“No argument with that. Simple solutions usually beat any others.” Regulo again tapped his own pile of papers. “I thought just as you did. No point in making it hard if you can make it easy. All right, what’s your other problem? So far we seem to be doing well.”
“Materials.” Rob pulled a single sheet of calculations from his notes. “We need a few billion tons of silicon and metals, and we need it close to the L-4 location where we’ll be doing the main construction. Where will we get it? I’m relying on you for an answer, because obviously it can’t come from Earth. An asteroid, of course, and we move it to where we want it. But which asteroid?”
“Fair enough.” Regulo reached over the desk and took the sheet from Rob’s hands. After studying it for a few moments he turned to the control panel by the side of the desk, and began to touch a pad there.
“How much did Cornelia tell you about the computer system here on Atlantis?” he asked.
“Nothing at all.” Rob thought of Corrie’s mysterious comment on the way out. “Unless Caliban is your computer?”
“Caliban!” Regulo raised his bushy white eyebrows. “Now, there’s a wild idea. Though when I sit here and think about it, perhaps it’s less wild than it sounds.” He laughed. “No, Caliban isn’t the computer. You’ll meet Caliban later. The computer is called Sycorax — that’s Joseph Morel’s damn fool name for it, by the way, not my choosing. But don’t let me get started on that. About forty years ago I decided that anybody who wanted to be a really good engineer ought to have the best computer system that money could buy. I still hold the same view, and I’ve been building the computer capacity that I control from here ever since. I moved the central processor to Atlantis twenty years ago, and there are satellite data banks and peripheral processors in a lot of other places — on Earth, on the Moon, in the Belt, and out on the satellite mining operations in the Jupiter and Saturn systems. But I still don’t like computers; which is why I give Joseph a free hand to do what he wants with them, and call them whatever fool names he chooses.”
As Regulo was speaking, a long table of data outputs had begun to appear on a big display screen at the side of the room. Regulo stared at it for a moment, then he keyed in more control words and the table rapidly began to change.
“These are outputs from Sycorax,” he said. “Don’t ask me where the data bank is stored. All I can tell you is that it must be somewhere on Atlantis, or the response time would be a lot longer. The records that we access most often are stored here, the rest are spotted about all over the System. Do you recognize this table?”
Rob glanced at it for a few seconds. “It seems like a list of the biggest asteroids. I don’t know what the other values are — diameters and orbital elements, maybe?”
“That’s the first set of entries. Did Cornelia tell you where I made my first money? I started out by mining the asteroids, and Regulo Enterprises is still doing it. You can’t make any money at that game unless you have good information — I learned that fifty years ago, from the first partner I ever had. Sycorax holds records on every known body in the Solar System. Of course, there are things out in the Halo that we haven’t managed to tag yet, but we’re not after those today, anyway. These data files have orbital elements, size, composition and a current position that is continuously recomputed. We can also list the mining costs for each asteroid, and the value of materials delivered to any chosen destination in the System. To stay ahead in this business, you need two things: better information than other people, and a willingness to settle for small percentage profits. How accurate do you think those figures are on the sheet you gave me?”
Rob was watching in admiration as the complex display unfolded on the screen before them. It was his sort of data bank. “Those are my first calculations, so I wouldn’t trust them to better than twenty percent. We should go for the high end of the range — let’s say we’ll need three billion tons of silicon, and about the same amount of metals. We can make do with a lot of variability in the metals’ mix, so long as we have a fair amount of iron and carbon in there.”
“That’s good enough.” Regulo was busy at the terminal, entering the specifications. “Now let’s see what Sycorax can come up with. It may take a minute or two. The files are still stored in the old way, carbonaceous, silicaceous, metal-rich and mixed composition. We want a mixture, and a particular one, so there has to be a good deal of sorting. I’ve also asked for a lowest cost delivery to L-4, so we won’t get too many things to choose from. We might as well do the mining there, rather than out in the Belt.”
He leaned back. “Speaking of mining, I’m still very interested in having a version of the Spider that can handle high-temperature materials. Did you take that idea any further?”
“Yes. It’s easy enough to do. But you haven’t told me why you want to do it.”
Regulo looked at him slyly. “Just another little idea I’ve been having. You know how we mine the asteroids, do you? We still dig holes in them, like weevils going at a lump of ship’s hard tack. I don’t like that, and I’m looking for alternatives. What would you charge to let me have the use of another Spider on something else for a couple of years?”
“Five percent of project revenues.”
“Net?”
“Gross. You see, I’m learning from you. But I wouldn’t lease one to you at all unless I could be sure that somebody competent would be working with it.”
“How about Sala Keino?”
“Does he work for you?” Rob looked puzzled. “Regulo, he knows more about big space structures than I could learn in ten years. Why isn’t he doing the beanstalk for you? I mean, I want to work on it, but he’s the one with the experience.”
“Not with the use of the Spider — and not with construction work down on Earth. I’m convinced that those are the two most important elements of the operation, the extrusion of the cables and the tether. Don’t you worry about Keino, he’ll be doing something else for me. I told you I want to develop a better mining method for the asteroids, and he’ll be busy with that. All right, let’s finish this off. What do we have?”
On the screen, the flickering display had settled down to show a single short table. Five objects were listed.
“Any one of those ought to do us,” Regulo went on. “There doesn’t seem to be much to choose between them. They’re all a couple of kilometers across, all with a reasonable mixture of silicon, metals and carbon, and they all have enough volatiles for transfer. I own mining rights to all five, and I don’t see any problem getting any one of them into Earth orbit. Don’t you worry about how they’ll get there, either — that’s one thing I’ve had a whole lot of experience with.”
He reached across and turned off the display. “Any other major problems that we should talk about now? If not, I suggest we get down to details. We need to go over your notes and mine, and see if there are any discrepancies. There are bound to be minor differences, but I must say I’m amazed that we agree as well as we do so far.”
Regulo leaned forward and picked up his sheaf of papers. He was silent for a few seconds staring down at them. His next question was one that came as a complete surprise to Rob, whose mind was still on the beanstalk design.
“Not planning any permanent bonds, are you, Merlin? Back on Earth, I mean.”
“As it happens, I’m not,” said Rob, after a few moments of confusion. “Though I must say I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”