Read Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7) Online
Authors: Laurence Dahners
Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7) (8 page)
“
Then we tried delivering ports with a mortar, the idea being that after the port arrived at the target you could send through flammable gases or liquids, essentially delivering the explosive force of a much bigger weapon. But, they don’t work after they arrive. The people at Portal Technologies
say
that the mechanism can’t tolerate the accelerations involved with being fired out of a muzzle. However, they don’t work after we deliver them by rocket either. They
say
that’s because the one port can’t be moved at high velocities relative to the other port, but I must point out that they send ports into space at much higher velocities, so it
is
possible. They just aren’t sharing that tech with us.”
Menahim leaned back, narrowing his eyes. “And what do your contacts in the American military say?”
Avral shrugged. “They say that, ‘ports have inherent limitations which make them difficult to weaponize.’”
“And you don’t believe this?”
Avral snorted, “No! This technology has
enormous
potential for weaponization and the Americans are keeping it entirely to themselves. They may
claim
to be our allies, but they aren’t sharing
this
technology with us.”
“So they have given us no new military technology based on the ports?”
“No,” he snorted, “well, yes. They have given us their new ‘bottomless canteen,’ so that a soldier never runs out of water and fittings for our military vehicles so that they get electricity and don’t depend on fuel. Even a gas mask that brings in fresh air from elsewhere.” He tilted his head and shrugged a little, “The mask is actually pretty good, not just against a gas attack but also in the smoky, dusty environments which are prevalent in war zones. But, as you can see, nothing of an offensive nature.”
“So you have not been able to create any offensive weapons using this tech?”
“Well, of co="+Well, urse. Small radio controlled flying machines, helicopters and ‘model’ sized airplanes. They use electric motors but have had very limited ranges due to battery life. Now they can fly incredible distances at surprising altitudes. They’re great for observation and can even attack if we strap an explosive to them. But imagine if they could land unobserved and then open a port that delivers propane or gasoline.”
Menahim frowned, “That sounds like the kind of weapon that a terrorist would like!”
“Exactly! And we need equipment more advanced than that in order to counter the terrorist threat.”
“Have you told the Americans about your radio controlled small weapons?” Menahim asked.
“Pfft. Let them figure it out for themselves if they can.”
Menahim grinned, “But they’re your allies. It sounds like you aren’t helping them
and yet are complaining when they don’t help you.”
Avral
frowned darkly, not seeing any humor to it, “They are
supposed
to help us.”
Menahim lifted his chin momentarily in question, “So, what do you think we should do about it?”
“We’ve already had our scientists try to reverse engineer the ports. The electronics are buried in one of these epoxies that destroy their contents when you try to remove them. We haven’t had any luck figuring it out. We need to hire the Donsaii girl to build us better ports. The Americans don’t seem to have
any
idea just how important she is. They don’t even guard her, so if she won’t do it for money, we can just bring her back here and ‘convince’ her.”
A raised eyebrow, “
You’re suggesting we kidnap her?”
Avral
shrugged. Darkly, he said, “Nothing less than the safety of our people depends on this.”
Menahim sighed, “Explore the options, but I doubt we can get approval for
a kidnapping. For sure, find out if she can be bought.”
***
Allan, Ell’s AI, said, “You have a call from Gary Pace.”
“Gary from Las Vegas?”
“Yes.”
“Put him on. Hi Gary, what’s happening in your life?”
“Uh, hello Ms. Donsaii. Things are going pretty good. I’ve finished my PhD and I’ve taken a job at Clemson.”
“‘Ms. Donsaii!’ You’re calling me ‘Ms.’? I thought we were friends.”
“Well… we were; then you went off and saved the world. Made me feel like I owed you some respect.”
“Hah, I’m still the same girl you used to toss around in
the Millie’s martial arts class. Call me ‘Ms.’ and I’ll have to move you off my ‘friends’ lralfriendsist.”
“OK,
‘Ell’ it is.”
“So, Clemson, that’s not too far from us here. Are you going to be teaching in the
Chemistry Department there?”
“No, I’m actually joining their Materials Engineering section.
I’ll be continuing research on carbon materials, nanotubes and tori, graphene synthesis. Maybe even some work on boron nitride macromolecules.”
“Great!
We’d love to hire you as a consultant. We really need some of those super high tensile strength materials for some of our projects.”
“Well, that’s kinda what I called about. I have an idea for graphene synthesis that depends on a microgravity environment. I was about to call NASA when I realized that you were flying little rockets out there and maybe I could mount a
small experiment in one of
your
flights.”
“Tell me more.”
“Well, you may know that there are a lot of ways to make graphene. The big problem is that so far no one has figured out a way to make the kinds of enormously long sheets like we’d need to build a space elevator.”
“Yeah.”
“One way to make graphene is with vapor deposition from methane. At the right temperature and pressure, the methane will leave behind its carbon as a single layer on certain alloys but it sticks so hard that peeling it off as a continuous sheet is hard. Some of my calculations suggest that we could make it form so it would strip off easily in a microgravity environment. I think I could make a ‘proof of concept’ experiment that’s pretty tiny so it could go up in one of your small rockets.”
“Hmmm, we can send up big payloads too. And we really need high tensile strength materials. Why don’t you build us something that’s big enough to actually try to spool off a long piece?”
“Really? I thought you guys only made little rockets.”
“What we make are the
dimensional ports that fuel rockets. Without those ports, little rockets can’t fly very far. But the ports will also fuel large rockets and they’ll deliver unlimited synthesis materials to your ‘graphenator’ too.”
“So… could you actually fly up the device I’ve been trying to work with down here on earth? It’s about four feet
, by two feet, by six feet, not counting the methane supply bottles.”
“Sure,
and you could go up to orbit with it and run your experiment without even leaving the Learjet. You wouldn’t have to take up the bottles; we can give you ports to send the methane up through.”
“Learjet? I need to get all the way out to a microgravity situation in orbit.”
“Yeah, sorry I didn’t explain. We use a modified Learjet as our spacecraft. It flies out of an island in the Caribbean. It’s plenty big enough to take your experiment up. We can even pick your equipment up from whatever the nearest jet capable airport is. We’d pick you and the device up in a different Lter differearjet and fly you to the island.”
“Wow! That’d be… great
!”
“When can you have it ready?”
They spoke further arranging details but Gary hung up from the conversation shaking his head.
A Learjet? That doesn’t sound safe. Is she crazy or brilliant? Well
, he thought, he
knew
she was brilliant. But still, it
seemed
crazy.
***
Manuel left the machine shop and headed over to the purchasing office. He had a cutting head for a three axis CNC machine that needed to be replaced. A few months ago he would have ordered another one and copied the order to the purchasing office. But that was before he’d had to talk to Shelly Williams about an ordering error. Manuel had always liked tall women and Shelly was just a little taller than he, dark hair, usually smiling. He’d made frequent excuses to visit the purchasing area since.
W
hen he heard Shelly had separated from her husband, he’d begun finding more and more reasons to have her order parts. “Hey Shell’, how’s my favorite order magician?”
Shelly smiled broadly at him. “Manuel, you breakin’ more equipment and comin’ ‘round to beg me to get you replacements?”
Manuel shook his head disconsolately, “Just workin’ so hard I’m wearin’ the equipment out Ms. Williams.”
He raised his eyes
so Shelly could see them twinkling. She laughed and said, “Come on, show me what you so urgently need me to get for you, but I think you’re going to owe me lunch…”
Chapter Three
Ell got to the “Team Teecee” group a little late. She looked around a little surprised to see that Wheat, Piscova and Norris were all there in person. She looked around and asked, “Did I miss anything interesting?”
Emma grinned at her, “Kira held an actual conversation with Goldy.”
When Ell looked at her with raised eyebrows, Kira said, “We talked about the ‘pecking order’ in their tribe. ‘Pecking order’ probably isn’t a very good term, it’s probably more like their social rank but still, those on top boss around those below them.”
Ell tilted her head, “And how does Goldy rank?”
“Apparently he ranked really low before the adventure he and Silver had when Silver’s wing got injured. I get the impression none of the Teecees have lived through the summer without flying south and the fact that they did it brought them a lot of prestige.”
Harald Wheat said, “We need to publish some of this stuff. Is there really any harm that can come of the public knowing about the Teecees? It’s not like anyone can go to Tau Ceti and exploit them, right?”
Ell sighed, “I just have a bad feeling about telling the world. We’re still trying to sort out the impact from ordinary ports.”
Norris said, “We
can’t
just suppress this knowledge. Science should be carried out in the public eye.”
Wheat said, “I completely agree with Dr. Norris.
Our non-disclosure agreements expired some time ago so we
could
publish without your permission. I’ve been holding back out of respect for your wishes, but the world deserves to know and to know sometime soon.”
Ell glanced at Roger and Emma who both shrugged.
Ell sighed, “OK.”
Norris said, “I propose that we
submit a quartet of papers in Nature. You describe the technology for the one ended ports. I describe the Tau Ceti system and TC3 in particular. Wheat describes the biota of TC3 and Piscova describes the language.”
Ell shook her head, “No paper about the one ended port
al tech. It’s far too dangerous.”
Roger raised his eyebrows, “But, with the other papers coming out
, people are going to realize that we couldn’t have reached another star without
some
major technological advance.”
Ell slumped, “Yeah, I know.”
“Maybe you could release a description of single ended ports that have a minimum reach of, say a few AUs. Then people couldn’t use them as weapons here on earth.”
“Yeah, I’ve thought of releasing one ended ports with a reach of
between one and fifty AUs for space research or less than 5mm for medical implantation. But I can’t release a ‘description’ of how to do it or people would figure their way around it. The only safe thing to do would be to sell devices that could do those things but not reveal how they’re made.”
Norris shrugged, “There are a
lot
of smart people out there. They’re going to figure it out from the original patent apps and your papers aren’t they?”
“Yeah, probably
they will… eventually.” Ell said wearily, “But
I
don’t want to be the one who told terrorists how to do this.”
“Wait a minute,” Roger said, “Less than 50 AU? Then they couldn’t reach other stars.”
“Nope, and I don’t want them to do that. Not all aliens we meet are going to be primitives like the Teecees. Believe me; we don’t want every Joe Blow sending a mission to some of the stars out there. We don’t want them doing bad things to the primitives, but we especially don’t want them pissing off one of the advanced races.”
Roger narrowed his eyes, “One of? Sounds like you might have already encountered a more advanced race.” He glanced at Emma
; then back at Ell “What did you find at Aeapou findlpha Centauri?”
Ell shrugged, “Just some pretty primitive looking
life. The planet there that’s near the liquid water zone has a pretty eccentric orbit, sometimes frozen, sometimes boiling. There is abundant mushy green stuff, probably single celled, but nothing that anyone would be excited about.”
“But, it sounds like you’ve encountered a more advanced race, where?”
After a long pause that set everyone’s nerves on edge Ell said, “Sorry, I just don’t want to say right now. I don’t know enough about them. I want to more fully evaluate the risks.”
The people in the room looked at one another. Norris exploded, “You can’t keep something like this a secret! An advanced race! That’s
hugely
important, not something that one person should keep as their own secret! Think what they could teach us.”
Piscova
turned to Norris and said, “What if they attack instead of teach?”
“I thought organisms couldn’t pass through the ports?” Wheat asked.
Roger looked at Wheat, “Earth organisms can go through ports and survive, but all the ones with nervous systems appear to have seizures when they pass through ports. Aliens might not, or they may be willing to have seizures in order to get here.”
Wheat said,
“I’m not sure we should worry so much. Despite a wealth of science fiction stories about inimical aliens bent on the destruction of the human race, it’s really hard to imagine
why
they’d want to attack us over interstellar distances. In those stories they’re often proposed to want our planet for living space, our people for slaves, or some precious material we have. First of all our biosphere probably won’t agree with them so they aren’t likely to
want
to live here. We certainly couldn’t live on TC3 for instance. Second, why would they want to enslave us, when an interstellar level technology likely has robots that would do those tasks better than we would? Third, what kinds of valuable materials or minerals would we have here that wouldn’t be more readily available in their own solar system?”
Ell looked at him consideringly. “I’ve wondered some of those same things Dr. Wheat. Some of the reasons proposed for wars with aliens in
sci-fi seem pretty implausible. However, I’d like to more fully evaluate the possible dangers before bringing you guys in on it. By the very nature of their being alien we must recognize that there could be dangers we haven’t thought of.”
After further discussion they agreed to the submission of three papers to Nature about Tau Ceti. Ell would be listed as an author on them but wouldn’t submit anything about the one ended ports. As they walked out of the meeting Emma put a hand on Ell’s arm
and quietly asked, “It’s Sigma Draconis isn’t it? I’ve realized that the little explorer rocket we sent there should be arriving about now.”
Ell nodded.
“What have you found there?”
Ell said, “Let’s go to my office. I don’ts. e. I do want to talk about this stuff out here.”
Once in her office Ell
sighed, “They have a ringworld, or halo or orbital or whatever you want to call it, at the L5 and L4 locations on the orbit of their apparent homeworld.”
“Ringworld
?”
“
Constructed habitat. A ring that’s about 20,000 kilometers in diameter. About 5,000 kilometers wide. The rocket isn’t very close yet, but the ring is easier to see than the presumed home planet! Allan thinks the ring is rotating about one revolution every three and a half hours.”
“Wait, what!
20,000 kilometers! Why so freaking big?”
“
So a
lot
of people can live there.”
“What?
Why a ring… world?
“
You really don’t read much sci-fi do you? The idea is that they live on the inner surface of the ring. At that rotation rate, the centripetal force would provide a simulated 0.34 gravities on the inner surface, pretty much what we estimate the gravity of the home planet to be. High edges along the sides of the ring keep the atmosphere in. In sci-fi stories the rings are even bigger than this so that the rotation matches the day-night cycle of the planet the inhabitants come from, but it seems unlikely that materials with enough tensile strength for that kind of structure are possible. Even one this size is pushing high up into the strength limits of graphene, which is the strongest material we’re aware of.”
Emma blinked,
“How much surface area would one of these have?”
“
310 million square kilometers. That’s about sixty percent of the surface area of the Earth. Close to three times the area of their presumed home planet.”
Emma sat down
, looking a little pale, “My God!”
“Yeah. T
he rings are
astonishing
feats of engineering. I’m worried because Allan hasn’t detected any rocket exhausts travelling from world to world. Hopefully that’s because we’re still too far away. But if they’re travelling everywhere using ports or some other technology… then they’re even more frightening… I’m not using the rocket’s engine. I don’t want them noticing it, tracking it down and tracing it back to us.”
“But, t
raveling on a ballistic trajectory, will it get close enough for you to actually see what’s going on?”
“
Well… no. When I first saw the Sigma Draconis ringworld on the video returning from the explorer I resolved not to activate the actual rocket engine on the explorer in an effort to keep it from being detected. But, then I realized that we had just the problem you brought up, it wouldn’t get close enough to be able to see much. So I really wanted to correct its course. Using low levels of thrust far enough away from the destination is going to allow t3emg to alhat to be done. I wanted an exhaust that consisted of something present in deep space that would be cold because hot exhaust would show up on infrared imaging. Liquid hydrogen seemed to be the best choice. It would exhaust at a fairly high velocity, imparting significant delta V, yet the hydrogen would be pretty cold and normally found in deep space, even if in lower quantities.
“
So I started porting hydrogen under pressure to both the oxygen and the LNG supplies to the main rocket nozzle. Allan controls the thrust by simply flicking the port open and shut at various cycle frequencies.
“Then it was just a matter of orienting the nozzle and opening up. The delta V, being fairly low
, required long periods of thrust, far, far from the ringworld. But Allan’s calculations show that it’ll be able to match the rim velocity of the side of the ring that’s travelling away along the explorer’s trajectory. It should be able to land on the rim without any major burns, especially since I’ve got Allan watching and adjusting almost constantly.
“I’ve trailed a wire through the port on the rocket to serve as an antenna and hooked it up to a broad spectrum radio receiver, checking to see if the Draconis might be using radio rather than quantum messaging through the 5th dimension. I couldn’t find any carrier waves or other evidence of non
-natural radio sources but I worry that I just don’t know enough about radio comm to recognize their transmissions.” She shrugged, “However, I think the best bet would be that they are using
something
more advanced.”
Emma left Ell’s office, head spinning with the ramifications. She wanted desperately to talk to someone about it, but Ell had made her promise.
Back in her office Ell wondered again if the Draconis would be using ports. Ell found it hard to imagine that they could build their ringworld using rockets that carried all their fuel with them. You just wouldn’t be able to move such enormous quantities of mass around.
In fact
... she leaned back, eyes unfocused,
you
couldn’t
move that much mass with chemical rockets. You’d run out of chemical. Sure a gas giant would have plenty of hydrogen, but you wouldn’t be able to find enough oxidizer. What if you ported liquid hydrogen into your rocket engine and heated the engine’s chamber with a port near the star...?
