Destination Mars - Part 1

by Jack Webber

  "Thank you." said John as he stepped to the side. After Jane checked in, they went upstairs, dropped her bags off at room 402, and then went over to check out his embassy suite.

  "You got the better room!! That's for sure." exclaimed Jane, as her eyes took inventory. "Two beds, wide screen tv, Internet, a desk, and ..." She poked her head around the corner. "There's even a jacuzzi!"

  John followed her gaze and saw the hot tub, with a table along one side and a small fridge at the end. Cupboards were built into the wall, just above the table.

  "I'll bet there's wine in the fridge." predicted John as he opened the door.

  Indeed there was, along with small bottles of spirits for mixed drinks.

  He took out some wine and offered it to Jane. "Take a bottle back to your room; I don't need all this."

  She motioned it away. "Maybe after dinner, I'm starving!"

  John opened the cupboards and saw a number of glasses, plates, and utensils. He closed them again and turned back to Jane. "Yeah, the snack on the plane was less than exciting. I think there's a nice restaurant downstairs, just off the lobby."

  The buffet was impressive; no need to look at a menu. Fresh fish from Lake Baikal, lobster and shrimp from the Arctic Sea, roasted meat, corn on the cob, steamed broccoli, and a dessert table that wouldn't quit.

  John put two pieces of broiled fish on his plate, and rice and broccoli and corn. Jane filled her plate with seafood, twice baked potatoes, and salad.

  "Let's eat here again tomorrow night." suggested John, and Jane agreed. They ate and talked, and went back for seconds, and then dessert. John gave the waitress a big tip, since the company was paying, and then looked at his watch.

  "It's almost 9; shall we call it a day?"

  Jane thought for a moment, as though she were solving a complex problem in particle physics. But there was no math in her head, only models of human behaviour.

  John thought it was a simple question, but he waited patiently for the answer.

  Finally a billion neurons fell into a synchronized pattern that represented consensus, and Jane answered his question with another question.

  "John, do you have an open marriage?"

  Now it was John's turn to pause and reflect. "No," he said slowly, "but I'm flattered. Thank you. And right now, I wish I could say yes."

  Jane was attractive in every way: physically, intellectually, and emotionally. He could have loved both her and Melissa, without contradiction, but that wasn't the commitment he made 14 years ago. So he set it aside, the way you might say no to a piece of pie.

  "I understand." she said as she stood up from her chair. "I may stroll around the hotel and see what I can find. I'll see you in the morn..."

  John didn't want to lose the spirit of her kind invitation, so he interrupted her in a quiet voice. "Jane, if you don't get a better offer, we could just spend time together. We can watch TV, talk, play chess, drink the wine in my fridge; I very much enjoy your company." In the end, love was not about sex, and they both knew it. Love went above and beyond, as far as the imagination could dream.

  "My chess goes downhill after two glasses of wine." Jane said with a chuckle. Then she looked straight into his eyes and touched his hand. "I don't think I'm going to find a better offer anywhere around here. Let's go."

  They stopped by the game room to pick up a chess set. "If I'm playing chess with you, then you have to play ‘Go’ with me." she insisted.

  "I've never heard of it." said John.

  "They haven't either." said Jane as she rummaged through the boxes on the bottom shelf. "They've got just about every game here except ‘Go’."

  Jane went back to the front desk and asked the concierge to scare up a Go game from somewhere, and have it delivered to room 425.

  "Go is the oldest game of strategy," explained Jane as they stepped in to the elevator, "much older than chess."

  "Played by the Japanese I suppose." mumbled John as they passed the second floor.

  "Yes, very popular with the Japanese, but it was invented in China, thousands of years before technology."

  The elevator door opened and they stepped out on to the fourth floor.

  "You'll like it, and here's the interesting part. It was the first game of strategy, and it's probably the most challenging. Computers have been chess champions almost since technology began, but today, after 50-55 thousand years of progress, the computer is still no match for an 8 Dan player."

  This peeked John's interest, a game of monumental complexity. He put his hand against the panel and the door slid open. He and Jane stepped in and the door slid shut behind them. Jane still held the chess set with both hands.

  It was a heavy, elegant set with pieces made of polished jade.

  "Hot tub?" asked John.

  "Sure." said Jane.

  John took the set from her and went into the next room. He placed the set on the table next to the tub and started the water. "Pick out some music." he called as he arranged the pieces on the board. Jane powered up the entertainment center and skimmed through reams and reams of music. "Something old." she thought to herself. "As old as chess itself, but not classical. John listens to classical all the time." She finally settled on the Beatles. The computer displayed a dozen albums, but she simply pushed shuffle-play.

  "If you wear red tonight. Remember what I said tonight."

  The harmony was beautiful, but how to control the speakers? The song was half over before she figured out how to activate the speakers around the hot tub.

  "Great." shouted John when he could finally hear the music over the running water. "I haven't heard, er um, Beatles isn't it, in years."

  Jane came into the room and they both got undressed and climbed into the tub. "Pawn to king 4, and wine." said Jane, all in one breath.

  She stood up and pulled a bottle out of the fridge, then took two glasses out of the cupboard. She poured while John moved pawn to queen 4. They played, and drank, and talked, and listened to the old songs. Jane put up a pretty good fight, but John was a grand master player, and by the second glass the game was all but over.

  "Do you want to be black this time?" asked John, but he was interrupted by the call button. A response panel was within easy reach, so he touched the view icon. He saw the concierge, standing in the hall with a box under his arm.

  "Good grief, he found one." thought John to himself. He pushed the talk button and said, "I'll be right there." He climbed out of the tub, dripped on the mat for just a moment, and then went to the door.

  The concierge was startled at first, but quickly regained his composure. "I see you're enjoying our jacuzzi."

  "Yes, very nice." said John as he took the box. "Just charge this to my room, and, here's a little something for..." He reached for his wallet, but came up empty in every sense of the word. "Just a minute." he said as he scurried back into the room.

  The concierge already had his foot in front of the sensor, so the door would not close. He rarely missed a tip. John returned with a 5 leppa note in his hand and the concierge smiled. "Thank you." he said as he pulled his foot away from the sensor, allowing the door to close quietly.

  John took the box over to Jane. "I think this is for you." He got back into the tub, moved the chess set to the side, opened the box, and placed the board on the table. "What's with these black and white stones?"

  Jane explained the rules, and they tried to play, but the bottle was empty and neither of them was capable of any real strategy. After a half hour the board was covered in stones, mostly white. When Jane gobbled up the last sizable swath of black territory, John was forced to resign.

  "Let's go to bed." he declared, and Jane didn't argue. It was getting late.

  John opened the drain and let the water run out of the tub while he put the chess set away.

  Jane packed the ‘Go’ set away, and they left the boxes on the table. Maybe they'd play again tomorrow.

  Jane went back into the bedroom and picked the bed nearest the window. She w
as already climbing in when John finished drying off.

  He got into the other bed and looked across the room towards her. She really was beautiful, in every way.

  It wasn't a hangover, fortunately, but his mouth was dry and his head felt like it was full of cotton. Of course he had to be the first speaker, 9:00 sharp. He took another drink of water and advanced to the next slide.

  SEVENTEEN

  "This is a typical deuterium tritium reaction under plasma conditions. You can see the Shroedinger equations at the bottom of the page. On the next slide we'll see how this changes with the introduction of muons."

  He paused to let the information sink in, and Jane groaned inside. Quantum mechanics was not her forte. Why do particles have to act like waves anyways? But almost half of the 20 participants were nodding their ascent, so she just sat back and let it wash over her.

  John stepped through several more slides, describing various fusion reactions with and without muons. Each included a description, a PowerPoint drawing, and the corresponding quantum mechanical equations.

  Jane understood the essence of each slide, as long as she didn't have to verify the math.

  Finally John was ready to wrap up his presentation.

  "Each fusion reaction responds to foreign subatomic particles in a unique way. With modern accelerators, we're just beginning to explore this field. We may, for instance, find that k-pions make the simplest reaction, HH D, practical, using today's generators. We simply don't know, and we're anxious to find out."

  "He did a nice job." thought Jane to herself. "You'd never know he stumbled out of bed at 8:25."

  After a round of questions and a ten minute break, Jane took center stage. She described the construction of the accelerator, and the injection of the particles into the mix.

  "Purity is the key. Stray air molecules will contaminate the plasma, bringing the reaction to a halt. Even if your vacuum is perfect, you have to worry about sublimation from the components. One day we had trouble with silicon from an overheated sensor."

  Jane's presentation was clear and well received. The group was eager to know more, and there were questions from every corner of the room. The last question came from one of the Canadians.

  "We come down to see your facilities in person?"

  Canadian grammar was a bit odd that way. The question and the statement are worded the same; you have to listen for the raised voice at the end.

  "Sure." Jane flashed her disarming smile. "I'll show you around personally."

  After lunch The Russians described advances in magnetic confinement, and the Canadians presented new fabrication techniques for super-conducting wire.

  Finally Paul Khristian came up to give his talk, which was entitled- "The Fate of the Earth"

  A few introductory slides served as a review. A fleet of 1,000 asteroids looped between Earth and Jupiter, raising the orbit of the former at the expense of the latter. Of course Jupiter was so much heavier; it could fling the Earth out of the solar system with only a modest change in its orbit. That was the theory, but the momentum wasn't transferring fast enough. The program was behind schedule, and the sun wouldn't wait.

  "We either need more asteroids or we need something larger. That logic is inescapable." He paused, and everyone in the room nodded. "Then I remembered the moon. We left it behind, but it's still circling the sun, waiting to be used. It can act like one giant asteroid, giving the Earth a big tug every time it swings by."

  One of the Russians was about to speak, but Paul motioned him away and continued. "I know what you're thinking; you're worried about the tides. I've done some calculations on that." He moved to the next slide, which showed an exaggerated bulge in the Earth as the moon sailed by.

  "We need to remember that most of the tides will occur at the equator, which is uninhabited. The oceans will sweep halfway across the continents, but we don't really care. Now in the northern hemisphere..." he moved to the next slide, with the North Pole at the center and countries all around. "We are protected by the vast areas of Asia and North America. Waves will spread across China, but they shouldn't reach Mongolia. Everyone in Russia should be safe. The same goes for the Canadians. Unfortunately Antarctica is not as well protected."

  He moved to the next slide, showing the southern hemisphere with Antarctica in the center. "Even modest waves will threaten the coastal cities. So I had to move the moon out a bit, approximately 50,000 miles. This will give the Earth a substantial boost, without severe tides at the poles. Of course the moon has to pass by the equator, in front of the path of the Earth, so we can only do this during summer or winter."

  The next slide showed a fusion reactor stationed on the moon. "Energy is the key. The moon has to drive itself around the solar system, and it needs lots of energy. We've installed mini fusion reactors on asteroids, so they can adjust their orbits as they scoot past the planets, but we're going to need a full scale power station to steer the moon. And yes, there's plenty of room to build adjunct particle accelerators if that will improve the efficiency of the reactor."

  "Here you see the bio domes. Three people will be on site to maintain the system, and we'll rotate crews every time the moon gets within 3 million miles of Earth."

  Paul, if I may," John interrupted, "I know you're the expert in this, but I just don't think the moon is going to loop by the Earth every so many years like clockwork. Some of the longer shifts could be 20 or 30 years, and I don't know anyone who wants to spend 30 years in a bio dome on the moon."

  "Yes, that is a problem, and I consider these bio domes a last resort. I would rather maintain the power station with robots, if we can."

  "That rules out the accelerator." chuckled Jane. "We can barely keep that thing running for more than 3 days at a stretch."

  "The moon is too massive." said Mr. Yarski flatly. "Nobody in this room is an expert in rocket engines, but you'd need a lot of thrust, and an engine that big is unprecedented. It's going to break down more often than the fusion generators. And when it does, we won't be able to deflect the moon from here, as we have done with runaway asteroids. And if the moon hits the Earth, or even comes close, we're done for. Now if you use the asteroids to move the moon; then use the moon to move the Earth; that might work."

  The room fell silent while everyone considered this plan. In 20 different brains, asteroids danced around the moon and moved it just enough to swing by the Earth and pull it forward, then more asteroids skimmed by the moon so that it was on course for Jupiter, where the cycle begins anew.

  John was the first to speak. "No, I don't think so. Whether by engines or by asteroids, it will take too long to move the moon." He built an analog model of orbital mechanics in his head, and it was surprisingly accurate.

  "The moon is going to be sluggish, like steering an air craft carrier with your hand. You'll make small adjustments only, and that means you have to wait for perfect alignments, which are rare. I'll bet we only get one good gravity assist every ten thousand years. And then it has to be during certain seasons, and not too close, because of the tides, and so on."

  He paused for a moment while his mind took the next step. "But you know, I think you've got the right idea." Everyone was silent, including Khristian. "There are dozens of small moons around Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. They are smaller than our moon, yet thousands of times larger than the asteroids we've been using. Take Amalthia for instance. It is only one tenth the mass of our moon, and if that's still too heavy, there's Himalia, which has 1 ten thousandth the mass of the moon. Lots of moons to choose from; I'm sure we can make it work."

  The room was quiet for another minute, and then Khristian went to the blackboard and started writing. "Let's say we use a moon weighing 10 to the 17th pounds." he began. "Do we think such a moon could steer itself with on board engines, or should we use smaller asteroids to steer the moon?"

  Jane joined him at the blackboard and together they calculated thrust and energy requirements. In the meantime John and Mr. Yarski moved to anot
her blackboard to calculate the tides and perturbations from some of the lesser moons. The other participants took notes, asked questions, and moved between the two boards, offering their advice.

  "You still need the moon for the Earth Jupiter interchange?" asked Mrs. Bartlet from Canada.

  "Yes, I think we will." replied Paul. "That's why I considered the moon in the first place. We need to make some big changes in Earth's orbit, in a short period of time, to move it past Jupiter, and the moon is the only plausible mechanism. But we can use the smaller moons to ferry the Earth along. It looks like we're going to have to use every tool at our disposal."

  The impromptu discussions and calculations continued for another hour, until the moderator was forced to intervene.

  EIGHTEEN

  "Ladies and gentlemen, please, I need your attention for just a moment." Lively conversations faded into polite murmurs. "I realize that you are literally trying to save the world, but the hotel doesn't understand that, and they have this room booked at 5:00 for an executive dinner party, so we need to vacate. If you like you can regroup somewhere else, or, Paul, if you think you have enough information, we'll leave the details to you."

  Suits and ties were already gathering at the door, waiting for the underdressed scientists to leave.

  "This has been very productive from beginning to end." continued the moderator. "Please have a safe trip home, especially you international travellers."

  The twenty conferees gathered up their papers and notebooks and wandered out into the lobby as the suits and ties filtered in.

  The two groups barely spoke as they passed through each other, except for Jane, who was a very social animal. She greeted several executives on the way in, and they seemed quite surprised, though they gave the proper response.

  When all the scientists were out in the lobby Jane took an informal survey and found that most of them had evening flights. Mr. Yarski and Miss Caddish were staying another night, so she asked if they were free for dinner.