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No matter what Yamagata said to him, Forward kept the same cheerful smile on his round, ruddy face. Sometimes that smile unnerved Yamagata.
    As now. While Yamagata showed the disastrous efficiency curves to Forward’s image, the physicist’s hologram continued to smile even as he peered at the bad news.
    “Degraded by solar radiation, huh?” Forward said, scratching at his plump double chin.
    Yamagata nodded and tried not to scowl at the jaunty smile.
    “The numbers check out?” Forward asked.
    “My people back at New Kyoto are checking them.”
    “You didn’t expect the degradation to be so severe, eh?”
    “Obviously not.”
    Forward clasped his hands behind his back. “Wellll,” he said, drawing the word out, “assuming the numbers check out and the degradation is a real effect, you’ll simply have to build more power satellites. Or larger ones.”
    Yamagata said nothing.
    Forward seemed to stand there, frozen, waiting for a cue. After a few seconds, however, he added, “If each individual powersat can produce only one-third the power you anticipated, then you’ll need three times as many powersats. It’s quite simple.”
    “That is impossible,” said Yamagata.
    “Why impossible? The technology is well in hand. If you can build ten powersats you can build thirty.”
    “The costs would be too high.”
    “Ah!” Forward nodded knowingly. “Economics. The dismal science.”
    “Dismal, perhaps, but inescapable. The Foundation cannot afford to triple its costs.”
    “Even if you built the powersats here at Mercury, instead of buying them from Selene and towing them here from the Moon?”
    “Build them here?”
    Forward’s image seemed to freeze for an eyeblink’s span, then he began ticking off on his chubby fingers, “Mercury has abundant metals. Silicon is rarer than on the Moon but there’s still enough easily scooped from the planet’s surface to build hundreds of powersats. You’d save on transportation costs, of course, and you’d cut out Selene’s profits.”
    “But I would have to hire a sizeable construction crew,” Yamagata objected. “And they will want premium pay to work here at Mercury.”
    Forward smile almost faded. But he quickly recovered. “I don’t know much about nanotechnology; the field was in its infancy when I died. But couldn’t you program nanomachines to build powersats?”
    “Selene makes extensive use of nanomachines,” Yamagata agreed.
    “There you are,” said Forward, with an offhand gesture.
    Yamagata hesitated, thinking. Then, “But focusing thirty laser beams on a starship’s lightsail… wouldn’t that be difficult?”
    Forward’s smile returned in full wattage. “If you can focus ten lasers on a sail you can focus thirty. No problemo.”
    Yamagata smiled back. Until he realized that he was speaking to a man who had lived a century earlier and even then was known as a wild-eyed theoretician with no practical, hands-on experience.

Nanomachines

    Nanomachines?” Alexios asked the image on his office wall.
    “Yes,” replied Yamagata with an unhappy sigh. “It may become necessary to use them.”
    “We have no nanotech specialists here,” said Alexios, sitting up tensely in his office chair. It was a lie: he himself had experience with nanotechnology. But he had kept that information hidden from everyone.
    “I am aware of that,” Yamagata replied. “There are several in Selene who might be induced to come here.”
    “We’re crowded down here already.”
    Yamagata’s face tightened into a frown momentarily, then he regained control of himself and put on a perfunctory smile. “If it becomes necessary to build more power satellites than originally planned, your base will have to be enlarged considerably. We will need to build a mass launcher down there on the surface and hire entire teams of technicians to assemble the satellites in orbit.”
    Alexios nodded and tried to hide the elation he felt. It’s working! he told himself. I’m