Chapter 6

Well, it's time to get back to the spaceship. I wanted to go to the moon, since it was easy to see and a convenient place to go. I really wanted to go to Mars, but I needed to practice before I went that far. You might ask why I didn't go to NASA, since they were in the space exploration business. Well, there were two reasons.

The first reason was that any development work done under NASA was automatically in the public domain. I still had hope of making some money off the AGD, so I didn't want to give it to them to develop. If I did, I would lose it. I had some ideas on how to retain control of the AGD, but I had to have a reliable working device before anything I could think of would work.

The second reason was that NASA would put their people on the job, and I would never have a chance to go anywhere, unless I had the big bucks to buy a tourist excursion on the International Space Station.

I was going to have to think about it before I risked my chances of getting into space by going to NASA. Oh, well, I still had plenty to do before I get that far.

A few nights later, ET was so excited that I was afraid for his safety and his sanity. "Oh, Derek, thank you, thank you, thank you! Our paint patent has been issued and six companies have already approached us for licenses! We have signed non-exclusive agreements with all six companies, and every one has paid us the equivalent of $500,000 for the rights to develop products using our patent. Furthermore, we will be receiving royalties on any other patents issued to our licensees. You have made us so rich that none of us or our children will ever have to work for a living! There is simply no way that any of us can repay you for your kindnesses!"

"Congratulations from both of us. Jenny and I wish you nothing but happiness. Please relay that wish to all of your family from us. Please tell Mu7o how proud we are to have been instrumental in the success of her family."

We spent most of the evening talking about ET's good fortune. He was almost too happy and excited to stand around to talk to us, and we felt pretty much the same way. He was a good guy who deserved good luck after all of the work he put into his machine which eventually resulted in him talking to us.

Just before he shut down for the night, I asked ET, "Do you know of any work that's been done on a Faster Than Light (FTL) propulsion system for a spaceship? I know you said that none of your people were interested in visiting other planets, but I wondered if somebody had done something, anyway. Maybe he did it just for the challenge of doing something most people say is impossible. We have some indication that FTL is possible, but we don't know how to do it. I would appreciate any help you can give us."

I really didn't expect my request for FTL information to go any further, but I had to ask. It was nearly a month later that ET surprised me with the statement, "I have found a description of a device that claims to be the FTL device you asked for. I ran across a journal article which mentions a book with a description of such a device. I have asked the University Library to obtain a copy of the book for me. I should have the book in three or four days. I hope that is soon enough."

"ET, I would kiss you if I could reach you! That is wonderful news. I am anxious to see what you have found. I just hope that it really works."

"That is something that I can't promise, but I will give you what I can find. I just wish you good luck with it."

Four days later, ET was back with a book for me to photograph. We went well past our normal shut down time so that I could get the whole book photographed before we quit for the night. ET was very patient with me, which I appreciated. Both of us were ready to collapse from exhaustion by the time we finished.

Jenny looked over the photos and skimmed through them, her face getting darker and darker. "Honey, I don't think that this will do you much good. This book describes a device that is more of a transporter than spaceship drive. As far as I can tell right now, this thing works only if you are already going 99.9% of the speed of light. How can you go that fast to begin with? I'll read the whole thing through and provide you with a translation, but I doubt that you will be able to do anything with it."

"Hell, I can get to 99.9% of the speed of light, the problem is that I can't go any faster. It's over four light years to the nearest star system. Anything that can cut that to one month would be worth any kind of work to get it. We can use our current AGD drive to let us go that fast, it's the rest that we can't do. I'm going to start work with what I currently know how to do while I wait for your translation. I'm so excited that I could bust!"

Three weeks later, I had the translation of the FTL book. Jenny and I started working through it, and the more we read, the more convinced I became that I could make my dream come true. At last, I could visit the places I had only seen through my telescopes. By God, I'm on my way!

I had my solution to the spaceship hardware problem! Back a few years ago, there was a contest to get private industry and individuals into space. The people in the contest built small space ships to get to the edge of space. I figured that I could contact one of the losers of the contest and buy a usable spaceship shell from them.

I needed a hell of a lot more money to do that, so I had better start converting steel into gold as fast as I could move. The first thing I needed to do was to locate a supply of steel. I had been using nails, but I remembered that there were several places in and near Auburn that did machining, so they would have scrap steel in the form of metal cut away when they were making something. I should be able to buy that scrap from them at a fraction of what I was paying for nails, and I would be doing a lot of people a favor.

I borrowed Jenny's car and visited a machine shop on the other side of town. I talked to the manager of the shop and found out that he was selling his scrap to an outfit that picked up the steel on a weekly basis. He was selling the scrap for four cents a pound. I asked if he would sell it to me at six cents a pound. He was friends with the scrap dealer and didn't want to hurt the friends feelings for only about a dollar a week. I figured, what the hell, and offered him 10 cents a pound.

He thought that I must be crazy, but, why not? He agreed to sell to me for 10 cents a pound. Right then, I took 50 pounds off his hands and paid him $5 for it. He looked at me like he knew that I was crazy, but my money spent as well as anybody else's. He agreed to compress the turnings for me, included in that price. I wound up with a cube of steel and air about a foot on a side. That was the maximum gross volume we could process, so we were in business for today. That mass of scrap would produce about $450,000 worth of gold.

As soon as I got home, I started setting up a small production line to melt and cast the gold. There was nothing much I could do for the transmutation process, but I sure as hell could speed up the casting process! I dashed back to town and bought 15 more of the little casting molds along with a crucible and ladle. I was able to enlist Mr. and Mrs. Holmes to help me cast the little ingots of gold. Jenny was busy working on the FTL device calculations, so I didn't want to disturb her.

By the end of the week, I had 229 pounds of gold cast into those one-ounce ingots. Now, what in the hell do you do with 3,664 gold fishing weights? That's over $2 million worth of gold at today's price. Mr. Holmes said that he was sure that his broker friend couldn't handle that much gold at one time, but he would ask. I left that problem to Mr. Holmes to work on, while I went back to the spaceship question.