“We’ll be flying the beanstalk in from L-4 right about then.” Rob was watching the bright stream of metal as it squirted from the spinneret. Was it his imagination, or had the asteroid already shrunk enough to see a difference? “Once it’s in orbit around Earth, we’ll be locked into the landing and tether schedule. If you can have a ship ready for me, I can be here again either before or after we land the beanstalk.”
“Come here first. We’ll do Lutetia, then you fly back and take care of the beanstalk. Tight timing, but it will work.” Regulo was frowning. “Pity about the damned flight regulations. If they’d let me put a decent drive on some of the ships, I could halve your transit time. About a year ago I had Cornelia explore some financials for me. Did you know that half our resources are tied up all the time, just sitting and waiting for materials to get where we need them in the System? I’m not talking transportation costs, either. I’m talking about the effects of delays on budgets.”
Rob shrugged. “I don’t like the time it takes to travel around the System any better than you do, but we’re stuck with it.” Regulo was chewing on an old and familiar problem, and one where Rob could see little chance of changing the rules. His time would be better spent examining the changes they would need for the Spider.
“Trips out to the Belt aren’t too bad if you have plenty of work to keep you busy,” Rob went on. “You can’t buck the laws of dynamics. Unless you can come up with a matter transmitter, we’re stuck with transit times to match the drives. Your only other hope is the General Coordinators. Get them to change the laws on maximum permissible drive accelerations, and you’ll be able to cut the transits.”
It seemed to Rob like an unproductive conversation. He pulled a sketchpad input sheet towards him and began to draw in the schematic for the Spider’s extrusion process. He wanted to begin looking at the design modifications. Regulo regarded the younger man with a paternal eye.
“I’m not a theoretician,” Regulo said. “You won’t find a matter transmitter design inside my head. The only solutions I know how to offer are based on things we already understand — strength of materials, simple dynamics, and engineering design. Let me take a look at your drawing there. I still want to know more about the Spider, even if you hold all the trade secrets.”
Rob moved the sketchpad so that Regulo could see his work. There was a long silence, while Rob sketched in changes to the nozzle profile. While Darius Regulo looked on, the screen before the two men showed the steady shrinking of the molten asteroid as it was consumed by the mining operation.
The old man’s expressions were never easy to read, in a countenance so transformed by disease. All the same, there was something in his eyes that few people would ever see. It was a gleam of self-satisfaction and secret pleasure.
CHAPTER 14: Goblin Mystery
“Look, Howard, there’s no way that I can get down there before the fly-in from L-4. That’s only twenty days away, and we’re on a round-the-clock schedule. Can’t you tell me the highlights now, and save the rest?”
Rob Merlin’s image on the screen was disturbing. Howard Anson adjusted the magnification and looked closely at the enlarged picture. There was no doubt about it. Rob showed all the signs of severe strain. His eyes were black-pouched and deep in their sockets, and his face was paler and thinner than ever. Anson wondered how close to the limit Rob had been driving himself.
“You still have twenty days, Rob,” he said. “That’s a long time, and you’ll never have the beanstalk ready for descent if you work yourself to death first. Can’t you find somebody else to pick up some of the effort?”
“Not at this stage.” Rob gave a grim smile. “I’ve been through all this before on the bridge construction jobs. You can delegate the mechanics but not the responsibility. Don’t worry, I’ll last out. If only I could get my mind off those damned Goblins, the rest of the work would be a lot easier to take. I’ve had new ideas about them. After the beanstalk is landed and tethered I’d like to have another session with you. I want to be sure that I’m not inventing something where there’s really nothing, or making a theory that’s contradicting known facts. I wish now that I’d done more last time I was out on Atlantis.”
“No.” Anson shook his head firmly. He was sitting at a long desk in his Information Service office, a great pile of papers stacked untidily in front of him. “I’ve checked further on Morel. You took too many risks as it is. He could have found ten ways to kill you, and from the sound of it he’d do it if he had a strong enough reason to. The records all show that he’s super-logical, and the things that he wants to do are always more important than anything else. You did well to get away with that trip in the aquasphere, but when you go there again you need to be better prepared.”
“I plan to be. Look, I’ll be on Atlantis again in less than a week, then straight back to Earth for the beanstalk landing and tether. I’ve sent you a list of equipment that I’ll want to take with me on the ship going out.”
“Wait until you’ve heard what I have to say, Rob. Then your plans may change. That’s the whole reason why I called you. We’ve found new evidence of Goblins.”
“What! More than the two you told me about?” Rob in his excitement leaned closer to the screen, so that the image of his intent face filled the whole wall display in Anson’s office. His eyes were alert, but everything else about his appearance suggested a man who had spent no time on personal care for many weeks. “When was it? A long time ago? Was it back when my parents were killed?”
“Stop right there.” Anson held up a well-manicured hand. “You’re asking four questions at once. Let me play you what I have, then you can ask questions. Get ready to record. This is audio only, but video wouldn’t add a thing.”
“Just a minute.” Rob cut in a data storage unit. The beanstalk control station, one of a dozen scattered between L-4 and synchronous orbit, permitted line-of-sight communications with Anson’s office back on Earth. To men who had been talking to each other with many seconds of round-trip delay, the fraction of a second that they were now experiencing was a pleasant luxury. Anson waited for the control check that would indicate that he could transmit straight to the recording mode.
“It’s not old information,” he said. “In fact, we almost missed it because it’s too new. We’ve been screening reports that mostly go back over twenty years. Then last week one of my people turned one up that’s only two weeks old. He got it from a `Can You Believe It?’ spot on a Tycho Base news station — just about the last place in the System that I’d have thought of looking. I was going to ignore it until I got to the physical descriptions, then I changed my mind and took a closer look. All right, get ready to record.”
“Well, it seems that the Little People are with us again, folks. At least, they are if you’re willing to believe Lenny Pascal.”
Anson held up his hand. “I’m holding the playback for a second, Rob. I’m used to the `Can You Believe It?’ spot, but if you don’t know it I ought to warn you. The news style is so cute you’ll probably throw up when you hear it. But I thought you ought to hear it word for word. Just ignore the form and settle for the content. All right? Then back to the recording.”