A Handful of Stars (Star Svensdotter #2)

by Dana Stabenow

  Startled, I said, “What is what, Mother?”

  “You’re bursting with news, dear.”

  “You’re like this little kid with a box of candy who’s determined not to share any of it until the box is half gone,” Charlie said unkindly. “I want some.”

  I grinned. It was useless to try to hide anything for any length of time from Mother or Charlie, another disadvantage in working with your family. “All right,” I said. “Charlie, how are things in the clinic?”

  She shot me a keen look. “Running smoothly.”

  “Any more cases of Hudson’s Disease?”

  “Nah, we’ve got it licked. The Sisters of St. Anne have started a vaccination program down on Ceres, so I think we’ve seen the last of it.”

  “Nothing else on the medical horizon?”

  “Nope. Just routine. Until the next mutation.”

  “Crip?”

  He shrugged. “The transportation department is pretty well running itself now, Star. I’ve got time for the next rabbit you pull out of your hat.”

  “Roger?”

  Roger looked gloomy. It was his natural expression so I wasn’t worried. “Geodome Five is up and running. One of the orange trees isn’t taking hold too well.”

  “Throw a bucket of water on it,” Charlie said.

  Roger looked at her.

  “Well,” Charlie said defensively, “that’s what I do for shocky patients.”

  “Throw water on them?” Simon said.

  “Give them fluids,” Charlie said with a dark look.

  “Simon?” I said. “How goes it in your department?”

  Simon stretched and cracked his knuckles. “Archy hasn’t blown a card in weeks. I’m bored.”

  Everybody laughed. “Well, Simon, it is always an object with me to keep life interesting for you, so why don’t you call a meeting of all department heads in the galley for tomorrow at noon.”

  · · ·

  “I’ve got an idea,” I said the next day, looking around the crowded galley. “Let me start it off by asking you a question. What does Terra have most of?”

  “Smog,” Maile said instantly, and Charlie said, “Bugs,” and somebody else said, “Brazilians.”

  “Seriously, folks,” I said. “What does Terra have the most of. More than anything else, what does she most need a—a relief valve for?”

  There was a brief silence, and then Leif piped up, “People.”

  “Exactly.” I smiled at him. Leif had shot up in the most amazing way; at twelve-plus years of age he came up almost to my shoulder. “Now, what if there were a viable, off-planet alternative. In that case, would some of the minority, religious, ethnic, and any other special interest groups on Terra pay, and I mean really pay, for—say—a world of their own?”

  A thoughtful silence followed my words. “All right, Star,” Simon said at last. “You’ve hooked us. Go on.”

  I said, “Archy, what was the population of Terra, last count?”

  “Nine-point-three billion at the 2000 census, Star,” Archy replied promptly. “Speaking of rabbits.”

  “Are Terrans starving?”

  “Noooo,” Archy said carefully. “The air is pretty foul and the quality of life literally stinks. The greenhouse effect is starting to take a real toll on the productivity of the North American breadbasket, and it feeds the world. People aren’t actually starving, no, but they are getting thinner. And there’s the ozone depletion, too. Gotta wear hats and sunscreen outside all the time.”

  “You would not describe life on Terra as pleasant, then.”

  “No.”

  “Not something you would like your kids to inherit.”

  Archy chuckled. He was getting more human every day. Scary. “Definitely not my kids, Star.”

  “Thanks, Arch. Okay, boys and girls, here’s the deal.” I looked around the room and took a deep breath. “Multiple-family dwellings, mass produced for lowest cost, sold on site or delivered upon request at extra charge.”

  Simon said, “What, you want to go into the prebuilt home construction business now?”

  I said softly, “Try the prebuilt world construction business.”

  “What’s the deal, you want to build everybody their own Terranova?”

  “I’m thinking more along the lines of a sphere maybe one and a half klicks in circumference. A seven-to-two ratio of shell thickness between the axis and the equator to resist atmospheric pressure and centrifugal force. Then, Terranova has, what, a meter of solar-ray shielding? Let’s build in a safety factor and make it two. So, a two-meter shell, with a transparent area around one axis through which sunshine enters via a circular reflecting panel. The panel adjusts for day and night the way the reflecting cape does on Terranova.”

  “A Bernal sphere,” Sam Holbrook exclaimed.

  “Got it in one. But my way we start out with an exterior and shielding already in place.”

  Sam stared at me, before his puzzled expression cleared. “Rocks?”

  “Right again. The first criteria for selection will be size. The model calls for one that supports a population of ten thousand people, with about forty-five square meters of living space per inhabitant, which puts it at about four hundred fifty meters in diameter. We can provide earth-normal gravity at the equator with a one-point-ninety-seven per minute rotation.”

  “How many asteroids with that diameter y’all think we can hunt up?” Claire said.

  “Enough to turn a profit,” I said. “And nobody says they have to be that big.”

  “Yeah, ten thousand?” Simon said. “Isn’t that setting our sights just a little high?”

  “Probably,” I admitted. “This project will likely wind up being overengineered and twice as big and ten times as expensive as originally projected. Think of the TransAlaska Pipeline, the Chunnel. Atlantis. Orientale Base.” I smiled then, and it was not a nice smile. “But, Simon, how many Luddites do you figure are on Terra? Who would like to get as far away from Terran technological corruption as possible? Who would pay any amount of money to see that they did?” He didn’t answer, in fact no one said a word, and I went on. “How many Amish? Sephardic Jews? Palestinians? Nudists? Born-again Baptists—we’re talking real money, there. Speaking of money, how about Las Vegas? Think they might go for an orbiting casino, off Terra and away from all those awkward Terran laws restricting gambling and drugs and prostitution? They practically underwrote Atlantis. How about retirees— think about Sun City on Luna for a moment, and then tell me you think this wouldn’t pay. Ten thousand is piddly for what I want to do.”

  “Which is, specifically?” Simon said.

  “Which is to offer a whole new world, a world of their own, to groups of people bound by similar political beliefs or Utopian social dreams or even paranoid delusions, who can’t find peace on Terra or Luna or Terranova, or in any habitat that causes them to rub up against competing faiths or constrictive political systems.”

  “And individual ecosystems for each one,” Roger said.

  I grinned. This was going to appeal not only to Roger’s imagination but also to his vanity. “With free and unlimited solar power, a habitat sized for ten thousand is within the limits of our present capability here in the Belt. The key is how fast after R and D we can turn these suckers out. We need a planetary—a minor planetary assembly line.” I paused, dazzled at the prospect, and Charlie rolled her eyes. “So, Sam, within those physical parameters, what are our chances of finding enough asteroids of the right size to turn us a profit?”

  Sam rubbed his head with his hands, as if to stimulate his thinking processes. When his white hair was standing straight up all over his head he dropped his hands and said slowly, “The profit I don’t guarantee, but a four-hundred-fifty-meter diameter isn’t that odd a size. Shape will narrow our selection down a bit, as some rocks are so oddly shaped that they will obviously not be suitable, but there are enough spheroids to give us a discretionary selection. And,” he said, suddenly excited, “nothing says we c
an’t compress smaller rocks together to form the right size!”

  “We could buy played-out claims,” Simon suggested.

  Sam’s eyes lit up. “Hell, yes! That way half our work might be done even before we climbed aboard!”

  “Claire? Composition?”

  She stirred and said, “Nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen—we can make anything if we got those, and I reckon we got plenty.”

  “Star?” Crip said, frowning. “Are we going to chip out the innards of these prospective new worlds or what?”

  “Or what,” I replied. “What I want someone to invent for us is a Little Bang.”

  “A what?”

  I turned to Whitney Burkette. “Can you produce a controlled explosion that set off in the center of an asteroid will shove matter outward, toward its rim, without breaking the rim?”

  He rolled the idea around, fingering his mustache like Snidely Whiplash. “What you want is a kind of a melting process?”

  “What I want is something like a controlled atomic explosion, without the fission, so that lets out employing pulse units. And after the initial clearing we go inside with MeekMakers to finish off the interior.”

  “Meekwhats?” somebody asked.

  “MeekMakers, magnetrons that focus microwave energy on slag or soil to fuse particles. When the surface cools, you can use it for roads or slice it into blocks to use for building materials. For a year we didn’t use anything but MeekMakers on Luna.”

  It took another moment for Burkette’s next comment, which was a characteristic blend of caution and optimism. “The charge would have to be reworked for each individual rock, depending on composition and shape.”

  “But you could do it?”

  “If there were charges fired on the outside of the rock at the same time to produce a centrifugal force. Which, if we did it right, would also provide the necessary onegee across its equator.”

  We all looked at Crip. He shrugged. “One-time propellant charges on timers, maybe even reusable vernier thrusters. Simple enough in theory.”

  We turned back to Burkette. “So you could do it?”

  He deliberated some more. “So,” he said at last, “we put on spin through exterior application of force, heat the interior with one blast, and allow the centrifugal force of the rotating sphere to sling the matter outward toward the rim. But only so far, or we’ll melt through the shell, defeating our purpose. When it’s cooled off we send in crews with MeekMakers to ensure sealant to trap an atmosphere.” He cocked an eyebrow at me. I nodded. He thought a while longer, through the growing buzz that was filling the room, and said finally, “I’ll need to run some tests, and I’ll need a free hand in experimentation.”

  I said patiently, “But you think you can do it.”

  “Perhaps,” was as far as Whitney Burkette would go, but that was like “Absolutely!” from anyone else, and I was satisfied.

  “Then what?” Roger said, his usually hangdog face alive with interest.

  “Then you move in, with your AgroAccel program,” I told him. “Ever wonder why I threw all that money at you back on Terranova, so you could do that experimentation with accelerated growing cycles? Now you know it wasn’t just so you could impress Zoya with your expertise.” Roger reddened and Zoya, amazingly, grinned at me. We hadn’t exchanged more than two words since we’d met, largely because I thought her English wasn’t good enough yet. And maybe a little because I was afraid she might blame me for breaking up her marriage. Not that there was a word of truth in that.

  “And a self-teaching computer that automatically monitors, runs, and repairs the life-support systems, the way Mehitabel does now on Terranova,” Simon said.

  “Step three,” I said, nodding.

  “Timetable?” he said, with the remote look on his face that indicated he was really somewhere else, running calculations, probably with dollar signs in front of them.

  “Oh, I think we could have a working model ready to show by the end of next year. Just a little one, say a hundred meters in diameter, plenty of room to make and correct our mistakes.” Someone gasped. I looked around the galley and added wickedly, “Let’s make it something flashy. A water world maybe, say a fish farm. I’m open for suggestions.” The crew sat in stunned silence and I said blandly, “Well? Conjecture? Speculation? Any theories going cheap?”

  “I’m beginning to feel like a third-century Egyptian magician,” Simon murmured, “looking for the philosopher’s stone to help me in the transmutation of lead into gold.”

  “Attempts at alchemy led to the science of chemistry,” I pointed out smugly, “which has in fact accomplished the transmutation of elements.”

  Claire looked at me solemnly and said, “I think y’all’ve lost your mind, Star, but it’ll be fun looking for it.”

  The room was suddenly full of competing ideas. I shouted, “I want one person dedicated full-time to overseeing and collating ideas. Archy—tag a new program—call it—what? World Builders?”

  “Ugh. We’ll call it Star’s Rabbit.” For a computer Archy had a really horrible cackle.

  I shuddered. “Fine. Mother’s in charge.”

  “But, dear!”

  “Yes, Mother, it’s time you contributed something concrete to the expedition.” She bridled defensively. I said, “With your help, Archy will be investigating our market, identifying the personal habits of individual groups, and working out ways to customize each habitat to suit the needs of future inhabitants. Mother,” I said, as she still looked unconvinced, “your whole life you’ve been studying the way people live. Now you’ve got a chance to influence the way they will live.” She brightened a little and I knew I had her. “Archy, when someone commissions us to build A World of Their Own, what do we do first?”

  “Check their credit rating,” he replied promptly.

  “Attaboy.”

  “For example,” I heard Simon explaining to Charlie, “we won’t have to build in a domestic power system for the Amish since they don’t use electricity. We won’t have to plumb for heavy industry, either.”

  “And no poison ivy growing in the nudists’ habitat,” Roger said, actually grinning.

  Burkette added dryly, “And of course no technology later than the wheel for the Luddites,” and the fact that the Britisher had made a semi-joke was enough to shut everybody up, but only for a moment.

  “Luddites?” Charlie said doubtfully. “Living in a world that was made and not just happened?”

  “Why not?”

  Charlie looked at me askance. “Well, for one thing, they tried to kill you seven or eight times. Why should you want to build them a home? For that matter, why would they be inclined to let you build it?”

  “It was only six or seven times,” I said, “and according to Caleb’s sources on Terra, it wasn’t the Luddites, it was a splinter group, the Rifkinites.”

  “Now I really have heard everything,” Simon told the ceiling. “Star Svensdotter, Luddite apologist.”

  “Who says fanatics have to make sense anyway?” I demanded. “For centuries the Luddites have been trying to make Terra over into their own image and have failed miserably at every attempt. We build them their own world, to their own specs, they can build exactly the kind of lifestyle they want.”

  “And deserve,” Simon added.

  “And who cares anyway, as long as their check clears?” Archy said.

  “That’s my boy,” I said. “What do you want for Christmas, Archy?”

  “Another pentillion megabytes worth of storage space,” Archy said promptly. “I’m going to need it if this project pans out.”

  “There’s the possibility of a certain symmetry there,” Mother said to Burkette. “Advanced technology providing a back-to-basics, Mother Earth world. What they once tried so hard to stop may give the Luddites the world they have always dreamed of.”

  “And why not tandem worlds?” Crip said, grabbing Caleb’s arm and spraying him and Paddy with enthusiasm. “Ten thousand inhabitants to a world
—hell, we could set a ring of worlds in orbit around each other—a real space community!”

  The meeting broke up into excited, chattering groups. I regarded the room with benevolent satisfaction. Charlie sidled up to me and said softly, “When were you planning on letting Helen in on the big idea, Star?”

  I scratched my head. “Actually, she already knows.” I looked at Charlie and nodded. “Yup. We set this up back on Terranova.”

  “And Frank?”

  I confessed all. “He doesn’t know. I guess now would be about the right time to tell him.”

  “I guess,” she said with a smile. “How do you think he’ll take it?”

  “What can he do? We’re almost two AUs away, and we’re more than fulfilling our contractual requirements in raw ore shipment. Maggie’s come up with an in-flight processing plan that Archy is de-bugging now. If it proves out—and Sam and Claire both think it will—in another two to three years the silicon will be arriving at Terranova ready to use.”

  “You think he’d try to stop us?”

  “No,” I said. “No, I don’t think Frank’d try to stop us. But he’s not getting the chance, one way or the other.”

  We stood in silence, our thoughts on the spinning cylinder so far away. “I wonder how she’ll tell him.”

  “With Helen, you never know.”

  “Still, Star. You’re going to be spending a lot of Terranovan dollars on this project, and without prior approval. They may think they have some say in how you expend man hours and supplies.”

  “It’s that kind of geocentricity that will keep us tied to Terranova or even, God forbid, Terra’s coattails forever, Charlie. It’s not money at stake here; it’s our independence.”

  “I thought you liked working for Helen and Frank,” Simon, who had been listening, said in surprise.

  “I do. But there’s no guarantee they will always be in charge. How would you like to work for the new mayor of Terranova, Simon, or for some Terran who has never even spaced?”

  He shuddered. I had my answer.

  · · ·

  Claire, Whitney, Crip, Roger, and Simon put their heads together and came up with a sign that read “Quiet—Alchemists at Work,” and posted it on a partitioned section of the cargo bay. Smaller lettering beneath read “Starbuilt Mobile Homes, S. Svensdotter, Prop.,” and “Astrocondos, Inc.” Someone else penciled in, “The Cheapest Habitat Rates Per Square Meter for Multiple-Family Dwellings in the Solar System.”