A12 Who Can Own the Stars?

by Mackey Chandler

  “It occurred to me that if they leave the ship parked at the same orbital facility, we can keep track and know when it is occupied and when it is just parked in orbit empty. They probably keep some separation for safety's sake. I don’t think we have sufficient jump accuracy today, but I can see us getting to the point we could position two ships several light seconds away, jump in simultaneously and have the computers set to verify each other’s position and jump back out in a millisecond. Their ship would just vanish in much less than the blink of an eye and we could dissect it piece by piece.”

  Chen was horrified. “If we were in an active war with North America, I could endorse that. Remember your reaction to Eddie's Rascal being snatched from ISSII. Even if It hadn’t been with loss of life, you’d have still destroyed her for the secrets. Am I right?”

  “Oh absolutely. They were both unforgivable but separate events,” Jeff agreed.

  “They would feel the same. It would be an act of piracy or war. If we weren’t in an active war with North America that should precipitate it. I can’t imagine that they don’t have a high-speed camera watching it with remote archiving. They will see the snatching ships even in a millisecond. Even if that was somehow foolishly absent or failed, who else could they realistically blame?”

  “Of course you are right about all of that,” Jeff said and dismissed it with a wave. “But if we do get in a hot war with them again it’s worth considering the possibility. I’m definitely going to write the software to allow us to do that and integrate it with the other navigational programs. Now that I think about it, you don’t have to do it in one long range accurate jump.

  “We can let the computer do a series of decreasing jumps, until we are close enough to precisely bracket the target. The computer and data files we might get would be worth as much as the drive and weapons intelligence. The only problem I see is if we are involved in active hostilities, they may have someone bright enough to rig her so she blows up if moved without authorization.”

  Jeff bunched his eyebrows together pursuing another thought. “It might even be possible to do an in-flight snatch of it.”

  “Or one of the first things they might do at the start of hostilities would be to set a constant guard aboard her,” Chen warned.

  “Good thought,” Jeff agreed. “My first impulse would be to automate it, but not everybody thinks like that.”

  Chen refrained from saying nobody else he knew thought like Jeff, and sometimes it scared the snot out of him. Anybody else might issue a series of disclaimers and let you know their outrageous thought wasn’t a blueprint for immediate action before diving in to paint such a terrifying proposal. When he ended his call with Jeff he had to go sit and calm himself before he could trust his judgment to work on something else. That was despite the fact he liked Jeff. He could imagine how it would sound to somebody who already thought him a monster.

  * * *

  “Our agent can’t get video of the ship leaving,” the Pacific coordinator told the head of North American Intelligence. “The Hawaiians gathered all the data from cameras and other sensors and have restricted it to about a half dozen people. They are disturbingly competent for such a new organization. The accounts in the report are of eyewitnesses to the aftermath and repair crews. Our man has already displayed too much interest.

  “The surface combatant Yukon on patrol south-west of Hawaii reported a radar return of a cluster of three objects appearing at a hundred kilometers altitude at a substantially suborbital velocity. It set off alarms because it approximated the profile for a multiple warhead reentry cluster, despite having no approach track. It didn’t fit any hypersonic flight profile. One object disappeared within a couple of minutes and one degraded very quickly and appeared to disintegrate while falling. The last object fell fast enough to display an ionization halo like a reentry vehicle, but didn’t maneuver. It ended its fall almost vertically and was assumed to impact the water beyond the radar horizon.”

  “The ship, the car front end, and the hunk of concrete,” the head man said.

  “That’s how I read it,” his subordinate agreed.

  “That makes my head hurt to try to rationalize it,” his boss said.

  “Indeed, it raises more questions than it answers.”

  * * *

  The next morning, after breakfast, Vic and Eileen got a tour of the shop building.

  “This is nice, but why do you have all these machines that take power still in place? I can understand you’d grease them up and cover them, but I’d jam them all in a corner and clear the floor space to use,” Victor suggested. “It may be decades before there is power again.”

  “This fall, when the stream is at its lowest flow,” Ted said, “we are going to start building a dam about three hundred meters upstream of the horse farm. Nobody is objecting and there isn’t anybody on the other side who would be flooded. The road cuts away from the stream past there and there are no buildings. We’re going to clear the trees where it will flood and cut the stumps as flush as we can too. That will be as much work as the dam itself. In three years, maybe four, we hope to have a dam with a powerhouse just below it. The output will use the poles and wires already following the road. We need three poles and wires we’ll take from above the dam to bring it across the stream here to the shop.”

  “And a nice trout pond, above it,” Vic said.

  “Yes, that’s a bonus. Deep enough for them to survive the worst winters we have here and high enough to run water down here for our use too. We will shut down and keep the level up to a certain minimum when the flow falls off.”

  “So are you going to tell me what you want the aluminum poles for or is it a secret?” Vic asked. If Ted didn’t share his secret Vic wasn’t going to share his.

  “We intend to make a batch of single-shot break-open grenade launchers for Arlo and his deputies, or whatever they end up calling them. They’ll be the barrels. We’ll make a dozen of them from your poles, standardized. If you know of any more traffic flashers, we’d help you collect them. We of course will owe you favors in return,” Ted promised.

  “Seems to me the hard part is not the launcher, but making the ammunition,” Vic said.

  “I was fortunate to acquire a large number of drivers for powder actuated tools,” Ted said. “The little charges that look like a .22 blank, to drive studs in concrete. He pulled a drawer open in a toolbox and showed Vic one. “Those will be our impact fuzes.”

  “And open a couple hundred for the main charge?” Vic asked.

  “No, we moved very quickly after The Day to secure all the explosives from a mining site north of here. That is now cached in multiple locations, very well hidden at separate locations in the deep woods.”

  “You’re concerned we’ll be invaded,” Vic guessed.

  “Eventually. I don’t know who, but there is too much of a power vacuum here. Somebody to the west may set himself up as a warlord. The North Americans may reassert themselves, or the Texans or Mexicans may show up. I expect whoever turns up looking to control the area isn’t going to try to promote local rule. They’ll need to be persuaded to include and listen to the locals.”

  “The boys who escorted me here said we already have a reputation on the coast,” Vic said.

  “I intend to enhance that,” Ted said, with an evil smile. “I know Mr. Mast intends to form a county government again. And it will be locals. I totally support that.”

  “So do I,” Vic agreed. “But he hasn’t even told me who he has been trying to recruit.”

  “I think it will be another year before he calls all his people to a meeting. Going too public too early could start others trying to organize early to counter him and suck people away. I only mentioned it because I was pretty sure you were working with him already.”

  “You’re right. A business relationship for now. People see to their business interests so it all goes together, doesn’t it?” Vic asked.

  Ted agreed with a nod. “And what can I do for y
ou in payment for the poles?”

  He trusted Vic, so Vic decided to return the favor.

  “I don’t want it talked around, any more than you do your business, but we’ve been panning a little gold. Enough to make our rings,” Vic said, taking his off and passing it over.

  “I’d like to be able to melt and maybe cast it. I have the road signal solar cells to work with, but no storage batteries or any way to run a furnace. I thought maybe you could tell me how.”

  “How did you make this if you didn’t cast it?” Ted asked.

  “I made a mold in a piece of steel, but I sintered it with a punch from gold dust and flakes. If you heat it and drive it together a few more times it gets to where you can burnish it and it looks solid. But it’s slow and way too much work. I’d hate to try to make a bar that way.”

  Ted looked amazed. “More a die than a mold, but congratulations, you re-invented the way pre-Colombians made gold objects. I’m going to melt aluminum to cast using charcoal, but I can’t get a hot enough fire that way to melt your gold.”

  “Oh, you have no way to melt gold?” Vic asked disappointed.

  “Not a huge crucible of it like aluminum, but maybe enough for you. You have the solar panels, hopefully, you can get some more for both of us. Panels for you and some more poles for me. If you have enough amperage you can use it several ways to weld or heat stuff with graphite rods. I’ll write out some ideas for you.”

  “Where am I going to get graphite rod?” Vic scoffed.

  “You’ve been mining your trash,” Ted said. “Have you found any old used up flashlight batteries?”

  “A ton of them,” Vic said.

  “Well, every one of them has a graphite rod running down the middle,” Ted informed him.

  “Why do you look so disgusted?” he had to ask Vic.

  “Because we’ve been setting aside any jar, and we made piles of metal and anything else we imagined we might use, but we shoveled everything else down the gulch behind us as we went along picking through it. We’ll have to dig it all back up to get the batteries now.”

  * * *

  Nathan DeWalt arrived at Home with a very expensive Australian passport. He’d been warned it would work just about anywhere but using it to enter Australia itself might be a little dicey. He had entered Tahiti with his genuine European passport, which turned out to be a serious mistake. He bought a passenger ferry ticket to Moorea with one of his old personal credit cards, then paid cash to ride a cargo boat to Huahine. He laid low for a few days on that quiet island.

  He’d used the Australian identity to go to Raiatea, where they made a local industry of running a cheaper low volume spaceport off their summit to compete with Tahiti. He arrived an hour before departure to the Turnip, so he figured if anybody made his identity it would be too late. He’d be gone beyond any recall.

  He’d been told Home would not ask for a passport or any other document. So the pricey document was just an expensive keepsake he might use as an illustration if he ever wrote a book about his experience. It was the sort of a thing that was a horror to live through, but an adventure to somebody with a sane stable life who wanted to experience it vicariously. He was free to be Nathan DeWalt again if he wanted. But after he touched the reader pad as instructed, the nice lady asked his name, and he stood there thinking about it.

  “I can void it and let you stand to the side and think about it if you wish,” she said kindly. “We’ve had people register as every historical figure or fictional character you could imagine, including Donald Duck. Just let the others finish entering if you would.”

  “That’s OK. Enter me as Nathan Walters,’ he requested. That wouldn’t make it dead easy to track him but wasn’t so different that he’d have a hard time adjusting to it. He wouldn’t sit oblivious, waiting for a table in a restaurant while the greeter shouted some stranger’s name.

  “Welcome to Home, Mr. Walters. There are signs and directions the other side of the bearing to assist you,” she said pointing through the round opening, “If you search Home Help on the local net you can get advice dealing with the differing acceleration felt on each level, how things are laid out, and where to find food and accommodations.”

  Nathan nodded his thanks, used the line rigged for the inexperienced in zero g, and examined the YOU ARE HERE map. First, he needed a bank.

  Chapter 21

  “Now there’s a twitchy little character,” Nick said quietly to Diana as they passed Nathan newly named Walters coming out of the elevators. “I’m glad he got off my shuttle. He made my internal alarms all beep.”

  “You are still paranoid from being a revolutionary,” Diana accused. “You can’t go buy groceries without thinking somebody is following you through the store.”

  “That’s not true of all revolutionaries. Just the surviving, successful ones.”

  “I was thinking. They killed Floyd. I’ll probably get a bill for disposing of the rear three-quarters of him. You have never shown any interest in having a car. If you want to buy something in my name go ahead. I’ll send you authorization and you can use it until I return and save me the trouble of shopping for one.”

  “I’m scared I’ll buy something you hate,” Nick said.

  “Just get something light colored and not too flashy to attract trouble. If it’s a little bigger than Floyd that’s fine. We were having to get pretty creative packing him when we both grocery shopped at the same time,” Diana reminded him.

  “OK, I will,” Nick agreed. “If you hate it, I’ll buy it from you. It looks bad for an important government functionary not to own a vehicle.”

  “Anywhere else you’d be saying you needed a car and a driver,” Diana said.

  “I expect the revolutionary zeal and disgust with excessive privilege to last a little longer. I don’t want to be among the first to discard it.”

  “Then be sure to tell all your friends it’s borrowed,” Diana advised him.

  “When do you think you’ll be down? I’ll miss you.”

  “I’m going to work with the brat on another lotto game and I have some other business in mind. Don’t start getting possessive, we’re not joined at the hip.”

  To soften that warning she gave him a warm and lingering kiss before he went through the bearing to the mast proper. He stiffened a little at first when she did that and when they pulled apart, she gave him a questioning look.

  “I’m still not used to being able to do that,” Nick admitted. “Most of my adult life you could be fined for public displays of affection under North American law. I still get a reaction to seeing men in public in short sleeves and other things. It’s hard to drop the conditioning to what was normal growing up.”

  “Up here, if you drag it out too long people will start applauding,” Diana quipped.

  “It has been interesting,” Nick said, and seemed like he’d say more but didn’t.

  “But too much to absorb?” Diana asked.

  Nick nodded. “I thought I was ready to reject everything about North America when we kicked them out. But you guys did exactly that and it’s kind of scary.”

  “Well not me,” Diana said. “I’m a newcomer. But April and her people, yeah. You need to go aboard before they slam the hatch in your face.”

  Nick's eyes flicked one way and then the other, checking the time in the new spex he wasn’t used to yet. “Eight minutes, but you’re right. Thanks again,” he said and hurried.

  Diana watched him go, amused. It was fun looking thirty again, and attractive to somebody of that age, but important government official or no, Nick lacked the maturity she’d come to expect from someone she could be serious about. The question she had been wondering the last few days was if she’d still feel the same when they were both twenty years older. The difference kept getting smaller compared to their ages. How small would it have to be to not matter at all?

  * * *

  “I need to run back to Home today,” April told her partners.

  “I want
to go talk to the Yangs, and need to visit a couple of prototype shops,” Jeff said. “Expect me along in a couple of days.”

  “Take Barak along, would you?” Heather asked. “He said he was going tomorrow but if you’re piloting solo it’s cheaper and faster for him.”

  “Yeah, I have an empty seat. I’ll text him right now,” April said, grabbing her pad. “I can wait an hour or two if he needs me to. I don’t have any rush medical or perishables.”

  “Did you check UPS and Larkin’s for standby packages?” Jeff asked

  “Of course. Nothing today and Barak just replied to my text that he’d meet me at the ship. Love you guys, bye.”

  It took two changes of elevators to get to the surface, but April had a priority pass. That was one of the few real privileges of being a peer. Only medical or security could override her express lift to the surface. The dour faced fellow already on the last elevator with a roll-along toolbox and suit carrier riding on top cheered up and said it was his lucky day when she keyed her pad at the controls and the three green stops on the screen went to amber.

  Barak seemed in an unusually jovial mood when they boarded, cracking jokes and energized about something. It amused April.

  “What would you like to do? Maybe go to one of the clubs tonight?” Barak asked.

  The presumption her evening was his and they had a date caught April off guard. Suddenly she understood Barak thought it was his lucky day just like the grouchy workman on the elevator. The last time he was her house guest at Home, Jeff and he had just returned from a failed mission together. They took him to a club dancing with them, and he dumped his hosts there, going off to a dark club with a lovely beam dog.

  If he’d forgotten that she hadn’t, and he should have realized that closed some doors to him. She was about ready to tell him off when she remembered she hadn’t told him she knew he was lifting to Home the next day or that his sister Heather asked her to give him a lift. Suddenly it didn’t seem so presumptuous and she had to blame herself at least a little bit. That just meant she’d be gentler.