“See these figures?” asked Vly. “They’re your coordinates. It is a three-dimensional map, in a manner of speaking. If it weren’t, I couldn’t get around. I’ll write down what you need. But you’ll find George on that little plunk of a rock. He’s been there several months now and won’t be hard to find, once I point it out to you. I just spoke to him a few hours ago and I’ll get ahold of him again and tell him you’ll be coming.” He began to write some notes down for Mark.
“Must take a lot of power to run your operation here, Mr. Vly,” observed Mark while he waited for Montezuma to finish writing. “Don’t you have to conserve energy?”
“Haven’t had to conserve energy since I developed a new process for drawing energy directly from the sun.”
“But out here the solar radiation is so weak. You can’t get much energy from solar panels, no matter how efficient—certainly not enough to run your machines without some sort of supplement.”
“I don’t use solar panels any more, Mr. Seaton. I mine energy from the sun directly with an entirely new process. I can pull in and store about four gigawatts. Gives me all I need and plenty left over.”
“Four gigawatts?”
“Four gigawatts. That’s a four with nine zeroes after it.”
Mark almost shouted. “I know how much it is! Mr. Vly! You amaze me! There’s nothing like that anywhere else in the Solar System! Nobody has anything like that, nobody! Not even Starlight Enterprise! You could make a fortune if you sell your design!!”
“Really?” said Mr. Vly, lifting his eyebrows slightly, handing him the sheet with his notes on it. “Excuse me a moment while I write that down, so the next time I want to turn my whole life over to lawyers and businessmen I’ll know just what to do.”
“But, but...” Mark spluttered. Joe laughed and Zip smiled.