April 2: Down to Earth

by Mackey Chandler

  "But what about Jerry's rights to this, you were so concerned about?"

  "We saw him going in the cafeteria and he asked us how many we had for who you wanted the mod and he was real happy with six. Jeff spoke up and said he wanted me counted as his family though and he wouldn't have to inoculate me separately. He just wanted a free ticket if I caught it from him. So he agreed on the spot to the deal and said we could tell you, if we were coming to see you. After he agreed, I said I would sweeten the pot for including me and give him a parcel of Lunar land as soon as we start surveying them out. I don't think he was sure I wasn't kidding him, but I told him I'd give him a plot next to the land for the University. I think that made it real for him. So we're legal. We won't be cheating anybody, if you're up to seeing us."

  "Come on." she invited, surprised. She thought that a bigger deal with Jerry was dead, since it didn't happen right away. "I'll let you in from here. I'm staying out of the house, so just come on through."

  They must have been half way from the cafeteria, because they were calling at the door in no time. In the last year she had entertained more guests than ever before, but none had ever seen her room. When they came in April got a sheet and folded it in half to put on the floor as a picnic spread. Jeff laid it out from the thermo-pak, as he had done at their first council of war, over a year ago at his family's apartment.

  It filled almost all the open floor, but Jeff still commented on how big the room was. She couldn't work up any guilt about it today. They had raspberry pancakes, with a separate container of whipped cream and scrambled eggs with potatoes and bacon pieces scrambled right in. Jeff brought a separate carafe of coffee, that wasn't the sort you got from the cafeteria. As soon as she smelled it she knew it was the good stuff instead. She was full and sitting sipping her coffee and the next thing she knew her eyes were closed. The only thing interrupting her slide into sleep was Heather, taking the cup out of her hand before she dropped it.

  "You need to lie back down," Heather said and they took an arm from each side and took her back to bed. When they eased her down instead of leaving, they laid on each side, crowded close to fit on the narrow bed. She didn't know what to say. They each had a leg thrown over hers and an arm crossed from each side at her waist hemming her in tightly. It felt so good squeezed between them she didn't want to object. Heather buried her nose in her ear and Jeff leaned over and said, "Let's have some of that virus." He kissed her gently on the lips and played at the corner of her mouth with his tongue. Not gross, but enough to be sure he was infected.

  He rubbed gently nose to nose and touched his finger to her lips and rubbed around his eyes. She was embarrassed to feel his arousal against her leg. She was about to object she couldn't get intimate with them, when Heather leaned over and kissed her on the lips too. She was relieved to find it wasn't as exciting as Jeff, but it was strangely sweet. Very sweet. "I really love both of you but I don't think I fly that way," she explained to Heather. "And I can't be intimate with you two. I haven't done that before, I haven't any protection, I'm not ready and I feel too crappy to even want to put forth the effort just now."

  "I'm not hard wired for girls either," Heather assured her. "That was just simple honest affection, not lust. Well, with Jeff I'm sure it's some lust too. You know guys, they have enough lust to share extra all around, but he'll limit expressing it today or I'll kill him. I'm sure there's some thoughtful affection mixed in there too," she gave him a stern look, not to contradict her. "We've known for awhile we love each other and we love you too. Seems there's a serious stage beyond infatuation, no anti-bonding drug inhibits. But then our bonding is by no means superficial. It was slow coming. Just go ahead and sleep. You can hardly keep your eyes open. We'll stay right here and we won't do anything to hurt you. Never will, I promise," she said.

  "You guys will have to isolate in a couple days you know," she suddenly worried.

  "Yes, we realize that. Relax."

  "I haven't even had a shower. I must be all stinko."

  "You smell just fine," Jeff said in her ear. "Sleep a little bit and when you are awake again, we'll take you in and scrub you down squeaky clean, until you squeal for mercy," he promised.

  "I don't think we'll all fit," she objected before she drifted off, remembering her tiny shower. She was surprised to find she was wrong.

  Chapter 17

  Jeff proudly showed his step mom the new use he had found for the quantum superconductor fluid she discovered. She was impressed and said they'd have to come to a balance how the effect would be utilized by their separate companies.

  "You haven't made it produce a gravitational repulsion?" she asked.

  "No. I have serious doubts you can do that in this universe. I have an idea, but it gets a bit beyond what we know, about how things work right now," he allowed.

  "Hmm… Yes, better to let that problem go for a few weeks and pursue the more obvious uses." That was her idea of droll humor.

  "We still can use attraction, to neutralize the effects of excess acceleration on the crew, in vessels. We just suspend a few attractive units ahead of the crew and pull them foreword against the acceleration. It will put extra strain on the frame and we'll have to worry about tidal effects, but it's doable. Then there is gravitational fusion. But I wondered what else you would see as a practical application.?"

  "Well there are a few you've probably already thought of and are too polite to mention," she said. The scary thing was she seemed to mean it. He hadn't given any thought to other uses and didn't especially want to say so.

  "No, please. I don't want to contaminate the process, by trying to lead you. What do you see? You're better at practical application than me," he admitted.

  "I suppose if it were efficient enough, you could use it as a drive throwing matter off your stern with it. This device means we'll be able to send probes way down into Jupiter and other gas giants. The kids here won't have to stay in the outer rings when they're growing up, because you can install these in your floor and just dial the gravity up, the same as the lights."

  "So I'd say low G cubic is suddenly going to be a lot more valuable. I'd buy some up if any is on the market. The next station built they might not even bother to spin it up. This certainly lets you build it in a lot different shape than a ring if you want. I can picture a plane of them and both sides would be a floor. I suppose that an intense field, would be much more efficient at separating isotopes than a conventional centrifuge too." She thought about it a bit. "You know how a superconductor excludes a magnetic field?"

  "Yes," he assured her.

  "Well, you have this sample to play with now and I'll send you some more when I can. I'd really appreciate it if you'd do two things. Make a sphere of the material and check the gravitational intensity inside the sphere. Put a mass enclosed and see how much force it takes to accelerate it. And make a wide flat disk and check the gravitational field on one face, with the field from the other side. I don't mean against the acceleration we experience in a station ring either. I think for the first time there may not be equivalence."

  She saw how he looked at that. "Humor me," she asked him. "You don't think relativity is holy writ do you? You can't risk sending any of this material down to Earth, so I guess you'll have to send the experiment down to Luna. You said Heather wanted to ship some things to Luna soon anyway. Do you think you could send a lab in a box and work it remotely?"

  "I can do better than that," Jeff offered. "I will probably go to the Moon for a few days myself, to help Heather. Happy Lewis is going too.

  "You know what else?" she continued. "If you do away with the center shaft and rotate the ring with a hole in the middle, it sucks in from both sides. We'll have to see if there is any lateral force in the middle, or if a fluid is free to expand in the plane of rotation when it gets in there. But I'd say you could suck hydrogen, or any other gas in there and if the gravity is strong enough you can store it, at such a pressure it will probably be quite compact. Especially if
it goes to the metallic state. The trick there would actually be to cool it sufficiently, to avoid heating it in compression to fusion."

  "That would take a tremendous field," he pointed out, but it sounded good.

  "Oh, if you have a tremendous field, you might be able to create degenerate matter. After all it's just gravity that creates a neutron star."

  Jeff asked then, "You think fusion is likely feasible?"

  "Well, if you had some way to pump heat into a mass in the center of your gravitational well there, you probably could ignite a fusion reaction. Of course just infalling and compression will help," she reminded him.

  "What if I had a cone of fusibles on each side," he asked, sketching it on the screen, "and when I spin up the torus it sucks each side into a very small volume in the middle," he illustrated by shading a small volume, "then I detonate one of our storage modules on each side, to compress this pill of condensed fusibles trapped in the center of the torus."

  Nam-Kha looked startled. "You might even have secondary fusion reactions proceed to carbon or beyond, that would significantly boost yield.

  "I need take this to hardware as soon as possible. I'm letting contracts for reentry buses based on what it will mass. And I need to tell you more about what's happening with Heather's Lunar project too, Mum and a few other little gadgets I'm working on. How about if we go get some lunch and I'll bring you up to speed on that project?"

  Chapter 18

  April had a work suit helmet on, with a full flat wrap-around face plate, diamond on nano-matrix sapphire, but no pressure suit. Besides that they all had bullet proof vests with high collars and gloves. There was a sort of cod piece and if you wanted them, a plate that went over the upper leg. Those were all too big, so April skipped them. The bullets they had come up with were about as nasty to be hit with as the rubber riot control bullets that were in use on Earth for some time. They were hard green wax for investment casting, with a fiber wad on the back. They would have liked something that recoiled more, but they decided just shooting a few real rounds into a bullet trap in the corridor would have to do. The businesses on the corridor had agreed to let them use it on the last half of the back shift. One fellow, with quite a bit of warehouse space, had agreed to let them move everything against one wall and use the space for a team against team workshop. They'd just have to pay a small fee, for the robot inventory system to stack everything twice, which would mean about a six hour delay in some of his shipments and any breakage they caused. The one non-negotiable demand was he be included in one of the teams.

  Since he was an ex-paint ball and combat games fanatic on Earth before he came up, April suspected that Jon could have made him pay, instead of the other way around. Harry, the business owner, was as excited as a kid going to a carnival for the first time. It was obvious from the amount of cubic he owned that he was pretty wealthy too. So Heather marked him as a perfect potential Lunar land owner.

  She approached him from the angle that he was so very nice to allow their session, but explained she was going to donate a large tract of land in her development to public safety, so they would have a place Moonside to go play pretty soon. She let him know it would be big enough for not only a range, but even for the militia to play war games with heavy weapons. By the time she finished he was practically salivating. She left it at that so he could talk himself into needing a ranch himself. Probably handy to the public range.

  The exercises were very instructive for April. She found out she didn't like big guns that recoil hard. Even the 9mm was a bit more than she wanted to hold onto. Especially given that LET was retarding her growth and that meant her hands would be small for years to come. The hypervelocity 3mm they had liberated the previous year from a Chinese fellow was more to her taste if she wanted a projectile weapon. Easy pointed out, tongue in cheek, that if she stepped up to a 14mm it was recoilless. But that was too much gun to carry around in pressure. They couldn't even shoot one into their bullet trap. It would punch holes through for sure. Her laser looked better all the time.

  They ran scenarios team against team in groups of four, switching the mix of teams too. Jerry and his team of gene altered customers had rattled the opposition at first with their speed, but Easy and Margaret quickly devised strategies to overcome their advantage, if both parties were not out in the open exposed. In a fixed defense or ambush they could be defeated, if at a price.

  The first time Jerry did an intrusion on a group defending a room, he had entered the door with a high rolling jump in the air and shot eight rounds so fast it had sounded like a burst from a machine gun. They had each absorbed two lethally placed hits before he hit the floor.

  The next entry he did was with a group that had Easy, who had been one of the previous defenders and forewarned. He placed Harry two meters in front of the door, blocking the way with a flash bang in each hand. The timers were set to a tenth second and he instructed him to hold them away from his body on each side and hold them with the initiator button depressed. As soon as he saw any movement at all at the door, he should release them. "Don't think, don't watch and decide, just drop ‘em fast and they'd fall far enough to avoid burning your fingers."

  "What then?" Harry asked all eager. "Do you want me to go for my pistol or what?"

  "Be my guest," Easy laughed. "He's going to be surprised at finding you forward in his face when he comes in and confused that you don't have a pistol out. He's going to shoot you about three times as much as he needs to, because the rest of us will be under cover and are not even going to be visible until we see the flash and come out. And then, after he is blinded and his ammo depleted, we're going to pop up and finish him off. The only one we'll lose is you. But don't worry, in real life I'd put you in for a nice posthumous medal."

  "I'm a target? You're sacrificing me to deplete his ammo?"

  "And to blind him, you grasp the strategy quickly. If I were doing it in real life I'd use fragmentation grenades and set the timer for zero. That way I'd know we'd bag the sucker. Why chance wasting the effort, when you know you are going to get potted anyway? But even though you're wasting a tenth second, we'll bag him. Watch if we don't."

  "Where did you learn tactics like this?" Harry wanted to know, appalled.

  "Officer's training school. Where else? Do you want me to go all noble and lose all four of us again, or do what works?"

  It went exactly as Easy promised. After, Harry was a little euphoric and punchy, with the shock of experiencing death vicariously. Jerry had come in low this time, sliding along the floor. Harry's vest and face plate were covered with-splatters and ricochets of wax. The slowed down video showed that Jerry, sliding by on his side with a pistol in each hand, shot Harry four times before the flash bangs went off. Then blinded, he shot eleven more times from memory, all head shots but only three of them connected. As he explained at the re-cap, he was angry at being tricked and wanted to kill him for sure. The other three popped up from behind cover and waxed him in a solid mass of green splatters when he slid to a stop, blinded and empty.

  Chapter 19

  The next morning April had breakfast with Margaret and was still rehashing the bouts. In came Eddie who had never joined her for breakfast despite a standing invitation. She liked him just fine, but Eddie had always seemed to like his privacy and remained distant. But this morning he marched right up and asked to join them.

  When they came back last year from rescuing the Doctors Singh, he had suddenly had a fortune and never explained how. In fact, it was enough he had to quit security to manage it properly. Jon made clear that had bothered Eddie badly. He still pledged he was on call for emergencies. She found out last week, rescuing Don Adams, that he could afford to give him ten million Euro in gratitude without hurting himself. If the security goons had not revealed that she would never have known an exact number. He had gotten them all together to send a group picture of the crew of the Happy Lewis to the man, but hadn't revealed what sort of reward he was sending. Now he was willing
to spend twice that, to try to defuse the way Home - USNA relations were headed. She suddenly realized she was going on a third rescue mission. It was getting to be a habit.

  "April," he said putting his tray down. "I understand you have accepted the challenge, to go down and tweak the giant's nose for us."

  He was one of those guys who ate right off his tray, without setting stuff off on the table.

  "Yeah, I agreed. I appreciate your funding it so heavily."

  He waved that off as inconsequential. "It will benefit me in the end. I have been trying to convert assets to cash equivalents and commodities, but the system isn't designed to do that. What good are futures, if people stop producing the commodity? And physical delivery is impossible. Where could I store anything I'd buy? If it's in North America It can be seized and if I spend money to ship it up here it may be vaporized. If we resume hostilities I'll lose big regardless of what I do. I'm shifting wealth to Asia and Europe, but everything is so interconnected now it doesn't matter. If America is hurt worse, the world economy will be trashed for years. And have you given any thought what will happen elsewhere in the world if America goes down?"

  "No, I have been so concerned with what will happen to Home I haven't spent any time worrying about anyone else."

  "Well the areas dominated by North America will unravel. The Pan Arabic Protectorate is just the most worrisome of them. There's no predicting how that region would shake out, or how long it would take. War between Korea as a Chinese puppet and Japan is not unlikely without the USNA defending Japan. And as their interception of the missiles aimed at us showed, I don't think their neighbors really know what they would be biting off in that case. Not to mention the Chinese could be sucked into that one real easily, if it goes bad for Korea early. Without the stability the USNA created even Antarctica may be destabilized. The Argentines and Australians both want to open it up commercially. Quite a few others will object. It can get complicated down there. But that's not what I stopped to talk to you about," he admitted.