3rd World Products, Book 17 (7 page)

Lori did so and I waited as she read the info. After a time, she asked, “What am I missing? Hydrazine
is
toxic. It causes cancer.”

“Yeah, but its flash point is fifty-two centigrade. That’s about one-twenty-six Fahrenheit. Its autoignition temp is about the same as gasoline, so how the hell would it survive reentry temperatures? They didn’t fool anybody. They were showing the Chinese the US could shoot down satellites, too.”

“Too?”

“Yup. The Chinese made a big show of shooting one of theirs in 2007. Can’t say they actually shot it ‘down’ because all they did was blow it apart and create about two thousand chunks of space crap. The US actually shot USA-193
down
in 2008.”

As Lori seemed to mull the matter, I headed for the kitchen. She soon followed, and as I rinsed my mug and made a fresh coffee, she asked, “So what’s the deal with Marie?”

I shrugged. “She says she wants a board.”

Canting her head and studying me, Lori asked, “But you don’t believe that’s all she wants?”

“I don’t have to believe it. I also don’t have to cooperate if she wants anything else.”

“Why invite me along?”

“Why not? Got something better to do?”

Lori grinned and chuckled, “Not good enough.”

Capping my mug, I sipped and turned to face her. “Okay. She’s living with Tanya and they’re working with Steph’s law firm, so the board isn’t an unreasonable request. But Lori, she’s someone I didn’t like way back when and have no reason to believe we’ll get along any better now. Having company along might make her cautious.”

With a grin, Lori asked, “Meeting Marie really bugs you, doesn’t it? Why? Did you have the hots for her?”

Putting up a screen with a picture of Marie in her twenties, I said, “Oh, hell, yes. We all did. But she turned into a shrew when she didn’t get her way. Planning an op was more trouble than the op itself. And we almost came to blows a few times. The last time she got in my face, I told Linda not to team us up again.”

In a skeptical tone, Lori asked, “You ‘told’ her? You didn’t ‘ask’?”

“I
told
her, ma’am. Ask her about that day.”

Lori laughed, “Oh, I
will!
” Laughing again, she said, “Okay, I’ll come along and protect you from Marie. I have to meet this chick!”

She headed back into the den with another chuckle. I took my new coffee out back and gave some thought to how things might go with Marie. At least she didn’t hate me anymore about Mike’s death, but there was still the likelihood of a strong personality clash.

In a discussion with Connie, I’d once compared dealing with Marie to dealing with a gorilla. If she didn’t see you as an authority of some sort, your opinions and thoughts were of little interest to her.

Unless she’d changed greatly, I’d be a teacher until she thought she had a handle on flying the board. Ten seconds later, I might no longer be of any use to her. The only thing that might complicate that for her might be her sense of ‘owing’ me for my previous help. But I wouldn’t bank on that.

Hm. Nor did I have any reason to bank on that. Maybe I was overthinking things a bit. Just sell her the board, train her a bit, and get the hell away from her. Let Steph and Tanya deal with her.

Calling up a screen, I checked email and group messages, then went to Reuters.com for news. Yammer. Politics. Jabber. Wars. Blather. Celebrity BS. Then I saw a corner pic of what appeared to be the Earth surrounded by hundreds of dots. The caption spoke of space debris. I tapped the pic and read the article.

Upshot: way too much junk in Low Earth Orbit. Everything from paint chips and lost tool bags to satellites the size of big trucks whizzing around at over 17,000 miles per hour. One NASA article read:

“
More than 21,000 orbital debris larger than 10 cm are known to exist. The estimated population of particles between 1 and 10 cm in diameter is approximately 500,000. The number of particles smaller than 1 cm exceeds 100 million.
”

Hm. Since they can’t track anything smaller than 2 cm, somebody was doing some heavy guessing. Still, that’s a bunch to worry about in a space suit. A paint chip could take out a shuttle window. Maybe it was time to take over where Steph had left off. Back in her flitter pilot days, one of her hobbies had been zapping orbital junk.

Tapping into NASA’s computers gave me their tracking data. Sending an observation probe upstairs verified some of the data. Good enough for a start. Now what? Just set up a field to intercept things? No. There were tons of the stuff and it was too widespread. Maybe go up there and… do what? Even the fastest flitter design couldn’t match orbital speeds. Close, but not quite.

And there was no reason to go up there in person. I could use Ed2. But again, to do what? Reroute individual bits so they’d hit the atmosphere? That might be entertaining for a while, but it would undoubtedly become boring as hell fairly quickly.

Maybe reroute stuff to collide as gently as possible in a high orbit? Form a big ball of junk instead of innumerable tiny bits of junk? And then maybe melt it all together. And hollow it out to make some kind of a space station. For what purpose? Just to keep busy?

But the idea wouldn’t go away. I could separate metals. Use the softer stuff on the outside to ablate impacts. Blow the whole mess up like a balloon and shape it to spin decently. That would provide faux-gravity for anyone inside it later. Wouldn’t have to be a work of art; the new tenants could fix it up however they wanted.

I pinged Athena and asked if she’d help with the math involved with safely moving things to form a ball at six hundred miles. She agreed, but suggested an elliptical orbit of between five hundred miles and twenty-five thousand miles for convenience.

“Twenty-five thousand doesn’t sound very convenient, ma’am.”

“It will be easier to collect debris safely.”

It would? Hm. Yeah, probably, if she thought so.

“Good enough, then. Mind if I kibitz while you work? I might actually learn something.”

Athena laughed, then said, “I’m sure you will.”

We began the effort with a small defunct satellite. I made a vid probe hover near the satellite while Athena used a bright, super-heated field to vaporize a tiny spot on the surface. A tiny hole formed and I could see more vapor jetting out of the hole. The entire event lasted less than fifteen seconds and the satellite didn’t seem at all affected.

Calling up a screen, I monitored data regarding the satellite and sure enough, it was inching upward from its former path. Twenty seconds later it had only gained eight feet of altitude.

Softly clearing my throat, I asked, “Um… excuse me, Athena, ma’am, but will I live long enough to see all this junk come together?”

Athena laughed again. “Keep watching. I’m working on another one.”

On my screen, the satellite began closing in on another satellite about the same size. Two minutes or so later, the two objects met gently and a bright flash occurred between them. Athena had welded them together.

Fifteen minutes later she had five good-sized objects in the clump. I suggested we add USA-281 to the pile. Athena set it in motion, then gave the clump a propulsion burn that lasted two full minutes.

She said, “Their joining will become the nucleus of our mass. It’s large enough to survive impacts by much smaller objects, each of which will add to the mass and alter its course slightly. Other objects will be sent to join it in a manner that will further adjust its course until it achieves our desired orbit. Have you considered how you’ll explain this orbital activity?”

“You’re presuming anyone will think I had something to do with it?”

She smiled. “Oh, yes. Eventually. Almost definitely.”

Hm. Yeah, could be. I said, “Nope. I hadn’t really intended to explain anything. If we just made a big ball of junk and left it out there, they’d go check it out sooner or later.”

“Yes, I suppose they would.”

When I asked what I’d need to work on the project on my own, Athena modified my data with time and applied force info. After making sure it all made sense to me, I set a few small items in motion with small burns of my own. Some would intersect the nucleus in minutes, some in hours, and a few would take days or weeks.

I became aware that Lori was approaching the table. She stood looking at me for a moment, then sat down and asked, “Is something going on?”

Did I want to bring her in on this? Any reason not to? Not really, and she might have some good ideas for the stuff. Putting up a screen, I showed her what we’d been doing. Lori instantly asked to be involved. Athena showed her the ropes and Lori happily altered the courses of several objects in short order.

She grinningly gushed, “This is a
great
idea! What’s it going to be? A kind of tree house? A super secret sanctuary?”

I said, “I doubt it’ll be secret very long. Your USA-281 is in that pile somewhere. Seems likely some people have already noticed things moving unusually up there.”

“Okay, but what are you going to do with it?”

“We were thinking it could become a space lab or something.”

Her eyes refocused and aimed at me. “A lab? For what? Why do you need a lab?”

“Not for me. For NASA and other spacy outfits.”

“I thought you were building it for yourself.”

“Don’t know why. What would I do with it?”

Her gaze narrowed. “Then why build it at all?”

“To clean up near-Earth space. It was getting kind of cluttered up there. Why all the surprise, ma’am?”

“I… well, I don’t know, exactly. I guess I’m just surprised that you’d give a damn about near-Earth space.”

Mustering a fisheye and an arch tone, I replied, “Obviously. Your abysmally low opinion of me has been duly noted.”

“Oh, come on, dammit, that’s not what I meant and you know it. It’s just that you’ve never once said anything about junk in space before. Why this and why now, all of a sudden?”

Shrugging, I said, “I saw something about space junk in the news. It seemed like a good idea. How many reasons do I need?” Sipping my coffee, I added, “And feel free to take over the project if you think you can find a better use for it.”

Lori eyed me for a moment, then said, “No, I guess I can’t think of a  better use. I also can’t think of how we’d get up to it. But I do still think it’s odd that you suddenly had an urge to clean up space.”

“That’s your privilege, ma’am.”

I felt her send another probe upstairs. After a time, she said, “It can’t stay a mass of junk. How do you intend to remanufacture it?”

“I figured to spin it, melt the metals selectively to separate them, and make a layered hull. Some of the lightest stuff would act like ablative armor on the outside. Inside that would be a steel shell. Inside that, an aluminum shell.”

“Melt them selectively? How would you do that?”

“Radio waves. Light stuff first, dense stuff last.”

“Radio waves can melt metal? Really?”

“Yup.”

She seemed to give that some thought, then asked, “How much stuff do you think is up there?”

Sipping coffee, I said, “As of 2008, about six thousand tons. No idea how much now. Doesn’t matter, really. We’ll just see what comes together and work with that.”

Lori gave me a stark look and echoed, “
Six-thousand-tons?!
”

I grinned. “Should make a helluva tree house, huh?”

“Oh,
hell
, yes! No doubt at all. Or even two or three treehouses. In fact, it might be a good idea to have more than one and separate them like the orbital AIs. What if something hits one?”

“Good idea. Let’s go with two for now and put them at opposite ends of the orbit. That way they’ll both pass close to Earth twice every time around. Athena, what do you think?”

She linked in and said, “I’ll modify the adjustment data so approximately equal masses will form.”

“Excellent. Thank you, milady.”

Sitting back gently and hissing slightly as she startled at some pain, Lori winced and asked, “Ed, would you mind putting some more of that spray on me?”

“You gotta be kidding, lady. Would I
mind?
You mean pass up an opportunity to get my hands on you again? Ha. Not a chance.”

Rolling her eyes, Lori came to stand in front of me, took off her t-shirt, and turned around. I sprayed her shoulders, then her back, and then gently smeared the stuff around for best coverage.

I said, “Those skinny little bikini straps are carving trenches in your shoulders, ma’am. I could put up a field around the yard if you want me to rub them out for you.”

She snickered, “You never quit, do you?”

“Just thought I’d make the offer before they reach the bone.”

Lori laughed, “Yeah, right. It hasn’t happened yet.”

Quickly drying my hands on her pants, I said, “Now go sit for a while, then we’ll do the lotion.”

Stepping away, she felt her butt and yelped, “Did you just wipe your hands on my butt?!”

“Yup. So? You wore them yesterday, so they’re dirty, right? Weren’t you planning on washing them?”

“You’re such a putz!”

Sipping coffee, I said, “I’ve never once denied it.”

Her pocket buzzed and she reached for it, then stilled the motion and put up a blank screen. Heh. Usually she answered it normally. Was she showing me she could link into her electronics, too? If so, no big surprise here.

Taking her screen with her, she walked back into the house as she answered the call. I sipped coffee and continued adjusting the courses of various bits of debris according to Athena’s data. It occurred to me to wonder how long the job would take.

“Athena,” I said, “How long until we have all the junk together?”

She answered, “Barring interruptions, approximately forty-seven days, nine hours, and thirty-one minutes. Or less.”

“Approximately, huh? Does that include the small stuff?”

“It includes everything larger than two centimeters.”

“Wow. That’s a pretty thorough cleanup, ma’am. Have I called you a goddess lately?”

She chuckled, “No.”

“Well, then, you’re a goddess, Athena. Thanks much for helping.”