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four-fold improvement in specific impulse—1050 seconds—that’s four times the gas mileage of kerosene combustion. And since there is no oxidizer, there is a huge safety improvement since with NTRs, there is no possibility of a chemical explosion from mishandling fuel and oxidizer. NTRs are much safer than chemical rockets.
    “Now, do we have a deal or do I go home and help my father with his grape harvest? I’m particularly keen on this year’s crop—it will just be drinkable by the time I turn twenty-one.”
    That exchange—nearly thirty years ago—was SpaceCorp’s first battle with the prodigious intellect, not to mention cojones , of Logan MacGregor. SpaceCorp’s chief engineer lost the argument that day and SpaceCorp inked the deal with Mack. Irwin continued to lose most arguments he had with Mack, so many that he took early retirement three years after Mack joining the firm. Mack was asked to take the job, but gave it up less than a year later. “I’m more architect than engineer.”
    Irwin Musk, childless and a widower for twenty-three years—moved to a small farm in the coastal mountains above King City where he lived off the grid making small batches of wine only he would drink. Mack made annual pilgrimages to visit his old nemesis, always on his Harley and always with three bottles of his family’s wine—two to drink and one to leave. They would drink one while Mack filled him in on the progress SpaceCorp was making. Irwin was eager to hear the news of each new space station. He always had comments and advice to offer which Mack would dutifully write down. That usually finished off the first bottle of wine. Then Irwin would offer to uncork one of his own bottles. Mack would always ask what year it was. Irwin would answer, and Mack would always say, “Perhaps we should give it another year, maybe two.” And Irwin would then say, “Hmm, perhaps so... Well then, we need some more wine!” And Mack would graciously pull another bottle from his saddle bag.
    This had remained their ritual until one day in the fall of 2064 when Mack pulled up on his Harley and Irwin did not come to the door to greet him. Mack found him lying peacefully in his bedroom, dead of no apparent cause. The coroner determined he had bled out through his stomach, a common cause of death among old people who lived in isolation with untreated ulcers.
    “What about the body?” Mack had asked.
    “I dunno… he got any next of kin?”
    “Not really. His wife died some time ago. I don’t know where she’s interred.”
    “Probably cremated and her ashes scattered someplace. Not much real estate for interment centers these days, even less for cemeteries.”
    Mack had looked around Irwin’s land. There was maybe half a football field containing a modest house and a few buildings for viniculture and a barn for farm implements. The rest was about twenty acres, mostly grapes, a small truck garden, and a few chickens wandering around loose. In the distance a solitary oak tree that must have been 300 years old stood watch at the top of a knoll. “Okay if I put him up there?” Mack pointed. “You’ve got the death recorded.”
    “Long as I don’t know about it.”
    “Spose you could give me a hand while you do know about it… then you could go straight back to not knowing about it.” Mack shrugged and made a half smile through unparted lips.
    The coroner was about forty years old, reasonably fit. He looked around as though someone might be watching.
    “He was a good man,” Mack said.
    “Do we need to mark the grave? That’d be suspicious.”
    “The tree will be his marker. We’ll carve his particulars into the bark. Doesn’t actually have to say he’s buried there.”
    And so Irwin Musk, SpaceCorp chief engineer and lead designer of SpaceCorp’s Von Braun class space station, was laid to rest.
    *   *   *
    Meanwhile, Mack’s nuclear powered shuttles lofted hundreds of payload pods up to their apogee pickup points