A Tower in Space-Time (The Stasis Stories #5) by Laurence Dahners

Author:Laurence Dahners [Dahners, Laurence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-01-05T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Six

Admiral Halser looked up when JAG Wang entered his office. “So, what do we have to do to invoke this Invention Secrecy Act?”

Wang looked reluctant for a moment, then took a breath and said, “It doesn’t apply. They haven’t patented the stazers.”

“What?!” Halser exclaimed. “Come on! If they haven’t patented them, then any fool could take one apart and reverse engineer them!”

“Yeah,” Wang said, a puzzled look on his face. “It would seem so, wouldn’t it? They did make a patent application, but then they abandoned it. By applying some pressure on the basis that we wanted to invoke the secrecy act, I got to talk to the examiner. He says the application doesn’t have enough information to actually build the device like submissions are supposed to. When it first came in, he says he told them their application didn’t represent the required ‘full disclosure’ of methods. Though they said they’d submit a revised application, they never did. When queried about it, they said they were just planning to keep the methods secret instead of protecting them with a patent. Shortly after that they formally abandoned it.”

“I don’t understand. How do they think they’re going to keep the tech secret?”

Wang shrugged, “Maybe they’re not going to let anyone else get their hands on a stazer. Could it be the company’s going to do all the stazing itself?”

“So, you’re thinking that if we wanted a Stade ship’s hull, someone from the company would come down and build it for us?”

“Um,” Wang said, “you know they’re building rockets for Space-Gen don’t you?”

“Rocket engines, yeah.”

“No, apparently they’re building the entire rocket. This poses another problem for the Invention Secrecy Act, in the sense that Stade’s already out in the wild and it’d be extremely difficult to make it secret. Also, if you tried to take it away from the world, you’d have a lot of very pissed off people coming down on you.”

Halser frowned. “I get that some people might be pissed about taking Stade away from the rocketry folks, but I don’t think the average citizen gives a damn about the space program.”

Wang said, “Stazers do a lot of things they will care about. Just the fact they can put people in stasis until their cancer can be cured is going to get the public involved.”

“So…” Halser said slowly, “maybe the government will have to make rocket engines and staze the people who need it medically.”

“I think you’d be in for an uphill battle, there’re too many other things people are going to want. But, back to Space-Gen. I talked to a Space Force JAG who says that Space-Gen has to build something like a mold for whatever parts they want made out of Stade, for instance, the rocket engines. Then someone from Staze shows up and,” Wang made finger quotes, “‘casts’ the Stade in the mold. Maybe the Navy could do something similar. Build a mold for a hull and then just have them come and cast it in Stade.”

Halser narrowed his eyes, “How much do they charge?”

“I’m not sure,” Wang said.

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