Chapter 29

HMS Agamemnon sped back to Mars and got there in about 1 second, using their star drive.

That never got old.

They opened a teleportation portal from the ship's cafeteria to the biggest cafeteria on Mars, where the new colonists would get a welcome lecture to orient them in their new home.

Then they marched them all through the portal, with those from the nursing home going last so they could move however slowly they may need.

Though, having been through the ships hospital, none of those needed to be wheeled along in their beds nor in wheelchairs. None of them even needed a walker anymore - not while on ship in it's standard Earth gravity, nor on Mars in it's one-third standard gravity.

They were still old, but their various infirmities had all been fixed up, and they were all acting a couple decades younger and comparatively spry.

Some even talked excitedly about the various activities they had given up, and the possibility of resuming them.

These cited certain famous examples like Jack LaLane the fitness guru who, in his 70's regularly did feats of strength for his birthdays, such as swimming a certain distance while towing a dozen or more small boats full of people.

Or there was actor-bodybuilder Peter Lupus, who, at 70 and again at 75 set world records for most weight lifted in a certain time limit - something like 76000 pounds in 27 minutes.

Nobody remembered the details for sure, but the point was that with restored health, age need not be debilitating.

They were excited to see how things went.

Agamemnon quickly transferred their passengers, medical supplies and so forth to Mars, then got moving again.

The dome on Boz's new park was done, and it needed to be filled with air.

Mars has only .08 the atmosphere that the Earth did, and plants would not survive, much less thrive, in air that thin.

And other new domes needed air too - all the spare air Mars Colony had stored up went to filling just a couple of them.

So Agamemnon sped off to the asteroid belt, with all sensors manned and looking at everything out to their maximum range.

Six new 'Old Codgers' from the VFW post Abe used to attend were there helping with the sensors, and 'learning the ropes'.

It didn't take long before they found some useful asteroids. They chose a particular one - shaped like a large flying potato - and flew up near it.

It was a nickel-iron asteroid with generally promising characteristics - the right size, with not many impurities, and the impurities it did have would not weaken it significantly.

They checked it out carefully, then used the ship's particle beams to take a slice of the top of it. That slice was about 80 feet on a side and 40 feet thick.

They tried to pull the slice away with telekinesis, but it was a bit too big and exceeded the tk weight limit.

A quick cut on the end fixed that, and left them with a big slice, and a little slice, plus the original potato, now with a flat top.

They sent over some repair robots to start shaping their big slice, and Ron could not resist the opportunity.

He sent just one repair robot to the small slice they were going to leave behind, and started shaping that too.

In a short while, they were ready to leave.

Their big slice of asteroid had been shaped into a 50' radius sphere, with a big opening on top and a hinged, screw-on lid, with large handles on the lid so that tk could do the screwing and unscrewing, despite its lack of fine control. The ship's telekinesis was more like a fork-lift than a hand: it could shift heavy weights just fine, but it wasn't useful for trying to type on a computer keyboard. Unscrewing a regular lid may be beyond it, but it would not have trouble with big handles like these.

Just in case, they also made it an 'interrupted screw' such as is used in gun breeches, where certain parts are cut away such that it only takes a quarter-turn to screw it all the way down.

The sphere was modeled on the gas cylinders used to store highly pressurized gas for welding, and had walls appropriately thick.

They made it a sphere instead of a cylinder, since a sphere would be stronger, and needed less surface area to contain the same volume, so would also be lighter.

The empty sphere weighed 18% less than their maximum telekinesis limit would allow, which left the extra capacity for the gas it would contain. That was the same proportion of tank-to-gas that welding tanks used, so they figured it should work.

They would use the sphere to collect some of the atmosphere from Venus, whose atmosphere was remarkably similar to that of Mars, but much much more dense.

And Ron's small slice of asteroid had been shaped into a perfectly square sign, with signpost planted at the end of the flattened part of the potato.

On Ron's sign, in perfect Braille, was written, "No Parking. This zone for loading and unloading only. Violators will be towed."

He hoped that eventually some space mission from Earth would find it and be puzzled.

He laughed as he imagined their reactions.

Agamemnon then took her new spherical gas canister, and sped to Venus.

Arriving in orbit there, they used telekinesis to lower the sphere to the surface. It's top was left open, so it could begin collecting gas.

They made it descend on a path that avoided the clouds of sulfuric acid in the atmosphere there, and landed it carefully in an area without sulfuric acid.

On the surface of Venus, the atmospheric temperature averaged 872 degrees Fahrenheit, which was just 28 degrees short of making iron glow red-hot. The pressure was 1350 psi, which would cram a lot of gas into their sphere all on it's own.

But gas cylinders often store gas at 2000, or even 3000 psi

They wanted more gas per trip.

They didn't know if they could rig a pump to operate in those conditions, to pump more gas into their container.

But they didn't need to.

Instead, they just increased the gravity in the spherical gas canister, which effectively sucked in more gas and compressed it as well.

Venus' gravity was about 90% Earth's, and that was enough to get 1350 psi of atmospheric pressure at its surface, given how high and dense its atmosphere was..

Using the Gravity Control Console, they could raise that gravity - in a small area - to as high as ten times that of Earth, but they didn't need anywhere near that much to get plenty of gas pressure in their sphere.

Gas flowed in in no time and filled the sphere with 96.5% co2 and 3.5% nitrogen - the usual atmosphere of Venus.

Then they used telekinesis to screw the lid on tight, and raise the sphere back up to orbit.

Then they sped back to Mars, where some repair robots had been preparing to receive them.

They had made a mile long pipe along the ground, out of quartz.

The pipe ran from the park dome to a big quartz cup, with a 50 foot diameter inner curve,designed to hold the sphere.

They used glass for greenhouse domes because it is a thermal insulator - it keeps the heat in really well. But quartz is a thermal conductor - it transmits heat really well. It does that despite it being made of the same silicon dioxide that glass is made of.- quartz just has a crystalline structure very much unlike glass, which gives it different properties.

So when Agamemnon arrived at Mars, they were ready to lower the almost red-hot sphere to the Martian surface near New Town, where the outside temperature was currently a - for Mars - comparatively balmy 35 degrees Fahrenheit.

The sphere lost a lot of heat as it lowered to the quartz cup it was to sit in.

Then it transmitted more heat to that cup as it sat in it.

The cup then transmitted heat to the ground and air it was in contact with.

But the gas inside the sphere was still almost the original 872 degrees Fahrenheit., and they didn't want to just dump that right into the cold dome, lest the thermal shock shatter the dome.

That was why they'd built the pipe.

Once the sphere was sitting correctly in the quartz cup, a repair robot carefully used Shape Matter to form a tiny, pinprick-sized hole in the bottom of the metal sphere, right over the intake for the quartz pipe.

High-pressure hot gas spurted out of that hole, and into the pipe, which had been made extra thick to withstand some thermal shock.

That gas spurt proved to be, as they'd hoped, little enough so that the quartz could take the heat without cracking. The gas flow sped along the pipe, heating as it went, then started heating the dome as well. And as it went, plenty of heat got transmitted through the quartz and out into the Martian atmosphere. That was why the pipe was a mile long - to allow a lot of heat transfer.

Once the whole apparatus was sufficiently warm, they widened the pinprick sized hole a bit at a time.

They did not open the hole so wide that the flow through it would raise the whole sphere like a rocket. But as the gas flowed out, pressure in the sphere reduced, and enabled them to open the hole wider.

So what started slowly ended quickly.

When the pressure in the sphere got low enough, they lifted it ten feet and held it there, to let the remaining gas flow out. They saw no point in sending even a little gas back to Venus. Mars could use all it got.

Then they sealed the hole again and flew back to Venus.

That time, they didn't bother lowering the sphere to the surface, but instead just increased the gravity within the sphere even higher while holding it within the Venusian atmosphere. That still got it full, at high pressure, and saved time.

The sphere, especially at high pressure could hold an amazing amount of gas. But so did the park dome.

It ended up requiring 13 round trips to Venus to completely fill the park dome.

Then they made 2 more trips with the 50 foot spherical gas container to Venus for gas - one to fill all the other new domes, and one so they could leave the sphere, full of gas, sitting in its cup on Mars ready to fill other new construction later.

Humans could not breathe 96.5% co2 and 3.5% nitrogen. But plants could, and they'd split the oxygen free from the carbon to make o2, which humans could indeed breathe.

So, until that process was well-enough advanced, humans would still have to wear spacesuits in domes full of this new gas. But the process was started for things to be in great shape later.

They just needed more Nitrogen - both as an inert gas for us to breathe, and as something the plants needed too, though they wanted it in the soil. Putting it in the soil is done by any of several well-known processes, generally referred to as 'making fertilizer'.

So next Agamemnon went back to the potato-shaped nickel-iron asteroid.

They cut off another slice of it like before - though this time the bottom part of the asteroid, in a nice even cut parallel to the first, leaving the asteroid flat on top and on bottom.

Ron resisted the urge to add another signpost to it, reasoning that any extra information on the second sign would detract from the intellectual quandary the first sign generated.

They shaped the new piece of asteroid into a second sphere just like the first, then flew, with it off to Neptune, where they looked for, and found, some large pools of liquid Nitrogen.

They filled the sphere there like they'd filled the other - moving it with telekinesis into the target substance to be acquired, then increasing gravity within it to suck in material, finally screwing on the lid, and flying it back to Mars.

Three trips that way got them all the nitrogen they could fit into three new domes made just to store it. Then a fourth trip left the sphere full and resting in its own cup near the one containing Venus gas.

Mars Colony would not be short of gasses for a long time.

Then they made 4 more trips, this time to Uranus to pick up large chunks of water ice, 64000 tons at a time.

It, too, was stored in new domes made just for that purpose, although these water domes were bigger than usual, at 400 feet in diameter.

In the first of those domes, the hydroponics experts immediately got to work.

They put the hot gas from Venus in with the water ice, and mixed those around while adding some extra nitrogen and other minerals and nutrients.

When they felt they had the right mix in the liquid, and right temperature, they added certain varieties of algae. Their aim was a 'red-tide' effect - an algal bloom. They were not aiming for a red-tide exactly, since that variety of algae was not the one they were using here. But that type of effect was what they were after - where the algae finds conditions to be perfect for it and experiences explosive, exponential growth.

They could use that.

They had succeeded with this in small scale trials in a section of an existing dome. Now they were hoping to succeed with it at an industrial scale in a large dome.

The algae itself could be eaten, at need, or pressed for useful oils. But mainly they were hoping to regularly harvest algae as a useful component of dirt.

Most of dirt is 'biomass' - that is, it is the remains of dead organisms or their feces. Mars didn't have any of that before the humans got there, and still had very little.

But if they could get an algal bloom going on a big scale, and harvest the algae, then they could generate biomass by the ton, which could be mixed with powdered rock and other nutrients, plus some existing dirt so the microorganisms and worms therein could spread and create more dirt ready for growing plants.

And if they could find a way to keep the bloom going - harvest just some of it on a recurring basis, each time leaving enough to keep the bloom going - then they'd have all they dirt they could use.

While they were at that, others were finishing the park dome. This included mixing in some liquid nitrogen to further cool the hot gas from Venus. It also had the effect of raising the nitrogen content, which was also useful.

After the 4th big chunk of water ice was stored, 4 more were retrieved and just set down on the surface of Mars.

This was part of an experiment. Mars did not do a very good job at retaining the heat it got from the sun. Part of the problem was that it had no 'hydrosphere' - water on the surface - and not much atmosphere.

They wanted to test just how much effect it would have on Mars' temperature if it acquired some surface water and a bit more atmosphere.

So next they started some 'speed runs' to Venus.

It took them less than a second to get to Venus' orbit from Mars' orbit.

Then in Venus orbit, they used the Replicator to make a copy of their 50 foot spherical gas canister

With all the settings and choices already made and somebody standing ready at the console, that too took just a second.

Then they lowered it into the atmosphere of Venus just far enough so that when Gravity Control Console increased its internal gravity, it could quickly acquire a full load of high-pressure gas.

Then a shuttle used it's telekinesis to screw on the lid of the container while the ship raised the container back up out of the atmosphere, so they could use the star drive while towing it back.

That all took almost 30 seconds. Then a second back to Mars orbit, where they slowed, and then dropped the container, aimed to hit the planet 2000 miles away from the colony, so as to be certain not to damage the colony.

They, while the canister fell, they sped back to Venus to do it all again.

The Replicated spherical gas canister was set to Dismiss the moment it hit the ground, releasing the gas at the surface of Mars.

The instantaneous release of all that gas, at 3000 psi looked the same as setting off a particularly vigorous bomb. They had previously set up cameras, some of which were in orbit, to catch the spectacle on film, for later viewing.

In just over an hour, they made 100 such speed runs.

In aggregate, that effort added just over 126 pounds of atmosphere per square mile of Martian surface.

It would have been more had they been bringing chunks of ice, but for gas, they needed the gas canister, and that weighed a lot, reducing their payload to just 18% of their normal maximum.

One hundred and twenty six pounds per square mile may sound like a lot, until you compare it to Earth's atmospheric pressure of more than 14 pounds per square inch, and then realize that there are more than 4 billion square inches in a square mile.

In other words, it would take approximately 44 billion individual trips to give Mars an atmosphere about as thick as Earth's.

But what this effort did do was add enough atmosphere to Mars to hopefully trap some more solar heat there - not enough to make a huge difference, but hopefully enough to be measured, so that folks could figure out where to go from here.

By the time the Agamemnon had made those 100 speed runs to Venus, the park dome's atmosphere was judged to be OK for plants.

So they set about moving the shrunken trees from the greenhouse domes to the park dome.

They prepared as planned, so big pits were shaped to receive the trees' root systems, silt from Brockton Bay was prepared to serve as most of the soil they would use. The trees were positioned, supported, and un-shrunk.

While the experts analyzed how the operations had gone, Boz turned to Simon and, speaking through the breathing mask they all required while within this dome, remarked, "I wanted to put the optimum trees in here - just the trees that had at least one use, such as producing fruit. So we just brought back a few. It is obvious now that that was a mistake. This is supposed to be a park, yet it looks like a wasteland. Having just over half a dozen trees in an area this big merely emphasizes how barren it is."

Simon replied, "Yes, I ran some numbers. If we plant trees spaced 30 feet apart, you will still need over 14,000 of them to fill the space . That varies of course depending on the size of the pool, waterfall, lazy river and so on. But it gives you a ballpark."

"Yes," Boz nodded, "What we need is not an 'only the best' approach, but a 'quantity has a quality all it's own' type of approach."

Simon smiled, "Exactly. Get as many trees as you can, of any type. Some will live while some die, but even that teaches us things and still provides biomass from the ones that die. Eventually, when space becomes an issue, the less useful types can be removed and replaced with more useful types."

Boz nodded, "I agree. We'll communicate with Mars One on Earth and get them started looking into possibilities for acquiring large numbers of trees."

"Regular types of tree sales will cost more than they have on hand."

"True," Boz agreed, "which is why we'll have them looking at things other than regular tree sales - things which would incidentally involve the acquisition of a number of trees. Maybe new construction where existing trees need to be removed first. Or farms with orchards going into bankruptcy. New roads being built. That sort of thing. You know we got nearly 300 trees, varying from 2 feet tall to almost 9 feet tall, with the purchase of that garden center. But I think I will leave those in the dome where they are for now, since they are already used to growing in pots."

Simon nodded, "That's reasonable. you know that group of 300 included 2 young American Chestnut trees they are hoping are blight-resistant? They hope to restore the species from the brink of destruction with them. I think all care should be taken with those."

Boz agreed, "yes, but, come to think of it, I think that includes a careful trip to the ship's hospital to see if it can detect and remove the chestnut blight disease if present."

"Agreed. But for now the park needs some grass or something so it doesn't look so barren."

Boz nodded, then he looked up and laughed. "At least someone is happy with the park the way it is now."

Simon looked up too, and saw Abe, holding a hang-glider just reaching the top of the dome, having been lifted up 200 feet by a repair robot below him. As he watched, the repair robot released its telekinesis, allowing Abe to drop and start hang-gliding through the park.

Being Abe, he didn't just glide, he started slaloming between support pillars - winding between them in s-shaped curves.

-0-0-0-

While they were in the park dome, the CHIMP dropped in on them.

He opened with "have you guys taken care of that incoming nuke yet?"

"Not yet," Boz replied, "but what's the rush - it'll still be months before it gets here?"

"The future is uncertain, never put off the most important things." Bobo the CHIMP replied. "Besides, I was talking with the guys at the Zoo..."

Boz and Simon chuckled.

The Zoo is what the Martian colonists, feeling especially whimsical at the time, had chosen to call the legislative branch of their government, arguing that anyone who took himself too seriously was just setting themselves up for problems later, so a whimsical name actually had practical utility.

Bobo the Chief High Imperial Martian President resumed "The guys have decided, and I approved, that,on the principle that, if you don't punish bad behavior, you get more of it, we need to strike back at the country that launched the nuke at us. It'll be a proportional strike."

"Proportional?" Simon asked. "They tried to wipe you all out - kill every last one of you. I hope you're not saying it'll be proportional to that?"

"No," the CHIMP grinned, "A different proportion. They have a total of 18 silos containing the same kind of nuclear missile they launched at us. We'll take out those silos and the missiles in them, as well as the guy who ordered the launch - their leader. We think that if other leaders feel personally accountable for their actions, they'll think twice about doing certain things."

"And you want us to take care of these strikes." Boz stated. It wasn't really a question.

"Bingo. Right in one." Bobo replied. "We're still basically subsistence farmers here, in practical terms. All the effort we can spare goes into feeding us, housing us, and making the things we need to sustain life. Thanks to your abundant help, we're decades ahead of schedule at that, but it will be several more decades yet, at minimum, until we can spend any significant effort on things like making missiles. So you're it. We're officially deputizing you - ship and crew that is, as Little Green Men, for 24 hours. That should be enough time."

That was Martian whimsy again. They had chosen for their official government forces, whether police or military, to be called Little Green Men. It cost them nothing, amused them, and, they hoped, would help keep any so designated a little humbler and easier to work with.

"Yes, Sir." Boz replied. "What are your orders?"

The CHIMP told him.

-0-0-0-

HMS Agamemnon sped to the coordinates where the nuclear missile would be, and matched speeds with it.

Well, they went nearly there.

They stopped 200 miles short of the missile itself in case it went off.

Not that nuclear missiles were anything like Nitroglycerin, which was temperamental and could go off if jostled even slightly.

No, it had taken the Manhattan Project, with large teams of the best scientific minds of the age, years to figure out how to make a nuclear bomb explode.

It doesn't just happen accidentally.

But there was the possibility that the country that launched it would know, either by telescopic observation, or by telemetry sent back from the missile, that it was being vandalized and would choose to set it off.

And it was with that same possibility in mind that Agamemnon was jamming all radio communications to prevent any telemetry from the missile leaving the area, and to prevent any commands from reaching it from Earth.

They also had their obscuring dust cloud in place as they arrived - so that any telescope would not see them, and could at best see that certain stars had been obscured.

Although, even if they had arrived with a fireworks display and a great big neon sign saying "we've come to mess up your missile.", they'd still have had almost 4 minutes in which to work safely before there could be a response from Earth.

That was due to the incredible distances involved.

In the time since the missile was launched - just over 2 weeks - it had traveled almost 8 million miles, after swinging close to the moon to get a speed boost from the gravitational slingshot effect.

And the Earth had continued on in it's orbit, moving over 20 million miles since that missile launch.

Things were more complicated than just adding those two distances together, but they'd done the math and so they knew that the missile was almost 2 light-minutes from Earth.

That meant that, if they'd arrived with a huge neon sign, the light from it would take almost 2 minutes to reach Earth.

If a keen-eyed observer there noticed that instantly, and reacted instantly, it would take his signal another 2 minutes to reach the missile.

So Agamemnon's crew had at least 4 minutes, yet they wasted no time, just to be safe.

A Replicated shuttle, with a crew of Duplicates and Replicated robots, launched immediately, and used it's own Star Drive to close the 200 miles to the missile in effectively no time.

Once at the missile, it gripped it in a tractor beam, and released several robots and people in space-suits.

The repair robots, clinging to the shuttle, used their own telekinesis to move the space-suited figures right to the missile's nose cone. That method had been judged to be faster and more secure than using the thruster jets built into the suits.

One Duplicate of Boz then scanned the whole missile from end to end with a remote scanning unit from the Replicator Console.

Other Duplicates moved to the missile's nose cone and began working.

It didn't take the crew very long to find an access panel. It was clearly labeled to make things easier for the maintenance technicians.

Nuclear missiles needed regular maintenance just like anything else did. In fact, they actually needed more maintenance than most things, due to the effects of radioactivity on its components.

They surrounded the access panel so all could work on it at once - Ron, with a cowboy hat in one hand, sat straddling the missile in a tribute to Slim Pickins in the movie Doctor Strangelove. Then, with one working each of the four sides, quickly removed 8 screws, and then the panel swung open on hinges.

Abe then removed a panel of something like insulation, revealing the apparatus underneath.

"My movies have lied to me!" Ron exclaimed, on seeing the inside of the missile. "This is supposed to contain an incomprehensible mass of bewildering electronics,any and all of which will blow everything up instantly if accessed wrong. But this looks almost as accessible as opening the hood of a Honda Civic!"

Boz and Simon each already had one sub-assembly disconnected and 'dangling' from its wires.

"What did you really expect?" Boz answered. "The same reasoning applies in both cases. For a car, or a missile, they both need regular maintenance, and so have to be accessible to the maintenance techs. Though at the same time, they will each be a little crowded, as they try to fit as much stuff as they can in the space available."

Simon disconnected one sub-assembly entirely and tossed it to a waiting repair robot.

The Boz Duplicate next to that robot scanned the assembly, then the robot put the assembly into a container.

Abe disconnected another sub-assembly.

"Ack!" Ron exclaimed in mock horror, "Can you even *do* that? What happened to all the traditional agonizing over whether to cut the red wire or the blue wire?"

They all chuckled, while Boz, who could be a bit pedantic, replied as if Ron had been serious. "Missiles like these are among the most heavily-guarded things there are. They stay for years in silos, protected by military troops, coded access panels, vault doors and so forth. And when and if they get used, they will fly rapidly to the target and blow up. All of that really doesn't leave much opportunity for anyone unauthorized to access them and tamper with their innards. So any booby-traps have an almost-zero chance of ever being useful. But at the same time, maintenance techs are working on these regularly, and you really do not want them accidentally setting of a booby-trap by an unfortunate slip of a tool or a missed sequence or a forgotten step. People make mistakes all the time, and you do not want a simple common mistake setting off the booby-trap in a nuke. So they don't bother to trap them - that'd be as foolish as you rigging your own car to explode if you turned on the ignition the wrong way. Booby-traps are for spy thrillers and movies."

They had already removed a dozen sub-assemblies by this point. Most of them were modular and set up for easy access.

"OK, but THAT," Ron said, pointing at a a component just revealed by the removal of another component, "is just over-the-top. I can't believe that's there. Are we on Candid Camera?"

They all laughed.

Ron was pointing at a deep-cycle battery exactly as used in golf-carts. It looked like it had come off the shelf at any regular car-parts store.

Boz replied, "It needs electricity. There would be too much overhead to make a generator run, so it needs to be a battery. A company with expertise in the field has already put a lot of effort in making sure the batteries they sell are durable and work well. And the country that fired this missile at Mars is under embargo and so unable to buy strictly military technology abroad. They can't develop better than this themselves. So they use what they can get. It has a certain practical logic."

"Well, OK," Ron pretended to grumble, "but if we come across any string - just simple nylon string like you can buy in a hardware store - used in this missile, I'm quitting this charade!"

They chuckled.

Boz replied "I'd say 'cut the chatter' but you're unscrewing things as fast as any of us, so have at it - enjoy yourself."

Ron triumphantly lifted the golf-cart battery free of the missile nose-cone, and seconds later, a chime went off in their helmet radios, indicating 4 minutes had passed.

"We win!" Ron exulted. "The race is ours. Even if they were watching, correctly interpreted the signs, and acted immediately, they can't set the nuke off if it has no power-source!" He brandished the battery like it was a trophy.

"True," Simon smiled, "Having no radio would also make it quite challenging for them to communicate with it." He pointed to a repair robot holding the radio sub-assembly while Bas-Teal scanned it with the Replicator's remote scanner.

They chuckled again, and kept working.

Soon Bas-Oon. pulled out a heavy cylinder. He said "here is the fissile material."

Unlike other parts, he did not toss this to a repair robot, but signaled for it to pull him in with telekinesis.

This was done, carefully.

It was one thing to know, intellectually, that it wasn't like Nitroglycerin, but it was another thing to be fully comfortable with that thought, down deep, where your instincts were.

While Bas-Teal scanned the container, Bas-Oon justified his caution, "most types of warheads use some amount of explosives to force two or more smaller pieces of U-235 together in a way that will cause nuclear fission. We don't know what explosive they have used here, so it makes sense to be cautious."

Ron responded, "we know they used an explosive that doesn't explode when jostled, or it never would have survived the missile launch process. But that's OK Boz-Man, you don't need an excuse to treat that stuff with respect."

They all nodded.

Bas-Oon unscrewed one end of the container, reached into the open end and brought out some kind of end-plate, followed by a half-sphere of dull gray metal.

"So that's what Uranium looks like, huh?" Ron asked.

"Yup," Boz replied, "And be glad you're a Duplicate floating in vacuum. The radiation this gives off is not instantly lethal or anything, but it is dangerous. But more dangerous yet, I understand, is the reaction if this touches air - some instantly oxidizes and forms a very lethal poisonous dust in the air. This is bad stuff."

Repair robots, floating in space nearby, used their Shape Matter power to turn the metal hemisphere into 4 rods.

Then they put the 4 rods into containers which had been provided for them by the guys that ran the nuclear reactor back on Mars.

When those guys got these containers, they'd use the Uranium as more reactor fuel.

Another repair robot, holding a Geiger counter, signaled Bas-Oon, who then put the end-plate back into the cylinder.

Then they repeated the procedure - unscrewing the other end of the cylinder and removing a Uranium hemisphere from it too. They shaped that into rods, stowed them, and so on as with the other end.

The 8 containers holding Uranium rods then got placed into another, bigger container, and taken to the shuttle.

Simon, with his own Geiger Counter, looked up from the missile and said, "It looks like the warhead itself did not spend much time loaded into the missile, since nothing here is significantly radioactive. It would have become so if it had spent much time around the Uranium."

"That's for sure," Bas-Oon replied. "This cylinder, the explosive end-plate and so on are all 'hot' as they say - very radioactive. I'd be worried about getting radiation sickness, except I'm just a Duplicate. Still, we don't want the contaminated stuff around, so let's proceed with Plan A, and dump it all into the Sun. The cylinder has lots of Tritium in it - the fission of the Uranium causes that to undergo a fusion reaction and makes the bomb more powerful. But we haven't got any need for Tritium, and the whole container is highly radioactive, so into the Sun it goes."

One of the Battleship's long-range missiles was unstrapped from the shuttle and brought up.

It had contained Napalm, but that payload had been dismissed, leaving an empty payload compartment.

Grandpa had made these missiles modular, so the payload compartment could be filled with Napalm, any of his special chemicals, or just about anything else.

Now they filled it with the radioactive components of the nuclear missile they had just disassembled.

There were not many, so they fit just fine.

Then a repair robot moved the long-range missile a few hundred feet to their side, pointed it at the Sun, and let go.

The missile had already been pre-programmed with it's target information.

So when the folks in the battleship ignited the rocket motor in their long-range missile, it started out at its best speed on a course that would take it right into the Sun.

Or rather, it's radioactive payload would fly into the Sun.

The missile would be dismissed after it ran out of fuel. It was long-ranged, but didn't have enough fuel to fly the hundred million miles or so needed to get it to the Sun.

But that didn't matter - while the missile existed, it was accelerating itself, and it's payload, on an intercept course for the Sun. And even when the missile got dismissed, it's radioactive payload would continue to coast along on that same course and speed, arriving at the Sun in a few weeks.

While that had been going on, the useful components - all non-radioactive and double-checked for that - of the missile had been loaded in boxes, and stowed in the shuttle.

The missile itself had had a few things such as insulation put back inside and the access panel screwed back on.

"Well, folks," Ron offered, "we interrupted this poor missile in it's journey to Mars. What do you say we make up for that and take it there ourselves? It will make a good monument - kinda like a statue in a public square."

"A grand idea!" Simon laughed. "Without it's payload, sensors and other electronics, it is basically a big metal can full of rocket fuel - and not much of that anymore. They burned most of the fuel to get here and only kept a little for final course corrections later. We can remove the small attitude-control thrusters, and drain off the remaining fuel for other purposes, and then it will be completely inert, yet a good reminder to the Martians."

All agreed.

They dismissed any Duplicate or Replica that had been exposed to too much radiation, since they didn't want to contaminate Agamemnon.

Then they loaded everything into the shuttle, used its tractor beam to bring the no-longer-nuclear missile along, and headed back to the battleship.

Then Agamemnon returned to Mars and delivered the new monument, spare parts, and reactor fuel.