More Words, Deeper Hole

was the name of the Anderson story. Driven, ike so much of Anderson, by Toynbee... in this case, Toynbee's ideas about challenges driving societies to greatness. (You have to have just the right amount of challenge, see.)

But as to hidden colonies in the solar system: surely there are ways. Fire some small construction robots at an appropriately obscure asteroid. They build solar panels and a big ol' laser. Load a rocket up with colonists, blast off, then turn off the rockets and stealth your ship. (Stealthing in space is much easier -- that is to say, it's possible -- when you're not accelerating.) Then use the laser to brake and match velocities. Have the laser use the whole asteroid as a heat sink.

Too baroque? Okay, purloined letter. You have a society that exploits asteroid resources. Cargo freighters carry robot machinery to asteroids to mine, build accelerators, and fire the stuff back to Earth orbit. (Or wherever.) There's no magic self-replicating machinery, so the freighters are huge.

Plucky rebels empty one of these ships and fill it with colonists in cold sleep. Shortly after the ship arrives at the asteroid, its reactor goes critical. Boom. From Earth's POV, it looks like the very expensive ship full of machinery has been utterly destroyed, a complete loss.

If it's a typical asteroid in the main Belt, the colonists have just won about a decade of peace and quiet. (Assuming tech that prefers minimum transfer orbits.) Subsequent attempts may occur, but can be dealt with. Eventually the asteroid may gain a reputation for snakebite luck (rather as Mars missions have today). Or, the colonists can fake telemetry data... in its last moments, have the first ship beam back the news that the asteroid is surrounded by a cloud of gravel from a recent impact, or some other improbable but possible hazard.

So I don't think it's impossible. Just tricky.


Doug M.