Metafire

Back on Earth, the Major was getting a disappointing report from the effort to crack Dr. O'Leary and the other Metafire people. All four people had been brought to Washington under arrest. But Metafire had hired attorneys to defend them, and they were not talking. They were very friendly. Finally, with the continued pressure from Metafire customers, the Major arranged for Metafire to come back on line from an office in the Pentagon manned by Dr. O'Leary and his team, and watched over by the analysts Franklin and Charles. The agreement was that Metafire revenue would pay the government costs to oversee Metafire operations.

Chapter 40 Pursuit

A hundred thousand miles away, in the Metafire colony, slow progress was being made on cutting the killer satellite away from the hull of the colony. The investigative tour, in Metafire Two, of the hull had shown that the satellite was in a location that was clear of any serious piping and wiring. Andrei and Platon were tasked with the job. They would expose the outer hull, cut with the power laser in a cup like arrangement, and stop the air leakage with patching tape. They had calculated that they could cut 95% of the hole, in perforations, without causing the hull section to "blow out" from the hull. It would take almost a week of constant work. But even before that, a second hull had to be fabricated out of parts from one of the showers. The shower vacuum pump was calculated to be strong enough to hold a vacuum in the final phases of cutting. It would also allow them to test the integrity of the second hull configured over the first.