“Hello. I’m Landen Keene—NIFTV’s flight engineer; also one of the principal design engineers involved with the project.”
“John Feld, Pacific Coast Network news.”
“Hi.”
“You are with the Amspace Corporation, Dr. Keene?”
“In a way. I run a private engineering consultancy that Amspace contracts design work and theoretical studies to.”
Feld looked mildly surprised. “And does this relationship result in your going into space often?” he asked.
“Oh, Amspace and Protonix—that’s the name of my company—have known each other for a long time. I go wherever the job demands. A desk has more leg room, but this way we get to have more fun.”
“As we saw,” Feld agreed. “That was a spectacular performance you people gave up there earlier.”
“And it was in spite of everything this country has done in the last forty years, not thanks to any of it,” Keene replied.
“So what were you demonstrating? Obviously you were doing more than having fun. Is it another version of the message we hear from time to time about private enterprise being able to do things better than government?”
Keene shook his head. “Hell no. What we were telling you has to do with the whole future of humanity, not somebody’s political or economic ideology. The world is still burying its head in the sand and refusing to face what Athena is telling us: the universe isn’t a safe place. For our own good, we need a commitment on a massive scale to broadening what the Kronians have pioneered and spreading ourselves around more of space. What we showed today is that we can start doing it right now, without needing to negotiate any deals with the Kronians—although if you want my opinion, we should avail ourselves of any help they offer. We already have the technology and the industries. The vehicle that we demonstrated today was a test bed for a Nuclear Indigenously Fueled engine. That means it uses a nuclear thermal reactor to heat an indigenous propellant gas as a reaction mass. `Indigenous’: native to a particular place.”
Feld seemed to understand the term but looked puzzled. “Okay. . . . But where are we talking about, exactly, in this instance?”
Keene spread his hands. “That’s the whole point: anywhere that you’re operating. You see, it works with a whole range of substances that occur naturally just about wherever you might happen to be. Venus is rich in carbon dioxide; the asteroids and ice moons of the gas-giants give unlimited water; others, such as Saturn’s Titan and Neptune’s Triton have methane; you can also use nitrogen, carbon monoxide, hydrogen, argon. In other words, it opens up the entire Solar System by affording ready refueling sources wherever you go. Today we were using water, and you saw the results. Methane would perform about fifty percent better still.”
“So was today’s effort to get publicity for a new technology that you’ve developed? If so, it certainly seems to have been successful.”
“New? No way. It was being talked about back in the 1960s. But antinuclear phobia took over, and we’ve been at a standstill. What we’re trying to do is more wake the country up again.”
“Ah, but weren’t there good reasons?” Feld seemed on more familiar ground, suddenly. “Surely there are hazards associated with taking such devices into orbit that haven’t been resolved yet. Isn’t it true that if the radioactive material from just one reactor were spread evenly through the atmosphere—”
“It isn’t going to get spread evenly around the planet. There’s enough gasoline in every city to—” Keene broke off as he saw that Feld was glancing aside, as if taking directions from somewhere off-screen. He looked back.
“Thank you, Dr. Keene. Apparently Captain Elms is standing by up there in the Amspace satellite now, and we would like to hear a few words from him too while we’ve got the connection. That was very interesting. Let’s hope you have a safe trip back down.”
“My pleasure,” Keene grunted. The screen blanked to a test mode.
Joyce, who had moved away to talk to the duty supervisor on the far side of the room and then come back, stepped forward from where she had been watching. “See, you’ve scared them off again, Lan. You always have to start getting political.”