Hm, well, if the CIA's on Castle Magellan, what's NASA up to out there? ![[Image: smile.gif]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/smile.gif)
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It's a truism of life: Bureaucrats, of any stripe, mix with Fen like oil and water. NASA bureaucrats, at least, have the benefit of fifty plus years of interfacing between Washington 'danecrats and the First Fandom. This means they are used to working with people who are just a little bit nuts. It doesn't help much when, say, The Professor drops in to borrow a few kilos of plutonium, but they get along better than most Suits.
First Fandom, you ask? Well, think about it. There are basically three kinds of non-Suits in NASA. I call them the Picards, the Sinclairs, and the Glovals. The Picards are the real scientists, the ones who like to poke their noses into places just to find out how they work. Sinclairs are the ones backing projects like Mars Terraforming, because their main objective is to get the human race's eggs out of that one fragile little basket. And the Glovals are the ones who just know that sooner or later, we're going to run into Trouble Out There, and that we're going to need more than harsh words if we're going to survive in any condition we'd enjoy once we do. All of them are Fen at heart, it's just that instead of Trek or Wars or Bab or whatever, their Fandom is space itself.
Which leads us to the particular branch I was visiting this particular day. Their assigned function is to investigate the wonders of the 'wave -- specifically, they take 'waved devices, take them apart, and figure out how they work, so that we can duplicate them with hardtech and design our own variations on them. They're the ones who built the atmosphere recyclers I use in the new Rockhouses, and they helped design some of the mining equipment used on them.
Their official name is the Transrationality Scientific Analysis Bureau -- 'NASFans' if you like them, 'IPX' if you don't. I think I'm the only one who actually calls them the TSAB, it might have something to do with the spiffy blue uniforms I sent them last Christmas. Amy O'Connell, my chief contact there, caught on almost immediately, and wears the things as often as she can get away with... which I encourage as much as possible, every time I see her in them. She's 5'6" of willowy Irish-American redhead, which dings so many of my buttons that the uniform just made the obvious inevitable.
Today was no different, and the sight of her sent my brain looping for a second before I could catch myself. I'd stopped off at their Ell-Four HQ on the way to the Con, more to invite her to tag along than anything else, really...
"Oh, ah, hey, Amy," I stammered out, catching myself just before I could stumble into her desk. "Lovely weather outside, hey?"
"It's two hundred and seventy below, Chris, just like it always is," she retorted. It was a dumb question and I knew it, but it was also habit, and she'd given me the same answer a hundred times now. "Glad you came by, though. Coffee?"
"You know perfectly well I don't touch the stuff, Amy... but if there's any cocoa to be had, well..." I waggled a hand, shrugged. The ritual of empty questions completed, I sat myself down to take in the view... er, well, you know what I mean.
"So," she finally said, after an assistant had brought in coffee and cocoa, and we were sitting together across the little conference table. "I hear someone's calling a Convention."
We chatted about that for a bit, and I filled her in on what little I knew of the SOS-dan (nothing, although I did pass on some idle speculation I'd picked up from cross-chatter on the way in). She filled me in on some of the recent research projects (they'd finally figured out how to build a couple of really nifty widgets, it seems, but still hadn't figured out just how they actually worked). The appetizers completed, we got down to the meat of the business.
"We need," she said, "Another Rock." And she gave me that Look, the one that said she really means business this time, the old 'what NASA wants, NASA will eventually get if we have to get out and farking push' look.
"Ah, Amy, hon," I temporized for a moment. "NASA's already got five. And my client list's a mile long, you know what the demand for orbital habitattery is like these days. The waiting list's about a year long."
She shook her head, sending those beautiful crimson locks flying just enough to catch my attention. "We're going to have to jump the queue, then, Chris. This one's coming down from Upstairs." Which meant the 'danecrats were breathing down necks about it. Frell, I thought, and tried to concentrate on the business instead of staring at what I fondly hoped I could one day call my girlfriend.
"I have contracts, Amy, my word is on those Rocks. I can't yank one, not even for -- "
"Not even for national security?" That one wasn't Amy. That one was Colonel Caldwell, US Air Force, chief of security and operations at Ell-Four. "Or should I upgrade it to 'planetary security'? Besides, if this works out the way we're hoping, you won't have to."
There are some fen who wouldn't balk at either of those, but I wasn't one of them. I took a deep breath, reigned in my temper, and nodded. "Alright. Make your pitch, Colonel."
He did.
"It's ... ambitious, to say the least. And don't think I didn't catch that whole 'potential recruits' part. There are plenty of fen who'd take you seriously... they'd just prefer not to have 'danes in charge of it." Wow, but it was ambitious, alright. And dangerous. If Caldwell's intel was right, then there might be enough time to get ready for what was coming down the pipe... I hoped, oh, how I hoped, he was wrong.
You know what they say about that, of course. Prepare for the worst, and you'll never be disappointed, only pleasantly surprised.
"The question, son, is can you do your part of this?"
I looked at him, looked over at Amy, looked down at the plan spec sheet he'd shown me. "Uhm. I can find you a suitable Rock, sure, but the rest of it... mmf. I may need to do some 'wave-work, getting it prepped to that level, discreetly, is going to take some work."
Amy nodded, and added, "We're prepared to authorize you to recruit some assistance, so long as they can work, as you say, discreetly."
Well... I knew just where all the possible help for a project like this was going to be, for the next week or so. Which meant I had the beginnings of a plan to cover my part of this. And that meant I had the time to work up the courage for the next step while I was supposedly thinking it through.
"Alright, then... Amy, how'd you like to go to a Con with me? Meet some ... discreet people?"
"Why, I'd love to."--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
-----
It's a truism of life: Bureaucrats, of any stripe, mix with Fen like oil and water. NASA bureaucrats, at least, have the benefit of fifty plus years of interfacing between Washington 'danecrats and the First Fandom. This means they are used to working with people who are just a little bit nuts. It doesn't help much when, say, The Professor drops in to borrow a few kilos of plutonium, but they get along better than most Suits.
First Fandom, you ask? Well, think about it. There are basically three kinds of non-Suits in NASA. I call them the Picards, the Sinclairs, and the Glovals. The Picards are the real scientists, the ones who like to poke their noses into places just to find out how they work. Sinclairs are the ones backing projects like Mars Terraforming, because their main objective is to get the human race's eggs out of that one fragile little basket. And the Glovals are the ones who just know that sooner or later, we're going to run into Trouble Out There, and that we're going to need more than harsh words if we're going to survive in any condition we'd enjoy once we do. All of them are Fen at heart, it's just that instead of Trek or Wars or Bab or whatever, their Fandom is space itself.
Which leads us to the particular branch I was visiting this particular day. Their assigned function is to investigate the wonders of the 'wave -- specifically, they take 'waved devices, take them apart, and figure out how they work, so that we can duplicate them with hardtech and design our own variations on them. They're the ones who built the atmosphere recyclers I use in the new Rockhouses, and they helped design some of the mining equipment used on them.
Their official name is the Transrationality Scientific Analysis Bureau -- 'NASFans' if you like them, 'IPX' if you don't. I think I'm the only one who actually calls them the TSAB, it might have something to do with the spiffy blue uniforms I sent them last Christmas. Amy O'Connell, my chief contact there, caught on almost immediately, and wears the things as often as she can get away with... which I encourage as much as possible, every time I see her in them. She's 5'6" of willowy Irish-American redhead, which dings so many of my buttons that the uniform just made the obvious inevitable.
Today was no different, and the sight of her sent my brain looping for a second before I could catch myself. I'd stopped off at their Ell-Four HQ on the way to the Con, more to invite her to tag along than anything else, really...
"Oh, ah, hey, Amy," I stammered out, catching myself just before I could stumble into her desk. "Lovely weather outside, hey?"
"It's two hundred and seventy below, Chris, just like it always is," she retorted. It was a dumb question and I knew it, but it was also habit, and she'd given me the same answer a hundred times now. "Glad you came by, though. Coffee?"
"You know perfectly well I don't touch the stuff, Amy... but if there's any cocoa to be had, well..." I waggled a hand, shrugged. The ritual of empty questions completed, I sat myself down to take in the view... er, well, you know what I mean.
"So," she finally said, after an assistant had brought in coffee and cocoa, and we were sitting together across the little conference table. "I hear someone's calling a Convention."
We chatted about that for a bit, and I filled her in on what little I knew of the SOS-dan (nothing, although I did pass on some idle speculation I'd picked up from cross-chatter on the way in). She filled me in on some of the recent research projects (they'd finally figured out how to build a couple of really nifty widgets, it seems, but still hadn't figured out just how they actually worked). The appetizers completed, we got down to the meat of the business.
"We need," she said, "Another Rock." And she gave me that Look, the one that said she really means business this time, the old 'what NASA wants, NASA will eventually get if we have to get out and farking push' look.
"Ah, Amy, hon," I temporized for a moment. "NASA's already got five. And my client list's a mile long, you know what the demand for orbital habitattery is like these days. The waiting list's about a year long."
She shook her head, sending those beautiful crimson locks flying just enough to catch my attention. "We're going to have to jump the queue, then, Chris. This one's coming down from Upstairs." Which meant the 'danecrats were breathing down necks about it. Frell, I thought, and tried to concentrate on the business instead of staring at what I fondly hoped I could one day call my girlfriend.
"I have contracts, Amy, my word is on those Rocks. I can't yank one, not even for -- "
"Not even for national security?" That one wasn't Amy. That one was Colonel Caldwell, US Air Force, chief of security and operations at Ell-Four. "Or should I upgrade it to 'planetary security'? Besides, if this works out the way we're hoping, you won't have to."
There are some fen who wouldn't balk at either of those, but I wasn't one of them. I took a deep breath, reigned in my temper, and nodded. "Alright. Make your pitch, Colonel."
He did.
"It's ... ambitious, to say the least. And don't think I didn't catch that whole 'potential recruits' part. There are plenty of fen who'd take you seriously... they'd just prefer not to have 'danes in charge of it." Wow, but it was ambitious, alright. And dangerous. If Caldwell's intel was right, then there might be enough time to get ready for what was coming down the pipe... I hoped, oh, how I hoped, he was wrong.
You know what they say about that, of course. Prepare for the worst, and you'll never be disappointed, only pleasantly surprised.
"The question, son, is can you do your part of this?"
I looked at him, looked over at Amy, looked down at the plan spec sheet he'd shown me. "Uhm. I can find you a suitable Rock, sure, but the rest of it... mmf. I may need to do some 'wave-work, getting it prepped to that level, discreetly, is going to take some work."
Amy nodded, and added, "We're prepared to authorize you to recruit some assistance, so long as they can work, as you say, discreetly."
Well... I knew just where all the possible help for a project like this was going to be, for the next week or so. Which meant I had the beginnings of a plan to cover my part of this. And that meant I had the time to work up the courage for the next step while I was supposedly thinking it through.
"Alright, then... Amy, how'd you like to go to a Con with me? Meet some ... discreet people?"
"Why, I'd love to."--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.