Vaz 4: Invaders Read online

  Invaders

  The fourth book in the “Vaz” series

  By

  Laurence E Dahners

  Copyright 2016 Laurence E Dahners

  Kindle Edition

  Author’s Note

  This book is the fourth in the “Vaz” series of books

  Though this book can “stand alone” it will be much easier to understand if read after:

  “Vaz”

  “Tiona.”

  and “Disc”

  I have minimized the repetition of explanations that would be redundant to those books in order to provide a better reading experience for those who are reading the series in order.

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  Contents

  Prologue

  The Story

  Epilogue

  Author’s Afterword

  Acknowledgements

  Prologue

  Raleigh, North Carolina —Tiona Gettnor and Nolan Marlowe, who recently rescued the astronauts from Kadoma have apparently just returned from Mars! This trip apparently had a bit more planning than the rescue mission and they were accompanied by several ex-astronauts from NASA. Still, since she’d only been freed from North Korea two weeks ago, it was hard to believe that they’d been all the way to Mars. When questioned on this, Ms. Gettnor said, “In its current position, it only took three days to get to Mars in a saucer at a steady one G of acceleration. We actually stopped at the Moon for a few hours on the way and only stayed on Mars for eight hours. With a three-day return trip, it only took about a week.” When some of the reporters expressed their doubt, she handed Mars and Moon rocks out to everyone in attendance.

  When asked if this was an official NASA mission, Gettnor replied, “No. We weren’t really trying to do any important science, we were just having fun…”

  Dante looked around the table at the people that made up Gettnor space industries. “Now that my father and my sister are back,” he glanced exasperatedly at Tiona, “and my sister’s finished her little jaunt to the Moon and Mars… we’re finally ready to start making progress on the things we’d planned before they got kidnapped. This meeting is mostly to make sure everybody’s still on board and ready to get started with our space projects. Licensing thrusters to airlines, for cars, for construction, and for other earthbound activities is more the business end of things and will be handled by the licensing division. I’ve asked my sister to bring us up to speed on the things that we’re definitely planning to do in space, followed by a few of the pie-in-the-sky things we’re thinking about. Tiona?”

  Tiona leaned forward and grinned at the people around the table. “My understanding is that one of the first things we’ve got to do is get back to work building our habitat. I’ve been told that you guys stopped construction on it just because we were off on a little adventure in North Korea.” She widened her eyes, “It’s like you guys thought we might not be back!” There were a few weak chuckles around the table, but no one really looked amused. Tiona glanced at Pete Costa, “I know it’s silly to talk about ‘floors’ in a weightless habitat, but it’s a term we’re all familiar with. My understanding is that you guys got two of the eight floors of the habitat done before construction stopped?”

  Pete nodded, “We’ve already purchased the materials for the other floors, so we just stopped assembly. Bigelow had manufactured the inflatable Kevlar covers for two of the six surfaces of the cube before we asked them to hold up. We’ve worked out a lot of the design and construction details doing the first two floors so it shouldn’t take us too long to finish the rest of it.”

  Tiona said, “That’s great!” She was about to continue, but paused when Pete uncomfortably held up a halting hand. She motioned for him to go ahead and speak.

  “I’m excited to get started, as is everyone at Costa and Sons. And I know that you’ve set aside funds to indemnify us against loss if something were to happen… but we’re hoping that you can reassure us that this whole thing won’t go down the toilet again should something else happen to you and your father?”

  Looking around the table Dante got the distinct feeling that Pete had put into words something that a lot of them felt, but didn’t want to express. He said, “Yeah, it’d probably be good for us to reassure you on that issue. I know a lot of you aren’t just in it for the money and I’m still pretty embarrassed that we let ourselves get into a situation where only two people really knew how to do this. Nonetheless, we’d still like to keep the actual methods for making discs a secret since there are certainly places in the world where patents mean nothing. Some of you are probably aware that we initially thought we’d be able replicate the methods from my sister and my father’s notes on their computer, but then were dismayed when we couldn’t find any notes. I told you they were encrypted and that we might have trouble breaking the encryption. Then later, some of you probably heard that we couldn’t break the encryption, while others may have heard that the data wasn’t actually even there on the computer.”

  Dante looked around the table and saw many people nodding to indicate their awareness. “It turns out both of those things were true. My dad’s kind of a programming genius at these things and was able to encrypt data on his and my sister’s computers so that the CPU couldn’t even find the data on the computer.” He shrugged, “Even I still don’t know where it was. Maybe somewhere else, maybe stored on some device in the computer that shouldn’t store that much data?”

  Although Dante had been going to continue, Landon interrupted at that point, “So, you’re telling us that NSA decrypted this stuff, but left us in the dark about it?!”

  “Um, no, NSA couldn’t find it or decrypt it either.” Around the table a lot of eyes widened and people glanced at one another. Dante shrugged, “My dad really is very, very good at this kind of stuff. Anyway, what this comes down to is that he set up a scheme where the instructions for making the thrusters are on quite a few different computers in a kind of a weird chain. His computer and Tiona’s are the first in the chain. Essentially the two of them are the only ones who’ll have access to it at present, however, if they don’t access it for a certain period of time, my computer will then decrypt and make the instructions available to me. If I don’t access the instructions, then they’ll become available on another computer. I’ll tell you now that I’m keeping the list of people whose AIs contain this information a secret so nobody will come after you and try to steal the computers your AIs reside on. Or,” he shrugged, “try to force you to extract and decrypt the information when you don’t know how. However, I have worked out a chain of people who’ll sequentially get access to this information if something happens to the primary owners again.”

  Landon said, “I’ve been wondering about something. I don’t understand why the science whiz people couldn’t figure out how to make thrusters from the existing examples? It seems like you’d be able to measure the power output of the generators pretty readily. Then, with a little chemical analysis you could determine what’s in the membranes and make them. Why couldn’t we replicate the technology when Tiona and her dad were gone? And, for that matter, why couldn’t people who wanted to ignore the patent make thrusters without the instructions?”

  Tiona shrugged, “Maybe they could eventually. But, if I gave you a diamond and told you it was pure carbon, that doesn’t mean that you’d be able to replicate it, does it? The thruster membranes are also almost pure carbon, but they’re multi-monolayer graphene, very different structurally from diamond. That’s an extremely new technology recently discovered by Nolan Marlowe. Worse, if I told you the membrane had to be doped with certain other compounds, even if you knew what they were, you might spend a long time trying different methods for d
oping the membrane with those compounds without ever getting the right recipe.” She gave a little grin, “In addition, my dad’s been ripped off in the past. Having had that experience, he made it even more difficult by adding some unnecessary compounds to the membranes. Those additional compounds are in separate micro-layers so they don’t keep the primary layer from working, but if you’re trying to assay the membrane, it’s extremely difficult to keep them from mixing in and confusing your analysis.” She lifted an eyebrow, “Then, if you do add them as dopants, the membrane doesn’t work.”

  There were a few moments of silence while everybody digested this bombshell, then, without any further discussion, Pete Costa said, “That’s good enough for me. We’ll get started on building the habitat as well as the additional saucers you guys already ordered. We’d put a hold on buying additional land around us to enlarge our operation, but we’ll finish those negotiations as well.”

  Bob Thompson lifted a hand momentarily to attract attention, then said, “That’s good enough for me too. I’ll get with my suppliers so we can start making you more skin suits.”

  Tiona said, “Bob, I’d like you to start thinking about really expanding your suit operations. I know we already put in an order for 100 suits distributed across typical population sizes, but I want you to start thinking about thousands. You should be able to get some economies of scale going if we’re ordering that many. Also, I keep worrying about how difficult it is to get the helmet to seal to the rest of the suit and how difficult it is to get a suit on in the first place.

  “Here’s my concern. Someday we’ll have hundreds of people up there in the habitat. We’ll have more people on Mars. We’ll have them on asteroids. They’ll be traveling the solar system in saucers. If some,” she paused and grimaced, “I should say, when some kind of catastrophe strikes. I’d like every person to have their own suit and ideally be able to get into it quickly, by themselves, and without so much fear about whether they got their helmet sealed on correctly.” She shrugged, “In other words, I’m hoping you can make it foolproof enough that a user doesn’t have to be a professionally trained astronaut with an assistant to be able to don and use one.”

  Bob looked a little askance. Speaking slowly, he said, “Well, I’ve been having some starry-eyed thoughts of suits with a lot more electroactive polymers in them so that they’d be pretty big and easy to get into when they’re charged, kind of like getting into baggy long-johns. As soon as you turn the current off, they’d shrink right down to a snug fit. You wouldn’t have to put on all the Spandex first if you were in a hurry, though I think you’d still want to wear Spandex for longer, planned trips outside. I also have a bunch of ideas for making a better seal, but it’d require a lot of expensive research to see if any of them work and if so which would be best.”

  Tiona said, “Go for it! Hire consultants, hire research people, call us anytime when you need a flight up into vacuum for testing.”

  Bob gave her a concerned look, “It’ll be expensive.”

  Dante leaned forward, “Don’t worry about that issue. First of all, my dad’s funded GSI with plenty of startup cash and the last thing we want to be accused of is being cavalier with people’s lives. Second, earnest money’s already starting to come in from some of our licensees, even in advance of actual product. Third, if we need more money, we’ll just send the big saucer out, grab a metal asteroid, and bring it back home. At about $12,000 per metric ton, a 2,000 ton asteroid like the big saucer could haul should bring in about $24,000,000.”

  Tiona frowned, “Wait a minute big brother. That’s what the metals in the asteroid are worth, after you separate them. Separation’s gonna cost.”

  Dante frowned at his sister, then shook his head, “Always trying to rain on my parade.” He turned to Bob, “She’s right, not quite 24 million.”

  Bob blinked a couple of times, then gave a little laugh, “Well, I guess we’ll start gearing up then.”

  ***

  As Lisanne pulled into the garage, a movement off to the right caught her eye. She told the AI to hold off on closing the garage door. Once she’d gotten out of the car she walked out of the garage door and looked over toward the west end of the yard. To her astonishment, she saw Vaz peering over the fence into the Dobson’s yard.

  Approaching her husband, Lisanne said, “Vaz, what’re you doing?”

  Apparently so focused on whatever he been thinking that he hadn’t seen her drive up, Vaz turned and stared at her for a moment. Lisanne could tell that he didn’t really want to tell her, but eventually he said, “Looking at the Dobson’s house.”

  “I can tell that,” Lisanne said patiently. “Why?”

  He blinked a couple of times, Lisanne thought trying to come up with a way to keep from answering. Finally, he said, “I think we should buy it.”

  It took quite a bit of patient questioning, but Lisanne eventually came to understand that Vaz was concerned about their security in the wake of the attack by the North Koreans. She’d been worried about it as well, but hadn’t imagined that Vaz would decide to solve this problem by buying up all of the neighbors’ houses! Rather than criticize the plan he’d been considering, which she knew would make him obstinate, she said, “I’m glad you’re thinking of this, but I’m not sure I’d be happy to be surrounded by a bunch of empty houses. Can you give me a few days to try to come up with some alternatives?”

  Vaz looked almost relieved, though Lisanne thought he probably wouldn’t be if he actually understood what she thought some of the potential alternatives might be.

  ***

  The Prenaust looked around at her counselors, then focused on the Minister of History. “Your review of the histories confirms this?”

  Historian nodded, “It’s the same in every system back to the first. When crowding gets to this point we begin to see increased aggression. Small wars, then larger wars. If we don’t offload a substantial portion of the population to a new system, eventually we’ll go through an apocalypse.”

  Prenaust turned to the Minister of Genegineering, “And what of your department’s research projects?”

  Genegineer waved her muzzle back and forth in negation. “We have tried many different modifications,” she said morosely. “We can reduce the drive to reproduce, but it seems we suck the joy out of life. All of the test subjects immediately begin demanding that their reproductive drive be restored. If, instead, we leave the drive to reproduce intact, but induce obstructions to successful breeding, the breeding failures bring about great angst. Once again we are subjected to demands that their reproductive capacity be restored. Attempts to prevent aggression in crowded situations yield passive, docile people who become non-productive members of society. Though they do not object, their relatives insist that the genegineering be reversed.”

  “But surely,” the Prenaust interrupted, “with your ability to control mood disorders you can modify the depression, or angst, or passivity?”

  Genegineer waved her muzzle back and forth again. “Our most successful treatment for depression involves boosting the reproductive drive. We’re able to do this while simultaneously reducing the success of reproductive attempts, but if we reduce reproductive success sufficiently to keep the population from expanding we again run into failure anxiety.” Genegineer lifted her wings and shook them in frustration, “Nothing we’ve tried works! We must vent some of our population to another system and hope we figure it out before we’ve filled that one.”

  Looking at the Habitat Minister, Prenaust said, “And how goes the construction of additional orbital habitat?”

  He also shook his muzzle. “We’re not keeping up. All the easy sources of carbon and oxygen have already been used up. We’re still building habitat, but the population is expanding faster than we’re providing room for it.”

  Finally, Prenaust turned to Explorer. “Tell them,” she said, waving at the other counselors, “what you’ve learned so far.”

  Explorer turned to face the others, “We�
��ve sent two missions so far. I can confirm that we’ve been able to reproduce the interstellar wormhole technology of our ancestors. The first of our two missions went back to Ican to ask whether it or any of the other older systems have found a way to control their populations.” He waved his muzzle in negation, saying only, “They have not.” After a pause, his wings drooped a little and he continued, “We sent the second mission to Mato. That star did not have any oxygen bearing worlds.”

  A rustle of unease went around the rest of the counselors. Prenaust’s old friend Jaelon, now the Minister of Logistics, said, “Are you thinking that we won’t be able to find an oxygen world?”

  “No,” Explorer said, “we’ll find one. It’s just disappointing that there wasn’t one at Mato. We’re prepping a trip to Obi, but it’ll take a year or two to refurbish, repair and fuel the ship. In addition, we must train a crew for it, training’s not inconsequential.”

  “Train a crew? Why not use the experienced crew from the other trips you’ve sent out so far?”

  “It’s been almost impossible to get any of the crew from those trips to sign up for another trip.”

  Logistic tilted his head curiously, “Why’s that?”

  “Transition is incredibly painful.”

  Logistic looked surprised, “Even in hibernation?”

  Explorer shrugged, “The ones in hibernation feel horrible when they wake up. And not everyone survives.”

  Habitat gave an alarmed look, “What if we can’t get anyone to leave this system for the next?!”

  “It won’t be a problem,” Historian said. “Once crowding gets bad enough, they’ll happily suffer the agony and brave the death just to get away from the rest of us. It’s always been that way, and probably always will…”