The Hundred Gram Mission (25 page)

"Quite high," said the pilot. "It puts the BP at around 115."

The lieutenant sat back in his acceleration seat. He strapped himself in with a five-point, jet fighter safety belt.

"Let’s go to supercavitation. All ahead full and boil the hull."

"Sir, picking up a new contact. Bearing Red 010, moving fast."

"Identification?"

"Sir," the sonar operator’s eyes widened, "it’s the same as the target. Speed, 40 knots!"

"A second submarine?" asked the XO.

"No, that’s fast as a torpedo. Sonar, show me the sonar profiles for both contacts."

"Yes Sir," two wave patterns appeared side by side on a screen.

"Superimpose. See? There are slight differences."

"It could still be a second sub. Some variation in profile can be expected."

"Or it’s a decoy.  Gentlemen," he addressed the bridge crew, "we are definitely engaging a new kind of submarine. We need to gather as much data as we can about it.  XO, let’s fire a torpedo at it. I want to see what it’ll do."

"Yes Sir. Fire One!"

"Torpedo! Speed 50 knots!"

"Impact?"

"Six minutes," said the ensign.

"What’s our hull temperature?"

"64 degrees Celcius and climbing," said the pilot. "Six minutes isn’t enough time."

"Boiling point?"

"At this depth and salinity, still 112-115."

"We’re in the Indian Ocean in summer; surface sea temperature should be over 25 degrees. Take us up to three fathoms."

"We’ll be visible from the air," said the pilot.

"Yes but let’s see them catch us."

"Target is climbing Sir," said the sonar operator.

"A surrender?" asked XO.

"Weapons, torpedo self-destruct stand by."

"Aye Sir," a cover flipped and fingers closed over a red switch. "Standing by."

"Sir – " one of the officers turned, jaw open, "I – don’t understand what I’m seeing."

"Do better than that, Mr. Darzi."

"The target has just shown up on the infra red– it has to be quite hot for that to happen at this distance. And, it’s getting hotter."

"What?" the Captain leaned over the officer’s shoulder.  The infra-red display lit both their faces.

"What
is
that?"

"The whole hull is this temperature.  It’s heating up,
completely
evenly. Like a good pan."

The XO came over.

"That’s a
sub?
" he asked.

"No," said the captain standing back. "It’s a fighter jet."

"Hull temperature 115!"

The vessel shook like a climbing rocket.

"Torpedo impact, 18 seconds!"

"Hull temperature 117! It’s hot enough Sir!"

"Hold ignition till 120! This goes wrong they’ll capture the ship!" The lieutenant pressed himself back into the acceleration couch.

"Impact, 10 seconds!" 

"119!"

"Ignite rockets!"

The boom sounded through the
Agni
. A cup fell over spilling cold tea. Bridge crew looked around and at each other.

"Detonation?" asked the XO.

"Negative," said weapons. "Torpedo has missed, now bearing Red 030. It’s been knocked off track."

"New contact," the sonar operator winced and held his headset away, "My God it’s loud! Bearing – bearing is changing rapidly, speed –
speed is 300 knots!
"

There was gasps.

"300?" repeated the XO. "That’s – but that would be – "

"Supercavitation," the captain sat against the chart-table, hunching. "The Chinese have subs that move at half the speed of sound."
[liv]

Jansen Henrikson, IV

Asteroid 2043 QR 3, Pathinder Antimatter Research Facility, Paul Dirac City

"We’re just not getting enough antimatter."

Doctor Jacob Henrikson looked out the window. Shallow drifts glittered against black rock - hydrocarbon snow.  They had spun 2043 to maintain a permanent dark side. Once done, the deep fissures coughed, choked, and finally died. The heavier, slower ejecta had fallen back as snow. The tracks of heavy mining rovers crisscrossed them. Most lead to the open cast mine. Others went around the growing slag piles. There, shielded by the spoil, was the linear accelerator.

"We’re getting only one or two percent of expected yield," said the scientist. Closer to the sun than any human before, his skin was vampire pale. "I’ve checked the metrics and the decay products again and again. I’ve run the experiments again and again. I’d like otherwise, but I doubt that you’ll get different results."

"Let us decide that," said another scientist. His skin showed no pallor, his eyes were hard. "We’ve come a long way for this, Johnson. For your sake, you’d better hope you’re right."

"We will of course replicate all your experiments," said Henrikson. "But barring simple measurement errors - which you have checked for - I think your findings are correct. If so, even with improved technology, we’re not getting much more than a couple of percent."

The second scientist’s brow furrowed and he shook his head. "This is nuts. I was hoping the test accelerator would do 10 times
better
. We can’t go back to Spektorov with this. He’ll fire the lot of us."

Henrikson snorted. "He understands this is R&D, Simmons. R&D is expensive, time consuming, and seldom cooperative."

"Seldom cooperative?" said Dr. Simmons. "He’s built a base on an
asteroid
. There are fifty prison workers out there, hauling radioactive ores. Do you want to tell him his investment is seldom cooperative?"

"I think he’ll understand."

"He’s a businessman. He will blame us both for this."

"That he might. But consider that he’s not doing this, just to invest in the antimatter fuel business. The antimatter fuel business
doesn’t exist
."

"So?"

"So big businesses are risk averse. They let startups take the risk, and then buy them out. You can justify high cost to a board if you’ll make your money back. If you’re not sure – you don’t bother. Paul Dirac City breaks those rules. It’s not a business decision, it’s just about Pathfinder. He applies different rules to the program."

Simmons folded his arms, "I think his idealism will be quite tested when you tell him this isn’t going to make him richer."

Out the window, an arcing survey satellite was a lantern in space.

"Look," began Henrikson, "We shouldn’t be worrying about our jobs right now. If it looks like that’s all we did after coming out here, that
will
get us fired. We should be figuring out how to make the program succeed with just a few percent of the antimatter. We needed kilos. Now, we have grams."

Simmons snorted. "This is perfect for you, isn’t it?"

Henrikson smiled but quickly killed it.

"I think I just missed something," said Johnson. "You want to fill me in? I have only prisoners to talk to, you know. All they do is bitch and watch porn."

"My apologies Dr. Johnson. At HQ we’re divided on this matter," said Henrikson. "Some of the team would like to see us avoid Von Neumann technology altogether. Others are much more in favor."

"They’re weapons of mass destruction," said Simmons. "Research on them is banned under international law.  There’s nothing to discuss. You cannot do the Hundred Gram mission profile."

"Perhaps, but now even the Hundred
Kilogram
mission, now seems to be physically impossible. Yes?"

Simmons said nothing.

The pale Dr. Johnson handed them heated squeeze bags of coffee. "So what’s the Hundred Gram mission?"

"It’s a constrained model," he sipped from the drinking tube. "A backup plan. I put it together assuming antimatter would be more limited than expected."

"It uses a hundred grams of antimatter?"

"No, that’s 90 grams of systems and 10 grams of payload. It uses an additional
35
grams, of antimatter."

"It’s ridiculous," Simmons glared.

"You just don’t like that someone could misplace it in their room."

"How
big
is the ship?" asked  Johnson. 

"You mean how small. It needs two liters of propellant as reaction mass. Anything will do, I suggest water."

"Water?"

"It’s bulky, but can be stored outside the ship, as ice. It then acts as additional shielding. The whole thing would be the size of a large soda bottle."

"You can see why the idea is ridiculous," said Simmons.

"I dunno. I kinda like it," said Johnson.

"Well Spektorov didn’t."

"He didn’t
dis
like
it," said Henrikson.

"He
laughed
when you finally mentioned it! Forget the antimatter constraints.
No one
is going to take a soda bottle space program seriously! Even if he came round to the idea, he would be a laughing stock. Pathfinder needs strong public support. The public want a big ship."

"The public are welcome to one, if they can find the Antimatter Fairy."

"Well, you’re suggesting they use the Von Neumann Fairy."

"Which is
real
."

"Which is illegal. Guantanamo illegal."

"You two are free to argue about this all you like. But for now, shall we go over to the accelerator and confirm my results?"

Four hours later, "Night" Shift

"Wait, hold up," Johnson held up a space suited hand.

They watched, holding the "highway" guide cable, as the rover passed. It was strung with lights, yellow headlights glaring forwards. Dust dripped from balloon-wheels like water off a steam boat paddle. A red light lit the space suited insect in the bubble cockpit. Stacked in its storage bins were long, thick cylinders. They were painted with radiation signs.

"Where’s it going?" asked Simmons’ radio.

"Waste disposal. It’s not Thorium or Uranium anymore, but it’s still incredibly dangerous."

"What are the decay products?" asked Simmons. The rover ambled away. 

"All kinds," said Johnson, moving hand over hand again, along the "highway." "Lighter metals mostly, but many quite radioactive. Half-lives vary. Those canisters won’t be safe to open for a few thousand years."

"How do you dispose of it? Do you bury it?" asked Henrikson.

"Yes. At first we were dropping them down mined out seams. But as the base started expanding, those felt a bit too close."

"So now you just dump them further away?" asked Simmons. "You make it sound like it’s a chore."

"It is though," said Johnson.  We have to travel further, and dig new pits. Pits with nothing in them of value. I was involved in the planning on Earth, and none of this seemed a problem. We hadn’t taken into account how difficult it is to work here. As production ramps up, disposal is going to become a bigger problem."

They made their way down the cable. Floods lit the silos and slag covered mounds of Paul Dirac City.

"Why aren’t there any surface structures?" asked Simmons. "This is in permanent night side."

"Cosmic radiation. There’s still enough nasty stuff out here, even with the sun blocked. I did orientation in Antarctica, it was nothing like this. Here you’re underground all the time, and when you come up it it’s always night. And dangerous."

"Do you get a lot of accidents?" asked Henrikson.

"No one has died yet, but we’ve have some close calls. It does change your perspective though."

"How so?" asked Henrikson. The "highway" cable ended at a cement block, mounted on a silo. Other cables snaked out from it, into the dark. On the floor was a large, submarine hatch.

"We’ve got career engineers making their money. Convicts who want to go home. Pathfinder First Volunteers who’ll jump at any task. Knowing what’s a few meters above their bunks has kept everyone on the same team."

They entered the hatch and cycled through the airlock. Henrikson popped his helmet. His suit hissed and clung to him as the pressure equalized. A Department of Corrections guard walked past.

"I’ve never seen one of those before," said Henrikson.

"You’re not supposed to, unless you’re in prison," replied Simmons.

"The robots keep out of the way," Johnson climbed out of his suit. "We don’t have any hardened violent criminals here, and like I said, it’s too dangerous for real drama. They just remind people they’re around every now and then, and that’s fine."