April 4: A Different Perspective

by Mackey Chandler

  "I suspect I got credit for what you did," April admitted. She related how Heather had passed along a wink and thank you, from Wiggen.

  "I'm surprised Wiggen will talk to your friend," he marveled. "Politics is so status and ego driven and they guard access so jealously. Most politicians would feel it beneath them to speak with a couple teenagers."

  "Politics is about power," Gunny said. "If you control the functional equivalent of nuclear weapons, things that would otherwise matter, like your social status, fade in importance."

  "I heard about Jiuquan," Otis revealed.

  "There has also been some conflict, to the point of shots being fired, on the Moon unfortunately."

  "Well, that I didn't know. None of your friends came to harm I hope?" Otis asked.

  "My friends? No, but there is peril and it is unresolved. President Wiggen keeps issuing orders the administrators at Armstrong ignore. This is even after the top executives were killed and the ranking successor recalled."

  "If there is continuing conflict, be aware a bunch of the security professionals who've come from Earth lately are discussing opening an agency together. We might be of use to you, if say, you need site guards on the Moon." Otis felt good to get in a sales pitch.

  "So far the conflict hasn't been the sort where you need something like a perimeter guard," April explained. "Heather had the smarts to see a com breakdown as a possible precursor to an attack and did an emergency launch of the Happy Lewis. They just lifted in time to avoid a cluster bomb attack on their landing field. My grandpa and my friend Jeff Singh, intercepted the attacking spacecraft and hailed them to surrender, which they refused, so they destroyed them in lunar orbit. Armstrong had a follow up craft to assess the bombing run and Heather's people destroyed it without any further damage, although it did fire on them. The Happy Lewis did a surveillance run on Armstrong and was fired on and damaged, so they destroyed the third and last USNA spacecraft on the moon, sitting on their field and put a ten kiloton weapon in the field building that was emitting targeting radar. They also did a camera run returning home and saw two formations of rovers. One of refugees and one of USNA administrators determined to make them return. Heather saw little reason to try to talk with them after questioning the refugees, so she just walked an artillery barrage across them, destroying them. Nobody has had any kind of face to face exchange with small arms."

  The horror on Otis' face had grown with the telling. "Surprise attacks? Cluster bombs and kiloton sized weapons? This is a small interplanetary war, not some property line conflict."

  "Well yeah, that's a fair summary. But we try to avoid that word. If it would get to the point we declare a formal war again, it's going to be very messy," she promised. "I hope it doesn't come to that point again. I appreciate what you did for Wiggen. I know my friends Eddie Persico and Heather anderson and Jeff Singh will all be favorably disposed to you for keeping Wiggen alive a little while longer. Others too. She is the only thing keeping a lot of those idiots from wanting to fight us again. Are you in need of any help?" she inquired, kindly. "If you abandoned your belongings to flee to Home, we can find somebody to give you employment. There is a labor shortage here anyway."

  "Thank you. The things I abandoned on Earth had mostly sentimental value. I'm in a good place financially," He certainly wasn't about to tell her why. "The only thing I'd ask of you is an introduction to these people, if I need to approach them for business. Your reputation is such that would be valuable to me."

  "Sure, you come with Gunny's recommendation, so I'd be happy to do that for you. Call me any time. We aren't very formal up here. I'm in the public com directory," she told him.

  "What do you think?" Gunny asked in the corridor.

  "She's so young," Otis said, dismayed.

  "You'll get used to it. I'll introduce you to her grandpa. He'd got white hair to offset her youth. But it's in the process of coming back in black. Pretty soon there won't be anybody on M3 who looks really old."

  * * *

  "Everyone else is starting a business," April's mother said with a smile. "I guess I should see if I have what it takes."

  "I have no doubt you have what it takes," April said wholeheartedly. "I just wonder, are there enough children in the right age groups to support this business?"

  "Mitsubishi says there are seventy-seven residents under eighteen years of age. At the rate they are building the new ring and talking about another already before the one is even finished, I think that number will go up. I've decided if I can get six students for at least a half day program, then I'll give it a try. I also see value in getting established before others."

  "Where are you going to do this?"

  "Why, right here dear," Faye said, gesturing at their home, surprised at the question.

  "Do you have to do much, make many changes?"

  "Well, obviously make one of the cupboards hand-locked, for poisons and sharp things. Some storage for floor mats and folding chairs and supplies. I'm going to leave an extra bathroom for students and staff from the bedrooms when we tear them out."

  "Staff? You aren't going to do this alone?"

  "That's pretty difficult. If one child needs your attention to clean up in the bath, or if they get a bump or cut bad enough to take them to the infirmary, or you take them out on a field trip, you need another hand to help keep them all counted and in line. I believe you know the young woman, Doris. She is interested in working for me."

  "Doris is a very nice girl. Very mild mannered. I think she'd be great with kids."

  "I'm given to understand she was treated harshly. In some people that leads to them doing the same themselves. I believe she is the opposite. She finds it repugnant."

  "How does dad feel about this?"

  "I don't think he has real strong feelings one way or another. We don't need the money desperately, like we did a few times when we were first married. But if it's something I want to do he'll be supportive. He'd probably be the same way if I announced I was going to write a novel, or represent some faction to the Assembly. Your father has never been hard to get along with, dear. Sometimes easier to be around than me," she admitted. This was a new candor April had never heard. It made her a bit uncomfortable.

  "I'll be putting out some ads after remodeling, with a six week lead to our opening. I'll offer half or full shift classes for ages six through fourteen and tutoring on site and supervision for ages fifteen through eighteen. I'll feed them and try to socialize them as much as formal instruction. If they have any serious medical issues or allergies I won't take the risk. Also if they plain don't want to be here, or have issues of aggressiveness or other mental problems, I will refund their guardians and dismiss them."

  "Well that is far enough ahead Gunny and I should be moved out," April said, relieved. "How many days a week are you thinking?"

  "Six days maximum. Every other day, or two days a week, or three is fine too. I'll be flexible to whatever the family needs. The motivation of parents wanting a few hours of privacy and quiet, after years of being with a child all day is a powerful force."

  "I'm glad for you. I know you genuinely like children. I'm still not sure I do. I've been around so few it's hard to know."

  "You spoke very favorably of Barak, Heather's brother."

  "He's a really good kid. He actually taught me how to make pancakes and he has had good enough ideas I need to bump them up to Jeff to consider."

  "Children are very much like big people. You may not care for one, but if it is just a matter of personality and not overt behavior you can't accept, then it is a test of character to get along with them anyway," she asserted. "I'll have various people come in and talk to the class about their work or experiences. I might invite you in some time, depending on what my class is like, what ages and interests."

  "Me? I can't imagine what I'd say to hold their interest. You should get somebody important, like Mr. Muños or Jon."

  "Yes dear," she said, smiling. "I'll keep them in mind, too
."

  Chapter 18

  Jeff and Heather were on Home. They had planned to take another load of supplies to the moon, when the Happy had made an emergency run back to lunar orbit to provide protection for Central. Likely they would be there until the intentions of the USNA spacecraft going to Armstrong were certain. Then the Happy would drop the short load of freight that had been loaded before returning.

  Jeff and Heather were at Heather's family cubic again. Heather and April were on one sofa, Barak wedged between them. Jeff and Gunny in the corners of the opposing couch. Heather and Barak's mom was home again, but busy working on another art commission.

  "Your grandfather insisted, after we got shot up over Armstrong, that I get qualified on the Happy Lewis," Jeff told her. "You should be pleased to hear I am officially an apprentice pilot, for both orbit to orbit and lunar landing," he told April. "I sat second board coming back from the Moon and intend to get my Master's ticket eventually."

  "That's great. I want to get landing qualified sometime too."

  "I have a fellow, Mo Pennington, coming who has actual tunneling experience. He's agreed to consult with us and demonstrate what to do in various situations, like making an entry through the soft surface debris, or how to detect and shore areas of cracked rock," Jeff told her excitedly. "He's bringing his family to Home and his wife Linda and children are going to stay on Home until we have more infrastructure on the Moon. He's going to do a couple weeks on, couple weeks off for at least a few months, maybe a year if we can keep him busy that long ."

  "Is he an engineer?" April asked.

  "Yes, he has a degree in mining technology, but more importantly, he has actually worked in three different hard rock mines. and talking to him, he seems very sensible about the differences like no water seepage and very low seismic activity. He also seemed agreeable to part of his compensation being in real estate. "

  "What's he like?"

  "In his thirties, so me being young isn't as big a barrier as with somebody in their fifties or sixties. He seems to be athletic, he mentioned bicycling and running. He already wears his hair short, so I didn't have to talk about how long hair is difficult in a pressure suit. We'll have to train him on p-suits and vacuum safety, but that’s a given with almost anybody we'd hire."

  "Well good. Doing a good job with your tunnels is so basic to your future I'm glad you are not just faking it. I mean, once you have a hole through solid rock you can hardly go back and decide it should have been smaller, or canted down seven degrees instead of five. Where is he from? Another German?"

  "No, he's North American. Canadian if that makes any difference," he added. "Mo Pennington is his name, if you can tell anything about his ethnic origins from that."

  "Some of the Canadians have never been happy since they were pressured into the continental union, same as some of the Mexicans. There are still places in Quebec that North American Federal Police don't walk around alone after dark, because they tend to have 'accidents'," she explained and added an eyebrow lift, because Jeff could be naïve about human nature sometimes if you didn't make it explicit enough.

  "He's from British Colombia. I'll watch to see what his feelings are, not pump him. It's a temporary position and not defense related, so I didn't limit it as far as USNA citizenship. and neither asked nor made any hints about Home or Lunar citizenship. I just figured he'd spend at most a year with us on contract and go home. I'm pretty sure the land is a long term investment for him; part of his pay, not to stay and live on it."

  April didn't say any more, but she remembered how firmly Gunny said working in a foreign country could make the USNA authorities question your loyalty. Was Gunny oversensitive because of his military background, or was this engineer being foolish and damaging his career back home? She saw Gunny get a sour expression at the whole story, but he said nothing. It was not her problem either, she decided.

  "Also, I'm designing two landers," Jeff announced. "One is for a dedicated route, LEO to the Moon. I've been convinced by several people, but Dave especially, that it has to be optimized for the route to be economical. I'm also designing an Earth lander, but it will serve as a base design for any planet with an atmosphere. This first one will be optimized for an Earth landing and the ability to climb back to orbit without refueling. That is rather difficult. I have to use aerobraking for the majority of the descent. It is just outside our ability to make a reasonable sized vehicle that would do a pure powered descent and take back off like one of the old Apollo lunar LEMs. It would be huge and the discarded stage it left behind would cost a fortune. The limit is not power density, but the reactive mass needed in the Earth's gravity well. I'm assuming we may need to make an opposed military landing so no refueling is possible."

  "The plasma engine produces so much more thrust now, that the old designs, surely that would be much more efficient than using conventional rocket engines," April protested.

  "The plasma engine won't work in the atmosphere. Or rather it would work until you land and shut it off. You can't restart it without a pretty decent vacuum. Even if you could initiate the required ionization the components would burn up in an oxygen atmosphere before it flushed itself clean. I suppose if you designed the throat narrow enough you could maintain the engine at an idle and keep the atmosphere swept out of the reaction chamber. Like an old diffusion pump. But it would be awkward unloading or loading, with the exhaust running cutting a hole in the pavement so close at ten or fifteen percent power. and you couldn't do that for more than a few minutes. The plasma drive is way more efficient, but it does still use up reactive mass. Just proportionally less of it."

  "Couldn't you pump down the drive chamber to vacuum to take off again?" Barak asked.

  "Not with a big hole where the exhaust goes out," Jeff explained. "It's like eight centimeters across right now. Nothing would pump it down against such an opening."

  "Put a plug in it," Barak suggested.

  Jeff just looked at him, mouth hanging open.

  "If you crank that sucker back up at full power, I bet it blows the plug back out like it wasn't even there," Barak guessed.

  "Robotic arm to slap a thin, domed, aluminum disk over the throat," Jeff said, nodding, "from a magazine of a half dozen or so disks, flush the chamber with argon to remove any oxygen, pump it down to a decent vacuum. Yeah, if you start it at a high enough power level the plasma would vaporize a thin throat cover like a sani-wipe," he agreed. "The drive is very much like a big plasma-arc cutting torch. How did you think of that?" Jeff demanded indignantly.

  "It seemed obvious," Barak said and shrugged.

  "If we need to start quickly you could have a tank that was open to vacuum in orbit. The internal volume of the ionization chamber is low, maybe two liters. We could reduce it with careful design. If you had say, a thirty liter tank, you could open a line to it and suck almost all the flush gas out of the chamber. That would take care of something like eighty percent of your pump-down. The tank would be wasted volume if you didn't need it, but wouldn't add that much weight at all since it would just hold vacuum." Jeff's eyes were focused off in the air, he likely had the whole thing half designed in his mind. "Or even seal it in orbit and land with aerobraking. Then you are ready to take off again immediately."

  "Seems to me that Jeff is our detail man," April pointed out, smiling at Barak. "But Barak is really handy to have around to point out what is obvious. That reminds me. I was supposed to ask for Barak how hard it would be to move the whole of Mitsubishi 3 out of LEO and off far enough the Earthies would have more trouble shooting at us."

  "Oh, he asked me himself quite a while ago. I have a process all written up to use four ships grappled at the south dockage to push us out of orbit. We would slow down the spin again like they did when they ducked behind the Rock. We should be able to switch over and move to a lunar orbit in a month," he assured her. "We can assume a halo orbit near L1 or better yet L2. We'd make a slow circle seeing mostly the far side, but a big enough circle to
see the Earth past the moon. We wouldn't be tucked behind it. Trying to sit right on the Lagrange Point itself is too difficult. It's meta-stable and you constantly need to expend propellant to stay there. The most difficult part is likely to be convincing the Japanese owners to move their property."

  * * *

  The Pagosa Springs landed without any warning on Armstrong Field, as close to the mass of buildings as the pilot dared. That was very close indeed, less than six meters from the paved edge of the field and almost that close to the crater that intruded on the pavement from where the control tower and flight operations used to be.

  Lieutenant Carlson had to dissuade Administrator Hartug from marching up to the nearest dome himself and demanding entry. When he suggested that was a good way to get his butt shot off Hartug gave him a look that said, 'they wouldn't dare'. He ignored the silence and spoke to the look, assuring him these fellows had defied the President's direct orders and irrationally dared far too much already.

  Hartug frowned a tight lipped, irritated frown, but inclined his head yielding to Carlson.

  "Very well. If you think there is real risk I'll defer to your judgment. I'm not keen to expose your people to unnecessary risk either however. I hope you will minimize your hazards?" he asked.

  "If we wanted no risk at all we'd have just bombed the place from orbit and started over," Carlson pointed out. "That's our job to take some risk in order to salvage something of the situation. It's likely the number of people in actual rebellion is fairly low, but you can assume they are the ones in charge of the arms locker and communications equipment."

  "How well are they armed compared to you?" Hartug asked. "I was not briefed on that."

  "They had a dozen Tasers, six long guns and ten pistols. They also had four rocket propelled grenades than would take out light armor. Damned if I know why. Maybe somebody thought the Chinese would come overland and invade them. It was foolish and a hazard to our ship too."