Trade World Saga 1: Manual Interpretation (8 page)

Minutes later several mumbled to their peers that he was crazy but they did admit among themselves that he had produced results but they couldn't see how he wanted to jump from power supplies, no matter how innovative, to interstellar travel. Andrew explained he had reasons and he would reveal them shortly. They were all interested and hooked by the work on the prospects the research was showing.

"Tod, I want you and Joel, and whoever else you need, to begin work on a supply of deuterium and catalyst. I'll give you some specs and probable workarounds later tonight and I want you to try to design within these general guidelines. I'll also want to be able to generate a particular range of voltage and amperage but we'll talk of that later. The university has only been told the barest of facts about the power supply and will loan us support staff for the millwork and large manufacturing details. They realize that there is a potential for mega profits from patents on our power supply research and want their piece of the pie. I am not telling anyone about the stressed field research. No one speaks of this Steve," Andrew looked directly at Steve and he nodded once.

Andrew turned to the women of the group. "I've had your group designing a self-contained habitat. Now I want you to begin working with the others to design and build the working hardware for a small-mobile environment. You three women have done wonders but I want you to build the system you came up with on paper and make it less susceptible to environmental shock. We’ll probably have radiation protection from the field but we’ll need room for a good size crew. I expect you to steal as many good ideas from deep space documentaries, prototype suits and food and recreation facilities. I’ll want a small sickbay with minor surgery equipment and staffing."

"Here are the general requirements and specifications I need for the ecosystem. Fran, you are in charge of this part. I'm not sure how much oxygen and food we can produce organically so you will figure that out and how much we’ll be required to store. We will only have a limited amount of water and we will have to recycle the waste recycled as much as possible. We can use electrolysis to produce oxygen and hydrogen. The new power source will produce H2 as a minor byproduct – we can use that in the MHD for power initiation. Essentially our fuel will be water but I'm not sure about the excess hydrogen if we can't turn that into deuterium...I don't want to burn anything. I'm concerned about storage and balance with water stored several places...probably some in every section of the Wildcat since the power supplies are so small. I want every major piece of equipment with its own power supply with a tie to the main power supply."

Steve got up and started yelling, "Look. This power supply thing is all well and good and I can see the usefulness of that. I can see that control of gravity would have HUGE effects on the whole planet if it worked...but," he got calmer and quieter. "Why us? Why do you think we can...no...Why SHOULD we do this? It's really neat and all but shouldn't we just turn this over to the World Government or the University?" he sat down, the group got very quiet and turned back to Andrew, some in obvious assent and others in amusement at the situation Andrew was now in.

Andrew looked around to each of them and didn't seem upset by the questions at all. "My first thoughts too, but what would the World Government do with this? Don't you think I thought of that? The university would just turn it over to the World Government. You know what they'd do. Tod?"

Tod nodded with his mouth pursed. "They'd jerk it out of our hands in a heartbeat. It would be studied in private and trickled out as they saw fit, if ever. We'd be sequestered somewhere not as comfortable as here."

"There would never be spaceflight with it," John said and the group turned toward him, surprised that he had spoken up. "It would squander precious resources from the needs at hand," he added to clarify his previous statement in a parody of news broadcasts. "The government really doesn't want any projects like this. All manned flights were canceled decades ago. Why are you so interested in spaceflight Andrew? Where did you get these huge leaps in technology? Everyone has been debating it but it's time to fess up."

Andrew sighed and Susan gave him a quiet thumb up from the sidelines. He took a breath and started his tale. There was dead silence at the end. Andrew figured they were trying to decide if he was kidding or not. Tod was the first to recover.

"Deep down I knew it must be something like this but didn't want to question too much for fear that I wouldn't get to work on it any more. Fill us in on the details," Tod said and asked a few dozen questions more. Everyone else had a go at him too but he fielded the questions as best he could.

"A pact!" Desiree said and put her hand out.

Ling grinned and put her hand on top of Desiree's as she nudged Steve with her elbow in his ribs.

They all put their left hands in a stack with Andrew next to last with Susan's hand on top.

"All right. I swear to tell no one about this until permitted to with the full consensus of the group." Desiree looked around when no one spoke up. "Shit. Swear it or I'll kick your butt out into the desert myself."

They all grinned and swore their Musketeer oath enjoying the childish excitement of it. Susan looked Andrew square in the eyes and gave his hand a long squeeze, with her other hand firmly holding the back of his upper arm.

Andrew smiled deeply and turned back to the rest as he gave out specs and further assignments. They were busily discussing plans and designs for several minutes when Susan interrupted the discussion.

Steve chimed in, "How do you plan to fund all these other little undertakings?"

"Well, right now the university thinks we're working on an independent power system for isolated communities. They think we've designed a system to make sections of the Earth habitable that are now arid. Realize there is a lack of people and funding to maintain the aging electrical grids with the freak weather we’ve had the past decade. No region wants to pay for the infrastructure upkeep. That’s why our power supplies are coming at the right moment in time. The university thinks this will be a little piece of the energy production like ethanol or wave power. Our power supplies are easily scaled up, the catalyst is readily available and the deuterium can be easily supplied. No one will want fossil fuel powered energy. When companies find out they can get energy whenever they want without being held hostage to a fixed, unreliable infrastructure, they will move and slash connections to the grid as soon as they find out it is cheaper and more reliable. The university thinks we will produce small, reliable prototypes and that’s all they think.

We are going to keep them thinking that line until I've completed the field projector and most the bugs are worked out," Andrew stated. "They don't have any idea the power generators can be tiny with huge output and we'll keep them thinking small prototypes...for a while. The university administration doesn’t know they will have control taken away from them when this disruptive technology hits the commercial market. They'll still make money and get prestige no matter what we do with half of what we are developing. It's a fair trade."

"But how will that get the project funded? They'll cut you off the minute you even look toward the stars, much less talk of going to them," Steve continued. "Hell. Half us think you're nuts." He saw the frowns around him on several faces. "Yeah, yeah. It is fun." He paused, "Yeah Desiree. I remember our oath though I don't think I'd mind if you kicked my butt and talked dirty to me. Oh come on. I'm just saying what most of you are thinking."

Andrew didn't let it get out of hand. "You're right Steve,
if
we were simply asking the University for funding and assistance. Once the power supply design is completed, we will have the bargaining power. Then we'll reveal our plans for the ship and refuse to release any of the power supply plans 'til they have given us a written guarantee of funding and support. We will turn over majority production rights to the power supply to the university at the completion of the project. That had us sign some boilerplate legal that says just like that but the money from the project is set up to mostly fund what we want to do. There is money for travel and food and miscellaneous. They weren’t stingy so we’re pretty well funded."

"I'm not sure about this...I see tons of obstacles," Steve said.

"Do you think for one minute that they would let us develop anything if they knew what we had? We'd be replaced with a think tank, muckety muck firm in a nanosecond. Hell. We wouldn't even be able to see what the others were working on. Everything would be classified ten times. Steve. I don't need problem identifiers. The whole planet has those up the ass. I need problem solvers. That's what we're supposed to be."

"Well...What if they turn us down and try to steal the plans," Steve queried.

"We'll simply be prepared to offer the same package to other neighboring universities. We can FTP encrypted plans to secure servers all over the dataNet. I don't want to do that unless we have to since we run up against some old technology export laws. These plans will make whoever has them very successful until the technology disseminates across the world. We won't release the other information until we're ready to leave," Andrew admitted.

Joel asked, "How do we plan to make something as complicated as an interstellar craft? There are too many details; think of the calculations alone."

"The craft I saw was crude. I'm amazed at how crude it was. Being such a small craft, helped show many design features that would be hidden on a larger craft. I saw no features for armament and there was only a rudimentary electric calculating system. I didn’t see anything electronic like we think of things. It was pretty big and clunky. It was mostly air tanks, power source and field projectors."

"You're kidding," Steve exclaimed, "Surely no civilized race would be without computers. How could they navigate?"

"I know it's shocking, but the alien couldn't even figure out a wrist Mem-Dex. What would they think of Dense Memory-Mobile Series computers? I think they must have gotten their power generation system early in their industrial period. Then they got the field generation system and it let them carry any weight into space if they could surround it with a field. Earth had to worry about ever gram it took into orbit. They never had to develop microelectronics. This is one of our advantages. If we combine our electronics and communications technology with the ‘borrowed’ knowledge, we can be prepared for anything that race could throw at us. At least, we'd have a chance against hostiles and I prefer to bargain from a position of strength," Andrew answered, the excitement easily noted in his voice. "The whole world will have access to the power supply technology. If we immediately turn over everything else -- we'll be drowned. We're going to ride the crest of the wave or be buried. We have nothing to prove my experience was real except what we make of these ourselves. The government will not look to protect us from others in space if there is no manned presence in space. We're going to make them sit up and take notice."

There was some general discussion but they generally agreed with him. Andrew pulled Ling aside and prepared stage two of his program as the meeting finally broke up.

Steve got up close to Susan's ear when they were leaving. "Hey. Your boyfriend isn't backed up all the way to the loading dock, you know."

Her ears turned red. "He isn't my boyfriend," she said without real conviction.

Dean Drucker, meanwhile, called an old, school alumnus that had been very prolific in support to the school over the years. The Dean had allowed him to cherry-pick from the synthesist graduates when they appeared to be producing innovative research and what he had been presented certainly fit that category. He even had a direct contact number. “Bradley. This is Simon Drucker over at UA. I’ve got some candidates for you.”

“More outstanding synthesists Simon. I’m fresh out of places to put them. They’re all outstanding,” Brad Philips said, annoyed by another call from the Dean. I should have never given him my number he thought. I’ll have to change it. On that thought, he decided he’d be polite, “Sorry. It’s been a long morning. What do you have?”

“Well. I’ve got a group that appear to have produced a cold fusion process,” the Dean said with pride.

“Everyone has about given up on that branch of research. Too much money -- too little results… Besides… All the info I’ve seen showed that there wasn’t much output from experiments that could be turned into useful energy. Tell me where I’m wrong,” Philips stated.

“No. No. No. They really did it. They are going to put on a demo…a prototype unit that could almost power a house from what I’m told. A house! They say they’re going to be looking into the environmental impacts and reliability but; they say, these things might be made fairly easily. They really didn’t want much in development cost so the university technology transfer group decided they would internally fund the development. I’m not asking you for money this time but this looks like these kids may really have something.”

“Okay. Okay. When and where for this demo?” Philips asked neutrally. Drucker told him and he replied, “I’ll try to be there.” Damned right I’ll be there. If he could cut into the low-sulfur coal and petro cartels, he would be rich or dead. Rich was the better sort. He’d see about backing these kids privately to get into their other ideas.

Across the city at the University, Tod and Joel had had some problem getting the kinks worked out of deuterium flow for their fusion plant but now work was going apace and their prototype was almost ready. The bitchin’ part of the alien belt power mechanism was figuring where all the wiring went though parts were huge compared to modern components. It was fairly straightforward after it was diagrammed and Tod had puzzled out a theory about WHY it worked.