John Ringo - Von Neumann’s War

“Uh, no?” Shane added uncertain if the question had been rhetorical or not. He restrained the desire to check his watch again. The guy wouldn’t be hurried by it, he was sure.

“Finally, these other fellows I’ve been talking about figured out how to synthesize the gecko skin. Wonderful ingenuity, wonderful,” Dr. Forrester said enthusiastically. “Modern vacuum deposition, lithography technology, and some other materials technology allowed them to build synthetic gecko setae made from a material called Kapton that you see there in those orange rolls behind you. They made little gecko hairs that measure about two microns in height and about a tenth that in diameter. That is about the same dimensions as gecko hairs are. They made tape that was covered with this gecko hair with a mold created by a lithographic process. And the most wonderful part is that a piece of tape one centimeter square holds around a hunderd million of these little artificial gecko setae and can actually support a weight of one kilogram. Wow! That suggests that a pair of gloves made of this stuff is all it would take to support the weight of a human being!”

“What’s the catch? That sounds too good to be true.” Shane leaned forward at that statement. Second-floor entry wasn’t required that often, but various forms of climbing did occur in infantry combat. A pair of lightweight “super climber” gloves would be a great addition to the infantryman’s pack. Well, it would add a smidgeon of weight, but… no, they could get rid of most ropes, which would drop weight. Weight had been a bugaboo in the infantry field all the way back to the days of Sargon.

“Ah, very astute, very astute, Major,” Forrester replied and frowned. “The previous researchers have never been able to produce a synthetic gecko skin that worked more than a few times. The little gecko hairs get crushed or dirty or something and the material stops sticking to things. Very astute.”

“So, it only works a few times, then you fall off the wall. Hmm, that could be hazardous for Geckoman the superhero, I would think.” Gries smiled and was somewhat disappointed. Even if they could draw it out, they probably wouldn’t be good for more than one use. Start talking about disposable gloves and it would be a pain.

“Oh, yes, Geckoman, funny.” Forrester chuckled like Santa Claus again. “But you see, we’ve figured it out! I think we can deliver a material that will be completely reusable and work for tens of thousands of uses, maybe even indefinitely if it’s cleaned after every few hundred uses. Here, watch this.” Dr. Forrester rummaged through some equipment on one of the cluttered work benches and found what looked like a typical toy’s remote control box.

Forrester flipped some switches and Shane nearly jumped out of his seat as a bright blue toy monster truck slammed into his stool. Forrester continued to flip the control levers on the box, then seemed to get control of how to steer the little monster truck. Shane noticed that the wheels of the truck were “oversized” to say the least. In fact, the wheels were so large that they stuck out in front of and above the little vehicle’s frame. The little toy truck must have been modified with a more powerful motor just to turn those big things over.

“Watch, watch!” Dr. Forrester said as he drove the little monster truck across the room and right up the wall.

“Holy shit!” Gries grinned. “Can I play with that?”

“Sure, go over and pull it off the wall, Major.” Dr. Forrester replied.

Shane crossed the cluttered room, being careful not to trip on some piece of equipment and break it or his neck, then grasped the toy truck. Shane pulled at the truck and it failed to unstick itself from the wall. He got a better grip on the truck and pulled harder — the truck stuck steadfast. He wasn’t sure he could get it off if he planted his feet.

“I love that bit!” Forrester gave a deep belly laugh. “I’m sorry, Major Gries. I couldn’t resist. You see, we figured out that the gecko is clever indeed. He has to twist his foot in a certain motion to release himself — we think. So, you have to do the same with the synthetic material. That’s why I drove the truck up the concrete wall instead of the drywall — I take it you noticed all the spackle in the building.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Well, let’s just say we’ve had a lot of fun with that trick, ha ha.” He laughed again. “You know, it took us forever to develop a tire that would spin with just the right motion that would stick when you want it to and not stick when you want it to. Roll the truck forward and pull up and forward at the same time.”

Gries did and the little truck went schaluurrpp and popped right off the wall.

“Well, I’ll be damned.” He rolled the truck over in his hands. “How do the wheels get unstuck enough to roll?”

“Like I said Major, that took us a long time to figure out. Geckos do it, so we just studied how they walked on walls and had to mimic that type of action with the wheel rotation. It wasn’t easy.” Forrester chuckled.

“Can you make me a bunch of this stuff, I mean tires for little recon trucks, boots, gloves, sticky-balls, bags, rolls of the material, you name it?”

“Well, Major, you see we’re but a small group. To mass produce this would probably take start-up costs of a few million dollars or more. That little truck alone cost us about four-hundred-thousand dollars, and that’s not counting the development cost for the synthetic gecko skin.”

“That seems to be the way life goes, doesn’t it?” Gries said with a sigh.

“Indeed, Major. Indeed.”

Shane looked at the truck, turning it over and over in his hands. They were starting to use trucks like this for recon, especially urban recon. He thought about the ambush he’d been in and running a couple of these, suitably loaded with explosives, up the walls and into the rooms the rifs had been using. If the stuff was really durable, it would be useful for way more than just climbing. Hell, it was a replacement for Velcro. Zippers even. Natick was the Army’s clothing and gear development center and Natick would go nuts playing with this stuff. Furthermore, they didn’t always have to jump through all the acquisition hoops for experimental stuff. This would require a start-up investment, though, and Natick couldn’t swing that. DARPA, maybe. What Gecko-Man really needed was a venture capitalist to jump-start the company. And somebody to actually run it, for that matter. Keep the spackling on the walls, make sure people made appointments.

“I’m just one step in the process,” Shane said, slowly, still turning the truck over and over as he thought, “but you have my support. I’m going to recommend this for an acquisition investment, but you’ll probably get more money, faster, if you could get a private investor.” He looked up at the man’s suddenly fallen face and grinned. Even frowning Forrester looked funny, like a clown wearing a frowny face.

“Hey, it’s never easy,” Shane said, still grinning. “But, yeah, this stuff is major interesting and I’m going to push for a fast track. But fast-track is usually for acquisition of stuff that’s off-the-shelf. I know a guy on the DARPA side, though, the Tactical Technologies Office or TTO. They might be able to fund you, I dunno. I’ll talk to my boss and DARPA when I get back; that’s all I can promise.”

“I appreciate that,” Forrester said, almost seriously. “I’ve been trying and trying to find an investor for this, but nobody can see the possibilities.”

“Then they’re blind,” Shane said, still turning the truck over and over.

The telescope sensors came online and began to slew the telescope’s axis. Location information from the star trackers fed into the pointing software and realized that the planet was outside the slewing capability of the telescope mount, so a subroutine triggered the attitude control system of Percival to fire the ACS thrusters and spin the reaction control wheels to align the spacecraft axis with a Mars line of sight. Then the software guided the telescope to bring Mars into the field of view.