CHAPTER 31

He is richest who is content with the least, for content is the wealth of nature.
-- Socrates

11 May

Chad Haley -- a theorist now in charge of producing the actual system for putting the station into space -- realized early on the difficulty of keeping secret something that needed so much technical know-how and sheer man-hours to design, manufacture, assemble, and launch.

"May I hire, umm, experts?" he asked in Grant's Long Beach penthouse office. "After all, I'm not an engineer."

"Sure you can, Chad -- as long as you organize things along your 'modular agorist' lines." The man smiled like a grey-maned lion. "See, I've been reading your stuff. I like the idea of not having anything remotely resembling regular employees. Work with Jo-Don on hiring the engineers and independent contractors for all phases of the project -- as long as each group doesn't know what the others are doing. The overall plan must be known only to a select few."

"That's no problem," Haley said, "until the point of recruiting the flight crew. Joscelyn must tell them what's going on. If we're going to keep this as counter-economic as possible, though"--he grinned--"I'm going to have to know what types of companies you actually control. So we can keep supply purchases and services all in the family."

Grant smiled back. "Pal, I'm not even sure what I've got."

"And I do want to approach Truman Collings and that producer," Haley said. "When we launch, we had better be ready with publicity and rhetoric to counter the cover story the US and others are going to use as an excuse to shoot us down."

"Shoot us down?" Grant's smile looked forced and almost quirky.

"You don't expect them to allow anyone into Space whom they don't control, do you? We may be well-protected in orbit by virtue of our high-ground position, but that won't stop them from trying to down us because of a perceived threat to national security. The space station will be in a stable, predictable, low-Earth orbit. Easy pickings if they ever decide to down us. Short of that, they'll denounce us as reckless or criminal or highly suspect. We've got to seize the moral high ground and hold onto it, and high visibility is the only way to stay their hand. Keeping a news pipeline open is just as important as getting up there."

Grant thought about this for a moment. "All right. You and Jo-Don handle the research and recruitment. I'll handle the delicate political maneuvering."

"Okay, but I--"

"Have you ever bribed anyone?"

Haley frowned . "Not rea--"

"I do it daily. Leave it to me."

***

Haley spent weeks learning all he could about plug-nozzle rocket engines, aluminum-lithium parts fabrication, hydrogen-oxygen catalysis as a way to convert unused fuel into water for the space station crew.

Using 3-D design software, Haley slipped on his VR equipment and gazed at a model of the space station. No engineer, he would leave the actual stress, weight-and-balance, center-of-gravity, and other calculations to the software, with input from experts Joscelyn would soon hire. For now, he hefted the virtual spacecraft in his hands, feedback devices allowing him to feel the shape of the knobby toroid. Like a string of raindrops joined together, the sixteen pods were rounded on the fore end, tapering at the midriff where they connected, and sharpening to points aftward.

With a flick of his fingers, he separated out a single pod and expanded it to look inside. The upper two-thirds of the teardrop contained the hydrogen tank, the lower third the oxygen tank, fitted into the tapering cone of the ærospike. Inside the hydrogen tank were three decks made of aluminum-lithium latticework. While allowing for free flow of the fuel during launch, once they had achieved orbit and catalyzed the excess hydrogen into water the empty tanks would immediately have three levels of work and living space available to the crew.

The crew and cargo occupied relatively cramped quarters during launch, packed into the topmost portion of the pod riding above the fuel tank, separated by a few inches of insulation. Chad designed in a small polycarbonate window for each crew member, then added an interior shutter for those too nervous to watch.

The most important part of the project would be in deciding what to take into orbit with them. Though he had no doubt that Grant could resupply the station once it was successfully operating, it might be some time before such a second launch was possible. That indicated the need for more than prepared food, hence the hydroponic tanks and seeds. The necessary water would come from combining the residual hydrogen and oxygen in fuel cells to provide electricity, heat, and water for the space station until solar panels could be deployed.

That thought caused a momentary digression. What, he wondered, would be the weight and drag penalty if amorphous or crystalline silicon solar cells were cemented to the skin of the spacecraft before launch? Since they intended to spin the toroid artificial gravity, most of the station would receive sunlight for at least a portion of each rotation. If each pod had its own rechargeable batteries, as well as an electrolysis unit to break down waste water into hydrogen and oxygen for the fuel cells, how would that alter the payload requirements? And the cost? And the fire danger of more electrical equipment...

Haley began to sweat. Designing a space station was no simple exercise. It required knowledge of science, engineering, ærodynamics, chemistry, horticulture, human physiology, plumbing, biology, architecture, pyrotechnics, metallurgy, cryogenics, recycling, cybernetics, air conditioning, nutrition, ecology, radiology, and higher mathematics of a head-numbing depth and variety.

A stunning amount of work over the last fifty years provided a wealth of data to utilize for the project, but Haley still needed experts to marshal all their knowledge into a final product. He telephoned Donahue to remind her of the need for speed.

"I'm on top of it," she said cheerfully. "My plan is that some of the people who will design and oversee construction of the station will be the ones who go up in them. That ought to ensure quality control, right?"

Haley agreed. "How do we keep this from mushrooming into a long-range, NASA-style never-ending project?"

"We have the classic skunk works setup in Kismayu," she said. "Isolate a small group of genius-types with a fascinating challenge, pay them practically nothing, and give them a firm finish date. It's worked so often in so many fields, from aircraft to computers to movies, that it may be the natural adjunct to your concept of the extremely horizontal modular agorist organizational chart."

"How many people do you have under contract?"

"A few. I'll be going for more this weekend." She became serious. "Including a few ex-astronauts and cosmonauts."

"Grant won't like that."

Joscelyn's voice grew even more emphatic. "We need input from people who have actually been in Space. An astronaut-doctor would be ideal. Anyone who may have done space construction would be invaluable. Pilots -- I think that's the most important of all. None of this will be worth it if we can't reach LEO."

God, he thought, she's beginning to use acronyms. "Any prospects?"

"I'm working on a few right now."

19 May

Donald MacIntyre watched as the woman from the mailroom wheeled in this morning's mail.

"Congressman Woolsey's very popular with the ladies," she said, nodding her head toward the colorful pile of card-sized envelopes addressed in feminine script.

"Thanks, Carol." He gazed at the cartload.

"Does he ever see any of these?" Carol asked.

MacIntyre winked at her. "Only the ones with photos." That meet my approval, he mentally added.

Carol laughed and moved on to her next stop. MacIntyre ignored the obvious love letters to pluck a red, white, and blue airmail envelope from middle of the pile. It was thick, but he was certain nothing dangerous lay inside since the mailroom always X-rayed and neutron-scanned anything that might harbor explosives.

The envelope had been very neatly typed, the high-denomination foreign stamps applied crisply and squarely. No return address, though the postmark indicated its origin to be Sao Paulo, Brazil. He slit the envelope open to withdraw the contents: a sheaf of pink papers stapled at the top corner. Despite the Brazilian origin, the copies of the airfare and medical bills were written in English, along with the note hand-written in tense script that read, I FELT IT UNREASONABLE THAT EITHER I OR NASA SHOULD PAY THESE.

What he read made his eyes narrow.

So he did bop the astronaut, MacIntyre mused with a mixture of cynical pleasure and mild disdain. And she's got the balls to send him the bill for the abortion. He smiled. Maybe we should bill her for Woolsey's plastic surgery.

He laughed quietly, but knew it was not a matter to take lightly. The congressman's reputaion as a womanizer had more than once threatened him politically, and something as crass as knocking up a national heroine might be the last straw if it became common knowledge.

MacIntyre slipped the envelope and its contents into a manilla envelope stamped TOP SECRET at top and bottom and added it to the stack he would personally discuss with Woolsey. He picked up the next mail item, thinking, Brother, if I ever write that book...


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