Big Bertha
“Easy, easy. This lunar gravity is one sixth, but it’s gravity nevertheless.”
“Yeah, yeah. I know. For this I went to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training School in Leninsk. Two years in the middle of godforsaken Kazakhstan!”
“At least you can breathe the air in Kazakhstan. Don’t knock it, Pete, you’re getting nice HARD American dollars with this gig! Careful. This 7075 aluminum ingot and magnet assembly has a mass of only 33,200 pounds, a little over a thousand slugs, which is why we call it a ‘Kiloslug’.”
“That’s what I love about you Americans! You hate the Metric System, but you attach Metric prefixes to all sorts of things! Microinches, nanotechnology, Pico Rivera, Mega Foods, Gigapets,”
“Don’t blame us for Gigapets! The Japanese did that to us! Hey, what’s a trillion bulls?”
“A tera, ah, come on!”
We laughed. But we were careful with the ingot. 33,200 pounds of mass weighs 5530 pounds of force on the Moon, and it hung on chains from the trolleys rolling down the steel I-beam in the ceiling of the tunnel. We pushed it through the personnel access door into the loading room. The opposite wall of the loading room slanted toward us and had a six foot diameter hatch covering the Big Bertha shaft. Hydraulic actuators and guide rails for the hatch were visible. In front of the shaft door is the loading assembly. The Moon is a rich source of untapped mineral wealth already out in Space. The ores are smelted, the metals blended to make alloys, and cast into ingots. The ingots are sent to us on a narrow gauge railroad. Our job is to get these ingots off the Moon.
“Magnets lined up!”
“Excellent. Now let’s guide this in. Easy. Easy.” Iron magnets were attached lengthwise around the outside of the aluminum cylinder. The ingot itself, four feet in diameter and fifteen feet long, contained 32,570 pounds of high strength aluminum alloy of the type commonly used in aircraft and spacecraft structure. “Second set of magnets lined up. Easy. Easy.” Two sets of magnets circled the ingot three feet in from each end. Each magnet was two feet long and had a wedge shaped cross section. Two inches wide at the base with a rounded top. This fit inside what is called a guideway. The twelve guideways of the loading assembly surrounded the ingot like the numbers on a clock. The ingot still hung from the trolleys on chains.
“Ingot’s in place. Ready to charge.”
“Ready. Charging!” Powerful electromagnets inside the guideways took hold of the magnets attached to the ingot and held it in place. The titanium chains became slack as they were relieved of the weight.
“Let’s remove the hooks and get the trolleys outta here.” We reached in and removed the hooks from the eyebolts screwed into the side of the aluminum. Then we pulled the trolleys down the I-beam and out the door. The I-beam is steel, but it’s firmly bolted in place except for a removable section at the door. The trolleys, chains, and hooks are made of titanium so as not to be affected by the magnetic fields when the guideways charge up.
“We’re out of the loading room. Closing door, now.” We moved the section of I-beam out of the way. We closed the door and rotated the handle to lock and seal it. An indicator light confirmed it was sealed. “Pulling repress valve, now!” The T shaped valve handle was horizontal. I rotated it to vertical. I watched the pressure gauges. 14 psi where we were standing and holding steady. The needle of the gauge for the loading room moved from 14 toward five. “Pressure in the loading room is now about five psi. Turning the valve the rest of the way.” Air continued to flow out of the loading room; the needle fell toward zero. “Pressure in loading room is now zero.”
“Good work, guys. Please come into the launch control room and help me send this aluminum on its way. Customer’s waiting, we all want to get paid.” Peter Andreyev and I went into the launch control room, Helen Baker and a nice hot pizza waited for us. The hydraulic actuators opened the door to the Big Bertha shaft and the loading assembly moved into the hole and rotated. “Loading assembly lined up with Big Bertha.” The guideways of the loading assembly pointed up at a thirty degree angle to align with guideways stretching one quarter mile up through the lunar bedrock to the surface. Big Bertha did not stick far above the surface. We needed to anchor its guideways firmly to the bedrock to withstand the 24 million pound reaction force from accelerating 33,200 pounds at 720 gees. “Charging up, hope nobody’s in a hurry. It’ll take an hour to fully energize the system.”
We listened to Pink Floyd music as electrical energy sufficient to accelerate 1030 slugs to a speed of 7800 feet per second in a quarter mile poured into Big Bertha’s coils. That’s why we named it for the famous German gun. Something about being in a control room a furlong below the surface of the Moon put us in a Pink Floyd mood. We munched the pizza and opened some cans of beer. We weren’t suppose to drink beer while on duty, but who’s gonna know?
“Isn’t this whole thing based on maglev train technology?” asked Peter.
“Yeah. Kinda like the German Transrapid train or the Japanese National Railway concept. But Big Bertha is not based on those designs. This is from good ol’ American know-how. Couple of fellas named Gordon Danby and Jim Powell came up with the null-flux idea. For a train, two guideways on each side held magnets in a tight grip to keep the vehicle locked in position.”
“So why didn’t you Americans put maglev trains into general use?”
“The road net’s in pretty good shape, even with the traffic jams around the cities. And there are the railroads left over from the 1800’s. If you wanted to get from Seattle to Spokane or from Los Angeles to San Francisco, you could do one of three things: Drive your car, take the Amtrak Train, or the Greyhound Bus. If you wanted to get there fast, 737’s work very well. When we finally installed high speed trains, they were essentially Americanized versions of the Japanese Bullet Train. Steel wheels on steel rails.”
“But while Danby and Powell came up with the null-flux concept for trains, didn’t you guys get the idea for Big Bertha from Saddam Hussein?”
We broke up laughing. “Yeah, one of our inspection teams in Iraq found it. We all know about the gun he tried to build with a very long barrel to launch an artillery shell over hundreds of miles.”
“The Israelis snuffed the engineer designing it.”
“Yeah, they did. Saddam figured there were other ways of launching that shell. We Americans in our generosity allowed Iranians and Arabs by the thousands to attend our universities to study engineering and physics. Some of these guys went home, making Iran a frightening war threat indeed. A few went to Iraq because Saddam paid good money to people with interesting ideas and no conscience. One of them brought an Argonne National Lab brochure on the null flux train. A United Nations inspection team found a working model of a null flux device with eight guideways. The eight guideways were capable of accelerating a one kilogram weight with specially shaped iron magnets at 300 gees. 65 feet long, it made a nasty weapon all by itself.”
“Big Bertha is a large version of the Iraqi design.” confirmed Helen. “And lest you think a nuclear warhead cannot be made to survive several hundred gees of acceleration, remember that the American B61 warhead is designed to plow into dirt and rock at thousands of feet per second and then explode.” The Pink Floyd music seemed even more appropriate.
Finally, the hour passed. “System’s fully charged, Big Bertha’s ready to launch. This is Big Bertha calling Moon Space Traffic Control, is the launch corridor clear?”
“This is MSTC, we read you Big Bertha. Launch corridor is clear. You are clear for launch.”
“Thank you, MSTC. Starting one minute countdown. T minus 60,” We sipped our beer as Helen counted down the sixty seconds. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Launch.”
In one third of a second the aluminum ingot flew out of the top end of the Big Bertha. “We confirm muzzle velocity at 7814 feet per second.” We heard no sound as the Moon absorbed the launch load silently. Just past the gravitational escape velocity of the Moon, the lunar gravity will slow the ingot down so that it will be easy to catch by the customer.
“Good job, Big Bertha. We confirm your exit velocity. We’ll be here in another hour for the next kiloslug ingot.”
“That’s good to hear, MSTC. The next one’s 32,500 pounds of copper. Same four feet diameter, but not quite as long.”
We went out to load the next ingot. A few more hours before the end of our shift.
That’s a part of this one short story I wrote. I’ve written others, and some full length novels I have been trying to get published. In the meantime I’m just scratching from week to week, occasionally getting contract work making use of this old engineering degree I once completed. The main science fiction and fantasy magazines turned nose up at Big Bertha but a little 500 copy per issue zine called Juvinal Delinquency paid me a few bucks for one time rights.
Very few bucks.
Gary Juvinal told me his magazine is mostly distributed on the East Coast, including a few comic book shops in D.C. and Virginia. I thanked him for choosing my short story.
Happy to have a little check for the bank and a publishing credit I went on with my business and thought nothing more about it.
I looked out the window from a holding cell in the Federal Building. At least they were discrete when they arrested me. I had no idea what this was about. Several men in business suits came into my cell and greeted me. “How you doing, Mr. Knight?”
“I’m not answering any questions without a lawyer present.”
One of the men wore a beard and his hair in a ponytail. “Winslow Bainbridge, Federal Public Defender’s Office.” I accepted his handshake.
“Arthur King, Assistant United States Attorney.” I refused his handshake.
“Mr. Bainbridge, this morning, I was scheduled to go to an interview for a three month contract job so I can earn money to pay income taxes to cover your salary. As you can see, I didn’t make that interview, and I haven’t had a chance to call to tell ‘em I wasn’t gonna make it. What am I gonna tell ‘em? I’m sorry I couldn’t make the interview because the FBI ARRESTED me for cryin’ out loud? Now how am I gonna make a living?”
“Arthur, he has a right to know what this is all about.” said Winslow, gently but firmly. “So do I, if I’m gonna represent him.”
The federal prosecutor let out a sigh. He opened his briefcase and brought out a copy of this month’s Juvinal Delinquency. “Mr. Knight, did you sell a short story to this magazine titled Big Bertha?”
I looked at my lawyer and he shrugged his shoulders. “You track the check from Gary Juvinal that I deposited in my bank account?” The FBI man nodded his head. “Yeah, I sold a short science fiction story about people who work in the mining industry on the Moon. I wrote a story about a device to get aluminum, steel, copper, that sort of thing, off the Moon into Space. That’s not a crime.”
“Writing stories about hypothetical devices is not a crime, Mr. Knight.” affirmed Arthur King. “But revealing classified information is.”
“Oh really. The crime you just committed right now.” I declared.
King laughed. “I didn’t reveal any classified information.”
“Oh yes you did. If the Big Bertha ingot launcher described in my story is purely hypothetical, you wouldn’t be wasting taxpayer’s money on little ol’ me. What you’ve done just now is convince me that it’s not! I don’t currently possess a security clearance, yet you’ve revealed to me the fact that my hypothetical Big Bertha is not hypothetical.”
Winslow chuckled. “He’s got a point, Arthur. If that information is classified, you’ve just revealed it to non-cleared personnel! He hasn’t worked on any project involving high powered magnetic fields. His degree is mechanical engineering, he hasn’t been involved in nuclear fusion research, the design of electric motors or generators, or even magnetic levitation train technology.”
“Thanks, Winslow. I’m just a structural engineering kind of guy. Aircraft structure, bridge structure, any old structure you can think of. Usually not classified, sensitive stuff. I like to read Aviation Week and keep up on the latest in technology. I’ve always enjoyed stories, both fact and fiction, about space exploration. I once read up on bullet trains and maglev trains because I hoped to get a job designing the track and pedestals. When I write science fiction, I look up the information from nonclassified sources, what you find in public libraries and university bookstores. I NEVER, EVER reveal classified information in my fiction. I can design new technology in my mind that can have both military and civilian uses. Science fiction is the genre where we can discuss the possible consequences and benefits of new devices.”
“He hasn’t committed any crime, Arthur. The First Amendment protects Big Bertha, as long as you cannot show that he knew about any actual device built under government secrecy. You cannot charge him with revealing classified information if you have no evidence that he KNEW the information. The stuff in the libraries and the bookstores is not classified information, though perhaps it should be. You can figure out how to build an atomic bomb from that stuff!”
“All right. All right. Cool it, Winslow. Mr. Knight, you’re obviously not the reincarnation of Nikola Tesla. Just another job shopping engineer. We’ll have to let you go. But, Mr. Knight, what you wrote about CAN be built. It CAN be used to launch nuclear warheads with muzzle velocities fast enough to cover several hundred miles, perhaps even a thousand miles. Neat idea for getting stuff off the Moon without big heavy rockets. But it’s also good for a nuclear strike without the trail of rocket exhaust to the source.”
I laughed. “You see the flash and the mushroom cloud. A city wrecked and thousands dead. Or a military base no longer in existence. But you cannot figure out who sent the weapon, or even how it was delivered. No bright flame from a rocket engine. No trail of smoke. I’ve always wondered why we relied on solid fuel rockets to deliver our warheads, that bright white flame and smoke trail is so easy to track. The Russian rockets were that way too. We can always send Timothy McVeigh with a truck carrying an atomic bomb and have him park it in the target city. The problem with that is that it takes several hours for him to drive there and all kinds of things can go wrong.”
“But if you launch a nuke out of a null flux magnetic accelerator, it arrives in a few minutes, nice and silent, without warning or a smoke trail pointing back toward the source.”
“Yeah, that’s true. I don’t think we or the Russians would ever do anything like that. But there are plenty of Third World countries caught up in their own little wars. And then there’s Iraq.”
“Iraq. Yes, Mr. Knight, we’ve read your story. Tell us, do you have any real information on whether Saddam has actually tried to build such a device?”
“No, I’m afraid not. The last time I saw any large number of people from the Mideast, I was in college sitting next to ‘em in engineering class. It was around the time of the Iranian Hostage Crisis. Some of those Iranians weren’t big fans of the Ayatollah. But many believed in the Khomeini Revolution and were angry with us for supporting the Shah. Most of these guys eventually went home. Wherever they went, I haven’t seen ‘em since. Those involved in Iraq’s weapons development efforts have yet to call me up on the phone.”
“That’s good to hear, Mr. Knight. Here’s a card with my phone number. If anyone tries to contact you about actually designing your Big Bertha, you call this number and let us know. Your story is published and we don’t begrudge you the right to earn an honest buck. But please be careful with your science fiction, you could give dangerous folks ideas they don’t need to have. You’re free to go, Mr. Knight. About that job interview you missed this morning, we’ll make a few phone calls to fix that. We don’t want you desperate from unemployment. Thanks for your time and patience.”
Helen piloted the four wheel drive Moon Buggy at about 20 miles per hour. Every vehicle up here is called a Moon Buggy, including the ones left over from Apollos 16 and 17. “One thing I like about the Moon, Helen, no traffic!” I exclaimed.
“But I’m tired of going so damn slow all the time. I’m ready for some Montana freeway or German autobahn.”
“Yeah, you get spoiled driving 70 and 80 miles per hour. At least we have no cops up here.”
“No NEED for cops. This damn thing don’t go faster than 30.” The speedometer went up to 30 miles per hour and no more.
“But look at this countryside. No people. No telephone poles, no city skyscrapers. Just mountains, craters, and sand. No air. Stars are pretty the two weeks the Sun goes down. Even with Earth up there all the time. We should come out here by ourselves, this is so romantic.”
“What about me?” protested Peter.
“Sorry, Peter. I’m not into that.”
“I didn’t mean it that way!” We laughed.
“You keep this up, I’ll sue you for sexual harassment!” Helen giggled.
“So sue me! Tell the court I’m human. A normal adult heterosexual man. Unmarried, even.”
“I’ll take you for everything you got!”
“You’re in for a disappointment!” More laughter. “It ain’t that much!”
“All right, gentlemen, we’re here. Time to collect some rocks.”
“I hate collecting rocks. I only do it because loading ingots into Big Bertha gets boring after a while. Where are we today?”
We unfolded the maps. The Fra Mauro region was marked off in the township and section squares we see in the American West. Elevations in feet, the Zero Datum is the bottom of a crater somewhere. “We’re here in Section 25.” The square mile we were in. “Northeast quarter of the southwest quarter.”
“Today’s back forty.”
“Yes, the company wants us to collect samples from this 40 acre parcel. Make sure your helmet cameras are working, record everything you do. Collect samples from any rock formation that looks interesting, anything that’s some color other than gray.”
Peter and I climbed into the pressure suits. We put the helmets on, ran through the checklist and went out through the airlock. Helen stayed inside the vehicle. Safety rules require that there be at least two of us outside whenever any of us are outside, and that we be in sight of each other. At least one person must remain on board the Moon Buggy at all times. All of our radios must be working; we tested them.
The Moon Buggy is about the size and weight of a recreational vehicle and has some of the same amenities. First aid kit. Emergency food supply. Drinking water. Lithium hydroxide canisters to clean out the carbon dioxide. Radio for communications. Fuel cell driven engine, tanks of hydrogen and oxygen to supply the fuel cell. There is water on the Moon, underground, we drill wells for it. Split it into hydrogen and oxygen as a way of storing energy. Fuel cells turn it back into water.
We saw a flash of light shoot out of the ground at a 30 degree angle. “How far are we from Big Bertha?” asked Peter.
“17 miles. Amazing we can see the payloads from here. Let’s get to work, Pete, they ain’t paying us to look at the scenery.”
“I’ll get the ‘shopping cart’.” A wheeled basket for carrying the samples. We walked the back forty. At each place we stopped, we put rocks and sand into a bag and marked the bag with a number. The bags were already marked with letters and numbers designating the 40 acre parcel. Helen parked the Moon Buggy right in the center of it. We kept in constant touch with Helen. No gender discrimination, just Helen’s turn to stay in the Buggy.
When the shopping cart was full we took it back and loaded the sample bags into the airlock. After we closed the airlock door, Helen took them into the passenger compartment. We went back out several more times. While we had a prospector’s knowledge of what ore rocks look like, we didn’t find anything that looked exciting. But the lab folks sometimes find something.
“All right, gentlemen. Looks like we’re done. Can barely see around the sample bags in here. Come on in!”
“It’s Miller Time!”
“Not for me, I’m driving.”
“You thought it was slow coming out, it’s gonna be even slower going in with all of this weight.”
“No kidding!
We cycled in and climbed out of our pressure suits. Helen took us back home, this time at a leisurely ten miles per hour. “They don’t mind us carrying the samples in here in the passenger compartment?” asked Peter.
“That’s how the Apollo capsules carried the Moon rocks. Lab folks don’t care if we spit on ‘em, they’re looking for metal ore. Only reason for numbering the bags is so if they find something, they’ll know exactly where we picked up the rock.”
“Mr. Knight, can you come into my office, please?”
“Sure.” I got the job after all. With a recommendation from the people who arrested me the morning of my scheduled interview. Toy magnetic levitation trains. A set that can be sold for about 40 dollars at places like KayBee and Toys ‘R’ Us. Interesting work, but it’s a toy!
I went into my boss’s office. “Hello, Mr. Knight.” greeted the federal lawyer, Arthur King.
“What the?”
“Don’t worry Mr. Knight, we don’t think you’ve done anything illegal, other than calling Mistress Desdemona to come visit you.”
“WHAT!? Can’t you guys leave me alone?”
My boss and Arthur King laughed. “I don’t care what you do on your own time,” assured my boss, “as long as you don’t get arrested for it.”
“Anyway, we’ve already performed a background check on you,” started King, “you qualify for a Secret Clearance.”
“I don’t want a Secret Clearance. We make toys. Why would I need a Clearance to design toys?”
“We have a special project for you, but you have to swear to secrecy.”
“I ain’t swearing to nuttin!”
“Ah come on, Mr. Knight. Where’s your sense of adventure? Your sense of patriotic duty?”
“I’m perfectly happy designing toys for Vixen Electronics.”
“And we’re happy with the work you’ve done for us. Our Deluxe Maglev Superset with 40 feet of track is about ready to ship to the stores. We have commercials set to run on every cartoon show in North America. But unfortunately we won’t need a high powered engineer like yourself for the next few months.”
“So if you come to work for the federal government on our top secret project, we’ll keep you in paychecks for a few months until Vixen is ready to start design work on its Cretaceous Adventure series of action figures.”
“That’s a generous offer, but I’m reluctant to do any more government work. I’ll be happy to have my job shopper find me other civilian work when I’m done here.”
“I see. You might find the market for your skills drying up.” Arthur King spoke with a bad impression of Marlon Brando’s Godfather voice. “It’s amazing how it happens to some engineers. No matter what the economy is doing, they just can’t get hired.”
“Maybe I’ll sell my novel and then I won’t need to work.”
“Sure, sure. If you can get a publisher to take a chance on you under such circumstances. We can investigate everything they have ever done in their lives, including a few things they haven’t done. In fact, what’s to stop us from putting you away for ten years for crack cocaine possession?”
“The fact that I’ve nothing to do with drugs.”
“Ah. So we search warrant your house and find a few grams of crack cocaine. It’s amazing how that stuff can just materialize out of nowhere during a police search. You can claim it was planted, but how could you prove it? Especially when we have Mistress Desdemona turning state’s evidence and testifying against you.”
“You sure have a thing for Mistress Desdemona. Why don’t you two go entertain each other and leave me alone?”
Arthur chuckled. “I’m a happily married man.”
“Desdemona does couples.”
“I’m sure she does. Anyway, here’s the paperwork for you to sign. You agree to secrecy, accept the Secret Clearance, and accept the salary and benefit package. You’ll find the money is adequate, you can get a new pair of eyeglasses on a new prescription at taxpayer’s expense. We want your vision corrected to 20-10. We’ll see you tomorrow at seven sharp at this address. Have your signatures on the dotted lines and be ready to piss in a bottle. We won’t fire you if we detect a little pot, but we do want to know. Have you used drugs in the last six months?”
“Other than alcohol and uh, Sudafed for my allergy, no.”
“Good.” King shook my hand. “We’ll see you tomorrow morning. Welcome aboard, Mr. Knight.”
I spent the next morning filling out paperwork and getting examined. A new eyeglass prescription. The physicians examined me like they were aliens in a flying saucer who kidnapped me. After the lunch break in the cafeteria, I went to Arthur King’s office and was presented with a new pair of glasses. They looked good and made my vision perfect. “You know, Arthur, for an Assistant U.S. Attorney you don’t seem to spend a lot of time prosecuting criminals. It’s not like we don’t have illegal drugs and racketeering and tax fraud and such in this state. So what gives?”
“I have a law degree and I’m licensed to practice before the federal courts. But I spend most of my time working with the intelligence agencies. That’s why you needed the Secret Clearance. Your Big Bertha story indicates that you have an insight into magnetic levitation technology. It turns out that a General Sergei Gudunov of the Azerbaijan Army has a subscription to Juvinal Delinquency and other science fiction magazines.”
“Sergei Gudunov sounds like an ethnic Russian name.”
“He’s ethnically Russian, but he’s from Baku and obtained his officer’s commission in the Azerbaijan Army after the breakup of the Soviet Union. He earned several medals for bravery in the fighting with Armenia. They recalled him to Baku to recuperate from gunshot wounds. There are unconfirmed rumors it was friendly fire. That’s all we know about him right now. The Azeris have their oil fields back in production during this current cease fire, and they’re getting some hard currency. Some of that money is being spent on reconstruction and resettling refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh. But we cannot account for all of it, undoubtedly some is being spent to resupply their military.”
“That’s understandable given their situation with Armenia.”
“It is. As long as it’s conventional weapons like assault rifles and tanks, we’re not too concerned. Neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia are known to have inherited any of the Soviet Union’s nuclear and chemical weapons. But we are concerned about possible new technology weapons being developed in this part of the world. Now that we have you in new glasses, I want you to look at these satellite photos and tell me what you think.”
With Arthur looking over my shoulder I looked through magnifying lenses. “An abandoned rail yard surrounded by a wall and guarded like a prison. A prison without cellblocks.”
“We don’t think it’s a prison. No reason to keep a prison secret. Those walls and guard posts are designed to keep people from breaking in, not out.”
“Long low rail shed. A hundred yards off one end is a pile of dirt.”
“That’s the daytime shot. Now look at these night time shots, taken a tenth of a second apart.”
“The site is lit up and then not lit up.”
“Strobe light, we think.”
“Like high school physics class. A strobe light flashes every twentieth of a second while the room is dark. A camera shutter is opened and a marble rolled off the end of a table in front of a black meter stick with white centimeter lines. The photograph shows the centimeter lines and images of the marble a twentieth of a second apart. We could estimate the speed and gravitational acceleration of the marble in its flight. Same kind of thing could be used to measure the muzzle velocity of a projectile in flight. The dirt pile could be used to catch projectiles. So they’re testing a piece of artillery hidden under the rail shed. The rail tracks should be five foot Russian gauge; that gives us a scale. You have any low angle shots of this place?”
“A Keyhole satellite shot this from over Iran, it was about 10 degrees above the horizon in the Azerbaijan sky.”
“Nice side view of the rail shed. That wall is painted black with vertical white lines at regular intervals. Meters?”
“The big fat lines are five meter intervals, the little ones are single meters, like football yardlines. We think there are small decimeter lines between the meter lines.”
“They’re strobing the flight of a projectile. Distance between images of the projectile measured by the background scale multiplied by the strobe frequency gives the flight speed in meters per second. The dirt pile catches the projectile.”
“That’s what we think.”
“In every one of these shots, no smoke is coming out of the rail shed. Yet the strobe lights are flashing at night and it looks like dozens of projectiles are being thrown into the dirt pile.”
“The usual artillery piece emits a huge volume of smoke with each firing. We’re not seeing that here. Nor are we seeing the flash of fire.”
“You brought me off the toy factory because you think this is a real life version of my Big Bertha ingot launcher.”
“That is what we’re thinking.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Big Bertha, you are clear for launch.”
“Thank you, MSTC. One minute to launch, T minus 60.” We waited through the countdown. “Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Launch. Muzzle velocity is 6578 feet per second. Shit! What happened?”
“I don’t know. MSTC, we have a problem.”
“We copy, Big Bertha. You’ve launched a kiloslug at less than escape velocity; we’re tracking it. Calculating orbit of the projectile. It’s in orbit around the center of mass of the Moon, unfortunately that orbit crosses the surface of the Moon when it comes back around. It’s gonna hit at six to seven thousand feet per second. What’s it made of?”
“33,000 pounds of chrome-mag steel alloy.”
“Great. Calling Flycatcher, this is Moon Space Traffic Control calling Flycatcher.”
“This is Flycatcher, we read you loud and clear. We’ve got the fuel for the interception. Big Bertha, what happened?”
“We’re running the diagnostics. Everything looked fine before the launch. Oh! Some of the electromagnets failed during the launch.”
“That’ll do it. Okay, we’ll go catch the ingot.”
In the launch control room, it was time to scramble. “Peter, we gotta do something with these beer cans, and FAST!”
“That’s right.” confirmed Helen. “We’re alone, but not for long!”
“But we’re not drunk. One twelve ounce can of,”
“I know that, you know that, everybody knows that, but so what? We better drink some pop to mask the beer on our breath.”
“Good idea. Peter, it’s like when you’re a drunk driver. You come to a red light and stop. Like you’re suppose to. Even drunk you can do that. You wait at the stoplight, nothing you can do until it changes. Somebody plows into your rear end. The accident is absolutely positively not your fault. But you were drunk, you see?”
“I see.”
“The magnets malfunctioned during the launch. Nothing we could do about it, how do you abort a launch in one third of a second? Like stopping the bullet after you pull the trigger. Jails are full of people who wish they could. Let’s not join ‘em!”
We got rid of the evidence and drank Coca Cola to wash down the beer. A thundering herd of people soon arrived. They asked us questions like we were in a police station suspected of a crime. Fortunately our stories matched and the tape recordings of the launch exonerated us.
“This is Flycatcher calling Big Bertha.”
“This is Big Bertha, we read you, Flycatcher.”
“We snagged the ingot, you don’t have to worry about it crashing into the Moon.”
“Thank goodness! Thank you, Flycatcher.”
“Uh, there’s something you should know about the payload.”
“Yes?”
“Two of the magnets are torn to shreds, the others show gouging and friction. They were still warm when we caught it.”
“At 5,000 feet per second, must’ve made a lovely shower of sparks, even in hard vacuum. Big Bertha is shut down indefinitely. Thank you, Flycatcher.”
YEREVAN, Armenia. (Bishop News Service) The capital of Armenia is rocked by mysterious explosions, starting at about eight in the morning local time. We heard whistling sounds like artillery shells or bombs dropped from planes. But we see no aircraft and hear no thunder of artillery. No one knows what’s causing the explosions.
“What do you think of this stuff going on in Armenia, Mr. Knight?”
“I don’t know. Nobody can find the artillery sending the shells?”
“Nope. Nor are there any planes flying over dropping the bombs. These aren’t planted bombs, they rain down from the sky. And we’re not seeing any smoke trails from rockets.”
“They rain down from the sky. Have our Armenian friends reconstructed any of the explosives? The way our FBI does it?”
“The Armenians aren’t as well organized as that. Right now, they’re afraid to come up above ground. Our Embassy people are looking into it. If these shells are being launched by magnetic force, what should they find?”
“Like my hypothetical Big Bertha? Like what we think we were looking at in the Azeri railyard? We should see some remains of the magnets mounted on the side of the shells. I would advise the folks in Armenia to look for magnetic shrapnel. The limitation of traditional artillery is the length of the barrel, and the fact that the force delivered by the burning powder decreases as the shell travels the length of the barrel even if that force is spread out by the use of slow burning powder. With a null-flux magnetic accelerator, we have a continuous force delivered to the shell the full length of the guideways. No upper limit, we could build miles of such guideways and accelerate the shell past gravitational escape velocity. To go from some place in Azerbaijan not occupied by Armenian troops, they would need a range of several hundred miles.”
“Look at these sat photos of Azerbaijan.”
“That’s interesting. Where in Azerbaijan is this?”
“Five miles south of Kuba.”
“Cuba? What does Fidel Castro have,”
“No, not that Cuba. This little town up in these northeast mountains. As far away from Armenia as you can go and still be in Azerbaijan.”
“Oh yes. Hmm.” I walked a pair of dividers over the map. “230 miles from there to Yerevan. We need more shots of this structure. Some low angle shots. How did we know about it?”
“Look at these infrared shots.”
“Hmmm. Heat’s leaking out in places. Power lines leading to one end of it. It’s possible a magnetic accelerator is hidden under that long roof covered with dirt and shrubbery. Clumsy effort to hide it. The upper end of this structure is angled at what?”
“We think 45 degrees.”
“Good. Let me calculate the muzzle velocity of a projectile to get from there to Yerevan. 230 miles. Times 5280.”
“You don’t do it in meters?”
“You can do it in meters if you want. I prefer to do it in feet.” I fed the numbers into the equation and punched the calculator. “Hmmm. Back of the envelope, I’d say 6200 to 6300 feet per second. 270 to 280 seconds of flight time. Four and a half minutes. Maximum altitude of the shell during flight, 302,000 feet or 57 miles.”
“You’re not taking into account air friction.”
“Yeah, a real drag. We’re talking about Mach 5.6 at the muzzle. In nice thick 2000 foot altitude atmosphere. Shell would bleed a conical shock wave. But not for very many seconds, gets up high quick, above most of the atmosphere for most of its flight. At the high end of the estimate, 6300 feet per second muzzle velocity, we could still make it to Yerevan from Kuba. The question is friction heating. Our orbiting spacecraft go 25,000 feet per second when reentering the high atmosphere, and need heat shields to avoid burning up.”
“I would design the shell to have an ablation shield to bleed off heat.”
“That would leave a vapor trail as soon as it heats up. Let’s look for that.”
We rode the Moon Buggy to the exit hole. “We see the guideways. What’s left of them. What a mess!”
“That bad, huh?”
“Tore ‘em out. There’s debris all over the ground out here. Three of the guideways are no longer in existence at this end. The rest are damaged.”
I spoke quietly with Peter. “Now you know why maglev trains are not common around the world. You’re cruising along at 300 miles per hour with only an inch between your vehicle and the track. Suddenly something malfunctions.”
“Lots of sparks. Very warm. Great for passengers.”
YEREVAN, Armenia. (Bishop News Service) The mysterious explosions suddenly ended at 9:25 a.m. local time. So far the death toll stands at 26, will go higher as more casualties are dug out of the rubble. The shells seem to come from the direction of Azerbaijan but no one will say how they are being launched, nobody can find the artillery. I am holding here in my hand a still hot piece of iron allegedly from one of the bombs. It is about four inches long, and inch and a half wide with a wedge shaped cross section. It was found fifty feet from one of the sites of the explosions.
“What do you think, Mr. Knight?”
“Looks like it could be a magnet attached to the side of the shell. They’re not saying how magnetic this piece of iron is. But then heat can eliminate magnetism from a piece of iron. The shelling stopped. Can we get a new satellite photo of the launcher near Kuba?”
“Coming up! Hear it is.”
“Wow! It’s all blown up, several hundred feet from the upper end! If it is a magnetic launcher, a failure of some of the magnets in the guideways would do it.”
“At thousands of feet per second, all the shell would have to do is slide off the centerline of its flight and bump into the guideways.”
“The results could cause the powder in the shell to explode. We’re gonna have to make a report to the President. Magnetic levitation technology is now available to third world countries for launching artillery shells over ranges of hundreds of miles.”
“If the Azeris could do it, so can the Iranians. The northwest corner of Iran is also called Azerbaijan, Tabriz is its capital. We have human intelligence that Iranian engineers helped ‘em build this thing.”
“Human intelligence?”
“Spies. You know they got this idea from your story.”
“No. It would have taken them longer to get this built if my story in Juvinal Delinquency is the first they have heard about this idea.”
“It didn’t take ‘em long at all. They hashed out a quick and dirty design and built the thing. It’s not a secret to them.”
“Nor is it to the public, CNN has just announced a story on my story, Big Bertha.”
The reporters were there when I left the office. How did they find out I worked here? All I said was “No comment.”
When I got home, the phone rang. “Hello.”
“YO! RAHJJJ! How ya’ doing! It’s Gary Juvinal! You know that little contract we signed?”
“One time use, 500 copy print run.”
“Yeah! Right. Hey, we’re getting calls from newsstands, booksellers, convenience store chains, everybody! They all want more copies of the edition of Juvinal Delinquency that has your Big Bertha story in it! The other authors have already agreed. We’re talking 100,000 copy press run here! Maybe more! What do you think?”
“How much you offering?” The one time use contract specified 500 copies. Additional copies require an additional contract.
“A few more bucks.” Then he told me how many more.
“That sounds pretty good. But hey, I got into a bit of trouble with the government. People in the Pentagon didn’t like me describing the Big Bertha mechanism in an obscure paperback sci fi magazine.”
“Yeah, I heard about that. But they got you a job with the toy company until they needed you to analyze what’s going on in Azerbaijan. Now that the Azeris bombed the hell out of Yerevan with a magnetic levitation accelerator located near Kuba, your little story is famous!”
Sigh. “How did you find out about that?! You know this, you called me on the phone. Now how am I gonna defend myself from a charge that I revealed classified info to you?”
“Don’tcha worry about that Knight! The Bishop News Service has had that on their Web Site since four this afternoon! General Gudunov flashed his copy of Juvinal Delinquency in front of the cameras! He’s demanding formal treaty negotiations to settle the war with Armenia. He wants joint Azeri-Armenian administration of Karabakh! Withdrawal of Armenian troops from Azeri territory. Or Yerevan is gonna look like Hue after the Tet Offensive! After they get their launcher fixed, of course. Lots of people now want a copy of that JD!”
“There goes my career as a job shopper engineer. Okay, Gary. Double your offer and I’ll sign another contract.” I figured his first offer is low, he needs my signature fast, and I will be needing the money.
After Gary hung up I called another number. “Assistant U.S. Attorney Arthur King’s office, may I help you?”
“It’s me, Knight.”
He came running. “Yeah. It looks like every secret you promised not to reveal, is on CNN, on the Internet, the evening news, and in the newspapers. Yeah. Go ahead and authorize more copies in the Juvinal print run. But don’t take his first offer, get as much money as you can out of him!”
“Thanks. I’ll remember that. But I’m not feeling very happy about getting this money.”
“Dead bodies on the TV news, huh?”
“I write a story suggesting a neat way of applying maglev technology for expanding our presence in Space! It always seemed like a benign technology. The worst that can happen with a maglev train is people not riding the damn thing because they rather drive their own cars. Next thing I know, my idea is being used in some chickenshit war between two itty bitty countries!”
“It’s a problem with technology. Any new invention created with a peaceful purpose, somebody can always find a military use for it. If we can smelt metal and make a plowshare, we can make a sword. We increase farm production with the plowshares. Everybody has more children because there’s more food and fiber and wealth, all because of the plowshares. Half of those children are boys. When they hit fifteen, they can become soldiers who chop each other up because we can make swords.”
“Vicious cycle. I don’t suppose it would be possible to talk the Azeris into tolerating the Armenians’ looks, religion, language, and weird alphabet, and likewise getting Armenians to tolerate the Azeris among them?”
“Are you kidding? The Azeris speak a dialect of Turkish, which the Armenians can’t stand because Turks massacred them in 1915. Never mind that the Azeris had nothing to do with that, they were under the ‘protection’ of the Czar then. After Stalin reconquered the place, he made Karabakh an autonomous region under Azeri jurisdiction. When the Soviet Union fell apart, the ethnic Armenians within the enclave went to war to throw the Azeris out, with the help of the newly independent nation of Armenia. Armenia got the better of the war, occupying much of western Azerbaijan along with Karabakh.”
“I still have a job?”
“Of course you do. Come in tomorrow morning as usual.”
I didn’t get as much sleep as I wanted that night. Next morning I sat at my desk sipping a cup of coffee trying to return to the world of the living. Arthur King is one of those insufferably cheerful morning people. “Hey kid! Rise and shine! We need you in the conference room. Don’t need to bring anything, just come.”
We went into the conference room. I was introduced to the people there, and to the President of the United States on the speakerphone. “So you’re the one who wrote the Big Bertha story!” exclaimed the Commander in Chief. “I’m glad you’re here. Please continue with the briefing Mike.”
Mike continued. “Here’s what we know: Sergei Gudunov read Knight’s story and decided to try to build the thing. He had a few engineers from the old Soviet Tokamak program, which is a type of fusion reactor using a doughnut shaped magnetic bottle. He also hired Iranian engineers educated in the United States. Azerbaijan is the Texas of the old Soviet Union, where equipment for the oil industry is built. With readily available machine shops and materials, these engineers were able to put together the two maglev accelerators that we know about. The little test machine at the railyard you have been looking at, and the bigger one recently used as a weapon.”
“They put it together pretty fast.”
“Yeah, caught everyone by surprise. They didn’t waste a lot of time with change board meetings and bureaucratic process. Just did it. Now they’re telling Armenia to sign a peace treaty on their terms or evacuate Yerevan.”
“But they had a malfunction that wrecked the Kuba launcher!” exclaimed the President.
“They think they can fix it faster than they built it.”
“Where do the Russians and Iranians fit in with this?”
“The Iranians tend to side with the Azeris because their northwestern people are Azeri and Azeris are Muslim. But they use Armenia to block Turkey’s influence with Turkish speaking Azerbaijan. The Russians have been playing the Caucasian Republics against each other since Peter the Great. I suspect they just wanted to see if we have a neat new way of launching artillery shells. Even nuclear shells.”
We sat in silence for a moment.
The President spoke up. “What do you think is the full impact of this technology being in existence, Mr. Knight? It was your idea.”
“I don’t think we have as big of a problem as it appears.” I announced.
“Do go on.” asked the President.
“Maglev technology is neat but it duplicates the function of other technologies that are adequate. The Azeris built one device in the mountains near Kuba that they have used for war. It blew itself up but they can repair it. The Armenians know exactly where it is because CNN told them. As soon as they can, they’re going to attack it. This magnetic artillery is almost a quarter mile long and fixed in place! There’s no way to hide it. How are the Azeris going to protect it? Armenians can use aircraft and rocket missiles or drop in a demolition team. All they have to do is bend the guideways a bit, or damage the wiring, or the electrical supply, and they can put it out of action. Sure, Iran and other countries can build one, but it wouldn’t last long in a war, it would be targeted. As far as the Russians or Chinese using one to launch a nuclear warhead over thousands of miles, well, once you use nuclear weapons, you’ve crossed the line. We just have to continue to rely on deterrence to protect ourselves from nukes.”
“I hate relying on deterrence.” admitted the President. “But there’s nothing else. The best missile defense can still let some warheads through. The fact that we have plenty of nukes and can use them is what keeps everyone else from using them.” Sigh. “Thanks, Mr. Knight.”
“There’s the mouth of the thing!”
“Yes. I see it! Looks just like any other tunnel entrance. How do we know it’s the one?”
“Look at all of the guards! Two fences, not one! Mean looking dogs between them. Just like the Berlin Wall. The hole goes down at a sharp angle along this hillside. 45 degrees for maximum range.”
“All right. Need to get a couple of missiles down the middle of that hole. But also hit the surrounding rock and dirt, see if we can cause a cave in.”
Whoosh! Boom! A dark object flew out of the hole in a blink of an eye. The sonic boom washed over the Armenians. “It has been repaired! Now we have to mess it up again!” The commander pushed a button on his field radio. A burst transmission lasting a hundredth of a second informed Yerevan, “Incoming!”
“All right, men! Set it up!”
In ten minutes the rocket launcher, mortars, cannons and machine gun nests were in place and ready. “We’re ready, Commander.”
“Thank you. Await my orders.” Hearts pounded as the men waited for the order. Whoosh! Boom! The commander pushed the button warning Yerevan of the shell. “Fire Missile One!”
“Missile One away!” A single wire guided missile flew toward the exit hole. The Armenian soldier had to be completely exposed in line of sight as he directed the rocket. Azeris opened up with machine gun fire when they saw the rocket.
“Return gun fire!” Armenian machine guns opened fire as Missile One entered the hole in the hillside. The soldier guiding it fell wounded. A flash in the cave! Flame and smoke burst out of it along with the boom of the explosion. The Armenian soldiers cheered and whooped. “Fire all missiles, cannons and mortars!” ordered the Commander as he sent another short radio signal informing Yerevan that the first missile exploded in the hole. Mortar and cannon shells and rockets rained down upon the Azeri positions and the magnetic launcher. Rock and dirt fell into the hole but did not seem to block it. Mortar shells rained down upon the length of the launcher. Another Armenian squad assaulted the lower end of the launcher. Secondary explosions confirmed detonation of the ammunition dump. Demolition squads worked on powerlines and transformer substations wherever they could be found. Kuba was without electricity.
When the artillery ammunition and the missiles were expended, the Armenians attempted retreat, but many were captured or killed.
“What do you think, Mr. Knight?”
“The Kuba magnetic launcher is out of action. The Armenian demolition squads have been chased away or captured. May take weeks or months to repair it and have it back in action. Then the Armenians might try an air strike. Meanwhile, war has broken out on all fronts between the two nations. The Azeris are going to have to prevail the old fashioned way. With conventional weapons and conventional soldiers fighting and dying.”
“The magnetic launcher didn’t give the Azeris a strategic advantage after all.”
“It did, in that Yerevan was under attack. That’s why the Armenians sent suicide squads to put it out of action. Now that it’s out of action, we have an old fashioned war. Expect a raid on Baku and the oil wells in retaliation for Yerevan.”
“Hey! More shells are hitting Yerevan! And Stepanakert! In Karabakh. They are also hitting the railroads through Idzhevan and Spitak!”
“It appears that Azerbaijan has more than one magnetic launcher.”
MOSCOW. (Bishop News Service) After a week of fighting, Armenia and Azerbaijan have agreed to a ceasefire. The guns fell silent at noon local time today. There are unconfirmed reports that the ceasefire happened when Russia read both nations the riot act. As we speak, the leaders of the two warring nations are flying to Moscow to meet with Russian leaders and to negotiate a settlement of the conflict. There are unconfirmed reports that Russian peacekeeping troops will be sent in to enforce the ceasefire.
“Unconfimed reports? Look at ‘em go! All the way to the border with Iran. Russia ain’t letting the Iranians assume any jurisdiction over anything north of the Aras River. They’ve even occupied Nakhichevan Autonomous Region.”
“Should we oppose the Russians on this?”
“Why? Say what you will about the big bad old Soviet Union, they at least kept their sphere of influence under control.”
“There was a lot of violence during the Stalin era.”
“Yeah, right. But after Stalin, at least during the time of Khruschev and Brezhnev, we didn’t have things like the Armenia-Azerbaijan War and the Chechen War. Just like Tito kept things under control in Yugoslavia. I understand the problems we have with tyranny and communism, but sometimes anarchy is worse. I mean, how do you keep the peace where a dozen different ethnic groups who hate each other are crowded into one small region?”
“Basic fear that everyone has is the extinction of their language and culture. Even big countries have this fear, we have the example of Ancient Egypt and the Roman Empire. But with small tribes that have been on the losing end of history, they’re extremely defensive. If we’re going to have peace, we’re going to have to find some way of guaranteeing the language and culture of Armenia, a Christian nation surrounded by Muslims, in some manner that allows the Muslims to save face.”
“Problem with that, the Muslims think the only way to save face is to either wipe out the Armenians or to convert them to Islam. The world won’t tolerate a genocide and the Armenians aren’t going to convert to Islam.
In the teleconferencing room General Gudunov was on the line. “Mr. Knight! I’m a fan of yours! Read your Big Bertha story. Excellent! It is an honor to be speaking with you.”
“With all due respect, General, I’m not so happy. You take an idea that I write into a short science fiction story, build the thing, and then use it to KILL people! Makes me feel responsible!”
“Please, Mr. Knight. I understand how you feel. Some of the men who served under me in the Soviet Army now fight for the Armenians. INVADED our territory! Ethnic clensed Azeris, even Russians like me, out of Karabakh. War’s nasty business. This weapon we’ve built using your idea is inexpensive and easy to put together. But it’ll get us some of our land back, at least north and south of Karabakh. Let Armenia have Karabakh. But let us have the Kura Valley and the railroad and highway to Georgia. And grant us the use of the railroad and highway on the north side of the Aras to Nakhichevan. Without such communication, they are getting a little too Autonomous for an Autonomous Republic!” He laughed.
“Well, maybe you wouldn’t have had a war with Armenia if there wasn’t the riot in Sumgait chasing the ethnic Armenians out.”
“Yeah, I know. Look, Mister Knight, we have no desire to see the Armenia disappear from the Planet Earth. But I wish they would quit blaming the 1915 massacre on US! We Azeris may speak a dialect of Turkish but we had NOTHING to do with what happened in Turkey. While it is true you Americans were enjoying cheap gasoline, you should make friends with us, we have plenty of oil. We have been producing oil since the 1850’s. In 1901, Baku was the site of the largest daily flow rate of petroleum in the world. Hitler sent an army into Georgia trying to get access to the Azerbaijan oil fields. And even though we’ve fallen on hard times lately, we still have reserves that rival Saudi Arabia!”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about that. If you can get a pipeline out to the Black Sea, you can sell enough petroleum every day to make every person in Georgia, Armenia, and Azerbaijan rich! Or at least well off. I don’t get it? Why not settle your differences and go to work exporting oil! There are plenty of Texans who’ll come to help you out.”
“Da! Like the Texans in Archangel! Wherever Russia has oil! You’re right. That’s why we want to settle this war and get the pipeline built through Georgia. For that, we are willing to let Armenia keep Karabakh and give them a cut in the oil revenue when the pipeline is completed and we’re filling tankers. That’ll provide Europe and America a new source of energy well away from the violence of the Mideast, and help keep your gas prices down.”
At least that was the start of common sense in that part of the world. The Armenians proved that there were not going to allow themselves be wiped off the face of the Planet Earth any more than the Israelis would. But their military success over Azerbaijan left them too proud to find a way of letting Azerbaijan save face. So General Gudunov looked for a way of restoring the balance of terror and he found one, with my idea. At least the peace talks in Moscow and the Russian peace keeping troops lead to a cease fire and land concessions that allowed Azerbaijan to build new pipelines to the Black Sea to export petroleum and bring in badly needed hard currency. But with poorly paid Russian troops willing to sell arms and their services to both sides, and with the ancient ethnic hatreds permeating the area, no telling how long peace will last.
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