Blood may be thicker than water, but money puts them both to shame--money and trust, that is. Jack agreed to stay on, and I’ve been giving him weekly reports. The man is almost shameless in his greed, but the result has been a tireless and inspired effort on laying the groundwork for my return. He was good at real estate, but this foray into “intellectual property” has tapped into a well of creativity I didn’t know he had. I may well come home to a ticker tape parade and as many patents as Thomas Edison, with licensing already in place when they are confirmed. The most amazing part is that Walsh and Phertipton are still clueless.
But we are not clueless on them, not any longer. The pattern search revealed fifteen lawyers being “fed” by Phertipton. With ten of them he has already “struck”--Walsh is one--and it seems he’s still laying groundwork with five, and maybe some repeats. All were “loner” billionaires, such as myself. At first I was surprised that two others were Belters--then not so surprised. The successful ones among us are--by definition--loner billionaires. I was a little more surprised to find one of those was Van Cleeve, but then, even though it’s a small community, we can keep a few secrets.
My Earth associates have been making discrete contacts with the past victims. We will soon be in touch with the potential victims. No surprise that those who discover that their lawyers have turned on them are doubly incensed. What is surprising is that Phertipton and his associates have kept their tracks so well covered--most of the traitor lawyers are still working for the clients they have burned.
The question now is not of settling, but of handling revenge. We easily have enough to get Phertipton to back off me. It’s not so much legal leverage as ethical leverage--in spite of all the lawyer jokes, lawyers do take their ethical appearances seriously, and Phertipton is high profile enough that a heady whiff of scam floating around his dealings will do him damage. I’m thinking hard about this.
But I’m thinking even harder about my treasures, and that’s a lot more fun! I’m going through my videos and data to sift for new findings, and I’m examining the treasures I’ve brought on the ship with me.
I’ve been transformed from a geologist into an archeologist. I still get excited over mineral deposits, but now even the most mundane “glove” I have with me is worth ten times what a good mineral vein is in dollar value, and millions of times more in growing humanity’s knowledge of the universe we live in. With Honey’s help, and the help of her associates back in the Inner System, I’m running all kinds of nondestructive tests on this stuff, and a few destructive ones on those samples I have large quantities of.
The net material of that first foray, for instance, has survived for a million years in hard vacuum because it is, in essence, just space rock--a silicate material. What is different is the crystal structure--it has somehow been oriented away from the roundish grains of typical rock, and into long fibrous structures more like those of silk.
The glove materials are all exotic materials--how useful they will be other than just being exotic, I haven’t determined yet because they are heavily deteriorated.
I’m researching the question of just how old the Honeycomb is, and where did it come from? And there are lots of mysteries there.
It’s orbit is hyperbolic, not elliptical, which indicates that it came from outside the solar system, but it doesn’t seem to have come from any nearby stellar system. Its trajectory is ... leisurely ... for an extra-solar object. If it had been moving at a reasonable trans-stellar speed--as if someone wanted to get from Star A to Star B in a reasonable time--I would never have touched it because it would have been moving so fast. It’s as if someone “parked” it near the Solar System, and then abandoned it. How strange!
The structure is space rock but it has been extensively reworked. The heavy elements, those beyond calcium, have been leeched out of the white rock, so there’s no uranium or thorium to date. The potassium-argon is giving funny readings, but they indicate a million to ten million years. Space rock without heavy elements ... that’s why it’s white ... no iron or other “pigment” elements to add color.
The colored rocks, on the other hand, are enriched with specific heavy elements. These are not random mixes of heavy elements, they are there for a reason, but it’s no reason I can discern. Each section of colored rock is a different mix, and the looters found these colored rocks interesting –- that’s why they have been mined.
So much mystery.