Free Mining the Oort by Frederik Pohl Page B

you know. What's an Augenstein?"
    Dekker blinked. "What?"
    "An Augenstein drive. What is it, how does it work?"
    He was evidently serious.
    Dekker put his collection of dishware on a sideboard, pushing a stack of clean, but unsorted, laundry out of the way to make room. He sat down. "Well," he began, "an Augenstein is what drives spaceships. Basically its power chamber is a porous tungsten block in a hydrogen atmosphere. There's a pipette through the block that admits antiprotons to the central chamber; the antiprotons react with the hydrogen, blam , and the heat propels the working fluid out the rocket nozzle. Mostly they use powdered rock for the working fluid, but it could be—"
    His father stirred. "Don't say 'they,' Dekker. 'We.' Say 'we.'"
    "I beg your pardon?"
    "Get in the habit of saying it. I want you to think like an Oort miner so you'll act like an Oort miner. We use powdered rock for the working fluid, only, of course, out in the Oort we don't. What do we do there?"
    "We use comet mass."
    His father nodded, swallowing a sip of his drink. "Comet mass, right. We tank up with frozen gases from a comet. What about the antiprotons that fuel the Augenstein?"
    "The antiprotons?"
    "Where do they come from? How do they make them?"
    For a moment Dekker was tempted to point out to his father that he had said "they," but it didn't seem like a good idea. This sudden pop quiz looked to be very important to the old man. Instead, Dekker said, as though called on in class, "Antimatter is made on the Moon, because of the vacuum environment, the ready availability of electric power, and the danger of accident. The photovoltaic power from the sunlight is used to run a ring accelerator that's about forty kilometers across, inside a big crater, and the accelerator produces antiparticles. Do you want me to write out the reaction?"
    "I do," Boldon DeWoe said, and pointed to a memo screen under the piled clothing on the sideboard. When Dekker retrieved it, his father watched carefully while Dekker wrote the equation out on the tiny screen. When that was finished, he wanted to know how Dekker would go about determining the deltas for an orbit from Mercury to Mars, what sort of comets were the most valuable, and how their orbits were controlled. He didn't comment on any of the answers. Finally he said, "All right, now what kind of shape are you in?" He wouldn't settle for an answer but ordered Dekker to pull out his record cartridge and display the results of the tests for his physical parameters—reaction time, depth perception, concentration factor, and the rest. Then Boldon DeWoe leaned back thoughtfully in his chair, stared at the ceiling for a moment, and sighed. He levered himself erect and stumped over to the refrigerator. "You want a beer?" he called over his shoulder.
    Dekker didn't, particularly; he'd never really enjoyed alcohol since Annetta Cauchy's party so many years before. Still, he said yes anyway, simply because drinking beer with his father seemed like a bonding kind of thing to do. He could feel the stuff bubbling ticklishly behind his nose. Then his father said, "I guess you're tired."
    Dekker nodded, reminded to notice that he was.
    "So let's get some sleep. You'll need all the rest you can get, Dek. There's a good prep school here in Nairobi. I know some of the teachers. The school isn't particularly aimed at the Oort, but they can brush you up on the theoretical stuff." He paused to sip from his drink. "The school isn't cheap, Dek, and I don't have much money. Do you have any cues?"
    "Earth cues? No. You sent the money for the fare, but there wasn't anything left over."
    "I didn't think there would be. Well, I'll get you an amulet—that's what you need to pay for things—and I'll transfer a hundred cues or so to your account, just for walking-around money. There won't be much, though, and I can't afford to keep you in the school forever. But you don't have forever, anyway. In about seven weeks you're going to