Power Base: Book 2 of the Leaving Earth series

by Kaal Alexander Rosser

  That, Grum decided, was the second spike. The HR director did not have to argue about whether Grum's proposal was good for the company or not. He could simply take a conservative position on a matter more firmly in his remit, to not issue more shares than necessary.

  In the end Grum walked away with the grudging approval to bring the third collider online at Nevada. The UMB plan was scuppered by the result of the vote to issue further shares. No more capital meant no expenditure on the ambitious plan.

  Kelvin spent a good deal of time, after the vote, roundly denouncing the board for its lack of vision, and declared himself to be severely unhappy with those who sat in opposition to the future expansion of the company he had founded.

  After the meeting was adjourned, Grum tried to put on his most positive attitude and went to tell Ben the good news about Nevada.

  Nothing had changed from the earlier plan for bringing "A" back online, and Ben assured Grum that he could incorporate the shake-down testing within the one month shutdown/switch-on cycle. The collider had been effectively moth-balled for months, but the whole testing suite had been completed before that, so there should be no problems in getting it back up and running as part of the overall production suite.

  Grum tried to allow himself to be happy about that. It would mean that they could provide for the Space Division's projects in a timely fashion while also making enough units for Medical and the external market.

  It was only then that Grum remembered about the message from Steve Branch about the increasing interest from outside the company. Finding the source of those enquiries would be a good distraction from the frustration he was feeling.

  'They're coming from all over the shop,' said Stew when he and Steve had joined Grum. 'All sorts of industries, and all sorts of products.'

  'Anything seem particularly odd?' asked Grum.

  'Well, that is a bit odd to start with, in itself.' Steve pointed to the screen which currently showed a breakdown of enquiries by market sector. 'Almost perfect alignment between sector size and number of enquiries. Now, that could just be a case of simply everyone being nosey, but you might still expect certain industries to be heavier in their interest. Potential large-use customers and potential competitors, particularly.'

  'I guess. Is there any other point of commonality? If we assume the lack of universal interest, what else would cause this kind of distribution?' Grum was only half asking the question to the others in the room. He sat back, glaring at the screen as if demanding that it hand over secrets.

  Stew coughed. 'Er, well, I have an idea.'

  'You're not normally reticent, what's up?' Grum frowned slightly, shifting his gaze to the unusually sheepish Stew.

  'Well… Steve disagrees, but I think USSMC has sprung a leak. Possibly more than one.'

  Steve, on cue, shook his head emphatically. 'Nope. It doesn't explain the pattern.'

  'Hear me out, Grum, then Steve can rebut.' Grum nodded and Steve shrugged acquiescence. 'We know that the HR director is antagonistic. We know that he was — and probably still is — friends with both the old VP and Hank's previous Chief Engineer. All three have lost out to your rise through the company, and could easily — almost definitely in two cases — have axes to grind. All three would have contacts throughout the industry and beyond.'

  'OK, Stew. But in that case, why would they initiate interest?' Grum had learned to respect Stew's reasoning, so he followed for now. Steve was remaining impassive, clearly waiting his turn for rebuttal.

  'It's this: most of the interest is in the underlying technology, not the products themselves. Now, you might get some who are persistent about knowing that, but there would be a scale. Everyone is asking about whether these new products are linked to the Nevada antimatter plant.'

  'And not everyone should care, is that it?' asked Grum.

  'Pretty much. We should be seeing some enquiries just about the specs of the product: MTBF, price, longevity, etcetera. Instead every single enquiry has asked about the technology first and then, maybe, the specs after.'

  Grum mulled that over for a second, then turned to Steve. 'Seems reasonable. Your turn.'

  'From my perspective, the distribution is wrong for the source. I agree with the wrongness of the enquiries, but the source does not make sense. If the sources were as Stew suggests, the enquiries would be clustered around our usual suspects: competitors and customers. They might be more insistent than normal, and seem more knowledgeable than they should, but the clustering should still be in effect. What we see here is outside of that pattern. We have companies which I have never heard of who are asking awkward questions. Some of them only barely fit the criteria of a potential customer. I agree that there would appear to be a driving force behind the enquir-lanche, but I disagree on the leak hypothesis.'

  'It would seem that we have a conspiracy, gentlemen. A conspiracy which seems aimed at making everyone into nosey parkers about our antimatter technology.' Grum tried to lighten the mood as the tension between Stew and Steve was evident. 'I suggest that in order to resolve this conflict of hypotheses, we resort to the scientific method. The null hypothesis being that there is no outside pressure and this is simply the result of people being people. In order to test this hypothesis and the two alternates you present, we need to gather evidence. That means finding out from each enquiry why they are asking, what made them ask, and if there are any connections between them and anyone in USSMC. Oh, and just to be on the safe side, who their normal customers and suppliers are. That, I think should cover it. But if you think of anything else to record, or gather other evidence which may seem extraneous at the start, I would suggest you record it anyway, just in case.'

  'OK. We investigate,' said Stew.

  'We're scientists,' said Grum. 'It's what we do.'

  'I'm not.' Steve grinned at the pair of them in denial.

  'You are, today.'

  The next morning Grum got an email from Steve, cc'd to Stew: "FYI… This just came into my inbox. NMFBBQ, Grum". The clear indication from that was that he thought Grum had something to do with whatever had been forwarded. At least that was what he thought "not my first barbecue" had to mean.

  The original email read:

  "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

  It is with great regret that I announce the retirement of Gil Delgado from the Board of Directors for USSMC.

  Gil has for many years sought excellence within the Core Business Division, and has provided direction for USSMC's world-leading Human Resources department.

  While Gil's contributions will be now absent from the debates in the boardroom, it is not for us to stand in the way of his wanting to spend more time with his remaining health and his grandchildren.

  Gil will serve out a one month notice period in order to hand his duties over to a suitable replacement.

  Given Gil's long service, the Board of Directors unanimously agrees to extend a supplemental sum to augment his retirement such that he should never need to work again.

  Please join me in wishing Gil quiet contentment in his retirement,

  Kelvin Goldstein

  CEO & Chairman of the Board of Directors"

  Grum read the email twice. Immediate release meant that Steve would not be in trouble for showing Stew and Grum the email before general release, but Steve was definitely not happy about something in here.

  He parsed the email once again. This time looking for the real meaning behind the polite phrases. Standard opening: it's always with regret or sadness. Usually the rest it will tell you something of what kind and what for. Taken with the tone of the rest, it seemed to Grum like the regret might be that Gil was retiring and not dying. That would fit with the boardroom scenes which Grum had witnessed.

  The next interesting piece of phraseology was the unmodified word "sought". Implying, perhaps, that Gil never found what he sought? Possibly. Then, too, he provided direction for the world-leading department. Not provided world-leading direction, or anything similar to that. Taken l
iterally, that could say that Gil's direction was incidental to the department being "world-leading".

  The next part was even harsher. The "contributions" will be "absent". Not missed. And not valuable contributions. If Grum were to be cynical, the last half of that sentence could be construed as a threat. We know where your grandkids are, style of thing.

  One month's notice was pretty quick in these circumstances, but not unheard of for retirees. Then, extra cash, never work again, and quiet contentment.

  In short: You are a pain in the arse. Go home. Here is some cash. Shut up and be happy with what you have got, or else.

  OK. Grum could see why Steve might be edgy about the underlying message, but seriously? Did he think Grum had anything to do with it? Clearly he did.

  Grum decided not to respond. Nothing he could say would be better than "oh, no I didn't", and that would not be useful. Let it rest.

  Chapter 19

  GRUM was not sure how he felt that Nevada announced it was running at full capacity on Gil Delgado's last day. It almost felt like he was rubbing Gil's nose it, even though he had not planned the two events. Ben had kept his promised timeline, and Gil's "retirement" was entirely outside his control, no matter what Steve Branch thought.

  It would take another month for generators to start shipping to where they should be going, but things were moving, and that was important right now.

  What Grum still wanted to know was what had caused — and was still causing — the number and distribution of enquires about antimatter from outside USSMC.

  Despite Steve's indication of mistrust, he and Stew had been working diligently on getting to grips with the apparent conspiracy. Grum was not sure what to make of that.

  On the one hand, he had a rational distrust of any grand conspiracy, because they just did not work. It was entirely unreasonable to think that they did. Even a relatively minor conspiracy to conceal something from public scrutiny — like that the energy products USSMC were releasing were actually matter-antimatter generators — was doomed to failure. Anything larger would probably not even get off the ground, let alone last decades.

  On the other hand, the chance of getting the patterns of enquiries they had, was just as unlikely.

  Either way, Steve and Stew were on their way over with an update, so he had only to wait.

  'It's not what we thought,' said Stew when he and Steve had grabbed coffees for themselves.

  'Not a conspiracy?' If it turned out to be random chance, he was writing in to "The Odds Must Be Crazy".

  'No.'

  'Well, crazy chance, but better than…'

  'Not a conspiracy,' Steve amended, before Grum could finished his relieved expression.

  'You have to be kidding me.' Grum took a swig of his coffee while the pair opposite him, just grinned. 'You had better tell me. But I warn you, I have a team of trained sceptical counsellors on speed dial.'

  'Neither Stew nor I were correct. Neither of our hypotheses held water on its own when we analysed the data.'

  'Go on.' Grum warily continued to sip his coffee, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  'Well, once our hypotheses played out, we were still left with data which also did not fit the "nobody did anything" null hypothesis. Or, I should say, more accurately, that the null did not fit, but that both Steve's and my hypotheses had strong supporting evidence in part.'

  'So, you went looking for hypotheses to support the data?' Grum frowned.

  'No, Grum, we didn't go fishing. It only took us about a day…' Stew glanced aside and Grum could see that although Steve was drinking his coffee, he had two fingers held up. '…Two days to test our own hypotheses. We could only get partial support, as I said, for each.'

  'Should have accepted the null…' Grum chided.

  'Don't start, I'm not some first year undergrad. Gimme a break. Anyway. We analysed from the perspective of the assumed null hypothesis — having realised that you supplied it — and found that it was not supported by the evidence, entirely, either. So in reality the assumed null was simply another alternate.'

  'That hurts,' said Grum, but he limited response to just that, and sipped his coffee again. They had obviously found something or they would not have gone through all this.

  'We left the data and went looking in the wider context. Journal publications, USSMC's own public communications, that sort of thing. There isn't much in the way of analysis on how much a publication in a particular impact factor journal raises the general awareness, but there is some. So, we worked out what the background interest level should be with a fairly wide margin of error, and our dataset was outside that range.'

  'Way outside.' Steve emphasised.

  'Yeah. What I would like to have done, would have been to give the problem of hypothesis generation over to someone else, but we couldn't. So…' Here Stew looked embarrassed. 'We each deliberately went away with our own copy of the data and all three hypotheses, and found all the misses rather than the hits. That, at least, would give us something marginally less biased to work with.'

  'Still sounds like fishing to me.'

  'Look, Grum, if we could have had other people fresh to the analysis, then we could have suggested hypotheses for them to test, or if we had the ability to gather fresh datasets, we could have bolstered the analysis that way! I need more coffee.'

  They all paused to refresh their mugs, then Steve picked up the tale. 'I wasn't at all sure why it was a bad idea to look for ways to explain the data until Stew explained about things like selection bias. Had it been less formal, we could probably have found this information quicker, but I understand it wouldn't be even as good as it is now. And I understand that it isn't good. However, the best we've got is that the pair of us compared our hypotheses on how to hit the misses from each others' original hypothesis. The hypotheses were pretty close, and by this time I was getting mighty tired of not being able to use a common sense approach, so I forced the issue. I said we should develop an hypothesis based on our two new hypotheses and apply that to the original dataset to see what we got.'

  'And?'

  Stew took it up again. 'And, taking the background level of interest as a baseline, the current levels and homogeneity of interest can be best explained by the confluence of several factors. One: we do have one or more leaks…'

  'Two,' Steve's turn again, 'we can't identify individual agencies, but we have piqued the interest of several of the armed services, despite having turned them away before…'

  'Three, one or more governmental civilian agencies are interested for reasons of their own, I can't imagine what.' Stew fluttered his hand ceiling-wards to indicate his opinion of the woolly outcome.'

  'And lastly, all of the other commercial space companies are keeping a close eye on us.'

  Grum looked between the two of them as they were numbering their findings, but said nothing.

  'The only thing we can deal with is the internal leak,' said Stew. 'So we turned detective and went snooping. You know that our old veep, the old chief engineer in Space Division, and the recently departed, unlamented HR director were all old mates, right?'

  Here it comes, thought Grum. 'Yes, I was aware.'

  'They were all part of the same company before USSMC. Do you know who else was part of that little group?'

  Grum put his head in his hands. He did know. He had hoped it would not come back to that, but he knew from the first time he and Hank had a drink together: "I've worked with him since the old days, before USSMC". 'It's Hank,' he said, dismally.

  'You bloody knew all along!' Stew nearly spilled his coffee as he jumped to his feet.

  'I guessed. I didn't know, and I hoped like hell I was wrong.'

  'So what have we been through all that for?' asked Steve.

  Grum shrugged. 'To know. Now, you two, I have to go and have a very difficult talk with one of our most fervent supporters. That was why I hoped there was another explanation. It's good that there were other factors involved. You said that the other c
ommercial space companies were interested. Not NASA?'

  'Grum, if NASA get on board we'll need another seven accelerators.'

  'Then perhaps we should prompt them.'

  'WHAT?!' Both Stew and Steve yelled.

  'But perhaps not another seven. Seven total should cope.'

  'You're kidding. You're not kidding!' said Stew as Grum shook his head.

  'Right now, and I mean this very day, we are in the strongest position we have ever been, and possibly ever will be. I intend to squeeze every last cent out of the board no matter how much stock they have to issue. But, before I do that. I have to talk to Hank. Go on, the pair of you. Thank you for the report.'

  The other two left Grum slumped into his chair. What am I?

  It was not a comfortable meeting with Hank. Of course he had chatted with his old friends about how the old programmes were going, and how Core Power was run by the young whipper-snapper, but doing good. Of course he had. He may have let slip that Nevada was producing new products, showing how it was being run right!

  Grum had tried to kindly suggest that perhaps he should not take ex-colleagues so much into his confidence about secret business, especially now that people outside the company are starting to ask awkward questions.

  Hank got the meaning. He bristled. 'There's no way!'

  'You said it yourself, Hank. The four of you used to work in the old company: you, the old chief, my old veep and Gil Delgado. The three of them were buds, you said that too.'

  'It's true, but…'

  'I caused the old veep to go, whatever happened to him. I don't doubt that Gil blames me, too. And your old chief, Hank. I had everything he's done in the last five years called into question. I don't regret a single action, but you bet your arse they are not going to love me for it!'

  'It's true. What can I do, now, though? Damage done, right?'

  'Yeah, but you can make sure that nothing else leaks from this office, Hank. Because there will be things. It's not over. And just to prove it… I'm going to tell you what I'm going to do to the board, next.'