Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7) (3 page)

Ell said, “Well
, we need to push the envelope on port size so we’ll know what
can
be done. Good luck.” She turned to Roger, “Can you tell us what you’ve learned about sending living animals through ports, Rog’? If they can make ports big enough, are we going to be able to port
ourselves
somewhere?”

Roger grimaced, “I’m
certainly not ready to hop through a port myself. In addition to the agony that’s associated with putting even a part of yourself through a port, every organism with a nervous system seems to have a pretty serious seizure. It doesn’t seem to shorten the lifespans of bees or mice, but rats don’t do as well on maze type IQ tests for at least a week or two after we put them through. We had some hopes for protecting the animals with drugs or shielding but so far they’ve only diminished, not prevented the effects.”

Ell shrugged, “Shucks. Any other news from the Portal group?”

Vivian said, “We’ve been pretty successful with our antiterrorist program for the ports. The ones we sell have their speed limited according to their intended use in order to prevent people who aren’t certified for it from building a missile. You were right about your circuit modifications by the way. We can limit the speed of one port relative to another with those mods rather than having to have a computer follow them with GPS. So we sell pretty fast ones to aircraft manufacturers and really fast ports only to companies that work in space. The rest of them only go slow.”

“What about toxins, explosives and flammables?”

“Well, as you can imagine, that’s a much tougher problem. A lot of those substances are volatile and we can pick them up through the microscopic ‘sampling’ port on each port we sell, but surveillance of all those ports is nearly impossible. Brian had a great idea though,” she waved at him ans fed at hd he looked embarrassed. “We contracted out with a chemistry research firm and they’ve sold us an insulating compound that dissolves in most organics. Once it dissolves, a couple of wires make contact and that disrupts the port’s circuit. In other words, ports not made to transport flammables become non-functional in contact with
most,
though not all, flammables.” She tilted her head, “So… we’re trying to push everyone to powering things with electricity delivered through ports by wire rather than with flammables. Companies transporting petroleum products for manufacturing or power plants only get ports that must be stationary relative to one another. We’ve essentially stopped selling ports that will move flammables to car companies, boat companies and propeller driven aircraft companies. We only sell ‘mobile-flammable’ ports to jet aircraft manufacturers and rocketry companies.” She grinned, “Our devious Brian,” she darted another glance at him, “had another great idea there. The mobile-flammable ports have to be mounted in place with our proprietary epoxy that has just the right resistance for some contacts on the surface of the port. That epoxy will tear loose those little contact wires on the surface of the port if someone tries to dismount it. So they won’t work unless you mount them with our epoxy and if you dislodge them from the epoxy, they stop working. So, essentially, you can’t take them back out of the plane once they’re installed and still have them work.”

Brian raised his hand, “Actually you can, you just have to cut out the
entire mounting surface with the port, but we’re hoping it takes a long time for terrorists to figure that out.”

Vivian
shrugged, “That still leaves us with problems. You may be aware that someone recently published their plan for modification of a Smith and Wesson pistol that would be able to fire ten thousand rounds before someone had to refill the hopper back home in the closet?”

“Yeah, and I’ve heard that the military has similar plans?”

Fred Marsden snorted, “Yeah, every military in the world has been calling. They want ports to fuel their ships and planes, resupply ammunition, send power out to the field. Even the lowly infantryman needs ports.”

“Infantry?”

“Oh yeah. You know that soldiers in the field can be expected to carry 60-80 pounds of supplies? Turns out that a lot of that stuff can be supplied by port instead, making the soldier much more mobile. And they all want to be able to fire a mortar or RPG at their enemies that doesn’t explode immediately. No they want it to pop open and deliver a port. The port delivers an enormous cloud of methane or propane, and they follow it with a spark. Boom, fuel air explosion!”

Ell frowned, “How have you been answering those queries?”

“Our own military gets
some
kinds of ‘military grade’ port tech. Other countries get the run around.
None
of them are getting high velocity flammable ports. But it’s getting to be a problem. You’re probably aware that a few murders have been committed using port technology. Knives stuck though ports, cyanide, etc. We’re worried that bad people are starting to recognize their potential. The government is too. They’ve started to include ports in security screens at airports and such.
diesuch.

“
We’ve massively increased security at the plant to prevent theft but I’m starting to worry about the safety of our personnel. So far we’ve been very careful to compartmentalize the knowledge needed to build a working port. We estimate that you’d have to combine the knowledge of more than ten of our employees to have much of a chance to build your own port, and that even then a lot of experimentation would be needed. But that doesn’t mean someone won’t try. I also find it distasteful that our facility is looking more and more like a prison camp. And, prison camp aside, I worry about kidnappings of our personnel away from work.”

Ell sighed and ran her hands through her short reddish blond hair. “Crap! I’ve been worried
that this kind of stuff would raise its ugly head. Anyone have any good ideas?”

Roger waved a hand, “I’ve been thinking. You know we’ve worked a way to open a port over a distance of a few millimeters without a port on the other end?”

Ell shot a look at Roger, startled that he’d bring this up. She looked around the group. “These ‘single ended’ ports Roger’s talking about are a pretty well kept secret. Please don’t spread this news around.”

The rest of the group
stared at them in astonishment. Fred said, “When will Portal Tech start making these?”

“Maybe never, they could be pretty dangerous.”

“How?”

Ell waved at Roger who said, “Probably the best beneficial use for them would be to deliver drugs like insulin without injections. Similarly they could be used to deliver euphoric drugs without needle tracks
, or toxins for untraceable murders. Just opening a port inside certain parts of your body like the brain can do significant harm. Everything is a double edged sword. Ell, I and Emma have had implants put in the subcutaneous tissues under our ears using single ended ports which was great. Just open a single ended port into the fat there and push in the implant. No scars, hardly any pain.”

Fred frowned, “What kind of implants?”

Roger said, “Ones that let us communicate with our AIs even if we lose our headbands. Essentially they contain a little microphone and speaker combo.”

Ell said, “They’re pretty ‘lo-fi’ because you’re listening to sound transmitted through
the fat surrounding the implant, but you can understand it and it can pick up your speech and some sound from your surroundings. It even has a little GPS antenna so your AI can determine where you are.”

Roger nodded. “So you guys at least should get the same.
Maybe your families? It’s pretty painless and if you got kidnapped your AI would be able to tell us it happened and where you’re located so we can try to rescue you.”

Ell looked around, “We could offer the same to your employees,
but since we want to keep the ‘one ended’ ports a secret, they probably should be implanted surgically.” She shrugged, “Think about it.”

Rob Braun
waved a hand, “I want one. I also have a suggestion.”

Ell raised an eyebrow at him.

“As you know we’re working on a space station and planning a pretty large space habitat. I’m thinking it would be nice to move the parts of our business that might be subject to spying or sabotage out to the habitat?”

Suddenly there were a
lot
of raised eyebrows around the table. Fred said, “Really?! How close are you to doing something like that?”

Rob shrugged, “Depends how
hard we want to push, and of course, on what our investors are willing to put up to get us there faster. You may know we bought an old freight version Boeing 747. It’s out on D5R’s island being converted into a spacecraft. We’ve pressure tested it and are currently installing the rocket engines. One of its first missions will be to fly up an inflatable space station.”

Vivian
frowned, “Inflatable? That doesn’t sound very safe!”

Rob smiled, “Actually some of the modules of the Space Station have been inflat
ed for a long time. They’re made of multiple layers of ballistic fabric like Kevlar and Vectran and when they’re inflated they feel as hard as concrete. Layers of fiber are more resistant to micrometeors than metal. Even the aluminum modules of the Station are mostly sheathed in ballistic fabric for that kind of protection. So we had one of the companies that make them assemble us a cylindrical module, 150 feet in diameter and 130 feet long because we can just squeeze one that size into the 747 after we suck all the air out of it. Just inside the outer layers we’ll have fifteen feet of water for radiation protection and thermal stability. This’ll leave us with a usable cylindrical interior space that’s 120 feet in diameter and 100 feet long. That’s 1.1 million cubic feet, the same amount of space you’d find in a 135,000 square foot building.”

“Holy crap,” someone muttered.

Another asked,
“What do you mean by ‘thermal stability?’”

Things out in space get really hot on the sunny side and icy cold on the shadowed side. Water would freeze on the shady
side and melt on the sunny side; circulating the water around will even the temps out.”

Ell said, “
It sounds pretty good in terms of safety from micrometeors and radiation but weightlessness is a problem all by itself.”

Braun said, “Once we’re confident in the first module, step two would be to put up two smaller modules, each 85 feet in diameter and 130 feet long. They’ll be connected to the first one with 250 meter long tubes and spun around a hub at about a revolution per minute. That will generate nearly 0.3 gravities of acceleration which should keep you pretty healthy.”

Fred blinked, “Wait a minute; that much water is going to weigh a
lot
. How much tension is going to be on the tubes?”

Ell shrugged, “The water would mass a little over 14,000 metric tons, but at 0.28 gravities it would exert under 4,000 tons force.”

Braun gaped at Ell, “Did you just do that in your head/spin your?”

Ell blushed and shrugged, “The formulas
are
pretty simple.”

Braun snorted, but then turned back to Fred. “Yeah, about 4,000 tons force which we could support with straps having a total cross section 130 square centimeters if they were made of Vectran, though we’d need more for safety overdesign and to compensate for degradation. We’re working on trying to get some of the folks making boron nitride, or carbon nanotubes, or graphene to ramp up if they can. We could get down under 10 square centimeters with that stuff if they can make it
in quantity.”

Fred frowned, “Really? It’s that strong?”
He glanced doubtfully around at the group.

Ell said, “Yeah, Those materials are
astonishingly strong, though they’re hard to get in large quantities and anything we use is susceptible to radiation damage. So we’d want to overdesign, use redundant straps and plan regular replacement for stuff that, if it broke, would shoot some of our folks off on a tangent to the rotation. Probably should have some kind of lifeboat craft attached to the modules in case said tangent puts them into a re-entry trajectory.”

Braun said, “And, if that works in LEO (low earth orbit) then we’d like to build a
real
habitat out at L5.”