“We need to wrap this up, I’m afraid. Captain Bauman, what do you think the next step for the starship ought to be?”
“They need to go back to the drawing board for a complete rethinking and redesign. Yes, we made it to Diomedes, but that proves absolutely nothing.”
“Admiral Fontaine?”
“Very little redesign is needed, Morton. Make the ship a little longer, a little narrower, maybe. Add a little more shielding, especially if it can do double duty.And that’s about it.”
“Thank you for being here, both of you. Our next story concerns an intelligence analyst, Mister Julien Ying who now is going public with the news that he made up facts to suit his bosses. Mister Julien Ying.” Ying was Chinese, conservatively dressed in a dark blue three-piece suit with a yellow power tie.
“How do you do, Mister Levine.”
“So far, so good Julien. I understand that you were an analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency?”
“That is correct, Mister Levine. For fifteen years.”
“And your specialty?”
“I prepared estimates of the inventory of nuclear weapons for different nations. We used technical means and human resources, and most often they would be in close agreement.
“And what happened?”
“Well, ten years ago I had the India desk. At that time my supervisor requested a high estimate.”
“Your supervisor told you what to find?”
“Not exactly, Mister Levine. Only he wanted a higher number than what I provided. Not once, but repeatedly; not marginally higher, but much higher.”
Levine’s eyebrows went up. “How come?”
“I asked the same question. Once I understood that his supervisor wanted to please the joint chiefs of staff, I, of course, furnished him an appropriate number.”
“And what number was that?”
“I said that India had 40,000 warheads.”
“And how many did they have, really, Mister Ying?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps 200, perhaps as many as 300, if they chose to fabricate mostly tactical weapons. The real number is almost certainly smaller than 200.”
“Isn’t this top secret?”
Ying looked inscrutably at the camera, “Only the document has been classified top secret. The information which that document purports to contain is, in fact, wholly fictional.”
“My goodness. Are you telling us that you made it up out of the whole cloth?”
“That is correct, Mister Levine. I arrived at the number arbitrarily, well, not quite arbitrarily. My supervisor hinted at the number he would like for his boss, and I guessed at what would make them happy.”
“How could you justify such a monstrous deception?”
“Once the number was in hand, I worked backwards and contrived a supporting basis for it by falsifying technical intelligence reports.” A wry smile. “We cannot discuss the numbers involved, of course. Revelation of such fine detail might reveal the inner workings of our military intelligence.”
Morton Levine sat back, completely flabbergasted. “My God,” he said at last. “You were playing games with the national security?”
“Sometimes the lies people tell reveal more about them than the truth one might be seeking,” replied Ying, blowing smoke without tobacco. “But in any event, India has never adopted a threatening posture towards us, so there have not yet been any unintended adverse consequences.”
“But why did the joint chiefs want a high estimate?”
Ying smiled politely. “Ask them, please. I could only offer ignorant speculation.”
“Well, maybe we’ll get around to it, then.Tell me this: How is that you are now breaking this story?”
Julien Ying gazed at the camera beneficently, his inscrutable Oriental face a finger raised at his host. “For the good of my country, of course.”
Lunar Three spun serenely on its axis, the inner tube racing against the more slowly turning casing, as the whole assembly went coursing sedately in its orbit around Luna, exactly as if nothing were wrong. “What did you find about the neutron leak?” asked Turi John Ramos fretfully. “That stupid radiation the NRDA was so exercised about.”
The engineer looked bored and called up the file on his workstation. “It is an artifact,” he said. “Look. Here is the prototype in profile.The bomb explodes; the neutron burst passes through the length of the ship before the recoil even begins. Now look at the cross-section of the ship; we take one module at a time, in shades of grey showing neutron shielding. The circular image grew darker and darker as successive modules were added. What do you see?”
“Three little light spots, otherwise it looks pretty much black.”
“Very good, Doctor Ramos. Now what do you see when we place the dosimeters—the little red crosses—in the crew module?”
“The dosimeters are placed exactly in the middle of the least shielded areas?” exclaimedTuri John.
“Amazingly, that appears to be the case,” agreed the engineer. “So there is really no problem with neutron contamination or radiation leakage.” He paused a beat. “At least no technical problem.”
Dr. Ramos missed the inference completely. “Good, good. What about the redesign?”
A shrug. “We re still working on it, chief. My guess is that we can reduce the unloaded mass by maybe 10 percent. More if you reduce the biosphere.”
“You people have no sense of urgency,” protested Turi John. “We need to get construction started the day before yesterday!”
“Oh?” A pause, as the engineer called up the PERT chart and studied it for clues. “We can start on the reaction chamber, at any rate. Our modifications there were pretty simple-minded.”
Turi John nodded. “What about the rest of the starship?”
“Come on. Building the reaction chamber will take enough time so that we can finish the redesign on the recoil system. You don’t want the recoil system screwed up, do you?”
Fish got to swim, engineers got to fiddle with the damn design, thought Turi John. “I remember the rule,” he said at last, “Anything you want done will take longer, cost more, and make a bigger mess than you ever thought possible.”
“Yes, indeedy,” agreed the engineer cheerfully. “That’s the rule, all right. Are you so sure you want to make a rush job out of building the starship?”
“Hunh. My charter is I can do anything except spend money without permission. Well, get started on the reaction chamber, then, and see what can be done about the recoil system.”
“We’ll do that, chief. What about the biosphere?”
The biosphere had been the subject of an ongoing series of discussions. “It looks like one hundred people will be too many. Scale it back.”
“We figured on seventy-five as about optimum, chief.”
“So go with seventy-five, then.”
“Yes sir. How are you going to feed them?”
A sigh. “It’ll have to be aquatic, mostly. Which means fish tanks. Design them to hold…” Turi John hesitated. “As long as we’re wishing, we might as well go for what we really, truly want. Let’s call for the basic garden, plus 1,200 tons of water in assorted tanks.”
“All ri-ight! Uh, how are we ever going to get our hands on 1,200 tons of water, chief?”
“The old joke was: If God wanted us to go to the stars, He’d have given us the money. All we need is a little water.”
Five astronomical units distant, the staff of Diomedes Station considered the problem, first on the one hand, then on the other. “We can send the ship’s boat off by remote control,” said Levsky, doubtfully. “With 1,200 tons of water, uh, I mean ice, it would arrive at Lunar Three in about four months.”
“That will be fine for them,” Winslow replied. “But how will we get home, then?”