by Bob Blanton
“You think so?”
“Earth to Catie,” Liz said as she knocked on Catie’s head. “Look at him, he’s all goo-goo eyed.”
“Well, I’m glad for her,” Catie said.
◆ ◆ ◆
“So, Jimmy, how do you like microgravity?” Catie asked while everyone was putting on their exosuit, the armor they wore over their shipsuit when they went outside.
“I can’t say that I like it,” Jimmy said. “But I didn’t need that barf bag.”
“We’re all happy about that,” Catie said. “How do you want to start?”
“Paul and I were talking about how we would mine the thing. Since it’s almost all metal, we figure we’re just going to break it up into small pieces and dump off the rocky stuff into some kind of pile. We can grind it up later to separate out the metal, but mostly we’re thinking the metal is going to be in big chunks. You guys need to decide how big a chunk you’re willing to take on your end. The bigger, the better from our point of view.”
“I see,” Catie said. “Well, we’re going to have to separate out the nickel from the iron. There are two ways to do that: one is with acid; the other involves melting the metal and then using a big magnet to pull the iron to one side and out through a drain hole.”
“I don’t like the thought of using no acid,” Jimmy said. “And if’n you’re going to melt it, then you should be able to take big pieces. If we can fit ‘em into the Oryx, then you should be able to melt them down.”
“But if they’re too big, you won’t be able to get as much into the Oryx,” Catie said. “There’ll be all these big gaps.”
“I see,” Jimmy said. “You’re saying you think transportation is the limiting factor.”
“I think so,” Catie said. “What do you think, Liz?”
“Sorry, I wasn’t paying attention,” Liz said.
“Jimmy is asking what we think the limiting factor will be on the iron, shipping it or mining it,” Catie said.
“Well, up to now, it’s been shipping it,” Liz said. “We can only fill the Oryx to like one percent of its volume when we’re loading iron.”
“I’m guessing those gaps aren’t going to be important,” Jimmy said.
“I think you’re right,” Catie agreed. “I guess Liz and I need to figure out how to melt big chunks of metal.”
“Why are we melting big chunks of metal?” Liz asked.
“We have to separate the nickel from the iron,” Catie said. “That’s one of the methods ADI recommended.”
“If we’re melting it, what about just feeding it into the plasma field?” Liz asked. “Will the nickel separate out like the sulfur does?”
“I’ll ask Nikola,” Catie said. “ADI?”
“Message sent,” ADI said.
◆ ◆ ◆
They spent an hour getting Jimmy and Paul comfortable maneuvering around in their spacesuits. Then they helped them move their equipment to the iron ball they were going to practice on. Then Catie, Blake, Liz, and Natalia sat back and watched the two men go to work.
Jimmy and Paul first drilled four holes with the auger, like the one Natalia had used on the asteroid mission. The holes were drilled at a shallow angle. To drill the holes, they anchored the guy who was going to run the drill, the driller, down with three small anchors. They tied him to the surface of the asteroid where each of his shoulders and the matching foot were tied to the two anchors closest to the hole. The third anchor was tied to the center of the driller’s shoulders and was just behind him, so he was held tight to the surface. Then the driller started drilling with a small auger first. Once they had the hole started, they switched to the bigger auger, and the driller really leaned into it.
“Wow, those guys really know what they’re doing,” Catie said.
“Yeah, they make what we did on the asteroids look pretty amateurish,” Natalia said.
“Yeah, four holes in like one hour,” Catie said.
Then the two guys inserted a hydraulic rock splitter into each hole. They used anchors to hold the splitters in place. Each rock splitter had a three-piece nose made up of two cone pieces that formed a spike. A third piece was a smaller spike that would be driven down between the other two, spreading them apart. When they had all four splitters in place, they turned the hydraulic pump on, and the small spikes were forced between the two cone pieces. In twenty minutes, a big crack formed along the line between the four holes. They then shifted over to halfway between each of the holes and drilled another three holes. They moved the spreaders to each of the new holes, leaving the center one where it was. Then they turned the hydraulics on again. After another twenty minutes, a two-foot sheet of the iron ball broke off. “Wow, that was pretty nice,” Catie said.
Jimmy and Paul gave everybody a wave, then they went back to work. They used the augers and spreader to break the sheet into manageable sizes, then moved them off the ball and let them float above it. Then they went to the vertical wall that had formed at the end of where the sheet broke off and repeated the process. Things went smoothly until they tried to do it a third time, then the hydraulic pump wouldn’t work.
Blake signaled everyone to go back inside the Oryx for a debrief.
“Okay, that was really impressive,” Blake said. “I assume you plan to just keep shaving the top of the asteroids off like that.”
“That’s the plan,” Paul said. “But our pump busted, what do you think is wrong with it?”
“The hydraulic fluid froze,” Catie said, “or at least got too thick to work.”
“Oops, what do we do about that?” Paul asked.
“Just put a recirculation pump on the fluid line and a small heater to keep it warm. The manufacturer might even make them for working in cold environments,” Catie said. “If not, it wouldn’t be too hard to rig one up.”
“That worked pretty slick,” Liz said.
“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “The real asteroid won’t be as nice. It won’t shear off nice and smooth like that did. But we should be able to deal with it.”
“What are you gonna want us to do with the trash rocks we pull out of them?” Paul asked.
“I think we need to clean up after ourselves,” Blake said.
“We can just put them in front of the three asteroids in the same orbit,” Catie said. “When it gets big enough, we can use some oil to tie it together. Then we can either boost it back to the asteroid belt, push it into the sun, or haul it to the space station and use it for something.”
“Isn’t that like pushing the problem down the road?” Liz asked.
“More like pushing it ahead in the orbit,” Catie said. “But we’ll have lots of time to figure out what we want to do.”
“What else did we learn?” Blake asked.
“We should use four-man teams,” Paul said. “Two can break the sheet apart, while the other two keep shearing new ones off.”
“I agree,” Jimmy said. “We’ll learn a bunch as we go. I’m also inclined to treat those ice balls the same way. Then we’re not trying to melt things, then freeze them, or whatever. Rocks are easy to deal with.”
“I’m good with that,” Liz said. “Catie?”
“Hey, it’s a place to start. If it works, we’re done; if we run into issues, we’ll replan.”
“You guys ready to gather your equipment up and go home?” Blake asked.
“We sure are,” Jimmy said.
“Okay, we’ll see you guys,” Catie said. “Natalia and I have some experiments to run. We’ll be coming back down tomorrow.” Catie could tell that Paul was disappointed that Natalia wasn’t going to be riding down with him.
“I’m hanging out with them,” Liz said. “I’ve got a few inspections to do to prepare for the first ring. Hoping I’m going to be getting lots of material to work with soon.”
◆ ◆ ◆
Catie and Natalia set six experiments up in the microgravity hub. The crew chief agreed to have someone monitor their experiments once they were done. It wouldn’t
be much work since Natalia had everything fitted with video cameras and instrumentation so that the experiments could be monitored remotely.
“Okay, Natalia, tell me what these are?” Catie asked.
“They're all identical boxes,” Natalia said. “They have a membrane separating the air compartment from the water and sludge compartment. We’ve started the bacteria growing in the sludge compartment and some algae in the air compartment; the air is ninety percent oxygen. Now we want to see what happens in microgravity.”
“Okay, so what’s the difference between them?”
“Box A will just sit here,” Natalia said. “Box B will get a little shake every two hours to stir things up. Box C will get shaken on the same schedule, but it has a little circulation pump that will create a current toward the bottom of the box. And Box D won’t get shaken, but it will alternate the direction of the current every two hours.”
“And the last two?”
“Box E will be like box C, but will also pump air into the circulation water. And F will do the same for the D design.”
“I get all that, but what’s the point?”
“We’re trying to figure out the minimal energy required to keep the boxes active, that is, if any of them work,” Natalia said. “But we’re pretty sure we’ll have at least one winner in the group.”
“Okay, so why are we staying up overnight?” Catie asked. “It seems like we’ll be done setting this up in a couple of hours.”
“I want to see what the results are after twelve hours,” Natalia said. “I might want to make some adjustments.”
“Okay.”
Chapter 10
Vancouver Recruiting
“Welcome, Cers, as we at MacKenzie Discoveries like to say,” Samantha said as the four founders of Vancouver Integrated Technologies entered the conference room at the Pan Pacific, Vancouver, British Columbia. “Cers is our non-gender-specific honorific. Please be seated, and I’ll introduce everybody.”
The four young technologists walked into the room and took a seat at the table. They glanced at Catie and gave her an awkward smile.
“As you know, I’m Samantha Newman, the general counsel for MacKenzie Discoveries. With me, I have two members of our board, Catie McCormack, one of our major shareholders and one of our lead technologists, and Liz Farmer, another of our technologists.”
There were head nods and smiles all around.
“And from Vancouver Integrated Technologies, we have the four founders, Ray Fowler, Aaron Leach, Shelby Ramsey, and Bryce McMillan,” Samantha said, concluding the introductions. “May I ask where your general counsel is?”
“I act as our general counsel,” Ray Fowler said. “We can call for assistance if this gets beyond what I’m comfortable with, but we want to keep this meeting to just the founders if we can.”
“I can understand that,” Samantha said. “We often have the same concerns. Our board of directors is only ten people right now. It was only five for most of the first year.”
“Thank you,” Ray said.
“As I’ve explained during our initial conversations,” Samantha said, “MacKenzie Discoveries is interested in acquiring a majority interest in your company. We would let you manage the operation; you’d be able to continue to headquarter here in Vancouver, but we would want you to open an operation in Delphi City to meet our special needs.”
“How does that help us?” Ray asked.
“You get to stay in business,” Samantha said.
Ray looked around at his partners. They all knew that they were hanging on by their fingernails, but were they willing to give up control just to stay alive?
“Let’s hear her offer,” Shelby said.
“I don’t know if you’re familiar with MacKenzie Discoveries,” Samantha continued, “but we’re a new technology company. Last year we introduced the new batteries and fuel cells that are setting the standard for those technologies. We’re the majority stakeholder in Fuerza Motores, which I’m sure you know has become the leading supplier of both electric cars as well as electric scooters. By the way, the scooters were designed by Catie McCormack.”
Catie got a few more glances; these carried more respect than the earlier glances.
“Our batteries and fuel cells are the driving force behind Tata’s new line of electric and hybrid electric-fuel-cell trucks,” Samantha continued. “We have also introduced the first commercial jet capable of doing Mach four. We arrived here today from the Cook Islands after a three-hour flight. And we recently introduced a treatment for Alzheimer’s and dementia. I’ll pause here for questions.”
“All of that is interesting,” Shelby said, “but we’re an integrated circuits company. How would we fit in?”
“I’m glad you asked,” Catie said. “I’d like each of you to put one of these on.” Catie handed out four pairs of specs and four comm units.
“Nice shades,” Bryce said.
“Thank you,” Catie said. “We call them specs. You’ll notice a HUD if you look up. If you focus on a menu item and blink, it will activate. Go ahead and play with them for a bit,” Catie told them.
Catie gave them five minutes to peruse the menu and play with the options.
“They’re kind of cool Google Goggles,” Bryce said. “Nice, but only a little interesting.”
“I like that you’re hard to please,” Catie said. “Now I’m going to take control of your specs so we can expedite the demonstration.”
Catie had their comm units display a video she’d prepared. The video was in three-D and included surround sound music. It showed a flight through the Grand Canyon. “You will all see a set of controls in front of you; they should look like a steering wheel for a plane, the yoke if you fly. If you take hold of it, you can change your orientation and essentially fly through the canyon.”
“More interesting,” Shelby said after about five minutes of playing, “but, I’m still not sure what you bring to the game.”
“Two more demonstrations,” Catie said. “Will one of you please read the text on your HUD?”
Aaron started reading. He had a very pronounced Canadian accent. Catie watched the recognition score; when it reached eighty percent, she interrupted him. “Now just start dictating anything you want,” Catie said. “The words that the comm unit is not sure of will appear in yellow, the ones it has no clue about will be in red.”
Aaron started dictating. He talked for three minutes, “Hey, that’s pretty good,” Aaron said. “I’ve only got two words in red and twelve in yellow.”
“That’s what we can do with our software on an Apple iPhone. Now I’ve made all your specs dependent to this comm unit,” Catie said. “I’ve copied the training data for your dictation over to it. Aaron, why don’t you try again?”
Aaron started dictating again. “Faster!” Catie said. “What do you think of the results?” Catie asked Shelby as Aaron kept talking. “Don’t worry about interfering with his dictation.”
“It’s almost perfect,” Shelby said.
“Liz, how did you like flying the Lynx up here?” Catie asked.
“It was so cool. Going that fast and over the ocean. We got to see such a beautiful sky the whole way. That storm we passed through really made things interesting,” Liz rattled on for a minute while Aaron continued to dictate.
“This is how I like to take notes,” Catie said as she started typing on the tabletop. Everyone’s comm unit showed her fingers and the text that she was typing.
“Wow, now you have my attention!” Shelby said. “What’s different?”
“These two comm units are our custom design,” Catie said. She picked up a small hammer she had sitting on the table next to her and pounded the comm unit. She hit it three times.
“You’re crazy!” Shelby said.
Catie tossed her the comm unit.
Shelby examined it, turning it over in her hand, “Not a scratch, how is that possible?”
“Some more of our new technology,” Catie said. “
The glass is a special material that we call clear polysteel. The computer chip is custom made. We can only make them one at a time. We need you to help us make them in quantity.”
“And before we can go on,” Samantha interrupted, “we would need the nondisclosures signed.”
“I assure you it will be worth it,” Catie said.
It only took a few moments before they all agreed to sign the nondisclosure forms. Once they were signed, Samantha continued.
“First, let me explain what we can do to help,” Samantha said. “We’ve done some research on your legal troubles, and as I’m sure you’re aware, the claims against you are thin. With our research, we can help you push back on the infringement suits. Once your competition has been forced to realize you’re able to fight back, we can announce the acquisition of a majority interest by MacKenzie Discoveries. At that point, we can bring our considerable influence to bear and get them to drop the lawsuits.”
“How?” Bryce asked.
“They want to use our batteries in their products; we don’t like being sued,” Samantha said.
“Oh, right.”
“But how does that help us?” Shelby asked again. “Sure, we’re still in business, but we’ve lost the edge we were using to get ourselves into the game.”
Samantha nodded to Catie.
“Three things,” Catie said. “One: we have a new camera design that you can put into production right away; it’s years ahead of the competition. Two: our operating system is significantly better than the competition’s. We can license that to you so you can put it on your chip. It will give you some of that edge back. Three: that comm you were playing with, I set to match the specs for a new computer chip we have designed. It’s over eight times more powerful than what is in that new iPhone we used for the first demo. But we don’t have the manufacturing process figured out. It will take you six months to a year to bring it into production.”
“That certainly helps,” Shelby said. “But why the nondisclosures?”
“Because, four: you get to be the first to manufacture here,” Catie said as she brought up a view of Delphi Station with the earth in the background.