Chapter 5 Chapter 4 The Powerful Missile

Another March is upon us, and Rick's contract with StarCraft is about to expire.One afternoon, the phone on his desk rang suddenly. It was Karen Hood's voice. His heart skipped a beat, but Karen's tone was cold. "Mr. Drake? My uncle wants to see you. Please come to his office at nine o'clock tomorrow morning." She hung up the phone without explaining why.But Rick figured this might be his last chance to see the busy High Commissioner.He worked all night and finally finished the final design, but Hood didn't even look at it. "Let Anders look at it. I don't understand this," Hood said, "but Anders told me I haven't designed a CT chassis that is safe to operate. He said you probably can't."

"I've been working on it." "You have ten days to stay here," Hood reminded, "There's something I want you to try." "There's nothing I can't do," Rick promised eagerly, "almost everything." Hood stared at his face for a while, then asked softly, "Is there any news from your father?" Rick held his breath, not knowing what to say for a while. "No news," he began with difficulty. "He lives on the asteroid he avoided collision with last year. He seems very busy and rarely writes to me." "What is he doing there?"

"Busy to really take ownership of that asteroid." Rick swallowed, and continued, "If he wants to become the master of that planet, he must make it inhabited. Last time he wrote An orbital reactor was being installed when the letter was written to me." Hood stared at him with narrowed eyes. "Are you sure he's not building CT chassis?" "He doesn't have a license." Rick tried to look back. "What makes you think he's making CT chassis?" "We don't just sit around and do nothing every day." Hood shook his bald head triumphantly. "Your father's asteroid is not close to us now. The explosion he caused was in Albania. There is a CT cloud forming in space above the star, through which even CT patrols cannot penetrate. But we have other sources of information. Your father and his companions often go in and out through that cloud, and do not know By what method, they keep sending equipment to that asteroid that they don't really need. I always suspected they wanted to find new ways to use CT. Now I'm sure of it, because your father came out again recently Yes. He has CT radiation sickness."

"No!" Rick's eyes widened, "If that's the case, I should have gotten the news." "Munchie sent him back to Albania two days ago," Hood said, "and the doctor there examined him and advised him to see a radiation specialist. Tell Dr. Regal." "He's really hurt." Rick nodded hesitantly. "But why didn't he call me? When are they going to be here?" "Tomorrow morning," Hood replied, "they called Dr. Tirillone, and he'll be examining your father at ten. I want you to meet them and see what they're up to."

Rick flushed. "Are you going to let me be a spy and spy on my father? Now he is injured and may die!" "I don't know if he's going to die," Hood replied calmly. "I didn't send you to be a spy. If your father really has some valuable information, I will send Vickers to sign a contract with him." A contract. I am now purely thinking about the interstellar company from commercial interests, and I will not pursue whether he has violated the laws of the trusteeship government. Moreover, the interstellar company can also provide him with the equipment and medical treatment he needs. Highly skilled specialist. I just want you to go ahead and make this suggestion to him as a company employee, because the asteroids of his generation have always been hostile to our company."

Rick didn't say anything more, he knew his father didn't care about money.For old Jim Drake, only the CT meteors mattered.Maybe Rick's mother was more important to him than the CT meteors, but she's long since passed away.Since then, the CT meteor group has become his biggest opponent, and he has spent most of his life studying the method of controlling CT matter.Money was like dirt to him, but Rick thought he might need manpower and equipment from StarCorp, but he didn't know if he could heal. The "Goodbye, Jane" arrived at Burroughs at seven o'clock the next day.It was an old dilapidated spaceship with outdated equipment, but Robo Mackey moored it easily and accurately.As soon as Rick waited for the port inspector to leave, he hurried forward.

"Hello, Rick." Robo Mackey turned to greet him.Mackey's eyes were always squinting, his shoulders were as broad as Rick's, his head was big and flat, and his neck was short. "Come up." Mackey reached out and pulled Ricky up the gangway. "Jim is in the cabin." Rick climbed into the ship, walked past the storage and reaction chambers, and into the sleeping quarters below the cockpit.His father was sitting in a cramped chair, both hands bandaged.He was thin and worn out, wearing a battered gray jacket and rough miners' boots. It's been five years since Rick left Albania.He was surprised to find that with the passage of time, deeper wrinkles were carved on his father's face, his hair became thin and dry, and even his tall body was no longer as tall and straight as before.Rick's father's old age hurt Rick more than the bandages on his hands.Not even Tirillone could heal the sickness of time.

"Dad, I don't know anything, how did you get hurt?" Rick stood in front of his father, staring at the bandaged hand, "It's my fault." He felt a sudden pang of guilt, "If I go home to help you, and you won't-" "It's all right, Rick," his father interrupted him mildly. "Robar and I are blind as hell, and you're sure to do better than us." "But you should call and tell me you're hurt." "Before we came here, why should you be disturbed?" His father looked at the bandages on his hand calmly. "When dealing with CT, it is inevitable that such a thing will happen. At that time we were using the reverse gravitational field to make a The CT material remained in suspension, probably because we knocked off a speck of dust invisible to the naked eye."

"Oh—" Rick swallowed, and he stretched out his arm to wrap around his father's shoulder. "Don't worry," Jim Drake reassured him. "I've been hurt like this before. Rigo will take care of me, and I'll get on with it. It's no big deal." He looked at Rick , then said, "Son, it's good to see you. Sit down and have a drink and tell us what you're doing." Rick sat down on a stool.Robert Mackey poured them the kind of bitter tea that people on asteroids are used to drinking. The tea tasted very strong, probably to dilute the strange smell of artificial water stored in rusted iron tanks for a long time.Rick sipped his tea slowly, but he didn't want to talk about his work at StarCorp.Instead, he asked Ann O'Brien.

"Ann is fine." Jim Drake's dull and dull eyes suddenly brightened, "She is still taking care of our company on Planet Albania, preparing the equipment and tools we need to build the laboratory. She used to talk about you and miss you a lot, always asking when you'd be coming home." "I must feel sad if I want to go. I must have broken your hearts when I went to work for Interstellar Corporation." The look on his father's face and the look in his eyes told him it was true.Feeling deeply guilty, he took a breath and tried to explain why he accepted this job from Interstellar.

"Dad, I'm sorry," Rick said sadly, "but Interstellar promised me that as long as I could design a blueprint that satisfies their engineers, they would help me build the CT chassis. I didn't know you were on Liberty Star -" "We haven't come up with anything yet," said Jim Drake mildly. "You don't have to be sorry. I've spent twenty years trying to get anyone interested in a CT chassis. If anyone will pay, And if I know how to build a CT chassis, I don't care who it's for, because no one can monopolize the power of the CT. I don't blame you, boy. "I don't know if I should say it." Rick twisted his body uncomfortably, and leaned forward, "Well, it happened like this. Senior Commissioner Hood thought you were developing a CT chassis, and he asked me to do it Find out if that's the case. If you guys do have a workable design, he wants Vickers to buy it. "We have nothing to design." The old man shook his head sadly. "Unfortunately, we have nothing." "But didn't you say that you use an inverse gravitational field to keep a CT film in a floating state?" "We did that." Jim Drake shrugged. "But that doesn't mean it's a CT chassis. In fact, I've decided to give up. I don't want to develop a CT chassis. "Then what are you building?" Rick caught a glimpse of Mackey's questioning eyes when he said this, and his face flushed immediately, "Maybe you shouldn't tell me, after all, I'm still an employee of the Interstellar Corporation .” "Rick, that's all right," his father said, "I'll tell you what we're doing, and we don't mind if you tell Hood—if you think he's really going to support us. We're developing CT reactor controls." "But if there's no CT chassis, where do you put it?" "We're trying to avoid the problem of incompatibility between the two," Jim explained patiently. "We ejected a piece of material at that CT planet earlier, causing it to leave its orbit. We're going to use the same method." "Did you make it?" "Not very successful," said Jim, shaking his head, "but we've got a block of CT material suspended in the transition field and coiled around it. My idea is to inject a measured flow of air into the CT block, to elicit a controlled response." "Didn't this method work?" "It's not as ideal as we thought, and I don't know why. No matter how much we adjust the gas flow, or which gas we use, we don't get the same response. The Geiger always shows switching field leakage A dangerous amount of radiation was emitted. And the CT block was also wobbly, so we had no choice but to stop spraying the air immediately.” Rick frowned thoughtfully. "The texture of your CT material is not pure enough." Finally, he said, "I think this is the problem. The impurities in CT usually cause the reaction intensity to be too high, so that the conversion field cannot effectively control the generated energy." "Probably so," his father said, "but how do we get a pure CT iron sheet?" "I don't know either." Rick shook his head helplessly, "Unless we have a CT chassis, then we can build a smelting furnace on top of it." "I don't know how to build a CT chassis," said Jim Drake, "but I can tell you all about our reactor. You can draw a sketch for Interstellar and take the time to figure it out." Okay, then sell it to Vickers and Hood, or give them away. Get them more interested in CT power before someone else sells them a CT missile." "I'll give it a try." Rick nodded hesitantly, "However, their engineer Anders is a CT expert, so it's not easy to make a deal with him." All day long, Jim Drake talked about his crude illegal equipment and the better controls that StarCorp might have built at his expense.Rick listened carefully to his description, asking a question now and then, and jotting down some details. Jim stayed with the radiation specialist for an hour and came out with fresh bandages on his hands and a faint smile on his face. "Two fingers were amputated," he said excitedly, "but no Rego said I'd be back soon." During this day, Robo Mackey was busy loading the materials needed on the Liberty Star into the spacecraft.Despite Rick's repeated attempts to stay, they decided to return that night. For Rick, Port Burroughs is small enough to be empty, only the top of the mountain is inhabited, and the rest is dead and silent.He didn't like the feeling of emptiness very much, unlike his father.Rick is not pure asteroid.He shook Mackey's knuckle-protruding hand, took Lou's father's bony shoulder, and watched them leave on the "Goodbye, Jane" spaceship. After he returned to the company, it took him a full week to draw up a sketch of the reactor his father wanted to build.When he handed Anders the sketch, he didn't hold out much hope.He could neither find a way to obtain pure CT iron flakes nor trigger a safe reaction with natural CT substances.He waited for Anders' casual criticism, but Anders carefully verified every detail without showing any disdain.Rick couldn't help being surprised. "Interesting." Anders looked up and nodded towards a safe in the corner of the room. "Lock the picture. I think it will be useful for us, just make some small changes. Tomorrow I'm going to talk to Hood and get the company to sign you for another year." "I don't know if I want to sign another year," Rick stood there looking at him in bewilderment, "and I don't understand why you would be interested in this. You must know that this reactor will be more dangerous than those you think The CT chassis is far more dangerous." "That's why I like it." Anders smiled. "It's not dangerous anymore. It's impossible to use in a power station. But with a few more changes, such as making the reaction easier to trigger, it can be made into a very powerful CT missile.