The Delicate Crunch of Marshmallows

Erica shrugged. “Not a chance, at least in court. But it’ll aggravate the hell out of ’em, and it may buy some time for us to prove we’re right. I’d bet we could manage enough restraining orders to tie them up for two or three years. This is also going to get some media attention. I sent copies to a dozen news agencies. We’ve been getting some bad press, and it’s time we changed that. But I have a couple of fallback plans.”

“Uh-oh. I hear mischief in your voice.” Buzz squinted suspiciously.

Erica grinned impishly. “Plan B, I’m thinking of buying each and every one of the scoundrels a copy of Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. Give them something to think about.”

“Erica, you wouldn’t?”

“Buy them classic reading material? ’Course I would. Then there’s plan C. We ignore ’em.”

Buzz blinked a couple of times. “You might want to think before you cut the umbilical cord…”

“Oh, come off it, Buzz. How many science fiction stories have you read where the colony had to do this very thing? Every author has at least one. This was so predictable, I’m ashamed I didn’t see it coming. Had to happen. It’s just human nature.

“Sure, we need stuff,” Erica continued. “Been needing it since before we got here. Haven’t been getting much of it, and when we do it’s two years late. We generally find a way to make it ourselves. And maybe they’ll cut off our pay. So what? We can’t spend it up here anyway. And I know we could have the first ship built way before they could, far cheaper, with more copies sooner. Hell, if we have to we can go independent and sell ’em the damned ships. They couldn’t say no. The whole bloody world economy may collapse if they can’t supply rare earths for the energy industries.”

Buzz grimaced. “Well… we aren’t absolutely self-sufficient. I suppose we can get by indefinitely on the so-called food we raise, but I know a lot of our coworkers want meat culture equipment so badly… I was going to say they can taste it, but the problem is they can’t. And maybe half of my medical supplies are produced by proprietary genetic engineering. I couldn’t duplicate the technology in twenty years. I’d need their cultures.”

Erica considered his arguments for a while. “If we have to, maybe we could fund our own mission. Better yet, we could whip off a smaller ship and go get the stuff ourselves. But, let’s face it, most things we’d be doing without, the Jamestown settlers had never even dreamed of. OK, so they had meat. Geez, what I wouldn’t give for just one bacon cheeseburger right now.”

“Erica, I’m really starting to regret bringing up the subject of meat,” Buzz lamented, patting his belly. “Let’s get back to the main topic. Assuming we can get these monkeys off our backs, do we really have what we need to finish this ship, or are we ignoring another problem?”

“We could really use more people,” Erica said thoughtfully. “Even with the new crew, if they don’t launch the last pair of habitats, we’ll still be about 25 percent understaffed, mostly astronics specialists. We could end up with a big, dumb brute of a ship, but I’m confident we could whip up a good enough system to make it fly. Hell, we’re not trying to build some fancy, over-engineered techno-money-hole like those idiots who’re giving us all the trouble want. What we’re building is the DC-3 of space. We just want a simple, solid, reliable transport that’s quick enough to do the job and economical to operate. Meanwhile, the jerks dirtside would be cutting their own throats. They’d be slowing us down, and they’d have to wait longer for the ship. That’s a lot more of a problem for them than it is for us.”

Buzz nodded.

Erica continued. “One more big problem.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m a lousy manager.”

“I dunno, you’ve—”

“Damned near run this outfit into the ground with all my freaking fiddling and reprioritizing. Buzz, before I took on this project, I’d never supervised more than a dozen people at one time. I was strictly middle management, and I bitched long and loud when the folks at the top got priorities screwed up with politics. Then I won a Nobel prize, and suddenly everybody, including myself, figured I could handle anything, even taking a small crew to the far reaches of space to build the biggest, fastest rocket mankind had ever created.

“I’ve done things that I swore I’d never do. I’ve talked people into making do, used up our capital equipment, and jerked folks from one task to another until they think the most important job is the last one they were bitched at about. They’ve accepted stupidity as Standard Operating Procedure. No wonder morale is so low. Every one of them was smart enough to know what a crock I was handing them. The only wonder is that they’ve gone along with it instead of handing it back to me.”

“Inverted!” Buzz grinned, picking up an empty coffee mug and holding it upside down.