by John Ringo
"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 dinner—Dr. Chu turned out to be as good a cook as he was an astrophysicist—and 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."
Six
"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.
The group had not done quite as well. It had been a very looong three weeks. Steve was used to much more cramped quarters with far less privacy than the four hundred foot Monkey Business allowed. He'd been doing fine. Some of the rest of the 'crew' was another matter. Dr. Bell, especially, was showing definite signs of needing to get back dirt side. He appeared to have a touch of claustrophobia and a major case of missing home. And even Tyler was clearly tired of being in the ship. He also had various urgent issues building up back dirt side. Dr. Chu and Dr. Foster were still perfectly content to watch an asteroid being slowly pealed.
Steve was torn. He felt under-utilized but the same could be said for the ISS missions he'd been on. Most of the experiments conducted on the ISS, before the Horvath took it out, were pretty silly in his opinion. But if that was the payment for being in space he'd take it.
Now he was in space, in a ship that was ten times the size of the ISS, actually doing real space work not make work to keep up the revenue stream . . . and feeling under-utilized. It was odd but not particularly bothersome. And he now agreed with Mr. Vernon. This was grunt work. With a bit of minor training any ship captain would be better at this than Steve Asaro.
"One of the separators dropped offline," Tyler said. "Diw could use a hand with it. It's in pressurized areas, obviously."
The two Glatun crewmen had kept entirely to themselves. Steve wasn't even sure where they slept. He'd seen the engineer working on a panel at one point but just said: Hello and continued on. It was simple courtesy. If the Glatun needed help he was free to ask and offering could be taken as pestering or questioning the Glatun's competence.
Other than that one encounter he had seen hide nor hair of the two ETs.
"Be glad to help," Astro said. "I've been looking at the specs on the fabbers but I didn't want to ask if I could see them."
"Computer," Tyler said. "Could you direct Dr. Asaro to Primary Separator four?"
"Of course, Mr. Vernon," the computer said. "If you will please follow the blinking hologram, Dr. Asaro?"
The trip ran through so many corridors, Steve, despite having really amazing situational awareness, knew he was going to have to have a guide back. Several of the areas were marked in yellow in the bulkheads but the script was Glatun and he wasn't sure what it referred to. He also passed three airlocks, including a large one he assumed was a freight lock, before he entered the compartment with the separator.
He had expected it to be hot. He'd been to a steel plant one time and in forges several times and they were always hot. But it was about 72 degrees and perfectly comfortable. Except for the smell of burning insulation and the Glatun up under a large, vaguely ovoid, piece of equipment. Steve didn't speak Glatun but he could tell cursing when he heard it.
"Mr . . . Diw?" Steve called.
"Wh . . . ?" the Glatun said, sitting up and banging his head. "Ow!"
"Sorry," Steve said. Great start. "Mr. Vernon suggested you could use some help?"
"Yeah," the Glatun said, sliding out from under the equipment on what looked like a metal plate. It didn't have rollers, though, so it was apparently a gravplate. "The standard repair bots have a hard time getting up in this spot. And they're working on the main switching gear since when this went it blew that out. There's a bolt that just will not come off."
"What happened?" Steve said, getting on his back and sliding under the equipment. He wasn't sure where the bolts were. There didn't even appear to be seams.
"Not sure until we get it opened up," the Glatun said. "I'm Diw, by the way. Diw Lhuf."
"Steve," Steve said. "Steve Asaro."
"You another one of the big brains?" Diw asked. "Here, give me some leverage on this."
'This' looked like a torque wrench without the socket. Diw applied it to a spot on the metal that looke
d virtually identical to all the other spots, except for the newer scuff marks, and pushed.
Steve grabbed the wrench, braced himself and pulled. Despite being apparently just in contact with the metal, it wouldn't budge. It felt exactly like a wrench applied to a stuck bolt.
