Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (16 page)

The ring darkened to a deep fuzzy red and a buzzing sound emanated from it. Ell reached for it but hesitated when her hand
felt
heat
coming from it
. With a pop and a puff of smoke the central disk fell out of it onto the table
. The wire electrode that had been soldered to the back of
the disk
had come loose
. Ell reached out to it again. It was really hot!
“Does that smoke smell
of sulfur?
”

Emma sniffed, “I think so.”

Ell
looked at
Emma, “How much power are you running through it? It’s
really
hot!”

Emma glanced at her power supply, “553 watts. How hot is it?” She reached out toward it
but
pulled her hand back at the sensation of heat. “Hey, all 500 watts
would have
to
go to
heat
for it to get
that
hot!” She sniffed, “It
does smell
like sulfur!” She turned to Manuel, “
When you made it you
didn’t use anything that has sulfur
in it
did you?”

Wide eyed Manuel shook his head.
“The plate is silver plated copper. The ring is polyethylene like you said. I can look
up
the solder flux but I
can’t imagine why
it would have any sulfur
in it.
”

Ell’s shoulders sagged. She looked up at Emma who shrugged at her. She looked back at the port and reached out to it. It had cooled enough now to pick it up. The disk of metal that had been the metal of the port stayed on the table. She looked at the end of the wire that had been attached to it. The solder had obviously re
-
melted because it had formed into a smooth blob on the end of the wire!
Why would it have gotten so hot?!
She felt something around the edge of the hole. Looking at it with the loupe, it appeared to be clear material, presumably melted polyethylene. She sniffed,
No more smell of sulfur.
Ell turned to Emma and raised her eyebrows, “It seems to have melted the solder and polyethylene?
I guess 500 watts is enough to get it
that hot
, but why
?
This circuit shouldn’t be resistive.
”

“
I
don’t know. I thought most of the power was supposed to go into forming the port. Maybe if it isn’t forming a port
,
it all goes to heat?” She frowned, “What do you suppose was making the buzzing sound? Maybe we had a bad connection.”

Ell’s eyebrows shot up, “Wait! Let me look at your settings
.”

Manuel
looked down
, “My AI says the solder is supposed to be sulfur free.”

Ell looked at the settings on the power supply Emma had designed to energize the port. “That should,” Ell looked up with a vacant expression, “create a port about 10-20 kilometers away.” She looked over at the melted port where it had been facing down, “Straight down into the earth! Allan, what’s the temperature 10-20 kilometers below the surface of the earth?”

“The temperature
inside the earth
goes up about 22 degrees C
entigrade
per kilometer of depth.
That would be
242 to 462 degrees C
at 10-20 kilometers of depth
.”

“Hah!” Ell turned to Emma and Manuel, “Manuel, what’s the melting temp of your solder?”

He looked up at his HUD,
“187 degrees C.”

Ell waggled her eyebrows.
“
And the temp that far below the earth’s surface should be at
least
242 degrees C! We didn’t build the port wrong, we just pointed it the wrong direction and gave it too much juice!
Lot
of sulfur down there.
”

Emma’s eyebrows were high. “Really?!”

Ell said, “Pretty sure.”

“What was the buzzing sound?”

Ell frowned, “I’m thinking that it was ‘port instability’ because the supplied current wasn’t steady enough.”

“Not steady enough? This is a standard power supply. Why wouldn’t it be steady?”

“Because even minute fluctuations will lead to large changes in the distance
away
that the port opens again into our universe
. Since the location of the port in our universe can’t move around
very fast, once the current fluctuates a little bit the port closes where it is and reopens a different distance away.” She looked up at the ceiling a moment, “At least that’s what I think is happening.”
She turned brightly to Manuel and Emma, “Let’s build some more!”

Emma said, “
But, w
e won’t be able to send anything useful through
them t
hen! Those openings and re-closings had to be milliseconds apart. You couldn’t possibly put anything through them. Well anything solid anyway.
And if you did send a gas or liquid it would be scattered here and there.
”

Ell grinned at her. “That’s why we hired an electronics genius! Someone that could build us an
incredibly
stable power supply.” She raised an eyebrow,
then frowned,
“Though I’m thinking that maybe a fuel cell would be the way to go
?
As long as we supply it very steadily with hydrogen and oxygen we should get a pretty stable current out of it?”

Emma frowned and mused, “Maybe.
” She tilted her head in consideration, a far away expression on her face,
“
Let me think about it and study some of the issues.”

Ell said, “Before you get too focused, can I talk to you a minute?”

Startled Emma fretted as they walked toward Ell’s office.
Am I getting
fired
?
She’d been worried about her inability to understand the physics of the ports and her lack of success with the circuit for the single ended ones.

Before they got to her office Ell turned and said
quietly
, “I just wanted to invite you to dinner tonight?”

“Hah! And you had to call me all the way over here for that? I thought I was getting
laid off
!”

“
Laid off
?! No way. If the big bosses wanted to get rid of you they’d have to tell you themselves!
” She grinned sheepishly, “I just didn’t want to invite you in front of Manuel. Sorry.”

“Well, I
haven’t
been
making much headway
with these ports.
”
Emma frowned, “
If you
guys
ever need to get rid of me, just let me know. I’ll go quietly.”

“
Hey, Em,
this is
science
. Everything we do
better not
work
perfectly
the first time
...
if it does we aren’t pushing the envelope hard enough!”

Chapter
Six

Emma arrived at Bin 54, a well known restaurant that she’d never been to herself, though she’d heard people talk about its excellent steaks. The hostess took her to a large table where Ell sat with Roger and a
few
other people
. The others
turned out to
include
Ell’s
mother and grandmother.
Emma’s eyebrows
went
up;
Roger was wearing a nice shirt and had combed his hair instead of leaving it in its customary “shocked and wild” state.
Wistfully s
he thought
that
h
e looked
even better than usual
.

Once Emma’d been introduced around and seated
,
Roger
raised his glass to Kristen, “To your little girl, Ms
.
Donsaii, and her Nobel Prize in Physics!”

“Hear, hear,” the people at the table chorused.

Kristen smiled big enough to split her face. “I’d like to say that I’ve always known she was destined for great things. But, that’d be a lie!” She grinned at Ell. “Changing diapers, tearing my hair out when she was having a tantrum,
watching her roll
her
eyes when she was a teenager
…
Oh
the
woe
I’ve seen.”

Gram
patted
Kristen on the arm, “S
he was just helping me get even with you for all the
suffering
you
brought
me when you were
a kid
!”

Duncan Miles
leaned forward to stare
at Gram, eyes twinkling, “My sweet Kristen, causing trouble? I don’t believe it!”

Ell raised her glass, “To all of you, for putting up with my
…
idiosyncrasies
.”

Kristen lifted her glass and said, “To my daughter. Today she turns twenty.
” Kristen’s eye’s twinkled,
“
Now that she’s
no longer
a teenager
perhaps she won’t cause so much trouble?”

Emma gasped and leaned forward, “It’s your birthday?! And you didn’t tell me!?”

Ell looked a little embarrassed, “Sorry, but I didn’t want you getting me a gift.” She grinned, “Your presence at
my party
is gift enough.”

In the kitchen Gaye said, “Frank! Ell Donsaii is in the group at table twenty!
”

Frank’s eyebrows rose.

“And… it’s her birthday!”

“Hmmm, we’ll have to prepare a special dessert, huh!”

The steaks were just as awesome as Ell had heard and the dinner filled with great fun as she, her little family and her friends got along famously. Gaye, their waitress treated them fantastically well and brought everyone a little chocolate cake with ice
cream on the side at the conclusion. Ell’s cake had a candle
o
n it
to her delight. N
ot realizing that Gaye had heard them talking about
it,
Ell
had no idea how
they
knew it was
her
birthday.

When they were ready to leave Ell had Allan try to pay the bill but found that her mother had already paid
. T
he bill for their large group was big at eight hundred plus dollars
. At first she considered protesting but realized that
,
even if it
were
crazy for anyone to buy someone as wealthy as herself a dinner
,
that her mother certainly had enough money to do it nowadays
. A
fter
all
,
Ell had
put millions of dollars in her mother’s account when she’d received her first disbursement from the
PGR
chips.

However, t
his had been the best service
Ell had
ever had in a restaurant.
She
’d always wanted to give a great waiter or waitress a
really
great tip so instead of protesting her mother’s paying the bill Ell
instructed Allan to add to the tip
.

After ushering the “Donsaii party” as Gaye thought of them out of the restaurant, Gaye walked back into the kitchen, glancing up at her HUD to see what kind of tippers they’d been. She staggered a moment in the door. The tip was $1,700! Dazedly she realized that this was a 200% tip
!
Maybe they’d intended a 20% tip and misplaced a decimal?

Frank interrupted her thoughts, “Hey, do you know that
the Donsaii
table left a
$1,700
tip for the ‘back of the house?’
Man, nobody else ha
s
ever
left
even a tiny
tip for us slaves back here in the kitchen before!
”

***

Ed Candela looked around the table at the people assembled. They had been selected for their complete discretion. H
e’d just briefed them on Hearth-
Daster’s trajectory and what it meant. Their faces were pale but set. He felt proud to be working with a group that could receive this kind of
horrific
news a
nd not dissolve into hysterics. Instead
they all looked ready to attack and solve the problem. “OK,” he said, “We have a couple of things going for us. First, we can
use
some of the D5R ports
to
fuel a vehicle to reach the comet. Second, DOD will provide us with nuclear weapons.” A hand went up, “Yes?”