Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (17 page)

“Ed, you aren’t going to try to blow it up are you? You could just convert it into a bunch of smaller fragments that would still cause huge amounts of destruction!”

“No, Harvey. The plan I’ve been contemplating involves landing the weapon on the surface of the comet, then blowing it at the correct moment to ‘push’ the comet to one side. But, that’s why we’ve gathered all you bright people in one place. To see if there are better ideas.”

Victoria Ullen put her hand up, “If we’re deflecting, t
he sooner we
do it
the better. We need to get this thing launched yesterday!”

The discussion went on and they all adjourned for a couple of hours to brainstorm
and
run calculations
. Candela scheduled them to
meet again
in four hours
to begin firming a rough plan.

***

Emma looked up at Ell,
“Hey, when are we gonna go out on the town again, girlfriend?”

Ell tilted her head, “A local band I like is playing at the
Lincoln Theatre
in
Raleigh
Saturday night. You up
for
a
listen
?”

“
Sure. A
re you ready to supply some current out of that fuel cell yet?”

Ell
chewed
her lip as she tried to adjust the flow from the hydrogen port to the fuel cell. Emma came aroun
d to watch the voltage display
on the monitor of the
extremely
sensitive meter they had purchased. Ell lifted her hands away and they watched the voltage settle to a relatively steady state.

Roger arrived and looked at it with them, “Looks pretty good.”

Though the meter still showed some drift it was much slower than they had achieved with any of the
expensive
power supplies they had tested
so far. “OK,” Ell said, “shall we try it?”

Emma said, “Yep,” and reached for the switch that would shunt
the
power to their new single ended port.

“Stop!” Ell said, sounding a little panicked.

“What?”

“It’s pointing at…” she waved a hand weakly.

Roger and
Emma frowned and turned. The port was facing across the big room there at D5R. “What?”
they said together.

Ell said, “
…
the ET Resource group.” She waved again at Rob and Ben who were gathered with their team
,
using the big screens on the wall to watch
the video from one of their rockets that was landing on an asteroid.

Roger’s eyes widened but Emma said, “So?”

“So,” Ell whispered, “If we open a port
inside
one of them…”

Roger said, “Bacteria from the air could float into their body and cause an infection!”

Ell said, “I was thinking more of what might happen if we opened it inside someone’s heart and let a lot of blood pour out, but yeah, an infection could be
pretty
bad too.” Her eyes widened, “My God,” she breathed, “remember how when one of the Space Station ports
switched
off
with
a hose going through it? It sheared off
the hose!
If opening or closing a port inside the body shears through the tissue the port appears in
side of
…”

Roger sat down suddenly, “If that had opened inside someone’s brain,” he glanced at Emma, “it
probably would
have sheared all the neurons that crossed the area
of
the port!”

Ell found herself desperately tamping down her “zone” which
was
respond
ing
to the
sense of
panic that had just flooded through her. Moving at what seemed to be a glacial pace to her enhanced state she reached over and turned the port to face upwards. Then she sat and lowered her head into her hands. “Shitshitshitshit…” she whispered.

Feeling a little lightheaded Emma
suddenly
sat
down as well
.

After a while Ell said, “We need to open a port inside of something and find out if it
does shear
the material in the opening like we think. I’m thinking a piece of wood?”

Roger said wonderingly, “
This
might not be
all
bad. Supposing we opened a port into someone
and shoved in
the
insulin
dispensing
port
...
surgery without incisions!?”

Ell frowned, “What if we never get better control of how far away the port opens? If we were using this for surgery we’d need to know exactly how deep
in the body
it was going to be!”

Roger shrugged, “If we can’t control depth, we can’t use it for surgery. But,” his eyebrows bobbed up and down, “if we can…”

Emma looked back and forth from one to the other. “All this ‘pie in the sky’ talk is making me hungry. Let’s try this thing out, then go for lunch!”

Ell grinned at her, “OK, but first let’s think our way through this to make sure we’re not about to do something else really stupid?” She looked down at the meter, “OK at this voltage we’re shooting for an opening about 10 meters away. Plus 50% shouldn’t be a problem, 15 meters up is nothing but atmosphere. But, if we’re minus 50%
, 5 meters up is still in
side
the building and if we opened the port inside a 220 volt power run, it would at the very least burn out our port?” Ell looked at them and raised an eyebrow. “I think we should go outside.”

Emma’s eyes had widened. “OK,” she said quietly.

Manuel had walked in so he helped them load everything on a cart. “Where are you taking it?”

“Outside.”

“Outside?”

Roger explained the issue
s
to Manuel whose eyebrows went up.

Ell said. “Guys? We really should keep these issues a secret until we’ve given this a
lot
more thought.” She looked each of them in the eye. “This might be one of those scientific discoveries that should be suppressed.”

Roger looked at
Ell
like she’d grown a horn, “You
can’t
be serious! S
uppress scientific discoveries
?
!”

Ell looked down
, then back up into his eyes
. “
I
don’t think we should either Roger. I’m just saying we should think a lot about it before we turn
this
loose on the world. What if there’s something even worse that it could be used for than we’ve thought of so far?”

Roger shrugged and started pushing the cart outside. “OK, I’ll agree we should think about it
,
but everything science discovers is a ‘
double
edged’ sword. I’ll bet the benefits outweigh the risks.”

Once they were outside Ell insisted on checking to be sure the port was facing up and double checking the voltage. Then she ran the calculation again in her head and had Allan check her on it. Finally, she nodded at Emma who pressed the switch.
Ell was looking up and saw a little flash
of light
about 50 feet up.
There was a “pop” and then another one but nothing else happened.
Emma took her finger off the switch a disgusted look on her face.

Ell
brought her eyes back down and
grinned at her, “Disappointed?”

“Yes!”

“A port into the air 40-50 feet over our head isn’t going to do much.” Ell raised an eyebrow.

Emma wrinkled her nose, “Damn,
it seems
there’s always
something
I haven’t thought of! How are we
even
going to tell if it’s working?”

Roger said, “I thought I saw little flashes up there in the air?”

Ell shrugged, “Yeah, they were little sparks when I first did microscopic one ended ports in
Nevada
. I think it’s waste energy from forming the port.
”

Ell looked down and adjusted the power supply, “OK, try it now?”

Emma pressed the button. This time there was a pop and a hiss another pop and continued hissing. Emma reached curiously for the port.

Ell said, “No!”

Emma pulled her hand back
and let her finger off the button
.

“It’s opened about
2
5 kilometers up now. The hi
ssing is air flow into the low
pressure up there
at that altitude
. I didn’t want you getting your finger sucked into the port.
Remember, each pop is the port closing and reopening.” She raised an eyebrow. “If your finger was in the port when it closed again it’d be sheared right off!” She frowned, “Well, that’s what I’m assuming would happen anyway. We need to test it.”

Emma said, “It’s not buzzing like the first one. The intermittent pops mean
the port
’s staying open longer right?”

“Yeah, I think it’s staying open about a second each time. I sure hope we can do better
than that
.” Ell turned, “Can you grab us a dowel or something
,
Manuel
. It has to be
smaller than
10
millimeters in diameter. Straight.” Manuel turned and
jogged back into the building
. Ell began adjusting the power supply again and mused, “A pencil would work
…
”

Ell had them tip the port to just above horizontal and peered past it to make sure it was aimed above the horizon. Manuel arrived back with a quarter inch oak dowel. Ell placed the end of it against the metal disk of the closed port and pressed lightly. She nodded at Emma.

When Emma depressed the switch and the port popped open
there was a flash
about a meter beyond the port. A
l
ittle bit of dowel slid into
the port and it
appeared in the air
where the flash had been
. Their eyes were all drawn to the dowel appearing in mid air. When the port popped again
the
small fragment of dowel fell to the ground and
a little bit more
dowel appeared in mid air
at another flash
, a little farther
away
. The
y
let this happen about
2
0 times and saw the tip of the dowel appear anywhere from about 60 to 140 centimeters away, though
most
of them appeared
in the region of
110 centimeters out.

After Emma released the switch they looked at the dowel fragments laying on the ground scattered around that 11
0 centimeter distance. “
It looks to me like the distance they
are coming
through at forms a ‘bell shaped’ curve.
We need to repeat this above a ruler so we can see exactly how far they’re coming through.” She lifted up the end of the dowel to look at it and thoughtfully ran a finger over it. “Wow, this is polished smooth.”

Manuel took it from her
. His eyebrows rose
, “
That’s amazing.
Can I use this to cut pipes?”

Ell snorted, “If you want to have
the cut ends of
your pipes
falling in random locations
.” After a moment
’
s far away look she said, “But you
should be able to
use a two ended port to cut stuff. Just
turn
the port
on, s
lide your pipe in
to the spot you want cut
and turn the port off.”

Manuel’s eyes widened. “That could be a
great
tool for the shop, these cuts are
perfect
.”

“Cool. Pick up a port from the Portal Tech guys and try building yourself a cutter. But right now let’s go out for lunch
and
celebrate!
We did it guys!
”

***

Candela looked around the room in some frustration. Despite the agreed upon urgency the people in the room had fallen
into their
old and comfortable
routines of
bureaucratic infighting
. It
happened in any major organization
but he had
idealistically believed
that it wouldn’t when they were all
staring
into
the barrel of
a
cannon
. A cannon aimed at the
ir
entire world!
Instead each
wanted a piece of
the
“unlimited spending” pie for their shop.
Sud
denly
Candela’s
gorge rose and
he
slammed a fist down on the table. When they had all
jerked their attention
his way he pointed at
Jordan
, red faced, “
You
! Are in charge of getting us rocket motors for a two metric ton vehicle
. They’ve got to be able to burn all the way there
.” His finger traversed, “
You
and your shop
will
build a vehicle capable of holding a 1 metric ton weapon
.” He pointed again, “
You
will get ports from D5R on a priority basis and bunker fuel for the trip, remembering
this vehicle
is going
to burn the entire distance.” His finger moved, “
You
will plot orbits to get us there and determine which way we want to push that monster
when
we get there
.”
The finger
moved again, “
You
will coordinate with DOD…”