will be organized similar to any other corporation. The board will consist as follows. Myself, chairman and CEO. Will Crane will eventually represent the investment group, and until they provide the pledged funds the two of us will finance the company. This will take us through the startup phase. Ben Counter is CFO. He’ll report directly to me in that role, and he also has a seat on the board.

  “Mr. Jindae is a non-voting member of the board and head of engineering development, but that might change later on. We’ll see how things work out. The rest of the people with us today will be working in his division. Mr. Sikkit is head of electronic engineering, Mr. Ruelle is head of design, and we’ll be hiring a chief mechanical engineer in the next few weeks. We’ll also hire manufacturing management as needed and sales staff when we have something to market. Morty, you are a board member, based on your stock in the company, but you’re also chief scientist and consultant to the other divisions. We’ll hold board meetings as necessary to discuss progress and resolve any problems that have cropped up. Is this satisfactory to you?”

  “Sounds fine, Frenchy. You have any idea of how long it’s going to take before we get a test craft ready to fly?”

  “Not at this time, Morty. We’ve already spent a considerable amount of money hiring the department heads and doing research, so funds aren’t unlimited. I’ve got brokers looking into land acquisition, but if that fails we’ve got a fallback position. I own property in New Mexico that extends across the Texas line, and we can build the main plant there if we can’t find a better location.”

  “Why don’t we just build it there to start with, Frenchy?”