“Except for one minor detail. Thanks to the Stellar Republic trade embargo, our competitors can’t buy high-tech parts such as drive spines from the Republic. They have to buy them from inside the Anglic Union. We’re approximately the only people in the Union who can build them. Drive spines need fine and coarse molecular spray units in good working order, but other than for spaceship parts there’s approximately no demand for molecular spray units. It’s not apparent there are any in working order anywhere in the Union except in our shops. Thanks to that court order, we can’t sell them spines. As a result, very gradually, the cartel is going to lose its stock of operating spaceships. Their fractional outside owners from the Republic can’t help, under the new Republic import-export restrictions. By the time this is a major issue, we should be in a financial position to offer to buy their derelict freight haulers, for which they will have no use, at a generous price. They get a substantial chunk of change to distribute among their stockholders, not to mention their overpaid and underworked corporate officers, and we end up with more spaceships.
“However, there are a couple of positive features that aren’t income for us yet. We have offered the use of our facilities to the Space Guard, at a reasonable rate, in order to retrain people from the China Yards to American standards. For doing this, we get a set of hard-working, technically skilled maintenance people. Their employer pays their salary. We have to be scrupulous that the work these people are doing actually qualifies as training, but that turns out to be quite simple, or so Elaine Bell tells me. In addition, we have a large area holding many of our manufacturing facilities that are not currently in use, which is also covered by an old-growth eucalyptus grove. Several local firms are now engaged in clearing that grove, paying us at a respectable rate for the wood they’re getting. The Space Guard wants to buy a considerable number of different larger parts that we will be able to make once the coarse focus units and other manufacturing facilities are up and running. Finally, once we are ready to make our own rare-earth components, we can straightforwardly set up an assembly line to make additional civilian-grade low-field fusactors for Bulger Power Systems. These will be exact copies of our current operating units, which are not covered by Stellar Republic patents.”
“Dear me,” Margaret Evans said, “as we would say at Georgia Benevolent Trust, bless their sweet little hearts, the cartel has given us enormous economic opportunities, without intending to.”
“Victor?” Rose Cohen asked. She was wearing traditional New New York women’s business dress, complete with enormously puffed sleeves, high collar, the whole in multiple shades of bright pink. “I’m sure this can be sold readily to the minor noteholders, but there is a question. If the cartel stops being able to haul metallics from Proserpine, that will disrupt Union industry. All sorts of litigation, including antique antitrust laws, may then be invoked.”
