Delta-v, page 34
“Fuck me . . .”
Morra whistled. “Blind luck that it didn’t kill us.”
Chindarkar pointed. “It’s a probe.”
Adisa zoomed the image out and unfroze the video. The object sailed up along the ship’s z-axis, past the solar mast, and then arced back toward Ryugu. It soon disappeared over the upper horizon and the terminator line.
Abarca said, “We can’t have that thing sailing around us again.”
Adisa sat down across from Tighe, tapping at an invisible UI once more. “This makes sense.”
“What makes sense?”
“Its arrival today. Apparently we were not the only ones to take advantage of that once-in-a-century delta-v window that Mr. Joyce mentioned.”
“Then why is it arriving only now?”
Adisa studied invisible screens. “I am looking at various Hohmann transfers from low Earth orbit on the day we left. One of those transfer orbits—in fact, the very lowest delta-v trajectory—would have arrived here at Ryugu two days ago.”
Tighe considered this. “A robotic spacecraft that—thanks to Joyce’s secrecy—has no idea we’re here. If that thing had struck one of the radial arms we would have collapsed like matchsticks. The whole ship would have been lost, and we would be dead.”
Abarca spoke into the comm link. “Priya.”
“Yes, Isabel.”
“Take a mule out. Ade, give Priya a trajectory to follow. We need to find out where that thing went and where it’s liable to go next.”
“Give me a moment.” Adisa started working UIs. In a few seconds he said, “There, Priya. Follow that path.”
Tighe looked up to see that Adisa had opened the camera view of the mule Chindarkar was already remotely piloting. The entire crew could see through its camera eyes. Tighe changed his crystal to VR mode. Now, it was as though he was the mule, sailing out and away from the ship—headed toward the sunlit rim of Ryugu. The screen was almost entirely black except for the terminator line.
Abarca’s voice: “Be careful, Priya. That thing is still flying around.”
The asteroid’s surface approached and then passed beneath the mule. As they crossed to the sunlit side, glare flared momentarily until the software adjusted. Now Tighe could see an ashen boulder field below.
But straight ahead—several kilometers away—was something else: an unfamiliar spacecraft. It was at least 100 meters long—its large solar array unfurled, radio antennas aimed back at Earth, and a dozen spherical tanks running along its underside. Half a dozen smaller craft moved around it.
Jin spoke first. “A mother ship.”
Morra said, “Looks like a whole robotic mining operation.”
Abarca’s voice: “Priya, bring us closer. We’ll need detailed video. Mission control has to identify who sent this.”
Tsukada said, “Why would they buzz us like that? It put their own equipment at risk.”
Chindarkar answered. “Because we’re dealing with an AI. The distance to Earth is too great for human telepresence. That means an AI must be guiding these machines, and we don’t know how dumb it is.”
Chindarkar brought the mule toward the equatorial ridge on the sunlit side of Ryugu. The robotic mother ship was just over 5 kilometers away according to the mule’s lidar.
Morra said, “Looks like they’ve set up shop on the far side.”
Adisa studied the screen. “To keep their solar panels in constant sunlight. It makes sense. Robots can be hardened to the Sun’s radiation.”
Chindarkar ran a 3D scan of the ship and stored the geometry for transmission back to Earth. The mystery vessel had the word “Argo” stenciled in blue letters along its aft panel, and the star-filled logo of Celestial Robotics Corporation.
Morra asked, “Anybody recognize the company?”
Adisa replied again. “CRC is an asteroid-mining company that belongs to Alan Goff—the industrial robotics billionaire.”
Tighe nodded. “So Joyce wasn’t the only Titan with his eye on Ryugu.”
“Try to get us a little closer, Priya.”
The mule edged a kilometer closer to the robotic ship. It looked like the vessel was built in four cylindrical sections—as if it had been launched as multiple payloads on a Burkett or Macy heavy-lift rocket. Each of the modules had panels open to reveal complex plumbing and processing equipment, as well as racks to recharge rugged-looking cylindrical mining robots. These were studded with bug-eye-like camera lenses, robotic limbs, and thruster ports.
Abarca said, “Mission control can contact Goff, and we’ll deconflict this situation.”
“Whoa!”
The view of the mule suddenly lurched.
Chindarkar shouted, “I’ve lost control!”
Suddenly the view shifted, and one of the newly arrived mining robots was up close—its hydraulic limbs gripping one of the robotic arms at the front of the mule.
Abarca called out, “Escape, Priya!”
“I’m trying!”
The mule’s thrusters popped, and the screen jolted around.
A blinding white light pierced the screen, and Tighe pulled off his crystal. “Damn! What the hell was that?”
“Laser. The damn thing’s cutting up the mule.”
Priya’s voice came through on the comm link. “Connection to Mule 3 lost.”
“Goddamnit! That’s a piece of equipment we can’t afford to lose.”
Adisa called out, “Isabel, we have more problems. Look at the radar. A craft is approaching Honey Bee 1.”
Tighe put his crystal back on and took it out of VR mode.
Adisa put up an exterior view of the rim of Ryugu. Two kilometers above the surface, Honey Bee 1 rode a terminator orbit while its optical mining reflectors slowly chewed up a bagged boulder with concentrated sunlight. The silhouette of one of Goff’s mining robots closed the distance to it.
Abarca called out, “Ade, cut that Honey Bee loose from its bag and bring it back to the Konstantin.”
Tighe interjected. “Isabel, it has 10 tons of water ice on board. It’ll barely be able to move.”
“J.T.’s right, Ade, jettison the slush bags. Get that Honey Bee out of there—we can’t afford to lose it.”
Tighe watched the video in disgust as the Honey Bee jettisoned its payload. It then fired its rocket engine, propelling the machine back toward the Konstantin, leaving a month’s worth of work behind.
The rival mining robot quickly latched on to the bags of water ice, nitrogen, and more.
“We left behind the centrifugal sorter. The Archimedes’ screw, the—”
Abarca broke in. “We can build new ones.”
On-screen the Honey Bee appeared to have escaped. Two more rival mining craft were now taking charge of what it left behind.
Tighe looked to Adisa. “Joyce needs to straighten this out or we are in serious trouble. We’ve got a storage yard containing 700 tons of mined resources that isn’t leaving here for another five months. That’s a whole year’s worth of work. Nicole died for it. How long until those things tear into it?”
Abarca’s voice came in over the comm link. “Ade, send that video footage to mission control. And get Gabriel on the line—tell him it’s urgent . . .”
CHAPTER 34
Titans
Lukas Rochat found it difficult to relax during the thirty-minute helicopter flight from Seattle’s Sea-Tac Airport. The last time he’d flown in a helicopter, he’d been unceremoniously tossed out the door with a bungee cord around his ankles, and it had been done on the order of the man sitting next to him—Nathan Joyce.
However, as the black ACH145 executive chopper soared across the Strait of Juan de Fuca and over the forested San Juan archipelago between Vancouver and Seattle, the scenery helped ease his anxiety. In any case, Rochat was nowhere near as anxious as Joyce, who’d sat in brooding silence ever since they boarded his jet back in Colorado.
The helicopter soon descended toward an island Rochat recognized only from magazines—Allan Island, the private home of industrial robotics billionaire Alan R. Goff, chairman and CEO of Celestial Robotics—Catalyst Corporation’s rival and newest neighbor on Ryugu. It was here, at this secluded 292-acre retreat, where they’d scheduled a meeting far from prying eyes.
The chopper alighted on a clearly marked pad in the middle of a manicured lawn surrounded by pine forest. As Joyce and Rochat exited they noticed an autonomous golf cart waiting for them. An LED sign on it scrolled the message: Welcome to Allan Island. Please climb aboard.
Joyce grumbled, “Fucking robots . . .”
As he and Rochat climbed aboard the golf cart, the chopper pilot waved, then lifted off and away, leaving them in relative silence as the electric cart whirred along pleasant asphalt paths into an orderly forest. Birdcalls echoed from the surrounding trees.
Try as he might, Rochat never got used to the capability billionaires had to alter their surroundings. The entire island had been tended to like a giant bonsai tree—not one branch out of place. During their half-mile ride, they saw no human beings. Instead, robotic vehicles rolled past or flitted by on rotors, focused on inscrutable tasks.
In a couple of minutes, the golf cart glided to a stop in front of a postmodern mansion that was all glass walls and Tetris-like slabs of white marble suspended in cunning ways that made them appear to defy gravity. Rochat and Joyce were greeted at the front door by an actual human domestic, a young Southeast Asian woman in a simple blue dress who brought them through cavernous chambers fronted by multistory seamless windows offering an expansive view of the strait. A massive sailboat stood at the dock below, with human workers lovingly polishing its decks and railings.
From there they walked along a terrace large enough to host a rugby match, and finally entered a near-invisible opening in a glass wall.
They now found themselves in the immense corner office of Alan Goff. Two of the exterior walls were crafted of pure glass. A postmodern fireplace occupied the interior corner and somehow managed to project a chill over the room.
Goff stood behind his desk and nodded as the men entered. Standing next to Goff was a woman in her fifties, with perfect silver hair cut in a severe bob. She wore a tailored suit and did not nod in greeting. Goff’s domestic departed, the glass door sealing seamlessly behind her.
Goff gestured. “Gentlemen, please have a seat.” He looked to his companion. “My attorney, Karen Cano.” He glanced at Rochat but spoke to Joyce. “I see you brought your son.”
“Very funny.” Joyce sat down in a black leather and metal chair. “This is my personal attorney, Lukas Rochat.”
“No doubt a wunderkind, like yourself.” Goff sat behind his desk. Cano remained standing.
After some hesitation Rochat decided to sit.
Goff peaked his hands beneath his nose for several moments before speaking. “Nathan, I used to think you were just another bullshitter. Now I realize you really are insanely irresponsible.”
Joyce glared. “I didn’t come here for a lecture, Alan. There are lives at risk.”
“Whose fault is that?”
“You need to reprogram your mining robots to avoid—”
“It’s already done.”
“You’ve made sure there’s no danger to the Konstantin or her crew?”
“No danger from me. I’ve instructed my engineers to revise the operating perimeter of our mining craft. They will remain on the sunlit side of the asteroid—for now.”
Joyce visibly unclenched. “Good. Thank you.”
“There wouldn’t have been any danger to begin with if someone had notified us there were going to be spacecraft at Ryugu.”
Joyce took several moments to answer. “Neither was paperwork submitted concerning any robotic mining missions to Ryugu.”
“That’s because the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg doesn’t own outer space. We’re operating under the US Space Act of 2015. We have a commercial space transportation license from the FAA.”
Joyce scoffed. “The FAA.”
“You did think to check other licensing authorities to ensure your secret—and illegal—activities wouldn’t conflict with other lawful operations, I trust.” Goff didn’t wait for an answer. “No? That is a surprise. But then, you have the world’s youngest attorney to help you keep track of things. I would think he’d have boundless energy.”
Rochat burned with humiliation. He couldn’t believe he had failed to monitor filings at the FAA. Could he even have done that? He didn’t know, and that made him feel all the more out of his depth.
Goff continued. “It’s interesting that you bring up legal filings, because my people have been unable to discover under what lawful instrument you are mining Ryugu. You’ve submitted detailed proposals and permit applications—which were very informative. And yet, your much-publicized mining ship, the Konstantin, has no legal right to exist. Not yet. Nor has it been cleared for human spaceflight—which isn’t surprising, since it looks like something the Wright brothers glued together. Where did you find the poor souls unwise enough to climb aboard it, much less sail it to the far side of the Sun?”
Joyce silently clenched his jaw.
“Not only are you breaking the law, Nathan, you’re putting human lives at risk. It’s unethical. Immoral. It’s—”
Joyce shot up out of his seat. “It’s exploration! Don’t you understand that? Do we not take risks anymore?” He gestured outside. “Is everything going to be done by fucking machines from here on? Why do we even bother to exist, Alan?”
“Sit down, Nathan. I’m not one of your investors or your unfortunate asteroid miners. Your impassioned speeches won’t enthrall me.”
After a moment Joyce sighed and sat back down.
“You probably know that I play poker as a hobby. Professionally. I know when I have a strong hand and when my opponent has a weak one. You, Nathan, have a very weak hand.”
Rochat felt a hot flash of fear spreading through his body. This was how it was going to end. His time in the limelight—over.
Goff leaned back in his office chair. “You sent humans to do a machine’s job. By sending robots, we were able to take a longer, slower trajectory. We reached Ryugu with a total delta-v budget of only 4.97 kilometers per second.”
“I reached it with a delta-v of just 2.6.”
“Bullshit, and you know it. You left out the delta-v necessary to bring 560 metric tons of materials to a lunar DRO to assemble your ship. Your total delta-v from LEO was at least 5.9 kilometers per second.”
Joyce remained silent.
“And what has it gotten you? We’ll exceed your tonnage in a few months. It makes me wonder why you publicized this plan of yours in the first place—suggesting you wanted investors—when you’d already built the ship.”
Joyce muttered, “I needed to design the ship. That process was impossible to keep confidential.”
“Ah, so you announce it so that no one pays any attention—just another harebrained scheme by Nathan Joyce.” Goff paused. “Which was convincing because Catalyst Corporation does not have anything like the resources required to construct and launch the Konstantin. In fact, none of your aerospace ventures do. It looks like you got some sovereign fund money—probably petro-states looking to diversify into the future, willing to bet on the visions of some tech-bro who throws a great party. But I figure that still leaves you, what—about ten or fifteen billion short?” Goff let his words sink in. “I wonder where you got the extra money.”
“What do you want, Alan?”
“You misappropriated resources, Nathan. Fund managers who thought they were investing in telecom or biotech might be surprised to discover that their money has been siphoned off to other uses. I wonder how long until someone discovers your little shell game?” Goff looked at his attorney. “How long was Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme operating? I think it was fifty billion he swindled, wasn’t it?”
“Okay, Alan. I get it. What do you want?”
“So why did you do it? Was it a last-chance Hail Mary pass to erase your liabilities before they swallowed you whole? Was the plan to come roaring back with one last big score? To become a legend?”
“What. Do. You. Want?”
Goff studied Joyce. “I want you to understand that what you did was not clever, or pioneering, or even original. It’s the sort of reckless thing people on the verge of going bankrupt engage in. My engineers have been monitoring your crew’s radio communications at Ryugu. You already have one crew member dead. Does it bother you that your little stunt got someone killed? Those foolhardy people you sent out there are still facing three more years in oblivion—no possibility of rescue even if we sent out a ship for them today. They are all dead. It’s just a matter of time.”
Joyce sat, his hands balled into fists.
“I will grant you this much: you built the first spin-gravity ship, and it appears to work. But how selfish do you have to be to send those people out there while robbing them of the glory for what they’re doing? A hundred and sixty-three million miles from Earth! Farther than any human has ever been. They’ve accomplished more firsts than the Apollo missions, but do you allow them to become the famous pioneers they should be—even as they sacrifice their lives to save your empire of bullshit? No. You do not. Instead you conceal this historic endeavor to save your skin in the hopes you can buy your way out of bankruptcy. You’re pathetic. It’s not the world economy that’s going to collapse, Nathan. It’s your net worth. But then, I guess you are your whole world.”
“Are you finished?”
Goff took a deep, satisfied breath. “I am.”
“What do you want?”
Goff’s attorney whispered in his ear. He listened intently, then looked up. “Forty percent of the net profits of Catalyst Corporation.”
