Leaving Earth Vol. 1 (Leaving Earth Omnibus) Read online

  Chapter 10

  THE VP New Energy — Grum's boss — was getting snarky about the increase in expenditure on what he considered to be non-essential projects, and about the quality — or lack thereof — of the paperwork.

  'Sir, the additional projects are intended to make up for the trouble we're having with the recombination research.' Grum tried to explain the situation for the umpteenth time. Once again looking for a form of words which might fit into his boss's locked brain and turn.

  'Making yield increases should be your top priority!'

  'Yes, sir, and I am working on how to approach the problem, myself…'

  'And I suppose you'll tell me that's why your administration is suffering?'

  'Partly, sir. The admin load is quite heavy for a facility of this type, with no dedicated resource to deal with it.'

  'Will another body help you get the recombination work going faster?'

  'It will certainly help, sir.' Grum stifled a sigh. Throwing more bodies at the problem wouldn't help if they were the wrong bodies. 'The person would have to be the right fit, though, sir. I don't really need more science or engineering staff at the moment, but an experienced administrator would be very welcome.'

  'You've worked with Steve Branch before?'

  'Er, yes, sir. But I thought he was attached to a different department. Is he available?'

  'He can be seconded. You can have accommodations ready for him?'

  'The living complex is well under way, sir.'

  'Yes. That's something else we need to discuss. Right now, though, I'm going to get Branch headed your way.'

  The line went dead.

  'Git,' said Grum.

  In truth, the apartment complex Grum had wangled was all but finished and was a beautiful little oasis. Grum had even managed to include a pub — called "Mack's" — on the complex which took regular deliveries from Kelso's. It was the extras that Grum suspected his boss was unhappy about. Approval had been given to build accommodations for the staff in return for the additional staff which had been foisted on him. Grum, though, had commissioned a village.

  It was not excessive, to Grum's mind. The apartments were nice, but not luxurious. The general store was mostly for fresh produce brought in by drone, and a small stock of what might be considered emergency supplies. The small restaurant was well-staffed, but not particularly high-class, and attached to the bar. As well as being an outlet for Kelso's brews, the bar operated as a brewpub and distillery.

  Rather than build a new medical facility, he had simply expanded the remit of the workplace emergency unit. Including general practice in the normal staffing numbers on the premise that it was necessary for the increase in the overall facility's complement.

  The biggest departure from a simple apartment complex was the suite of school rooms, including a crèche. Grum consider this to be essential, though, and certainly those staff with families were appreciative.

  The message confirming Steve Branch's secondment to the Nevada Facility came through later in the day. It included a brevet for Mr Branch to AVP, but reporting to Grum, for the length of the appointment, and a requirement for accommodations at the Facility's expense.

  Grum acknowledged the message in all particulars, copying Stew and Amy, and decided that he needed a shower — followed by a beer or two, mid-afternoon though it was.

  Near the end of the normal work day, Stew walked into the bar and made a bee-line for Grum.

  'Watchdog?' Stew asked.

  'Could be.' Grum flicked the edge of his glass. 'Could, indeed, be.'

  'I'm getting a drink. Another?' Stew pointed at Grum's half-finished glass.

  'Please.'

  'You eaten?'

  'Missed lunch.'

  'I'll get you something.'

  Stew returned with the beer and a couple of sharing platters. One filled with cheese and biscuits, the other with chili and tortillas.

  'Thanks, mate,' said Grum. 'That'll be welcome.'

  'No worries. Can't have the boss getting mangled on a school night.'

  Grum grunted round a mouthful of cheese and biscuit.

  'So, about the spy-turned-watchdog…' said Stew as Grum finished finished chewing, and washed it down with a sip of the beer.

  'Yeah. He'll report to me but he's an AVP, like me, while he's here. That'll mean I can't directly give him orders outside what the VP has already agreed with his boss, and he'll be within his rights to report directly to his VP without going through me. I suspect that he's been given orders to do exactly that. Gotta say, though, if he does take the admin load off the staff, then I have to say that'll be a good thing.'

  'Can you trust him to do just that, though?'

  'Well, not exactly "trust",' said Grum. 'What I expect is that he will do the job he was sent here to do, and no more. Precisely no more.'

  'Ah. Control by submission?'

  'Pretty much. Nevertheless. We will get the admin done. I… We… Will have to make sure that the admin which is available is appropriate. Don't want to trouble the lad with inconvenient facts, do we?'

  'Like that we want to do more than just stockpile antimatter?'

  'Boss already knows that, mate. Wanting ain't a problem. Doing is the issue. We can't hide the fact of the generator research, nor building out the plant, but the slower that information is released the better. If we can present it as a fait accompli, it'll be the best case scenario.'

  'You sure about that?' Stew took a mouthful of chili and waited for a response which did not come. 'You're not, are you?'

  'Not exactly, no. But permission will not be forthcoming, so we'll have to seek forgiveness, instead. Though, to be honest, I doubt that will be forthcoming either.'

  'So, we do what? Stick our necks out and wait for the axe?'

  'What would you rather bloody do?!' Grum's frustration exploded from his previous melancholy. Tiny fragments of biscuit flew at speed into his beer, and he stopped to swallow, lowering his tone against the notice he was very carefully not being given. 'What would you rather, do?' he repeated, rather more calmly.

  'I would rather that we had a line management that wasn't so limited.' Stew grinned at his friend. 'I'll support you, you know that. Maybe we can go over the veep's head.' Only the faintest rising inflection on the end of the sentence made it a question.

  'I'll hold that in reserve, Stew. I'd rather go around than over.'

  'Are you going to start playing politics, then, Grum?'

  'Hah! I've been playing schoolground politics since we got here. Possibly even before. But, in a way, yes. I'm going to start playing a slightly harder ball.'

  'Is that wise?'

  'Wise? Possibly not. Thing is, I don't think that the veep knows the strength of my hand,' said Grum, switching metaphors. 'In fact, I don't think he knows that he's bluffing with no cards.'

  'That's pretty strong.'

  'Look at it this way,' Grum paused to take a sip of beer. 'How many people do you know who could take over from us right now?'

  'Well… We do have a whole complex full of scientists and engineers…'

  'True. Any of those could front this operation, you think?'

  'We have trained them in our research and expanded on it.'

  'Really? And how many, do you think, could take it further? How many could apply that knowledge without going back over the research and delaying the whole shebang by several years?'

  'Honestly? One or two.'

  'I think you're doing yourself down a bit, mate. Also… Consider our hiring and the subsequent attitude from the boss. Now, it could be that he is somewhat mercurial. That he was excited by the project and just really doesn't like me as a personality. But that doesn't quite track. He's been interfering from the start and doesn't really seem to grasp the potential. That suggests to me that someone directed him to get with this particular programme, and to hire us.'

  'I… I suppose… But if that's true, then shouldn't we do what I said a minute ago and just go over his head?'r />
  'That would be a solution, I agree, but not the solution, I think. And that's another thing. Steve Branch was involved in hiring us. He didn't report to our VP at that point, but was acting as an intermediary.'

  'You think he has standing orders from another source? You think it's better to prove our mettle?'

  'Yes to both. This is business, and the veep is a duffer. Making a viable business unit in spite of the boss and then calling him out is more likely to be successful than calling him out now. Pulling that string now would probably get us a new boss, it's true, but it would also show that we have done precisely jack with the expenditure. The previous plan still applies, therefore. Make generators, and go further if possible, to give us something to show when the house of cards collapses.'

  'We'd have to keep a lot of people working only on the generators to make this happen.'

  'I know. What I plan to do is obfuscate the matter. Neither Steve Branch nor the boss are seriously technical. I have, so far, kept the project teams combined into big teams just to keep the admin down. But if I separate the projects into their component parts it will give us two benefits. One, it'll give me a chance to sound out Steve. Two, he won't be able to tell whether a project is for generator research, recombination research, maintenance, or a hole in the ground. If I label a project "The Cuprate High-temperature Superconducting Magnet Lab", how is either of them going to know whether I want them looking into magnets for the production assembly, storage, or generation?'

  'They wouldn't. Even I'd have to ask.'

  'Exactly. Most of them will be floating teams, sharing members and lab time.'

  'Roughly mirroring the effective resourcing we have at the moment?'

  'Funnily enough, yes. Now, let's finish these platters. Vann's staying over this weekend, so I'm going home for a wash-and-brush-up soon.'

  Chapter 11

  GRUM was as good as his word, splitting up the larger programmes into far smaller projects and giving each better defined goals. He was surprised to find that most people were happier with it, so long as their own admin over head was not increased. He also started to find intriguing differences in the staff attitudes. Mostly this was reported to him via Stew. After the second person approached him directly with a request for weighting their time on a particular piece of research one way or another, though, he decided that it was a real thing which needed addressing.

  To that end he sent out a message asking each individual what their ideal weighting would be between the various projects. To his surprise everyone responded, even those who were on leave. He followed up the responses up individually with a simple "thanks", but sent another general email around promising to take the results and work out how much could be accommodated while still getting the work done.

  As far as the yield combination research was going, Grum was not devoting as much time to that as he could. Partly because the generators were more important, and partly because — until Steve Branch showed up — he really did not have the spare time.

  Today, though, was the day before he got to hand over the admin chores. He was not particularly inclined to clear his calendar of admin tasks, he wanted to get down to some serious thinking. Combining yields was a massive pain in the arse, but he had successfully avoided thinking about an even bigger one until now. Assuming that these larger masses were also destined for power generation of one type or another, size was going to become much more of an issue than it already was.

  Back at MITAMP, they had produced four hundred micrograms of antihydrogen. That was only about nine millilitres in volume, but the storage container had been seven-hundred-and-fifty kilograms and two cubic metres in volume. A generator, as Stew had said in their first meeting with Steve Branch, would be even bigger.

  Stew had unofficially told him that the engineers they hired for the Nevada Facility, considered Grum's containment cell design to be crap. Grum knew himself to be nothing special in the field of engineering. But he had not thought his design to be that bad until he saw the initial production masses from this facility being contained in cells the same size as his original. Even though there was fourteen times more mass of antimatter per cell. Apparently, they could make them even better.

  Still, though, he suspected that keeping the generator size down overall with larger masses would need a different form of antimatter. Or would it?

  This was what needed some serious thought. Whimsically, though, he pondered how might a metallic crystal be contained for power generation. You couldn't just let it annihilate against the walls of the chamber, like you could with a gas. It would have to be held magnetically. Superconductive magnets again inducing an all-round levitation effect, probably. Then pass a stream of, maybe, helium gas through the chamber. Pressure of the gas atmosphere in the chamber would be directly proportional to the annihilation rate, wouldn't it? Probably, yeah.

  That might work. He called Stew to tell him his musings. It was lunchtime anyway.

  'Yeah, mate, that might work. Only one problem,' said Stew.

  'What's that?'

  'Making the bloody crystals in the first place.'

  Grum sighed. 'Yes, I know. I was just getting in the mood. Need to start thinking our way round the problems of yield combination and those associated with it.'

  'Ah, I see. You were thinking about cell sizes, so your mind went to solids. Gotcha. Want another brain to bounce ideas off?'

  'Good idea. I'm going to have a sarnie, then get into it.'

  'I'll join you. I've only got admin to do, and…'

  'Steve's here tomorrow. Yeah. That was my thinking, too.' Grum grinned, even though the other could not see him. 'Let's have a bit of fun.'

  By the end of the highly-enjoyable-yet-fruitless afternoon, Grum was reaching the conclusion that the problem was looping back on itself. 'To effectively use masses above, say, a hundred milligrams, we would need denser material.'

  'About there. On planet, at any rate.'

  Grum ignored the comment. 'And to get those masses, we would need yield combination.'

  'Yup. Unless we switch tracks entirely and start looking at a Bose-Einstein Condensate of ortho-positronium.' Stew's expression was completely deadpan.

  Grum goggled at him for a second, then shrugged and made a note. 'Fuck it. We'll add it to the list. Working out how to cool it in a hundred nanoseconds, store the stuff and then control the excitation is probably comparable with the difficulty of this.'

  'There was that study twenty-odd years ago…'

  'Yeah. Cassidy and Golovchenko in two thousand and one. There was another one more recently by Shu, twenty seventeen, I think. Don't know if Shu made it happen. I'd gone down this route by then.'

  'Could be time to look him up.'

  'Could be… Could be…' Grum was distracted by a thought. 'What if we take this on?'

  'Just us?'

  'Yeah. Steve's going to do as much admin as I can load on him. The generator projects are pretty much hidden in the muddle. We know the science behind this, we're the best candidates to run with it.'

  'I dunno, mate. You remember what the engineers said about your cell design. They didn't even want you near the generator design team.' Stew grinned.

  'Who do you suggest? Yields and containment have to be studied as a whole.'

  'Agreed. So what we need is a dedicated engineer, two top scientists, and a capable assistant to work exclusively on the future direction for the Nevada AM Production Facility. They can't be considered two distinct problems any more, they are the same process. Whichever one it turns out to be.'

  'Our girlfriends? That'd be nepotism,' said Grum, without much censure.

  'Sure'n I care about that. Let's put it out there as an idea. Ooo. Gotta thought. Double date. We can ask them what they think where there are no prying ears and it's non-work, so less pressure. Whadyafink?'

  Grum hesitated. They had been pretty circumspect thus far in their dating and this would be obvious favouritism. 'Yes to the double date. And yes
to asking their thoughts. But no to offering it as a fully formed idea until we've all talked it through.'

  'Right! It's hometime, anyway. Let's go our separate ways and rejoin at Mack's if no-one cancels?'

  'Done. Seven?'

  'Done and done. Seeya later, boss.' Stew waved cheerily as he got up and left.

  Grum thought for a moment longer, then called Vann.

  Whatever else he was, Steve Branch was absolutely invaluable with the admin. On the first day he asked for half-hour meetings with Grum, Amy, Stew, the Lead Engineer and the Lead AM Production Scientist to go over how admin had been handled so far. Then he asked for another hour with Grum before lunch to go over priorities.

  During that meeting Grum told Steve that the team reorganisation was the top priority and boiled down his reasoning, including that it would familiarise Steve with all the teams in the facility and their purpose. To his surprise, Steve agreed.

  Two hours after lunch, Steve emailed a list of each person with their virtual-team weightings, noted where these differed from the requested values and marked where he thought someone was a team-lead candidate.

  Initially, Grum was highly impressed. He was still quite impressed after he read through the list, but somewhat confused by the team lead choices. He replied, with a different selection of names, asking what would happen to the team weightings if these people were made team leads.

  Twenty minutes later there was a knock at the door.

  'Come in!'

  'Hi, Grum. I'm a little unsure about your question. Thought it best to discuss face-to-face.'

  'Sure thing. Take a seat.'

  Steve did so. 'The answer to your question is that we could rebalance the rest so they were even closer to their wishes. But some of these names haven't been with us very long, or have much in the way of seniority.'