Leaving Earth Vol. 1 (Leaving Earth Omnibus)

by Kaal Alexander Rosser

  Stew remained silent but selected two files. As they sprang into sight Grum saw that the first was a bullet-point list and the second a diagram of Stew's conception for the new layout of the Nevada facilities. Stew had gone into more detail, but essentially Grum had covered the major points. 'With the production feeds going into the single decelerator and capture rig,' Stew said, 'it is also possible to increase the captured mass, if Ben can figure out the details. It's not true recombination as it all still happens in the same run, but we could go triple the single accelerator mass.'

  'That will please some people,' said Grum.

  'Unfortunately, we need to do this to service the needs of Space Division and beyond, and we need to do it quickly. Which is where we run into the holy triumvirate.'

  'Fast, cheap, good. You have any two of the three,' quoth Grum. 'Well, we know what normally gets sacrificed, but if KG really sees the AM generators as enabling the rest of the company then we'll need to spend money to do it.'

  'I have the scaries, here.' Stew brought up the figures for the plans.

  'You realise that, in total, that's quadruple what I spent during my entire tenure there?'

  'And we'll be getting between six and eight times the production facilities.'

  'New accommodations included? I assume it'll mean upping the workforce significantly,' Grum asked.

  'We'd have to build new accommodations anyway,' said Stew said, looking at the figures. Grum projected a quizzical silence field until Stew finally noticed that there had been no response, and turned to face Grum's querying eyebrow. 'One of the collider control and collector sites will have to go about 4 miles due north of the current facility…'

  'Which is where the apartment complex is. I see.'

  'There is one other point…'

  'Yes?'

  'Well, since we haven't done our re-design, yet, these builds will be essentially modifications of the current design. It's nowhere near properly scalable, but…' Stew shrugged, expressively.

  'We're not waiting until we've got the time to do the full re-design to ramp up production. Most of the re-design is to try and have recombination and we don't need that to make smaller units, nor these multipliers. Do you have this lot in the form of a proper report? Thanks. I need to have a chat with our CEO about near-future budgets…'

  Kelvin was obviously still pumped from the presentation the night before, because he did not bat an eyelid at the projected expenditure, but signed off as if it were a petty cash request.

  The best of the prospects which Stew have left with Grum had been Space related — as had come to be expected — so Grum sent an informal message to the VP of that Division asking for a chat.

  Chapter 4

  VP Space, Henry "Hank" Bowers, had a nicer office, overall, as far as Grum was concerned. Grum's office was near the centre of the building, just down the corridor from the observation platform where most of the public tours ended up. Very useful position, but no windows. Bowers had fewer screens on his walls, an outer office with a dedicated assistant, and large windows.

  Git, thought Grum. He did not let his complete lack of gruntles show, though, because Space was the most receptive of the Divisions to the real generator abilities.

  'Tell me, Grum. What kind of production capacity will you have after the accelerator builds are completed?' Grum could not place Hank's accent. It was certainly more westerly, but that was as much as he could tell.

  'In terms of antimatter mass, it's a simple multiplier: six time as much. However, with the new capture and containment array the guys down in Nevada have devised, we can make different sizes of cell on any given run. For the largest cells that we have been talking about, it would be that times-six factor. Double the mass and triple the units.'

  'And what mass for each of these generators?'

  'For the biggest, that would be three hundred kilos.'

  'That's a lot smaller than the first lot…'

  'I'm not a very good engineer, Hank. Ben Abelson — the guy running the plant, now — is much better than I am.'

  'Sounds like you made a good choice with him.'

  'One of the best so far.'

  'And the power output of one of these big ones?'

  'Total output over its lifetime would be two hundred and eighty megawatt-hours. Continuous output would depend on what lifetime was chosen.'

  'Over twenty five years?'

  'One point three kilowatts.'

  'Not enough. These "pods"?'

  'Twenty six generators in each pod.'

  'How long to produce?'

  'At thirteen runs per year, two years. But that would be exclusive running, just to produce those.'

  Hank waved that away. 'Just speculating. One of these pods would produce what? Thirty kilowatts?'

  'About twenty nine, there are some losses involved every time we add a layer of abstraction.'

  'OK, and the mass would be?'

  'Just over eight tonnes.' Grum did not know where Hank was going with these rapid-fire questions. He did seem to have something specific in mind, Grum just wished he would say it aloud. 'Look, Hank, if you've got something in mind…'

  'Well, sure! A couple of things. Several types of orbital platform and there's the moon-mars shuttle.'

  'Do you know the power requirements? Rather than trying to do the maths in our heads, I do have an app for that.'

  'Do you, now? Don't suppose you'd like to share?'

  'Of course I will! Bear in mind, that I designed it and…'

  'You're not an engineer, I know. Not a software engineer either, I'd guess. OK. Hit me.'

  Grum pulled out his phone, pointed it at the larger of the two screens on Hank's wall and let his hand hang motionless for a second while he raised both eyebrows in polite query. Hank gave him a good-natured get-the-hell-on-with-it roll of the hand, and Grum zapped the app over to the screen.

  'Right. What are the power requirements?'

  'Let's do emergency power on a research orbital, first. That works out at about thirty kilowatts for the always-on systems.'

  Grum put the figure in, selected the lifespan and the type of generator they were talking about, and the app spat out several rows of numbers.

  'Nearly a year to produce the generators?' asked Hank.

  'Yes. If we do nothing else. Longer, if we have to make generators for anyone else.'

  'And that figure? Crap! That's the cost!'

  'Yep. The cost for individual generators. Not enough to fill a pod.'

  'Over six hundred million dollars!' Hank was clearly flabbergasted, and Grum was enjoying it. The normally imperturbable man had let his guard down a bit.

  'Yep. And that is the internal-to-USSMC price. We're not making a margin, here.'

  'Well. I suppose that is actually less of a worry than the time. And it gets swallowed up in the overall cost of building an orbital platform. OK. Good to know. Let's try the shuttle.'

  'OK, what are the numbers?'

  'Actually, this will be a bit arsey-farcey. I've got the amount of antimatter needed to get from earth orbit, or the moon to Mars in forty five days from some NASA figures, but what that translates to in continuous load, I have no idea.'

  'Tell me the mass, then,' said Grum, pulling up a calculator app on the phone.

  'Ten milligrams.'

  Grum paused. That was just less than one of the new containment cells worth of antimatter. But… Have to figure in the losses, so… 'I'll assume that NASA was talking about perfect annihilation — I'd love to see the paper on that, by the way — and see what energy they think is needed.'

  'Fair enough. To be perfectly frank, I think it was just an article, but I know some people at NASA, so I could confirm.'

  'If you could, that would be great. OK, now…' Grum tapped at the calculator. Starting from scratch with E=mc², gives me joules, over seconds in an hour to get watt-hours… Forty five days, Hank said, and twenty four hours in a day. 'I get two hundred and thirty-odd kilowatts continuous. I c
an tell you that you will like the answer.'

  'Oh?'

  Grum plugged in the numbers to the generator configuration app. 'Well, I kinda knew from the moment you told me the mass. You see, the output from a single collection phase of a single new production assembly will be eleven point three milligrams. But, best to be sure…'

  The figures were on the screen.

  'A month?' asked Hank.

  'At full capacity it would be three of those a month, and each one a little north of eighteen and a half million dollars. However, I'm guessing you'll want to bring the shuttle back from Mars, and you'll want redundancy…'

  'Triple redundancy…' Hank interrupted.

  'OK, then. How long do you want the shuttle to run for without the generators being replaced?'

  'A few years would be good. Say three years?'

  'OK. Let's plug it in with the biggest version of the generators we want to build.' Grum put the figures in, and looked at Hank expectantly.

  'Just shy of a billion, and five months lead time. Could we stagger the production?'

  'Sure, but wouldn't that increase your costs?'

  'At the prices we'll be charging to take stuff to Mars and back?' Hank grinned, wolfishly. 'We'll buy cargo space on a heavy payload rocket to Earth geosynchronous and pick it up from there if we have to.'

  Grum changed the figures to reflect a yearly quota.

  'OK. I feel obliged to point out that we can't even begin this production rate until the new builds are complete in Nevada…'

  'That's fine, Grum! I get it. But the yearly costs are about the same as launching one of those heavy lifters into orbit and back. Just once! Trust me when I say that for once antimatter is actually a good deal, here.'

  Grum was relieved. With luck this could mean the would have real orders on the books by the end of the year.

  'Now. Let's see what else we can come up with…'

  Chapter 5

  GRUM had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. When Ben's email came in that afternoon, the footwear fell. It was in Ben's normal style. Straight and to the point: "It's no good, I can't do it".

  Ben went on to explain that just upgrading the current rigs would not work the way Grum wanted them to. It would need the current production rig to be rebuilt along the lines of the new assemblies.

  That was going to put a crimp in the timelines. Along with a reduced production capacity at some point down the line, the entire complex — bar the offices and accommodations — would need to be powered down and serviced. That would take a month each time they switched round. If they were very lucky they might get away with just the once.

  Grum called Stew, who came over immediately.

  'I've got about ten minutes before the next chat. Will it take longer than that?'

  'Hope not. We'll keep this to an update.' Grum showed Stew the email from Ben.

  'Bugger.'

  'Indeed. Gotta do it, though. He is the man with the knowing of the things.'

  'True. If we're going to do this, we might as well make the current assembly into a clone of the others. No point in upgrading to a lesser state.

  'We'll need some serious exclusive processing time on the compute grid,' said Grum, thinking of the pain they went through when they were setting the site up the first time round.

  'Short bursts only.' Stew cut his hand through the air in contradiction. 'We can farm the longer analyses out to the distributed public network in chunks. You know that they'll crunch away if you provide the work, credits and a promise that it'll all be made public eventually. Only the model combinations and the time sensitive stuff would need to go on the internal grid.'

  'OK,' said Grum, accepting Stew's analysis. 'Get it done then. Tell Ben the news.'

  'He's not going to be chuffed.'

  'I know. It means a lot of upheaval. Tell him that I'll visit and chat with everyone. In fact, we both will, since you were more popular.' Grum grinned at Stew. 'If we provide any extra facilities people really want, it should help. And as far as Ben, himself, goes… If this comes off right, he'll be the head of the most high-profile — and profitable — department in the company.'

  'How do you figure profitable? We'll barely cover costs on what we charge the Space Division.'

  'You're thinking only of the big stuff. Take a look at the costings when you get down to the pico-scale generators. I was playing with the settings on my generator config app, earlier, and got a surprise. The equivalent of a three thousand milliamp-hour battery which lasts ten years would cost less than ten cents with mass production. Think on it.'

  Stew left Grum's office, looking thoughtful.

  Grum realised that he had never verbalised those thoughts before. Now he had, though, they would not go away. What other applications were there for these tiny generators? He had suspected that there was some utility to those generators, but the concept of profitability from them was new.

  What he needed to do to combat all sorts of misinformation and wishlistitis, was to produce a catalogue. In fact, two catalogues. A service catalogue, telling the rest of the company what they could expect from the department, and a product catalogue showing what they could produce. Along with what the real specs were, and how much it would cost them.

  That was not just true of Nevada, though. He was the VP of Core Power, now, and had to think of the whole Division. If he was to walk the walk of syncretisation, then he had better start with his own Division. Each department would have to produce their own catalogues. Stew could organise that. In addition, it would be ideal for Stew to them oversee the production of these catalogues and spot any technologies which were in one part of Core Power but which could help solve a problem in another.

  If he could also take his own app as a prototype and get someone to make a portal which did the same thing based off the various catalogues… That was something he could present to the board, point people at when they came knocking, and even use himself if he got awkward questions. It would take a lot of the meeting load off his plate, for sure.

  Case in point, thought Grum. There was an incoming call from Hank Bowers.

  'Hi, Hank.'

  'Hey, Grum I don't suppose you could spare a couple of minutes for a slightly early end-of-day meeting? I'll be at the bar.'

  'Uh, sure, Hank. See you in five.' Hmm, at five, more like, thought Grum, confused. The bar normally opened at around five thirty to make sure people had finished their normal day before alcohol was served. Hank had not sounded happy, and Grum wondered if he were unhappy enough to have forgotten the opening times. Nevertheless, Grum had just promised to meet him, so down to the bar he went.

  'You didn't know your pass will open the bar for half an hour?' said Hank as Grum arrived.

  Grum's surprise must have registered on his face, because he was caught off guard at the sight of Hank behind the bar. 'Er, no, I didn't. New to this gig, see.'

  Hank gave him a somewhat wan smile and waved Grum in the direction of the ramp, as he came round to sit on a barstool. 'Help yourself. Just press your security badge to the register and it'll unlock your thirty minute tab.'

  Grum noted that Hank had got himself a large whiskey and soda. He was not going to go down that road at the staff bar, so he grabbed a bottle of some generic light ale, opened it, and went round to sit with Hank.

  'I take it there's some bad news?' said Grum, when Hank continued to sit silently.

  'You could say that. My Chief Engineer has decided to take early retirement.'

  'Really? Why? I thought he was all up for the current programmes. Didn't he have at least a finger in designing them?'

  'A whole hand in most. Up to the elbow in one or two. Yeah. He's integral all right. But he's getting on, and he's not a well guy. Says he and his partner want to sell up and go live somewhere warm with beaches. Fort Lauderdale, probably.'

  'Can't blame him for that.'

  'Naw. But it does leave me — and you — with a problem.'

  Grum did not like the s
ound of that one bit. 'How's that, Hank?'

  'Well, like I said, he's integral. I've worked with him since the old days, before USSMC. My fault for not seeing it. Shoulda given him an admin assistant years ago, but there was always something new to get on with…' Hank trailed off for a moment. 'In any case. He's the one who knows most about how we could integrate your generators into the current programmes. But now, I have to have him writing up reports and documentation for the next three months until he leaves, or we don't get the information we need to keep the programmes going without a major setback.'

  'Crap.'

  'Crap, indeed. All this is on the QT for the moment, you hear? Only just heard from the man, myself.'

  'Understood. Did you want me to help in some way? Try and get you some cover resources?'

  'Naw. I just wanted a drinking buddy, and I know you Brits like to drink. Besides, you're veep, like me, so I can talk to you and I don't have to share my tab.' Hank grinned, sidelong, at Grum and raised his glass. 'Cheers!'They had only stayed for one more drink before the bar was open to the rest of the company. So they shut their tabs, and went home.

  Vann was already making dinner when Grum arrived home. Ju was quietly watching everything from his chair in the curiously intent way that infants do, but stuck his arms out when Grum got close. So Grum picked him up for a cuddle, and a back-and-forth pace, while Vann cooked.

  It was becoming a familiar routine, but Grum knew that very soon Vann would be back to full-time hours and they would have to find a new routine. Daycare at USSMC was very good, though neither of them were ever actually happy to leave Ju there.

  As he paced about the kitchen with Ju, Grum told Vann about the events of the day and she did the same in return. According to Vann, his decision to make the upgrade into a full rebuild was causing strife at Nevada. She had Ben Abelson on the phone at least three times over the course of the day.

  'It's not that he's resisting. He agrees. But it's an organisational nightmare.'

  'I know. But it has to be done. Did you have any more calls after Stew spoke with him?'