Salt of the Earth (Salt of the Earth Book 1)

Book summary

In Salt of the Earth, Marshall Salt, a visionary scientist, leads a bold mission to unlock the asteroid belt's potential, turning to his estranged billionaire father for funding. Amid corporate intrigue and global conspiracies, their struggle for humanity’s spacefaring future weaves together technological ambition, high-stakes power plays, and the complexities of family bonds.

Excerpt from Salt of the Earth (Salt of the Earth Book 1)

Chapter 1: Eureka

“Eureka!” the exclamation echoed off the concrete walls.

Startled, a lanky young man tumbled over backward from his chair. His companion jumped but managed to maintain his balance.

“Marshall is at it again,” the short blond man literally chirped in a high-pitched voice.

“I wish he would not do it quite so loud,” the other young man muttered from the floor.

“Come on Doctor Nelson,” his companion teased as he proffered a hand to help his friend from the floor.

Justin Nelson had defended his doctoral dissertation successfully earlier that week. His research had been a follow-up to the work of Marshall Salt’s experiments combining a new technique of X-rays, gamma radiation, and spectrographic analysis to determine the mineral composition of objects at great distances from the surface of the Earth.

Blake Hilst and Justin Nelson were as opposite as two people of Caucasian descent could be. Blake stood five foot two inches tall when he stretched, while Justin was six foot six when he was slouching. Blake spoke in a high-pitched rat-a-tat style and could easily have been the voice that gives all the disclaimers at the end of a commercial. Justin talked with a slow, Midwestern drawl. Blake was wearing a blue blazer and smartly creased gray slacks. His blond hair was cut like a Wall Street businessman. Justin was wearing jeans that seemed cut for someone twenty pounds heavier. He wore a green plaid, crumpled shirt under his white lab coat. They did have two things in common: they both had blue eyes, and they were best friends.

Brushing himself off Justin looked across the expanse of the lower labs of the observatory, “Well, we better go on up and see what he’s so excited about this time.”

The lower labs were almost barren. Eight computer stations sat empty in a space that could have accommodated fifty. The floors and walls of this level of the observatory were concrete. The venting and light fixtures were thirty feet overhead with no drop ceiling. A metal circular staircase led to the second-level hallway that was defined by a two-tube metal railing to keep self-absorbed scientists from falling to the concrete below.

“Have you ever thought about the acoustics in this place?” Blake began to chatter, “It would be perfect for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or Canada’s Nihilist Spasm Band.”

“What are you talking about?” Justin drawled.

Before Blake could answer a young man racing toward the guard rail above yelled, “Blake! Justin! Where are you?”

“We’re coming,” Justin yawned. “What’s so important?”

“I found it! We should have started looking on the earlier discoveries. This one was actually cataloged back in 2011.”

Justin stood up straight with a more attentive look on his face as he reached the balcony. “Marshall, are you sure?”

“Yes, I was hoping we’d find it on a closer orbit, but I always knew it would have to be in the Belt itself.”

“Well, that will certainly create a logistics nightmare. I don’t think any current technology can get the robotic units there and back again,” Justin frowned.

“What are you talking about? You know darn well that I’ve got the designs to get us well beyond the Belt and back. I’ve been working on them for the past four years.” Blake chattered.

“I’m not talking theory, or design, I’m talking developed technology,” Justin continued frowning.

“You know my design is tight!” Blake’s fair complexion reddened.

“That’s not the point. Who is going to fund a multi-billion-dollar project with technology that has not been proven or tested? Even if we found an investor it would be twenty years before the basic engineering tests were completed,” his friend began to slump.

“I believe we can get it funded,” Marshall Salt smiled. Our computer model estimates that just the precious metals that could be retrieved there are valued at between four and nine trillion dollars.” Turning to Blake he asked, “What did you say the estimated costs were for your Frodo design?”

“Frodo?” Blake’s brows rose? “Seriously? I thought we had settled on the robotic models.”

“And how do we get it back in the condition we want if everything is on CNN or Z-News?”

“Or National Inquirer?” Justin snorted.

Blake paused, “It will be a lot more expensive that way. We not only have to deal with life support but dealing with the physiological issues…” he hesitated, “I think we could do it for $50 billion if we cut some corners.”

Marshall Salt was a genius. He was not a big man, at five foot six, with jet black hair that his genetic profile attributed to his Japanese maternal grandmother and Latino mother. He liked to refer to himself as a mutt. He stood with brown eyes transfixed, and then exhaled slowly, “I think I know a way to fund the venture. I know Midas, and Midas is always hungry for more gold.”

“You sure you want to go down that path?” Justin asked.

Chapter 2: Midas

Seven men and four women sat around the polished mahogany table in the dark paneled office. Floor to ceiling glass on the outer wall displayed an expanse of Chicago from the eighty second floor of the downtown skyscraper. Today there was not much to see as clouds enveloped the city.

A middle-aged man with blond hair pulled back in a short pony tail, leaned over to the newest Vice President of the company, 36-year-old Barbara Fielder, “He’s on a roll today,” he whispered conspiratorially.

“Calvin! Something you want to share?” the short, dark haired man who had been pacing while he spoke paused suddenly.

Calvin Graham’s head jerked away from his efforts to flirt, “No sir. I think the plans for building refineries in Tijuana and Matamoros is brilliant. Have you considered cross-border transportation issues?” Calvin slid comfortably back in his seat. Ever since the CEO had caught him not paying attention eight, or was it nine years ago, he had always read the agenda carefully and developed what he referred to as a save comment for each agenda item.

“Excellent question Graham,” the man at the front of the room frowned and turned to the Vice President of Operations for Mexico, Central and South America, “Well Tate?”

“Arthur, we have Senator Harkin who chairs the oversight committee in our pocket. The NAFTA agreement covers most of the transportation issues. The Tamaulipas government is on board for anything that will create jobs. The Baja government is not a problem. But we are still negotiating with the cartel. They’re unhappy with your decision not to allow contraband.”

Arthur motioned to the secretary taking notes from the side and she stopped writing, “Samuel, we built a company with $300 billion in annual revenue without getting involved with drugs; we don’t need to go there now. Blood money to protect our assets and people I do with great reluctance.”

Samuel leaned forward as if to argue, and then sat back tenting his fingers on the table, “As you wish, Arthur.”

Arthur Salt, CEO of Salt Industries would not admit it, but he had considered dealing with the Tijuana cartel, just like he had considered such temptations at least a dozen times in the past thirty-five years. His career in the mining industry had started as a joke. He was in his second year with an investment banking firm when he was presented an opportunity to acquire a small salt processing facility in the West. It was the humor in the coincidence between his name and the industry that grabbed his interest. It turned out to be a sweet deal. The owner’s family had run the business for four generations, but none of the children wanted to carry on the tradition. All Arthur had to do was come up with a buyout plan to pay off the book value of the assets, which were almost zero. He borrowed $50,000 to buy the assets then improved production by laying off a third of the workforce and started the process of modernizing equipment with lease agreements and improving production toward efficiencies rather than family tradition. He was out of debt in less than six months.

The first time that the temptation of illegal drug affiliation came up was two years later when he was trying to acquire rights to another salt refining operation in Columbia, South America. He had already made his first $10 million and could have jumped that value to $50 million just by cutting an agreement with another drug cartel. He had paced the floor half the night over that one. It was a benchmark moment in his life. He decided to thumb his nose at the cartel and walked away from the deal. But the cartel then threatened to break him. He took the threat as a challenge and had determined that he would build the largest corporation in the world.

Since that time, Arthur Salt had cut deals and cut corners. He had bowed to corrupt politicians and had broken just as many more. He sometimes wondered whether he had simply traded one version of evil for another. But he continued to grow and expand. He was at the threshold of meeting that goal he set so long ago. Forbes placed his company at number thirteen, and his personal assets in the top 25 in the world.

Turning to his old friend Roberto Trujillo, and the CFO of Salt Industries, Arthur queried, “What about those earnings reports? I was anticipating a 5.6 percent Return on Assets. What happened?”

Roberto Trujillo looked up from the spreadsheets on the table in front of him. He still preferred paper to computer screens when reporting. “Arthur we’re still at 5.5 percent. The difference is a flux in exchange rates. The Euro decline was more than we anticipated.”

“Humph! Never saw you get caught with you pants down like this before,” Arthur Salt snapped. “Didn’t you have arbitrage to cover the gaps?”

Trujillo didn’t even flinch at the attack, “Our models indicated a four percent exchange loss against the dollar, it was six percent. It will bounce back this quarter. We’re already seeing it.”

Turning back to Graham, “Well, Calvin?”

Calvin Graham smiled, “We’ve settled the appeal on the fraking class action suit in Farlap, North Dakota. The final settlement was $32 million.”

“What? $32 million? What the hell are you smiling about?”

Calvin grinned wolfishly, “As you will recall, the suit was for $200 million. You signed off on any settlement under $50 million. We did well. The attorneys for the plaintiffs could not underwrite another five years through the court system on their own, and if they brought in a bigger firm, their cut on the deal would have been reduced from $10 million to around $7 million on a negotiated settlement; ergo, the best deal for the plaintiff’s attorneys was the deal we offered. Much lower and they probably would have pulled in some New York powerhouse firm with deep pockets. Calvin noted that Arthur was trying to scowl, but that one side of his lip was turning to a smile. Good, another home run for me, he thought smugly.

“Okay, time for damage control then,” Arthur’s stoic expression returned. “What is that small state university about thirty miles downriver? Never mind,” he paced. “They have been looking for a new basketball arena. Contact their fund-raising group and offer to donate $5 million to the school toward that event center if they’ll put my name of the building.”