Stone dogs, p.56
Stone Dogs, page 56
EPILOGUE II
CONTROL DECK
ALLIANCE SHIP NEW AMERICA
PAST THE ORBIT OF PLUTO
OCTOBER 1, 2000
"That's it," Captain Anderson said with a sigh. "If we needed any more confirmation." He eased the earphones from his wiry black hair; a stocky pug-faced Minnesotan of Danish descent, and a physicist of note as well as a Space Forcer. "Over to you, JB," he continued formally.
The Second Officer nodded and touched a control. Anderson turned to the gaunt man who stood behind him, watching the receding light of Sol in the main tank-screen in the center of the control deck. It was set to show what an unaided eye would see from this distance: no more than an unusually bright star.
"So they're keeping their word, for once," Lefarge said softly. "Not that we left them any choice, the way we had it set up." It was surprising enough that von Shrakenberg had trusted him to broadcast the final specs on the comp-plague… He pushed the complexities out of his mind. It was difficult; that was something he was going to have to learn all over again, to live for the future. Cindy would help, and they would both offer what they could to Marya.
"They couldn't touch us at this range, anyway," Anderson said meditatively.
"That's true," Lefarge agreed. His voice had an empty tone, to match his eyes. "They'll probably follow, one day. If not to Alpha Centauri, to other places."
"We'll be ready," Anderson said, coming up beside him. There was no other sound besides the ventilators, and the subliminal tremor of the drive. That would continue for months yet… "Or we… our descendants could go back, first."
"No. No, not if they have any sense. There'll be nothing here worth coming back for; we're taking all the valuables with us. All that's left."
The ship's commander cleared his throat. His authority was theoretically absolute, until they reached the New Americas destination, and he knew Lefarge would obey as readily as any crewman. But there was something in that lined face that made him reluctant to order; it would be an intrusion, somehow.
"Brigadier—" he began.
Lefarge looked up and smiled; it even seemed to touch his eyes, somehow. "Fred," he said. "While we're off duty, Captain."
"Fred. Look, man, there's no real need for you to stand watches; yes, you're qualified, and it'll be only five years total." The bulk of the colonists would be in low-met all the way; there were five active-duty crews, who would work in rotation. "But it's at the other end we're really going to need you. Hell, why waste your lifespan? You're going to have a life's work there, and barring catastrophe the crew's doing routine. For that matter, I'm going to have time to finish that novel at last."
"I think I am going to have a life job, when we get there," Lefarge said, nodding. "And to do it properly, I'm going to have to be looking forward." He met the captain's eyes again, and his were like raw wounds. The other man had seen more than enough of grief, these last few months, but it was still shocking. "So I need time for… thinking. And to get the saddest words in the English language out of my system." He laughed bleakly at Anderson's silent question. "If only. If only."
EPILOGUE III
OBSERVATION DECK.
DA3CS LIONHEART
NEAR PLUTO
OCTOBER 5, 2000
The bright dot of the New Americas drive was another star among many, in the screen that fronted the darkened chamber. Gwendolyn Ingolfsson hung before it, lost and rapt, unconscious even of the man whose arm was linked with hers.
"Oh, gods," she whispered; starlight broke on tears. "How I envy them!"
APPENDIX
Note to readers: First mention of placenames not common to our timeline and that of the Domination are given with their equivalent in brackets, thus: Virconium [Durban, South Africa]
Excerpts from:
The Economy of the Domination: Historical and Regional Perspectives by Sandra de Varga, Ph.D, Department of Economic Geography, San Diego University Press, 1991.
Industrial Power Systems and Transportation
The development of the steam engine followed rather different paths in the three most important centers of innovation during the Early Industrial era—Great Britain, the USA, and the Crown Colony of Drakia.
Steam Engines to 1850
The Watt engine had assumed its mature form by the early 1780s; a double-acting reciprocating engine with D-slide valving, a centrifugal governor, a separate condenser and steam pressures of no more than 5 psi, capable of delivering reciprocating or rotary action via sun-and-planet gearing. This engine was very suitable for the British market, which was small, coal-rich and had an excellent transport infrastructure by the standards of the time. Watt engines were extensively exported to Drakia in the late 1780s, and put to a number of uses in mining and agricultural processing, particularly sugar milling, and also in civil engineering—principally harbor dredging.
However, the Watt engine had serious disadvantages in the Southern African environment. The coal was abundant and cheap but the mines were far inland and out of the reach of water transport; water itself was often scarce and highly mineralized. Unlike the Americas, there were virtually no navigable rivers. The centers of economic activity—plantations, ranches, harbors, gold, coal, and diamond mines—were very widely scattered, islands in a sea of thinly-populated grazing country. By 1796 there were over 250 Watt engines at work in the Drakian colony, a number second only to that of Britain herself, and these problems were becoming acute. Boulton & Watt, the manufacturers, were far too distant to understand the needs of the Drakian market, and uninterested in the sort of research program necessary to solve the manufacturing problems involved; after all, they were selling every engine they could turn out and more.
It was at this point that Richard Trevithick arrived in Virconium to take up a post as inspector of steam engines for the African Mining and Metals Combine. The young Cornish engineer had little formal education, like many of the entrepreneur-inventors of the time; unlike them, he also had virtually no business sense to speak of. What he did have was an almost instinctive grasp of the thermodynamics and mechanics of steam engines, and a matchlessly fertile imagination. In Africa, he found a patron with limitless capital and driving needs.
Trevithick's first accomplishment was a simple modification of the Watt engines used for pumping water and crushing ore in the Combine's gold mines in eastern Archona province; he substituted a riveted-iron double flue boiler for the earlier copper model, inserted the cylinder in the boiler itself, and tripled the operating pressures. The drastic increases in fuel efficiency led directly to his promotion to Inspector-General of Engines for the Combine.
Shipping shortages produced by the Napoleonic Wars, coupled with high prices and demand, had already prompted a coalition of investors to start a coal-fired iron smelting plant on the site of the future city of Diskarapur [Newcastle, South Area], where suitable coking coal and iron ore occurred in close proximity. The colonial Assembly had financed its expansion to include a Court-process puddling plant and crucible-steel facility for munitions production; there was a large Wilkinson-type cannon boring mill, imported from England, as well. The Mining Combine was sufficiently impressed with Trevithick's talents to propose a merger, and the setting-up of a Ferrous Metals Combine which would produce mining equipment—steam engines in particular.
Trevithick was in charge of the new operation, and recruited extensively in the British Isles for mechanics and engineers. Improved products followed rapidly, particularly since Drakia was too remote for Boulton & Watt patent-protection lawsuits. Pressures of up to 25 psi were quickly achieved, and smaller and more precisely-bored cylinders produced. Trevithick's next crucial innovation was the external feedwater condensor, which permitted recycling of boiler water (1799) and the uniflow valve system, which raised fuel efficiency another order of magnitude by separating the steam entry and exhaust areas of the cylinder. By 1800, Trevithick high-pressure single-cylinder engines were being produced in some numbers and were replacing or supplementing the Watt engines then in use.
However, Trevithick was not content with fulfilling his original mandate. The new engines were now compact and rugged enough to be a credible power plant for locomotive purposes. In 1800-1801 Trevithick and his team of assistants (which included a number of instrument makers familiar with precision metalworking) produced working scale models of road-engines and rail locomotives, as well as an experimental paddle wheel steamboat. The backers of the embryonic Ferrous Metals Combine were sufficiently impressed to provide funding for prototype development. While slow and cumbersome by later standards, the resulting locomotives and "road autosteamers" were an obvious and vast improvement on animal traction. Capital from gold production and the export trades flowed into further investment, and the first production models were in use by 1803. Steam-powered gunboats on the Nile proved the military utility of the new engines, and were crucial to the rapid pacification of the province of Egypt after the uprising of 1803. Steam dredges of Trevithick's design helped to build the Suez Canal in 1803-1810, and coastal steamers and harbor tugs. Steam gunboats pushed Draka control up the eastern coast of Africa and into Madagascar. As early as 1810, "drags" (steam haulers pulling wagons) were being used to transport troops.
The next important innovation was in the fuel and boiler systems. Power-driven drills had been an early application of Trevithick's work, searching for underground water in the extensive arid regions of southern Africa. When Egypt was overrun, drilling teams began operating in its Western Desert— and discovered petroleum in the deserts west of Alexandria,natural gas in the Nile Delta. There were no convenient coal mines in Egypt, and local engineers quickly modified their machinery to use at first crude oil, and then distilled products, as a fuel source. Once the greater convenience and heat-density of petroleum became apparent, most road-engines and an increasing number of nautical ones were converted to liquid fuels. At the same time, "water-tube" boilers (in which the furnace fire circulates around water-filled tubing to produce steam) were introduced, lowering the weight and bulk of boilers.
Power Distribution Systems
Meanwhile, Trevithick had not forgotten the special needs of his original Mining Combine patrons. The gold mines were quickly running deeper, and this was the hardest of hard-rock work. While unskilled labor was plentiful and cheap, costs still rose with depth. Trevithick and the team of apprentices and subordinates that grew around him experimented with direct-siting steam drills and borers, as well as with improved pumping and hoisting systems. However, piping hot steam without loss of heat (and therefore pressure) proved to be extremely difficult and dangerous, especially in underground situations.
Trevithick (and Edgar Stevens, his principal assistant) turned to compressed-air systems instead. The basic mechanical principles were already familiar, and local experiments with native rubber provided a solution to the problems of gaskets and flexible connectors. Large reciprocating double-action compressors were set up, enabling each mine (or later, factory) to have an efficient central power plant. Hegenerative systems (using the heat generated during the compression of the air to warm the feedwater of the steam engines) provided greater thermal efficiency. Compressed air was stored in central reservoirs, then distributed by iron piping to dispersed locations with only minor frictional losses; drills, pumps, winches, and crushers could be placed as needed and flexibly operated.
Once developed, this had obvious applications outside mining. Mobile compressors were developed to power rock drills and other equipment in road building and construction work; powered rock-saws drastically reduced the cost of masonry, despite the lack of trained masons and quarrymen. Central-factory systems, particularly alter the development of the rotary-vane air motor in the 1820s, superceded the clumsy, friction-ridden and dangerous belting and shafting the British pioneers of the Industrial Age had used. Whole new categories of machine tool proved possible with the flexible and precise control which air motors could offer with a simple manipulation of valves, and powered equipment could now be used in locations—e.g., the home—where direct steam drive was out of the question. Air transmission systems had few moving parts and were easily centrally controlled, leading to low maintenance costs. Compressed-air auxiliaries greatly simplified the operation of autosteamers.
Technology and the Sociology of Industry
By the 1830s, most Draka mining-industrial plants were using centralized pneumatic transmission systems, operating at standardized pressures. Given the vastly superior efficiency of such systems, the question arises of why the other industrial countries, particularly Britain, did not follow suit to anything like the same degree. (For example, several of the larger Draka cities installed mains systems delivering metered compressed air via understreet tubes in the 1840s and 1850s; the first European city to do so was Paris, in the 1880s—and that system was installed by Draka engineers.) A digression into industrial organization is necessary to establish the causal links.
The overwhelming majority of European and American industrial firms—even in heavy industry—were organized on a family business basic until well into the twentieth century; corporations were closely held. Before about 1870, railroads aside, this was the only form of business organization in those countries. These firms, mostly small, were obstinately self-financing, which sharply limited their capital reserves; and they were almost pathologically averse to debt and the supervision by banks it entailed. This form of organization responded quickly and intelligently to shifts in consumer demand; it was matchlessly efficient at supplying a diverse and "atomized" market.
In the proto-Domination, by contrast, industry developed to serve production rather than consumption; mines, heavy transportation, the armed forces, the Landholders' League and its agricultural processing plants, were the primary customers. The primary demand was for metal goods, principally tools, rather than the textiles and other end-products which were the staple of British industry in the period. When consumer goods manufacture did become important, it was mostly as a part of the Landholders' League's drive to capture value-added by following its members' crops "downstream" through processing to final sale. Even here, orders were "lumpy" by contemporary standards; for example, the Combines bought standard products in immense quantity for their basic serf labor forces. After the League went into cooperative wholesaling/retailing for its members (at first by mail order), plantation demand was largely aggregated as well—the League bought uniform goods in bulk, e.g., agricultural machinery or cheap shoes for fieldhands, later canned goods and power systems. Thus markets were simple, and on the whole quite reliable, making it possible to utilize economies of scale with little risk. The production units were large, from the beginning, and operated by salaried mangers. The government, and the especially the League, dominated the banking system, which served to funnel the surplus capital of agriculture into concentrated locations.
Thus Draka enterprises could afford to be of technically optimum size (indeed, sometimes larger); sales were reliable enough, and capital abundant enough, that long-term planning and research became a feature of their operation two generations before the Germans followed in their footsteps. The concentration of all money incomes in the top 4%-8% of the population kept the savings rate extremely high, usually in the neighborhood of 30%-50% of GNP, which meant an economy that was both awash with capital and furnished with abundant opportunities for productive investment. Land, unskilled and semi-skilled labor, and raw materials were all superabundant and cheap; the perennial shortage of managerial personnel led to an early emphasis on higher education—influenced by the German tradition of many of the early immigrants.
At the same time, this was not a pure command economy. Prices were set by the market, which was completely open to world trade; the high export propensity exerted continual pressure on even the largest organizations. The consumer and service sectors that served the Citizen population were characterized by much smaller individually owned enterprises. The ideology of the corporate State came later; in the early period, roughly to 1840, it was a matter of "sleepwalking" through to a solution to a set of isolated problems. Only when the essentials were in place did the fact that a system existed become obvious.
The result was what the great classical-liberal economists of the 19th century regarded as an utterly perverse economy: one in which human beings and their food and clothing were intermediate production goods, and machine-tools and cannon end products. To function it required a militarized society regimented by terror. But for the sort of brute-force, quantitative, capital-goods intensive industrialization the Domination needed to power its relentless expansion, it was ideal.
Power System Development 1840-1910 Steam Turbines:
The low operating efficiency of reciprocating steam engines was obvious, both intuitively and from the growing knowledge of thermodynamic and mechanical analysis in the early 19th century. Even with pneumatic transmission, the reciprocating action of pistons lost efficiency every time it had to be transformed into rotary action, and there were annoying limits to the size, speed, and power-output of steam pistons. Attempts at direct rotary engines (steam turbines) were made in a number of countries, but the manufacturing difficulties were many. A multi-stage tur-bine was obviously essential if the expansive power of steam was to be utilized, but this required precision machining of unprecedented quality. Furthermore, for maximum efficiency operating speeds and temperatures whole orders of magnitude greater than the piston engine were needed. Wrought and cast iron, and direct-contact oil lubrication, had sufficed for Watt and even Trevithick; they were not enough for the turbine.
