A More Perfect Union

CHAPTER ONE

The sniper was in position, in his nest, well before the big game got underway. He was camouflaged from view by a chameleon ghillie suit. The barrel of his rifle was sheathed in an identical chameleon barrel wrap. The material on both the ghillie and the wrap was adaptive and light-sensitive. It adjusted to the tapestry of its surroundings, became neutral to thermal. It made the nest virtually indistinguishable from the background. No one would see him lying there on the rooftop taking aim, not even the surveillance drones that regularly circled overhead.

This man was a cold-hearted killer, a washout from the U.S. military, Omega Special Forces to be exact. He had no confusion about bonding with his targets or holding back on his adrenaline. Once everyone in the stadium was on their feet standing — and while the National Anthem was still being played — he was going to murder as many spectators as he could before he ran out of ammunition. This time, there would be no holding back.

The sniper’s name was Branislav Karpinski. Friends called him the Carp. But then again, enemies were few. — And not because the man was so well liked; because they didn’t last long. The story was still told of an occasion when a chap he knew called him Bran Flake, trying to make light of his first name. That man had suffered a brutal end. When his body was found a week later, he was so badly beaten around the face, not even his wife was able to make a positive I.D.

Branislav Karpinski was an immigrant from Central Europe. He had a head of dark wiry hair, plus a mouthful of straight white teeth. Sadly, those teeth rarely smiled; for Branislav Karpinski was not a happy fellow. And yet, on those rare occasions, when he saw a funny cartoon, he would laugh so hard, tears would roll down his cheeks.

The man was only vaguely interested in people, though he was always amused by life’s little surprises. Branislav was religious to a degree, liked what he’d heard in Puritan City from the Reverend Roland Whitmore. He was also the most unforgiving and ruthless killer to ever walk God’s green Earth.

Branislav reached into his bag, now. This wasn’t the first time. He had done it every hour like clockwork since first settling into position in his nest.

The bag was filled with fine sand, very lightweight. Branislav extended his arm, let a handful slip through his fingers, watched it settle to the ground. The particles drifted slightly to the left with the breeze. He looked at a distant flag hanging nearly motionless, ran the numbers through his head, compared the results to the dial on his shooter’s watch. The rule-of-thumb formula for wind velocity was straightforward enough:

Hold paper, dust, or grass at arm’s length and allow it to drop. Point to where it lands. Divide the angle between the extended arm and the body by four to get wind velocity in miles per hour. To get the answer in kloms, divide the angle by two point five.

Then, to manually adjust the rifle’s sight for wind shear, take the range to target in hundreds of yards, multiply it by the wind velocity in miles per hour, and divide the product by fifteen. This is the number of clicks left or right needed to adjust the setting on the sights. An equivalent formula existed for metric ranges and velocities.

For those weak in mathematics, a shooter’s watch could take out some of the guesswork. But, on this particular occasion, precision shooting wasn’t the objective. Today, Branislav didn’t care who he hit. Unlike a traditional hostage situation, where there were hostages whose lives had to be spared, collateral damage was not an issue here. In those other situations, a sniper didn’t want to accidentally hit one of the hostages. What he wanted to do was kill only one person in the group — the terrorist — and do it at long range, without harming anyone else. That made his job extremely difficult.

But on this particular day the sniper didn’t care who he hit. It just didn’t matter. All he wanted to do was kill as many spectators as he could, and do it in as short a time as possible.

To do the job, Branislav used a solid, hard-jacketed, military-issue round. The Unlucky Thirteen, as it was called in the trade, was known for its accuracy, stability, and penetration. Legend had it the big shell got its name on account of its approximate weight in grams. It was a big mother of a bullet, and only an M35 sniper rifle could deliver it reliably on target.

Branislav’s nest was an air-conditioning unit atop a multi-storied building four blocks from the stadium. He had scouted it on multiple occasions. The vantage was good, escape easy and quick. Not that it mattered. Even if Colonel Barnes wanted him to return to base camp unscathed, Branislav Karpinski didn’t particularly care if he got away clean.

The sniper had made his way to his rooftop nest in the wee hours of this morning, while darkness still hung over the land. After settling in, he made some initial measurements with his laser rangefinder. Hardcore old-timers might take sightings and calculate angles on nearby objects, then use the trig tables in their sniper data book. But this sniper liked his high-tech toys, especially his shooter’s watch.

He looked down at it now on his wrist and gently peeled back the dark, vinyl cover to reveal its illuminated face. A shooter’s watch was more like a wrist-capable minicomputer than an actual timepiece. It was a tactical watch engineered to perform a specific set of aiming calculations for the long-range shooter. It accepted a series of critical inputs, then displayed on the watch face the appropriate number of clicks to make on any model riflescope to properly adjust for wind and elevation. The input variables were many. Bullet weight. Muzzle velocity. Height above bore. Calibre. Barometric pressure. Air temperature. Wind speed and direction. Angle of inclination. Distance to target.

Branislav found comfort, in the dark, in his adaptive ghillie suit. Though only millimeters thick, the suit made him feel warm, as if he were home, in the loving arms of a woman.

The darkness closed in around him, now. He drifted off to sleep. But it was field sleep, not natural sleep, an inbetween state familiar to any combat soldier.

When a man is in field on a mission, perhaps days on end, he cannot stay awake around the clock. But a trained man can trust in his concealment to field sleep at night. He can sleep, yet still keep part of his mind on alert. He is asleep but also awake. His mind is resting and his eyes are closed. Yet, if anything moves nearby or if something makes a sound that registers as being dangerous, he is instantly and completely awake.

Field sleep is not the only behavioral skill an accomplished sniper must master. He must also learn how to consciously slow his heart rate. This enables him to literally shoot between heartbeats, a critical skill once you realize that the thump of a single heartbeat can throw a shot off by as much as a meter at long-range. It is all part of his biofeedback training — being able to selectively warm a trigger finger or foot that has gotten cold, being able to lie perfectly still for hours, being able to let the body rest while keeping the mind active. Fatigue kills snipers, not other snipers.

As for other bodily functions, a man does what he has to do. Liquids go in a bottle, solids in a plastic bag. Both go with the sniper when he leaves his nest.

As for nourishment, a man eats when he’s hungry — usually trail mix — and drinks constantly. Dehydration leads to fatigue, and fatigue kills snipers.

•

•

Branislav jerked suddenly awake. A robin was tending to her young nearby. They were chirping loudly. The sun was coming up.

Kick-off was scheduled for 11 a.m. That meant the stadium would be abuzz with activity by 8 a.m. First the robo-vendors, then the janitorial people, the press, then the fans. Concession stands usually opened by 9:30 a.m., the first drunks getting rowdy by 10 a.m.

Branislav had breakfast, a chocolate bar, a handful of walnut bits, two pieces of dried fruit. He took a swig of water to wash it all down.

He brought out his scope and laser rangefinder, readjusted his sights for a range of eight hundred and twenty meters, the distance to Section BB in the upper stands.

A shadow passed overhead, a surveillance drone. In these United States, there were precious few open-air stadiums. The few that did still exist were patrolled by drones, both overhead and in the stands.

But Branislav wasn’t worried. His camouflaged suit would keep him hidden from prying robotic eyes.

Karpinski waited for the drone to pass, then once again slid his hand into the bag. Once again out came a handful of fine sand. He extended his arm, let the sand slip through his fingers. This would be the last time. Then a final, tiny adjustment to his sights.

Branislav lowered the handle of the bolt fully. This action locked a round securely in the chamber. The heavy, tripod-mounted gun could be single-loaded or clip-loaded, nineteen rounds to a clip. He had eight clips within easy reach of his gun. Each was filled with a full complement of Unlucky Thirteens, all machined to be lethal, all machined to be virtually identical.

Branislav took a sip of water, let his finger find its place on the trigger. He adopted a breathing rhythm that would cause the least amount of movement to his sights. He adjusted for the first shot by sliding his right knee back and away from his heart.

In contrast to the last seven hours of inactivity, things now moved with uncanny speed. People were wound up, excited for the big game, waving, jostling for seats, balancing food in their arms, chili dogs, popcorn, beer.

The announcer quieted the crowd. People came to attention, hands over their hearts. The singer began to belt out the National Anthem. The sniper held his sights on the upper lip of a big, pot-bellied fan with an orange and black tee shirt.

Thwoomp!

The rifle spat out its venom with barely a cough. Branislav rocked back with the gentle recoil.

A killing shot drops a man so fast, it seems the earth just swallows him up.

The only hint that a large man had been standing there an instant before was a faint pink halo of bloody tissue and bone suspended briefly in the morning air. The pink mist dissolved almost as fast as it formed.

Thwoomp! Thwoomp! Thwoomp!

Three more bloody mists. Three more dead bodies. The dead fans collapsed in the stands even before the sounds of the shots reached the rest of the crowd.

Thwoomp! Thwoomp! Thwoomp! Thwoomp! Thwoomp!

Now some people in the crowd began to scream. A few tried to run, elbows flaring. Most didn’t know what to do. One or two stooped over the crumpled bodies, horror on their faces. A few of the more sensible ones hurled themselves to the ground, frantically urging the rest to dive for cover.

Thwoomp! Thwoomp! Thwoomp!

The music stopped. Airborne drones began to take notice, started to triangulate his position. Panic began to grip the stands. A crushing stampede got underway. No one had yet figured out from which direction the shots were coming.

But the Unlucky Thirteens kept on coming. The sniper wasn’t done yet. Not by a long measure.

Three more minutes and nearly eighty more rounds were still to be fired before the murderous rampage was over.

CHAPTER TWO

In Orbit, High Above Mars

I tell you, Red — I wouldn’t want to be one of those boys working a tug out on the edge. What a lonely job, pushing comets around all day long.

The speaker was a powerful man, built like the Marine he once had been. His name was Butch Hogan. Like Red Parsons, the man working beside him, Butch wore a rugged, brown spacesuit bearing the insignia of EMD Enterprises. The suit was made of tough, rigid material and was fully pressurized inside. The sound of rushing air always filled their ears when they were floating free, working in space. Because the suit was stiff, it took effort to move, even to open or close their hands.

You and me brother: we’re no comet-pushers.

The two were EVA, repairing the servo on a damaged electromagnetic mass driver. Under their spacesuits, each man wore a tech-shirt with built-in comm and personal locator.

I mean, there’s no women out in the Oort Belt. Butch leaned in as he spoke. Red Parsons, his co-worker, opened his kit, lined up the tools Butch would need, in the order he would need them.

Butch Hogan moved slowly and with deliberation. Even an experienced spacejockey could make a wrong move in zero-g. He could set a huge calamity in motion and not even realize it until it was too late to correct his mistake. Then the whole thing becomes a theatre of the absurd, as the spacejockey watches himself fail miserably in slow motion.

Not like that slice of heaven you had the other night, Butch. Anyway, I think they call it a cloud, the Oort Cloud.

The inside of a spacesuit isn’t smooth. In fact, it’s quite rough. Lots of internal stiffness. Bearings, joints, seams. After a couple hours battling inside a suit like that, a man is nothing but a mountain range of bumps and bruises.

No, I mean no women at all.

Butch Hogan stared through the visor of his spacesuit at his co-worker. The first thing a man learns about working in space is to conserve his hand strength.

Not even bio-bims like they got in Hedon City?

Nothing. Nada. Nilch.

In a weightless environment a man doesn’t use his legs much. He moves himself around with his arms. A newbie constantly grabs onto things. It’s instinctive. But it’s also wrong. Working a thousand kloms up, on the really high steel, requires a man to break down and re-learn just about every physical act he once did back on Earth without a second thought. At first, his tendency is to grab tightly onto things to support his body weight, like he would back home. But, in space, he learns to grasp things more lightly, maybe with only one or two fingers.

No women? Now that would be hard. I don’t get myself off a couple times a week, I start climbing the walls.

Red had a way of putting things that sometimes made Butch feel uncomfortable.

So what do the guys do for relief out there? Red asked.

Mech-love, I guess.

Ugh. Machines. Frigging hell! What man wants to make love to a frigging machine? Red shook his head.

I think it makes love to you, not the other way around.

Either way. I’ll stick to natch snatch, if it’s all the same to you.

Here, hand me that adjustable wrench, or we’ll both be reassigned to a tug in the Oort Belt. Excuse me — Cloud.

Get it straight, stud. It’s the Kuiper Belt, part of the Oort Cloud.

Are you going to hand me that bloody wrench or not?

Just take it slower this time. Don’t juice the torque. That wrench locked up on you last time, nearly sent your ass looping off into outer space.

Butch nodded, rested his hand. Space gloves were inherently stiff. Even fifteen minutes of work could be painful and wearying. While he rested, he spoke:

It’s like so many things we do up here, Red. But try convincing the boys back home. Everything’s counterintuitive. Try brushing your teeth in zero-g, I tell them. Or taking a shower. Or turning a door latch. No sooner does a man grab hold of the latch than he finds himself spinning in the opposite direction.

Quit belly-aching, it’s not your first day on the job. You know the drill. When you use a wrench, you have to grip it tightly the first turn, then loosen your grip for the remaining turns. Red glared at Butch through his visor, twisted his wrist as if he were tightening a bolt.

Yeah, okay, a wrench is not like a power tool.

Red laughed. If the business end of a power drill is spinning clockwise, the tool wants to spin you the other way, counterclockwise. A man learns to adapt. Just make damn sure the tool isn’t pushing against the weak side of your hand. Otherwise, you’ll exhaust yourself in no time at all. It takes a while for the newbies to learn, but you of all people . . .

Butch kept working at the bolts, six in all. They were stuck fast. No way are these puppies coming loose without some encouragement. Hand me that Pigtail.

Ah, the Pigtail. My favorite. An overgrown cordless drill on steroids. The Pistol Grip Tool.

Just hand it to me, will you? A Pigtail saves the arms.

And the brain. The bloody thing counts the number of turns needed to secure or loosen a bolt. Keeps those of us who are light in the head from over-tightening the heads.

Butch took the tool, slowly fitted the grip to the bolt. Since ordinary steel turned brittle in the intense cold of space, all their tools were made of a beryllium copper alloy. Between the two of them, they carried a veritable tool chest, either on their belts or in a front or backpack — a manual ratchet capable of a hundred foot-pounds of torque, a half-dozen adjustable wrenches, the Pigtail, a crowbar, two vise grips, a pair of cutters, plus a deadblow hammer with a pocket of shot in the head to absorb the recoil.

As the bolts came loose, Red caught them and dropped them one by one into a catch bag. Up here in space, at orbital speeds, anything not strapped down, anything floating around loose, could become an unguided missile that might strike with devastating results.

Experienced spacejockeys, like these two, knew their jobs were dangerous. It came with the territory. It could also be unnerving. That monkey we evolved from doesn’t want to fall out of his tree.

The funny thing is, whether we like it or not, our brain quickly decides which way is up and which way is down. It is an amazing feat, especially when you consider how it makes absolutely no difference whatsoever when a man is weightless. Still, half the spacejockeys that work for EMD Enterprises vomit their first time out. And they hurt, too. Severe back pain is not uncommon. The spine stretches in the absence of gravity. Plus, bathrooms are like being stuck in a really bad hotel with facilities you don’t want to use or even go near.

Butch loosened the last bolt, popped the protection plate off the panel. He craned his neck, took a gander inside. Can’t see a damn thing.

Red positioned a light so they could both see better. He gasped. The motherboard and microworks were blackened and melted. Something had caused a serious short.

Frigging hell, Butch. Ever seen innards messed up like that before? I guess those factory boys are slacking off. They sure don’t make these EMDs like they used to.

The servos on the new generation electromagnetic mass drivers have always been a little hinky. And a man doesn’t want to go perfing the skin. He’ll go up like a Roman candle and his carcass’ll go shooting ‘cross the Kirkwood gap like a torpedo.

That’s why they’re paying us the big bucks, isn’t it? ‘Cause there’s risk at every turn. I love the rush, I really do.

No, Red, you love the money. Feeds all your bad habits.

I do like pussy, brother. Never seen any as fine as what you had the other night, though.

The woman was a looker, wasn’t she? And she smelled awfully nice. Can’t quite get her out of my head. Thing is, she’s something of an Enviro. You know — hug the trees, save the dolphins, outlaw terraforming, that kinda thing.

Well that’ll never work. You’re a throwback, Butch. A complete Neanderthal. You like guns. You like uprooting trees on your papa’s ranch and bulldozing new logging roads for the Wyoming lumberjacks. Hell, you only work for the biggest goddamn terraforming company this side of the Belt.

EMD is a helluva good company to work for, I’ll grant you that much. But I do like the woman, tree-hugger or not.

Aw, Butch, don’t go getting soft on me. My daddy always said: It’s okay to bed ‘em; just don’t try to wed ‘em.

And you’re calling me the throwback? Hand me that wire cutter, will you? We have to pull out this old unit and pop in that new one.

You gonna see her again? Red pulled the wire cutters off the Velcro pouch on his belt and handed them across to his partner.

She’s headed back home on the next ship, same as us. Butch began to snip wires.

Red held the light. I thought it was just gonna be the two of us — you and me bobbing for babes.

I do like bobbing. But let’s face it — Some apples are juicier than others.

Frigging hell, you are soft on that bird, aren’t you? What a complete zibb you have become.

Can you blame me?

What’s the skirt’s name anyway?

Kaleena Flanagan. Butch handed the wire cutters back to Red and yanked out the damaged unit.

Flanagan? Like the Senator?

Spelled the same. Though I don’t think she’s any relation.

You know one Irish, you know ‘em all. They’re all tree-huggers, if you ask me. Red took the damaged unit from Butch and tossed it in his catch bag.

Yeah, maybe. I don’t know that much about her yet. I do know she works for the Commission.

Like that’s gonna work. A spacejockey and a sappy Enviro. Oil and water, if you ask me.

No one asked you.

"You are soft on the woman. Dear God, save us all. Girls everywhere will rue the day Butch Hogan took himself off the market." Red unpacked the replacement unit and handed it to his partner.

Heh, at least I’m sincere when I shop. All you do is play the field and return the merchandise damaged and soiled.

Soiled? If God above didn’t want us men to play the field, he never would have planted it with such fine looking stems and bulbs. Anyway, women love me.

More of your daddy’s philosophy?

Red shot his buddy a mischievous grin. But Butch wasn’t done with him yet.

Aw, yes. Red Parsons of No-Wheres-Ville, Colorado — a legend in his own mind.

I was born in No-Wheres-Ville. But I grew up in Pueblo.

Yeah, like that makes a difference.

Butch took the new unit and started sparking wires. It was the spacejockey’s version of soldering back home, only without the solder. The hardest part of the job was nearly complete.

CHAPTER THREE

A hundred million kloms of wide-open space hung beneath their legs as the two men worked to replace the busted servo.

These two men — Butch Hogan and Red Parsons — occupied the lowest rung on a very tall corporate ladder. This is not to say their jobs were unimportant, for they certainly were not. And yet, these two men were but cogs in a giant machine, an integral part of an audacious project.

The firm they worked for — EMD Enterprises — was actually but one part of a much larger conglomerate, a company known to the world as Transcomet Industries. Aside from the asteroid-harvesting venture, Transcomet’s other lines of business included capturing comets in the Oort Cloud and crashing them into the Venusian atmosphere. The idea was to cool the planet down for eventual colonization. This was an extremely long-term investment in the future, but the payoffs were considered to be enormous. On Venus, the manufacturing possibilities were endless, with no Enviros underfoot to interfere.

Transcomet Industries was by far the world’s dominant player in the global space industry. It was a public company traded on every major stock exchange. But, like every large organization, it attracted formidable enemies. Even now, powerful forces were allied against the giant outfit. No threat to the company was too small for the Board of Directors to ignore. Indeed, the Board took great pains to defend the firm’s near-monopoly position over all things space. This included, among other things, making generous use of the Board’s extensive political connections, senators, governors, even the President of the United States.

But out here, seventy-five million kloms from Earth, more pedestrian matters held sway. Out here, the workers on that lowest rung of the corporate ladder were hard at work on the highest of all steels. For these people, the job always remained the same: Capture an asteroid in the Belt; secure an EMD onto the asteroid’s main axis; drive the hurtling rock back through the solar system to high-earth-orbit, where it could be profitably mined. The central hub of the entire operation was here, on Mars, where the motor factory was located. This place was also home to one of the many links in the EMD tracking-chain.

Right now, on the ground, below these two men, down on that factory floor, some of those powerful, allied forces were gathered. While Butch and Red worked in orbit far overhead, members of the Terraforming Commission were being feted by executives of EMD Enterprises. Today was the last chance they would have to make their case to members of the Commission before that august group headed back home to make its final report to Congress and to the rest of the nation. A lot was riding on this meeting, and tensions were running high on both sides.

The Mars Station had not been built with large groups in mind, and there was only one room on the planet large enough to handle such a crowd, the company dining hall inside the factory itself. The room was plain, but it was filled to capacity, now, with Commission members and other bright lights. Near the doorway was a large device. It looked rather like a jet turbine, but much larger and with multiple nozzles and coils. On a table beside it stood a large placard. It read Prototype Electromagnetic Mass Driver.

The speaker wasn’t much to look at, a small, pencil-necked man with a narrow necktie and ill-fitting suit. He took a glass of water from the table, cleared his throat to speak. Overhead, on the ceiling of the plant, tiny bots constantly checked the seams for deadly air leaks.

Gentlemen. Ladies. Thank you for making the long journey. As you all probably know by now, maneuvering a spinning rock through the asteroid Belt is an immensely complicated business. The mathematics of real-time multi-body motion are daunting. Just one nonlinear equation after another. Most computers are simply not up to the task.

Good God, man. You think we came halfway across the solar system just to hear you complain about your computers?

The speaker was a slim, good-looking woman with fiery, red hair and a demeanor to match. Her name was Kaleena Flanagan and she wore the sort of perfume a man was unlikely to forget. Kaleena was daughter to a prominent United States Senator and an adjunct to the Commission. She continued:

Given the size of your budget, you would think your organization would have the best computers money could buy.

That’s true, Missy. We have lots of expensive computers, and even more high-priced programmers. And, no, I’m not here to complain. But, given the number of unknowns, it is all but impossible for us to chart a precise trajectory for any given harvested asteroid, at least not in advance, and certainly not through the maze of moons, planets, and random bits of rock and space-junk that comprise our solar system.

I’ll kindly thank you to call me by my given name. Unless you want to see some real fireworks around here, you will refrain from calling me Missy, Mister Whatever-The-Hell-Your-Name-Is.

That brought on a few snickers from around the room.

Krotchmeier. Frederick Krotchmeier. I apologize for not properly introducing myself. But here’s the thing about those fancy computers. With one main-sequence star at the solar system’s center, plus nearly a dozen planets, hundreds of thousands of asteroids, and upwards of fifty moons, every single one of them constantly in motion, every single one of them constantly interacting with one another — and with the incoming asteroid — there are just too many variables to handle, no matter how big a computer a man has.

Kaleena Flanagan glared at the fellow. Mr. Krotchmeier, every single person sitting in this room has come weeks out of their way for just one purpose — to try and properly judge the safety of everything your company is doing out here. Do you actually believe that you are going to ease our collective minds by telling us no computer you own is up to the job?

Lady Flanagan, please allow me to tell you what we’re actually up against out here. Estimates place the total number of asteroids in the main Belt at upwards of one million. They range in size from as little as a speck, up to as much as eight hundred kloms across. All evidence points to a common origin for these countless, irregularly-shaped chunks of rock. The thinking is this: Long ago, when the solar system was first forming, one or more of the early planetoids were torn apart under the influence of Jupiter’s tidal forces. Today’s asteroids are remnants of that long-ago explosion. Like all the rocky planets — including our own — the asteroids are laden with valuable ore. This is what our company is after.

We all know what you’re after, Kaleena chided. More tax dollars, less regulation, total immunity from legal liability should something go wrong.

Kaleena, why don’t you let the man speak? This was a new voice, the voice of Elijah Montrose, Ph.D., economist and advisor to the Commission. Everyone respected him greatly.

Thank you, Dr. Montrose, Krotchmeier said.

Don’t thank me. But do cut to the chase already, young man.

"Yes, of course. Now where was I? Oh, yes. Nearest the sun and accounting for roughly fifteen percent of the Belt’s population are the S-type or siliceous asteroids. These bodies consist of an olivine shell surrounding a core of nickel-iron alloy. Interesting, but hard to mine.

"Inhabiting the Belt’s outer reaches and making up three-quarters of the Belt’s population, are the C-type asteroids, the carbonaceous or carbon-rich asteroids. Easy to mine, but not particularly valuable.

The really valuable stuff is in the middle, the M-type or metallic asteroids. These big chunks of nickel and iron emerged eons ago from repeated collisions among the S-type bodies. There aren’t many of them out there — barely ten percent of the total — and they are separated from the other two rings by a large Kirkwood gap.

The thin, pencil-necked man stopped, clicked on a vid machine, brought a chart up on the big, overhead screen.

Here’s where the complex mathematics kick in. Daniel Kirkwood, an American mathematician. He was the first scientist to link unoccupied orbits in the main Belt to Jupiter’s gravity and orbital frequency.

Krotchmeier pointed to a complex graphic on the screen. Our Mr. Kirkwood made the following argument: Any asteroid circling the sun at a rate that was a simple fraction of Jupiter’s orbital period of twelve Earth-years — say, an asteroid with a four-year orbit (3:1 resonance), or one with a six-year orbit (2:1 resonance) — would get a gravitational boost every time it lapped the gas giant. After repeated boosts, it would eventually be kicked out of that particular orbit. This happened millions of times over, some asteroids being slowed, others being hurried along. Over long stretches of time, these repeated pulls and tugs eventually swept eight different orbits clean, empty tracts now known to us as Kirkwood gaps.

Yes, yes, the Kirkwood gaps. That’s what you want us to put in our final report? — Kirkwood gaps?

I’m simply trying to put the risks in perspective for you. The physical risks of working out in the Belt, among all those moving bodies, are many. Countless things can go wrong, many of them beyond our control. Even if Congress is reluctant, we need legal protections against lawsuit.

Elijah Montrose spoke up. Here’s where you lose me, Krotchmeier. Given what you’re doing out here, the financial payoffs ought to be enormous. Every economist will agree: a profitable company should be made to cover its own financial risks. Otherwise, there is a moral hazard. The company will begin to accept unnecessary risks, which they will eventually dump on the rest of us. We in the trade refer to this act as free-riding. According to your prospectus, a single M-type asteroid a mere klom in diameter houses a treasure-trove of nickel and iron, plus lesser amounts of manganese and bauxite. The infrastructure is already in place. That asteroid of yours will arrive in high-earth-orbit as one neat and tidy package. It will be easily susceptible to mining techniques perfected during the lunar gold rush. Where’s the risk?

Dr. Montrose, your comments are insightful, as always. It goes without saying that this operation is a unique combination of enormous payoff coupled with relative economies of scale. That is what first fired the imagination of the financial muscle behind EMD Enterprises. But let’s not forget: incredible sums of money have been put at risk here. The financial muscle behind this project includes some of the world’s savvier business minds. People like Keith Roberts, Chairman of the Board of Transcomet, and Spencer Trask, now Chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve.

No one wants to make waves, Elijah said trying to remain neutral.

Speak for yourself, Kaleena interjected. On a good day, an asteroid that size could fetch something on the order of five trillion dollar-equivalent credits on the international market.

Don’t tell me you’re trying to hold my company personally responsible for the state of prices at home? Krotchmeier replied testily.

Isn’t that what a monopoly does? — manipulate prices?

Honestly! Ore prices are high with good reason. Those prices are testament to the severity of raw ore shortages that have become legend in the past few decades.

And why is that?

You know very well why. On Earth, inexpensive and easily accessible veins were mined out long ago. The Moon has been mostly a bust. The mineral deposits there were thin and mined out early on. Plus, even at one-sixth earth-gravity, raising metal ingots to orbit from the Moon’s surface means contending with a seriously deep gravity well. Recycling materials bound up in other products is prohibitively expensive. Plus, the amounts recovered are trivial. Even the comparatively complex matter of swinging an asteroid out of the Belt and into Earth orbit is cheaper than any of the alternatives. Asteroid-harvesting is the only course of action that makes economic sense.

Let’s get back to the risks, shall we? one of the other Commission members observed. Getting that big hunk of rock three hundred million kloms across the solar system entails countless risks, doesn’t it?

Moderating those risks is high on our list of priorities. Slinging an asteroid around the solar system begins with a sophisticated piece of equipment called an electromagnetic mass driver, or EMD for short.

Krotchmeier stopped, then pointed to the large device on the factory room floor near the doorway. A properly calibrated EMD uses the asteroid itself as fuel. By ejecting tiny bits of rock forward — into the asteroid’s orbital path and thus counter to its present direction of travel — the big rock slows down. A slower-moving rock begins to fall. It falls in toward the sun. Which means it also falls in towards the Earth.

My very point! Kaleena exclaimed, jumping to her feet. As soon as that big rock begins to drop out of its orbit, the danger to Earth starts to rise. The closer it gets to Earth, the worse the risk becomes. She slowly settled back into her seat.

"It has to be a controlled fall, of course. Otherwise, as you said, the results could be calamitous. We all know this. But assuming the