Live Free or Die-ARC Read online

  "No," Tyler said. "Just a very smart computer. It works similar to an AI, but it can't figure things out. If it's not in its programmed responses it has to consult a sophont. Access time through the hypernet with one of the Gorku AIs came with the lease so we shouldn't have to help it figure out much. Gorku also will tow us home, to Glalkod mind you, if the ship breaks down and it's something we can't fix. Or send a repair ship if it's more feasible. That's one of the reasons I didn't buy it. Anyway, can you work with this?"

  "All electric ranges," Dr. Chu said, looking around. "I really doubt I'll need the microwave. Isn't that a GE?"

  "I had it retrofitted," Tyler said.

  "This will do very well," Dr. Chu said. "Far more than I'd expected, frankly. I was expecting a tiny little galley the size of the inside of the Paw."

  "The Monkey Business can control up to forty tugs," Tyler said, shrugging. "And a maintenance, mining and repair crew of up to a hundred. There are also cookbots but they're not programmed very well for humans."

  "This will do very well," Dr. Chu said. "Perhaps we should get the rest of the materials out of the Paw and I can set up."

  "Works," Tyler said. "And Nathan would probably appreciate that. Or you can come fly down to Huntsville."

  "I do not wish to quit if that is what you mean," Dr. Chu said.

  "Not at all," Tyler said. "But since I was working through my plants, which have an ocular portion so I was watching what was going on, I forgot to turn on the vision plates in the Paw. I appreciate your dedication but how would you like to see earth, and the ship, from space?"

  "I can set up later," Dr. Chu said. "Let's get the Paw unloaded, shall we?"

  * * *

  "So, it's got vision screens?" Nathan said. He'd never even gotten out of his seat. "That's nice to know. Where?"

  "Everywhere," Tyler said. "Monkey, Paw Four undocking . . . Roger . . . Yes, I'll bring maple syrup. And . . . we have the vision blocks on."

  "Holy hanna!" Dr. Foster said.

  The vision blocks of the Paw were installed prior to the development of standard ocular implants and designed so that a crewman on the Paw could maneuver it in the often complex environment of asteroid mining. He, she or it might have to back up, spin or otherwise maneuver with a clear 'view.'

  So they were everywhere. It was as if the seats were sitting in space.

  "Now that's a view," Asaro said.

  "I think I've peed myself," Nathan said in a muffled tone. "An' I don' wanna breath."

  The earth was laid out 'above' the ship with the Monkey Business blocking most of the rest of the view. But to either side was a glorious star field.

  "We're not in vacuum," Tyler said. "You'd know if we were in vacuum. I'm given to understand it smarts."

  "I was having a hard time with scale," Bryan said. "That's the airlock we were docked to."

  "Roger," Tyler said. "Big, ain't she?"

  "Immense," Steve said. "Huge doesn't cover it."

  The ship stretched seemingly forever with the airlock they had used a tiny door that became smaller and smaller as Tyler backed away from the ship.

  "She's not really all that big," Tyler said. "Four hundred and twenty feet long. That's about thirty nine stories. It's easier to think in terms of skyscrapers for things like this."

  "Good point," Steve said, nodding. "It does work."

  "Most of the aft third is engines and power plants," Tyler said, scooting the Paw around so that the crew could get a look at their new home. "The forward two fifths is a smelter and bulk storage. The middle bit is crew quarters, life-support and command centers. So it's a big ship but with a full crew compliment it's still rather cramped. And compared to some it's not all that big. But it's more than big enough for us. Dr. Chu? Comments?"

  "I am absorbing myself in rapturous glory," Dr. Chu replied. "Space in all its infinite wonder. Are there . . . Is there anywhere in the ship with a similar view?"

  "Not quite," Tyler said. "There are some ports and your bunk has a screen which you can set to various views. But you can ride in the Paws from time to time if you really want. As long as I can get my me fun."

  "No problem," Dr. Chu said. "I'm a master of the noodle in all its forms. They rather remind me of space-time theory."

  "So, where are we going to store the mirrors?" Astro said as Tyler hovered the Paw over the parking lot of AMTAC.

  The mirrors had been trundled out with forklifts and were now scattered around the parking lot, looking just a bit forlorn.

  "We're not," Tyler said, looking over his shoulder. "I'm going to pick them up with a tractor bubble. The bubble will act as a shield against any damage. I'm just having to be sure to get the mirrors and not the ground under them. There . . . got it. I just needed to find a good structural point to pick them up off the ground so I could bubble them."

  Steve watched as first one mirror then two then the whole group of twenty-three were picked up. There were twenty VLA mirrors, simple circles of nickel with a sat-pak on the back, and three BDA mirrors. Those were more complex and larger glass and nickel hexagons with cooling systems. But they all were hovering, spread out in formation, in a couple of minutes.

  "This is so very cool," Nathan said. "This would be a six month evolution with NASA."

  "Six year," Steve said. "Working for NASA just means I know their problems better. But at the level we're working on, just to be able to get people to space safely has huge issues. With this system, completely different story."

  "So we're meeting specifications?" Tyler asked as they started to ascend.

  "So far I've got no issues," Astro said. "Quite the opposite. I think with the Paws around we should ground every rocket on earth for our own good. Rockets are very big explosions waiting to happen. If the Paw just breaks, it's going to be nothing but a big chunk of metal falling. And there is a lot of the world for it to fall on that's empty. Meteors do it all the time and there hasn't been anyone seriously injured since Tunguska. Of course, if it breaks just a bit in orbit and comes down at orbital speeds . . . Then you've got a KEW on your hands."

  "And it will take a while to come down," Tyler said. "Even if the other Paws are out system, there's probably enough time for them to come in and grapple it."

  "A point which had escaped me," Steve admitted. "I'm still trying to catch up to the technology. But since I can't see what you're doing I need to get some more detailed information on the control and management systems. How, exactly, are you controlling the Paw?"

  "Heh," Tyler said. "Some of it is intuitive but that takes a lot of explanation. First, you need to understand the plants."

  "Okay," Steve said. "Go."

  "The neurological implants integrate with the brain," Tyler said. "So when you go looking for a piece of information it searches not just for what you've explicated but also your back-thoughts of what you really want. Sort of like a very detailed and intuitive query system. I went looking for information on meteors when I was setting all this stuff up. I didn't spend a lot of time on it, but I looked through all the major online databases. And I couldn't find one damned meteor that I liked. You with me?"

  "Yes," Steve said.

  "Well, when I did the same thing using the hypernet from Glalkod, which can interact with our internet by the way, I got a hit on Connie right away."

  "Connie?" Steve asked.

  "6178 1986 DA," Nathan replied. They were at about 40,000 feet and he was reveling in the view. "Two point one kilometer nickel iron asteroid. Apollo." The last meaning that its orbit was mostly outside of earth's but crossed it. They also, generally, stayed inside the asteroid belt ranging from outside the orbit of Mars to inside the orbit of earth. Aten asteroids were mostly inside earth's but entered earth's orbit or crossed it. Apohele were those that stayed mostly in earth's orbit. None of the classifications were precise. There were 'Aten' asteroids that crossed the orbits of Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars.

  "Okay," Steve said.

  "Which Dr. Bell knew off the top
of his head," Tyler said. "But with the plants I've got pretty much everything his memory would draw upon and a pretty good sorting system. They use their internal memory, organic memory and a combination of intuitive processing and software to arrive at the answer you're looking for. But they aren't, per se, creative. They just give you access to a host of information. You have to be able to use it."

  "I'm with you so far," the astronaut said. "How does that relate to flying the Paw?"

  "I don't really fly it," Tyler said. "What I do is look for flight-paths. Then a combination of my plants, and the processors on the Monkey Business, sort through all the possible combinations using all available data, to find a clear spot. You know what the orbital belt is like. So does the Monkey. Then I'm given a bunch of potential flight-paths. I generally pick the one at the top. But it's not exactly the safest or the fastest or whatever. It's an intuitive pick."

  "I'd prefer you use the safest," Steve pointed out. "I'd really prefer you don't conflict a billion dollar satellite."

  "I won't," Tyler said. "I'm not a hot-rod in this thing and the Monkey knows it. That's part of the algorithm. But . . . I don't want to take all day coming down and I really like watching North America and South America over Eurasia and Africa. Since we're going straight up from Huntsville to a ship over Brazil, that seems like the straight route. But it might be really crowded up there at the moment. So the ship has to maneuver."

  "Which we've been doing while you were talking," Nathan said. "It was making me nervous since you didn't seem to be paying attention."

  "I'm paying more than you think," Tyler said. "When you guys get plants you'll understand. But mostly I'm letting the Monkey fly the Paw. Getting back to the point. The absolute safest might be a polar insertion, then down over Russia . . ."

  "Which would have some security issues," Dr. Foster pointed out.

  "Which it takes into account but you see my point," Tyler said. "Maybe Antarctica then over the south Atlantic. But that's not my favorite view and I don't want to take another thirty minutes out of my day flying half way around the world to get more or less straight up. So it finds the safest route within my preferences by using a very advanced and partially intuitive query I don't even really set up. I just comm 'Following all local directives, get me up to the ship.' It gives me a set of routes, I pick the top one and then keep an eye out for visual aspects. Like there was a Cessna you guys probably didn't see at about seven miles out when we took off that wasn't on the FAA screens for some reason. The system also highlighted that and both informed me and took it into account. That's what the system is for."

  "You're right," Steve said, shaking his head. "Four years of academy training . . . A monkey could fly this ship."

  "A Monkey is flying this ship," Tyler said with a grin. "When I figured out how easy it was, I knew the name for the ship right away. But it can't figure everything out."

  "Example?" Steve asked.

  "Picking up the mirrors," Tyler said, gesturing 'under' the ship. The ship had rotated so that was now a view of the star field beyond the mirrors. They were also pretty much clear of the atmosphere. "It didn't have a programmed way to do that. I figured that we could either adjust the width of the grav beam to prevent damage to them or find a hard-point. We sort of did both, maximizing lift at a hard-point while adding support to the lighter parts of the structure. Then we wrapped them in a grav bubble when we got them off the ground—they've been in zero g since we took off—and off we went. But the computer didn't have that method programmed. Now it does and the next time it'll be easier."

  "And if a failure happens?" Steve asked.

  "If the main engines give out, the mirrors or anything else we're lifting gets dropped," Tyler said. "Which could be potentially ouchy for somebody. There are two redundant back-ups that can get this thing down safely in up to a three gravity environment from within the well. Stored capacitor power and it's pretty much a mass of grav plates which can be used for drives in a pinch.

  "If I lose contact with the Monkey, I'm qualified to do a personal drop. I'm not going to promise I won't conflict a satellite on my way down. But I probably won't. The plants and the comp on the Paw are good enough to manage that much traffic control. And you can be sure I'll declare an emergency. FAA can route planes around my inbound track. Which will be to the nearest flat spot I can find. I can drop this thing, in an emergency, right into Times Square easier than you can land a trainer. The world has a lot of flat spots if you don't need five thousand feet of runway.

  "If everything gives out, which is pretty damned unlikely given that this thing has been tinkered and refined over five hundred years, then we're either stuck in orbit until another ship comes along and pulls us off or we're a dropping brick. Can't help you with that one."

  "If you had some serious pilot's training, I don't think there would be a single issue," Steve said, shrugging. "It all sounds . . . almost too good to be true."

  "That's because it is very advanced," Tyler said. "We won't be able to replicate this system in the next fifty years. The programming is just too complex. But we'll be able to make something nearly as good in short order. And as to the pilot, you can be sure that I'll get someone more qualified as soon as I pick a good candidate and get him or her planted. You can run things without plants, but it's not easy."

  "I've had about all I can take of NASA," Steve said with a grin.

  "You don't want this job," Tyler said. "Seriously. The guys on this ship are going to be doing grunt work. Nobody here wants this job. You need to be working on our ships. I've got a joint project going with Boeing and McDonnell Douglas to produce the first class of ground-space shuttles. I turned over all the plans for power plants and drive systems to them as soon as I got back along with a functioning power plant from a scrapped freighter and a gravplate fabber. And they're scratching their heads and talking about a hundred billion dollars and ten years development. Which I've already commed them is just out of the question. If they can't get off the stick I'm going to form my own company to do it. They're still talking about light-weight composites and noodle programming. With a power plant and a grav system you can fly one of these things, made out of raw steel, with a stick. They can't get their head around 'the better is the enemy of the good.'"

  "Serious problem with NASA as well," Steve admitted.

  "The problem being, a start up is based around new and customized systems," Tyler said, shrugging. "I need Boeing and McD's expertise at mass production! I need shuttles, a lot of shuttles, so the Paws aren't constantly carrying stuff into and out of orbit. I'm going to be sending back materials but a lot of it's going to stay in space and build orbital systems. And I can do the big stuff, hulls and such, in space. But I still need all the fiddly bits built by ground-based companies. So I need shuttles. Several and some of them pretty damned big so they can carry big fiddly bits up. And I don't need them in ten years. I need them yesterday."

  "What about the Horvath?" Nathan asked.

  "I'm hoping like hell the Horvath consider this part of the human tribes they're not allowed to touch," Tyler admitted. "And once we leave, I'm going to be keeping the Monkey Business well away from Earth and the region between the gate and Earth. Last, they were another reason to lease it. Its Galactic transponder shows it, and the Paws, as belonging to one of the biggest Glatun corporations there is. I'm pretty sure that the Horvath don't want to explain to Gorku why they destroyed one of their ships. Even an old one."

  "But human ships it's a different story," Astro said.

  "Absolutely," Tyler replied. "Probably. Which is, again, why I'm not going to be doing a lot of stuff around earth or the gate if I can avoid it. Just parts and food up and materials down. If I'm far enough away, the Horvath will have to go out of their way to destroy whatever I've got built. And they're not going to be able to easily sort out the human stuff from Glatun. It's the best defense I can come up with so far."

  "What about the beam?" Dr. Foster asked. "I'm thinking
that could probably do some serious damage."

  "Not powerful enough," Tyler said. "It's a one terrawatt laser so far."

  "It's not a laser . . ." Dr. Foster said, tiredly.

  "My orbital death ray, my name," Tyler replied with a chuckle.

  "This sounds like an old argument," Steve said.

  "The name laser is an acronym," Dr. Foster said.

  "Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation," Astro said. "Don't have a degree in optics, but anybody knows that. What's the problem?"

  "The light beam is not a laser," Dr. Foster repeated. "A laser is a beam of polarized light of a single frequency generated, well, in various ways at this point. This is nothing more than, in effect, a concentrated view of the sun."

  "A very concentrated view of a lot of the sun which just happens to burn and melt stuff," Tyler said. "I know, I know, it's nothing more than Archimedes Mirror writ large. But we don't have a good name for it other than laser. I'm not going to call it The Solar Beam. It's a one terawatt laser. Which is great. But not enough. We need a lot more power than that to defeat the shields on the Horvath ship. At least a hundred terawatts. We can collect that much power . . ."