The Speares

Jan was in his office, seated at a table. Behind him, the commanding view of downtown Amsterdam and the harbor went largely unnoticed by the three people seated before him, in slightly inferior chairs. Jan himself was a significantly more commanding presence than any mere view, and tended to take all of one’s attention. Everyone had a glass of filtered rainwater before them. Later there would be a tray of fresh raw organic vegetables with a creamy tofu dip, artfully arranged, but at the moment there was more serious business to discuss.

“Gentlemen.” Began Jan. “As you are no doubt aware, the game has changed. Mr Ruimte, would you be so kind as to explain what the game used to be so that you, I, Mr. Telraam and Mr. Geld are all on the same page?”

“Of course, Mr. van Oldenbarnevelt.” Said a slightly nervous Mr. Ruimte. “But you’ll forgive me if I don’t refer to it as a game. There is nothing entertaining about this endeavour. It is a calculated series of technical challenges and risks leading to ever greater challenges and risks. The challenges and risks are their own reward, and there will never be an end game.”

“Indeed, Mr. Ruimte, that view is precisely why you are sitting here today. Please proceed, then.”

“The portion of the endeavour for which we can reasonably plan today was to have progressed over the next few centuries. We were to have grown a population of labour on Mars over the course of some decades all the while building an impressive city in high orbit using the spent Ballistic Capture vehicles used to shuttle supplies. Once the labour pool and the high orbit city reached a critical mass in …” and Mr. Ruimte checked his notes out of habit, even though his mind was not one that made mistakes with details. “in one hundred sixteen months from now, then we would start using both resources for phase two of the endeavour. That was to have been to use the Martian orbiting city, and the raw materials being acquired for us by the labour pool on the surface, as a stepping stone for our next goal: the gas giants and their associated moons. Then the plans for the endeavour become less concrete. But eventually the goal for the endeavour would have been to reach the stars, and, ultimately, to meet any neighbours we might have. This was not to be until some centuries hence.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ruimte. And Mr. Geld, would you be so kind as to share your insights into this endeavour, or this game, as it was supposed to have been played, as recently as yesterday?”

“Certainly, Mr. van Oldenbarnevelt. There were, and still are of course, certain venture capitalists, representing a cross section of concern spanning the entire United Netherlands which now circles the globe, at least unofficially, as far as other countries are concerned. These venture capitalists were all invited to participate in the grand Game based, of course, on their ability to play, but, of equal importance, on their desire to see the Dutch empire rise once again. The bulk of the initial funding would be from these very same patriots. But very quickly we were to, and in fact did, start utilizing additional streams of revenue from additional sources. These additional sources were unaware that they were actually supplying us with free labour, and, in fact, paying us for the privilege. Over the one hundred and sixteen months that Mr. Ruimte has mentioned, this labour would have started sending revenue-generating materiel back from the surface of Mars to our receiving stations around the world. The beginnings of trade. The beginnings of the new empire. And, as Mr. Ruimte has already mentioned, as things progressed and the gas giants entered the game, with their unknown riches, we would have found an unending supply of customers all wishing to use our orbiting launch point on Mars to once again send cheap labour for us further afield. That is the point at which we anticipated break-even, and the start of vast profits. But profits or not, our empire would have been firmly established and growing quickly. And, of course, once bases of operation were firmly established on the moons of the giants, then they too would have become further stepping stones, ultimately leading us to the absolutely inconceivable riches to be found amongst the stars. And, as has been mentioned, we were to one day meet our neighbours, assuming them to exist, ushering in a level of trade opportunities the nature of which we can literally not imagine at the moment. The moment being yesterday, it now seems.”

“Thank you, Mr. Geld. Mr. Telraam, we will be drawing upon your expertise shortly. So, gentlemen, that was the game yesterday. The game today seems to suddenly be drawing to a conclusion, some centuries early. So I believe that there are four things which can be considered major developments. The first, and oddly, least important, being, of course, the existence of a vast pile of gold literally at the door step of the Martian city. Mr. Ruimte?”

“Yes, I can confirm that. The astronauts have deployed robot vehicles to verify what the computer has said, and it is very likely true. There is certainly a large surface gold deposit that, due to whatever set of coincidences, we have landed directly upon. It is a few millimeters to a few centimeters to a few meters under the dust depending on how the winds have been blowing the Martian dust around. It is of an unknown depth until we can get some ground penetrating radar results, but at this moment we have no reason to doubt the computer’s word of an immense mother lode.”

“Mr. Geld? Your thoughts please?”

“As tempting as you might think a vast pile of gold would be, there are some considerations to realizing profit from it. The first, of course, is the immense cost involved in shipping it back.”

“May I interject for a moment, Mr. Geld?” said Mr. Ruimte. “I must point out that we are two launches away, at this moment, from having a vehicle capable of returning to the orbiter with any surface materials.”

“Thank you, yes. But even when we have such a vehicle, the costs will be staggering. And then even when we returned a vast pile of gold to Earth, there would be the problem of what to do with it. We may kill the goose, if I may borrow from children’s literature, by trying to get the golden egg too quickly. I would propose a different strategy. We leave the gold in situ. But we solidify our claim upon it. I think it is time that we entered the colonialization phase of the project.”

“I agree with you, Mr. Geld.” Said Jan. “But let’s table that thought for the moment. Mr Ruimte, do you have any further thoughts on a vast supply of gold?”

“Yes, I most certainly do. I’m sure you’re all aware that no small amount of gold is essential to the making of spacecraft; from the computer and other electronic components, the shielding of various harmful wavelengths of radiation, thermal insulation, etc. etc. there is a surprising amount of gold that goes into space travel. Having the market cornered on the world’s gold supply could mean we have the market cornered on space travel, but that would be more your area, Mr. Geld.”

Mr. Geld smiled, as he worked out the initial details of becoming a gold, and therefore space, monopoly.

Then Mr. Ruimte continued, “But perhaps more important is a project we are working on with our colleagues in Switzerland. It is something of a parallel project, and was not intended to be needed until a few decades from now after we had bases established about the gas giants. Have either of you heard of the Quark-Gluon Plasma project?”

Mr. Ruimte could tell by the faces of his colleagues that he should make this brief and, as much as possible, non technical.

“Well, I will leave out many details. The nub of it is that it may be the engine that attains relativistic speeds - those approaching the speed of light - thus making interstellar travel possible. And the interesting thing is that it will use gold as its fuel.”

“Thank you, Mr. Ruimte.” Said Jan, who was furiously but invisibly turning this new fact over in his mind. “So that I think summarizes what we need to know about the first new bit of information, which is the large pile of gold that we have suddenly at our doorstep. Now on to the second new development. That is the seemingly spontaneous development of intelligence in the mission’s computer. Mr. Telraam?”

“Yes, I have been in textual communication with the computer myself, although it’s a tedious affair with the time lag, and, of course, it’s not a secure channel so nothing confidential can be discussed. I have long ago developed my own Turing Test to evaluate the ‘intelligence’ of our computers, and I used a modified version of this test to try to ascertain just how intelligent the computer has become.”

“And the results of that test?”

“The computer told me to stop being so obtuse, and then proposed a much better version of the test, which I will be using in future.”

“So can we say that the computer passed your test, and is, in fact, intelligent?”

“As far as we have any meaningful way of telling, I think we need to consider ‘him’ to be intelligent, and sentient. He seems to want to go one step further and consider himself a god, but I believe that is extraneous to any discussion of him, other than that it shows perhaps a touch of schizophrenia, and that is significant because, ironically, it shows just how intelligent the computer has become.”

“Thank you, Mr. Telraam. Would this computer be of any use to you if you could get ‘him’ here?”

“Oh, I believe so, Mr. van Oldenbarnevelt. He is decades away from anything we could hope to build ourselves. If we had him back here, and could convince him to help, we could start building not just the next generation of smart machines, but the generation that would come after that. Can you get him back here on the next Ferry, in…”

“Thirty-five months.” Said Mr. Ruimte.

“Oh, I’m sure we can do better than that, Mr. Telraam. Did you all watch the unscheduled confessional from the red planet yesterday morning?” asked Jan.

Nods of assent all around. “And, of course, the much more polished version that was televised to the whole world last night compliments of our friends at Fun Fact. Well, it seems that the version you gentlemen watched originally, and also the version that was televised publicly, was missing a critical piece. Let’s watch it again, shall we? Only this time we’ll add in track four, which you gentlemen do not receive. No one other than the audio people at Fun Fact would have any reason to be monitoring the upper tracks, and so this was a message intended solely for our television friends. Except, of course, we monitor everything that goes on with our mission. So here we go, with the addition of the extra track…”

Jan sipped at his rainwater while the others watched, and listened, to the confessional again. Mr. Telraam’s eyes widened as he listened to the overdub on track four. When it was over, there was a brief silence while everyone internalized this new information.

“Mr. Telraam, is this something that interests you?” asked Jan.

“This would put us in the lead, from a computer point of view, of the entire planet for the foreseeable future. The financial implications I will leave to Mr. Geld…”

Mr Geld nodded, while his mind whirled off in a new direction.

“The spacefaring implications I will leave to Mr. Ruimte…”

And Mr. Ruimte, too, nodded.

“and the implications to empire I will leave to you, Mr. van Oldenbarnevelt. But to the technical folk, this would be like winning the lottery several times in a row.”

“And what would you need to actually invite, or should I say, intercept, the computer and bring him to your lab?”

“I would need immediate access to the instructions that will be sent next on track four, and then I can take it from there. There will be some kind of decryption key for the video signal, and while I could figure it out myself given time, time will be very much against us on this one. Unless we immediately suspend transmissions from the red planet to Fun Fact and send them solely to ourselves?”

“I don’t wish to do that at the moment, if I can avoid it.” Replied Jan. “The computer may have reasons for wanting to talk to Fun Fact directly, and we don’t want to tip him off that his conversation has been eavesdropped. Although, IQ is it? The computer would likely be saddened to know that our mutual friends at the church are also very probably paying attention to the fourth track.”

“Then I would recommend that when IQ sends the instructions to Fun Fact, that we then wait until the confessionals start arriving and then garble them downstream. Fun Fact won’t be able to get word back to Mars for twenty-one minutes that something has gone wrong, and by that time the confessionals will be over and we’ll have our palimpsest.”

“Good. So, gentlemen.” continued Jan. “We have discussed the gold. And we have discussed the computer. Let us now discuss the alien.”

Everyone’s attention peaked. This was completely new ground.

“What do we know of him?” asked Jan, rhetorically of course. “And I’m sure that gender pronouns are completely inappropriate, as they are with the computer, but there you have it. What do we know of him? He spent very little time talking to anyone and then simply and literally disappeared. What do we make of that?”

There was a buzz of discussion amongst the others around the table that instantly stopped when Jan furled his brow. There were no side bar conversations in any of his meetings.

“If I may speak, Mr. van Oldenbarnevelt.” Said Mr. Ruimte.

“Please do, Mr. Ruimte.”

“The computer tells us that the alien can exist at different points in what we consider to be time, but what the alien seems to consider just another dimension, like left-right, up-down, front-back … he seems to have ‘before’ as well. Curiously, ‘after’ does not seem to be available to him. I suspect that when he disappeared in his whimsical vehicle he simply travelled back in time a micro second and is in all likelihood still there watching us.”

“Interesting, Mr. Ruimte. So it is possible we can talk to him, just not see him or hear him.”

“Yes, I would say so. At least, that would be a plausible guess. He would want to observe us I’m sure. For whatever reason, likely an abundance of caution, he does not wish for us to observe him.”

“Instruct the astronauts to pursue this. I need to talk to him.”

“Immediately the meeting is over, Mr. Oldenbarnevelt.”

“So he has limited time travel at his disposal. What else can he do?”

“In my conversations with the computer, who wishes to be known as ‘IQ’,” began Mr. Telraam, “it seems the alien can also manipulate matter at the atomic level. He can create things seemingly from nothing, but in fact from atoms and molecules that are close at hand.”

“Create things. What sorts of things?” asked Jan.

“IQ was surprisingly hesitant to talk about this. He did say however that the alien can create food from unneeded atoms that are laying about.”

“Food?” interjected Mr. Ruimte. “How about fuel? If we could create food and fuel from whatever is ‘laying about’ then we could be going to the gas giants tomorrow.”

“I believe that to be the case, if we can convince the alien to give us the technology.” Said Mr. Telraam. “Entering into trade negotiations with the alien would be your purview, Mr. van Oldenbarnevelt.”

“Indeed. Is there anything else the alien can do that would be of interest to us?”

“Also from talking to IQ, it seems the alien’s vehicle can travel exceptionally fast in space. IQ has no idea what the motive force is, but speculates it has something to do with time. The alien has the ability to ‘take frames out of reality’, which may account for the perception of enormous speed, but may also indicate that the actual speed is somewhat less. IQ pleads ignorance on this point.”

“Mr. Ruimte?” said Jan.

“The cosmic speed limit is an absolute speed limit, as far as we know. If we can ourselves approach the speed of light when we get the Gluon engine operational, then I don’t believe the alien could top that. Even making the trip seem faster wouldn’t really help at relativistic speeds, where time shrinks anyway. I say if it’s a choice then we should concentrate on getting the first two technologies mentioned from the alien.”

“Very good, gentlemen. So we have the beginnings of a plan to address our first three developments: the gold; the computer; and the alien. I believe all three plans would benefit from the fourth thing I wish to discuss. It is now time, I think, to consider Mars a colony of Holland. I wish to declare, and secure, sovereignty. Thoughts, gentlemen?” said Jan.

Mr. Telraam was the first to speak up. “Even before we declare Mars to be a colony of Holland we are facing the first major threat to our sovereignty. At present, there are no fewer than eight other nations all planning very hasty Mars shots.”

“Mr. Ruimte?” said Jan, indicating he wished the technical details.

“The next Hohmann transfer window is in seventeen months, and any vehicle making that Hohmann transfer would arrive in orbit around Mars in some twenty-six months from now. That is the only safe way for a transfer involving people to take place. That is what our current plan is.” Said Mr. Ruimte.

“Except?” prompted Jan.

“Except as was just mentioned, there are at least eight groups, four of whom we must take seriously, all planning to have a foothold on Mars in roughly thirteen months from now, coincidentally when the next orbiter shipment arrives. We have been contacted by the Australian beer company who, as we all know, has a large presence on the moon. They have warned us that they were invited to join a kind of a tontine - sort of a non-aggression pact amongst rivals for the purpose of getting to Mars and becoming rich. They say they have declined and are going it alone, but they wish to remain friendly with us as the most likely customers for some of their new space technology going forward. So while they are still striving to be competitors to us, they wish to be friendly competitors and so have warned us as a show of good faith. As for the rest, their motives cannot possibly be trusted - at the very least they plan to steal our gold. The new players are: The aforementioned Australians; a bunch of oil barons from Scotland; a diamond concern from South Africa; some French and French-Swiss physicists; a few Vikings from Iceland; a group of Latin Americans headed by a pharmaceutical concern; a group of mostly Russian businessmen of a shadowy nature; and lastly a Canadian group under the control of a vast coffee shop empire, of all things. This group is most notable for only very recently aquiring anything like a space presence, more of a high altitude air presence in reality, although the Australians are quite insistent they are players and have a shady and highly secretive alliance with the Latin Americans. None of these other groups has the technology to make it safely to Mars in a little over a year except possibly the Australians. The Russians and Latin Americans will be cannibalizing their existing lunar mission efforts underway in low Earth orbit to come up with something like manned missiles. The Canadians can only be planning to acquire someone else’s technology with their vast capital reserves, likely piggy-backing on the Latino mission if our sources are correct and there is collusion between the two groups. These are the groups we are worried about. As for the rest - the Icelanders and the Scottish will be interested in going mostly to demonstrate their technologies to potential markets but they may get in the way. The French don't have a chance of any success. The South Africans are kindred souls to ourselves, I'm afraid, and while they don't have much of a chance of pulling anything off safely, they will most likely make a suicidal attempt.”

"Kyk Noord en Fok voort. Keep an eye on the Canadians, and update us when you know more of their plan.” Said Mr. Oldenbarnevelt.

“Certainly. But however anyone plans to get there, the relative positions of Mars and Earth will not be at their best for the trips. There will, however, be a complicated route that will present itself at the time, a so-called cosmic highway. I will not bore you with the details of this maneuver, but the window for it is quite small, and will tend to make everyone arrive at more or less the same time, unfortunately for us, at about the same time as our orbiter will be captured by Mars and planted into orbit near the orbiter city. The nations’ challenges will include carrying enough supplies to keep their astronauts alive for the journey and having a feasible plan for slowing down when they arrive at Mars, likely involving braking in the Martian atmosphere and/or some incredible gymnastics involving the moons and Mars itself. They’ll all be in a high-tech horse race to be the first ones on the surface, in proximity to our colony. The later arrivals will lose because the earliest ones will have no doubt claimed ownership of as large a stake as possible, and the size of the deposit, while unimaginably large for a gold deposit, is still nonetheless quite a small piece of real estate. But if any of the groups arrive too early, then they’ll most likely die because their margins on consumables such as food, water, air and fuel will be that tight. They will not be so foolish as to plan to arrive at the orbiter well in advance of the arrival of the new supplies, attack it for its existing supplies, and await the arrival of the new, because David would simply move out of harm’s way using his fully provisioned ferry. I would say the most likely threat, if indeed the other groups pose a threat, is that they plan to ‘help’ us catch the new supplies when they drop, and thereby help themselves. We will of course be taking precautions, the simplest of which is merely deploying more cameras to broadcast to the world any misdeeds. So to sum up, the new groups are in a race not just to be first, but to be most accurately right on time.”

“I have something to offer on this.” Said Mr. Telraam. “I have various means of finding out what peoples’ plans are. Electronically. All of the activity involved in planning a mission to Mars leaves a fairly large thumbprint on things if you know where to look.”

“And what do your thumbprints tell you, Mr. Telraam?” asked Jan, who disliked theatrics but had learned to humour technical people.

“They tell me that Mr. Ruimte is quite accurate in saying that all of the groups intend to get to Mars shortly before the arrival of the next shipment. In fact, they seem to have very compatible schedules. I am afraid that it is likely their non-aggression pact is actually more of a syndicate. Particularly the Canadians and the Latin Americans. It seems quite likely they are pooling resources. If this is true, and especially if they are also in league with the Russians, then the newcomers may have what would be on Mars a sizeable army. Our people could not possibly protect themselves from any determined attack. But I must point out that the Russian plan is confusing at best. Unfortunately, they are fanatically paranoid in their computer security and so I cannot uncover most of their plans. But I did manage to intercept an order for the fuel tanks to be used for their mission.”

“And what of those fuel tanks, Mr. Telraam?”

“They’re too small. The Russians will have sufficient fuel to get to Mars on time, but they’ll only have a brief glimpse of it as they hurtle past at several thousand kilometers per hour. Or they will have just enough fuel to get to the orbiter city and match velocities in around two years’ time, but not deboost any materiel or people. And, of course, they would be dead. The upshot is they are something of a wild card.”

“That is quite interesting. Thank you, Mr. Telraam. You will, of course, give your findings to Mr. Ruimte so he can verify your analysis, and do keep looking for thumbprints and other sorts of smudges on things. But I am missing something. All of these groups, except possibly the Australians; they have plans to get to Mars, where they will set up their own colony and then potentially steal our supplies when they land on the surface. It is too obvious. I do not wish to leave the orbiter unguarded in our plans. Mr. Ruimte has said that the groups would not be so foolish as to mount an attack on the orbiter prior to the arrival of the new supplies. And of course, attacking after the supplies had deboosted to the surface would be of no benefit. What if they planned to attack at the exact time the new supplies are arriving? Would David be able to repel them and get the orbiter first, before anyone else?”

Mr. Ruimte answered this one. “David cannot cover two goals at one time. Either he leaves the first orbiter to acquire the second, and then finds he has to negotiate with pirates to get back into the city, or he abandons the new orbiter to defend the city and then has to negotiate with pirates to get the new supplies. Either way he is negotiating with pirates who will undoubtedly have weapons of some sort and we will certainly lose both the new orbiter and the existing one. Yes. If the invaders could time things that well, this is a vulnerability.”

Jan worked the facts over in his mind, without any indication of this showing on his face.

“Now, Mr. Ruimte, it seems that a lot of people are making plans concerning our shipment and its widely known time of arrival in Mars orbit.” Said Jan. “What can we do to make it arrive a tiny bit earlier?” asked Jan.

“Well, nothing, unfortunately. Since the orbiter is an unmanned vehicle it was sent on a ballistic capture trajectory, essentially an economy ticket. It used all of its fuel to get into a very slow trajectory to intercept Mars’ orbit and thence be captured when the planet catches up. It is, at this moment, essentially a dead tube in space.”

“And tell me again, when this dead tube arrives near the orbiter city, what happens then? Ignoring any United Nations welcoming committee for the moment.”

“Well, David will ‘drive over to it’ in the ferry command module, hook onto it, and tow it back to the other orbiter to begin constructing the orbiter city. And to get ready to deboost the pods and supplies to the Planitia, of course.”

“So the ferry module can hook onto the orbiter vehicle, and tow it. Tell me; the next ferry, the one leaving in seventeen months. Does it have this capability as well?”

“Of course. The ferries are identical copies of each other, and perform basically the same functions in a kind of tag-team fashion.”

Jan took a moment to process, but to disguise the fact that he was processing, he pressed a little button on his desk. “Miss Minnares, would you be so kind as to bring in the crudités. And perhaps another round of drinks. Thank you.”

Jan’s internal processing had completed. He indicated Mr. Geld. “Mr. Ruimte, Mr. Geld is about to tell you that you have unlimited funds at your disposal.” Mr. Geld swallowed, but said nothing. “And then you are going to tell us how you will get the next ferry to this dead tube in space, and then how both of them are going to make it to the orbiter city site one week before people currently believe it will arrive.” Mr. Ruimte swallowed, but he too said nothing. “And then all of us are going to decide what is on this next ferry that cements our claim of sovereignty on this new colony of Holland.”

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