Troy Rising 1 - Live Free or Die (13 page)

“We can keep heat on it longer.” Dr. Nathan Houseley said. The metallurgist was a
necessity. There
were
no experts at orbital mining per se. Tall and spare he had a bit of the look of a
vulture. “Although the asteroid is currently well within the orbit of Venus, the degree of
thermal coefficient necessary for successful melting of the entire, assuming any
significant quantity of nickel iron in its composition, is one point six times ten to the
sixteenth joules. Given that the current output of the Very Large array is only eight
point six time ten to the
sixth
joules per second, even factoring for the projected rate of increase, subtracting
anticipated heat dissipation, it will require some six months to observe noticeable
heating much less melting of the material. To achieve even that degree of efficiency will
require solid and continuous transfer which requires a low rotational period to prevent
convection transfer.”

And a bit of a tendency to go on.

“Which means?” Tyler asked.

“If it rotates fast it cools off fast,” Dr. Bell said. “Also will increase material
spalling, probably, and create a cloud of material around the object that will reduce the
quality of the beam.”

“And we've got take in five, four...” Dr. Foster said.

The screen suddenly flashed up a picture of what was clearly an asteroid rotating slowly
in space.

“Oh, beautiful image,” Dr. Foster said. “Where's our beam?”

“Impact in two, one...” one of the technicians said. “Beam on.”

“I... don't see any difference,” Tyler said. As far as he could see it was still an
asteroid rotating in space. “I was expecting an asteroid shattering kaboom.”

“We don't actually want an asteroid shattering kaboom,” Dr. Bell said in a distracted
tone. “That would cause spalling. See previous explanation.”

“I'm an impatient person,” Tyler said.

“Get used to waiting,” Dr. Foster said. “Do we have spectro, yet?”

“Be about three minutes,” Dr. Bell said. “Fortunately, with this hypernode thingy, we
don't have light-speed lag or it would be... about seven minutes.”

“I hate waiting,” Tyler said. “What is spectro?”

“Spectroscopic analysis...” Dr. Houseley said.

Tyler held up a hand.

“What is spectro in this context, Dr.
Foster
?”

“The beam is putting some heat on target,” Foster said, grinning. “That is going to burn
some material which is going to tell us what the outer composition is.”

“Thank you.”

“Which as expected is, using a
very
unscientific term for our visitor, dust,” Dr. Bell said. “Undifferentiated gathered
materials. Primarily silica. Some aluminum and titanium. Lots of hydrogen, water and
oxygen as expected.”

“So it's a sand ball?” Tyler said, grimacing. “A sort of wet sandball? Guys, not to be
unscientific or anything, but this is costing me out the butt. I'd really like something
other than a ball of sand.”

“That is the outer shell,” Dr. Foster said. “And as noted, as expected. Okay, since you
threw us into this and told us to take it and run, we never had the basic briefing.
Asteroids one oh one.”

“I hate lectures nearly as much,” Tyler said. “But I guess this is important. Don't,
please, go into the whole 'there's no such thing as asteroids.' That's an asteroid. For
the purpose of
this
company and its nomenclature, an asteroid is something that is mostly rock or at least
stuff like rock such as metal and carbon. A comet is something that is mostly ice meaning
solid water, ammonia, etcetera. All the planetules and planetesmals and all the rest seems
to be people having to publish or perish and not having a good idea. 'Wow! I'll come up
with a stupid name for stuff that's already got names!' And Pluto is a
planet
, damnit! Asteroid. Rocky thing. Comet. Icy thing.
Nine
planets. How damned hard does it have to
be
!”

“Been trying to do research on our own, have we?” Dr. Foster said with a grin.

“I hate trying to play catch up, too,” Tyler admitted. “And most asteroids are, sorry Dr.
Bell, rock. That is low metallic content, silica, etc. Some are highly carbonaceous. Got
bunch a carbon. Can't we just call those carbon asteroids?”

“You're the boss,” Dr. Foster said. “But most asteroids aren't one thing or another.”

“I thought conglomerates were rare?”

“By the 'I need to publish' definition of conglomerates,” Dr. Foster said. “But what
happened was... You know how they were originally formed?”

“Left over planet junk,” Tyler said. “Especially the asteroid belt.”

“Good enough for a C,” Dr. Foster said. "Most of what you define as asteroids probably
started in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Some of them are, and I grimace as
I say it this way, comets that all the junk boiled off and left behind rock.

“The asteroid belt is, probably, a planet that either didn't quite form or sort of formed
and then got pulled apart by tidal forces from Jupiter. But with all those rocks drifting
around they were bound to collide. When they collided they broke up. Then there were
smaller rocks. Which drifted back together and in some cases fused over time. In other
cases, true conglomerates, they haven't quite fused together so they are obviously
conglomerate. In addition to rocks, using your nomenclature, there was a lot of stuff,
dust if you will, thrown off. Which also drifted onto whatever had microgravity. So you
have rocks covered in dust of varying size which then ground together producing more dust
and fusing together into the asteroids we're looking at. The whole process continuously
going on along with them hitting various planets, which are for scientific definitions
just really big asteroids, and sometimes hitting hard enough to throw dust out of the
planetary gravity field to add to the mess for fifteen billion years give or take a
billion.”

“Of which we are now the official cleaner-uppers,” Tyler said.

“And absolutely damned by the scientific community,” Dr. Bell said, peering at a computer
screen. “What my fellow minor planetary object experts have to say about my current job is
unprintable. I've had death threats.”

“They're just sorry they're not getting paid as much as you,” Tyler said. “Okay, when I
was doing my very fast and dirty research I noticed that there weren't very many good
pictures of these things. What's up with the high-gain color semi-real-time video?”

“We're using the VLA,” Dr. Bell said.

“I thought the purpose of
my
VLA was to melt asteroids?” Tyler said. “Thus, hopefully, eventually making enough money
to keep this lash-up going. Or at least defray the costs. Not that I don't love pure
science for pure science's sake. By the way, Dr. Bell, if you'll come up with a list of
particularly vocal critics I'll be glad to gag them with some money. Basic research into
these things is actually a wise investment.”

“I'll send you an e-mail,” Dr. Bell said. “But we have to look at what we're doing. We
currently have forty-two VLA mirrors and two collectors up. We're using seven of the
primary mirrors and one collector for take. The VLA mirrors are angled to reflect the view
of the object to the collector. The collector is pointed at a camera. We had to buy the
camera, by the way.”

“It was originally purposed for a satellite,” Dr. Foster said. “The company went bust when
one of their others was zapped by our Horvath friends. It was cheap. Comparatively.”

“Over or under a mil?” Tyler said. “Never mind. I get it. Any chance of using it for
general astronomical research? As I understand it, the VLA is a great telescope.
Potentially.”

“I thought you wanted to heat up asteroids?” Dr. Foster said. “It would make a
great
telescope. Even with the relatively low quality of the VLA mirrors, the final take would
be
awesome
. Right now we've got thirty-three hundred square meters of space mirror. That's the
equivalent of about nine hundred Hubbles. Cut that by maybe ten percent for the quality
and you're still talking about the most powerful telescope ever created. One of the
bitches we're getting is that we're using all this scope power for, sorry, industrial
purposes.”

“Which, in time, is going to pay for one hell of a scope,” Tyler said. “We getting
anything but dust?”

“This is going to take time,” Dr. Bell said, patiently.

“I'm still unsure about the entire exercise,” Dr. Houseley said. “We can heat the
material, but we can't
form
it. And how, exactly, are we going to get it to earth based industry?”

“One thing at a time,” Tyler said. “First we have to develop the basic techniques. Not to
mention find an asteroid that's not just a ball of sand.”

“Still no real clue what it is,” Dr. Bell said. “It's more than sand, though. Getting some
definite carbon readings.”

“Unless it's hydrocarbon doesn't do me much good,” Tyler said. “As to Dr. Houseley's
question. Assume a more or less consistent nickel iron asteroid.”

“Good luck,” Dr. Foster said. “But I'll accept your assumption for the purposes of
discussion.”

“Thank you so much, Dr. Foster,” Tyler said, grinning. “The Transvaal formations are from
a nickel iron asteroid as are the Sudbury complexes.”

“I'm an expert in nickel mining, sir,” Dr. Houseley said, irritably. “I'm aware of that.”

“You're also a metallurgist and know that neither composition is pure nickel iron. But
have you thought about the actual method of their formation? A ball of nickel iron and...
other stuff...”

“Conglomerate,” Dr. Foster said.

“Came screaming in through the atmosphere. It was heated. The more volatile material was
mostly burned off on reentry. What was left was the high melting temperature materials.
Nickel. Iron. Platinum group. Etcetera.”

“Accepted,” Dr. Houseley said.

“What we are doing is a replica of that,” Tyler said. “Sort of. The asteroid is spinning.
As it heats the lowest volatility material will... What was that term, Dr. Foster?”

“Sublimate, mostly.”

“Basically, it will burn off. And spall as Dr. Bell put it. Chunks will be blown out by
the low volatile material beneath. The removal of the low volatiles, the higher portions
of the periodic table in general, will permit contraction of the high melting, generally
denser, materials. With the rotation what
should
be formed in time is a compact ball of metal. As it heats more, the lowest melting point
materials will creep to the outside.”

“I see,” Dr. Houseley said. “Centripetal thermal smelting.”

“Exactly,” Tyler said. “By the time it's heated up enough to be worth pulling stuff off, I
should have some Glatun space bots here to do the pulling. Then, a bit like pulling taffy,
we'll start pulling off the valuable materials. The main thing I'm actually worried about
is losing the copper and tin with the silica.”

“Speaking of which,” Dr. Bell said. “Just got a hit of selenium. There is tin in it. Was.
Well, it's still probably orbiting but as finely divided powder and gases. Ditto aluminum
now. I think I know what this thing is made of.”

“What?” Dr. Foster asked, craning over his shoulder.

“Bloody damned everything,” Dr. Bell said. “We're starting to run the periodic table here.
It really
is
a conglomerate. It's mostly low volatiles so far, obviously. As D... Mr. Tyler just
pointed out, the melting point of silica and copper, which just turned up, isn't that
different.”

“Yeah,” Tyler said with a sigh. “I was afraid of losing all the low volatiles.”

“Fear not,” Dr. Bell said. “Based on what we're getting so far and the overall recorded
mass, it's a conglomerate that's about seventy-five percent mixed low-densities by weight.”

“That's not too great,” Tyler said.

“It's going to make a
great
paper,” Dr. Bell said, excitedly. “ 'Minor planet composition determination by solar
pumped spectroscopy' has a nice ring don't you think?”

“I'm not doing this to keep your professional reputation intact,” Tyler said. “Does this
thing have any significant amount of useable metals?”

“Not really,” Dr. Bell said. “I mean, it's got metal. But not a lot. I think we need a
better asteroid.”

“Hell. Well, on that note, I'm going to be late for a meeting.”

***

“Mr. Vernon, it's a pleasure to meet you at last.”

“And I you, Mr. President,” Tyler said, taking the indicated seat. Sitting in the Oval
Office was a long way from cutting logs.

“I understand you are not a fan, though,” the President said, giving Tyler a charming grin.

“You're the President of the United States,” Tyler said. “I am what could be considered
the loyal opposition. I dislike your policies but that doesn't mean I don't recognize that
you are the President with all that entails. Including automatic loyalty to the position
within the constraints of being a citizen.”

“I believe the term that my staff came up with was 'Communist, terrorist-loving
danger-to-the-Republic with delusions of grandeur.'”

“Well, I'll admit I didn't vote for you,” Tyler said. “But the choices were pretty sparse
on the ground, period. I take it this is not a test of my loyalty to you as a person as
opposed to as our Chief Executive. Because if so, we might as well withdraw to corners and
start the count.”

“Not at all,” the President said. “But you have to admit you do seem to keep putting your
foot into messes.”

“I prefer to think of it as giving my government bargaining chips,” Tyler said. “We now
have regular... ish trade with the Glatun. We have something resembling a balance of
trade. One that is so far very favorable to the world and this nation in particular.”

“The Horvath are now demanding all of our, mostly your, maple syrup,” the President said.
“And now you've discovered something that has their appetite even more whetted. Whereas it
may all be fun and games for you, Mr. Vernon, I am President of this entire nation. If the
Horvath start destroying our cities it will not be Tyler Vernon that will have to comfort
the grieving.”