Alexis Gilliland - The Third Wave

“We could go home, we could? Winslow studied his computer for a moment. “Only at the end of seven or eight years, instead of maybe three.”

“Or maybe ten or eleven? Or fifteen? No. Sioux is right. We aren’t going to go home without the ship’s boat. The starship isn’t going to leave without the water we could send them.”

“Earth could send up the water.”

“It could, but I’m afraid it won’t,” Colonel Levsky shook his head. “Earth is having serious second thoughts about the whole affair. The NRDA is claiming that it has authority over the design and planning process, and wants Lunar Three to shut up and shut down.”

“What’s Turi John doing at Lunar Three?”

“The fool is pushing ahead,” replied Winslow. “CAD is too widespread for the NRDA to claim a monopoly on the design process, so Doctor Ramos is building the starship in defiance of orders.”

“The design Turi John wound up with is pretty damn good,” said Madeline Tosca. “Once they get our water, all the starship will need to get under way is that great shitload of hydrogen bombs from Earth.”

Colonel Levsky looked morose. “My brave comrades in the military will hate to give up the power, the authority which that plutonium represents, but I think they would have no choice.” He paused, “But.”

“But if we send the boat off, you want to know what will happen to us here, Pavel Ivanovitch?”

“That’s right, Sioux. How are we doing? Maybe more to the point, how will we be doing in the future?”

She sat back in her chair and considered the question. “I don’t know how we—the crew—are doing, but the biosphere is doing very well indeed. How are the various construction projects going, Winslow?”

“Diomedes Electric is up and running,” he said. “So we have plenty of power. We could expand it to take the nuclear reactor off-line if you wanted.”

“I thought it was off-line?”

Winslow shrugged. “We’re using it for mining and refining,” he said. “Currently, we’ve got the biosphere running entirely on solar.”

“How about Diomedes Three?”

“Look out the damn window; we’re working on it. Right now we’re mining raw material and refining it into stuff. Like, we re spinning steel cable and processing aluminum into slurry. The templates and jigs are being cut in the shop, already, and we ought to get started assembling the tube and casing pretty soon, now. Then comes the rigging, of course.”

“And after the rigging is installed, Winslow, we install the air, water and soil for the biosphere?”

“And the germs and worms and compost, yes, yes, yes. All that organic shit!”

“Speak with respect of that shit, sir,” said Colonel Levsky. “It is your once and future dinner. How long, do you think, until you can walk around Diomedes Three in your shirtsleeves?”

“The target date, you mean? The Christmas after next.”

“About the time we’d be starting back for Earth,” said Dr. Kerry quietly. “Myself, I would be more inclined to move into Diomedes Three. The interesting part would have just begun.”

Madeline Tosca stood up, pumping her fist. “YE-ES! Let’s get the human race moving in the right direction, for once! I say we load the damn boat with water and send it back to Lunar Three!”

There was more discussion, but in the end that was what was done.

On Earth, the collection of fuel for the starship ran into difficulty as grossly optimistic estimates ran into an unyielding reality. In the highest circles of government, this difficulty provoked both consternation and a certain grim satisfaction.

“These promises are, of course, conditional,” said the secretary of state. “Promises made by sovereign nations can hardly be otherwise. Even if the nuclear devices we have identified were already in place on the starship, however, a problem would exist.”

“What is the problem?” asked the president, who already knew pretty much what it was.

“The problem, sir, is that the starship needs a fuel load of 300,000 hydrogen bombs,” replied the secretary of State. The CIA’s latest revised highest estimate is that if we collected all the bombs in the world, including all fissile materials suitable for making bombs, we could produce a total of 128,206 H-bombs.”

Less than half, thought the President, with a touch of regret. “What about the DLA? They thought the figure was more than 10 percent higher.”

“The DIA figure has been a joke since that fool went on TV and said he made up 40,000 H-Bombs for India.”

“Oh, him. What a mess, what a bloody mess.”

The secretary of state nodded. “Yes, sir. The Intelligence Community has been telling the men in power what they wanted to hear. When push came to shove, however, the crafty sons of bitches finally coughed up the real numbers.”

“Well, then, suppose we collect as much fuel as we can, and send the starship off as fast as its little legs will carry it. Does it make a difference if they don’t actually achieve 3 percent of the speed of light?”

“I’m afraid it does, sir,” the secretary of defense replied. “The NRDA assures me that the power system has been taxed to the limit to provide the 140 years of safe, reliable service that are required. Three whole centuries would be simply out of the question.”

“The idea was to get rid of all the damned plutonium,” the President said at last. “Isn’t the crew willing to take a chance 300 years down the line? My God, where is their patriotism?”

“The crew isn’t the problem, sir,” said the secretary of state. “The crew is keen to fly, and I’m sure they’d be willing to take their chances with the power system.”

“So what is the problem, then?”

“The problem is that any number of countries, including, I’m afraid, some members of our own congress, and even some members of this administration,” his eyes flicked over at the secretary of defense, “do not wish to give up owning nuclear weapons. Given this pretext—technical, yes, but political as well—the promises we have so laboriously collected are totally worthless.”

The president poured himself a glass of water and took a slow swallow. “You’re telling me that that the 99 percent complete starship orbiting Luna is a non-starter?”

“It can not be fueled for the trip to Alpha Centauri, sir,” replied the secretary of Defense. “Therefore, it isn’t going to go. Unless, of course, we are prepared to resume the massive production of nuclear weapons to support this harebrained scheme.”

“That’s hopeless,” sighed the president.

“Then if I may say so, Mister President, this is probably a good thing. Without the threat of nuclear weapons, we’d be facing another world war within a decade, and God knows, we couldn’t afford the buildup for a conventional war.”

“Neither can anyone else,” was the sour reply. “Given our cultural aversion to risk, we might lose if we even tried to fight one.” The president sighed again. “I really was looking forward to launching a starship during my term of office, you know.”

“I’m very sorry, Mister President,” remarked the secretary of defense. “It just isn’t going to happen.”

“So what are we going to do with the Dyson’s Dream II at this point?” asked the secretary of state.

“It’s a UN project,” said the president at last. “At least nominally. What we’ll do is tell the UN, and see if they can work something out.”

“What do you want them to work out?” asked the secretary of state.

It looks like the third wave into space has crested, thought the president sadly. “Whatever they can work out, of course. The diplomats can talk all they want, but I fear our starship is kaput.” He hesitated. “Keep that report top secret for now, all right? It’ll look better if it leaks from the UN.”