2312

Boosters to get off planets, Earth especially, need high thrust Orbit-to-orbit interplanetary rockets need high exhaust velocity to save on fuel weights. Deuterium-helium-3 fusion spheromak engine, built on Luna, use began in 2113; Antimatter plasma core, magnetic bottle, Martian design, 2246; Deuterium-tritium fusion, with lithium-blanketed core to create more tritium in the burn, Luna, 2056; two have lost thrust chamber integrity and exploded with loss of all hands; Laser thermal, mainly used within the Jupiter and Saturn leagues for local transport, 2221; Mass drivers for the terraria, 2090; often called the workhorse; Inertial confinement fusion, Mars, 2237; Micro-fission Orion format, subcritical pellets of curium-245 compressed to fission by Z-pinch, magnetic thrust to the pusher plate of the rocket, Callisto, 2271; Orion style (external pulsed plasma propulsion), Luna, 2106 Magnetoplasmadynamic engine, propellant potassium seeded helium, Callisto, 2284; Emergency propulsion system for disabled vessels, a “solar moth” where half of a balloon is silvered and sunlight is reflected onto a window chamber hoop boiler, where hydrogen seeded with alkali metals serves as the propellant. Tiny exhaust velocities and not powerful beyond Mars, but very compact until deployed, Mars, 2099; Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma, which can “shift gears” from high thrust to high exhaust velocity, depending on need, Callisto, 2278; advances in physics, materials science, and rocketry, plus a growing desire for improvements in speed and fuel efficiencies, now drive an industrial race for new designs, dominated by organizations on Luna, Mars, and Callisto, so we can expect to see

KIRAN AND LAKSHMI

The next time he was passing through the Cleopatra train station, Kiran called the number Swan had given him, and the call was picked up by Lakshmi herself. When he explained how he had gotten the number, she gave him directions to a noodle house near him and told him she would be there in an hour, and she was. She turned out to be a Venusian native in the classic mold-tall, dark, handsome, taciturn. Her combination of Chinese ancestry and Indian name resembled that of some others he had met; he had been given to understand it marked Venusians who wanted some separation from the old country, with the name being a way of saying they were more Venusian than Chinese.

“Don’t stop working for Shukra,” Lakshmi told him immediately, even though Shukra had left him in a state of xuanfu (drifting chaos). She would help him to get to cuo suo. (Both meant “place,” Kiran’s translation belt told him, but suo was one’s own place, meaning also his work unit.) She would give him a better assignment, which would involve serving as a courier in his travels, moving things and information from one xiaojinku to another. Xiaojinku, small gold-storage centers: this sounded good to Kiran. He agreed to do it. Only then did Lakshmi tell him that he would be paid in yinxing gongzi, invisible wages. That didn’t sound as good, but something in the way she said it made him think it would be all right.

At the end of her description of his new job, Lakshmi stared at him. “Shukra got you from Swan Er Hong, but he did not use you. Does he think you are stupid? Or maybe Swan? Or me?”

Kiran almost said, Maybe Shukra is the stupid one, but Lakshmi did not actually seem to expect him to reply. She got up and left, and an hour later he had a new ID number, thus a whole new identity and name. None of which seemed to matter to anyone. His first assignment from Lakshmi was to courier a small packet from Cleopatra back to Colette; he was to fly back, to get there faster. With the packet, Lakshmi gave him a pair of translating glasses, which looked like thick old-fashioned black spectacles, with speakers in the earpieces. “Better translator,” she explained.

So he booked a flight, and in the process found that his new identity had quite a number of credits-so many it was a little scary. But interesting too, to see what kind of resources Lakshmi commanded. Maybe a whole xiaojinku, or more than one. People in his old work unit had said she was in the Working Group, and the Working Group ruled the planet.

Certainly her translator glasses were an upgrade; when he looked at Chinese language signs, with all their intricate ideograms, he now saw them overlaid in glowing red with the words rendered in English. It was startling to discover just how much information was written into the cityscape, now in glowing red: Beware of the Three Withouts. Vote for Stormy Chang. Towering Mountain Beer. The Door in the Middle of Half the Sky Alterations. A gender clinic, apparently. One could also Give Father a Second Sister.