Privately, Nicholas suspected part of Madeline Fathom was actually pleased with the situation; she enjoyed having an adversary who might occasionally test her steel. For Nicholas himself, however, Keldering was just an annoyance. "Put him down for an appointment in a week or so." "Yes, sir. On the positive side, the finalized cooperative agreements with Ares have arrived and the Ares board of directors just signed all of them. Once you countersign, all our arrangements will be in place." "Good." "Let's see… America's got the second engine built and tested forNike and is building two more forAthena. Europe's keeping tight lips on theOdin. They're making some major design changes, and I think what they're planning is something more suited for outer-system exploration. Based on preliminary hints and the fact that they've hired a number of people in a couple of related specialties, Jackie Secord and Dr. Gupta have both told me they suspectOdin will be designed to use a mass-beam drive as well as the NERVA rocket and standard electric ion drives."

She glanced at Nicholas to see if he understood. Nicholas nodded.

"Ions or small particles fired at the ship, which catches them, probably magnetically, thus transferring the momentum directly without need for using fuel. Very power hungry, however, yes?" "I think they're also planning on attempting solar powersats to run the thing.

Do it far enough away from Earth to be no particular danger or nuisance, and once you've proven the reliability you can also then market the satellites to supply energy. We'll have to keep a close eye on them. Japan's well along in the construction ofAmaterasu, and current buzz is that they're planning to also build a real orbital colony. This has been a perennial favorite of Japan's space enthusiasts, so that's no real surprise. "China, unfortunately, had their engine go bad-you heard about all that. I think what's going to happen there is that the U.S. will apologize, promise to repair the thing at no cost, and probably sell them or give them another engine eventually.