NFI: New Frontiers, Incorporated: Book 2, the New Frontiers Series

by Jack L Knapp

  “You think I can do this?”

  “I do. I wouldn’t have asked you otherwise.”

  “I guess I can give it a try. But what if I don’t like it? What if I can’t handle the job?”

  “We’ll still need pilots, maybe a chief pilot. I don’t know if Will can come back, for that matter whether he’ll ever fly again. We’re in a bind right now, and I need your help.”

  “Put like that, I don’t have much of a choice, do I? Tell you what, I’ll take a look at the job and let you know.”

  “Good enough. We’re about ready to begin. We hired an engineer to blow holes, and the plan is to build habitats in the craters. The engineer’s name is John Knox. Interesting man, he was an Army lieutenant until he lost his legs. We’ve got a lot in common, except I kept my leg. The shrapnel is finally out, but I still limp; scar tissue, according to the doctor. That’s one of the reasons I liked being in space, there was less stress on my knee.”

  “I’ll have a talk with John, see what I can do to help. What’s he doing right now?”

  “Getting the explosives ready. We’re going to blow the craters to start with, then clean out any remaining rubble. He decided to use custom explosive packages because there’s no commercial versions available.”

  “Really? I thought you could find almost any kind of explosives you might want.”

  “Not for what he has in mind. The entire base will be built underground. There’s enough radiation on the surface to be dangerous over the long term. The ships are protected while the impellers are operating and we’ve also retrofitted them with infused-foam insulation, but people working out on the lunar surface won’t have that. Some of our people are...well, as soon as they pick up more than half of the maximum recommended exposure, we’ll have to find other jobs for them. They won’t be able to work in space.”

  “I’ll give him a call. I’ll get with you after I look at what the job involves.”

  #

  Wolfgang met John when he arrived at NFI’s field in Iceland.

  “John, what’s in the boxes?” The two men watched as forklift operators approached Gypsy Moth’s open cargo bay.

  “The pipes are scaffolding. The smaller boxes are rolls of detonating cord, the big ones are shaped charges.”

  “Those are shaped charges? They’re huge!”

  “They have to be. I had them custom molded, because I’m not sure what the regolith is like below the surface dust. We don’t have the equipment to bore a test hole, so I decided to err on the side of too big.”

  “Regolith?”

  “That’s the broken rock structure beneath the surface. It’s fairly thick in places, so I included it in my calculations. Then I added half again, just to be sure. It’s not like there are neighbors to complain.”

  “Point taken. So how big are the shaped charges?”

  “A thousand kilograms each.” John’s tone was nonchalant.

  “You’re loading four thousand kilograms of explosive on my ship?” whispered Wolfgang.

  “More than that, actually. The detonating cord is also explosive, just different. It burns a lot faster. The shaped charges are octol, good for blowing big holes. There’s a roll of time fuse too, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to use it. I’ll clip off three feet and do a test burn, then divide the time by three. That gives me the burning rate per foot. We’re operating in vacuum, so I want to be absolutely certain that it won’t change the burning rate. Or if it does, that the rate is consistent. I’ll do half a dozen test burns, just to be sure.”

  “What about the shaped charges? Won’t the vacuum change that too?”

  “It might, but I don’t consider it likely. I put that into my estimate too, it’s why the charges are so big. Shaped charges work by using some of the high-pressure gases to squeeze the rest into a cone-shaped explosive jet. I’m using point eight meters as my standoff distance, that should be enough to allow the cone to form. The jet won’t be focused as tightly as I would like, but it should shatter the rock for a considerable distance around the blast point as well as several yards underneath. Even if it doesn’t have time to focus, it will still penetrate to a reasonable depth. I expect a lot of rubble left behind. Removing that...well, we’ll have to see. Some of it will be blown out by the explosive jet, but not all. We don’t have rock-moving equipment yet, so it might come down to hauling rocks out with the lifters.”

  “And how are you going to do that?”

  “Slings and nets. Suspend them from the lifters, fly down into the cavity, have people pile on the broken rock, then bring it to the surface and dump it off to the side somewhere. I’ve already laid out where I want the power grid to go, but there’s plenty of other places to dump the busted rock.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Should work. If not, I’ll just bring up more explosives and try again. Explosives are cheaper than manpower, you know.”

  #

  Frenchy hired an agent and spent several days looking at property near Brisbane. He found a house that was empty and paid for it with a check. The house was in good condition, recently painted. Frenchy hired a decorator, who consulted with Lina. She spent two weeks in the hotel after being released from the hospital, then moved in. Frenchy had a small suite of rooms in the main house, and there was a separate building for the staff who would make their lives easier.

  A week later, Chuck took Lina to the hospital and joined her in a room set aside for them. A nurse brought the babies from the NICU; Chuck held Robbie while Bobby nursed.

  “They’ve got that part down,” mentioned Chuck.

  “They’re growing too. I think we’ll be able to bring them home later this week.”

  “Great. That’ll give you more time, not having to drive back and forth to visit the hospital.”

  Lina looked at him suspiciously. “More time? Babies take a lot of time, I’ll have you know!”

  “Well, sure. If you need more help, hire someone. The house is certainly big enough for an extra employee.”

  “It is. That man dad hired...he’s some sort of mercenary. Or was.”

  “I wouldn’t call him that, but Frenchy wants to make sure you and the kids are safe. Me too. Bert’s a highly trained driver, knows any number of martial arts, so I doubt you’ll run into anything he can’t handle.”

  “We won’t have trouble, Chuck, not here. Australia has problems, just not the same ones we dealt with in New Mexico. That’s where dad went this morning, back to the US. He said something about settling affairs, whatever that means. He’ll be back in a day or two.”

  “Back to New Mexico?”

  “No, Hawaii. It’s something to do with finance, and he needed access to brokers, but he didn’t say exactly what.”

  “At least he waited until I got here. Anyway, now that you’ve got more time, I wondered if you might want to design the habitats for Moonbase?”

  “But you’re building underground, aren’t you?”

  “We are, but we won’t be living in caves. What I had in mind is a kind of apartment in a box, a combination living area and survival capsule. The plan is that the engineers will blow holes in the surface. We clean out the rock, build foundations, and set up prefab habitats. We’ll cap the holes with self-sealing domes. It’s actually two domes, a smaller one that goes up first, a larger one over that, and a layer of chemical material between. We’ll seal the dome to the lunar surface, but what if a seal fails? What if the domes spring a leak? Moonquakes happen, meteors can strike anyplace, so having sealable habitats adds a layer of safety. Tunnels with airlocks will link everything, but even those can fail. I want the Moonbase staff to have comfortable apartments, single or double depending, that can keep them alive in an emergency and that are similar to small efficiency apartments on Earth. We’ll build the habitats dirtside, maybe contract with the same company that builds portable housing for military forces, haul them to Luna in one of the Insect-class ships, and set them in place. Add a layer of crushed rock or moondust thick
enough to protect against radiation and the job’s done. If we built the habitats on Luna, it would be difficult and expensive. There’s no reason to spend money if we don’t have to.”

  “What about utilities? They’ll need electricity, water, waste disposal.”

  “Electricity won’t be a problem. Ordinary sewage systems won’t work, there’s not enough gravity to ensure flow, so design in flash toilets. They use electric heat to combust the waste. Maybe we should just dry it electrically and recycle it, we’ll soon have underground farms that can use the sludge. Grow lights are common, this will be the same kind of system. As for the waste, we’ll need nutrients for the hydroculture system. Those are fish farms linked to hydroponic vegetable farms so they can reuse water. As for water, worst case, we haul it from Earth. I’m hoping we find deposits on Luna, maybe under the craters. We’ll find out when we get there. Later on, we may decide it’s cheaper to collect water from farther out, possibly from asteroids or comets, maybe from the rings of Saturn.”

  “Saturn? We’re not even on the moon yet!”

  “We will be. It’s just a matter of time now. Some of our people like being on the moon, they may never go back to Earth. First Luna, then Mars, then on to the asteroids and the outer moons.”

  “I want to go out there, Chuck! Oh, not yet, but after the children are grown. I want to be part of it!”

  “You will be, babe. I’ll see to it. We’ll go out there together.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Six weeks later.

  Long white strips of engineer’s tape stretched across the moonscape, radiating out from a common center. Seen from above, the star configuration was obvious.

  Wolfgang was nervous. The standoff supports for the shaped charges seemed spindly, but John had assured him they were strong enough, given the low gravity of Luna. Detonating cord lines led from each charge to a ring of det cord in the center. Two separate lines led to a smaller ring a kilometer away; the rings were a safety feature, ensuring that all the branch lines would fire. Two carefully-measured lengths of time fuse lay on the lunar surface, ready. A blasting cap was crimped to one end, a pull-ring igniter to the other. Attaching the blasting caps to the ring of detonating cord would complete the firing circuit.

  “You know what you’re doing, right?”

  “I’ve done it before, Wolfgang. A few hundred times, actually, but who’s counting?” John said.

  “They let officers do that, John?”

  “They insist on it, but I did a lot more of it while I was a staff sergeant. Trust me, you don’t forget how it’s done. I kept my hand in even after I got my commission. This is not my first big bang.”

  Wolfgang asked, “What was your biggest explosion?”

  “I’m not sure,” John said. “I took down a wrecked building one time, though none of the individual charges were very large. Still, there were quite a few of them, and they all went at once. Another time, the Taliban rigged a bomb as an IED, one of our duds. That was probably the biggest one. I was with EOD at the time, explosive ordnance disposal. We decided it was too dangerous to move the bomb. The officer in charge decided to blow it in place, and the Afghani contact agreed. I prepped the initiating charge and sent it in by robot, not that it would have made much difference. We were inside the blast radius. Sergeant Blowers controlled the ‘bot, it placed the charge against the bomb and backed out, then we set it off remotely. The bomb went, leaving a big damned crater, and I can tell you it didn’t do that neighborhood any favors either.”

  “Blowers?” Wolfgang chuckled. “A guy working with explosives named Blowers?”

  “Yeah, that was his name. He was a Marine, the rest of us were Army. Good man.”

  “You were EOD?”

  “Two complete tours, and two months of a third. I got my degree, BS in chemistry, between my first and second tour. I applied for a commission and started my third tour before it came through. Funny, in a way; all those years of blowing stuff up, I lost my legs to an IED while I was riding in a Hummvee. Convoy commander turned out to be more dangerous than EOD.”

  “Very bad news, John.”

  “Tell me about it. But the new legs work okay, some days I almost don’t miss the real ones. Walking around up here is a lot easier.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “You beat feet to the lifter and wait for me. I’ll be along; I’ve got to clip the caps to the det cord ring, then pull the igniters. As soon as I do, Mister TNT is not your friend. I’ll board the lifter and we get as far away as we can. I allowed five minutes to reach Gypsy Moth, you fly the lifter right into the cargo bay, then get us a long way from here.”

  “Surely the Moth is far enough away already!”

  “Surely it’s not. If we had time, I’d let this critter blow from way out in space. But thirty minutes probably gives us enough time to get far enough away. Probably. I had reliability problems when I tried longer test burns of the fuse, that’s why I went with half an hour. We’re going to need better explosives, stuff designed to work in space.”

  “What are you worried about, John?”

  “Not worried, just cautious. That much explosive is going to shatter a hell of a lot of rock, and when the explosive jet bottoms out it will kick rocks out of the crater. Bottoms out isn’t a good term, but I can’t think of anything better; what happens is that the jet doesn’t have enough energy left to break more rocks, but not enough doesn’t mean no energy. Think lots of very hot gases, injected into a hole that’s full of broken rubble. This is Luna, not Earth; low gravity and no appreciable atmosphere. Some of the ejected material will reach escape velocity, the rest will go a very long way. I don’t think lunar gravity is strong enough to form a ring like Saturn’s, but it could happen. If so, it will be a very faint ring, probably something like Jupiter’s. Anyway, most of the rocks will fall back, but you don’t want to be underneath even at a sixth of a gee.”

  “Why didn’t you use an electrical timer, John? Set it for two hours so we could be a long way out in space?”

  “Use an electric timer anywhere in the vicinity of an impeller powered ship? Nope, I’m not ready to suicide yet. Ready?”

  “Yes. You’re sure you want to walk that far? I could bring the lifter in closer.”

  “No, same reason. Even nonelectric blasting caps are sensitive, I don’t even like using these tenth-of-a-watt radios. How far does that aurora effect extend anyway?”

  “Not very far, that’s why no one noticed it; that, and the low radiation at the bottom of the atmosphere. The lifters don’t use the same impellers as Gypsy Moth, they’re a lot smaller.”

  “Not very far is the key; let’s err on the side of caution, okay? Head for the lifter, I want to pull the rings.”

  “John, I could do that. I’ve got ordinary legs.”

  “My charges, my privilege. Beat it.”

  #

  There was never enough time. Chuck agreed to meet the leaders of the Japanese consortium Friday afternoon, on his way to Australia. Who did what among the Japanese had never been established to his satisfaction, but it worked for the them. One man represented the government, a financier; another headed up a smaller consortium that sent the fuel rods to space in NFI ships, while a third was a nuclear engineer working with the company designing the small reactors. Three men appeared to have no discernible function. They obviously did something, they frequently took over the conversation, but Chuck had no idea what. Perhaps they represented other parts of the Japanese government.

  Frodo landed Chuck’s new ship at Haneda International Airport. Nominally copilot but usually pilot in command, Frodo would refuel Lina, then fly Chuck to Brisbane after the meeting.

  A small electric cab was waiting to take him to the conference room. The Japanese representatives were already there. After greeting the men, he sipped his tea and waited.

  “We believe our new reactor will meet your requirements. It uses thorium to generate heat, much the same as other reactors do. The heat drives
a generator which is part of the unit. The startup costs were higher than expected, but since thorium is common compared to uranium, fuel costs will be less. We hope to be your sole supplier, producing the reactors, then replacing them periodically for maintenance. We will do all the necessary servicing here in Japan. There are costs involved, but they are internal and do not impact our balance of payments.”

  “Excellent! How many of the reactors do you have?”

  “We have one at this time. It’s completing reliability tests, but since the generator and other components are common to other systems, we do not expect problems. We will begin production within the month. Some will be for you, some for our domestic market as we begin replacing our older reactors. Our people will be happy to see the last one decommissioned, I believe. The remainder will go to other customers, most to the United States. Our priority is to provide reactors to our customers in Japan, but also serve your needs. You have underwritten half of the development costs, so other customers will have to wait.”

  “What are the Americans doing with small reactors?”

  “Most will become part of a redesigned distribution grid, others will power military posts and similar remote locations. America is changing from a centralized system to one that is semi-distributed. Under the new plan, which as you might expect is facing considerable opposition from your Congress, the power grid will be transformed. Older generating plants will be phased out and replaced by smaller systems. These will consist of photovoltaic grids and wind generators for the most part, backed up by small, easily replaced, nuclear units. Some of the systems will have hydropower or geothermal power modules as well.

  “It is not yet feasible to make each house self-powered, although most will have their own private PV unit. That’s where the commercial system comes in; it supplements the private system, during the hours of darkness for example. One such commercial system would be enough to power a village, two systems could power a town. Cities will require more, but not larger, installations. The Americans expect to keep the nuclear components small, easy to replace, and therefore easy to service.”