Everyone knew it was impossible, until a fool who didn’t know came along and did it.
(Albert von Einstein)
Nothing adverse had happened to the mothballed installations. Doktor Manfred Rüchel felt relieved. It wouldn’t take long to bring them on steam again. And the Krupp folks had indeed made good use of the hiatus; their steel plant was ready for shipping. Because Rotterdam wasn’t operational, they were sending it via Bremerhaven, which was all right for Rüchel. It was their business to get the stuff from Essen to Bremerhaven – and they seemed to have solved the problems involved.
The steel plant was the core project right now. Producing the 4,000 tons pusher plate was no mean feat. But once it had been accomplished, Donars Hammer could take off. Well, real testing could begin at least … The Krupp engineers were quite sanguine. Granted, they never had produced a solid steel disc of eighty metres diameters before, but they had meticulously worked out how they were going to do it. They were also ready to construct a new takeoff pad, as the old concrete structure had not stood the proof.
Rüchel hoped that no immunes would show up, although an antidote had been found for RV. Yet, it was an awkward remedy. It didn’t kill the bug, but was only sedating it. Hence, a man infected with RV had to ingest the antidote for the rest of his life. – But one never had come across any immunes here in Ireland. And one was about to build a fence – and guard it. The old general was right. However, because Krupp had jumped at the opportunity to preproduce the steel plant, one hadn’t lost too much time.
Donars Hammer would beat the Russians – and also the fusion drive project, Rüchel was sure. The Russians had to start from scratch. That meant they were two years behind, at the minimum. And the fusion drive project hadn’t really begun at all. It was a fancy idea, but it hadn’t yet been exposed to the dire facts of life. Once they started assembling the field generator in orbit, said facts were going to hit them. Oh, he didn’t doubt von Weizsäcker’s and Fuchs’s theories, but theories didn’t make spaceships fly.
NPP was simple, if not crude. That made it effective. It would hand the solar system to RRA. Fusion drive, if it should ever work, was much more elegant – and might hand the stars to RRA. But in this case, the old general wasn’t quite right. Fusion drive wasn’t a fact; it was a mere conception still. It might be ready in twenty-five or thirty years. By that time, NPP ships were due to cruise between Earth and the colonies on Mars, in the asteroid belt, on Europa, Ganymede and Titan…