Powersat (The Grand Tour)

by Bova, Ben

  Jane took the armchair angled at the end of the sofa. Dan pulled up a straight-backed chair and sat facing her.

  “So how’re you going to help me, Jane?”

  Scanwell’s eyes narrowed slightly at Dan’s tone. Dan wondered how much the governor knew about the two of them.

  Unruffled, Jane replied coolly, “The last time we talked you mentioned the concept of having the government back long-term, low-interest loans for private corporations.”

  “That’s right,” Dan said.

  She turned toward Scanwell, “Morgan, did you know that the big power dams of the West were financed that way? Hoover Dam, the Grand Coulee: they were built on money raised privately for fifty-year loans at two percent interest.”

  “Two percent?” Scanwell asked, his brows rising.

  “I think it was two.”

  “And the federal government guaranteed the loans?”

  “Yep,” Dan broke in. “The dams got built. They provided irrigation water for desert areas and generated enough electricity to light up Las Vegas and a lot of other cities that wouldn’t exist otherwise. And everybody made money out of it.”

  “After fifty years,” Scanwell muttered.

  Jane said, “Dan, I intend to introduce a bill in the Senate that will offer federal backing for similar loans for you.”

  For a moment, Dan didn’t know what to say.

  He didn’t need to say anything, because Jane went on, “I’m going to have to be a little creative with the language so that it won’t appear that the bill is aimed specifically at helping Astro Corporation. It’ll say the government will back loans to any private entity engaged in building major structures in orbit. Something like that.”

  “Make it any private group engaged in developing new forms of renewable energy resources,” Scanwell suggested.

  “A pretty thin disguise,” Dan muttered.

  “My staff people are pretty good at making up disguises, don’t worry.”

  “Fifty years at two percent?” Scanwell asked.

  With a slight shrug, Jane replied, “Again, my staff people will come up with numbers appropriate for today’s money market.”

  Scanwell rubbed his chin. “If you make the wording too loose, some other corporations could line up at the trough.”

  “I can’t specify Astro Corporation,” Jane said. “The bill would be shot down in committee as a special-interest job.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Dan. “Jane, I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but by the time you get a bill through both houses of Congress and onto the president’s desk, I could be in a soup line somewhere in downtown Houston.”

  “And that’s assuming that our current president would sign it,” Scanwell added. “Which I doubt.”

  Jane gave them both a pitying look. “Neither of you understand the bigger picture.”

  “Enlighten me,” Scanwell said.

  “Simply offering the bill will make it easier for Dan to raise money now. The prospect of government backing—”

  “Will mean that anybody who’s thinking of loaning me money will wait until the feds come in with their guarantee,” Dan interrupted.

  Jane countered, “No, we’ll word the bill so that people who have already loaned money to Astro can apply for federal guarantees for their existing loans once the bill becomes law.”

  “You can do that?” Dan asked. “It’s legal?”

  Smiling knowingly, Jane said, “You’d be surprised at what’s in the fine print of most bills.”

  “But the White House won’t agree to it. He’ll veto the bill,” Scanwell said.

  “Good. Let him.”

  Before Dan could object, Scanwell asked, “Let him veto it? Then why … oh, I get it.”

  “This bill gives you a powerful tool for your energy independence program, Morgan,” Jane said, leaning toward him. “You can tell the voters that your plan won’t be funded out of their tax dollars; it will be paid for by private investors.”

  “And if the President vetoes it …”

  “You’ve got an issue to club him with,” Jane said, almost triumphantly.

  Dan sank back in his chair and stared at the two of them grinning at each other. She’s not doing this for me, he realized. She doesn’t give a hoot in hell about Astro or the powersat or energy independence. She’s doing it for him, to help him get elected. Not for me. For him.

  MATAGORDA ISLAND, TEXAS

  “Mr. Randolph?”

  Dan looked up from his desk.

  April said, “The control tower just called. Mr. al-Bashir is landing.”

  Dan got to his feet and looked through his outside window. Sure enough, a sleek little T-38 was making its turn for the final approach to the runway, glinting silvery in the late morning sunlight. Dan saw thunderheads building up out over the Gulf. We’ll have boomers this afternoon for sure, he thought.

  “Do we have somebody at the airstrip to ferry him over here?” Dan asked.

  “That’s all taken care of,” April assured him.

  “Good. Thanks.” Now all I have to do is wait and look like the busy executive when he gets here.

  Once he had returned from Austin, Dan had looked up al-Bashir on the Internet. Not much there, he found. Born in Tunis of a filthy rich family, on the boards of a dozen big multinational corporations. Nothing in the tabloids about him. Either he’s not a playboy or he’s got enough money to keep his exploits out of the scandal sheets.

  Dan asked April to straighten up his office in preparation for al-Bashir’s visit while he took a walk around the hangar floor. Still more than a dozen FAA and NTSB people down there, measuring and weighing fragments of the shattered spaceplane. And more in the office building next to the hangar, running analyses on their laptops and driving up Astro’s phone bill with calls to Washington.

  By the time he’d returned to his office he hardly recognized it. Everything neat and clean, sparkling, almost His desk was bare, Dan saw with some astonishment. I’ll never be able to find anything, he thought.

  April announced, “Mr. al-Bashir to see you,” precisely on the tick of eleven A.M. I always heard that Arabs had no sense of timing, Dan thought as he got up from his chair and came around his desk, hand extended.

  Al-Bashir smiled as he stepped into Dan’s office, but he took a good long look at April before turning to accept Dan’s proffered hand. He was dressed like a fashion model in a light gray suit and pale blue tie. Dan felt almost shabby in his shirtsleeves and creaseless slacks. They sat at the circular little table in the corner of the office, next to the window that looked out on the parking lot and the trees beyond it. April brought in a tray of coffee and juices, smiling prettily as she put the tray down on the table and left. Al-Bashir followed her with his eyes, a curious little smile on his lips.

  “Your secretary is quite lovely,” al-Bashir murmured as April closed the door behind her.

  Dan nodded offhandedly. “Yep, I guess she is.”

  “Is she married?”

  His attitude riled Dan. Keeping his tone pleasant, he lied, “No, but she’s got a steady boyfriend. Local police officer and martial arts champ. Big guy, mean as a hungry bear.”

  Al-Bashir’s smile faded.

  “Coffee?” Dan asked.

  Half an hour later, Dan was impressed with how much al-Bashir knew about the technology of solar power satellites. He’s no engineer, Dan thought, but he’s pretty damned smart.

  “Power satellites will never replace petroleum entirely,” the Tunisian was saying, “but they should be able to take over a large percentage of base-load electrical power generation:”

  “Yep,” said Dan. “If we get a dozen or so powersats up there we’ll be able to shut down most of the fossil-fuel electrical power plants on the ground. Maybe all of ’em.”

  “Only the fossil-fuel plants? What about the nuclear?”

  Dan hesitated a moment, wondering how much he should tell his visitor. Then he said carefully, “Fossil-fuel plants put out gr
eenhouse gases. Nukes don’t. Burning coal and oil and natural gas is causing global warming—”

  “Many eminent scientists don’t agree that global warming is real.”

  “Yeah, I know. But global temperatures are creeping up every year. If we could shut down the fossil-fuel power plants around the world—”

  “An enormous if,” al-Bashir interrupted, with an upraised finger.

  Dan chuckled. “Okay. Okay. Let’s concentrate on getting one powersat up and running.”

  “What do you think of Scanwell’s dream of making the United States independent of imported petroleum?”

  “It’s no dream,” Dan replied. “It’s a necessity.”

  “Really?” Al-Bashir’s brows rose. “How so?”

  “As long as we’re tied to Middle Eastern oil we’re tied to Middle Eastern politics. We’re hostages to the terrorists and nutcases who want to wipe out Israel and the United States because we support Israel.”

  Al-Bashir smiled blandly. “And if the United States no longer needs to import petroleum from the Middle East? What then?”

  “That’s their problem, not mine.”

  “And Israel’s?”

  Dan said, “Israel will have to solve its own problems.”

  “I see,” murmured al-Bashir. Then he fell silent.

  You stuck your foot in it, Dan angrily told himself. You’re talking to an Arab, for double-damn’s sake, a Moslem. Why can’t you put your brain in gear before you rev up your mouth?

  Well, he asked for it, Dan thought. He pushed the door open. So now what?

  Al-Bashir sat before Dan’s desk, his face expressionless, his deep, dark eyes on Dan.

  “Look,” Dan said, feeling uncomfortable, “I’m not a politician. I’m a businessman. I’m not trying to save the world. I just want to get this power satellite going and make an indecent profit out of it.”

  Al-Bashir broke into laughter. “Indeed, that’s what we are all seeking, Mr. Randolph.”

  “Call me Dan.”

  Nodding, al-Bashir said, “It’s very rare to find one so honest as you are, Dan.”

  Dan shrugged.

  Growing serious again, al-Bashir said, “Very well. Mr. Garrison is prepared to buy fifteen percent of Astro Manufacturing for a price of one point five billion dollars.”

  “And what else?”

  “Tricontinental Oil will want to have one of its board members sit on your board of directors.”

  “Would that be you, Mr. al-Bashir?”

  “It will be me, yes.”

  “I would much prefer a loan,” said Dan, “without diluting my holdings of Astro stock.”

  AI-Bashir leaned back in his chair and said nothing.

  “Senator Thornton plans to introduce a bill that will provide government guarantees for loans to Astro.”

  “And other firms, as well,” said al-Bashir.

  He knows about Jane’s plan! Dan felt surprised. But he kept his voice level as he added, “The bill is intended to help Astro.”

  “The loans will be at very low interest,” al-Bashir pointed out.

  “Two percent of a billion and a half is still—”

  “Much less than the money would earn elsewhere.”

  “But it would be guaranteed,” Dan pointed out. “Zero risk.”

  Al-Bashir had the look of a cat playing with a mouse it had captured. “Dan, be serious. You can’t expect us to hand you a billion and a half dollars and get nothing for it but two percent interest over a ten- or twenty-year time span. It’s ridiculous.”

  “Then I’ll have to go elsewhere, I guess,” said Dan. “Maybe Saito Yamagata will be more willing:’

  Al-Bashir’s expression turned pitying. “Dan, my friend, if you’re worried about having your corporation snatched out of your hands, worry about Yamagata and the Japanese, not Tricontinental.”

  Inwardly, Dan agreed. Sai is willing to help, he knew. But the price of that help would be to allow Yamagata to get its hands on the spaceplane design.

  “You can’t get the kind of money you need without giving up something, Dan,” al-Bashir said, quite reasonably. “What is it the scientists talk about, some law of thermodynamics?”

  “The second law,” Dan muttered. “You can’t win, and you can’t even break even.”

  “There’s no free lunch, Dan. All Garrison wants is a seat on your board so he can stay informed of what you’re doing. One seat isn’t going to change your board. I won’t be able to take over your company with only one vote.”

  “I suppose not,” Dan admitted. But a voice in his head asked, Then why do you want that seat so badly?

  WASHINGTON, D.C.

  “Senator Thornton!”

  Jane turned at the sound of the voice. She didn’t recognize the young man elbowing his way toward her against the crowd streaming down the crowded marble corridor of the Hart Senate Office Building. Denny O’Brien, walking beside her, looked over his shoulder and whispered, “Gerry Zisk, Wall Street Journal.”

  It was almost four o’clock, the nominal end of the working day for staffers, and already the corridors were jammed with office workers on their way to the homeward-bound traffic rush. The young man striding briskly against the human torrent looked too scruffy to be a reporter for the redoubtable Journal. He was balding but had a silly-looking goatee springing from his chin. He wore slacks and a baggy pullover shirt and, Jane noticed, expensive Birkenstock sandals that looked as if they had seen plenty of miles. But no socks.

  “He covers high tech, science, that sort of stuff,”O’Brien explained before she could ask.

  Zisk reached them and stuck out his hand. “Thanks for waiting up for me,” he said, grinning happily. “I just want to ask you a few questions about the bill you introduced on the Senate floor this afternoon.”

  “Why don’t we go over to my office, where we can be comfortable?” Jane suggested.

  Zisk nodded enthusiastically.

  As they started walking upstream, with Zisk between Jane and O’Brien, he asked, “Is this bill part of Governor Scanwell’s plan for energy independence? I mean, it’s aimed at helping to raise capital for high-tech companies, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, to both halves of your question,” said Jane.

  They rounded a corner and went to the SENATORS ONLY elevator. O’Brien pushed the button, muttering about how the elevator stops on every floor when the staff are emptying out of the offices on their way home.

  “Do you really think it’s possible for the U.S. to become totally independent of Arab oil?” Zisk asked.

  The elevator arrived and a fresh flood of employees streamed out, forcing Jane and the two men to retreat back away from the doors. Jane thought of the old saw about Civil Service employees: How many people work in this office? About a third of the staff.

  They got into the elevator and Zisk repeated his question as the doors slid shut.

  “Totally independent of oil imports?” Jane mused. “That’s our goal. How close we can get to it, and how quickly we approach that goal, depends on who’s leading the nation.”

  Zisk grinned at her. “I’m covering technology, Senator, not politics. Is it possible, technologywise?”

  “Of course it is. A lot of the necessary technology already exists, and we can develop what isn’t ready today.”

  They reached the top floor and headed down the corridor for Jane’s suite of offices. Instead of going in through the outer rooms, Jane pecked at the electronic lock on the door to her private office.

  Zisk seemed unimpressed by the handsome, dark mahogany furniture. He barely glanced at the window and its view of the Supreme Court building.

  “You’re really confident we can develop stuff like this solar power satellite?”

  “We got to the Moon, didn’t we?” O’Brien snapped, heading for the refrigerator hidden beneath the ceiling-high bookshelves.

  “And it cost twenty billion bucks.”

  Jane took one of the green-and-white-striped upholstered ch
airs near the window. Zisk sat in the facing chair.

  “You want something to drink?” O’Brien called, hoisting a chilled bottle of spring water.

  “Beer?” Zisk asked.

  “What kind?”

  “Lite anything.”

  “I’ll have a tonic with lime,” Jane called to her aide.

  “Coming up,” O’Brien replied.

  Hunching forward in his chair, Zisk asked again, “Do you really think this power satellite can work?”

  Jane hesitated. The reporter didn’t have a notepad in his hand. There was no evidence of a recording device, unless he had one burrowed inside his pullover or jammed into a pants pocket.

  “Are you recording this?” she asked.

  He tapped his temple with a forefinger. “I’ve got a good memory.”

  Jane gave him a wintry smile. “Then perhaps I’d better make a record of what we say.” As O’Brien handed her a tall glass of tonic, she asked, “Denny, would you turn on the machine?” Looking back at Zisk, “We can provide you with a copy, if you like.”

  “Whatever,” he answered, shrugging carelessly. “Now, about your bill: this is a bailout for Astro Corporation, isn’t it?”

  O’Brien shot her a warning frown as he headed for her desk. Jane waited until he had clicked on the digital recorder before replying.

  “My bill is intended to provide help for struggling companies in areas of new energy technology without costing the taxpayers a penny.”

  “Unless a company like Astro defaults on the loans.”

  “The government has done this before,” Jane pointed out. “For Chrysler Corporation, for Lockheed. It’s nothing new.”

  “But it is intended to bail out Astro, isn’t it?”

  “It should help Astro, certainly. And other companies struggling to establish private ventures in renewable energy technology.”

  “Name two,” Zisk said, grinning.

  “Rockledge Industries has plans to build a hydrogen fuel facility, I hear,” Jane replied immediately. “And several companies are looking into the possibilities of establishing windmill facilities—wind farms, they call them.”

  Zisk’s grin widened. “What about Sam Gunn and his zero-g honeymoon hotel?”