Troy Rising 1 - Live Free or Die (25 page)

“What about the beam?” Dr. Foster asked. “I'm thinking that could probably do some serious
damage.”

“Not powerful enough,” Tyler said. “It's a one terrawatt laser so far.”

“It's not a
laser
...” Dr. Foster said, tiredly.

“My orbital death ray, my name,” Tyler replied with a chuckle.

“This sounds like an old argument,” Steve said.

“The name laser is an acronym,” Dr. Foster said.

“Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation,” Astro said. “Don't have a
degree in optics, but
anybody
knows that. What's the problem?”

“The light beam is not a laser,” Dr. Foster repeated. “A laser is a beam of
polarized
light of a
single
frequency generated, well, in various ways at this point. This is nothing more than, in
effect, a concentrated view of the sun.”

“A very
concentrated
view of
a lot
of the sun which just happens to burn and melt stuff,” Tyler said. “I know, I know, it's
nothing more than Archimedes Mirror writ large. But we don't
have
a good name for it other than laser. I'm
not
going to call it The Solar Beam. It's a one terawatt laser. Which is great. But not
enough. We need a lot more power than that to defeat the shields on the Horvath ship. At
least a hundred terawatts. We can
collect
that much power...”

“That is one
seriously
powerful laser,” Steve said. “Sorry, Doctor.”

“I'll get over wincing sooner or later,” Foster said, ruefully.

“Thus the acronym,” Tyler replied, grinning. “Technically, it's the Solar Array Pumped
Laser.”

“SAPL,” Steve said. “Serious ass powerful laser?”

“Got it,” Tyler said, still grinning. “Problem being, we can't concentrate it. Most we can
concentrate so far is about four terawatts. Let's just focus on mining and leave the
defense of the system to Earth's governments.”

***

“So, we've been heating Icarus for nearly a year,” Dr. Bell said, gesturing at the screen.
“And it's heating up. No question there. It's even melting. But it's not doing what we
expected. The volatiles are all burned off. But what we've got is now a shiny ball of what
appears from spectroscopy to be mostly nickel iron with some small admixture of noble
metals. But it's not melting, per se. And given that we've determined the iron composition
to be barely ten percent... we're sort of stymied.”

The
Monkey Business
was decelerating at fifty gravities towards the smelting region. Due to orbital
eccentricities, the VLA was currently about half way around the sun from earth. And so was
Icarus.

They'd just finished a really excellent dinnerÑDr. Chu turned out to be as good a cook as
he was an astrophysicistÑand the bots were clearing the dishes. Which was just about the
best time to contemplate a problem in Tyler's opinion.

“How did it turn into a ball of iron?” Tyler asked. “Computer?”

“This method of orbital smelting is outside my experiential parameters,” the ship replied.
“I have no idea what is going on.”

“And you guys have already kicked this around,” Tyler said. “So you don't have any clue?”

“No,” Dr. Foster admitted.

“Steve? Conrad?”

“Not a clue,” Astro said.

Dr. Chu, on the other hand, had a distant look on his face.

“Conrad?”

“Could you run your estimates of composition for me again, please,” Dr. Chu said, looking
at the screen. The view of the spinning asteroid was replaced by a mass of numbers that
Tyler could barely follow. His plants were giving him translations but it wasn't the same
as knowing what he was looking at. That came from training and experience.

“Ah, I thought so,” Dr. Chu said, nodding. “Very interesting problem.”

“Which is?” Tyler asked.

“The body is rotating around three axes at a very low rate,” Dr. Chu said. “The majority
of the Minor Planetary Body is silica. Relatively low melting point compared to iron or
nickel but also very viscous and low volatility even in vacuum. The remaining material can
be assumed to be similar elements such as the high level of aluminum.” He paused and
looked around at the group as if at a set of favored students. “Comments?”

“It's a glass eye,” Steve said after a moment. “The silica melted and the heavier elements
migrated to the area of, relatively, higher acceleration, the outer layers. It's probably
layered all the way down with... silica being at the center then various metals arranged
outwards like the skin of an onion. What was the mechanical composition of the nickel
iron? Are we talking about big chunks of metal?”

“Probably not,” Dr. Bell said. “The material was probably formation pellets. Small blobs
of nickel iron that were left behind in the original system formation.”

“Getting that to melt will be tricky,” Dr. Chu said. “They have more surface area to
dissipate heat.”

“Crap,” Nathan said. “Crap, crap, crap. What the hell do we do now?”

“We can pull the nickel iron off,” Bryan said.

“Very high viscosity you are looking at,” Dr. Chu said. “While it is feasible I suppose
with the
Paws
, there will be a high energy penalty. Which translates to fuel which translates to cost.”

“Finally somebody in this lash-up that thinks in business terms,” Tyler said, musingly.
“Hmmm. If we increase the rotation, it's going to make the nickel iron easier to pull off.”

“Also harder to control when it separates,” Dr. Chu said. “High orbital velocities. And
the tugs will have to increase the rotation. Energy penalty again.”

“I'm really thinking this one is a bust,” Tyler said. “But I'm not willing to give up.
Among other things, my recently tinkered with brain is screaming at me about last year's
Olympics.”

“Olympics?” Steve said. “That brings up that Chinese sprinter that got all the medals to
me. Tanzania...”

“No,” Tyler said, rubbing his forehead. “Thanks, but no. Don't brainstorm for a second. I
think... No, you were right. Chinese. Specifically, Chinese food.”

“Which we just had,” Dr. Foster said.

“Which uses lots of onions,” Tyler said. “Which have layers. Which can be... peeled!”

“Peeled?” Dr. Chu said. “Ah. Fascinating. Use the beam as a knife. Peel off the outer
layer of nickel iron. Catching it will still be difficult.”

“I'm not sure if the material will come off straight or like a snake,” Tyler admitted.
“I'm not even sure how thin we can cut it. But either way the
Paws
can be set up on its trajectory to catch it. Stop cutting and cut the strand when they
have a full load. Take it to the
Monkey
for further processing. All the metals should be on the outside. When we spot a new one
spectroscopically we'll pre-separate that at the laser smelt. What we'll end up with is a
ball of silica which we can toss into the sun.”

“Highly
refined
silica,” Dr. Foster said. “This has been spinning in a melt condition for nearly three
months. Most of the impurities are going to have been pulled out. Perfect for mirrors.”

“Which we'd have to pay energy penalty to drop onto earth,” Tyler said.

“But we're going to have other metals available,” Dr. Foster said. “Backing materials. We
can make one
huge
fricking mirror out of this thing. All we have to do is spin it harder and get a disc.
Slow it down, put some melted aluminum on the back, it will stick due to microgravity
interaction and vacuum welding, and we've got ourselves a mirror.”

“Ah,” Tyler said, nodding. “So maybe it's not a bust.”

“Snake it is,” Tyler said.

The three BDA mirrors they had brought out had been picked up by
Paw Two
and brought into alignment with the asteroid. By bringing in four more from the main BDA
they created a massive mirror array. Six were arranged in a circle which concentrated the
light on a small spot on the seventh. This became the cutting beam.

The terrawatts of power punched through the semi-molten nickel-iron and a thin stream of
it pulled off of the asteroid in a wriggling formation. The 'small' snake of nickel-iron
was about three meters across and two meters thick on average.

Paw Three
was set up two thousand kilometers away, practically point-blank in orbital terms, to
catch the spalling nickel iron. All of it wasn't coming off in a solid stream, the power
of the laser on such a small spot was causing some of it to flash into gas. That would
have been a real problem on earth since nickel gas was highly toxic.

It wasn't a problem for the
Paw
, though. The gas followed more or less the same trajectory and gravity gathers
everything
.

“We're getting some trajectory change on Icarus,” Dr. Bell said. “The change in mass is
causing it to... wobble is the best term that comes to mind. Also a slight increase in
rotation speed.”

“Can we adjust the beam?” Tyler asked.

“Now that the computer understands what we're doing,” Dr. Foster said. “It's compensating.
So far. These things aren't super-precision instruments.”

“Quantity has a quality of its own,” Tyler said. “Solutions?”

“Two beams,” Astro said. “As exactly opposite as we can manage. That way the mass removal
is balanced.”

“Do we have enough mirrors?” Tyler said.

“No,” Dr. Foster said. “We don't.”

“We need more BDA mirrors,” Tyler said, sending a note planet-side. “If we can handle the
wobble, we'll keep on like this.”

“And we can't,” Dr. Foster said.

“Crap,” Dr. Bell cursed.

“What?” Astro asked. “Oh.”

The material that had been snaking off of the asteroid was now wrapping onto it.

“Readjust targeting,” Tyler snapped. “Never mind. Taking control.”

The BDA beam retargeted on the material, cutting the snake off. What was left was a molten
piece of iron that looked a good bit like a noodle writhing in vacuum as various vectors
caused parts of it to go one way or another.

“Let some of the orbital eccentricity work out of that,” Tyler said. “It's going to miss
the
Two
by a gigamile. I'm going to send the
Paw Four
to follow it. Right now it's headed for the sun at three hundred and eighty six meters
per second. We'll recover it. We'll also need to heat it from time to time to keep it
molten. Okay, what did we learn?”

“We need two sets of mirrors,” Dr. Bell said.

“Or a thinner snake that will break instead of sticking,” Dr. Foster said.

“We're getting too much wobble,” Dr. Bell insisted.

“We're dealing with too many parameters,” Dr. Chu said. “There is too much orbital
eccentricity in the satellite which makes it harder for the computer to adjust to the
wobble.”

“We're too far out,” Tyler said.

“With the BDA?” Dr. Foster said. “We're at sixty thousand meters. How close do you
want
to be?”

“A couple thousand meters,” Tyler said. “Maximum. No matter how fast light is, precision
is a matter of distance. With off-the-shelf satpaks we don't have enough precision in
aiming to be way back. We can't keep up with the wobble even with FTL communications. So
add we need better satpaks for the BDA and the other mirrors we're designing.
And
we're dealing with too many parameters
and
we need a smaller snake for the time being until we get this right.
And
we need another set of mirrors. For now, though, we'll have lunch, let it melt back into a
nice quiescent ball and come back and try it again. I'll readjust the mirrors while we're
eating.”

***

“You were right,” Dr. Foster said. “We needed to be closer.”

The BDA, from so close it was practically getting splashed, was accurate enough to
maintain the snake of metal even with the minor wobble the satellite was developing.

“And all the other ands,” Tyler said, nodding. “But closer is more precise. Also we can
get the focus area of the laser tighter. Cut that snake and let's try for a thicker one.”

“Seems to be working,” Dr. Foster said a few minutes later. “Even with a six meter snake.
And the
Paw
is able to catch it.”

The relatively thin and molten nickel-iron tended to contract and cool as it floated
through space. What the
Paw
was catching looked like a long worm or amoeba. The
Paw
would activate its tractor field just enough to pull the nickel-iron in. As the material
arrived it started to build up a large lump of nickel-iron. 'Large' being about the
monthly output of the entire Sudbury complex in Canada every minute.

“I am moving the next
Paw
into place,” the ship's comp said. “
Paw Two
will be at its functional maximum for repetition of this process in fifteen minutes.”

“Cut the snake again,” Tyler said. “Let the
Two
pick up all that and bring it back for further processing. As soon as the
Three
makes it back it can go into support. Stack them up and around to catch any bobbles. And
we have a process.”

“But at this rate...” Dr. Bell said.

“It's going to take us a month to strip off the nickel iron,” Tyler said. “I
said
this was grunt work. Hell, now that the computer knows what it's doing, it can handle most
of it. Can't you?”

“I cannot handle major changes such as the loss of a metal snake,” the computer said. “But
the basic cutting and gathering with the
Paws
is simple enough that it does not require human intervention.”

“As soon as we have two sets of BDAs we'll put two
Paws
up catching and two back looking for leakers and in position to take over,” Tyler said.
“Then we can
really
start smelting some iron. In the meantime... it's going to be a long business.”

“Okay,” Dr. Foster said, sitting back. “The view is great, the food is excellent and the
beds are small but comfy. Who's got first watch?”

***

“Astro?” Tyler said, poking his head in the astronaut's room. “Got a second?”

“What's up?” Steve said, rolling out of his bunk. He was off-watch so he'd been reading
technical manuals on the ship's construction. It was a complex system but despite its age
and Tyler's worries about same it had been holding up remarkably well.