Fred actually had managed to speak to Chancellor Carver after his uncle had interceded with the Chancellor on his behalf. That conversation had been strange, filled with soft wording about how the University might need venture capital or assistance in negotiating with the aerospace industry depending on some issues regarding the intellectual property. Though Fred had tried to find out what the IP issues were, Carver hadn’t been forthcoming.
Fred eagerly told his AI, “I’ll take the call! Ms. Gettnor?”
“Yes?” She sounded, like she looked, alarmingly young.
“Oh, I’m so glad I finally reached you! I work with your brother Dante down here at Axel VC. Our managing partners are very eager to see if we can assist you and the University in negotiating with the aerospace industry on your new spacecraft, or, even better, capitalizing you and providing management assistance if you decide to form your own company.”
“Hmm,” she said, “the University and my father both have the right to commercialize this intellectual property as long as either entity pays the agreed-upon royalties to the other. We Gettnors are planning to commercialize it. I’m not quite sure what the University intends to do, but I suspect they will be letting us commercialize it and they’ll just collect royalties from us. We and UNC aren’t exactly seeing eye-to-eye on things at present.”
Fred’s head practically swam. Typically universities owned the intellectual property of the people working or studying there, so he hadn’t expected to hear that someone else had the right to commercialize the IP. He’d thought that he’d be working with Eisner and the Gettnors while they commercialized it, but that the University would be in control. His connection with Carver could have been huge in that circumstance, but she seemed to be saying Carver wouldn’t influence things as they lay. He bulled ahead, saying cheerfully, “That’s great! That’s great, we’d like to help in any way we can. Dante’s been a valued employee and we’d love to work with you folks in any fashion we can.”
“Well…” she trailed off as if thinking, “Dante’s the business person in our family and we’re looking to him to organize that part of the enterprise. Have you talked to him yet?”
“Um, no, I’ve been trying to reach him, but he took yesterday off. I suspect that he wanted the time to come to grips with the possibilities engendered by your new technology. He hasn’t gotten to work yet this morning either.”
“Yeaahh…” she stretched the word out, “that’s probably because you fired him…” She let the little silence stretch while Fred desperately tried to think of something, anything to say, then continued in a falsely cheerful voice, “But I’m pretty sure he’s going to be in there this morning. Someone called him and told him that if he got security to escort him, he could pick up his personal items. Maybe you could talk to him then?” She disconnected before Fred’s gibbering mind could come up with anything he could say to assuage the damage.
For a minute Fred sat with his head in his hands, that bitch Terry hadn’t canceled his order with HR! Either that or those stupid sons of bitches down in HR screwed it up! “Terry!” Fred bellowed, stepping to the door of his office, “did you tell HR not to fire…” He broke off when he saw Dante Gettnor standing there at Terry’s desk. “Hi Dante, are you feeling better?”
Dante grinned cheerfully at him, “Never felt bad Mr. Yount. Remember, I called in for personal leave, not sick leave. Sorry the company couldn’t let me have any time. I had some tough decisions to make about whether to stay on, or help my family found a company.” He grinned at Fred, “Fortunately, you helped me with that decision when you fired me. Even saved me the need to give you guys two weeks’ notice.” He glanced around the office, then said, “I brought in some little gifts for some of the people here who’ve been nice to me over the past few years, assuming Tom here,” Dante hooked a thumb at the security guard standing behind him, “will let me drop them off. Then I’ll pick up my plant and my picture of my fiancé, and be out of your hair.”
“Dante… There’s been a mistake,” Fred said, desperately trying to think of how to make this better. For a moment he tried to think how he could blame it all on Terry, but then he remembered that Dante and Terry had seemed to be good friends. He considered blaming it on the bosses, but he couldn’t have that get back to Mr. Anderson.
While Fred frantically tried to come up with something to say, Dante cheerfully said, “Hey, no problem. It all worked out for the best for me. Once I decided to run the family company, the sooner I could get out of this job the better! You actually helped me a lot when you fired me.”
“But you don’t have to go,” Fred said, pleadingly. “We can help you with startup know-how, venture capital, IPOs. Whatever you guys need…”
Dante walked around and gave Fred a friendly pat on the shoulder, “We’ve already got more capital than Axel VC has available. And, we’d rather hire our own know-how than contract it out. So, we’re good.”
Dante turned and walked around the office, handing little envelopes to some of the employees. Fred saw that Terry had one on her desk. She’d torn it open and was staring at the contents. There was a check. Even upside down Fred could see it was written for $5,000. A card lay beside it, turned sideways enough that Fred could read it. It said, “I’ve enjoyed working with you. If you’re ever looking for a change, you’ve got a job at GSI.”
“GSI?” Fred said querulously.
“Gettnor Space Industries,” Terry said helpfully.
“Where’s he getting the money for all this?” Fred asked in a near whisper.
“Um, apparently his dad’s got a lot of money.”
“Sheiiitt…!” Fred moaned.
***
Liz Costa walked out into their big custom manufacturing facility. The Gettnors were supposed to be there to precipitate their membranes in just a few minutes, but her son Mark had just called her out to look at something first. She was hoping bleakly that Mark hadn’t found some egregious construction error that would require them to eat a lot of revision costs.
Mark wasn’t standing beside either the top or the bottom of the huge saucer. He was standing beside a row of six big crates which had apparently just been delivered. She saw a big GE corporate logo on the side of it. Relieved to be fairly sure it wasn’t a problem for Costa and Sons, she raised an eyebrow. Mark said, “You know what these are?!”
Liz shook her head.
“Those new fusion plants GE’s building. Six of them!”
“Oh, I thought they were supposed to be pretty small?”
“According to their labels, each one is supposed to generate 125 megawatts!” He turned to look at them, “When I saw that, I thought they were pretty small for what they do.”
“Holy crap,” Liz breathed. “They are small. They’re smaller than the generator in one of those big wind turbines and those only generate one megawatt!” She turned to look at the saucer, “Is one of them supposed to go in this big saucer?”
Mark said, “The plans specify locations for six ‘power plants’ and the locations are about the right size for these things; we just didn’t know they were going to be fusion plants!”
“So that’s, what, 750 megawatts total?!”
“Yeah,” Mark said, turning. “I think this is Gettnor’s daughter coming now.”
Liz turned, recognizing the slender young woman from her press conferences. The young man looked a lot like her so Liz suspected he was a relative. “Call Pete,” she said quietly to Mark, then stepped towards the Gettnors. “Hello Ms. Gettnor, we think we’ve got everything set up for the precipitations. All your chemicals have arrived and we’ve got the pumps and equipment that were specified.”
“Call me Tiona,” the young woman said with a pleasant smile. “This is my brother Dante, he’s going to be running our business and so he wants to see how all this works.”
“Great, call me Liz, and these are my sons Mark and Pete.” She grinned and gave a wink, “We’re the Costa and Sons of the company name. Once we’v
e got the precipitation going, we’d love to talk about the business end. Costa and Sons would like to be as involved in this new industry as we can be.”
As they walked over to where things had been set up for the precipitation, Dante said, “Do you think you can make saucers here in quantity? I thought you were really only set up for large-scale prototyping?”
Mark said, “That’s what we’re known for, but we’re ready to expand into manufacturing. We’d love to get in on the ground floor of this industry. My brother Pete, here, has been hard at work studying radiation hardening and shielding as well as other issues related to long term stays in deep space.”
Peter spoke up in his own stead, “I know that right now you’re trusting mostly to the fact that your spacecraft move so fast they don’t have to spend much time out there, but as you start to move into deep space industry, you’ll have people staying out there for extended periods of time. When you get to that phase, you’ll need to work out ways to keep them healthy. Simulated gravity to keep their bones from getting soft for instance.”
Tiona eyed Peter, “If we’re accelerating at one G, our bones won’t be getting soft.”
“Yes ma’am, but if you’re mining an asteroid for an extended period of time, you can’t be flying back and forth to maintain one G can you?”
“Hmm, I thought we’d go out to an asteroid, give it a push to modify its orbit so it would come back to Earth, move on to the next asteroid and give it a shove. Then we’d come back to earth and use the saucer to catch them and place them in an orbit where Earth’s magnetosphere protects the workers that are actually doing the mining. Kinda like what NASA was doing with Kadoma, except we’d be able to do it with asteroids that didn’t start with such favorable orbital mechanics.”
Pete said, “I’m sure that’d work. But I’m assuming that eventually you’ll want to do something with asteroids that are bigger than anyone would want inserted into low Earth orbit, as well as making extended visits to the moon, Mars, Ganymede, Titan etc.” He shrugged, “Anyway, that’s more long term. I have some other ideas for increasing safety and comfort…”
***
Landon Archer wondered what was going on. The managing partners, the men who owned the monetary capital that gave Axel VC its name, had just been in talking to Fred Yount behind closed doors. Yount’s office was glassed so everyone out on the floor knew the partners were mad about something. Raised voices had been heard right through the wall. Yount was such a hard-driving gunner it was difficult to imagine him screwing up bad enough to piss off the partners. Landon wondered whether any of the shit storm was going to rain down on him. When the partners, still looking pissed, left Yount’s office, Landon contrived to be looking elsewhere.
Just as Landon wondered whether he could safely head over to ask Terry what was going on, his AI chimed saying, “You have a call from Dante Gettnor.”
Landon quickly said, “I’ll take it… Hey Dante, what’s up?” It wasn’t a rhetorical question either. Rumors about Dante were rampant at Axel VC. He’d quit; he’d been fired; Yount was mad at him; Yount was begging him to come back to work; Dante had something to do with the new flying saucer technology. Nobody really knew what was going on. Landon had returned to his desk a few days ago to find a note from Dante saying, “I’ve enjoyed working with you. If you’re ever looking for a change, you’ve got a job at GSI.” Whatever the hell GSI was. The note had a check for $1000 with it! Landon knew a few of Dante’s other buddies had gotten the same thing, but no one really seemed to know what it was about. If Dante had just been fired, where in the hell was he coming up with the cash to be writing his friends thousand dollar checks?! Gary claimed Dante’s sister was the one who’d flown out to the asteroid, which probably spoke to the rumor that this all had something to do with that technology. Landon hadn’t checked on the sister rumor yet. Even so, having a sister who was the pilot on a new spacecraft wouldn’t make you rich, would it?
Dante’s voice came over his earphone, breaking Landon’s train of thought, “Hey Landon, did you get my note from the other day?”
“Yeah man, sorry to see you go. We’ll have to have a beer and talk about what happened, ‘cause nobody seems to know around here.”
“Terry does, you could’ve asked her. Have you figured out what GSI is yet?”
“Uh, no. Did a Google search and found lots of companies named ‘GSI,’ but didn’t know which one you might be referring to. Did you get hired on at one of them?”
“In a manner of speaking, yes. I’m inviting you and a few of the other guys to lunch at Bixby’s on me. I know lunch is only a half an hour away, but do you think you could make it?”
Landon glanced at Yount’s office. Yount had been all fired up yesterday afternoon about how Axel VC wanted to finance the new spacecraft technology. He’d canceled the lunch they’d planned at Bixby’s so the team could talk about it. The partners had assigned Yount to go after the spacecraft account thinking that Axel VC had a good chance since the technology’d been discovered right there in the triangle. Researching it had been how Gary had discovered that Dante’s sister had piloted the new spacecraft. Normally, when there was a big push on to get a new account, it would be a bad idea to go out to lunch, so Landon had brought his own bag lunch this morning. However, everyone seemed to just be going through the motions today since no one seemed to have any good connections to the inventors. Landon decided that talking to the brother of the girl who flew the flying saucer could be considered research into the possibility of attracting the new account. To Dante, he said, “Count me in. I’ll buy you a beer.”
Enigmatically, Dante said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be buying the beer.”
***
When he got up to go to Bixby’s, Landon wasn’t surprised to see his friends Gary and Steve heading out of the office at the same time he was. Gary winked at him, saying, “Having a burger and beer at Bixby’s?”
Landon nodded, “Do you know what this is all about?”
Gary shrugged, “Like I told you, Dante’s sister flew the saucer out to the asteroid and was part of the team that built the spaceship. It’s not too big a leap from there to figure that he’s in on the ground floor of a new industry that’ll be building more spaceships. From there it’s just a small step to hope that if we play our cards right, we might bring in the account that the partners have a hard-on about. Or,” he said quietly as if the words held some portent, “maybe they’re starting a new company and Dante’s going to offer us positions in it.”
Steve said, “But… if they’re starting a company, where’s the money going to come from? I assume they built that first saucer on some kind of grant, but the things have to be freakishly expensive. Space launches cost fifty to a hundred million dollars! Starting an industry to build spaceships will require major funding. Do you think he’s hoping we’ll manage to get money out of some kind of backdoor at Axel VC even though he pissed off some people bad enough to get fired?”
The discussion got cut off just then because they ran into Dante outside of Bixby’s. They spent a few minutes shaking hands, getting a table, ordering beers and looking over the menu. Having eaten there many times they all placed their orders pretty quickly. Once that was done, Landon turned to Dante and said, “So what’s the deal? We’ve heard all kinds of rumors, ranging from you quitting, to getting fired. Nobody really seems to know what’s going on.”
Dante grinned at them, “You guys really should learn to talk to those people below you in the pecking order. Terry could’ve told you what happened if you’d deigned to ask.”
Steve snorted, “Yeah, yeah, so, come on, tell us what…” They all looked up to see that Rachel had arrived at their table.
Dante said, “Hey Rache’, I was thinking you’d gotten cold feet.”
Rachel rolled her eyes, “No, it’s just that I thought our exit should be at least a little bit staggered. When I saw these three morons all get up and leave at the same time, I figured I should hold back
a little. I assume that whatever we’re meeting about is something that isn’t going to make the big bosses back at Axel happy?”
Dante shrugged, “Well, no, but I don’t think you have to skulk around like we’re doing evil.”
Rachel lifted an eyebrow, “On the other hand, you have no reason to keep our bosses back at Axel happy anymore, do you?”
Dante gave a little laugh, “No, you’ve got me there.” He looked at Landon, “In answer to your earlier question, yeah, Yount fired me.”
“Son of a bitch! Why?”
“I called in to ask if I could take a personal day off. He told me, if I did ‘it would be my ass.’” Dante shrugged, “I took it anyway.”
“You were taking a personal day because your sister just got back from the asteroid?” Steve asked.
Dante grinned, “Yep, and because she offered me the opportunity to found a new industry based on their thruster technology.”
Gary said, “Who would you be working for?” He glanced around the table, then back at Dante, “I’m figuring Boeing, Space X? I don’t know if there are any other space industry players big enough?”
“Like I said in my note to you guys, ‘GSI.’”
“Which GSI? A Google search finds quite a few of them.”
“Gettnor Space Industries,” Dante glanced around at everyone’s goggle eyed expressions and gave them a grin, “We’re starting up a new company.”
Rachel stared at him a moment, then said, “Wait a minute. This tech was invented at UNC. Are you telling me they’re just going to let you go off and develop it yourselves? Or… did you somehow already get them to license it to you?”
Disc Page 7