Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (9 page)

With some relief she noticed that, though she got some second glances from the guys, they didn’t seem to be tracking her with their eyes like they had Belle. It was
nothing
like they always tracked her as “Ell.”

Shortly after she sat down in the classroom Gordon thumped down next to her. “Long time no see! How the Belle are you?!”

Ell rolled her eyes, “Fine Gordy, how are you?”

His eyebrows shot up
in horror
, “Gordy!
Gordy!
I hate that!”

Ell narrowed her eyes at him, “Good! Know you then
,” she raised an eyebrow,
“
that I intend to call you ‘Gordy’ anytime you entertain yourself with
my
name.”

Gordon shrank back in mock terror, “Nooo, not that! I would never have imagined you
to be
so cruel.”

Ell grinned at him. “Hah! A
very
cruel girl am I.” She
widened her eyes
. “Hey you guys were pretty amazing at the Cat’s Cr…” Ell ran down
,
suddenly
remembering
that she had been there as “Ell,” not as “Belle.”

“Cradle!” Gordon finished for her, “Yeah, wasn’t that amazing!
You must have seen it on the net.
Ell Donsaii!
Holy crap she’s
sooo
gorgeous
!
And, Oh my
God
, can that girl dance or what?!
Velos
got millions of views just ‘cause reporters were tracking her and…” Gordon waggled his eyebrows and lowered his voice, “we got contacted by an agent.”

Ell felt her thoughts stretching all different ways.
Good, he doesn’t realize I was there... He thinks I’m gorgeous?
! He’s telling Belle that
Ell’s
beautiful, isn’t that kinda rude?
He likes the way I dance!
After a moment she said brilliantly, “An agent?”

“Yeah! He wants us to go on tour!”

“Are you going?”

Gordon slumped, “Nah
…
we can’t afford it.”

“The agent isn’t sponsoring you?”

“Nah. He’ll book us gigs
and advertise us but we’d have to get ourselves a van and pay for our own room and board.” He winked, “School loans don’t cover fleabag hotels and fast food, I checked into it.”

Ell tilted her head an
d
looked at him carefully. It seemed like this might be pretty important to him. “You really want to go huh?”

“Yeah,” he shrugged, “ain’t gonna happen though.” He smiled, “Besides, I like physics and astronomy too. ‘Amazing guitar player’ will just have to continue being a sidelight.”

Ell leaned a little closer to him, “I’ve got this silly rich aunt who’s always making crazy investments. You want me to talk to her about you and your band?”

Gordon leaned back and stared at her a minute. “Really? You’re not just blowin’ smoke up my…?”

Ell shook her head.

“Oh yeaahh! I’d need to know in the next couple of days though so we can drop our classes
while we can still get our tuition back
.” He raised his eyebrows in question.

Ell shrugged. “I’ll talk to her tonight, she can watch you on the net and decide. I’ll bet she’ll have an answer for you tomorrow. How much money do you need?”

At that moment t
he professor started the class and Gordon put up a finger to pause their conversation.

When the class finished, Gordon turned to her and said, “I hope
your crazy aunt
comes
through
,
‘cause I’ll never pass this class now! Y
ou com
pletely
destroyed
my concentration and
I d
idn’t hear a word the Prof said
!
”

Ell got up, “Well, I’ve got another class to g
et
to
,
so you’d better give me your estimate pronto.” She started walking up out the back of the
class
room
,
winking at Steve
from her security team
as she went.

Gordon scrambled to catch up. “Oh, sorry, I’ll walk with you.
I think about $30,000.
Twenty
to get a used van and
ten
for expenses for a few months to get us started. If we flop we could sell the van and probably get
fifteen
back out of it for her so it wouldn’t be a total loss.”

“And if you succeed?”

“We’ll
pay a 50% return on her
money.
Forty five
K.”

“How big do you have to succeed
to
pay
her
off
?”

“Our agent will be collecting the money, once we bring in a hundred K
,
over expenses
,
we’ll pay her back the
original
thirty. Once we get to two hundred K we’ll pay her the
additional fifteen K
?”

Ell shrugged, “OK, I’ll see what she says.”

Walking behind them
Steve saw the young redheaded man stop, spin around and pump a fist. He wondered if the young man had
asked
Ell
for
a date or something.

Gordon turned
again
to watch Belle walking away.
She’s put on some weight
,
he thought.
Too bad. She’s still cute but she
looked
better
last semester
.

***

After her biology class Ell hustle
d
to her truck
for the ride
ba
ck to the house behind the farm. She
chang
ed
out of her “Belle” getup on the way. Then
she
jog
ged
through the woods to her own house
and
jump
ed
in
to
her Focus
to
drive to D5R/
Quantum Research
. She was
trotting
in
to
the building when Allan said in her ear, “The video conference with Dr. Horton
has begun
. I’ve logged you in using the screen and camera in your office.”

Ell jogged down the hallway to her office, waving off several people that wanted to talk to her.

Her big screen had been divided into 8 windo
ws for the various participants. One of the
window
s was
blank until she slid
in front of her camera. “Sorry! So
sorry
I’m
late.”

Presidential Science Advisor Horton breathed a small sigh of relief and smiled at the camera. “I’m sure you will all recognize Ms. Ell Donsaii who has just joined us. She has some important information to share with us
but first let me introduce everyone…”

Horton proceeded to introduce the Secretaries of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Energy, Transportation, and the head of the Council of Economic Advisers.

Ell cringed a little. She hadn’t expected to be speaking to a
Cabinet
level
group and felt
even more
embarrassed to have been late to log on.

Horton said, “Ms. Donsaii, could you tell…”

Secretary of Transportation
Bayless
interrupted, “Chip, I know
you said
this young lady invented some kind of fancy new rocket, but we don’t transport things by rocket
here in these
United States
. Can you tell me why
the
Secretary of Transportation
needs to waste
time listening to
some ‘wet behind the ears’ child, who couldn’t even be on time, talk about rockets? I
can
assure
you that I have better things to do!”

Agriculture, Commerce and Energy chorused, “Aye.”

Ell shrank in her seat,
mumbling “I’m so sorry.
”

Secretary of Defense Amundsen grinned, thinking
to himself
that his fellow cabinet secretaries were about to get
“
schooled
”
in not taking
this
particular
young lady for granted.

Horton rolled his eyes and said, “Listen for five minutes, if you still don’t think it’s important, just log off. Ms. Donsaii, please proceed.”

Ell cleared her throat nervously, then said, “Once again Secretary Bayless, I apologize for being late. But
I must clarify. T
he company I work for, D5R, didn’t actually invent a rocket sir. What was developed was a means to create a wormhole through the fifth dimension from one location to another. This capability allowed us to ‘port’ fuel from our facility in
North Carolina
to a rocket
during its
transit to orbit. Thus, even a small rocket
—
now freed of the necessity of launching fuel for the later portions of its flight
—
can fly all the way to orbit.”

“So you can send small rockets to orbit.” Bayless
rolled his eyes
, “That’s all well and good Ms. Donsaii, but I can assure you we aren’t going to start moving
tons
of goods from one place to another with little rockets!”

Ell blinked,
as
surprised as she had been before that it wasn’t obvious
to people
. “Sir, aircraft efficiency will also be improved if they port fuel to their engines rather than
lifting it all at takeoff
in fuel tanks.
Secretary Amundsen’s UAVs will be able to stay in the air
for unlimited periods. Well…
until they need maintenance.
”

Bayless looked mildly surprised as he considered this but looked like he was about to interject again.

Ell held up a finger
,
asking
him
to pause
. She
continued, “And your oil tanker trucks and trains?” she waved the finger back and forth, “No longer necessary. Liquids can be ported from one location to another. Pipelines? Unneeded. The
national
distributor can send liquids and gases directly to
the end user
. This
will cause economic upheaval when the local distributors are cut out of their business. Gas
and charging
stations
for cars
? Closed
. Your
car
will get
its gas
or electricity
directly from a national company.
Direct electric connections to cars will almost certainly lead to the end of gas powered cars.
”

Ell focused on the Secretary of Energy, “Wires can be extended through ports Secretary Morales. Therefore
,
thousands of miles of power transmission lines will be replaced by ports
that pass
wires a few feet long
directly
to the end user
. I
ncidentally
this will save
tremendously on
the
transmission
losses
due to resistance in those
power
lines
.”

Ell looked at the Secretary of Commerce, “Oil and LPG tankers? No longer necessary.”

She turned to the Secretary of Agriculture, “There will be tremendous upheavals
in your area Secretary Nyquist,
when farmers
in dry areas
find they can port water in from places with plenty
. The Secretary of the Interior is not in
this
video
conference, but he will need to consider what to do when
Los Angeles
finds it can buy water from the abundant rain
fall
s of southeastern
Alaska
.
Someone has to decide whether
the states of the
Great Lakes
should
be allowed to
sell water to
Arizona
?