Chapter 8

Sol fretted on his way back to his office. What to do? The potential payoff was so huge as to be incomprehensible, but at the same time, the risks were enormous. If he used his considerable private fortune to bankroll this Morty person, he might end up broke, even lose his position as head of the company! There was no question of using company funds; thanks to the board’s decision, that option was no longer available.

The transportation industry and the independent businesses that supported it made up the largest manufacturing segment of the national economy. If Sneyd’s invention proved to be all he claimed, then a revolution in transportation would certainly happen; when revolutions take place, new companies take the place of those on top. That flying device Panit saw would kill surface transport, no question about it. For one, Sneyd had made the device himself, which meant that it could be manufactured cheap and sold for less, far less, than cars were selling for now.

As for air transport, why would anyone even need an airport or a pilot’s license, since the device could fly slow and low enough not to be dangerous? It could even hover, and unlike helicopters, required no special skill to operate.

No; Sneyd was a threat, to the economy, to the company, and to Sol himself.

The prospect was frightening. Of what use had a clear superiority in buggy whip manufacturing been at the start of the automobile age?

Join him, try to ride along, or oppose him? Could his invention be suppressed, as rumor claimed had happened to similar revolutionary developments? It wouldn’t be easy, but...

There might be a way. It might be possible to slow Sneyd down, perhaps even force him into bankruptcy. Clearly, he needed money, that’s why he’d approached the company in the first place, so cutting off funding would slow or maybe even stop him. After all, he wasn’t a young man. It might be enough to simply slow him down until he died. And if he was as secretive as he’d implied when he offered the deal to Panit, the secret would be lost with him. Too bad, but considering how much of a threat Sneyd posed, sentiment couldn’t be allowed to play a part.

He would have to be stopped, but how? The board had refused to support Sneyd, but that wouldn’t stop the man. Where would he turn next? Railroads? Shipping? Aircraft? Would someone like Boeing be interested? They were certainly big enough, but like Sol’s own company, they had long term contracts to consider. Would they be willing to take the risks? Smaller companies might, Sol concluded, but probably not one of the majors. They stayed in business because they had the huge industrial plant needed to manufacture something as big as a jumbo jet. Even so, Boeing faced stiff competition from Airbus. Other manufacturers had similar concerns. No, they all had too much to lose.

But maybe one of the smaller companies would be willing to take the risk? What then?

Well. The thing to do was to keep his, Sol’s, nose in the wind. There were a number of small manufacturers who had cut back on production recently, and if one began hiring people and reopening plants, then that was enough of a clue to look into whether Sneyd was involved. He, Sol, might need to directly intervene if that happened. But for now, Sneyd needed money and Sol knew a thing or two about finance. Best of all, he could work behind the scenes, avoid direct involvement, and by so doing avoid risk-taking. After all, investors were by nature nervous. It wouldn’t take much, no more than a word in the right place, to convince them that Sneyd’s venture was too risky.

“So you claim to have all this money available, Frenchy?” asked Morty.

“The money will come from several sources,” revealed Frenchy, “but there’s more than enough pledged to get started. Some will be available immediately, the rest after the investment consortium I’m putting together liquidates investments.”

“Who would run this plant you’re offering to build?” asked Morty suspiciously.

“I’ll be the chief executive officer, but I’ll answer to a board of directors. The other investors will be represented on the board, as will you. We’re prepared to offer you a substantial initial payment for access to your invention, but the rest of what you’re asking for will be in the form of common stock in the company. We’ll work out the details later, after we form the company, but you’ll own thirty percent of the stock and the investors will own sixty percent among us. I intend to reserve ten percent of the stock for employees as incentive payments.

“I know how much you asked for, but you’ll not get that, nowhere near that much. You won’t be poor, even in the beginning, but if your invention is as promising as you say you’ll wind up insanely rich. You’ll not only own stock in the company, you’ll serve as a consultant, and we’ll negotiate a reasonable salary for your work. How does that sound?” asked Frenchy.

“I mainly figured to set the askin’ price high so they’d take me serious,” Morty confessed. “They’d been ignoring me for weeks. I tried telephoning, sending faxes ... I even sent ‘em pictures of me flying the prototype! But nothin’ worked.”

“Where is the prototype, Mr. Sneyd?”

“Call me Morty, Frenchy. I ain’t saying any more until I see the color of your money.”

“How about I immediately deposit a million dollars into your bank account for access to your prototype? Within a day or two, I’ll have a small engineering staff ready to examine the drive units—you did say they’re relatively simple?”

“They are,” said Morty. “I’m surprised nobody came up with it before now! But yeah, it’s simple in concept and the important thing for your people to keep in mind is that it works. Development will require quite a bit of money, and a small engineering staff won’t cut it. You’re going to need people who can do precision machining, mechanical engineers to design layouts, engineers to design power systems, and materials science people just for starters. You plan to go right for the spaceship, or you want to develop one of the other ideas first?”

“We’re interested in the aircraft propulsion system as the first major effort,” Frenchy said. “We may build prototypes of your railway car, but I don’t think there’s enough short-term profit there to make investment worthwhile. You intend to equip each railcar with propulsion units and computerized controls, is that correct?”

“Right, no need for a big old engine up front. It should be possible to use half a dozen units like the four on my flying prototype, just attach them directly to the frame of a flatcar. I figure that people who own cars, motorhomes too, might be interested in parking on a flatcar and just kick back while the flatcar takes them to wherever they’re going. Just leave the drivin’ to us! They’d drive on, snooze until they get there, drive off. No need to rent a car, no need to worry about traffic or bad weather or the price of fuel, just relax and read a book.”

“How would you control the flatcars?” Frenchy asked.

“My grandson Chuck says it could be done using computerized controls. A central computer would do the scheduling, command the car when it’s time to pull onto the main track—you’ll need two sets of tracks at least, you know, one east and one west, or one going south and the other north—so when you’ve got a car loaded, it powers up, then slides onto the main track. When the car gets to where a passenger is going, the car gets sidetracked just long enough to let him drive off.”

“An interesting concept,” acknowledged Frenchy. “But a second set of tracks for each railroad would cost billions.”

“You invest money to make money, Frenchy.”

“So you do! But you’re asking us to spend money a lot faster than your proposed railway system would earn it back, so no, that’s probably for the future, if ever. The maritime system shows more short-term promise; some of our investors have extensive interests in shipyards and shipping, so they’re in a position to profit from such a system. We’ll see how the other ideas look before making a final decision, but a ship, that’s doable now. A diesel-electric generator and multiple propulsion units, you said? No propellers needed?”

“That’s it, Frenchy. Mount the impellers inside the hull on gimbals, so the ship can go forward, backward, sideways ... you might even be able to lift it off a sandbar if it got stuck! That would probably take a lot more impellers than you’d need just to haul freight, though, and you would also need backup batteries. I figure we should design a generator to power the impellers and charge the batteries at the same time; that way, if the generator fails, you’ve still got an immediate backup system. Maybe use two or three smaller generators for reliability?”

“What if an impeller fails, Morty?”

“If you’re using, say, thirty of them, you can afford to have failures! Just pull a defective unit offline long enough to fix whatever went wrong. If you’ve got a spare on board, just bolt it in place as soon as you pull the busted one, power it up and keep on goin’. Even if you had to shut the system down long enough to replace something, you’d be down for maybe an hour, tops. That’s the beauty of electric drive, you can gang impellers together, as many as you want. Instead of huge, expensive, failure-prone units, just use smaller ones and hook on as many as you need.”

“What about efficiency, Morty? Wouldn’t larger units be more efficient?”

“Maybe,” Morty admitted, “but that’s something we’ll find out by experimenting. In the meantime, use lots of smaller units for safety and reliability.”

“And you wouldn’t need external motors or propellers at all, would you?” Frenchy pressed.

“Nope,” said Morty. “As for an airplane, you can put the impellers inside the wings so there’d be no more problems with a bird gettin’ sucked into the jet intake!”

“But wouldn’t you need to use something like a turbojet engine, the kind they use for turboprops, to spin the generator? There’s no battery pack right now that’s not only light enough, but that also has the storage capacity to power long-range flight.”

“No, you’re right,” Morty agreed. “That interplanetary spacecraft I mentioned, that’s going to eventually need nuclear power. I figure maybe three of them small reactors Los Alamos is developin’ would do it.”

“Three? Why three?”

“Safety, Frenchy! One would provide plenty of power, but I’m a believer in safety! If you’re out in the asteroids, you don’t want to try hitchhiking home!”

Two months went by. Manufacturers, including Sol, began seeing changes. “Send him in, Miss Porter. Then hold my calls.”

“Yes sir, Mr. Goldman.”

“Ben, you’re resigning? Why? I thought you were happy with us. Is it that last raise? You know why we had to limit that, of course. You’re the comptroller, you know how limited our funds are! Really, you’ve done well with us, so why are you resigning now?”

“I’ve decided to move on, Mr. Goldman. The salary isn’t the whole issue, of course, but after that last negotiation I decided I should keep my options open. I’ve already got a job offer, working for a venture capital firm.”

“So it is the salary! But I explained why we couldn’t afford...”

“So you did, Mr. Goldman. But I noticed that you and the board members were rewarded with a considerably better package than the one you offered me!”

“I see.” Sol’s tone was frosty. “Well, you understand that our corporate interests aren’t yours to reveal? Are you going to work for one of our competitors?”

“No. As I said, I’ll be working for a venture-capital startup. This serves as my two-week notice.”

Sol abruptly ended the discussion. “Thank you for coming to see me, Mr. Counter.”

Well. There was no shortage of people like him. Sol would nose around. He could hire someone from another company, couldn’t he? Maybe at a lesser salary?

Panit Jindae sent Mr. Goldman an email that same week. Two of his senior design engineers had resigned. Hiring new ones would take time, and inevitably there would be slowdowns until their replacements could be brought up to speed.

Sol mentioned it later to his golf buddies. Frenchy had canceled; something had come up, he said. But the others were there, and Sol broached the subject as they approached the third tee. “Something strange is going on. I’ve had an unusual number of resignations. Granted, the last raises weren’t great, but...”

“Other companies are hiring too, Sol,” Charlie said. “I haven’t heard anything definite, but according to one of the trade papers, Boeing’s having to offer large bonuses to engineers to keep theirs on! Someone has to be hiring, but no one’s reporting new sales, certainly not enough to justify opening another plant or even put on another shift! So what’s going on?”

“No idea,” Sol admitted. “Something else, did you check the stock indexes this morning?”

“No, I didn’t have time. I intended to, but the V.P. in charge of the design offices had a crisis. I think it’s time for new blood there.”

“You’re talking about Jindae? I thought you were happy with him?”

“I was! But he’s talking about pushing completion dates back, and that will slow the launch of the new vehicles. He implied it was because some of the resignations were in his department. You’d think some insider was poaching our best people!”

“Ridiculous, Sol!” Charlie said, but he looked very thoughtful as he spoke.

“So how about other companies?” Sol asked. “You’re on their boards, are they reporting problems?”

“No, Sol, we’re not having problems. Maybe you should consider offering higher salaries or at least fat bonuses to keep your key people happy! Who’s up first?”

Things were not exactly as Charlie described. Still, no need to tell Sol; he’d figure it out, soon enough. Meanwhile, if Sol’s employees were looking for better offers, perhaps a few discreet approaches would provide replacements for Charlie’s companies? Senior engineers, people with managerial experience, those didn’t grow on trees! Perhaps it was time to have a quiet word with personnel?

Sol would understand, he was sure. It was just business.

“Come on in, Morty. I’ve saved you a spot at the end of the table. Would you introduce your companion to the board?”

“Sure. This is my grandson Chuck, Frenchy. He’s watching out for my business interests.”

“Welcome, Chuck, but no one here is trying to take advantage of your grandfather,” Frenchy protested. “We’re trying to come to an agreement that protects all our interests!”