Alien Impulses

"Our main problem", I explained to a rapt Minister, "is the sheer temperatures of the combustion process within the engine. You see", I explained, using my hands to mimic the fuel flow, "the combustion is sympathetic in nature. The more fuel we provide, the more will burn, following a parabolic curve". I described the curve in mid-air. "Force-feeding the process using these spherical combustion chambers, supported by high-quality materials like these, produces a tremendous increase in thrust over conventional models."

I banged on about combustion, re-entry temperatures, thermodynamic properties and centripetal forces until the Minister started to glaze over slightly, and then showed him the new PowerPoint, which showed a large fleet of Orbiters operating out of Sculthorpe, ferrying dozens of tonnes a day into orbit.

"Son, I have no idea how the hell you've come up with this stuff... I mean, I'd love to meet your materials people and bend their ears for half an hour..."

I smiled thinly. "You'll recall, Minister", I began, "that our research is carried out amid conditions of secrecy which would be recognisable to the scientists who took part in the Manhattan Project." He was nodding, waved me down.

"Yes, yes. We've agreed all of that. But remember, futuristic metals or none, I want to see an engine test in three months", he said, raising a finger at me. "Don't let me down, now!"

We shook hands, grinning at the ridiculousness of our wager. The Minister genuinely believed he had set me a near impossible task. Hal openly wished that I'd said three weeks, not three months. That might have given him a challenge. As it was, we would take the tape at a mere stroll.

Official photographs taken, handshakes done, and the various official cars waved off, the security guard left his post and drove home. He seemed vaguely sad to leave, although I was sure the RAF would find him something else to do. And then, suddenly, I was alone on my very own airfield.

No, not airfield, I soon corrected myself, glancing around at the massive runways with a grin. Spaceport.

I spent an hour setting up a command post in the abandoned control tower. It was handy enough, being able to see everything, and with the Relocation system in place, I could easily nip over to the production or testing hangers once they were built. I installed my laptop by the windows and organised electrical power, desk space and coffee. We'd need to get a replicator in here, I thought, adding one to Hal's monstrous build queue. He wanted to get started straight away.

I Relocated over to one of the old hangers and took a look around. There were three of the worn-out buildings, recently cleared by the RAF. I made some notes on my lectern, returned to the tower and brought Wright, Forager and Brunel with me to the hanger. This would do nicely as an initial work space for the construction phase. Hal got them moving immediately. The hanger was piped into the water supply, and the first thing the robots did was to manufacture a fuel pipe for Forager. Then they began work on the robot fleet.

Two hours later, three construction robots and two foragers were working in the tower to transform the place into a modern, well-connected, high-technology office. There were new desks, the ancient windows were replaced with double-glazing, the floor was re-laid and I had a full suite of printing and copying machines at my disposal. They even installed air conditioning, removing the musty wartime smell. Once the walls were painted, the place looked fantastic. I loved working there from the first moment, and I love it still as I write these lines in the very same office.

By dusk, Hal's build queue was markedly smaller. Seventy robots were now under his command, a mix of Foragers, construction machines, diggers and transport robots. As darkness fell, six diggers wheeled themselves over to the centre of the airfield, a triangular patch of grass formed by the meeting of all three runways, and got to work. They needed no lamps to see in the dark, but I had built a set of low-light goggles so I could follow their progress from the tower. They stripped away the grass, in the manner of taking up turf, and then began to dig a massive hole, some 100m square, within the triangle. As the whole deepened, more digger robots were completed in the hanger, and they joined the original six. After three hours, with the hole more than 20m deep, the majority moved over to begin a second hole, near the farmland on the south side of the runway.

More robots emerged from the hangers. Hal was operating on a construction curve, I knew, so that each new construction robot built would aid in the building of other, new, larger robots. As the total passed two hundred, Hal began a third enormous hole on the opposite side of the runway. The first, I knew, would become the main construction building where the Carrier plans were to be produced. The second would house Orbiter construction, and the third would produce and test the engines. All three were flexible, so that anything could be built anywhere, but it was easier to keep track of a compartmentalised system.

I walked out to check on their progress at about 3am, nursing a cup of hot coffee from my newly-installed replicator. The speed at which these robots worked was phenomenal. About a dozen were actually down in the hole, their large, fast-spinning drills boring into the earth, then withdrawing to allow digger machines to remove the fill, and pipes to be brought down to suck out the groundwater. Every few minutes, the hole gained a half meter in depth, while other drills and diggers laboured to expand the sides of the hole, which closed on 80 meters already.

A platoon of robots whizzed past me, carrying tall sheets of tough, green plastic. These, I knew, would comprise the new security fence. Guide posts were already in place, with small drill machines creating post holes and copies of Brunel slotting the tall planks of plastic into place. The fence would eventually encircle the whole site, perhaps five miles around in total, and would be monitored by security cameras, motion sensors and other, less conventional equipment.

At 7am, I emerged once more from the tower and looked down into the first hole, barely ten hours old. A floor was in place, and walls. Panelling was being screwed into place, and entry ramps were almost finished, allowing smaller construction robots to trundle down into the bottom of the hole and assist. In his hanger, Hal showed me the plans by which a Carrier plane would be built, on a large cradle attached to a hoist. Once complete, it could be lifted up, the roof would open at the centre and slide back, and the plane would emerge and be gently tipped forward into its own wheels, straight onto the tarmac.

In the second hole, which was in a similarly advanced state, I could see the beginnings of the tunnel which would connect this to the other two factories. Parts, robots, engines and eventually payloads could be exchanged between the three facilities using transport robots which would scurry to and fro using these tunnels. It was a masterpiece of engineering and design, even before it had produced anything.

*

[Well done for making it all the way to the end of this draft -- let me know what you think, either in a Message or some Feedback. Would love to have your opinions]