“Yes, ma’am.” Bell smiled. “Bulger actually assembled everything needed to build starships, and when he couldn’t, had a good crew mothball the works. Challenge is that the full construction works would need a lot of people to run them. That’s more people than can fit on our payroll, with current incomes. But a detour gets us a solution.”
“Detour?” Morningstar asked. “Victor has been justly emphatic…we need to focus completely on getting the yards and ships up and running.”
“For his long-term objectives,” Bell said, “he needs lots of things. The detour gets one of these. We have all these molecular spray systems being brough back to operation. We have the rare earth concentrates we can’t sell. But we can build low-field fusactors. And the hypothetical Bulger Electric can sell the electricity they produce.”
“We can build fusactors?” Morningstar asked. “Safety issues?”
“Exact copies of the units we already have,” Bell asnwered. “We have the CAD-CAM plans. They aren’t traditional civilian low-field systems, which can be made with conventional machining but gobble huge amounts of rare earths to build, so, for example, Australia has all of two fusactors. Lots more are on order, but rare earth supply was the bottleneck. We have smaller units, which you can’t build without molecular spray, but which require far less in terms of transition elements to build.”
A Peaceful Academic Environment
Victor Chelan’s aircar overflew the National Technical College and began its final approach to the parking area near Chancellor’s Hall. Ahead of him, another, larger air car filled with his Seldon Legion bodyguards had already landed, the bodyguards deploying in a ring around the area where he would set foot.
“Compliments of Group Leader Conti,” Pamela Davis said, “and he has secured the landing zone. He reports, however, that Chancellor’s Hall has been occupied by protesting faculty and students, and asked what he wants done about it.”
“Occupied?” Chelan said. “How positively twentieth-century of them. I wonder where they came up with that idea. Has anyone notified the local authorities yet? This appears to be a case for the constabulary.”
