The death penalty? Nicolette asked, her eyes rounded.
That's right. I winked. Something to think about when you're considering joyriding one of the jeeps.
I wouldn't!
What about a motive? Nathaniel persisted. Tenacious boy. I wonder where he got it from?
No motive established so far. I haven't compiled enough information on Maowkavitz yet.
It's got to be personal, he said decisively. I bet she had a secret lover, or something. Rich people always get killed for personal reasons. When they fight about money they always do it in court.
I expect you're right.
•••
One thing all Penny Maowkavitz's nominees had in common, they were industrious people. I caught up with Bob Parkinson in the offices of the He3 mining mission centre, the largest building in Eden, a four-storey glass and composite cube. An archetypal company field headquarters, the kind of stolid structure designed to be assembled in a hurry, and last for decades.
His office didn't have quite the extravagance of Harwood's, it was more how I imagined the study of a computer science professor would look like. The desk was one giant console, while two walls were simply floor to ceiling holoscreens displaying orbital plots and breathtaking views of Jupiter's upper cloud level, relayed directly from the aerostats drifting in the gas-giant's troposphere. A hazed ochre universe that went on for ever, flecked by long streamers of ammonia cirrus that scudded past like a time-lapse video recording. The JSKP currently had twenty-seven of the vast hot-hydrogen balloons floating freely in the atmosphere; five hundred metre diameter spheres supporting the filtration plant which extracted He3 from Jupiter's constituent gases, and liquified it ready for collection by robot shuttles.
He3 is one of the rarest substances in the solar system, but it holds the key to commercially successful fusion. The first fusion stations came on-line in 2041, burning a mix of deuterium and tritium; second-generation stations employed a straight deuterium–deuterium reaction. Those combinations have a number of advantages: ignition is easy, the energy release is favourable, and the fuels are available in abundance. The major drawback is that both reactions are neutron emitters. Although you can use this effect to breed more tritium, by employing lithium blankets, it's a messy operation, requiring more complex (read: expensive) reactors, and a supplementary processing facility to handle the lithium. Without lithium blankets the reactor walls become radioactive, then have to be disposed of; and you require additional shielding to protect the magnetic confinement system. The costs in both monetary and environmental terms weren't much of an improvement on fission reactors.
Then in 2062 the JSKP dropped its first aerostat into Jupiter's atmosphere, and began extracting He3 in viable quantities. There are only minute amounts of the isotope present in Jupiter. But minute is a relative thing when you're dealing with a gas giant.
The fusion industryif you'll pardon the expressionwent critical. Stations burning a deuterium–He3 mix produced one of the cleanest possible fusion reactions, a high-energy proton emitter. It also proved an ideal space drive, cutting down costs of flights to Jupiter, which in turn reduced the costs of shipping back He3 , which led to increased demand.
An upward spiral of benefits. He3 was every economist's fantasy commodity.
Bob Parkinson was the man charged with ensuring a steady supply was maintained; a senior JSKP vice-president, he ran the entire mining operation. It wasn't the kind of responsibility I would ever want, but he appeared to handle it stoically. A tall fifty-year-old, with a monk's halo of short grizzled hair, and a heavily wrinkled face.
I was wondering when you were going to get round to me, he said.
They told me it would have to be today.
God, yes. I can't delay the lowering, not even for Penny. And I have to be there. A finger flicked up to one of the screens showing a small rugby-ball-shaped asteroid which seemed to be just skimming Jupiter's cloud tops. Fully half of its surface was covered with machinery; large black radiator fins formed a ruff collar around one conical peak. A flotilla of industrial stations swarmed in attendance, along with several inter-orbit transfer craft.
That's the cloudscoop anchor? I asked.
Yes. Quite an achievement; the pinnacle of our society's engineering prowess.
I can't see the scoop itself.
It's on the other side. He gave an instruction to his desk, and the view began to tilt. Against the backdrop of salmon and white clouds I could see a slender black line protruding from the side of the asteroid which was tide-locked towards the gas giant. Its end was lost somewhere among the rumbustious cyclones of the equatorial storm band.
A monomolecule silicon pipe two and a half thousand kilometres long, Bob Parkinson said with considerable pride. With the scoop head filters working at full efficiency, it can pump a tonne of He3 up to the anchor asteroid every day. There will be no need to send the shuttles down to the aerostats any more. We just liquify it on the anchor asteroid, and transfer it straight into the tanker ships.
At one-third the current cost, I said.
I see you do your homework, Chief Parfitt.
I try. What happens to the aerostats?
We intend to keep them and the shuttles running for a while yet. They are very high-value chunks of hardware, and they've got to repay their investment outlay. But we won't be replacing them when they reach the end of their operational life. JSKP plans to have a second cloudscoop operational in four years' time. And, who knows, now we know how to build one, we might even stick to schedule.
When do you start lowering?
Couple of days. But the actual event will be strung out over a month, because believe me this is one hyper-complicated manoeuvre. We're actually decreasing the asteroid's velocity, which reduces its orbital height, and pushes the scoop down into the atmosphere.
How deep?
Five hundred kilometres. But the trouble starts when it begins to enter the stratosphere; there's going to be a lot of turbulence, which will cause flexing. The lower section of the pipe is studded with rockets to damp down the oscillations, and of course the scoop head itself has aerodynamic surfaces. Quantumsoft has come up with a momentum-command program which they think will work, but nobody's ever attempted anything like this before. Which is why we need a large team of controllers on site. The time delay from here would be impossible.
And you're leading them.
That's what they pay me for.
Well, good luck.
Thanks.
We stared at each other for a moment. Having to conduct a direct interview with someone who was technically my superior is the kind of politics I can really do without.
As far as we can ascertain at this point, Penny Maowkavitz didn't have any problems in her professional life, I said. That leaves us with her personal life, and her involvement with Boston. The motive for her murder has to spring from one of those two facets. You are one of the trustees named in her will, she obviously felt close to you. What can you tell me about her?