New Title 1 by Steven Lyle Jordan Read Free Book Online Page A

about matching his credentials against theirs. They all sat down, and by custom, the leaders poured water into glasses and exchanged them; each took a sip, then allowed the others to help themselves.
    “Are any of the latest ground reports encouraging?” Julian asked as an opening.
    “I’m afraid not so good,” Lambert replied. “The weather patterns are going crazy, all through North America. The ash has caused some freak storms, some of them with severe winds and lightning, and they’ve done a lot of spot damage. And the larger ash particles are already doing damage of their own. The Great Plains wind farms are trying to trim for extreme weather, but frankly, they weren’t built for volcanic bombardment. Even if this thing ended tomorrow, it would take us years to clean up some of the damage we’ve already had.”
    “And,” Calvin interrupted, “are geologists giving any idea yet when they think it might end?”
    “None,” Thompson replied. “Some of them suggest we may have been better off with one big eruption, instead of this constant stream. And you can’t get any of them to commit to an estimate of duration. They think the final effect will be much more widespread.”
    “And they are probably right,” Calvin confirmed. “Pre-existing weather patterns will have time to carry the ash further. A single eruption would create damage that was bad, but more localized. A constant outflow could potentially impact the entire planet.”
    “We’re all in a bind now,” the President said. “This is going to affect materials and goods transfer between the ground and the satellites.”
    “Our major economic engine,” Julian added. The importing of raw materials and supplies to the satellites, and the exporting of products that were most efficiently made in orbit, constituted the primary trade between the ground and the satellites, and played a major part in keeping their joint economies rolling. With curtailed trade, the economies of both satellites and ground nations were going to be problematic at best. “We’ve already made arrangements to scale back factory operations, in expectation of that. We’re also talking to vendors about ballistic deliveries, for the time being. Maybe you can help with that.”
    Lambert nodded. Sending shipments via ballistic rockets, essentially robotic guided missiles, was not as efficient, and they could not carry as much, as the big freighters, and everyone at the table knew this. It would suffice for small and emergency supplies, but not well, and not for long. “I’ll try to allocate additional resources to the ballistics manufacturers. Given the state of the atmosphere, we probably can’t expect those ballistics to last for more than a few flights. That’ll be tough, too.”
    “Perhaps,” Thompson said, “it would be a good idea to provide us with your list of priority items. That way, we can concentrate our efforts to bolster shipments where it will do you the most good.”
    “We can do that,” Aaron nodded. “And we’d be glad to prioritize our factory production towards your most critical needs … provided, of course, that we can get the raw materials.”
    “I foresee the need to balance our needs and your needs against the available cargo space on the ballistics,” Thompson stated. “That’s going to be difficult.”
Here it comes
, Calvin mused. “We might be able to help each other here, though… possibly an easing on expected product shipments from Verdant, in exchange for other concessions, to be named later.”
    “Maybe we should name them now,” Julian suggested coolly.
    Julian and Thompson locked eyes. Aaron, ever the stumbling diplomat, tried to help. “After all, we may need to start planning now for future changes to operations or resource allocation. We—”
    “We’d like to see an easing of immigration quotas,” Thompson cut Aaron off. “Effective as soon as the flight restrictions are over.”
    Julian continued to look at