Evacuation (The Seamus Chronicles Book 2) (6 page)

The fight broke out as soon as I walked through the door of the lab.

“You need to get on board!” Cassandra screams right in my face.

“You need to open your mind and look beyond your own ideas,” I reply, my voice low and calm. Dad taught me this trick for dealing with irate people.

“As if!” She is still animated and speaking loudly. “Seamus the genius can’t lower himself to work on an idea from someone else. When will you realize that you have NOTHING?!”

“I guess that’s what you will never understand about original thought. I have something and it is going to blow your socks off,” I reply. My confidence is real, even though my idea is not.

“Then let’s hear it,” she says, issuing the ultimate challenge. 

“I’ll make a deal with you.” I have no choice but to stall. “If you spend the next 24 hours identifying the three closest, best planets capable of sustaining life, I will come up with a presentation of my idea. If I cannot convince you by tomorrow at lunchtime, I will go all-in on your solar sail.”

“No.” Her arms are crossed and she is defiant in her presumed victory. “Convince me now.”

“You’ve had a while to think about this. I’ve been working on it for a couple days. Right now the idea is in pieces in my head. I need 24 hours to pull them together in the right order. Logic jumps and concepts that seem clear to me sometimes seem contradictory to other people. Remember how I struggled to share the details of my reactor?” This is true but I don’t know what the pieces add up to.

“Seamus, how many years did it take you to get the reactor out of your head and into reality?” Jane is speaking to me with pleading eyes. “We don’t have time to grind this out. We have to get moving today.”

Her point is not lost on me. From the first night, I envisioned my reactor to the day we got electricity from it was more than eight years. This concept is bigger and riskier but we have weeks—or if we are lucky, months—to get it done.

“Twenty-four hours is all I ask,” I say. Humble pleading feels like my only path to victory. “And who knows? Maybe if you shift your focus for a day, you’ll be able to solve some of the things you’ve been stuck on.”

Jane places her hand on Cassandra’s shoulder before speaking. “Fine. Twenty-four hours it is. We will have a sortable list of planets; you have a presentation on how you are going to get us from here to there better than a solar sail.”

I won, but I’m screwed. As an intellectual person, I am surprised that I have so much trust in my instincts. I like to think that I work well under pressure, but I have no idea. Wanting to wrap up a dynamic field test before Dad makes me go to Grandma’s for Thanksgiving used to feel like pressure. Now I know it was not.

The answer has to be in the solar sail paper. I must have read it fifty times in the last two days. I can’t seem to see beyond the sail itself and how the angles to the sun affected their calculations. There are no flaws in the calculations. I have been through all of them multiple times. Aside from not defining what the sail is made from, there are no flaws in that aspect either. The sail’s size and shape make sense. Maybe Cassandra was onto something and I need to re-read the document with an eye on the craft itself. Was the craft itself properly accounted for in all assumptions? How closely does the size of our proposed craft match the theoretical one?

I dive into the paper and the hours rush by. I feel like I am getting closer every minute, but I still have no idea what it is I am closer to. As with the database, I am desperate for one small thread I can pull on. I need to determine
how
to think about the problem as well as
what
to think about the problem.

I must have been at this for too long. My mind keeps drifting to the first sails and wondering if they were made from animal skins. How did the early humans determine that a valuable skin could be used to test the idea of a sail? Would they have hunted a large animal specifically to get their skin for use as a sail, or was it an extra skin, if that even existed? Did the inventor risk his life as a hunter or did he rely on others like I rely on Dad and Liam?

Suddenly I realize we still haven’t heard from my father or brother.

Without a word, I walk out of the lab. I am going to the shed. If I assume they are there and fine, that’s where they will be. There is nowhere else they can be. I am not worried; in fact, I’m confident. I am so confident that I plan to challenge Liam to a dart match. Concern will become competition and life will be back to normal.

On my way to the shed, I see Grace. “Please tell me you are coming to say you found Dad?” she asks with hopeful eyes.

“I was just going to see if they were at the shed,” I say. My response is softened because it’s Grace.

“I just came from there. It’s quiet.” She’s shaking her head back and forth.

“Were their cars there?” I wish she had offered this piece of information without me having to ask.

“No.” She’s growing more concerned while she speaks. “The Land Rover and the Bentley are both missing. Seamus, I’m worried about them.”

“Me too.” I put my arm around her shoulders. “Let’s go find Mom.”

There is no need to go far. Mom is coming out of the dorm and walking toward us. “Still no word?” She shouts her question across the parking lot. Grace and I both shake our heads in the negative. We split the distance between us in silence.

“Is the box truck here?” I ask when we are close enough for reasonable voices. “How much do you want to bet that they took the truck and an extra car somewhere and Liam wrecked them both?”

“I doubt it, Seamus. Liam deserves more credit than that.” Mom looks around like she expects to see them just walking down the street. “Fine. You go check the lot and see if you can find the box truck. Grace, you check the commissary. If they are not there, look for a note. I’m going to look for a note in the shed.”

The box truck is right where it always is. Mom is right; this is not some silly thing we can pass off as an accident. So logically, what could it be? I’ve already assumed that Dad would not have wanted to miss the morning meeting. Grace said she saw him last night around 9:30 on his way to bed. That has to mean that Liam went first wherever they are. That means Dad went after him. But where would Liam have gone first?

Fishing! Liam pointed out yesterday that we still need to get food and water. He loves his fishing and usually goes early in the morning. I bet he went fishing and something happened. Dad probably went to look for him when he wasn’t back in time for the meeting. And then, whatever happened to Liam, the same thing happened to Dad.

The Maserati I selected as my car is close by, so I get in. I stop at the commissary and look for Grace but she is not there. I’ll check the shed for Mom, but it is starting to get late and it’s rainy. There is not a lot of time to mess around. If she’s not there, I am going off to find them.

Mom and Grace are both ransacking the shed. Their fear and energy is just short of panic. Dad and Liam are not just nice members of our little community. We need them like we need no one else. The food and water they make sure is readily available are obvious. The support and encouragement we get from them to keep going everyday is almost of equal importance. Tearing apart the shed is not going to help. The note would have been left on the whiteboard, if there were one.

“Have you seen Liam’s fishing gear?” I ask. My presence startles them both.

“I don’t think so.” Grace answers first.

“I think they are fishing. I’ll go find them,” I announce. There is no room to discuss my conclusion.

“Seamus, wait. If something bad happened to them, why do you think it won’t happen to you?” Mom asks. It’s clear she wants me to slow down.

“Because I am careful and on high alert.” Bravado is not a typical attitude from me.

“Take Grace with you,” Mom says as she walks over to the gun safe. “And take this, too.” She inserts the clip in a Glock nine-millimeter handgun. She hands it to me grip-first.

I grab the gun and turn to Grace. “Let’s go.”

At the end of the runway, you can make your way out to the marshes and eventually some open water. I know that this is where Liam likes to fish. We discussed it on the day I had to wait for him to clean all those fish. So I point the Quattroporte toward the end of the runway and pin the accelerator to the floor. In a matter of seconds, we are at 160 miles per hour. We will be at the end of the runway in no time.

In the distance but approaching quickly I can see Liam’s parked Land Rover and Dad’s Bentley. They are in the middle of the runway and I can see no movement around them. I look to the left of the runway and then the right. One of the nice things about an airfield is the availability of good sight lines. There is no motion on either side. If this is a trap, they are still in hiding. 

On my left a shape whizzes by in a blur. It was not human. I would like to think it was a dog or a deer, but it was too tall and thick to be either of those. I take my foot off the accelerator and think about the damage a wild animal could do to the car and myself if I hit them at this speed. But I’m committed and we can only go flat-out for another few seconds, so I stomp on the throttle.

After another few seconds, I apply the brakes aggressively but we still wind up shooting past both cars. Deceleration turns out to be more difficult to judge than the acceleration. I think this is a good thing if there was anyone expecting us to arrive and pull in next to them. “Fooled ya!” I think to myself until I see the marsh approaching too quickly. I push harder on the pedal until I can feel the anti-lock mechanism kicking in. We come to a stop with our front wheels just off the runway. I slide the transmission into reverse and backup to stop next to the Bentley.

With the engine off, I chamber a round and undo my seatbelt. “Grace, get in the driver’s seat. If you hear a gunshot, take off out of here and go tell Mom there is trouble at the end of the runway.”

“Got it.” Grace can be all business when she has to be.

The door is open on Dad’s Bentley and the keys are in the ignition. There is no bell ringing and the dashboard clock is still. I walk around to the Land Rover and find the front end peppered with holes that look to have been caused by a shotgun. I feel something move behind me and spin around. Nothing. But then I faintly hear it. “Seeeeaaaamuuuuusss.” It sounds like Dad but I can’t see him.

I walk across the remaining stretch of runway to the grass. Without maintenance crews, the grass has grown tall. I can’t see Dad or Liam anywhere but it looks like there is a path trampled down off to my right.

“Seamus.” Dad’s voice is stronger and clearer.

“Dad?” I shout and follow the trampled grass pathway.

“Don’t run!” Dad yells at me.

I’m not running but I am walking quickly enough to go right past the hole. A few steps back and to my right I see Dad and Liam together in what looks like a nest. Dad is holding Liam across his lap. Liam is clearly in shock and not speaking. Dad either is in shock or just exhausted.

“Did you see our friend the lion?” Dad gives a half-hearted smile and lets out a sigh of relief.

They have no reason to lie, but initially I had trouble believing the story Dad and Liam told. Then the lion appeared. My single shot was lucky and must have directly struck his brain. He dropped dead in his tracks.

It turns out that Liam had been on his way to go fishing and stepped in a hole. When he fell, his leg broke and his shotgun went off. The shot penetrated the front of his Land Rover and disabled it. When Dad finally got there hours later, he left the door of his Bentley open while he searched for Liam. Dad had assumed that Liam couldn’t be far if there was shot embedded in the front of his car. He was right, but didn’t anticipate the lion that had climbed on top of his car to rest. By the time the lion got down, the battery was dead.

With both cars disabled and a lion on the prowl, Dad had refused to leave Liam, who kept coming in and out of consciousness. By the time Grace and I arrived, they were cold, wet and hungry. I think that Dad was in the early stages of hypothermia, because as he warmed up in the car he started speaking more clearly.

It was my first time in the infirmary here at Ames, and from the looks of things, no one else had spent much time there either. In general, we have been healthy since our arrival but the lack of a medical doctor among us became painfully clear. We debated taking an x-ray not because we couldn’t figure it out but because we didn’t think we could read it well enough to make a difference.

Dad was feeding Liam scotch as a painkiller, so Liam was pretty drunk. Dad handled setting the break based on feel and Mom helped with getting a cast together. When Liam finally passed out, Dad kissed him on the forehead and said, “You’re going to feel this for the rest of your life. I hope you feel it for a very long time.” Then we went and sat on the steps and I shared a scotch with Dad. Needless to say, we didn’t get to bed very early and I did not have much time to work on convincing the Crenshaws.

But that was yesterday. Today I’m sitting in the morning meeting and I can tell there is a rabbit in my hat. Or it may be a dove or a pigeon. As long as it’s not a duck or a turkey, I’ll feel good about myself. Mom shares the saga with everyone so we can move on and not burn too many cycles on gossip. We’re all generally concerned but not fazed. Liam will spring back faster than the rest of us would. It’s a good reminder to be careful.

With the meeting adjourned, I make my way to the lab, wondering if I will get a few minutes or if Cassandra will pounce when I walk through the door.

“Seamus, I’m so sorry about what happened to Liam,” Jane says first and she is genuinely sad.

“Thanks, I’m sure he’ll be back on his feet in no time. What doesn’t kill you and all that,” I answer with a smile.

“I’m sorry too, Seamus. I know neither of you did this on purpose, but...” Cassandra trails off.

“Were you able to prepare anything?” Jane has taken over. She’s not as forceful as she used to be but you can sense sternness in her approach.

“I don’t have anything written out or rehearsed. I guess I’ll have to take a shot with my voice and the whiteboard.” I’m not sure how to begin. If I knew that, I would have figured out the rest of it, I suspect.

“You’re not trying out for the spring musical,” Cassandra says. She is critical of a pastime she never participated in or understood. “If you don’t have anything, please don’t waste our time. Let’s try and be adult about this.”

Instead of thinking frantically, I stop thinking altogether. After a deep breath, my first thought is that I solved this problem yesterday. Let your subconscious talk: it has all the answers.

“Time is what it is really all about.” They both seem startled when I speak. “What is the best multiplier you think is reasonable for the solar sail? My estimates are about 1.3x the speed of light. To make math easier, I’ll generously round that up to 1.5x.” I see no dissent on their faces. I actually think that it is closer to 1.15x the speed of light, but I want to give them some credit.

“Also, if I recall, the closest planet with even a chance of sustaining life is about 42 light-years away. That means it will take us 28 years to get there,” I say, and let this timeframe sink in for a second or two. “The international space station measures its supplies in days.”

“Seamus, your goal was not to highlight the challenges we face with our approach. You are supposed to be telling us what your better solution is.” Cassandra has her hands on her hips in defiance. If I don’t give her something good, she may tune me out altogether.

“You’re right.” I turn and walk to the , whiteboard and they both follow me. On the board I draw two spheres and label one “Earth” and the other “X.” Drawing a line with an arrow between the two, I turn and face them. “Earth, we’re here. Planet X is where we need to go,” I explain. “If we can’t cover the distance between them any faster, we need to make the distance shorter.” I erase the planet X sphere and redraw it closer to the sphere representing Earth.

“Ha!” Cassandra thinks she’s won. “Seamus, you’re talking about warp drive or something similar here. Since you’re the one who wants to talk about time, let me remind you that we have weeks, maybe months, to get something done.”

“With your help, I can have a prototype done in a week, a full model in two and production ready in four,” I say. It has all come together in my head. I speak the truth and I truly believe this idea will come together.

“I need more convincing than your say-so,” Cassandra says. “Where is your proof that it is possible to warp the time-space continuum?” Cassandra has challenged some of the top Ph.D.’s in the world. She is more than comfortable questioning me.

“The solar sail paper,” I say. When you talk about things you know, it’s easy to have confidence. “They used a theoretical Tantalum-skinned space vehicle for their tests. Before breaking the light barrier, there was a noted build-up of electrons on the surface of the craft. After passing the light barrier, the electrons were gone, but there was an unexplained deflection in trajectory. In fact, if you remember, they had to account for the deflection in the angle of the sail.”

“Seamus, we cannot build a Tantalum-skinned spacecraft.” Cassandra isn’t thinking about what can happen; she’s thinking about what can’t happen.

“We don’t have to!” My issue now will be controlling my excitement. “My reactor manipulates dark energy. The dark energy accelerates electrons and condenses them in one place. Having so many in a small space generates plasma, which we are able to turn into electricity. But we have a gate at the input to the power pack. You know, you built one. Did I ever tell you how I figured out the need for that gate?”

“No,” Cassandra says. Now she is weary of being schooled on physics.

“I was ten. Running a mathematical model never occurred to me. I had been building my own computers and creating custom motherboards for a year. I thought I could just build my reactor.” This is a fun memory. “So I pulled together a very crude version that had trouble staying square. To solve that problem, I crossed two thin Tantalum wires at the top and another two at the bottom. I knew the Tantalum could withstand any heat generated. But I had no electron gate. When I started things up, the electrons began flowing out of control. I could feel movement in the air. Within seconds, I had condensed so many electrons there was a plasma pulse out the bottom of the unit. It burned a hole through my work bench and deep into the ground.”

“Thanks for the history lesson; what does it have to do with warp drive?” Cassandra says, rolling her hand over like she wants me to move on.

“The reactor fell over and I never knew why.” I never really cared until right now. “It was odd because the table was solid, the support rig was solid, everything was solid, there was no reason for it to fall. Except for the inflection in the time-space continuum.”

“You were right before.” Cassandra is still filled with doubt. “Leaps of logic that seem clear in your mind don’t hold up under scientific scrutiny.”

That’s not what I said, but since she is slow to pick up on advanced concepts I won’t nitpick. “You’re absolutely correct. Try this on for size,“ I say.

I turn and begin writing a formula on the whiteboard. Before I am complete, it will take up more than the whole whiteboard. This is the mathematical description of how time-space warps when subjected to an ever-condensing stream of electrons passing over a piece of Tantalum faster than the speed of light. It feels like there should be some fanfare or note recording the accomplishment. A concept thought on by the greatest minds in history is now documented for the first time. While not as simple, this is on the order of E=MC
2
. I have amazed even myself.

“You seem to have forgotten to account for the mass of the electrons on the tantalum prior to deflection. It is not insignificant,” Jane says, speaking up for the first time.

“Mother?” Cassandra is in shock.

I spin to review my formula. After a minute of close inspection my mistake is clear, but easily corrected. Was Jane sitting on this idea in another act of maintaining control?

“In 2012, a scientist in North Korea completed work on documenting the physical properties of time-space,” Jane says. “Once they were defined, manipulation became conceivable.” She is staring at the formula, presumably fact-checking my work. “A hastily constructed device was used to test a flawed implementation of warp drive. It succeeded in creating a small inflection in time-space that we detected here at Ames. It also caused a catastrophic failure in a nearby nuclear reactor that killed hundreds of thousands of people.”

“So you’ve seen this formula before?” My ego has taken a major blow.

“No.” Jane is shaking her head and a smile is growing. “The Korean scientist met with an ‘unfortunate accident’ after we alerted the National Security Agency of what we saw. He and his team survived the nuclear disaster, but the guilt or something else caused them to leap off a tall building. I was part of a small group here at Ames that spent two years trying to come up with the formula you have written here. Naturally we were unsuccessful, but I remember that the electrons had measurable mass that needed to be accounted for.” 

“So you agree it’s feasible?” I’m a little surprised that she’s not protesting more.

“For a number of years we have understood that it is possible to warp time-space. The first challenge we had with accomplishing the feat was that we did not have enough power. You solved that with your reactor work. The second challenge we faced was controlling the warp so we could do something with it. Apparently you solved that with your work here on the board.” Jane scrutinizes my formula while she speaks.

“Are we seriously going to try and build a warp-capable craft in a matter of weeks? From scratch?” Cassandra is not as on-board as her mother.

“If we’re going to do something ridiculous, why not go big?” I want to point out the flaws in the solar sail approach, but instead I try to maintain some semblance of a team.

“Seamus may not have thought of this yet, but we don’t need to build a craft, just the warp unit,” Jane says, reminding Cassandra that I have not figured out all of the details.

We all spend several minutes in deep silent thought. I am going back over the formula looking for errors. There is at least one point in it that I know of where a change in a variable would create a massive explosion.

“Any craft that can be pressurized will work!” Cassandra says, solving the bigger problem of using my warp unit. “The trick is to use something that can get us over the warp and be strong enough to survive whatever environment is on the other side. One of the space plane prototypes will be perfect!”

“We’re building a warp-capable space craft,” I say, awed. The full weight of our project begins to overwhelm my senses.

“So that we can evacuate Earth.” Cassandra sounds equally overwhelmed.

“And we need to get it done in a matter of weeks,” Jane says, putting the cherry on top of this ridiculous solution to an unfathomable problem.