Free Disc by Laurence E Dahners

million plus. “My God, Tiona can these figures be right? We can’t really build spacecraft for less than a tenth of what an airplane costs can we?”
    “Hmmm, and here I thought they were pretty expensive. I hadn’t compared them to products already on the market.” She tilted her head, “Though, these are pretty rough. Well, not ‘rough,’ that’s not the word I’m looking for. I guess I mean that they’re not polished specimens of a designer’s art. If you’re going to build passenger ships to compete with the big airlines, you’ll probably need to spend some bucks making them look pretty. Comfortable seats, food service, etc.”
    “Hah! I did some research. Did you know that a flight from New York to Perth with a single connection takes 24 hours?! And you’re saying we can do it in about an hour?! Hell there won’t even be time for food service!”
    Tiona shrugged, “It’s still going to be a lot more expensive than what we’re building right now. These prototypes probably don’t comply with all kinds of federal aviation regulations. There’ll probably be hell to pay getting them certified. The airline industry is going to be bucking you every step of the way. You might have a lot less of a fight if you leased saucers to the carriers. They’ve already got the infrastructure to run the flights. At least at first, jets will still fly people to hubs where saucers will take them sub orbital to the truly distant destinations.”
    “OMG!” Dante grinned at her, “You just called them saucers!”
    “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m acquiescing to the fact that you philistines are going to call them saucers no matter what.”
    Dante gave a little frown, “What do you mean, ‘at least at first?’ You explained last night that the big differences are with long flights where you can get suborbital. It’s not all that much better to fly a saucer on short flights since they’d need to go through the atmosphere, right?”
    Tiona shrugged, “Flying them in the saucer would be better for the planet than flying them in a jet, if for no other reason than that you wouldn’t be burning any fossil fuels. But, as a businessman, it’d once again be better because you won’t be burning expensive jet fuel. Power from a fusion plant is way cheaper, but it can’t push a jet.” She got a distant look in her eyes, “wait a minute. For short flights you’d like an aerodynamic shape for your craft since it won’t be getting outside the atmosphere. I’ll bet you could take existing commercial jets and remove the engines. Put thrusters in the back of the main cabin and in the engine nacelles and keep flying the jet bodies using a fusion plant for power. Cheaper, less pollution… and less industrial waste because you’d be reusing/recycling.”
    Dante stared at her, “Freakin’-A,” he whispered, “it isn’t just going to be the airlines that hate us; aircraft manufacturers are goin’ to hate us too.”
    Tiona eyed him, “Just like you may want to lease saucers to the existing airlines, you might want to have them manufactured by Boeing and its competitors.”
    Dante gave her a sour look, “You’re talking about spoiling all my fun. How am I going to go into the business of world domination if I let other people play in my sandbox?”
    She lifted an eyebrow, “You go into the business of solar system domination. You build the spaceships, the space stations, the hotels on the moon and Mars, and found Interplanetary Spacelines. Leave the world to the peons.”
    Dante broke into a full belly laugh, “I’ll never again accuse you of thinking small!”
    Dante paused at a chime from his AI, “You’ve got a call from the HR department at Axel VC.”
    “I’ll take it… Hello.”
    “Mr. Gettnor?”
    “Yes.”
    “I’m calling from HR to let you know that you’ve been terminated from your position at Axel VC. You may come in tomorrow morning, any time after eight to pick up your personal effects. Stop at the