Troy Rising 1 - Live Free or Die (28 page)

“Right,” Tyler said. “Put the
Paws
on garbage duty. Just... put it back in one place as best you can. Okay, people, what
have we learned here today?”

“We don't know enough about making mirrors in space,” Dr. Bell said.

“We don't know enough about making big glass mirrors in space,” Tyler pointed out. “We can
probably make a small one. Next.”

“If we're going to be doing complicated stuff, we need better tracking systems,” Steve
said. “On the BDA mirrors especially.”

“Comp, do you have cycles available?”

“I'm not that busy tracking if that's what you mean.”

“Are there better systems for the BDA available on Glalkod?”

“Yes,” the
Monkey
said. “Much better.”

“Add that to my next shopping list,” Tyler said, grumpily. “Standard satpaks for the VLA,
better ones for the BDA.”

“We need better mirrors, period,” Dr. Foster said.

“We'll have to talk to AMTAC,” Tyler said. “It's about time for their next upgrade,
anyway.”

“I'd say that we need better modeling,” Steve said, “but the truth is a lot of this is
going to be trial and error.”

“I have already modeled the failure,”
Monkey
said. “The primary problem was an unnoticed concentration of low-density, low-viscosity
impurities that remained at the center of the silica. It was those impurities, not the
basic process, which caused an unexpectedly low surface tension for its temperature. In a
similar situation, with some refinement of analysis of the composition of the material, I
could probably control the SAPL such that there is
not
a failure. Again, this was a new situation for me. But having seen the failure and modeled
it, and spent some cycles communicating with Parva the Gorku AI, I now have sufficient
information to do the same process successfully.”

“And we now have one more lesson learned,” Tyler said.

“What?” Dr. Foster asked.

“We have to spend more time looking in our crystal ball.”

“Mr. Vernon Tyler?” the guard at the gate said, surprised. He was looking at the ID but
clearly didn't believe it.

“Last time I checked,” Tyler said. It for some reason floored people that he often drove
himself. He didn't know why, but it was still sort of funny. He looked at the guard's
face, though, and realized that this was one who had had his humor bone surgically
removed. “Yes. I am Tyler Vernon.”

“You're going to have to be escorted, sir,” the guard said. “If you could park in
visitor's parking, please?”

It was called Phantom Works in a more or less direct rip-off of Lock-Mart's Skunk Works.
Being honest, though, Boeing had had an advanced projects group around for years. One of
the first such groups had invented the B-17, at the time the cutting edge of heavy bomber
technology. They just didn't get the really cool name until Lockheed revealed Skunk Works.

Technically it was distributed throughout all of Boeing's many,
many
facilities scattered around the US. And there were people who worked for Phantom Works at
other locations. There were people who worked for Phantom Works in various university
research centers. The joke was that there were people who worked for Phantom Works that
didn't even
know
they worked for Phantom Works. Because, you know, it was that secret.

But most of the advanced design work was done at the main Boeing facility in St. Louis
where, at this point over three thousand, engineers, scientists and various worker bees
turned the future into reality.

And today was the big day. They'd finished his shuttle.

Well, they'd finished the prototype of the design structure of his shuttle. An actual
shuttle was, you know, two iterations away. At most. Give or take.

Tyler parked the car and sat on the trunk until a golf cart driven by a familiar figure
came through the gate.

“Astro,” Tyler said, shaking the former astronaut's hand. “Good to see you again.”

“Good to see you, Ty,” Steve said. “Welcome to Phantom Works.”

“Shhhh...” Tyler said. “Somebody might hear!”

“There's a sign,” Steve pointed out.

“It's supposed to be Seeecret,” Tyler said, getting in the golf cart.

“What goes on is secret,” Steve pointed out. “So we'll have to wait until we get inside to
discuss it.”

“Or we can just comm it,” Tyler commed.

“Our security people hate these things,” Astro commed back. “Every time we go in a shield
room they freak out. They take away a guy's Blackberry but you can't exactly take away an
implant. It's not so bad here, anymore. But every time I have to do a brief somewhere else
their people have conniptions. Speaking of Connie, how's it going?”

“Like clockwork,” Tyler commed. “The nice part is that we can just transfer the material
straight to Gorku ships off-planet. The Horvath are, I'm told, having a fit. Especially
since asteroid 6178 1986 DA turns out to be relatively high in palladium. We're getting
about point two percent by weight. Which doesn't sound like much. But we're stripping
ninety-six tons of base nickel-iron per week. That's three hundred and eighty kilos a
week
. And that's not counting the rest of the materials. I'd say it's a gold mine but it's
better
than a gold mine. It's a palladium mine with a side of nickel, iron, copper and every
damned thing else you can imagine.”

“So are you making your nut is the question?” Steve asked.

“Not really,” Tyler admitted. “But that's because of the cost of the mirrors. Getting them
into space is easy. We just ship most of them up in the milk run from Glalkod and they
shove them out the door. We've gotten better lift and drives for the BDAs by the way.”

“Heard about that,” Steve said.

“But the mirrors are still costing like crazy,” Tyler commed. “I'm going up next week to
see if I can do something about that.”

“Going to try to spin a mirror again?” Steve commed, grinning.

“Going to try to spin
small
mirrors,” Tyler said. “I want to get a system into place to manufacture the VLA mirrors.
Then center all the BDA mirrors inwards to concentrate the light. Then pump it through a
new mirror system we've developed called the DSA...”

“DSA?”

“Distributed Solar Array,” Tyler commed, promptly. “A DSA mirror will take up to thirty
BDA pushes which, in turn, will take up to thirty of the VLA. We're shooting for twenty to
one to use the DSA mirrors for fine work.”

“What's it really stand for?” Steve asked.

“Damned Scary Array. Each of the mirrors has to be able to handle two and a third
terrawatts.”

“Six months ago we were only pushing a terrawatt,” Steve pointed out.

“Six months ago I hadn't gotten AMTAC and the subcontractors off the stick,” Tyler said.
“We're producing fifteen VLAs and a BDA a
week
, now. And we've got a new system in design called the Variable Scaled Array.”

“Very Scary Array?” Steve commed.

“Got it in one,” Tyler commed. “VSA mirrors are designed to handle thirty terrawatts per
second. When we've got enough VLA and VSA we can start doing some
serious
stuff. Assuming I have
ships
to do it with.”

“Which we, sort of, have,” Steve said, pulling up at a guarded hangar. “Sort of.”

“What does 'sort of' mean?” Tyler asked, getting out of the golf cart. Getting through the
door to the offices attached to the hangar was harder than getting onto the base. But
Tyler could tell the wheels had been greased.

“There are... issues,” Steve said.

“What issues?” Tyler said.

“The issues that we're going to discuss in the briefing,” Steve said, waving him into a
secure room. “I take it you're not wearing a Blackberry?”

“Don't hold with them,” Tyler said, nodding at the three people in the room. “Steve?”

“Mr. Vernon,” one of the suits said, walking over rapidly to shake his hand. “I'm Brian
Gnad, Vice President of Phantom Works and I can't tell you how much we appreciate your
assistance in developing Earth's first space ship.”

Gnad was forty-something with the look of former military. Probably Navy fighters given
his intense nature. Fighters, anyway. He had that cocky 'I can lick the world' attitude.

“You're welcome,” Vernon said. “Introductions?”

“This is Jory Eichholtz, Director of Programming for Project Three-One-Nine,” Gnad said,
gesturing to the other male suit.

Eichholtz was pure vanilla IT geek executive type. Late thirties, early forties. Brown
hair, eyes and beard. 'Big boned'. He really wasn't fat, just robust. Nice taste in suits.
Better than his boss.
Nice
tie. Nice. Italian silk. Tyler knew because he had one just like it and his 'clothing
advisor' had explained that it was Italian silk.

“Mr. Eichholtz,” Tyler said.

“Mr. Tyler,” Eichholtz said.

“It's Doctor, Ty,” Steve said.

“If I can call you Astro, I can call him 'mister' by mistake,” Tyler said. “And, sorry,
Doctor Eichholtz.”

“Doesn't bother me one bit,” Eichholtz said.

“And this is Doctor Barbara Givens,” the VP finished. “Head of our gravitics research and
design team.”

Dr. Givens didn't have as good a taste in suits as Dr. Eichholtz but she didn't need it.
She wasn't super-model gorgeous but she had the look of somebody who was going to hold
their beauty. Mid thirties, brown hair and eyes, short hair in a simple style and
seriously stacked. She looked like she worried a lot. About the safety of the world,
whether she had missed the boat on her biological clock, kittens. She was
definitely
a worrier. But a stacked one.

And she also didn't look particularly thrilled to meet the famous Maple Syrup King.

“Mr. Tyler.”

“Doctor.”

“And I think we can get started,” Gnad said. “Mr. Vernon, again, let me personally thank
you, and thank you on behalf of Boeing and Phantom Works, for availing us of the technical
data, not to mention the power system, obtained on Glalkod.”

“You're welcome,” Tyler said. “And as soon as you can get me some useable ships I'll be
making Boeing even
happier
by buying them faster than you can make them.”

“We do have a prototype, a test-bed really,” Gnad said, smiling as enthusiastically as he
could. “Which we'll be showing you in a few minutes. But we'd like to briefly discuss some
of the issues which have arisen during the design phase. Dr. Asaro will start with a
briefing on the power system. Dr. Asaro?”

“I've got a power point,” Asaro said. “You want it?”

“Nope,” Tyler said. “Not if I can avoid it. Is it good?”

“Oh, it's great,” Steve said. “Marketing did a great job. Doesn't matter. We can't make
power systems.”

“I thought power systems were some sort of bottle that you just shot He3 into and you got
power?” Tyler said.

“Much more complicated,” Steve said. “We can make the initial conversion and get the power
from that. Sort of. Problem is, we're having an
impossible
time replicating their secondary particle converters. We don't understand the theory and
we haven't been able to reverse engineer the system. Even when we tried to do it
exactly
like the one we've got in the ship. Which is why there's a new crater in the Mojave.”

“I heard about the furor over a surface test,” Tyler said. “And it was referred to as an
industrial accident.”

“The system puts out more power than we can control,” Steve said, shrugging. “And even if
we could divert it, somehow, it would overheat the ship. Maybe, maybe, when Dr. Chu gets
back from Glalkod, he can help us figure out what's going wrong. But the technical stuff
we're getting is making even our best theoretical people hit and bounce. On power
conversion, gravitics, the whole works. And no joy with reverse engineering. Not on power.”

“Well...” Tyler said. “Since I'm trading heavy metals with the Glatun, I can probably get
power plants. How about gravitics?”

“Dr. Givens?” Gnad said.

“I, too, have a very well prepared PowerPoint,” Dr. Givens said. “Which I may refer to
later. I'm going to go over what we have found are issues and then cover what we have done
successfully. But the issues are... supreme.”

“Go,” Tyler said.

“The first issue is power,” Dr. Givens said. “There is no such thing as a free lunch. To
get sufficient thrust to give a one hundred ton spacecraft a delta V of one gravity,
enough to get it out of the gravity well, requires that much power. Do you want the
numbers?”

“Something like a nuclear power plant,” Tyler said, nodding. “Which is why we need
conversion power plants which Steve says are a no-go for now.”

“The power plant is only the start,” Dr. Givens said. “I'm not in systemology but I'll
mention things like, oh, power runs, transformers, relays. All packed into a ship and
running more power than a super carrier for a ship the size of a frigate. You have some
knowledge of our current technology in this area I assume?”

“Electricity is French for 'don't mess with it' to me,” Tyler said. “But I know you're
talking about some serious problems.”

“The Glatun have superconductors,” Dr. Givens said. “And transformers, relays and so on.
Which is why they are able to pack so much power into such small packages. The
Paws
each generate the equivalent power of all of southern California.”

“Build it bigger,” Tyler said.

“You reach a point of diminishing returns,” Dr. Givens said. “Less space for crew, cargo,
etcetera. And that is before we get to the gravitics issues.”

“Which are,” Tyler said, trying not to sigh.

“Do you know what a stator bearing is?” Dr. Givens asked.

“Steve mentioned them,” Tyler said, looking over at the former astronaut. “They're the
bearings in the grav plates.”

“Which the Glatun generate, somehow, from the gravitics generated by the grav plates,” Dr.
Givens said. “Grav plates work by counter-rotating particle fields. We've gotten that far
in the theory. And even practice. We've produced functional grav plates.”

“That's good,” Tyler said.