Delphi Challenge

by Bob Blanton

  “Why does she care about taking classes virtually, it’s not like Delphi University is very far from her condo?”

  “It still saves her a lot of time, and she’s at home between classes, so it’s easier to get things done.”

  “That sounds pretty cool. What are you doing?”

  “I’m taking classes too. I’m hoping I’ll get accepted into the Academy as a junior, instead of having to start at the beginning,” Jason said.

  “I’m sure you will, you’ve already got two years of service. That should count for something.”

  “What about you?”

  “Taking classes, working on projects. I’m sure you’ve heard that Liz and I started a shipping company.”

  “Everyone has heard that. We’re all jealous.”

  “Well, you should talk to Liz. She’s been complaining about all the work she’s been doing to buy the cargo.”

  “I’ll bet, but how come you’ve dropped out of sight?”

  “I’ve just been busy.”

  “I’m betting you’re at the Academy in disguise.”

  “What would give you that idea?”

  “It just makes sense. Otherwise, I’d be seeing you around. There’s no way you gave up flying for anything less than the Academy.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t recommend spreading that conjecture around. Uncle Blake would get really mad.”

  “Don’t worry, mum’s the word, Cadet.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “First Mate, are we ready to jump?”

  “Aye-aye, Captain. Jump is laid in, engineering and navigation are green,” First Mate Hayden Wilson replied.

  “Send the probe through.”

  “Probe shows clear space,” the second mate reported from his station on the sensors.

  “Then take us through,” Liz ordered.

  The Dutchman moved through its wormhole, emerging in Paraxea’s system. There was a large cargo ship two thousand kilometers off their port side. It hailed them immediately.

  “Dutchman, this is Parmira One, welcome to Paraxea Prime. I am Captain Talgor. Do you require assistance? Over.”

  “Open the channel,” Liz ordered. “This is Captain Farmer. We are happy to be here. It will take a few moments for us to release your cargo pods, then we will be happy to accept assistance in attaching the new ones. Please hold steady while we match course and speed. Over.”

  “Please let us know when we should approach. Over” Captain Talgor said.

  “Copy,” Liz replied. “Helm, match their course and speed.”

  “Matching course and speed,” Helm replied. “We will be matched in ten minutes.”

  “Excellent.”

  Ten minutes later, Helm announced, “Course and speed matched.”

  “Release the upper pods,” Liz ordered. Liz had placed all the cabin pods in the front of the Dutchman and the cargo pods behind them. That allowed the colonists and crew easier access between the various occupied spaces.

  “Upper pods released.”

  “Helm, give us 0.1G akeel for ten seconds.”

  “0.1G akeel . . . 0G,” Helm responded.

  “Pods are clear,” the sensor operator announced.

  “Helm, move us to starboard of the pods, one kilometer, and rematch course and speed,” Liz ordered.

  “Aye, one kilometer to starboard, rematch course and speed.”

  A moment later, Helm reported they had reached their new position.

  “Release the lower pods,” Liz ordered.

  “Lower pods released.”

  “0.1G atop for thirty seconds,” Liz ordered.

  “0.1G atop . . . 0G,” Helm responded.

  “Pods are clear,” the sensor operator announced.

  “Rematch course and speed.”

  “Aye, rematch course and speed.”

  “Captain Talgor, your pods are free. We should be matched to your course in a moment; would you join me in our shuttle bay?” Liz requested.

  “We’ll be right over with your relays,” Captain Talgor replied.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  Once the shuttle bay had recompressed, Liz met Captain Talgor at the hatch to his shuttle. She had sent three Lynxes out to oversee the pod movements and provide protection if necessary, leaving plenty of room for Captain Talgor’s shuttle.

  “Welcome aboard the Dutchman,” Liz said as she bowed to Captain Talgor.

  Captain Talgor floated to the deck, using the magnetic couplings in his boots to firmly attach himself to the deck. “This is an interesting ship. I was trying to imagine what it would look like from the containers you had us make.”

  “Thank you, my partner designed it. It was the most efficient means she could come up with to move such large quantities of cargo.”

  “It does seem efficient. And your unloading process is quite impressive. I’m curious to see how you load the new pods.”

  “We will just use some thruster modules. They’ll attach to the cargo pods and steer them to their place, then the crew will lock them down.”

  “What do you do when you have to bring them up from the surface?”

  “We have a special ship to do that. It is capable of dropping them to the surface of a planet or lifting them from the surface,” Liz said. “It can do two to three pods per day. Now, if you’ll follow me through the airlock, we can complete our exchange.”

  “Certainly,” Captain Talgor said as he followed Liz through the airlock.

  Liz led him to the conference room right next to the flight bay. He handed her the package he was carrying. Liz opened it to reveal the quantum relays. She selected a few pairs randomly and put them in the tester she’d placed on the table earlier.

  “They all test out,” ADI confirmed as Liz cycled through the pairs she had selected.

  “Thank you, ADI,” Liz said. “Captain, we’ll push the satellite out of our cargo bay. Once you put it into orbit, your people will be able to start viewing the entertainment files. It has registered your credit for the money we still owe you.”

  “I am looking forward to watching a few of the programs. Governor Paratar has told me quite a bit about your planet. I hope you plan on making more trips out here.”

  “I’m sure we will,” Liz said. “Will you be wanting more grain?”

  “Possibly. But we are interested in these solar panels that Governor Paratar has told me about. They sound very efficient, and they would help to alleviate our overcrowding.”

  “You’re overcrowded?”

  “Yes. As our standard of living has increased, it has also increased the power consumption that people deem necessary to maintain that standard. That has led to the concentration of people close to the power plants. Distribution of power is very expensive. Those solar panels would allow people to live farther from the power stations without having to give up their standard of living.”

  “Don’t you have solar panels?”

  “Yes, but they are only about thirty percent efficient. That makes them cost-prohibitive. We have better uses for the resources.”

  “We could deliver some on our next trip,” Liz said. “We’d need to settle on a price.”

  “We understand. It would be better if we could manufacture them ourselves. Of course, Governor Paratar did not provide the design or manufacturing process. I wonder if you would be willing to license the process?”

  “ADI, is Marc available?” Liz asked.

  “Hello, Liz. Hello Captain Talgor,” Marc said as he joined them on their Comms. The captain and Liz had been using their Comms to communicate so that they would provide the translations.

  “Hello, Your Excellency,” the captain said.

  “Marc is fine,” Marc said. “Now, how can I help?”

  “Captain Talgor has inquired about licensing the technology for the solar panels so that they could manufacture them here,” Liz explained.

  “We could do that,” Marc said. “But how would we be able to track how many you made?”

  “Captain,” ADI
interjected, “the main DI here could be instructed to track them. It would then provide a reliable count.”

  “Okay, that works for me. And how would you pay for them?”

  “We would provide credit for the ones we manufacture, which you could use to purchase trade goods on your next mission,” Captain Talgor said. “Similar to the credit we have with Cer Liz. You would just need to tell us how much to pay for each unit.”

  “I have been discussing with Governor Paratar about setting up a Galactic Currency so that we can manage trades like this,” Marc said. “We’ve agreed to call it an “aurora” and have set its value at one gram of platinum.”

  “You would pick platinum since you’ve got such nice reserves,” Liz said. “Didn’t you just make yourself the richest man in the galaxy?” she messaged.

  “You have a ready source of platinum?” Captain Talgor asked.

  “We do, as well as the other platinum metals,” Marc said.

  “We would be very interested in acquiring more of those metals. We’ve exhausted most of our supply and have to rely extensively on recycling to maintain our manufacturing capability.”

  “You don’t just go out and mine your asteroids?” Marc asked.

  “Of course we do. But there are a finite number of them, and we have consumed the richest ones. It is very expensive to mine the ones with marginal deposits.”

  “Well, we certainly can export some of the metals,” Marc said. “I’ll work with Liz to set up a time when she can deliver some to you.”

  “That would be a great help to us,” Captain Talgor said as he rubbed his hands together, which to Marc indicated that the captain would be raking in quite a profit on the exchange. “Now, about licensing the solar panels.”

  “We are charging Governor Paratar two auroras for each panel. They would be for internal consumption only. We would extend the same license deal to you,” Marc said.

  The captain closed his eyes as he did some mental arithmetic. “That is acceptable. What about the polyglass and polysteel processes?”

  “One hundred auroras for every cubic meter of polyglass. We would prefer to license the polysteel process with a one-time fee.”

  “That would be excellent, what would that fee be?” Captain Talgor asked.

  “One hundred million auroras,” Marc said.

  The captain gulped. “Would it be possible to pay it over time?” he asked.

  “Yes, we would accept a five-year payout.”

  “Year?”

  “A galactic standard year. Your DI will have the details, but it is about as long as your year, the time it takes Paraxea to travel around Paraxea Prime.”

  “That is acceptable. Should I work out the details with Cer Liz?”

  “No, I’ll have our lawyer call you and work out the details of the contract as well as cover issues related to interstellar trade,” Marc said.

  “Excellent. This has been a very beneficial conversation,” Captain Talgor said.

  “You mean profitable,” Liz said.

  “That too,” the captain conceded.

  It took the rest of the day to exchange the cargo pods and prepare the Dutchman for its jump out of Paraxea’s system.

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “How are things going?” Marc asked Tim Garity, his assistant. Garity was responsible for coordinating all the work in Orion City.

  “We’re doing okay, but we’re not getting enough diesel to run the digger and the tractors.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing about it?”

  “You mean, besides yelling at Natalia?”

  “Yes, and let me tell you, yelling at Natalia could be hazardous to your health,” Marc said.

  “Yeah, I know that. If she doesn’t kick your ass, that husband of hers will bury it.”

  Marc laughed. “As if she needs Paul to help her deal with loudmouths.”

  “Yeah, I know. Anyway, we’ve added extra batteries to the tractors and that digger. That way we can plug them in overnight, that saves us quite a bit of fuel. But if we don’t start getting more, we’re going to either stop digging or abandon some of that grain you’ve planted. Those tractors really drink the diesel.”

  “Okay, I’ll see what I can do.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “Natalia, how’s it going?” Marc asked as he met Natalia at the diesel panels. The panels were filled with algae and were arrayed like solar collectors. The algae produced the diesel that they were using to fuel their equipment.

  “Are you here to complain about the diesel production?” Natalia asked.

  “I’m here to understand what our options are,” Marc said. “I know better than to complain.”

  “Good!”

  “So what’s our problem?”

  “I’ve made some adjustments that I think will improve production by about ten percent, but nothing like the forty percent that Garity is asking for.”

  “Ten is better than zero. What can I do?”

  “We just don’t have enough nutrients for them.”

  “Not enough nutrients?”

  “Not sewage coming in.”

  “You’re not serious. We don’t have enough waste to produce the fuel we need?”

  “That’s exactly it. I’ve tuned the system so that it aerates the tank more often and circulates the water through the collectors faster. But there’s just only so much you can do without more input.”

  “So you’re saying we need to ask everyone to eat more?”

  “That would help. I blame the problem on all the men and boys that take a whiz in the field or behind the barn instead of using the facilities.”

  Marc burst out laughing. He laughed so hard that he cried.

  “It wasn’t that funny,” Natalia said.

  “No, but it does put the problem in perspective,” Marc said. “I’ll talk to Doctor Mallock and see if he can put together a small refinery to convert some of our oil into diesel until our population expands enough to supply your needs. We’ll also look at putting in some algae panels to produce diesel, it can’t hurt and they capture most of their own fertilizer from the air.”

  “Doctor Mallock, is he Paraxean?”

  “No, he’s human, just has a weird name.”

  ◆ ◆ ◆

  “Doctor Mallock, do you have some time?” Marc asked.

  “Of course, Governor,” Dr. Mallock said. “What can I do for you?”

  “Our diesel production isn’t keeping up with demand. I was wondering if you could put together a small refinery to produce diesel from the petroleum we’re using for the polysteel?”

  “What’s the problem with the algae converters?”

  “Not enough nutrients,” Marc said.

  “You don’t want to just pump fertilizer through them?”

  “We don’t have fertilizer.”

  “How are you growing plants?”

  “We have a clover derivative that puts nitrogen into the soil. We plant it in the field along with the crops.”

  “Oh, I remember something about that. Anyway, how much diesel do you need?”

  “Five thousand gallons per day,” Marc said.

  “That much?”

  “Yes, is that too much?”

  “No, but it will take a little bigger refinery than I was thinking about. Maybe I’ll just make two of them.”

  “How long?”

  “What’s my priority?”

  “Pretty high.”

  “Then three weeks,” Doctor Mallock said.

  Chapter 6

  Board Meeting – Feb 7th

  “I believe everyone’s here,” Marc said, checking his Comm to verify.

  “We’re all here, the question is are we all awake,” Blake said. “It’s pretty late for the admiral.”

  “I know, trying to sync up all these time zones is problematic,” Marc said.

  “It is. And just what time zone are you in?” Blake asked.

  “We’re in
Orion Mean Time,” Marc said with a laugh. “But that brings up our first agenda item, Galactic Standards. I call this meeting to order.”

  “Galactic Standards?”

  “We need to set some frame of reference as we deal with the various colonies and worlds. We just defined the aurora as the value of one gram of platinum. I’d like to set some standards for time and schedules.”

  “You’re just like Napoleon and his metric systems,” Blake said.

  “Uncle Blake, he did make some lasting standards.”

  “Okay, tell us,” Blake said, giving Catie a dirty look.

  “We are going to set the Galactic Second to be the same as Earth’s cesium definition. We’ll also keep the definition of minute and hour consistent with Earth. However, a Galactic Day will be twenty-five hours and a Galactic Year will be four hundred days.”

  “Hey!” Blake yelped.

  “Artemis has a 26.1-hour day and a 330-day year; Mangkatar has a 27.3-hour day and a 402-day year; Paraxea has a 23.2-hour day and a 410-day year, so we thought we’d pick round numbers that divide easily into one hundred,” Marc said. “Local time will still be measured locally, but this allows everyone to make one transformation to the standard from which everyone else only has to do one transformation back to their local time.”

  “Hey, at least we don’t have to learn new constants for gravity and mass,” Catie said.

  “Umm,” Marc interjected. “We didn’t use Earth Standard for gravity. One gravity is ten meters per second squared. We did keep Earth’s definition of a meter and a kilogram, but that still means a Galactic Newton isn’t the same as an Earth Newton.”

  “It’s a good thing we have our Comms to do all those conversions,” Liz said.

  “Okay, okay, enough of the boring Galactic politics,” Blake said. “Let’s get on with the meeting.”

  “Fred, I hear you’ve scheduled a press conference to announce our new airline,” Marc said.

  “Yes, it’s noon on Friday, Earth Standard Time,” Fred said. “We have eight jets ready to start flying. Crews are trained and ready.”

  “Excellent. I wish you the best of luck at the press conference,” Marc said.

  “Daddy, you could do the press conference remotely,” Catie suggested with a big smile.

  “Fortunately, we’re keeping quantum relays a secret, so that is not actually possible,” Marc replied. “Liz, where are you?”