Specialized “magnoshielded” rocket engines had to be built to cope with the energetic new fuel, but fortunately, meta also had a high heat capacity, so it could be used to cool the exhaust nozzle before being “burned” in the reaction chamber. It wasn’t long before the propulsion engineers had produced a rocket engine that got nearly all of the energy stored in the meta clusters turned into kinetic energy in the rocket exhaust. The exhaust velocities attained thirty kilometers per second, more than six times what could be obtained with the best rocket fuel up to that time, liquid hydrogen burned with liquid oxygen.
Now, instead of an Earth-to-orbit launch vehicle consisting mostly of fuel tank, the new MACDAC heavy lifters were mostly payload, with the meta fuel weighing only one-third the dry vehicle mass. Even Chastity’s Boeing-Mitsubishi interplanetary freighter only required a fuel load equal to the vehicle mass, yet it still made the half-AU opposition run to Mars in less than two months. With that much propulsion margin to play with, any company that could build an airplane could build a launch vehicle or an interplanetary rocket. There were now three space hotels in Earth orbit and a resort on Luna. Soon, there would be a resort on Mars catering to the super-wealthy clientele that wanted to climb the tallest mountain in the solar system—Olympus Mons. Unlike Chastity’s slow freighter, the new Mars cruise liners for these customers would make the trip in ten days.
~ * ~
Three weeks later, Chastity walked into Art’s office. When Art saw her, he felt a pang in his heart.
The only word that properly describes her is “magnificent,“
he thought to himself. She had dark-black curly hair, violet eyes, a sculpted strong-jawed face, and the body of a decathlon gold medalist. Art noticed that only her left hand still had the long, fantastically painted nails and the multitude of rings and bracelets. Her right hand was now bare and short-nailed, ready for its job at the delicate throttle controls of an interplanetary rocket ship.
Seeing the long, artistically painted nails took Art back to the time he had first seen them. It was eight years ago and he had been looking for a wife. He had approached that task with the thoroughness with which he had approached all the other tasks in his life. He was almost finished with law school—at the top of his class, of course. It was time for him to move on to the next phase of his life’s plan. He knew he had good genes and he felt that the world deserved to have them passed on. He had set out to find a woman whose genetic abilities would complement his; someone with mathematical and analytic skills that would go with his social and artistic abilities, someone tall to compensate for his short stature, and someone who was willing to bear four children. Chastity had been only one of the many women Art had sought out and dated. But, on his first date with Chastity, it had been quickly obvious from their initial discussions that her primary goal in life was to fly spacecraft—-and the radiation hazards of spaceflight and pregnancy don’t mix—so instead of pursuing her further, he had introduced her around to his father’s engineering friends at the reception and she had taken it from there.
Art had finally found a wife—a top-rank computer programmer—and he and Blanche were now expecting their fourth child while Blanche easily kept up with her career over the SolNet. He had remained faithful to Blanche all this time, but now he found himself wondering how it would feel to have long fingernails slowly scratching their way lightly down his bare back....
“Hello, Chastity,” said Art. “You’re looking magnificent, as usual.”
“What’s this about a billion-dollar job?” asked Chastity, getting to the point.
“The job will take two-and-a-half years—thirty months—to accomplish. It’s risky, and might cost you your life, so we feel that an appropriate payment for the task is a billion dollars.”
“It must be awfully risky if you’re willing to pay a billion dollars,” said Chastity cautiously. “Is it legal? ... and who is the ‘we’ that you mentioned?”
“I represent a consortium. It includes the governments of many of the spacefaring nations, so the job is definitely legal. It also includes most of the aerospace manufacturers, space transportation companies, and space resort owners. The long-term objective of the consortium is to ensure an ample future supply of low-cost meta. Future growth in the space business depends upon the availability of large amounts of meta at a reasonable price.”
“I was beginning to worry about that myself,” said Chastity.
Without waiting for an invitation, she made herself comfortable in a large chair. “Helium is a pretty scarce element on this planet and I throw a few hundred tons of it away into space every time I light the candle on my freighter.”
“You aren’t the only one that’s worried,” said Art, perching on the end of his desk. “The ‘Save Our Helium League’ is now holding ‘SOHL-saving’ demonstrations at Kagoshima and Baikonur as well as Canaveral. We’re used to handling kooks in America, but the demonstrations are causing political problems in the other countries.”
“Don’t the demonstrators have a point?” asked Chastity.
“Not really,” said Art. “We pump hundreds of millions of tons of natural gas per year from the wells in Texas and the other western states, and depending on the field, as much as seven percent of the gas is helium. With the increased demand for helium to make meta, the gas producers have been adding more helium skimmers to the higher-concentration wells, so we have plenty of helium, even if the SOHL-savers don’t think so. But we still have to turn that helium into meta and haul the meta up into space, which takes more meta to get it there. The consortium is looking at a way of generating an essentially unlimited supply of meta
in
space.”
Chastity looked puzzled, her violet eyes seeming to turn darker under her glossy black eyebrows as she tried to figure out what Art meant. “Helium was named after the Sun, because that’s where the first spectroscopic evidence for it was found,” she said. “But you can’t be meaning to capture the helium in the solar wind, or mine it on Luna. Except for the Sun, where are you going to find significant quantities of helium in space?”
“Saturn.”
“Of course!” said Chastity, annoyed with herself for forgetting about the outer planets. “Although Jupiter’s closer ... What are you planning to use? Scoop-ships? It would be fun to fly one of those.”
“Scoop-ships would scoop mostly hydrogen, with only a few percent of helium,” replied Art. “Nope, what we are planning on doing is taking a meta factory down into Saturn’s atmosphere and floating it there under a raft of balloons. The meta factory will separate out the helium and turn it into meta. Meta-fueled cargo ships will then haul the meta back to the inner solar system. This first mission will establish the feasibility of the concept by having a ship take a pilot-plant version of a meta factory down into Saturn and having the plant make enough fuel for the ship to make its way back. That’s why we’ve chosen Saturn instead of Jupiter; the gravity well of Saturn isn’t as deep, and besides, the gee level in the upper atmosphere is only one Earth gravity, while on Jupiter it’s two-and-a-half gees. You’ll find living on Saturn almost like living on Earth.”
“I haven’t said I’d take the job,” warned Chastity. “Besides, I already have a job ... with TransPlanet.”
“TransPlanet is a member of the consortium. The CEO of TransPlanet was the one who recommended you for the pilot slot on the mission.”
“Pilot!” said Chastity, annoyed. “Who’s commander?”
“Rod Morgan,” said Art. “He’s already accepted the job.”
“Oh...” said Chastity, having to admit to herself that Rod was older and more experienced than she was.
“Why don’t I have him come in and join us?” said Art, pushing a buzzer. “He’s been working with the ship’s engineers for the last three weeks while you’ve been on your way in. He can better answer any technical questions you might have, while I can answer the business and financial ones.”
The door opened and Rod Morgan strode in, dressed in the tailored spaceman’s jumpsuit and soft boots outfit affected by those who piloted TransPlanet ships. He was handsome and blond, with the same height and almost the same muscular build as Chastity, except her chest-circumference measurement involved different lumps from his. When people saw them together at TransPlanet functions, they often remarked what a cute couple they would make ... and they
had
coupled occasionally.
“Hi, Rod,” said Chastity, rising from her chair to give Rod’s hand a strong shake. “The fact that you’re going to be on this mission makes me more willing to consider it—besides the billion bucks, that is. What are we flying?”
“It’s basically the same Boeing-Mitsubishi freighter-lander that you and I have been flying. That’s why we two were at the top of the selection list. Instead of cargo modules, we’ll be carrying more fuel modules, so we can make the interplanetary hop faster and still have enough fuel left to take us down into Saturn. Also, instead of landing struts, we’ll be carrying a balloon.”
“This sounds like a planetary exploration mission,” said Chastity, turning to Art. “How come NASA isn’t doing this?... or ESA... or, if it costs too much for one government, some multigovernment collaborative effort?”
“The reason a consortium has been formed to carry out the mission is to make the mission feasible,” replied Art, launching into a long explanation. “If any one of the national governments were officially in charge, then the very idea of designing a mission with any significant risk to the humans on the crew would not be acceptable. In order to make the mission safe enough, the spacecraft would have to be made so heavy that it couldn’t even lower itself into Saturn, much less carry enough fuel to take off again. By putting the burden—and any blame for failure—on a commercially led consortium, the spacecraft can be pared down in size so it can accomplish the mission. That’s why Space Unlimited was chosen to be responsible for the operational phase of the mission.”
“How risky are we talking?” she asked, blinking nervously.
“The fuel you need to get from Saturn back to Earth is going to be stored in orbit around Saturn,” Art started. “You have to rendezvous with it to get home.”
“Not much risk there,” said Chastity confidently. “Rod and I have to do a rendezvous mission every time we refuel a freighter.”
“You go down with only enough fuel to bring you to a halt under a parachute in the upper atmosphere. The balloon has to deploy and develop lift before the parachute drifts down to the level in the atmosphere where the pressure and temperature become too high for the spacecraft to survive.”
“I won’t ask the odds on that happening,” said Chastity. “I’m sure the parachute and balloon designers will do as good a job as they can. And, taking along a little extra fuel to extend the hovering time will just postpone the inevitable.” She paused and turned to look at Rod.
“Will we fry or be squashed?”
“The walls of the crew quarters will collapse before the inside temperature reaches the protein coagulation point. They were designed that way.”
“Good.” She swallowed heavily and turned back to look levelly at Art. “What else?”
Art paused, not wanting to answer, and looked over to Rod for help.
“We have to make our own meta before we can leave,” replied Rod.
“Suppose something goes wrong with the meta plant?”
“We have to make our own meta before we can leave,” repeated Rod.
“That
is
risky.” Chastity turned to look questioningly at Art. “I know it’s because of the hours-long time delay between Earth and Saturn, that you need humans at Saturn in order to monitor and control the plant. But why aren’t you just dropping the meta plant down into Saturn, and leaving the crew in orbit to run things through telerobots?”
“We priced out that option,” said Art. “In order to cover all possible contingencies that might arise, the telerobot systems for the meta factory and its support facility became so complicated that the total mission costs ballooned to thirty billion. The project was a no-go at that price. Putting humans in for telerobots brought the price of the equipment down to an affordable three billion. That’s why you’ll be getting paid a billion dollars,” explained Art.
“Is each crewmember getting a billion? Or is Rod getting more because of his age and experience?”
“You’re not getting paid for your talent,” said Art. “All the crewmembers are tops in their fields. You’re getting paid for the risk. Same risk—same pay.”
Chastity looked at Rod, who nodded his confirmation. She turned back to Art.
“How many in the crew?”
“Six,” replied Art. “The consortium raised ten billion dollars for the mission—six billion for the crew and three billion for the equipment.”
“Who gets the last billion?” asked Chastity, suspiciously.
The look in Art’s eyes suddenly shifted from friendly to cautious. “Space Unlimited,” he finally answered.
“What!?” exploded Chastity.
“We’re
taking all the risk. Why should you get paid the same amount we are?”
Art knew that Chastity was in no mood to hear explanations of how much Space Unlimited had invested so far in putting this consortium together, and how much his business could potentially lose if the budget went over the ten billion target. A billion was a fair return for the business risk he was undertaking. If the project was successful and meta production started, he could then expect an even higher return, since Space Unlimited owned 5 percent of the consortium shares.