Rainbow Mars Read Free Page A

wait?”
    Gorky’s jaw set hard. “He’ll wait for Divine Image. A year at least. Do you know what a Von Neumann device is?”
    Both men shook their heads. Miya Thorsven lit up. “It’s a machine no bigger than your two hands that makes more of itself! It’s called Michelangelo. I worked on the Divine Image Project. Michelangelo mines the Moon and makes more Michelangelos and piles the slag along the Earth twilight rim. The numbers double over and over. In a year and a bit we’ll have trillions of Michelangelos! They’re carving the near face of the Moon into an image of Waldemar the Eleventh!”
    Svetz gaped. Gorky murmured, “Resculpted from Waldemar Tenth, of course.”
    Ra Chen said, “Ambitious. If you’re processing that much Moon, you could bake oxygen out of the slag too. You’d wind up with an atmosphere.”
    Gorky laughed and clapped a big hand on Ra Chen’s shoulder, hard. “Right. Right!”
    â€œDoubling rate?”
    â€œWeek and a bit—”
    â€œBut you get all your action near the end, don’t you? For this next year there’s nothing to be seen from anywhere on Earth…? Just videos of any number of your little mining things crawling over Moon rock.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œHe bought it?”
    â€œHe did.”
    Miya was looking at Gorky in shocked disappointment. Gorky said, “I’m sorry, Miya. After you came back to Earth, some of the Michelangelos were chewing rock in the wrong places. Others got blocked up, or made junk, or just quit. We’ll keep fiddling.”
    He turned back to Ra Chen. “But a year from now we’ll have to show the little buggers operating, or else have something to show him, or else I’d better retire to the Moon. That’s real. There’s been a city in Clavius Crater since before there were Waldemars. Six hundred years.”
    Svetz said, “Moon and Mars. Anything else?”
    â€œRovers! We’ve got toy boxes crawling over every planet and moon in the solar system, hundreds of asteroids and scores of comets, taking pictures and samples. We’ve sent Forward probes past more than forty stars, with more on the way, Svetz, but the Forward devices are just silver blankets made of computer elements and launched by light pressure. Enough laser power to cremate a city in ten minutes,” Gorky said, watching to see if Ra Chen would flinch. “Firing for ten weeks.”
    â€œThe lasers, they’re on the Moon?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSo you’ve got the Moon, and everything else is smoke and mirrors?”
    â€œThere’s Mars Base One. Twenty men and women and some VR sets to control a thousand Rovers, Pilgrim model. I built it on the equator. I was hoping we could experiment with advanced lifting systems. Orbital towers. Maybe a Pinwheel. We never got that far. Too expensive. Even life support for cosmonauts is too expensive.”
    Ra Chen said, “But now you’ve got a time machine.”
    â€œAnd if I can’t use the Institute, I’ll have to break you up and sell the parts for what I can get.”
    Ra Chen didn’t seem surprised. “You’d get nothing but scrap prices.”
    â€œHow much do you spend just keeping the Center going? I’d save that much. It wouldn’t save either of us, of course.”

4
    On the other side of its glass wall, fifty feet of short-legged lizard half uncoiled, lifted its head high above them, and spat fire along the glass. Gorky and Ra Chen didn’t appear to notice. Miya stared up at the beast in awe and wonder.
    â€œWe should change the label on this,” Svetz said, “now that Waldemar the Tenth is dead.”
    â€œIsn’t it a Gila monster?”
    â€œNo. I found him in another picture book, after I caught him. Dragon!”
    â€œ You caught—”
    She cut herself off because Gorky was speaking. “You can change the