The Goliath Stone Read Online Free PDF Page A

asteroid to build a linear motor and move the asteroid from its current Earth-threatening course.
    “Our financial backers prefer to remain anonymous, but their motives must surely be clear. This is for our grandchildren’s grandchildren. Target One was not a near-term threat, but such things can pop up with a warning time of weeks or months. The life of our planet depends on our knowing how to move a Dinosaur Killer.
    “There is the possibility of profit, but I can’t discuss the details. If every part of this endeavor succeeds except that we go broke, we will surely have done well.”
    “Mr. Glyer.” That was Dennett. “I notice that you haven’t used the term ’nanotechnology.’”
    “No, as a courtesy to the president. It makes him uneasy.”
    “What about you? Are you aware of the ‘gray goo’ scenario? Nanites might lose their programming, multiply without limit and eat everything—”
    “—Until the whole world has turned to ‘gray goo. Scary as hell. Made a good movie.”
    CNN cut to a feed with Dr. Wade Curtis, self-exiled to Perth when he’d exceeded the federal age limit on health care. Dennett must have expected a vintage sci-fi writer to help out with the scary stories.
    Curtis grinned around his moustache. “Yes, I’ve heard the ‘gray goo’ fable. I imagine when our ancestors began using fire, some shaman tried to aggrandize himself by wailing about the risk of it going out of control and burning up the entire world.”
    Dennett: “But that’d be ridiculous.”
    Curtis: “Of course it’s ridiculous. Most things don’t burn, and fire has to have the right circumstances to keep going even when there’s fuel. And fire is simple . Nanobots aren’t. And the stuff that can be made into nanobots has to meet standards that are a hell of a lot more exacting than ‘find some dry wood.’”
    *   *   *
    Briareus ran out of reaction mass not long after passing the Moon.
    Now most of the orbiter was gone; but the carousel was intact, and an expanded telescope, a nuclear motor, a laser signaling system, Briareus One’s first daughter in Slot One, and four quintillion machines, each under three thousand atoms long in any dimension. Slot Six was nearly empty of the trace elements the nanites needed to reproduce; but their reproduction phase had passed.
    With nothing to send down the linear motor, the nanites went to work again. They spun their aluminum work mass into an expanded telescope dish. When the Master Computer had rechecked Briareus’s course, they spun again. The telescope dish become something more, a vast frail sheet only a few atoms thick: a mirror kilometers across. From Earth it seemed a brightly twinkling star.
    All things considered, the Briareus Project was a fantastic success. Every part of it was experimental. It was history’s first use of nanotech in space, third orbiting telescope, first use of a traveling linear motor, fourth working solar sail … and, technically, first piloted slingshot maneuver.
    But no kind of money was flowing back.
OCTOBER 2029
    When Toby Glyer spoke in private, he sounded like this: “If you would plan for years, build a house. If you would plan for decades, plant an orchard. If you would plan for lifetimes, found a university.”
    “Sounds Oriental,” May Wyndham said. “Not standard business procedure. Toby, where are you getting your money?”
    “We’re planning for lifetimes.”
    “Nobody thinks that way.”
    They were both in late middle age, speaking through an encryption program. Maybe Toby was in Cuba and maybe he wasn’t. Nobody cared where May was.
    Toby said, “Science fiction writers do.”
    “Is that—”
    “Science fiction fans do.”
    “But they’re traditionally poor. Wait, now. Tom Clancy? Terry Pratchett? Not Heinlein. This can’t be as old as Heinlein.”
    “Well, May, he might not have been up to speed on nanotech, but don’t count on it, and he certainly knew about asteroids and kinetic energy.”
    “