Some people are fools, thought the admiral, but it can’t be helped. “The rising generation seems to be a little more relaxed about nuclear weapons than we were,” he conceded. “They maybe don’t know as much about them, but they’ll learn.”
“Only a few charismatic and ignorant members of any generation want to use nukes, sir, but if the people are also ignorant, an, uh, excursion might happen inadvertently. Those hundreds of tons of plutonium in all the world’s inventories are a sword of Damocles, hanging over all our heads.” Turi John paused to pull his cuffs clear of his sleeve, displaying gold and jade cuff links in the process. “This is kind of a side issue, really. Nobody ever got in trouble for saying that nuclear weapons were too powerful to be practical.”
“So what did get you in trouble?”
“It was a woman, sir. MadelineTosca put me onto Freeman Dyson and Project Orion.”
Fontaine’s grey eyes blinked as his mind retrieved a long unused file. Ancient history from the dawn of the nuclear age, I do believe. “The nuclear powered spaceship?”
“Yes sir. Eventually, Dyson took the idea as far as it would go. He had a 100,000 ton spaceship using 300,000 hydrogen bombs, half to get up to 10,000 kilometers per second, 3 percent the speed of light; the other half to brake. The thing could go to Alpha Centauri in about 130 years, which is pretty neat, but the really important thing is that it would burn up all the plutonium in the world in a noble cause. So I looked up what I could, and did a little figuring, a little CAD—”
The admiral’s eyebrows went up. “Where did you learn about computer assisted design, Doctor Ramos?”
“In art school, of course. Nobody paints with their hands anymore; it’s all conceptualization and audacious visuals. The theory is to bypass the cerebral cortex entirely, exciting the brainstem—”
“Spare me your theories of aesthetics, Doctor. What got you in trouble?”
“Yes, of course, sir,” replied Turi John, wrenching himself back onto the main track. “Now that particular concept, the one that got me into trouble, the secret meaning of the Orion Starship, is just so great, so aesthetically perfect, that I can hardly tell you! We take all the world’s plutonium, that terrible stuff named after the lord of hell, and we use it to send man and life into heaven! Symbolically, it is the binding of Death into the service of Life, and the ultimate aspiration of our technological civilization and the salvation of mankind from the terrible demon technology has unleashed, and the visuals! Admiral, I did some really fine visuals.”
The man is mad, utterly mad, thought Fontaine resignedly. He is, nevertheless, still connected. “For the Orion uh, starship?”
“Yes.The problem was, when I started talking up my ideas, showing my conceptualizations around, I ran bang-smack into the forces of reaction and ignorance.” Turi John crossed his legs to display a multinational tasseled loafer: Spanish leather, crafted in England to Italian design by Indian workers. “The thing was, back in the dark ages, the US signed onto the Geneva Convention banning the use of nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered spaceships.”
“Uh, banning the use of nuclear weapons in space, I think you mean. Go on.”
“Whatever, sir. Well, the thing was, here was a really great way to get rid of this awful plutonium inventory we’ve accumulated, and the reactions of the people I talked to were really very, very positive about the idea. Then, just as I was about to go public, somebody lowered the boom.”
“Probably the secretary of state,” remarked Fontaine. “Being up to his ass in alligators, he didn’t appreciate you telling him how to drain the damn swamp?”
“Oh no, sir. The secretary was very polite when I told him about what I was doing, but somebody in the State Department wanted me pulled off the team serving with the UNNDC. Professional jealousy, I do believe.”
The secretary of state told you to back off and you didn’t want to hear it, I expect. “Whatever, Doctor Ramos. Look, on a more practical level, you are entitled to your own office and your own secretary. The thing is, right now we don’t have a private office to put you in, nor a spare secretary, either.”
“That’s all right, I don’t mind a little inconvenience, as long as it’s temporary.”
I’ll be out of this place in less than a year, thought Fontaine. “Temporary is the word, young man. For the time being, we’ll give you a desk in Captain Bauman’s section.”
“What sort of horsepower on the desk, sir?”
“All the perks you’d have in your own office, Doctor. Phone, fax, scanner, computer, and coffee maker. You’d like a window, too? We’ll see what the captain has to offer.”
“No copier?”
“Our copying center is just down the hall.”
“Sounds good; what will I be doing?”
Ah, he had to ask. “That will be largely up to you. Your official tide will be something like Space Program Conceptualizer, if that’s any help.”
“Uh, no sir.To tell you the truth, it sounds like drawing up pretty pictures to snow congress.”
A flash of insight from this fop? People do surprise you now and then. “Well, not exactly. Captain Bauman will show you the ropes on this tight little ship of ours.”
Captain Mary Ellen Bauman was a short, stocky brunette with a touch of silver in her close-cropped hair. She was tough as nails and looked it. “What do we do? Well, think about it, Doctor Ramos. What are the only products we can get from space? Information, which the intelligence community has been very, very tight about sharing, and power, beamed down as microwaves.”
A regular Navy type, thought Turi John, uneasily. Terribly good at details, and no imagination, no soul at all. “On Luna they can mine iron with a magnet, I saw them doing it on television.”
“Public television, I expect. Was that the program on building the centrifuge?”
“I think so,” he said, crossing his legs. “Yes, yes, they were doing sand casting, in grooves pressed right onto the surface of the Moon, forming those huge cast iron girders to hold the 100-meter centrifuge together.”
“Which is all very well for the poor bastards sweating out their tour of duty up there. It will make it a lot easier for them to return to Earth.” Captain Bauman studied her new charge, looking for signs that he might be useful but finding nothing obvious or even hopeful. “But there is no way in hell that we are going to be able to deliver a few thousand tons of steel to Detroit or Yokohama. Which leaves beaming down microwaves.”
“But you could deliver thousands of tons of steel into lunar orbit, couldn’t you?”
A sigh. “In principal, yes, Doctor Ramos. There is, alas, no demand for steel in lunar orbit.”
“Not even for building power plants so as to beam power down to Yokohama and places like that?”
She shook her head. “Unfortunately, the answer is no. We’ve done a feasibility study, constructing the tiny pilot plant that’s beaming power down to Luna Station, but that was all she wrote.”
“Why aren’t you going forward?” asked Turi John.
“Politics. Power is in surplus right now, what with all the wind farms and pv panels coming on line, with I don’t know how many cogeneration plants upping the efficiency of our existing facilities. The vested interests don’t want to disrupt the status quo, and nobody wants to spend billions and billions now to save a penny or two per kilowatt-hour later.”
Wasn’t there something he’d read, somewhere? “Couldn’t you dedicate that extra power for making fresh water from the sea?”
“What, you watch PBS on a regular basis? I vetted the script for that program, and saw to it that they didn’t make the case against the idea.”