Rocket!
Author: Laurence Dahners
Date: 2012-07-30T05:00:00+00:00
Description: "Rocket" is the fourth in a series of near future SciFi/Thrillers whose young heroine Ell Donsaii has a nerve mutation. This mutation’s rendered her a genius and an athletic phenomenon. In “Rocket!” she works out the enormous potential of the wormholes she discovered in "Lieutenant." Though they only provide small openings through the 5th dimension, these wormholes will prove a tremendous boon to humankind. Feeding fuel to little rockets will let them fly all the way up into space.

Table of Contents

Copyright

Author’s Note

Preprologue

Prologue

Part One

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Part Two

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Epilogue

Author’s Afterword

Acknowledgements

Rocket!

An Ell Donsaii story #4

By

Laurence E Dahners

Copyright 2012 Laurence E Dahners

Kindle Edition

Author’s Note

Though this book can “stand alone” it will be much easier to understand if read as part of the series including “Quicker (an Ell Donsaii story),”  “Smarter (an Ell Donsaii story #2)” and “Lieutenant (an Ell Donsaii story #3).” I have minimized repetition of explanations that would be redundant to the first two books in order to provide a better reading experience for those of you who are reading the series.

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

Preprologue

Allan Donsaii was an unusually gifted quarterback. He was widely recognized to be startling strong and was a phenomenally accurate passer. During his college career he finished two full seasons without any interceptions and two games with 100 percent completions. Unfortunately, he was never drafted because the pro teams felt he was too small.

Kristen Taylor captained her college soccer team and was extraordinarily quick. She rarely played a game without a “steal” and usually had many.

Allan and Kristen dated more and more seriously throughout college and married at the end of their senior year. Their friends kidded them that they were only marrying so that they could start their own sports dynasty.

Their daughter Ell did have Kristen’s quickness, magnified by Allan’s strength and accuracy. The child also had a new mutation affecting the myelin sheaths surrounding her nerves. This mutation produced nerve transmission speeds that were nearly double those of normal neurons. Nerve impulse transmissions being faster, she had much quicker reflexes. Yet the new myelin sheath was also thinner, allowing more axons, and therefore more neurons, to be packed into the same sized skull. These two factors resulted in a brain which had more neurons, though it wasn’t larger and a more rapid processing speed, akin to a computer with a smaller scale CPU architecture that enables faster processor speeds.

Most importantly, under the influence of adrenalin in a “fight or flight” situation, her nerves would transmit even more rapidly than their normally phenomenal speed.

Much more rapidly…

Prologue

Boston—PGR Comm, a privately held company in Boston MA, announced today the initial public sale of a new communications “chip.” These chips have apparently already been in use by the US military services. The chips come in pairs, said to be “quantum entangled” and are purported to allow instantaneous communication between one chip and its mate over very large distances at extremely low cost. It is alleged that such communication is uninterruptible, uninterceptable, undetectable, and requires no infrastructure. The company claims that these chips will revolutionize communications. If such claims are substantiated the chips will certainly alter…

The Friday night before Thanksgiving Phil Zabrisk walked into the Gold Rush and looked around for Jason Daventa. He and Jason had been buddies since basic training at the Air Force Academy and were meeting there for a night out on the town in the big city of Denver. It had been a while since they’d last gone out together because Phil, to his own surprise, hadn’t really been in the mood to chase other women.

He hadn’t felt like it since that Thanksgiving weekend nearly a year ago when he’d helped foil Ell Donsaii’s attempted kidnapping. After the kidnapping he’d tried to tell her how important she was to him and she’d seemed to respond. He could close his eyes and remember the “thank you” kiss she’d given him. But he’d rarely seen her since then. She’d driven up to Seymore Johnson AFB to see him for a day over his Christmas break when he’d been home visiting his parents. Then he’d driven down to visit her at her mother’s home in Morehead City a day later. In January she’d gone to Officer Training and been assigned to Nellis AFB. He’d hoped to visit her in Las Vegas over his summer break but that hadn’t worked out. He’d kinda hoped that she’d hop over to Colorado Springs and visit him but that hadn’t happened either. Now it had been nearly a year and he’d only seen her that one day at Christmas time. Gradually he’d developed the feeling that he’d better get on with his life. She’d been a lieutenant for almost a year now, while Phil still had more than half a year to go at the Academy before he’d get his own bars. It seemed silly to wait around for her. It was even crazier to think that she’d wait around for him.

So when Jason called and suggested they go out on the town, he’d decided that it was time to get back in the swing of things. He looked around The Gold Rush and saw Jason sitting in a booth. Not a good tactical base for chasing women, Jason, he thought to himself as he started that way. A booth impairs your mobility. As he approached Jason and could see deeper into the booth he saw Joy Denson sitting next to him. Joy and Jason had been an item back in their Doolie year but hadn’t been together for quite a while now. Damn! If they’re getting back together tonight, and are dragging me along as a “third wheel” I’m gonna be pissed! Phil rolled his eyes and stepped up next to the booth. Belatedly, he noticed that someone was sitting on the bench seat across from Jason and Joy.

Ell! Gorgeous as ever!

Stunned, Phil found himself grinning vacuously at Ell’s trademark crooked smile. Then he realized that Joy and Jason were laughing at the silly look on his face and turned to glare at them. “You guys kept this a secret?!”

Ell grinned up at his Norse God good looks and giggled, “Are you gonna sit down and give me hug? Or am I gonna have to climb up there to get one?”

Phil dropped to the bench beside Ell and threw his arms around her, Hmpf, she feels good! He drew back, leaving one arm around her shoulders, “Man! It’s great to see you! I’d just been thinking how it’d been a long time! How is life up there in exalted lieutenant land?”

Joy laughed, “Lieutenant!? Boy are you behind the times! She’s been a captain for whole days now!”

Ell looked sharply at Joy, “How did you know about that?”

Smugly, Joy said, “I have my ways.”

Phil and Jason goggled, “Captain?” Phil asked.

Eyes sparkling, Joy grinned, “It seems that President Teller has been up to some of his old tricks. Let’s see,” she looked musingly up at the ceiling. “I believe a certain someone may have been awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom as well as being promoted two ranks, the maximum possible in ‘peacetime’?” She waggled her eyebrows at the two men. “If you guys knew how to keep your ear to the ground, you too could be aware of such things.”

Phil turned to stare at Ell, “Really?!”

She shrugged, looking uncomfortable, “Yeah, but they’re letting me out of the rest of my military commitment so the promotion doesn’t really matter.”

A stunned pause followed, then Phil said, “What’d you do?!”

Ell looked uncomfortable and shrugged minutely again. “I let them use some of my chips…” she trailed off.

Joy grinned, “What the indomitable Captain Donsaii means to say, is that she single handedly staved off a war in the Western Pacific.”

Jason turned to stare at Joy, “You mean that “Fleet Exercise” of the PRC’s really was an invasion that was turned back? I’ve heard people claiming that, but…”

“Yep! A certain someone got in their way.” Joy chortled.

“Joy!” Ell said blushing brightly, “I didn’t stop them! All I did was help solve some of the comm problems we were having after the Chinese shot down our satellites!”

Joy snorted, “Yep, that’s all she did…” Joy raised her eyes to the ceiling. “Holy crap! Isn’t that enough?”

Phil lifted his arm off Ell’s shoulders, “Holy crap is right! My arm’s on fire just touching such a hot commodity.”

Ell grinned up at him and grabbed his hand, pulling his arm back down onto her shoulders, “Hey, a girl needs her hugs, the least you can do is keep your arm around me until you have a few blisters.” She tilted her head and frowned seriously. “But really, it wasn’t that big a deal. It just happened that some communication chips I came up with last fall could substitute for the lost satellite comm. Joy makes it sound like I went over there and stopped the PRC myself!”

Phil rolled his eyes, “So, tell us, what did happen then?”

Ell was saved by the waiter who stepped up to the table then, asking, “Can I get you some drinks while you look over the menus?”

However, once their orders had been placed, they dragged the story of what had happened out of her, including the story of her PGR chips, their quantum entanglement and instantaneous communication capabilities. At every turn, a flabbergasted Phil heard her describe her accomplishments as if anyone else could have done the same if they’d simply been lucky like she had. She played her role down and asked them not to make a big deal of it, especially in view of the fact that the President wanted public acceptance of the fiction that the PRC had only been undertaking a “training exercise.”

Eventually Ell managed to deflect attention from herself by using the tactic of asking them what their own plans were. Jason had applied to med school. Ell gave him a high five. “Hey, I didn’t know you were that kind of student!”

He lifted his chin, “I have been forced to hide my light under a bushel so you bourgeois individuals would accept me into your circle.” He raised an eyebrow aristocratically and held up his beer mug.

Phil said, “Put your pinky out when you lift that beer, Mr. Academic!”

Joy chortled, “You were worried that you were too ‘smart’ to hang out with Donsaii!? That’s a good one!”

Ell turned to her, “What about you, Joy?”

Joy shrugged, “I applied to flight school. I think I’ve got a pretty good shot at being accepted ‘cause my vision’s 20/20, hearing’s good and my reaction time is better than average. Like everyone else I’m dreaming of being selected for fighter aviation but there aren’t all that many slots now that UAVs are doing so much. I’m trying not to set my hopes too high.”

“When do you find out?”

“After Christmas.”

Ell turned back to Jason, “When do you find out about med school?”

“Sometime Spring semester.”

Ell looked up at Phil, “What are your plans big guy?”

Phil shrugged, “I’ve been applying for astronaut training. I may be screwed though. They recently reduced the height limit to 6’ 3” when they took the R20 capsules out of service. I’m 6’ 3” plus a half. They have so many good applicants that they probably won’t overlook that extra half inch. If so, I’ll try for aviation I guess.”

Phil sounded pretty depressed about it to Ell. “Aren’t they talking about a bigger launch vehicle?”

Phil shrugged, “Yeah, but if I were running things, I probably wouldn’t take on an oversized astronaut trainee in the ‘hope’ that we’d have a bigger vehicle by the time he was trained.”

Joy said, “Have you tried slouching for the measurements?”

Phil frowned, “My height is all over the Academy documentation!”

Joy shrugged, “Just say they inflated your height to make you look bigger on the wrestling programs, then slouch when they measure you. I can change my height a couple inches by standing up straight or slouching.”

Phil gazed at her musingly a moment, “That’s what I like about you Joy. Your mind is soooo devious.” His eyes sparkled.

“Think nothing of it,” she grinned, “Actually, I’m just trying to reduce the competition for my aviation slot.”

After finishing their meal they went out bar hopping. Ell ordered a Coke and for a moment Phil started to chide her, then he remembered that she was only nineteen. She leaned up against a rail next to him as they looked out over the crowd in the Roost. “Astronaut huh?”

Phil shrugged, “Yeah,” he looked mildly embarrassed, “always been a dream.”

She smiled up at him, “What do you want to do up there?”

He smiled, “Be weightless, fly a spaceship, go to the moon—if we ever go back, cowboy up an asteroid or two and bring them back to earth orbit for space resources.” Come back down to earth and brag about it.” He waggled his eyebrows and grinned, “Have pretty girls like you go all googly eyed over me. You name it; I’ve dreamed about it.”

Ell raised an eyebrow, “But I’m already all googly eyed over you.” She frowned, “How many googly eyed girls you shootin’ for anyway?”

Phil stared at her a few moments, eyes darting from place to place about her delicate features, then he said huskily, “If it were you… one would be enough.”

Ell got a little frog in her throat, then said huskily, “You do say the nicest things lately Mr. Zabrisk.”

Their “moment” was broken when a soprano voice said, “Phil! I haven’t seen you in ages!” A blond girl threw her arms around him for a big hug.

Phil’s eyes widened in alarm at Ell but he said, “Uh, hi Cathy. Good to see you.” After a moment he disentangled himself but, after Cathy had moved on, he and Ell never regained the closeness of the moment they’d had.

Part One

Chapter One

Boston—PGR Comm admitted today that their new communications chip technology is based on a physics paper published in Nature last year by Ell Donsaii, the young gymnast who stunned the sports world two years ago, receiving three “10’s” and four gold medals in the Olympic gymnastic competition…

Chancellor Joseph Kellet surveyed the room. To his relief their “anonymous” donor had apparently not arrived as yet. He saw that the Chair of the UNC Department of Physics as well as her Vice Chair were present as the donor had requested. His own assistant and a couple of the Vice Chancellors were there also. He walked over to check on the refreshments and noticed that a good deal of the ice had melted. He turned to the pretty brunette student who had been examining the refreshments and said, “Would you mind refilling the ice? There’s an ice machine out that door.” He pointed her in the right direction.

She grinned at him, saying “Yes sir,” and picking up the large glass bowl.

He turned to his Executive Vice Chancellor and said, “Hi Mary, any word on when the donor is going to arrive?” She was looking after the girl with the ice with a horrified expression

Mary said, “I think you may have just sent her for ice…”

“What!!!”

“Mary darted a glance at the door, just closing behind the young, brunette woman, “I’m not sure, but I’d been wondering when the donor might arrive myself. Then I found myself looking at that girl. She came in the main door and didn’t seem to know her way around. She doesn’t work in our offices. She can’t be the actual donor, but she may be a representative.”

“Oh my God!” Kellet turned and stared, “She looks like a teenager! Are you sure?”

Mary said, “Of course I’m not sure! But we don’t know anything about the donor and I know everyone else here!”

Kellet started for the door he’d sent the young woman through. As he opened it he found the young woman standing on the other side holding the newly filled bowl of ice. She grinned at him and breezed through the door he was holding open. He reached for the bowl of ice.

She smiled sunnily and sailed by him to the refreshment table.

Kellet followed, nervously attempting to reach out and assist with the bowl. Embarrassed, he realized that everyone in the room was staring at him.

She set the bowl down, scooped up some ice and put it in a glass which she handed to the Chancellor. She filled a second glass for herself. “Coke?” she asked smiling at him sunnily.

“Uhh… ginger ale.”

She poured ginger ale for him and a Coke for herself, then raised her glass to him. When he touched his to hers she winked, “Yes, Chancellor Kellet, as you’re probably realizing, I am your donor’s representative.”

Mortified, Kellet said, “I am so, so sorry! I thought you were one of the student interns we have in our offices from time to time.”

Still grinning she winked at him and whispered, “I could tell.”

A few nervous titters broke out among the nearby people in the room who had been watching the interaction with the fascination reserved for a slow motion train wreck. But then Ell turned to the room with a broad smile. “Hello folks, I’m Raquel Blandon and I represent your ‘anonymous’ donor. Please call me ‘Raquel.’ I’ve met Chancellor Kellet here, but I’d like to meet the rest of you before we talk about the donation I’m planning to make here today?”

She passed among them shaking everyone’s hands. It was obvious from her comments that she had researched everyone in the room and already knew their backgrounds. When they were all seated, she smiled at them again and said, “So far you are aware that I’m representing the donor of a substantial sum of money to the University. To clarify, it is expected to be approximately 115 million dollars per year for ten to twenty years.”

A stunned silence greeted this announcement. Chancellor Kellet said, “My goodness, that’s wonderful. May we know the name of the donor?”

She shook her head. “I am meeting with you because there are a few strings attached.” She grinned at the Chair of the Physics Department as she said, “Fifty percent of this money is to be spent on Physics, from buildings, to research, to hiring faculty, to special physics scholarships. Essentially, in-state students admitted to the Physics program are all to be able to attend UNC tuition free and out of state Physics students are to have very low tuition. This funding for faculty and research should enable you to make this one of the best, if not the very best Physics program in the country. One page summaries of physics research projects to be funded must be submitted to the donor for approval. Some recipients of the Physics scholarship slots might be specified by the donor. Finally, the donor wishes to remain anonymous. This last is very important—so important that attempts to determine who the donor is may result in a loss of this funding.”

They all stared at her in consternation. Finally the Chancellor said, “Um, we’ll just have the University’s attorneys write up an agreement…”

He paused at a minute shake of Ell’s head. She said, “You can readily access your AI’s (Artificial Intelligence’s) audio record of what I just specified. You will find that the first 115 million has been deposited anonymously into your public account in the past few minutes. I have ported you the website where Physics research proposals can be posted for approval.” She looked at the Physics Chair, You might warn your faculty that they won’t be funded they aren’t enthusiastically teaching their undergrad and grad students. Otherwise, there need not be any interaction between the University and the donor. The money will continue to arrive as long as the donor is satisfied that you are fulfilling the spirit, not just the letter of what I’ve laid out for you. No need for an agreement. Thank you for your attention.” Before anyone in the stunned room got enough of a grip to say anything she had slipped out the door.

***

Washington D.C.— Today the White House announced negotiations intended to reduce the disruption of the communication industry that has been caused by the quantum entangled chips introduced by PGR Comm. The stock markets have reacted violently as the capabilities of the new chips have become evident and this unrest…

Dave Slager looked around as a loud “bang” sounded behind him and a tremor ran through the Space Station. Slager closed his eyes. It was a micrometeorite strike. Sounded like a pretty big one. The station was “armored” with Kevlar padding to protect against strikes but the sound of this one had been different, as if it hit something that wasn’t armored?

Jim Sasson yelled, “I think it hit the CRV!”

Slager grimaced. Sasson was more excitable than the typical astronaut but everyone cut him some slack because he was such a genius. However, yelling that the meteorite had hit the Crew Return Vehicle which was intended to evacuate the space station scientists in case of an emergency? That seemed akin to yelling “fire” in a theater to Slager. Unfortunately, the CRV was one part of the Station that wasn’t covered in Kevlar, so Sasson may well be right.

About thirty minutes later Emil Taussan pulled himself into Slager’s area.

Slager looked at him with raised eyebrows.

Taussan shook his head, “I’ve inspected the interior of the CRV and it seems fine. No atmosphere leak. But I think Sasson’s right so I will suit up for an EVA (Extra Vehicular Activity or “spacewalk”) and inspect the exterior.”

Slager shrugged his shoulders, “OK, better safe than sorry.” He turned back to his work.

***

Washington D.C.—NASA announced today that a meteorite strike had damaged the rocket nozzle of the Crew Return Vehicle which serves as an “escape pod” for the International Space Station in case of emergency. NASA said they expected to be able to send up a replacement nozzle on the next supply ship. Apparently they believe that the nozzle can be replaced by an EVA mission.

Mary and Ell strolled together across the campus of NCSU in Raleigh.
Steve prowled about a hundred feet in front of them. As head of Ell’s security detail, Steve had agreed that having her walk with Mary made her look more like the other students and so was good “coloration.” He himself was “pretending” to be a grad student crossing campus on a similar course.

Ell nudged Mary, “Steve doesn’t do ‘oblivious grad student’ very well does he? He looks more like a panther searching for its next meal.”

Mary stifled a laugh, “It is difficult to make six foot two inches of solid muscle look like it spends most of its time musing in the library.”

Ell snickered, “I swear I can see the ghost of his old M-25 in his hands!” She paused, “Well, this is the Physics building. You guys could have some coffee in the little shop over there while I’m upstairs.”

Roger Emmerit fidgeted and slid a finger under the collar of his shirt. He seldom wore a tie and it was driving him crazy. Of course, his nerves might also have something to do with the fact that he was about to defend his thesis for his PhD.

Dr. Johnson and the other two professors on his committee had arrived and seated themselves in the front row of the small conference room. Dr. Johnson had insisted that he redo his experiments repeatedly when they failed to support classical theories in Physics. Then Roger had had to repeat and modify his experiments many more times, once he’d demonstrated that the results he was getting were compatible with the new math conventions and theories that Donsaii had published in Nature. For a while Roger had wondered whether Dr. Johnson would ever allow him to defend his thesis but as experiment after experiment agreed with Donsaii and failed to meet the predictions of classical theory Johnson had finally relented.

Several other people had gradually filtered in and seated themselves in the audience. More than he had expected. They registered mostly as blurs to Roger, though he assumed that some of his grad student friends were there. Johnson said, “Let’s get this show on the road.”

Roger turned to the big screen at the front of the room. He began to speak as his first images appeared on the screen. Forty minutes later by the clock and forever by his internal time sense he finished his presentation and asked for questions. An initial barrage of questions flowed over him. Some other faculty had shown up, having heard of Roger’s surprising results and their questions reflected their dubiousness regarding his results, or at least regarding his interpretation. Here Professor Johnson’s earlier attacks served him well, because he’d already heard all of their objections from Johnson and had done the experiments to show that their contentions were incorrect. The questions slowed and eventually trickled to a stop. Finally his committee asked that the room be cleared for their deliberations. Roger stepped outside with everyone else and his friends clustered around to shake his hand and wish him well.

Al and James promised to buy him a beer at West 87 no matter the results. Emma gave him a hug and whispered fiercely, “They’d better give you a pass.”

Jerry gave him a “bro” hug with a slap on the back and said, “Good luck. We Alpha Centaurians are on your side.” Everyone chuckled at Jerry’s old joke.

Roger looked around. A couple of more distant friends spoke among themselves. Suddenly he recognized a familiar posture in the slender girl leaning up against the wall with her hoodie up and hiding her face. “Ell?”

She turned and grinned at him as everyone else standing in the hall turned to stare. She pulled her hoodie back exposing her short reddish blond hair and crossed the distance to him in three strides, throwing her arms around him and hugging him fiercely.

Hugging her back Roger said, “Damn, girl! Why didn’t you say something?”

She drew back and raised an eyebrow, “Didn’t want to throw you off—or make the professors think I was trying to influence your findings as they regarded my theory.”

The door opened behind Roger. Professor Johnson leaned out, “Roger?” He motioned him back in. Suddenly Johnson’s eyes lit on Ell. He turned back to the room behind him and said, “I’ll be just a moment.” Then he stepped out into the hall and said, “Ms. Donsaii, a word please?”

Ell, dreading the possibility that Johnson would be confrontational again, stepped down the hall with him.

He said, “I would like to thank you very much, not just for funding my research application. Though, I’ll admit that your prompt authorization of the funding for my project surprised me no end. But, what I really want to thank you for is the audio-video record you forwarded of our interactions. I’m embarrassed to say that I had no idea just how obnoxious I can be until I watched your video of myself being an ass from the perspective of the person I was treating so poorly. Old habits are very hard to break but I am making a sincere effort.”

Ell’s eyebrows rose, “I am so happy to hear that Dr. Johnson!”

He said, “I have to get back in there with Roger’s doctoral committee but I hope you’ll have a drink with us at the traditional West 87 celebration?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

West 87 was crowded with well wishers. James held up his glass, “To Doctor Emmerit!”

A chorus of “Hear, hear,” resounded.

Johnson said, “I’ll buy one more round for you hooligans, then Dr. Emmerit and I are going to take on all comers at the pool table.”

James chortled, “Oh, you’re going down tonight Professor. Ell, will you be my partner again?”

Laughing, Ell shook her head vigorously.

Once more drinks had been delivered James turned to Ell again. “Come on. You know the Professor just thinks it was luck that let us beat them last time. We’ve got to take them on again and show them the error of their ways!”

Ell raised her eyebrows, “It was luck!”

“No way!” James grabbed her elbow and tugged her toward the tables where Roger and Dr. Johnson were racking the balls.

Ell dragged her feet, protesting feebly but then Emma said, “Come on Ell. Show us what you can do at pool like you did at foosball.”

This urging reminded Ell how she had regretted playing “full on” at foosball the year before. Her athletic abilities had stunned the group but left her feeling embarrassed to be known as someone with bizarre abilities. She turned to Emma and whispered, “No! There are too many people watching! I don’t want strangers thinking I’m some kind of freak! Help me get out of this?”

Emma looked into Ell’s eyes a moment, seeing the anxiety there and then said, “Sorry James, Ell and I need to have a little ‘girl talk.’ Jerry, you play as James’ partner.” She assertively led Ell back to the booth despite some lingering protests.

Once they were seated Emma said, “So, if I’m going to protect you here, you’re going to have to spill the beans. What’s going on between you and Roger?”

Ell shrugged, “We’re just good friends.”

Emma’s eyes widened, “Hah. ‘Just good friends’ don’t submit a paper to the APS simply in hopes they can visit their ‘friend’ in Las Vegas.”

Ell tilted her head, “Really good friends?”

Emma snorted, “I should say. You gonna make an honest man out of him?”

Ell rolled her eyes, “He’d need to participate in that you know. Besides, remember I’m only nineteen? You might find it hard to believe but Roger’s the first boy I ever kissed. I probably should see a little more of the world before I settle down don’t you think?”

In shock Emma said, “Your first kiss! Age eighteen! You’ve got to be kidding!”

Ell stared at her hands, “I’m a late bloomer?”

Emma grinned at her. “So you’re gonna play the field first?!”

Ell shrugged and looked embarrassed, “Maybe? I don’t know. I like Roger a lot.”

When almost all his well wishers had left West 87 Roger turned to Ell, James and Jerry, saying, “I’m done in and heading to the barn. See you guys next week.”

Ell said, “I’ll walk you home. You’ll be needing some protection from the ‘Rigellians.” She winked at Jerry.

Jerry put a hand over his heart, “But then who’ll protect me?”

Ell raised her eyebrows, “Surely you jest! Everyone knows that Rigellians don’t like the taste of Alpha Centaurians! You’re perfectly safe.”

As they walked Ell was happy to find her hand in Roger’s again. “So, what are you gonna do with that shiny new doctorate?”

Roger shrugged, “I really don’t know. I want to do research. Sometimes I think I’d like to work for industry but I’m afraid of being told to work on some problem I’m not interested in. I’m thinking I’ll have to stay in academics, do a post-doc or something, then join the ranks of the professors. Right now I’m planning to spend some time looking around at what’s available since I’ve got the PhD pretty much wrapped up. Maybe the perfect job will find me?”

“What do you want to study in your research?”

“Hmmm, I’m kinda interested in a crazy new theory by this chick named Donsaii. Maybe you’ve heard of her?”

Ell grinned up at him and punched him lightly on the shoulder.

Roger said, “This is my place. I’d love to have you come in as long as you promise to behave yourself? No taking advantage of my drink addled state?”

Ell stopped, and when he stopped too she put her arms around him for a hug. “Maybe you shouldn’t invite me in then. Who knows what I’ll be tempted to do with you in such a pliable condition? I probably wouldn’t be able to leave without some kisses...” She leaned her head back and smiled up at him again.

He shrugged, “OK, I guess I could part with a few of those.” He grinned back and turned to open the door…

Chapter Two

Cape Canaveral.—Today’s launch of ILX Corporation’s Vulcan 5 rocket ended in failure when the rocket failed to stay on course and had to be destroyed. This is the second failure of the new Vulcan 5 launch vehicle that was expected to take over the supply of the aging International Space Station. More concerning is the fact that this launch was carrying the replacement rocket nozzle for the Space Station’s Crew Recovery Vehicle. The CRV’s nozzle had recently been destroyed by a micro meteorite, leaving the astronauts without a means to escape in case of an emergency. NASA director James Epaulding described this as one of a “perfect storm” of problems for the Station but said that they fully expect to solve these problems…

Ann Tandy parked her car so that the Century 21 Commercial Real Estate decal on its door would be obvious to anyone entering the empty parking lot. She walked over to the door of the closed QemZ research facility and checked to be sure that the digital key her AI’d downloaded would in fact open the door. She stepped inside, Good, the heat is on. She’d sent Jake out to warm up the building and check for any other problems that morning and Jake rarely failed to perform—but she always worried. She flipped on the lights and looked around. Good, looks clean. She walked down a hallway looking into the various offices and cubicles.

Ann checked the research/production area which consisted mostly of a huge empty space with a number of big chemical tanks and some industrial sized stainless steel tables. Satisfied, she walked back outside to wait for the prospective buyer. She’d been communicating with this “Raquel Blandon” for several days now. Blandon had been very reserved about who or what company she represented which made Ann nervous. She sounded kind of young and Ann had had the unsettling thought that she might be being “pranked.” Blandon had specified a facility in the Research Triangle Park near Chapel Hill with some large “industrial” rooms and a total of 10-20,000 square feet. Even with those broad specifications this QemZ facility was the only available place that really came close. Ann hoped it would meet their needs; she could really use a commission about now.

A car pulled into the lot and parked near Ann’s. A young brunette woman got out and began walking towards her. Ann’s heart sank. She was just a girl! Then to Ann’s immense relief another car pulled in and parked a few spaces away from the first car. Hopefully these would be the real buyers?

“Ms. Tandy?” The young woman said, putting out her hand to shake, “I’m Raquel Blandon.” Because Ann had her attention focused on the other car Blandon looked back over her shoulder at it. Three men had gotten out of the vehicle, but the men just started walking off around the far corner of the building. “Uh, the guys’ll just walk around the outside.” Blandon said.

Ann’s shoulders sagged. “You’re the one interested in this building?” she said dubiously.

Blandon grinned at her and said, “Yep. I’m guessing you’re worried that I’m too young?”

Ann raised her eyebrows and said, “This facility is listing for 3.7 million dollars.”

Blandon nodded enigmatically and said, “I know. Shall we look around?”

Trying to avoid gnashing her teeth, Ann dispiritedly said, “Sure,” and opened the door.

To Ann’s surprise the girl spent only a few minutes in the office space, giving it at best a cursory examination. But she went over the industrial space with a fine-toothed comb. She examined each of the vats, looking at their outsides and then peering at their insides with a flashlight. She went outside and scrutinized each of the huge insulated liquid and gas storage tanks in the fenced in enclosure out back. Back inside she carefully looked over the industrial stainless steel tables and cabinets. She spent 20 minutes in the “machine shop,” exclaiming over and turning on and off every one of the large machines, including some that apparently communicated with the young lady’s AI once they had been powered up.

As she left the machine shop Blandon said, “We’ll offer 3.4 million. Please let me know if the sellers are agreeable?”

“What! Wait! Who do you represent? I’ll have to assure the buyers that you can actually finance the purchase.”

“Say that I represent…” the girl looked to one side as if thinking, “‘D5,’ a… new company. Check your account. I’ve just deposited 3.4 million. Of course I’ll expect to get it back if the sale doesn’t go through.”

In astonishment Ann looked up at her HUD (Heads Up Display) and saw her AI’s confirmation of the deposit.

“D5?”

“Yes Ma’am.” She grinned, “for ‘Dimension Five.’ Let me know what the sellers say.” she said, and turned to walk to her car.

***

Boston—Today, President Teller announced that he had brokered a deal with PGR Comm to license their “quantum entangled chip” technology to existing communications companies. This agreement has been trumpeted as a means to prevent the collapse of current cell phone, cable and other telecommunication companies due to their inability to compete with PGR Comm’s new chips. Such a meltdown of the communication industry had been forecast to result in the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and those predictions had already resulted in huge losses in the stock market. President Teller proclaimed the agreement to be a means to “provide an orderly transition to a new technology in this important industry…”

Aaron Miller’s receptionist Sally looked up when the door to their waiting room opened. A slender young woman stepped in and walked over to Sally’s desk. The young lady had reddish blond hair and a pixie face. As she got closer Sally realized she was quite young. She had even features, brilliant green eyes and a flawless complexion. The young woman looked like a model, but, Sally frowned, what would a model be doing in a patent attorney’s office? Is she lost?

The young lady said, “Hello, I’m Ell Donsaii. I have a spot on Mr. Miller’s schedule under the pseudonym ‘Blandon’?”

Startled, Sally recognized the young lady now. “Um, yes Ma’am! I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you. I’m sure Mr. Miller will see you now. He’s told me he’d see you anytime.” She tilted her head, “Why did you use a pseudonym?” Sally realized with embarrassment that she was burbling.

“Sorry, I don’t like having my real name on calendars. There are people out there who’ve caused me a lot of trouble.”

Sally’s AI confirmed that Mr. Miller wanted her to bring Ell back to his office. Sally said, “Right this way.” She indicated a door decorated with a Christmas wreath.

Miller enthusiastically met Ell at the door to his office, “Hello, hello, what can I do for you Ms. Donsaii?”

Ell shook his hand, “I’d like to submit another patent application please.”

Miller looked over her shoulder, “Is Dr. Smythe here?”

“Uh, no, this patent is separate from the previous one he helped me with. And…” she grinned at him, “thanks to you guys I have plenty of money to take this patent out without his help.”

Miller shook his head briefly, reminding himself that the previous patent had actually been for Ell Donsaii’s intellectual property, not Dr. Smythe’s. It was difficult to get his head around the fact that this pretty teenage girl was a genius. Because Dr. Smythe had brought her in the first time, Miller’s subconscious somehow always managed to attribute her brilliant invention to Smythe and thought of Donsaii as Smythe’s protégé, even though, intellectually, he knew better. “Excuse me, Ms. Donsaii. Step into my conference room and tell me about this new invention.”

Miller sat listening with more and more incredulity as the young woman described a method she’d worked out to connect one location to another through “ports” defined by pairs of entangled molecules. The PGR chips she’d invented sent data instantaneously from one location to another using a single pair of entangled molecules. This invention apparently worked on an extension of the same principles by using entangled molecules to form a connection from one location to another through her “fifth dimension.” Instead of one pair of entangled molecules, this new invention used many entangled molecules arranged in a circle to make a physical connection from one location to another. The entire concept was quite similar to the “wormholes” proposed by a number of others. The big difference was that this wasn’t a hypothesis. The girl claimed that she had actually created some of these ports. It required a highly specialized set of electronics to “energize” the “portal.” Making a very large opening would be extremely difficult and expensive because of the need to construct the opening one entangled molecule pair at a time. Before she hired people to work out techniques for making such ports more efficiently and to investigate possible methods to make the ports without such labor-intensive manipulations, she wanted the concept to be patent protected. Resisting the urge to call Dr. Smythe to confirm that this wasn’t all just a pipe dream, Miller took extensive notes and began planning out a patent application.

***

Los Angles— ILX Corporation admitted to finding a “design flaw” in their Vulcan 5 launch vehicles that have blown up recently. Apparently the modified rocket nozzles that allowed ILX to engineer a greater thrust to weight ratio and undercut their competitors are at fault. It is unclear whether ILX will be able to honor its commitments to provide cheaper service to space. NASA director James Epaulding was heard to say “This is a disaster of the first water…”

Amy and Steve entered Ell’s room at the Red Roof Inn in Chapel Hill. Amy choked back a giggle at the incongruity. Here was a woman who’d soon be receiving her second “minimum royalty” of 2.1 billion dollars, sitting cross legged on the bed in a cheap hotel instead of in a suite in the most prestigious lodgings available. However, as head of Ell’s security team, Steve liked the anonymity provided by such a modest and unlikely place. Plus, it seemed that Ell had no desire to stay in an elegant hotel. She turned to them, “OK, tomorrow I’m going to be starting to interview people out at the old QemZ facility. Steve, how are you coming in regards to providing security out there?”

“The company that you hired to do remodeling and renovation of the building has subcontracted installation of some of the security features I wanted. They’ve already brought out a portable guard shack and placed it at the entrance until a permanent one can be built. For now I’ve hired a local security firm to provide a ‘guard presence’ at all times. They aren’t of the quality of your personal security team, but with the budget you’ve provided we should have enough of them there around the clock to do what we need.”

“Amy, what about a more permanent place for us to live?”

Amy looked up, “First I want to mention that the equipment from your ‘lab’ in Las Vegas was delivered to the old QemZ facility yesterday.” She frowned, “I really think we should refer to it by our new name D5, but I’d like to suggest ‘D5Research’ so it doesn’t just sound like a quadrant on a map?”

“Great idea, we’ll ‘incorporate’ using that name. Can you get the lawyers on that?”

Amy said, “OK.” She had her AI make a note, “Regarding your first question, I’ve found three houses for you to look at. And, Ell, I wanted to say that I truly appreciate your willingness to live in the Chapel Hill area where the public schools will be good for Mike and Janey.”

Ell shrugged, “No problem, I’m looking forward to living there myself. Besides, it’ll make my commute to class shorter.”

“You’re really going to go back to school?”

Ell shrugged again, “Yeah, there are a couple of classes I want to take. I could learn this stuff by reading on line but there’s something I like about being in a class and having somebody explain things to me. Besides, it gives me a chance to hang out with kids my age.”

Steve chuckled, “Well, you aren’t going to have complaints from the security detail about having to follow you around a college campus. I’ll have to work out something to keep them on task instead of girl-watching.”

Ell grinned, “I don’t mind if they enjoy the ‘scenery’ as long as they’re ready to go if and when I need them.”

She turned to Amy, “I don’t have my first interview until 11. Can we look at houses first thing in the morning?”

“I’ll call the agent, but I’m sure she’ll be willing.”

The next morning they drove out to look at the houses Amy had picked out. Ell really liked the first one but Steve was not happy. “There’s no place for your security team to stay is there?”

Ell said, “It’s pretty big, couldn’t they stay in one of the rooms?”

“Either they’d have to stay in that one room, which would be uncomfortable for them, or they’ll be out wandering around your house which won’t give you any privacy. You need a house with a ‘mother in law’s’ apartment out back. Or one with another small house next door that you could buy as well. And, Amy, you should live close by as well.”

Amy grimaced, “I wasn’t thinking about those issues. I don’t think the other two houses I picked out will be any good either. Maybe we should give it up for today and I’ll ask the agent to look around some more with me over the next few days?”

They spoke a few minutes more and agreed to Amy’s suggested plan. Ell and Steve started driving out to the “D5Research” facility. As their cars left the neighborhood they’d been in and drove past a small farm Steve asked his AI to call Ell. “We need a place like this farm we’re passing. It has several small buildings the team could stay in and work out in. Lots of space to run and circulate guard details. You could even have your own separate small lab in that barn.”

“Is it for sale?”

“Well, no. But I mean we need to find a place like that.”

“Hmmm, let’s go talk to them.” Her car slowed and started to turn.

“What?!” Steve sounded scandalized. “It isn’t for sale.”

“Come on Steve. Everything’s for sale.”

A few minutes later Steve found himself standing behind Ell as she knocked on the door of the farmhouse.

A stout, pinched looking matron came to the door wiping her hands. She grimaced and said, “Sorry, we’re Baptists. Not interested.”

Ell grinned at her. “We’re not here to convert you or sell anything. Actually, we’d like to buy your farm. How much would you take for it?”

“It ain’t for sale.” The lady made to close the door.

Ell said, “Five million dollars.”

The door, mostly closed, stopped and opened a little again. The woman stared at Ell wide eyed.

Ell said, “Your family bought these 21.4 acres with the house, two outbuildings and the horse barn for 2.4 million dollars 19 years ago. Current appraisal value would be approximately 3.3 million dollars. I’m offering quite a bit more than that, but would want to take possession of it quickly.

The woman turned her head and hollered, “Harald…”

“You’ve what!” Amy said incredulously.

“Bought the farm.” Ell said with a little giggle. “Actually, we only ‘agreed in principle’ to buy a small horse farm. Allan (Ell’s AI) has sent you the address. I’ve offered a lot more than the appraised value and they’ve agreed to move out within the week but will continue to maintain the property for at least six months. Steve likes it. It’s in the right school district. It’s an easy drive to work and to the University for me. And—I think it’s pretty.”

“But there isn’t anything like that for sale out there!”

“Sure there is. If you offer enough money… I’ve got to head over to D5R. Please get that real estate agent to help you work out the details of the sale.”

As his car cruised I-40, Roger Emmerit wondered what this “D5Research” was? He’d never heard of it but it had popped up in his job search engine several days ago. He’d been running a job search for “PhD, physics, research, no experience required, North Carolina…” for a couple of months now with only weak matches until last week when this one had popped up. It matched nearly every characteristic he’d given. He was excited to see it was located nearby in the Research Triangle Park. However, he felt concerned that a new tech company might not have much staying power. Oh well, he thought, if it folds, I’ll have some “experience” to put on my next job application.

His car turned in at a small facility and stopped at a guard shack where the guard leaned down to get a good image of him. The shack looked very temporary. After a moment the guard looked up at his HUD and said, “Dr. Emmerit?”

Roger looked blandly back at him, “Yep.”

“You’re expected and can go on in. The main entrance is at the right front of the building.”

Roger frowned as he looked around, “How long has this “D5Research” company been here?”

”I think just since last week sir. My security company was contracted to start providing protection on Monday. Lots of construction vehicles going in and out so I assume they’ve just bought the building here and are remodeling it.”

Roger’s heart sank, “Thanks,” he said to the guard as he had the car move on into the facility. Maybe it was just a new facility for an established company? His AI hadn’t turned anything up on “D5Research” but it wasn’t unheard of for the research wing to have a distinct name from the main company. The parking lot was about half full, but at least two thirds of the vehicles appeared to be contractor’s trucks. Roger’s car pulled up to the right end of the front of the building and he got out.

Four men were putting up a “D5Research” sign by the door as he approached and Roger had to wait for one to scooch aside so he could enter. Inside a couple of men were tearing up the carpet. Roger had to step around them and a small Christmas tree to approach a receptionist’s window.

The young man behind the window looked up, then down at a monitor. “Dr. Emmerit?”

“That’s me.”

“If you’ll step through the door over there Sir, I’ll meet you in the hall behind it.”

Roger opened the door and the young man met him on the other side in a long hallway. Roger said, “What does this company do? I can’t find anything about it on the net.”

“Research, Sir. I’m afraid I don’t know all that much about what the research involves. I was only hired last Friday. So far everything has been focused on hiring admin personnel and researchers like yourself. Well that, and the remodeling of course.”

The receptionist took Roger down the hall to meet a lady in an office labeled by a sheet of paper taped to the door. It said, “Human Resources.” The young man said, “Hey Nancy,” to the dark haired woman in her thirties sitting behind the desk. “This is Dr. Roger Emmerit, one of the physicist applicants.”

He turned back to Roger, waving a hand at the woman, “Nancy Moore.”

“Nancy” looked away from her screen and smiled at Roger, “Thank you for coming out Doctor Emmerit.”

Still finding it odd to be addressed as “Doctor,” Roger said, “It’s no trouble, Ma’am. Please call me Roger. I’m very interested in learning more about your company, is it new?”

“Well then, call me Nancy. Before I can tell you much about the company Roger, I’ll need to get you to sign a ‘non disclosure agreement’ or ‘NDA.’ I’ve ported it to your AI. Can you look it over and let me know if you’d feel comfortable signing?”

Roger’s eyebrows rose. He assumed that this was a pretty unusual request for a job interview since he’d never heard of such a request. Nonetheless he looked at up at his HUD and started reading. The NDA specified that, whether or not he took a job here, he wouldn’t speak of D5Research, or its field of study, or its founders for a period of two years.

He looked back at Nancy who was focused on her screens again. “And I can’t learn any more about the proposed job unless I sign?”

Nancy looked back at him, “I’m afraid not. The company is studying phenomena for which it has applied for patent protection but, even so, it doesn’t want word getting out.”

Roger agonized for a moment. This didn’t feel right to him. However, he found that the secrecy had made him even more curious. “OK, I’ll sign.”

Nancy said, “OK, your reading of the document and verbal agreement has been recorded as an ‘electronic signature,’ you do agree?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

Nancy leaned back in her chair, “D5Research, or ‘D5R’ as we call it here, is a new company founded to study phenomena predicted by a paper published in Nature a year and half ago. You’ve probably heard of the paper. It’s the one that has led to the new PGR chips that are causing all the upheaval in the communication industry. D5R has been founded to investigate a different, though related, phenomenon…” She halted as Roger put his hand up in a halting motion.

“Um, you should know that Ell Donsaii is a personal friend of mine.”

Nancy tilted her head quizzically, “Okaay?”

“She’s the one that wrote that paper in Nature you’re speaking of.”

“That’s correct.”

“I feel like I’d have to tell her that you’re working on her theory here so you might not want to tell me any more. I could have real conflicts with that NDA.”

Nancy cocked an eyebrow, “I’d point out that you’ve already signed that agreement. But it doesn’t matter,” she grinned, “Ms. Donsaii is aware of D5R.”

Taken aback, Roger said, “Okaay?” himself.

“In case you decide to join our team you need to be aware that D5R plans to offer very competitive salaries and benefits. For instance we’d expect you to start at a hundred fifty thousand a year. I’ve ported you a listing of the benefits to review at your convenience. If you’re still interested, I’ll need to take you to talk to our chief science officer?”

Roger, trying to appear blasé about the surprisingly large salary figure, shrugged. “Sure, I’d like to hear more.”

Nancy stood, “OK, let’s go find her.” She grinned at Roger as if she had a mysterious secret. Roger followed her down the hall. She stopped at another office. The door had another paper sign, this one saying “CEO-CFO-CSO-etcetera.” Nancy grinned back at Roger, “Not here.” Nancy winked, “She hardly ever is.” She turned and led Roger back the other way and out into an industrial space with a scattering of people around it. Roger’s head swiveled every which way trying to take it all in. Large crates labeled with the names of scientific research instruments lined one wall. Men in coveralls were mounting one of the large stainless steel tables onto vibration isolation supports. A group heaved one of the large boxes up onto one of the tables that already had isolation supports, evidently preparing to open it. Nancy, just in front of Roger said, “Ms. Donsaii? I have Dr. Emmerit here.”

Electric tingles ran up the back of Roger’s neck and prickled in his scalp as his head swiveled around to see Ell standing there with a small group. Grinning at him unrepentantly! “Ell?!”

“Hey Roger! What do you think of our little setup here?”

“Ell!” He turned his head to see Nancy grinning at him too. The rest of the little group looked puzzled.

Ell held up a finger. “Hold on a sec’ Roger. Let me finish up here so I can talk to you without being pressed to come back to this issue.” She turned back to the group she’d been with when Roger came up.

Nancy said, “Can I get you a coffee Roger?” She looked at him with an innocent twinkle in her eyes.

Roger snorted, “You had this all set up didn’t you?”

“Well, Ms. Donsaii had mentioned that she knew you and hoped you’d apply for the position. The coffee machine’s over here.”

Ell came up as Nancy handed Roger a cup of coffee. “Hey Rog’” she was still grinning ear to ear.

“Hey yourself! What is all this?”

“You’re not gonna believe this! You know how my theory predicts that quantum entanglement works because the entangled molecules are connected through a very tiny 5 dimension?”

Roger nodded.

“So that when something happens to one of the molecules, effects are seen at the other member of the entangled pair instantaneously, at least as near as we can tell?”

Roger nodded again.

“Well, it turns out that you can arrange entangled molecules in tiny circles and energize the area surrounded by them. When the energization field is correct, a physical opening appears through the 5 dimension like a little wormhole connecting the two rings!”

“What?!” Roger felt a sensation like an electric shock in his scalp and his head swam a little as if he had been physically stunned.

“Yeah. The holes I’ve made so far are microscopic. Some rich investors set D5R up to see if we can make them bigger.” Ell put a hand to the side of her mouth and lifted an eyebrow as she stage whispered, “Investors are crazy! Kinda put me in charge!”

Roger swayed slightly, “A, a, a… wormhole… that stuff can pass through?”

“Well, just gas and water so far, but, yeah. You wanna help us work on it?”

Chapter Three

Washington D.C.—NASA has come under some heat for depending too much on ILX Corporation’s Vulcan 5 rocket launch vehicle. Critics say the excitement over the Vulcan 5’s potential to launch larger payloads at significantly lower cost was unwisely allowed to disrupt the commercial space flight industry. Without prospects for future launch contracts, several of the companies that had been providing satellite launch and service to the Space Station have been shuttered. However, due to the repeated failures of the Vulcan 5 during actual launches NASA has been placed in the unenviable position of trying to resuscitate some of the companies that it let wither…”

“Holy crap! What a mess!” Dave Slager turned himself in place to face Emil Taussan who was running on the Space Station’s simulated weight bearing treadmill. “We should all have known that the figures for the Vulcan 5 were too good to be true!”

Emil shrugged. “But we all wanted them to be true.”

Slager grimaced, “You know we’re going to be on short rations up here pretty soon. None of the previous launch programs, Russian, European, or Japanese really have anything in the pipeline. ILX was supposed to keep one of their old launch vehicles ready until they were sure the Vulcan 5 was reliable, but I’ll bet they don’t really have one that they can send up quickly.”

Emil said, “If it gets too bad surely the Chinese would be willing to supply us.”

“Hah! Do you know that their capsules won’t even connect to our airlock? They’d have to work up an adapter and you know that nobody will even start on it until it’s almost too late.”

“What about India?”

“What about? They could get something up here I suppose, but their capsules are small and I’ll bet they don’t have the correct mechanisms to lock to our door either.”

“Maybe I should go evaluate the CRV’s rocket nozzle some more? Do you think there’s any chance we could repair it up here?”

“No chance at all, none, zippo. Even if we had equipment to weld it, the kind of weld we could make wouldn’t hold up to the heat the nozzle generates.”

***

Ed Candela looked up at a knock on his door. Mike Voight stood there looking grim. “How bad is it?”

Voight’s shoulders slumped. “Bad! ILX says they have a Vulcan 4 that they can launch in case of trouble but it turns out they don’t have any motors for it! They had been ‘planning to fit it with the new motors’ that they’ve been building for the Vulcan 5! ‘Didn’t want to waste money making any more of the inefficient Vulcan 4 motors!’”

Candela slammed a fist down on his desk, “Dammit!” He raised his eyes to the ceiling and slumped back in his chair. “How long to make more Vulcan 4 motors?”

Voight’s eyes rolled. “Six months! They repurposed the fabrication equipment to make the Vulcan 5 engines!”

Candela sighed and closed his eyes. “Please talk to the Chinese about whether they’d be willing to send a mission to the ISS. We’ll need to start now on building an adaptor to fit their capsule to the station. Then tell ILX we want them to try to send up another supply rocket using their existing Vulcan 5 after they’ve done what they can to stabilize the problem with their rocket motors. We’ve got to at least supply those guys up there somehow if we want them to last until we can get a mission up to retrieve them.”

***

Roger pulled his pecan pie out of the oven. Living in a family that owned a restaurant made Christmas dinner kind of weird. The Emmerit family tradition was that everyone made one dish. Some of the family made something exotic and new each holiday dinner. Some made something awful, for instance Aunt Gert’s fruitcake. Roger made pecan pie. He’d learned to make a pretty good one years ago and wasn’t interested enough in cooking to try to make something different each time. The doorbell rang as he carried it out to the big buffet the family was setting up. He went to pull the door open. “Well, hello Ms. Donsaii.” A smile threatened to crack his face, “How are you this evening?”

Ell grinned at him, “Well, I’m just fine Dr. Emmerit, thank you for asking.”

Roger grinned back, “Please allow me take that.” he took the covered dish she had in her hands. “And your coat?”

She handed him her coat too, then smirked at him. With both hands full, he wasn’t sure what to do next. Her eyes crinkled, “Perhaps I should take the dish back while you hang up my coat sir?”

Resignedly he said, “Perhaps so. Pray tell, what’s in the dish?”

“Mac and cheese. Probably not up to the standards of your family’s holiday meals, but it’s something I actually know how to make.”

“Oooohh,” Roger leaned close as he took it from her to put it on the buffet, “I love a good mac and cheese,” he said sotto voce, “people in my family feel they have to prove something by making things too fancy, if you know what I mean.”

Ell’s eyes sparkled and she raised her eyebrows, “I’m looking forward to fancy.”

From behind her Ell heard Roger’s Dad, “Is this the young lady you’ve invited Roger?”

Ell turned, “Hi Mr. Emmerit.”

His eyebrows rose, “Ms. Donsaii?”

“Yes sir.”

He darted an accusatory look at Roger, “Roger didn’t tell us he’d invited you to dinner, just kept referring to his ‘mysterious guest!’” Brows lowered, he said “I’ll have to have a word with him about keeping something like you a secret.”

Ell grinned at Roger, “Well, Mr. Emmerit, I’m probably mostly to blame. Ever since I was kidnapped last year I try to keep my intended whereabouts unknown if possible. He was probably respecting my wishes.” She winked, “I do think he could have told his own family though.”

“Well, my son is much too rude to offer you a drink but if you’ll come with me I’ll see to getting you a glass to hold.” He winked at Roger as he steered Ell toward the next room. He marveled at how pretty she was. Somehow, she looked even better than she did on video. “I know you and Roger were in grad school together a year ago, but then didn’t you go back in the military?”

“Yes sir, but I’m back out of the military again now. I’ve moved back to North Carolina…”

Bemused Ell looked around at the swirling menagerie of people pouring in to the Emmerit Christmas dinner. Aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, grandkids and a boyfriend for one of the cousins. Ell had invited Roger to a quiet Christmas Eve dinner with her, her mom and her Gram the night before and he’d countered with an invitation to this veritable feast and celebration. The two dinners couldn’t have been more different.

Roger’s sister Shelly’s ebullient acorn had fallen closer to the Emmerit tree than the introverted Roger’s. To Ell’s amazement they’d drawn lots to determine who sat where at a huge table which consisted of sheets of plywood on sawhorses. The table had been dressed up with large tablecloths so that its lowly nature wasn’t evident. Ell had greatly enjoyed their small, quiet dinner the night before, but being with this huge, raucous and loving family felt very special too.

At the dinner Ell found herself seated across the table and several seats down from Roger. Roger was horrified to see that the lottery had placed Ell next to Roger’s Grandmother Emmerit, a notorious snoop. This indomitable lady turned to Ell and said, “And you’re Roger’s guest?”

“Yes Mrs. Emmerit, I’m Ell.”

She looked Ell over, frowning. “Aren’t you awfully young for him? How old are you?”

Ell grinned at her and then over at Roger who, appalled by his Grandmother’s directness, rolled his eyes. “Yes, Ma’am. I’m only nineteen. I do like older men though.” She winked at Roger.

“Roger,” his Grandmother said turning to him, “How old are you now?”

“Twenty nine Gramma.”

“My goodness, ten years. He’s robbing the cradle isn’t he? So tell me, what are you doing young lady? Are you in school? I hope Roger isn’t dating his students.”

Finding it refreshing to talk to someone who had no idea who she was, Ell said, “No Ma’am, I’ve finished school. I did meet Roger in school but I wasn’t his student.” Ell glanced back over at Roger and, as she did, realized that many of the people in their portion of the table were hanging on every word of the conversation. Some appeared appalled by the way Ell was being interrogated. Others were restraining their mirth at their Grandmother’s ruthless questioning of someone who was relatively famous.

While the rest of the family were pondering asking for an autograph, Roger’s grandmother, having no idea who Ell was, was disappointed that she’d apparently dropped out after high school.

“So you’re working then?”

“Yes Ma’am.

“What kind of work do you do?”

“I do research at D5R.”

“Really?” Grandmother Emmerit thought to herself that it was pretty uppity for a nineteen year old high school graduate to be claiming to be “doing research” herself. But the girl is certainly beautiful, no need to wonder what Roger sees in her.
Surprising really, that a quiet boy like Roger would be with such a stunningly gorgeous young lady. “What kind of research does D5R do?”

Wide eyed, Roger said, “Gramma…” but paused when Ell held up a hand in his direction.

“They’re trying to find useful applications for the fifth dimension that’s recently been discovered.”

“Fifth dimension?!” she said dubiously.

“Yes Ma’am, another company called PGR Comm is already making chips that use that fifth dimension to make communication devices.”

“Humpf. What do you do there?”

Eyes twinkling Ell said, “A little of this, a little of that. I really like working on the research but the company’s very new so I spend a lot more time setting stuff up than I do on actual research right now.”

“Gramma!” Ell heard the boy on the other side of Grandmother Emmerit whisper urgently to her. Mrs. Emmerit turned to him and Ell faintly heard him whisper, “That’s Ell Donsaii! The girl that won all the gymnastic gold medals in Olympics!”

Mrs. Emmerit turned back to eye Ell speculatively. “So you’re a gymnast, eh?”

“I was Ma’am. I don’t do gymnastics anymore.” Her eyes crinkled, I’m much too old for that now.”

The conversation moved on to other topics but it was apparent that Roger’s grandmother remained highly dubious of the suitability of a nineteen year old high school graduate for her grandson, the newly minted physics PhD.

When the main meal had been cleared and people had been served dessert Roger’s father dinged a spoon on a glass and the huge table fell quiet. He said, “OK time for announcements.” He turned to his immediate left. “April, I think you have an announcement?”

Roger’s young, blond, blue eyed cousin proudly said “I just got accepted to NC State.”

Everyone at the table clapped and then held their glasses up for a toast. “What are you going to major in?” one of the aunts asked.

One of the younger girls stage whispered, “Boys.”

Red faced April paused to glare at the whisperer, then said, “I don’t know. I’m starting in ‘general studies’ until I decide.”

The same whisperer, “I told you, boys.”

They went around the table, some of the older people passing with a professed, “Nothing to report.” However all the young people said something. Some had graduated. Some had new jobs, one had purchased a new boat for his fishing business. Two were engaged to marry.

When it came Roger’s turn he blushed and said, “I’ve completed my degree and got a job.”

Someone sang out, “And what degree did you get?”

Still blushing, “A PhD in Physics.”

“Woohoo! A toast to Dr. Emmerit.” After everyone had raised their glass, “Where’s your new job?”

“I just started work at D5Research in Research Triangle Park.”

At this Grandmother Emmerit turned to look suspiciously at Ell. Ell could tell she wanted to ask more questions but the announcements went on around the table. When it came her turn Grandmother Emmerit passed and they all looked at Ell. She widened her eyes and said, “Pass.”

“Oh, no, all the young people have to announce something!”

Ell looked up at the ceiling a moment, then raised her glass and said, “I really like Roger Emmerit?”

Cheers and applause followed this announcement and the spotlight fell on the next person.

Once the announcements were done Grandmother Emmerit turned to Ell and narrowed her eyes. “You and Roger work at the same company?” she asked suspiciously.

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Don’t they have rules against dating your boss?”

Ell glanced at Roger, seeing he was appalled again and winked at him. “Why no. They don’t have such a rule, but it’s a very new company.” She frowned with concern, “Perhaps they should?”

Mrs. Emmerit said, “Well I for one think it’s bad karma to mix romance and work. But if you and Roger continue to hit it off, perhaps you could find another job?”

Roger finally couldn’t take it anymore, “Gramma!” He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Ell runs the company. She doesn’t work for me, I work for her. And if someone had to ‘get another job’ it would be me, not her!”

Mrs. Emmerit turned to stare at Roger in disbelief, then turned to look at all the others around her who were smothering their mirth. After a moment she threw her head back and laughed out loud. She turned back to Ell. “Well! I guess I’ve done stuck my foot in my mouth! I apologize. I guess you can tell from the way my own family’s laughing at me that this isn’t the first time I’ve done it?”

Eyes twinkling, Ell said, “Oh no Ma’am! I am absolutely astonished that anyone might think that!”

To her amazement Grandmother Emmerit grinned, then turned and stuck her tongue out at her nearby family members.

After the dinner was over a couple of the younger family members did ask Ell if she’d sign autographs for them. By the time she’d signed the entire family was bundling up to go out and sing carols for the neighbors. Ell went along and at first just mouthed the words, afraid of singing badly and spoil the harmony. A few minutes into the first carol she realized that several of the Emmerits sang horribly but joyfully so she joined in. Caroling turned out to be a funny, sweet, inspiring and joyful endeavor from which she returned home quite late.

***

Cape Canaveral—NASA and ILX today announced that they will attempt to launch another Vulcan 5 rocket with supplies to the International Space Station within the next two weeks. ILX hopes that some recent modifications they’ve made to the Vulcan 5 rocket motors will be successful. Although the supply situation at the Station is not desperate as yet, there is no doubt that a successful mission to the station is becoming a very high priority…

The D5R researchers had gathered around one of the big stainless steel tables in the middle of the big industrial room at the research facility for their morning meeting. Ell looked around the group, “Happy New Year to you all. Since we’re all so new, some even newer than others, I’d like to introduce and reintroduce the members of our little research group to each other. I’m Ell Donsaii. Since I wrote the original paper that our research is based on our investors have put me in charge of ‘directing’ D5R’s research program.” Ell waved to her right, “Roger Emmerit here has just completed his PhD in Physics at NCSU and is very interested in all aspects of our investigations but doesn’t have a particular specialization as yet. Next is Ben Stavos,” Ell indicated a slender thirty year old man with a shock of wild blond hair.” Ben comes to us from Hewlett Packard where he was a maven of microconstruction. He’s going to lead the team attempting to construct port rings by moving entangled molecules into place with high-speed micro assemblers. Fred Marsden,” Ell indicated a tall redheaded man, “comes to us from SUNY where he just completed a post doc with Edgar Venter working to quantum entangle macro molecules with some new techniques they’ve developed. He’ll lead our team that will see if they can successfully entangle carbon nanotube tori so that we don’t have to assemble ports two molecules at a time. Next is Brian Short,” Ell nodded at a grizzled man, “Brian is a lifelong machinist who can actually run all the equipment in our machine shop and claims he can make anything we need.”

Brian, waved his hands in protest, laughing, “Almost anything.”

Ell grinned at him, “I’m counting on ‘anything’ we need.” She pointed, “Vivian Varka there,” she indicated a heavyset woman, “is an electrical engineer who’s going to help me build circuits to generate the specialized fields we need. Hopefully, between the two of us we’ll be able to energize any ports the assembly teams are able to build.” Ell went on around the table, introducing assistants and minor players in each of the groups that she’d already introduced the heads of.

Ell looked around, “I know that none of you know each other very well yet but I hope that we gel into a real team. Although D5R has backstopped each of you with a relatively generous minimum salary, remember that if we’re successful in making the ports work on a larger scale, we have a profit sharing system.”

As the meeting broke up Ben Stavos rubbed his chin and wondered what he’d gotten himself into. He’d interviewed and taken this job over the net from Texas. Yes his minimum guaranteed salary was significantly better than HP had been paying him. But when interviewing over the net he’d thought that Donsaii just “looked” young. He also hadn’t realized that she was running the place; he’d thought she was just doing the hiring. When he’d arrived and found out that this girl child was in charge he’d been completely flummoxed. Then he’d done the research that he should have done before giving up his job at HP. She was just as young as she looked. Not even twenty yet! Yes, she had had a moment of brilliance that had set the physics world on its ear when she’d worked out the math for this 5th dimension and explained entanglement. However, even though Ben didn’t understand that math himself, he got the distinct impression that it was really just a bit of luck that had let her stumble across it. If this harebrained entangled port idea didn’t work quickly, he suspected that whoever was financing D5R would drop it like a hot potato—then what?

He admired her as she walked with Roger and Vivian over to the electronics table. She was wearing faded jeans, running shoes and an old t-shirt. No makeup. She should have looked plain but instead he could feel her drawing every eye in the room. In a simple clean cut wholesome way she was beautiful yet seemed completely unaware of it! If she was aware of it, surely she’d take the easy way out and work as a model, wouldn’t she? Oh well, maybe he’d just stick with this job until the investors gave up on it, then move on. Enjoy the moment. He turned back to the micro assembler setup, “OK, John,” he said to his assistant, “let’s see if we can persuade this monster to line up individual molecules in circles.”

***

Steve and Mary got out of their car and slung their backpacks. He watched a moment to be sure the car had begun to drive itself away to the parking lot. Then he turned and looked for Ell who had been dropped off by her car a few minutes earlier. She was about a hundred yards away, walking one of the campus’ brick paths on her way to her Astronomy class. The platinum blond wig she’d chosen to disguise herself with for her stint as UNC student Belle Donovan made her easy to pick out, even this far away. He and Mary began walking along the same path, Steve’s eyes darting around as he checked for threats. Once they reached the building Mary stayed in the lobby on a bench there. Steve entered the classroom and sat up near the back. He looked over the class. “Belle” was sitting down near the front and had started talking to the young man next to her.

Gordon looked up as someone sat in the seat next to his. Hmm, a pretty blond. Too much makeup for his taste. It looked like she was trying to hide a bad complexion. However, she was cute in a pale sort of way. He turned to her, “Hi, haven’t seen you around. You new?”

Ell grinned at him. He had freckles and curly reddish hair. “Yup. Just taking this one class ‘cause I’m interested in ET’s.” She raised her eyebrows at him.

Gordon gave her a look that combined a grimace and a query, “This is a pretty tough class to be taking just because you’re curious! You can read about ET’s on the net.”

She tilted her head. “Maybe so, but I’d like to get a deeper understanding than that.”

“Why not just audit the class over the net then?”

“’cause then I wouldn’t get to have scintillating conversations with fascinating people like you. My name’s Belle. What’s yours?”

He put out his hand, “I’m Gordon. A real Southern Belle ‘eh? I never thought I’d actually meet one.”

“Hah, ha. Didn’t yo momma nevah tell you not to make jokes about a person’s name? I’m sure I’ve already heard all the ‘Belle’ jokes you can possibly think of!”

“Oh ho! Did you just ring the starting ‘bell’ on a challenge?”

Ell rolled her eyes but was saved from having to respond by the arrival of Professor Norris. The Professor introduced himself and outlined the class on planetary systems before starting his first lecture. His speaking style kind of droned on but Ell found the topic fascinating. He was assigning some reading to be done for the next class as the bell rang.

Gordon looked wide eyed at Ell, “There’s the ‘bell!’”

She grinned and lightly punched his shoulder, saying, “I can see I’ll have to watch who I sit next to from now on.”

As she left the building she had her AI contact her car and send it to pick her up. She saw Mary getting up from a bench in the lobby to leave when she did.

Chapter Four

Cape Canaveral—NASA and ILX Corporation today announced that the latest Vulcan 5 rocket, carrying supplies for the International Space Station, has also failed to launch successfully. Once again, one of the new, super efficient motors trumpeted by ILX apparently exploded, driving the rocket off course and requiring it to be destroyed by internal charges. More and more concern is being expressed about the supply situation at the Station…

Roger and Ell walked into West 87 together and started toward the booth where the physics grads customarily hung out. Emma looked up. “Hey you two!” She bounced up out of the booth to give Ell a hug. “Am I ever gonna see one of you without the other again?” She was amused to see they both looked a little embarrassed.

Ell said, “Well, you know we work together now, so if we’re gonna go slumming at West 87 with our degenerate friends, it only makes sense to ride together.”

“Besides,” Roger said, “I’m buying her dinner in a transparent attempt to influence my new boss and the only restaurants I know anything about are here in Raleigh.” He shrugged, “If we’re gonna be in Raleigh on a Friday night, of course we’ve gotta drop by West 87 and visit you guys.”

They sat down and caught up with their old friends from NCSU. They were introduced to a couple of new grad students.

Cody, one of the new students wound up sitting next to Ell. He felt like there was something familiar about her but in the flurry of introductions he hadn’t really caught her name. She was hot! He wondered if she and this ‘Roger’ guy were in a committed relationship. He asked her, “When did Roger graduate?”

“Last December.”

“And you two work for the same company?”

Ell grinned at him. The grin lit up her face and he found her even more attractive, “Yep.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Well,” she considered, “we’re very good friends.” She tilted her head, “and I’m pretty sure he’s a boy…”

Cody, happy to hear that she didn’t sound committed to Roger, glanced around the table. The others were all lost in their own little conversations. He turned back to Ell, “You seem familiar to me. Do we know each other from somewhere?”

She smiled enigmatically, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

He tilted his head, considering. She looked about eighteen to twenty, younger than he was by a couple of years. “Are you sure? Where did you go to high school?”

“Morehead City.”

He grinned, “My parents have a vacation home on Emerald Isle and my dad loves to go fishing on Jim Slip’s charter boat out of Morehead. I’ll bet we’ve run into each other somewhere down there one summer.”

Ell tilted her head, considering. “Maybe we did.”

“Did you go to college?”

She grinned again, “A couple of years.”

Cody was a little disappointed, thinking she’d gone to a community college somewhere. But who cares how far she went in school when she looks this good? He glanced at Roger. Roger was deep in a conversation with Jerry. “Do you mind if our AIs exchange contact info? I’d love to see you again sometime.”

Ell shrugged, “No problem.”

Emma, sitting on Cody’s left, dug an elbow into his side.

He turned to her and saw her grinning at him. He raised an eyebrow in question.

“Have you figured out who you’re putting the moves on yet, ‘Casanova’?”

Cody glanced up at his HUD. It said, “Contact—Ell Donsaii.” He closed his eyes and felt his cheeks flush. He opened them to see Ell grinning at him. “I guess now I know why you seem familiar?”

She quirked her lip, “Maybe?” She tilted her head in consideration, then frowned a little, “But we might have met in Morehead too.”

A little later Roger and Ell got up to leave for their dinner at the Mellow Mushroom. James said, “You’re not taking her someplace fancy now that you have a job? My God man, you’re not gonna impress the girl that way!”

Ell patted James lightly on the shoulder. “Turns out ‘the girl’ likes pizza better than she does those fancy restaurants.”

***

Ell stared up at her HUD, watching the results of a computation she had Allan, her AI, running to calculate the orbits of the planets of Epsilon Eridani. It held interest for her because E. Eridani was only 10.5 light years away and had a planet in the “habitable zone.” However, it also had a large planet with a highly elliptical orbit that likely made the habitable zone planet’s orbit unstable. Ell was trying to calculate from the known orbits and masses of the various E. Eridani planets just how long the planet had likely been in the habitable zone.

Someone thumped down in the seat next to her. “Whew, got here before the ‘bell.’”

Ell looked over, “Hey Gordon. You know, the way you keep arriving to class barely before it rings, you make it very difficult to avoid sitting next to you and hearing these awful name puns?”

He grinned at her, “My plan exactly.”

Ell rolled her eyes and checked her HUD.

“Hey my roomies and I are having a pre finals party Saturday night, you wanna come? You could be the ‘belle of the ball.’”

Ell glared balefully at him for a moment but then a grin broke out. “OK. Where and when?”

***

Ell arrived back at D5R after her class and headed immediately into the research area for the team’s Wednesday morning update meeting. No one looked happy. In fact their dejected expressions matched her own feelings. They’d been at this for weeks now with little success. For a moment she wondered if they had taken on an impossible task. Or had she assembled the wrong team? Maybe she was the wrong person to lead them? She turned to Stavos, “Ben, let’s start with you. Can you tell us something positive?”

Stavos twisted his lips a moment, then shook his head. “The good news is that we’ve got the micro assembler set up so that it can build a pair of rings made from entangled buckyballs.”

Ell’s eyebrows shot up in excitement. “That sounds great!” She frowned, “Why are you so down?”

“You know the entanglement isn’t terribly stable until we get them placed in your stabilization field. We actually have the entangled buckyballs moving into the assembler stabilized by such a field. But when we take them from the stabilization field that they’re in and move them to the field for the port’s ring, they are out of the stabilization field and the action of moving them un-entangles them if we move them very fast. When we try to ‘up the speed’ of placement of the buckyballs into the ring, they start losing their entanglement in transit.”

“Ouch, that is a problem. How fast can you place them reliably without breaking their entanglement?”

“About two per second. Since the buckyballs have a diameter of about one nanometer, that means about 5.5 days per millimeter of ring. To make a pair of one centimeter diameter rings like you want will take somewhere around half a year!” He paused and shrugged, “We’re still working on it though.”

Everyone at the table could see that he didn’t have any ideas for a solution at present.

“Dang! I’ll come look at your set up after the meeting. Maybe I’ll have some ideas on how to stabilize the entanglement sooner.” She looked up at the ceiling, “Or maybe during the placement?” After a moment she turned to Fred Marsden, “Is your team having any luck entangling tori?”

Marsden rolled his eyes, “Oh yeah, we can entangle them alright. But we have a problem similar to Ben’s. Once we’ve entangled them, we can’t separate them to put the tori into your stabilization field without breaking the entanglement. Molecules this big will only stay entangled for microseconds unless they’re stabilized.”

“Any ideas on how to solve it?”

He shrugged, “We’re going to try to position each torus on a stabilization field plate, then bring the two tori into contact while they’re on the plates and see if we can get them to entangle with the field all ready to turn on.” With a sigh he said, “The entanglement field and the stabilization field are pretty different though.”

“Vivian?” Ell turned to Vivian Varka the electrical engineer. “Let’s look at their setup together and see whether we can help them work on the transition from one field to the other, maybe a gradual transition.” She looked up at the ceiling again, “Or would an abrupt transition be better?” She brought her eyes back down and shrugged, “I guess we can try both.”

Ell looked around the table, “Any other news or ideas?”

They all looked back without response, as if hopeless or depressed or something. Ell despondently wondered what she could do to buck them up. Maybe she should just give up and disband D5R?

Roger felt nervous speaking up in this group because he was the most junior. Well except for Ell! Nonetheless, he cleared his throat, “Uh.”

Everyone turned to look at him. “I’m wondering if an intermediate approach might work?”

The group looked at him with puzzled expressions. “For instance if we entangled nanotubes say a hundred microns long instead of the much larger nanotori. Then used Ben’s micromanipulators to move them into a ring shape at a relatively slow pace…”

Ell’s eyebrows went up and she looked around at the group. They all looked somewhat dubious but no one was saying it couldn’t be done. “It’s an idea. Roger why don’t you do some tests and calculations. How fast can Fred entangle them and how fast can Ben move them without breaking entanglement? Then determine whether it will actually be faster than ‘one at a time’ buckyballs?”

Roger nodded.

Ben put a hand up and Ell nodded. “I’m just wondering,” he said, “exactly how long the investors will put up with our lack of progress? Should we be taking offers we may be getting for other jobs?”

For a moment Ell considered telling them that she was the only investor. Then she thought about telling them they did have a deadline after which they would be disbanded. That would be the way it would work in the real world. Mentally she shrugged, after all, there wasn’t really any reason to stop working on it until Ell herself was ready to give up. With PGR Comm paying her a minimum royalty of 2.1 billion dollars a year, minus the 230 million a year she was funding NCSU and UNC with and about 800 million in taxes she had about a billion dollars a year in disposable income. Financing D5R hardly put a dent in that kind of cash flow. She didn’t want to tell them that because she really didn’t want people to know how wealthy she was. She looked at Ben a moment, then around at the others. “Our investors,” she said, “have personally guaranteed me six months of salary for each of you should they abandon our efforts here at D5R. I hope that that’s enough cushion that all of you will be able continue to focus all your energies on achieving success, rather than on backup plans?”

There were surprised nods all around the table and the meeting broke up shortly thereafter.

***

It turned out that Gordon and his roommates lived south of campus in a small rented house. Ell’s car dropped her off and headed out to find a place to park as she walked down a gravel driveway. She could already hear the heavy thump of music. She had arrived very late to her first ever “college party” so she wouldn’t feel too awkward arriving where she didn’t know anyone. It looked like she’d been successful; the front porch was crowded with people swaying to the music. People spilled out into the yard most of them holding a cup in one hand. Ell slowly worked her way into the crowd.

A young Asian man staggered into her. For a moment the multiple attempted kidnappings she had suffered at the hands of Chinese nationals leapt to the forefront of her mind. Then the red faced young man smiled widely at her and held up his beer, “Heeyy! You’re pretty! I’m Joe Chan. Can I be your boyfriend?” He swung his hands to point at himself with both thumbs, spilling some of his beer.

Ell grinned at him, “You can be my friend.”

“Heeyy!” he raised his arms. “And I’m a boy! Tha’ makes me a boyfrien’, right?”

Ell laughed at his cheerfully good natured drunkenness, “A ‘friendly boy’ at least. A friendly boy who’s had too much to drink, I think.”

“You’re a poet! But you’re right. You should help me maintain my balance.” He put an arm over Ell’s shoulders, “If you help me walk without falling I’ll introduce you to the band.” He waggled his eyebrows proudly, “I know ‘em all.”

Ell rolled her eyes, “OK, I’ll hold you up.” She looked toward the window, surprised that people staying in a little house like this could afford a live band for their party. “Take me in and introduce me.”

“All righ’!” Joe said enthusiastically, starting toward the porch steps, “Gangway, pretty lady comin’ through!” He began crowding his way through the people on the stairs shouting all the while.

Ell worried that someone would object but they all grinned good naturedly at Joe, many shouting good natured taunts, “Oh no, Joe’s fooled another one.”

“Give it up Joe, she’s too good lookin’ for you!”

“Look out little lady, he’s a devil in disguise.”

Joe drew himself up, “Ignore those small minded people, remember—I know the band!” He clumsily maneuvered her in the door.

The house had a surprisingly large front room, crowded with even more people. The band was set up at one end. The people were swaying to the loud music, or perhaps you could call it dancing, though packed so tightly, it was a little hard to tell. Joe said, “Let’s dance!” Or at least that’s what Ell thought he said. He took his arm off her shoulders and turned toward Ell. Assuming a wide stance he began moving jerkily to the music.

Ell turned toward Joe and began swaying and shuffling her feet in a minimized version of the line dance she’d learned in Las Vegas. Joe smiled happily at her then bumped into the woman behind him. He turned to apologize to her and Ell stole a glance at the band. They were mostly hidden by the crowd since they weren’t up on a stage, but a small gap in the crowd revealed Gordon. He was actually part of the band and behind a microphone! He saw her too and grinned widely then leaned to the mike and began the next verse. Ell realized he was the lead singer! He’s really good!

Joe leaned close to her, Ell put up a hand to steady him. The song was winding down he shouted, “What’s your name?”

Ell said, “Belle. Belle Donovan.”

Joe’s eyebrows shot up. “Gordon’s friend?”

Ell shrugged. “Gordon invited me.”

Joe turned vaguely toward the band and bellowed, “Gordo, Belle’s here!”

Gordon’s voice came over the PA system, “OK folks, last song before we take a break! I give you ‘Belle…’ Bottom Blues!”

Ell rolled her eyes. She should have known!

A rough distorted bluesy guitar lick began. Joe resumed swaying so Ell did too. A commotion from her left proved to be Gordon pushing through the crowd while still playing the guitar. Behind him a guy was carrying the microphone on its stand. Ell raised her eyebrows at him as he stopped in front of her and waited for the guy to put the mike down. He leaned to the mike and began singing, “Belle bottom blues…” while raising his eyebrows at her.

Like the rough mildly distorted guitar he sang with a gravelly voice. Ell thought it sounded great. When the song was over he pushed his guitar around behind his back on its sling, grinned at her and said, “I see you’ve met my buddy Joe Chan?” Gordon gestured at Joe who staggered a little. Gordon put a hand out to steady him.

Joe said, “Oh yeah!”

Ell grabbed Joe’s other shoulder to help keep him upright, “Yep. I think Joe’s had enough to drink for a while.” She turned back to Gordon raising her eyebrows, “Are you ever gonna ease up on my name?”

“Oh no!” he said, mock seriously. “You challenged me with that, ‘I’m sure I’ve already heard all the ‘Belle’ jokes you can possibly think of’ line. It was just for you I spent hours learning that ‘Bell Bottom Blues’ song you know.”

“I liked it. Even if you were hassling me with it.”

He raised his eyebrows, “What’s not to like? A blues standard, played by an awesome guitarist, sung by an amazing singer!” He frowned, “Of course you liked it!”

“Astounding modesty too!” Ell laughed.

“Hey Joe,” Gordon said, “We need to get this girl a beer. She’s too sharp for us when she’s sober!”

“Yeah! But don’ gi’ me another one, or, I’ll be, too drunk, to im-impress her with my sc-scin-tillating wit.”

Without the band playing, the crowded room was emptying out. People filtered out into the yard and the keg set up out there. Ell and the guys went out into the crisp spring evening. Someone had started a small fire in what appeared to have been a brick planter in the middle of the patio. Ell said, “I’d like a Coke, not beer.”

Gordon looked at her and said, “A rum and Coke?” He winked, “Remember, we’re trying to dull your resistance to our sharp wit.” He waved to a table, “It’s over there.”

Ell made her way to the table and got herself a plastic cup full of ice. She poured Coke into it.

Gordon shouted from over at the keg, “Don’t forget the rum! I’m watching you.”

Ell picked up the rum bottle and pretended to pour some into her Coke, then headed back toward the fire. Part way there she was stopped by a large guy with a beer in one hand. “Hey pretty girl! What’s your name?”

“I’m Belle.” Ell glanced past him, looking for Gordon and saw Joe unsteadily coming her way. She was beginning to regret this Belle disguise. The platinum blonde wig seemed to attract too much attention. To become “Belle” she put on a heavy makeup with a slightly lumpy texture to make it seem like it was trying to cover a case of acne. She also tucked prosthetic lumps between her gums and cheeks to give herself slightly puffy chipmunk cheeks. As opposed to her “Ellen” and “Raquel” disguises she wasn’t wearing a nasal prosthesis.

The “Ellen” disguise with the large nose and “fat pants” made from silicone had rendered her pretty unattractive. In that disguise men had never accosted her. In fact they seldom even gave her a second look. As “Belle” she looked different enough to not be recognized as Ell but she was getting hassled a lot. She was thinking she must have unwittingly made herself look better than her natural state. No judge of her own looks, she didn’t believe people who told her how stunning she was naturally. In fact when they said things about her looks she worried that they were enamored of her gymnastic fame or that they might have found out about her money.

In actual fact the “Belle” disguise changed her so she wasn’t as gorgeous as in her natural state but she was still pretty cute. It did nothing to change her slender shape nor to alter the fluid grace of her actions. She had no idea how much the simple elegance and economy of motion of her actions attracted people’s eyes. She wondered if she should have used “fat pants” for “Belle?” She had wanted to avoid the extra time the pants required in changing into her disguise because she changed in and out of this disguise three mornings a week for her Astronomy class. But really, she could have done it in the car during transit without that much trouble.

The big guy said, “I’m Vic. Are you a student at the ‘U’?”

“Part time.”

He nodded, “I’m on the football team.” His eyes said she should be impressed. “Vic Galtieri.”

“What do you study?” Ell looked over at Joe who’d unsteadily come around Vic.

Joe cheerfully said, “Belle!” and reached out toward her.

“General studies.” Vic said to Ell, then he turned slightly toward Joe, “Get lost.”

Joe turned to look blearily at Vic. Ell said, “Joe’s a friend of mine.”

Without looking back at Ell, Vic growled, “Joe’s a drunk who’s gonna go sit down until he’s sober enough to walk.”

Joe turned back to Ell with his big grin still plastered on his face, “Maybe he’sh right Belle, you wanna help me go sit down?”

Narrowed eyes on Joe, Vic said, “No, she’s gonna stay here. She and I were talkin.’”

Sighing inside, Ell reached out to steady Joe. “Vic, I can decide for myself what I’m going to do.”

Ell saw Vic tense and his hand start to rise. She dropped into the zone a little.

Vic said, “This drunk can sit down right here then.” His hand rose.

Realizing that Vic intended to shove Joe and knock him down, Ell sent her hand up underneath Vic’s. She wondered if she could push his arm up just the right amount? She didn’t want to hit his arm hard and injure him like she had her step-dad Jake; she just wanted to push it up enough that it didn’t hit Joe. It was a big arm. She went deeper in the zone and watched her hand settle under Vic’s meaty distal forearm. She pushed upward gently and then a little harder when she realized it wouldn’t be enough to move an arm the size of Vic’s. Vic’s hand slid up and over Joe’s shoulder and Ell’s hand rotated to settle on Joe’s shoulder, steadying him and turning him away from Vic.

Vic stumbled when his hand didn’t meet the expected resistance. Ell realized that Vic was fairly drunk himself, though it didn’t show on him like it did on Joe. Ell started to guide Joe toward a bench keeping an eye on Vic over her shoulder. Vic staggered a step or two, then turned back toward them. Damn, why can’t he just leave us alone!

Gordon appeared behind him, “Hey Vic,” he started.

“Butt out Gordon.” Vic rumbled, shambling after Ell and Joe.

Gordon started to reach out for him, “Vic, calm down! You know how you get when you’re drunk.”

Saying, “I said BUTT out!” Vic reached out one big meaty hand and shoved Gordon. Gordon staggered back, stumbling into an azalea bush and losing his footing. Vic resumed stumping after Ell and Joe.

Ell turned Joe and sat him down on the bench. He grinned up at her. “Heeyy Belle,” he drawled, seemingly completely unaware of the high tension situation surrounding him.

Vic lumbered up and reached for Ell’s arm, “Let’s get outta here Belle.”

Ell moved her arm so he missed it, “No! Vic, I’m sorry, but you’re acting like a jerk. I don’t want to go anywhere with you.”

He narrowed his eyes and reached again, “Come on! You’ll like it!”

Ell moved her arm out of his grasp again, Gordon was coming up on Vic’s other side. She wondered what she could do to get this situation back in control? How had it escalated so quickly? Are all college parties like this? Or was it something about her, somehow bringing out the worst in people?

Gordon said, “Vic! Leave her alone!” and reached for Vic’s arm.

Ell had come most of the way back up out of the zone, she pushed herself back down into it. Crap! She saw Vic tensing as Gordon touched his arm. He’s going to hit Gordon! Vic’s hand formed a fist and he began to turn toward Gordon, muscles bunching as he built a full roundhouse punch. My God! If that punch hits, Gordon’s going down. Hard! Ell moved with Vic, reaching up again to slap the bottom of his forearm and deflect the punch up above Gordon’s startled face. Gordon’s face showed that he realized how badly he’d underestimated Vic’s current state. Vic’s knuckle grazed Gordon’s forehead, knocking his head back a little, but then Vic himself, unbalanced by the miss, lurched forward and stumbled into Gordon. They went down in a tangle of limbs, Vic bellowing with rage.

Ell stepped closer, studying the debacle in front of her. Vic was coming down, his waist across Gordon’s ribs, Vic’s upper body to Gordon’s right. Gordon’s arms were flailing out, trying to keep his head from hitting the ground. Ell reached out for Gordon’s right hand with hers, reaching with her left hand into her purse. When she had a good grip on Gordon’s hand she leaned back, pulling hard, trying to help keep his head from hitting the bricks, as well as pulling him out from under Vic. As the two men crashed to the ground, Ell’s pull slid Gordon somewhat out from under Vic, but not completely. She leaned to her right, trying to roll Gordon out from under him. As she’d feared, the thrown punch having failed, Vic began to surge back, now ready to wrestle.

Ell leaned forward, stretched out her left arm and gently squeezed a small dose of pepper spray into Vic’s face. Then she surged back to resume pulling on Gordon’s arm. Vic’s arm that had been snaking around Gordon’s torso, stopped and began pulling back to grasp his face in agony. Gordon rolled the rest of the way out from under Vic, got his hands under him and heaved himself to his feet, prepared for fight or flight. His eyebrows creased as he looked at Vic. “What happened to him?” Vic was scrubbing at his eyes and coughing violently.

“Pepper spray,” Ell said quietly, looking around at the crowd that had begun staring at them. Barrett and Randy from her security team were just turning to fade back into the shadows as it began to look like they weren’t needed. She leaned down to Vic, “Sorry Vic. Let me help you get into the bathroom to wash your face.”

Gordon said, “Whoa! Remind me not to piss you off!”

Vic coughed again, he must have been inhaling when Ell shot him with the spray. “Wha’ ta’ Hell happen’!?” He coughed again but pushed himself to his feet and let Ell start leading him toward the house.

Ell turned to Gordon, “Gordon. Where’s the bathroom?”

Gordon shook his head, “I wouldn’t go in there with him if I were you Belle. He’s an animal when he’s drunk. I wouldn’t have invited him but he promised to stay sober.”

Ell rolled her eyes at Gordon, “He’s hurt, we gotta help him get in and get this stuff washed off of him.”

Gordon shrugged and said, “This way.” He stepped into the lead and Ell guided the sobbing Vic after him.

When Ell got back to the farmhouse that night she found Steve waiting up. “Hey, you’re not on duty.”

“No but Barrett called to let me know what happened. You’re a one woman calamity zone!”

“Hey! I didn’t start anything! It was a drunk guy that apparently likes to get into fights!”

“Drunk guy getting in a fight over a woman. You! You really should stay away from these situations!”

“I didn’t do anything to get the guy started! He was plain spoilin’ for a fight!”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Yeah, sorry, I know it wasn’t your fault. I just don’t want you getting hurt is all. You really shouldn’t be going to these kinds of wild parties. At least not looking so good. Pretty girls attract aggressive guys. ”

Ell looked at him a moment, “Hey Steve. I know it’s a weird dichotomy, but, even though I’m your boss, I’m just a kid you know. I need to get out and live life a little don’t you think? That’s half the reason I’m taking that astronomy class—so I can spend some time with kids my age.”

Steve looked up at the ceiling, then drew a long suffering sigh. “Yeah, yeah. I get it. I just don’t like it.”

She grinned at him, “’night Dad.”

Steve rolled his eyes, “I’m not your Dad,” he growled, “if I were, you’d be better behaved!”

She blinked her eyes up at him, “Yes Daddy.”

“Oh Hell, who am I kidding? You’d have me wrapped around your finger.”

Chapter Five

Ell looked around the table at her D5R researchers. Another meeting, another set of frustrating results. “Roger, what about your idea to use nanotubes for an intermediate path to making our ports?”

He shook his head dispiritedly, “We entangled some nanotubes but they have to be moved much slower than buckyballs if you don’t want to break the entanglement. It would slightly speed up the creation of a 10mm port from doing the whole thing with buckyballs. But each port would still take months. Sorry.”

Ell tried not to let her disappointment show. “Any other ideas?” she asked with a perky tone.

Stavos said, “We should go out.”

Ell tilted her head, “Out?”

“Yeah, socialize. Get to know each other away from here. Think about something else besides work.”

Ell’s first thought was surprise that he thought of it as work, doing what you loved. Well, what she loved. Though she loved research, maybe the rest of the team did think of it as a job? She knew first hand that research was fun when you were getting results—not so much when results were few and far between. In fact, maybe she liked science, not slogging away at the research end of it. “Sounds good!” Ell tried to keep some sparkle in her voice. It frequently surprised her to be nineteen and have these older people looking to her for leadership, but she recognized that she was their leader, no matter how unexpected it may be. “What do you suggest?”

“Sports bar, tomorrow night.”

Ell looked around the table seeing ambivalence, or at best small amounts of enthusiasm, but she didn’t have any better ideas. “OK!” she said keeping an enthusiastic tone, “Tomorrow night. Ben to pick the bar, D5R to pick up the tab, fun to be had by all!”

***

Washington D.C.—Critics of NASA are lining up to say “I told you so,” in regards to NASA’s decision to move quickly to the ill fated Vulcan 5 rockets. Steven Esklund has begun demanding that the “ancient” International Space Station be abandoned once the current astronauts have been safely rescued. “It has been up there far longer than its expected lifespan anyway. We have no business putting people up there into harms way to do things that can be done by robotic entities.”

“The new PGR chips make remotely operated telepresence the obvious method to further space science…”

Allan, Ell’s AI spoke in her ear, “You have a call from Phillip Zabrisk.”

“Put him on! Phil, how are you doing?”

Phil chuckled, “How am I doing? Ha! Asks the woman who’s single handedly destroying my intended career as an astronaut?”

“What?! How do you figure that?”

“Haven’t you been hearing all this talk about using remote control of robotic astronauts with those PGR chips that are based on your theory? Then they won’t have to keep sending expensive astronauts into dangerous locations?”

“Oh!” Ell thought furiously, then said with a chipper tone, “But a remote telepresence astronaut can be over six foot three can’t he?”

“You’re so behind the times! I took Denson’s advice to slouch and convinced NASA that I’m six foot two and a half, not six foot three and a half.”

“Oh.” Ell said in a small voice.

“And, I don’t want to fly my spaceship from a cubicle! No girl’s gonna go googly eyed over that!”

“Sorry.” Ell said contritely.

Phil laughed, “Oh hell, it isn’t your fault. Besides, telepresence or no, I can’t believe they won’t be sending people up there again once they get this Vulcan 5 snafu straightened out.”

“So, did you get accepted by NASA?”

“Well I haven’t been rejected yet. I’m hoping to find out before graduation.”

“Oh! That’s right, when exactly is your graduation?”

“Wednesday, two weeks.”

“Hey, could I get a ticket?”

“Sorry, they’re all gone.”

Disappointed, Ell said, “Oh.”

“However there is a spot reserved for one ‘Captain Donsaii’ on the reviewing stand. Something about her being a ‘special friend of the graduating class.’”

“What!”

“Yeah, the class figured that ‘Ell Donsaii’ should be there for the graduation of her class, even if she was too uppity to graduate with the rest of us. I got elected to ask you.”

“Hah! I’ll be there. ‘Uppity’ and all.”

“They want you to wear your uniform. Since you’re still in the reserves you’re entitled to wear it.”

“Oh! I’ll have to get it out of storage. Have your AI send me ticket codes and the other info and I’ll be there.”

***

Ell walked into Bailey’s for their D5R “social hour” and looked around.

A pretty hostess asked, “Would you like a table?”

Ell heard her name and saw Ben Stavos waving from over near the pool tables. She thanked the hostess and headed over to hop up on one of the barstools around the tables Ben had sequestered. She grinned at him, “Is it just you and me?”

“Naw, Eddy just came in, Sheila is in the bathroom, Brian promised he’d be here. Don’t know about ‘team ring ding’ though.”

Ell had noticed a little rivalry developing between the team trying to entangle tori and the team trying to make rings out of the buckyballs. She wasn’t sure whether it was good or bad but it was crazy to pretend it wasn’t there. “Are all the ‘ball busters’ going to be here?”

“Hah! ‘Ball busters!’ I like that! I think they’ll all be here.”

The waitress came by and Ben ordered a Guinness. Ell ordered a Coke. “What! Are you a teetotaler or something?”

Ell grinned at him, “Uh, Ben? Underage? Are you trying to be a bad influence on me? Lead me into a corrupt life of drunken debauchery?

His eyes widened in startlement as he was reminded just how young his boss was. Eddy ordered a wheat beer and Sheila a glass of Merlot.

More and more of the D5R team filtered in and ordered drinks, then nachos and wings. Everyone seemed to be in high spirits with good-natured teasing developing between the “Ring dings” and the “Ball busters.” Ell surveyed the happy crowd and decided that the “social hour” had been a great idea. She leaned closer to Ben and said, “Hey thanks for suggesting this. Think we should do it regularly?”

“Sure, maybe every two weeks?”

Ell nodded, “OK.”

“Hey,” Ben proclaimed, “Team ‘Ball buster’ challenges team ‘Ringa ding’ to a game of darts! You guys up to the challenge?”

Fred Marsden raised his glass, “You bet!”

As the two teams wandered over to the dart board Ell scooted down to sit with the admin folks who’d conglomerated at the other end from the science team. They were a pleasant group, several of them becoming happily inebriated. The woman next to Ell asked if Ben Stavos was married. She grinned when Ell said he wasn’t and got up to walk unsteadily over to “watch the dart game.”

Their machinist, Brian Short, moved over to sit next to Ell. “Uh, Ms. Donsaii?”

Ell turned to him and raised an eyebrow, “I thought we were informal Mr. Short?”

He grinned sheepishly, “Uh, ‘Ell’ then. I’ve got a crazy idea that I’m too embarrassed to bring up in the group meetings.”

“Why not?”

“Well… you know… I only finished high school. So I don’t want to suggest stuff to you big brains.”

Ell raised an eyebrow, “Smart doesn’t have to go to school. I’m amazed by the way you make those machines sit up and roll over! Anyhow, what’s your idea?”

“Well I’ve been wondering if the entangled buckyballs really have to be precisely placed? You can make ‘em by the millions right? What if you just made huge quantities of them and ‘sprayed’ them into a circle, like with an inkjet printer or 3D fabricator? Could they work even if they weren’t ‘precisely’ arranged into a circ…” He paused as Ell’s eyes widened.

Prickles ran over Ell’s scalp as she said, “Oh, my, God!” Her eyes focused off into the distance. “That might work.” she mumbled.

***

Ell arrived early at Falcon stadium for the Academy graduation. The rental car deposited her near the gate and then took itself off to park in the big lots nearby. The code that Phil had given her got her through the gate and she walked out into the stadium reminiscing about the two years she’d spent at the Air Force Academy. She made her way to the reviewing stand. As she approached a 3rd class cadet saluted and said, “I’m sorry Captain, this area is reserved for graduation officials.”

Ell returned the salute and said, “I’m told that I’m supposed to be one of those ‘officials.’”

The cadet’s eyes widened and darted down to Ell’s nametag. She drew herself up and saluted again. “Excuse me! Captain Donsaii, it will be my honor to escort you.”

The cadet conducted Ell up the stairs. As they approached the podium area Lt. General Ammonds, the commandant of the Academy saw Ell and interrupted his conversation to salute her.

The colonel who had been speaking to the Commandant turned to see whom he could be saluting. There weren’t supposed to be any officers senior to a Lieutenant General at the graduation. His eyes widened as he saw a cadet and a slender female captain approaching and just dropping their own salutes. The colonel began his own salute after his eyes dropped to her left breast and recognized the Medal of Honor ribbon.

The Commandant grinned at Ell and said, “I assume you still have some friends in the graduating class. If you’ll step to the podium with me, I’d like you to mark which of the cadets you’d like to present with their diplomas?”

Ell raised her eyebrows, “Really sir? I’d greatly appreciate that.”

He lowered his voice, “I heard what you did for us in the recent China debacle and wanted to let you know how proud it made me. I’ve often thought back to the day you were brought to my office to determine whether or not we would let you try out for the Olympics.”

“Yes sir?”

“And I wonder how there could ever have been any doubt. Of course, then we didn’t know you…like we know you now.”

“Well, I appreciate your providing me that opportunity, sir.”

He looked at her a moment musing, “Actually, would you mind handing out all the diplomas?”

“I’d be honored, sir.”

When Ell turned she found Secretary of Defense Amundsen standing behind her. She saluted him and he said, “I thought that was you!” He grinned at her. “What are you doing back in uniform?”

“Um, Sir, this is the class I would originally have graduated with and they invited me to their graduation ceremony as a special guest. General Ammonds asked me to hand out the diplomas. Since I’m in the reserves I still have the uniform…”

When the Secretary finished his commencement speech to the graduates he paused. Then said, “I have a real treat for you today. In a break from tradition this year, your diplomas are to be handed out by a celebrity.” He paused again. “A celebrity and a former member of your class… An early graduate, who earned early promotion to Captain… I give you Presidential Medal of Freedom and Congressional Medal of Honor winner… Captain Ell Donsaii!”

As Ell blushed, the susurrus of puzzled murmurs amongst the crowd crescendoed into a lusty cheer.

After the ceremony Ell walked down the stairs from the stand and found Phil, Joy and Jason waiting with their families. She was introduced around. Because of their long military history Phil’s family was especially enthusiastic about meeting her.

Phil and Jason’s families had already made plans to go out to dinner together and they began to get ready to leave the stadium. Ell had Allan call her car and wondered somewhat despondently when the next flight back to NC would be. Phil turned to her and said, “Ell, I’m hoping you’ll be my ‘plus one’ at dinner?”

“Sure!” Ell said with a big smile. She’d been pretty let down at the thought of flying back right after the ceremony.

At the dinner Ell turned to Phil and asked, “So what’s the word from NASA?

“Oh they’re really in trouble with this Vulcan 5 thing. No one can believe they got themselves in this situation with no backup system to re-supply the station!”

Ell glared at him, “You know what I mean! Did you get accepted?”

“Hmmm, let me check with my AI,” he looked up at his HUD.

She poked him in the ribs, “You got in didn’t you! You wouldn’t be messing with me like this if you didn’t!”

He grinned, still looking up at his HUD. “Hmm, Yup! Says here I head to Houston for training in July. After a well deserved break from the rigors of my life so far…”

She poked him again, marveling at how hard his abs were. “I can’t believe you didn’t already tell me. ‘Spaceman’ Zabrisk! Will you still have time for me when you’re a famous astronaut with girls falling all over you?”

Phil’s mother leaned toward Ell, “I think he’ll always have time for you.” She winked at Ell.

Chapter Six

Washington D.C.—NASA announced a deal with the Chinese to send up supplies for the Space Station on one of the PRC’s “Crouching Tiger” launch vehicles. A special adaptor is being constructed to allow the Chinese capsule to connect to the Space Station’s airlock. Many have expressed surprise that the Chinese are willing to help in this situation, no matter how desperate…

Ell’s flight from Colorado landed in Raleigh late in the evening. The seven members of her security team who’d gone to Colorado with her were met by a pair of their own cars but Ell asked Steve to ride with her to talk about how the team was doing. “Are they happy? Do they like the farm and their houses?” Ell had bought a few houses near the farm for the team and only the “ready team” actually slept in the outbuilding next to her house. To get those houses she’d used the same tactic of offering the homeowners a price well above market value.

“Oh yeah! Everyone seems to be really happy. This is pretty much a dream job for security people like us. You don’t do crazy stuff or even travel much. You pay very well and provide great benefits. Providing housing is unheard of, let alone excellent housing like you got for us. It may be a problem if some of them get married and their spouses want to live somewhere else, but right now all of them are really delighted to be part of your team.”

“Great, it seemed like this trip to Colorado would be a real hassle for...” Ell put up a finger indicating an interruption.

Allan spoke in her ear, “Five persons have entered the D5R facility. The guard shack guard’s ID key was used to open the door. They have divided up, four going to the research area and one to your office.”

Ell told Allan to pass the message to Steve and took the car off auto/AI control. She immediately accelerated far above the speed limit. She was momentarily grateful for the modifications Steve had made to her cars, overpowering them and allowing her to break out of the AI’s safety controls.

Once he received Allan’s message Steve said, “Damn!”

Ell said, “Have the team from the airport speed up and ask everyone on the team still here in North Carolina to head to the D5R facility too. Allan, please call the police to the facility too.” To Steve she said, “Do you think we can trust the guard company?”

“Yeah, I’m contacting them now. How did Allan detect the intrusion?”

Ell took the freeway exit at a high speed, passing cars that were under computer control by driving on the paved shoulder. “I asked him to monitor the facility. He’s tied himself to the building’s AI and keeps an eye on anything out of the ordinary that happens. The gate guards aren’t supposed to be at the building so that drew his attention. He can pick up the intruders’ activity from the microphones on the various AI systems here and there in the building. He’s tapped into all of them. The intruder in my office is using some pretty sophisticated software to try to break into my office AI. Fortunately, the office AI really doesn’t have any secure information on it even if he does successfully break in. Anything I truly care about is actually stored on Allan. The people in the research area seem to be taking photographs of all our equipment. They’re presently trying to send them out over the net but Allan activated the building’s net jammer. Luckily none of them have PGR chips. At least all of them are trying to transmit using cell technology which I hope means they don’t have PGRs.” Ell made a corner with the tires squealing and accelerated down the driveway past the empty guard shack. As the car skidded to a stop near three strange cars in front of the building she said, “You up to coming in with me?”

“Of course!” Steve said slamming his door open and running toward the door. Somehow he wasn’t surprised to find himself falling far behind her. My God, that girl can run! The door had opened itself as they pulled up. Steve was momentarily concerned that someone inside was exiting, but it was just Allan activating the door’s motors. When Steve entered the building he had to ask his AI which way to go to reach the research area because he hadn’t actually been inside the building before. Based on the premise that she could protect herself—and only needed the team to keep her from being kidnapped if someone successfully trapped or drugged her—Ell’s policy was to keep Steve and the rest of her security team nearby but not actually visible.

Manny left Ell’s office and entered the research area, “No joy! The security she has on her desk AI is way beyond what I can crack. You guys about done in here?”

The other four men were wandering around inside the facility filming everything they could put eyes on. He could easily tell where they were as each of them had a high intensity light source to provide good images for their video. Jeff said “I think we’ve got it all but I’m gonna pry this one open so we can get images of the inside, it’s been modified...”

A sudden voice cut through their chatter, “Stop right where you are!” The room lights came up and in the suddenly frozen tableau they saw Ell Donsaii just inside the door to the big room.

Manny recognized the Donsaii girl. Alone. He’d been offered even more money to kidnap her but had backed out of that deal in a hurry when he learned about the security team that followed her around. There were Seals on that team! But, right now she was here all alone and he had five guys. On the link to his team he said, “We don’t need the computer files if we’ve got her. Grab her boys! Then we’re out of here.”

The two men nearest to Donsaii lunged at her. To Manny’s surprise she didn’t back up. Instead, it seemed like she flickered between them. A couple of meaty thuds sounded and the men staggered, then clasped their faces, one dropped to his knees. A “pop” sounded and Jeff dropped as if poleaxed. Manny recognized “pop” as the sound of one of the new Tasers firing a dart. He reached for his Glock. The lights went out then he heard another pop. His muscles spasmed and the floor rushed up to hit him in the face. In agony, he wondered whether Torain was going to get away? If he remembered right, Torain’d been over by the far exit…

Torain had bolted from the main room and began running down the hall to the rear exit as soon as the woman shouted. As he slammed out of the exit he heard the alarm go on. He supposed the exit wasn’t supposed to be used except in emergency. He didn’t consider trying to run around the building to their car. Instead he sprinted for the woods. He should be able to lose himself in the neighborhood on the other side. Glancing back he saw the woman come out the door. Torain was an excellent sprinter though, so there wasn’t any way she’d be able to catch him.

To Torain’s astonishment something smacked his right foot. The right foot struck his left and he found himself sprawling forward into the grass. As he started to scramble back to his feet he saw Donsaii jogging back towards him. She’d passed him! After a moment of complete disbelief and denial he realized she’d not only caught him, she’d kicked his foot to trip him as she’d passed! She said, “I’ve got a Taser on you so just lie still. I’d rather not shoot you with it… they hurt.”

Stunned he watched as she squatted down and switched off his AI, then pulled it out of its case and disconnected the battery.

“Who sent you?” she asked.

***

Wang slammed his fist down, “Two minutes of video! Two minutes, seventeen seconds to be precise! That’s all we got between when he left the jammer field and when that bitch turned off his AI! And what do we see on it? The machine shop! None of their tech, not a single picture of a single instrument! We invested three hundred thousand dollars bribing the guard and hiring those idiots and that’s all we get?!”

“Can they be traced back to us?” the man across the table rumbled in Mandarin.

“Not a chance.”

“There’d better not be.”

***

Washington D.C.—NASA admitted today that they have had the astronauts at the space station go onto two thirds rations. They’ve also had them stop exercising or exerting themselves in order to decrease oxygen consumption — “as a precaution in case the Chinese mission to the station encounters problems…”

Ell looked around the table at their 10 AM morning meeting. After talking to the police and cleaning up after the break in she hadn’t gotten back to the farm until 4AM. She’d slept in to 7 in order to get her customary 3 hours of sleep. Allan had brought her up to date during her drive to D5R. She cleared her throat, “The men inside the building had been paid a lot of money. But it had been put in offshore accounts and after they moved the money to their own accounts, those offshore accounts were closed. So far we can’t trace the money. They never met their handlers wearing their AIs so no records there either. They claim their handlers were disguised when they met them.

“Though the gate guard claims he was attacked, the nervous twitches on the last few moments of his AI record suggest that he was trying to avoid looking behind him so that they could sneak up behind him. They held a gun to his head and made him say, ‘Open the door.’ Then they tied him up and carried his AI to the front door so that it could handshake with the AI inside. They opened the door using the recording of him saying to ‘open the door.’ The guard’s AI wasn’t a very sophisticated model so it didn’t detect the stress in his voice. In actuality however, there wasn’t all that much stress, suggesting that he expected the entire thing.

“The gate guard hadn’t moved any large sums of money into any onshore accounts, so we don’t have proof that he was bribed too.” She sighed, “The police think it was a large corporation undertaking some industrial spying. On the other hand, it may have been the Chinese working with local assets, they’ve attempted to kidnap me several times in the past.”

Stephen Black, one of Fred Marsden’s assistants, had been getting more and more wide eyed. He exclaimed, “My God! This is crazy! What the Hell would have happened if one of us had been here working late when those guys broke in?”

Ell sighed, “I don’t know. Hopefully nothing since they were apparently here after the tech, not the people, but we can’t be sure.”

Black said, “Why would they want our tech? We haven’t discovered anything new! All we have here is equipment you can buy from most scientific suppliers!”

“You’re right of course. They may be hoping that we’ve had more luck than we have.” She looked around the group “D5R’s investors realize that most of you hired on with no intention of getting into anything that might be dangerous, so D5R has asked me to offer you all the opportunity to exit your contracts. With a half year’s salary bonus as thanks for your work so far. Of course I personally would like it if you stayed on but this wasn’t what you signed up for.”

Black said, “A half year’s pay? For doing nothing? I’m taking that!” He got up and started for the admin offices. Carol got up too. “Sorry Ell, but I want out. I’ve got kids to worry about.” She got up and followed Stephen.

Ell had begun to despair. Is everyone going to leave?! She looked around the rest of the group. They all looked pretty calm. “Anyone else want out?”

They all shook their heads.

She smiled, “Thanks team. I’m glad to still have you aboard. You’ll find a danger bonus of three month’s salary in your next deposit for staying around.”

The team all looked at one another in surprise, then Viv led a small round of applause.

“Now,” Ell raised her eyebrows, “what can you tell me about our progress while I was in Colorado. Have we successfully entangled tori? Can we assemble buckyballs at speed yet? Is Brian’s idea of spraying buckyballs all around the opening going to work?”

Ben grimaced, “No joy on the buckyball assembler. It looks like we might, with further optimization, get the assembly of a 10mm port down to 3 months. Not very good.”

Ell shrugged, “If that’s all the faster we can make them, then that’s how we’ll have to make them. It’ll just make them a lot more precious than I had hoped.” She looked at Marsden.

Fred just shook his head disconsolately. “Can’t seem to get full tori of any size to stay entangled when we separate them, sorry. I’d say, ‘so far’ except I don’t have any other ideas to try. Maybe one will come to me.”

Brian said “I’ve put together a micro-sprayer jet and Fred has provided an entangler that can supply entangled buckyballs at an extremely high rate for the jet. The jet uses turbulence to separate the entangled buckyball pairs and sprays the edges of two disks, intended to become the two ports while the discs rotate their edges together under it. We’ll have lots of entangled pairs landing with both members of the pair on one port instead of one member on each port like we want. Also Fred thinks the turbulence will break the entanglement of about seventy percent of the pairs. But, if you’re right that it might work as long as we have a lot of correctly separated pairs, it might work. We’ll be putting millions of entangled buckyballs per mm on the edges of the ports. We should be ready to attempt a test run this afternoon.”

“Great! Think positive!”

That afternoon Ell watched as the inkjet Brian had set up sprayed the buckyballs, looking for all the world like soot, onto the edges of two 5mm diameter metal disks as they rotated beneath it. Ell’s stabilizing field was already established on the disks so the pairs that were correctly entangled when they landed should stay entangled. Between pairs that both landed on one disc and pairs that lost entanglement they only expected about 10% total efficiency but they were spraying so many that Ell thought it might still work. There weren’t any calculations she’d been able to do to determine whether or not it would.

After a couple rotations under the sprayer the edges of the disks looked pretty black. Brian turned off the jet and popped them off the machine, handling them carefully so as not to break the circuits maintaining the fields. Ell shifted the field strength so that it would energize a port. In theory it should have taken about 60 watts to energize a 5mm port but due to inefficiencies Ell had to pump in about a hundred watts. As Brian moved one port around, Ell looked into the other one. With rising excitement she saw what appeared to be shifting light patterns in the stationary port she was watching. Brian turned his port down toward the floor and Ell put a drop of water onto the port she was holding. She held her breath.

Water dripped out of Brian’s port and onto the floor! A cheer went up, then vehement applause and even a couple of shrieks. Ben was hopping up and down. Ell gave a couple of fist pumps then said, “Allan, ask Sheila to break out the champagne and invite everyone at D5R in for a celebration!” She turned to the group, “Hook it up to the piping and let’s pour some more stuff through it!”

The disks were inserted into pipes that had been designed to fit them tightly so that liquids and gasses could be put through the ports under pressure. Before the pipes were pressurized Ben insisted on pouring a dollop of champagne through the port and drank it with great relish. Brian had inserted another set of disks in the “printer” and set them to being “inked” as the group was calling it now. They closed off the “pipes” and blew pressurized air and water through them, Fred managing to turn the jet of pressurized water onto some of the “ball busters.” Then Ell insisted on holding the hi-jinks a minute or two so she could try sending liquid oxygen and then liquid hydrogen through the port. She held her breath, worrying that the ultra-cold would destroy the port but it held up! The port was heated by the waste heat from generating the field and the gases boiled from the warmth. But they transited the port without damaging it. Seeing this made Ell’s heart pound. “Brian, can you bring out the components of the ‘side project’ I’ve had you working on?”

Brian nodded and headed to his machine shop. A minute later he returned with a box of components which he set on the table.

Excitedly Ell started picking up the parts in the box and laying them out on the surface of the big table. The happy babble around her quieted as one by one the team members turned to watch her lay out a number of metal tubes. She heard them speculating,

“What is it?”

“All those tubes. Some kind of plumbing project?”

Ell laid a pointed cap at the left end and a conical device at the other, “A rocket?” someone asked.

Ell grinned up at them, “Yep, a rocket.”

Ben said, “Why a rocket? I thought we were going to replace rockets with instantaneous transfer of materials through ports to satellites and to the space station?”

Ell smiled even more broadly. “Well, first we have to get our ports up to orbit where we want to transfer those materials, right? And before you say we can just send them up on the rockets that already go up there, think about why those rockets are so huge?” She looked around the group. “Right? Because they have to carry so much fuel! For the first part of the mission they are mostly just launching fuel for the next part of the mission. It’s horribly inefficient!”

The group stared at her as they pondered her words.

Fred scratched his head, “Are you thinking this little rocket,” he waved at the parts on the table, “because we can port it fuel, could make it all the way up to orbit?”

Ell waggled her eyebrows, “All the way to the International Space Station!”

Eyes widened around the group, someone said, “Then we could ‘port’ them supplies!”

Ell said, “Yeah! So full speed ahead! I want to prepare a rocket that can get to the Station and deliver ports that we can supply the astronauts with. If the Chinese fail their supply mission we need to be ready as their backup. I’m sure you guys know that if the Chinese fail to deliver supplies the folks on the station are going to be in some very, very serious trouble. All their other backups have already failed. Like Epaulding said, ‘they are having the perfect storm of problems.’”

“This is one of the most important things we may ever do and D5R is prepared to pay you guys triple time for any overtime you put in trying to make this work.

“Now, this motor that Brian machined from specs off the web for a model rocket is supposed to burn hydrogen-oxygen and you’ll note that I’ve already determined that liquid hydrogen and oxygen will go through our ports without destroying the ports. So far, my plan is for us to figure out how to install one port into the hydrogen chamber and one into the oxy chamber of the rocket. We need someone to figure out how to be sure the airspace above us is clear. We need someone to work on calculating when to launch so that we have a short track to reach the Space Station. We need someone to work on what kind of ports should be in the body of the rocket and how the astronauts could get to those ports. Also what adaptors those ports should have on them in order to deliver oxygen and water etc. to the station. Brian, we need you to build a test stand for our rocket’s motor so we can be sure it will produce the expected thrust and will withstand long enough burns to get into space. We need a power source built in to the rocket that can energize the ports. Anyone think of anything else we need to do?” She looked around.

Fred said, “I can put the ports into the chambers.”

In a mad scramble people enthusiastically signed up for the tasks Ell had outlined and thought of several others.

Ell said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Braun, but I’m not ready to tell you why we want to hire a rocketry expert until and unless you take the job. For the moment it is very confidential, and in fact would be confidential for some time after you took the job. I’ve made a ‘good faith’ deposit to the account we agreed on so you can be confident of one year’s salary if you take the job.” She saw him glance up at his HUD to confirm the deposit.

“OK, Ms. Donsaii,” he said with a little exasperation, “I’ll take the job and I’ll agree to the confidentiality clause. Now do I get to talk to your boss?”

She grinned at him, “You are talking to the boss.”

He looked askance at her, “Come on! I mean someone who understands your rocketry needs.”

“That’d be me.”

“Okaaay, when do you want me to start?”

“Right now. I want you to assume that we have a rocket motor capable of producing essentially the same thrust as a hydrogen-oxygen motor but not needing to carry propellant.” She paused a moment for him to digest this. “We want to launch…”

He interrupted. “I’m sorry Ms. Donsaii, but that just isn’t possible…” he stopped when he saw her smiling enigmatically at him.

“I’m afraid you’re going to find us doing several impossible things, Mr. Braun. For now, just make the assumption. I’m sure you’ll immediately realize that this means we can launch small rockets to orbit because we don’t have to carry huge quantities of fuel. While you’re on your flight here we’d like you to be thinking about how to best put this capability to use.”

His eyes widened, “You want me to fly out for an interview? I thought that was what we had just completed?”

“No, we want you to fly out here to work. Today. D5R is paying you starting right now. Therefore, we want you to immediately begin thinking about how to use these rocket engines.”

“But then I’d just need to fly back to get my stuff packed up!”

“We’ll have someone pack and move everything in your house, after you’ve arranged housing here. They’ll also sell your house in Florida for you, should you so desire. You just pack what you need for a couple of weeks into some suitcases and start your trip here.”

“But, but, I can’t…”

“Don’t tell me you can’t. If you can’t, you aren’t the man we want to hire. We’ll pay you double time, 24 hours a day until your stuff arrives from Florida but we want you here this afternoon and working on the project this evening. We’re under huge time pressures. My AI has found you a flight that leaves in three hours and has made you reservations.”

He looked stunned, then apparently gathering resolve he said, “OK. I’ll be there.” He signed off.

Ell looked up. Roger and Brian Short stood in her door. “We’re ready to run the rocket in the test stand if you want to watch.”

She jumped up, “Wouldn’t miss it!”

As they walked out Roger said, “I’ve been looking into small rocket design. The engine you have on this thing is bigger than it needs to be?”

Ell said, “Yeah, but it’s going to be running a lot longer than model sized rockets normally run. A rocket this size usually runs out of fuel in a minute or less. If you run them for very long the heat can melt or burn the nozzle, which is sometimes facetiously called an ‘engine rich exhaust.’” she grinned. Our nozzle has ducts in it. The liquid hydrogen is supposed to run through the ducts to cool the nozzle before the hydrogen gets burned. Also, Brian made this nozzle from a tungsten alloy that should hold up to the heat for quite a while—but I figure we need to be sure. So we’re going to run it a little below max efficiency which will keep it cooler. We have temp sensors in it so we can turn it down or off for a while if it gets too hot but I want to run this test right now using a long enough burn to reach orbit to see if it can do it.”

Brian had set up the test stand in the building’s chemical reaction safety room. This was a preexisting room from the building’s QemZ owners. It had thick concrete walls and excessive ventilation in case a dangerous chemical reaction went bad. The group stood outside the heavy glass windows as Brian fired up the motor. Even through the thick concrete they could hear the motor howling. Ell ran it up to 100% then backed off to 80% and let it run. The thrust was about 3% less than expected for the design they had modified from the net but the nozzle cooling appeared to be working. The thermal probe read within acceptable limits but the infrared cameras showed a few hot spots on the nozzle. After a couple of minutes everyone became bored. Some wandered away and others began chatting.

The sound of the rocket engine had faded to a distant irritation when it ceased with a bang. Ell looked back through the window into the room and saw that the rocket nozzle had pretty much disappeared. Flames from the tubing stopped as Allan shut off the ports. The small tanks containing the ports and the remainder of the tubing appeared to be intact. In a minute Brian had the video of the rocket’s last seconds playing on the screen outside the room. On the screen the video showed the nozzle was white hot in many areas just before it disappeared between one frame and the next. Brian looked up at her. “It lasted 3 minutes, which my AI has calculated wouldn’t be enough to get it to orbit. It sure isn’t as long as I’d hoped for.”

Ell clapped him on the shoulder. “Probably pretty good for rocket amateurs, I’d say! But you’re right, we’ve got to do better.” She turned to the group, “And soon, any ideas?”

Roger said, “Instead of using the liquid hydrogen fuel as a coolant, why not just add a separate port to send coolant through, that way you could send a lot more…”

Ell clapped a hand to her forehead, “My God, of course! We have to break old thought patterns. The ports change everything! We can put a water jacket around the engine and feed water into it. It could be blown out as steam and even add to the thrust! Or we could burn something that doesn’t generate as much thrust and therefore as much heat because we can use more of it!” She looked up at the ceiling a moment, “I vote for burning hydrogen-oxygen that converts to steam and cooling with water which converts to steam. That way our exhaust will only contain water and there won’t be any concern about toxic products.” She looked around the group, many of whom were nodding.

Vivian said, “You should look at your news feeds, the Chinese supply rocket has arrived at the Space Station but they’re having problems with the hookup…”

***

Emil Taussan turned white faced to the eager astronauts behind him. “The airlock won’t pressurize!”

Dave Slager pulled himself forward to look at the display. “How can that be?! They flew the dummy airlock over to China from Houston. They tested it there and it mated just fine!”

Emil looked back at the pale faces, “I don’t know. I think I must do a spacewalk to look at the connection and see if it can be repaired.”

“No!” Jim Sasson said, “You know we vent a little air with each EVA. We can’t afford to lose any air now!”

“James,” Emil said quietly, “we can’t afford a failed connection to the supply capsule either. If we can’t get at those supplies we’ll be in serious trouble.” He didn’t have to say, “we’ll be dead,” they all knew that already.

Sasson swallowed spastically. Then nodded his head jerkily. “First let’s back it off and try to mate it again.”

Emil nodded, “OK, that’s reasonable. You try it, I will start the oxygen pre-breathe procedure so that I can EVA.”

***

Washington D.C.—NASA confirmed today that the Chinese supply mission had failed to make an airtight connection with the International Space Station. Emil Taussan, one of the astronauts, made an EVA to examine the problem and says that it appears that the metal used in the Chinese adaptor module has contracted differently in the cold of space than the alloys used by NASA. The misfit, though small, has prevented an airtight seal from being achieved. For a while there was hope that Dr. Taussan would be able to remove items from the Chinese capsule and move them to the Station airlock but safety interlocks in the Chinese capsule prevent it from being opened into a vacuum. Taussan has moved the adaptor into the sunlight in hopes it will heat enough to correct the misfit…

Sheila said, “Mr. Miller we need four machinists today!”

“Sweetheart, I heard you the first time. You just can’t have me or any of my people today. We have commitments to other customers. I can free you up some people in about two weeks. Even when we’re available, I would strongly suggest you just contract us to make the parts you need and let us make them here on the machines we’re familiar with.”

Sheila had walked out to the research floor where everyone was desperately working on creating their rocket, “Just a minute Mr. Miller.” She turned to Ell, “I can’t get anyone to send us any machinists.”

Without looking up Ell said, “Offer them $200 per hour, but they need to be here within the hour.”

Wide eyed, Sheila said, “Mr. Miller, I’ve been authorized to pay $200 per hour.”

A long period of silence greeted her, then Miller said, “Sorry, honey I don’t believe that.”

“I’ve just transferred $20,000 to your public account.”

A pause while Miller checked the account then, sounding surprised, “OK, we’ll be there tomorrow morning at 9AM.”

“You’ll be here within the hour or the deal’s off.”

***

Jim Sasson hung in front of the comm station. Normally, this was where he had audio video chats with his wife and daughter. With the specter of his death hanging over his shoulder he didn’t think he could hold himself together for a realtime conversation with them. He was, however, hoping to record something brave for them to watch after he was dead. Slager was expecting reduced oxygen concentrations in the Station’s air to begin in the next ten to twenty hours. Low oxygen could cause blackouts and drunken behavior so Sasson wanted to get the recording done before that happened. Idly he wondered why they didn’t just do themselves in before they ran out of air. There was no longer any chance of rescue. He used a tissue to dab gently at the tears which had welled up and threatened to float away, then reached out to switch on the recorder.

Chapter Seven

Cape Canaveral—People have begun to gather in a vigil for the astronauts on the Space Station. NASA has not provided estimates of how much longer the astronauts can last without resupply but several “unofficial” sources predict that they have days at best. NASA says it is exploring “all avenues” for sending up another supply mission and for extending survival without resupply. However, India, China, Japan, Russia and the European Space Agency have all been queried. All have said that they do not have a launch vehicle that can be ready to go within…

Sheila said, “Ms. Donsaii, I have a Robert Braun here who says he’s the rocketry expert you hired?”

“Great!” Ell straightened and turned.

Sheila grinned as she watched Braun’s eyes widen when he came face to face with Ell for the first time. She found it amusing to watch the new hires as they realized just how young and attractive their new boss was.

Donsaii said, “Come this way and look at the rocket we have on the test stand. We’re desperate to launch but would really appreciate your advice! We’re running oxygen-hydrogen in our current engine...”

She took him to a window where a rocket nozzle could be seen and heard through the heavy glass. Braun estimated it about an inch and a half in diameter and must be mixing propellants in a terrible ratio because it was generating a huge cloud of exhaust rather than the clear flame oxy-hydro should produce. Braun frowned. The engine was burning steadily but didn’t seem to be hooked up to any tanks or supply hoses. He looked again, trying to see where the tubing was that supplied it. As near as he could tell just the motor was bolted to the test frame. Some of those bolts must be cannulated to run the fuel through, he thought. “Uh, your mix must be off, oxy-hydro shouldn’t be making all that smoke.”

“Oh! That’s steam. We’re cooling the nozzle with water.”

“Well, that won’t work for a real rocket, you can’t possibly carry enough water!”

Braun listened goggle eyed as Ell explained the ports. He interrupted several times to tell her that this or that wasn’t possible. “Mr. Braun,” she said exasperatedly, “Look at the set up! There are no tanks hooked up to it, yet you see the motor burning. Trust me on the port stuff. Assume that that part of this stuff works. Please stop telling me that something you can see with your own eyes is ‘impossible.’ Please?!”

Braun swallowed and nodded somewhat spastically.

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be short with you, but the lives of the people on the Space Station may depend on your coming to grips with this stuff now, not later.”

He nodded again and raised his eyebrows, “OK, I’ll suspend my disbelief and do my particular job. I’ll just assume all this other stuff actually works.”

Ell turned back to the window, “So this particular motor has been burning for,” she looked up at her HUD, “thirty minutes now, and we’re planning to use it or one like it on our mission but I’m uncomfortable with the fact that we can’t see how the nozzle is heating behind all that steam.”

“Can’t you cut off the steam… and the fuel itself, just long enough to get an infrared picture?”

“Great idea! Allan” Then to her AI she said, “Allan, please shut off the coolant and then the motor.”

The rocket snapped off, the cloud of steam dissipated and a screen lit with an infrared image of the nozzle which glowed warmly but evenly. In regular light it was red, not white.

Braun raised his eyebrows and said, “That doesn’t look bad at all. But may I make a suggestion?”

“Sure! That’s what you’re here for. As long as it isn’t another lecture about how the ports won’t work.” She cocked an eyebrow at him and grinned.

“No, no, I’m giving up on that,” he grinned back. “But I’d like to suggest that using liquid hydrogen has a lot of problems that you could avoid. First of all, it’s so cold that sooner or later you’re going to have a problem with it freezing some part so that it breaks or plugs up. Second, the molecules are so small that they leak out of anything and you’ll have a fire. Third, as you’ve already seen, it burns very hot and melts nozzles. Fourth, it’s expensive and it’s dangerous to store.

“If your ports work the way you say they do, the upside of hydrogen being light and easy to launch provides little benefit. I think you’d be much better off burning RP-1 or kerosene.”

“RP-1?”

“Rocket propellant number one. It’s just purified kerosene. You could still cool with your water shroud, but you wouldn’t have as many issues with overheating in the first place.”

“OK, Allan resume the burn.” The rocket engine fired back up, “Come on,” she said to Braun, “Lets order some kerosene, then I want to review my flight plan with you.”

“You’ve made a flight plan? To orbit?”

“Well, my AI and I have. I fed him the numbers and he crunched them. My AI’s running on a supercomputer so calculating stuff like orbital mechanics is pretty easy for him. We want to launch to the Space Station in the next few hours. If it fails we want to have time for some ‘do overs’ before the Station runs out of air.”

***

Everyone from D5R gathered outside the building to watch the launch. Ell had paid a premium to get some 50 gallon barrels of kerosene delivered immediately. They’d moved the input port for the test stand rocket into the kerosene and run the test nozzle for a while. It didn’t have the same thrust that it did with liquid hydrogen but it still had plenty. So they moved the input port for the launch rocket into the kerosene as well. The gate guard had been told to stop all traffic. Their rocket, which only measured 20 inches long by 2 inches in diameter was clamped to a launching rail that one of the new machinists had built and the engine was being given one last test before launch. Even though it was about a hundred yards away on the far side of the parking lot, almost everyone had their fingers in their ears. Ell’s military grade AI earpieces kept the sound to a comfortable level for her but she wished she’d thought to purchase earplugs for everyone else.

Allan spoke in their ears, “Sensors on the launch stand report that thrust is nominal for LOX-kerosene at 100% and at 80 %.”

“Good, let’s test the attitude thrusters.” These simply consisted of ports behind nozzles arranged radially at the front and back of the rocket body. The ports were connected to a pipe coming out of the top of the big liquid oxygen tank out back behind the research facility. Energizing the port behind a nozzle blasted the high-pressure oxygen from the tank out through the nozzle, providing thrust to push the nose or stern around depending on which nozzles were energized. Paired counter jets controlled axial rotation.

Ell could see puffs of mist where the cold oxygen jetted out of the rocket here and there. A moment later Allan said, “All attitude thrusters are generating nominal thrust.”

“Allan, are we still in a reasonable launch window to the station?”

“Yes.”

“No aircraft overhead?”

“Yes.”

“OK, folks,” Ell called out to the group, “Here we go!” more quietly to her AI she said, “Proceed with... Wait!” She turned to the group, “We need a countdown! Who wants to do the honors?”

Ben Stavos shouted, “All together now! Ten, nine, eight…” everyone joined in by the time he got to the last six numbers, “three, two, one, blastoff!”

The launch was anticlimactic. Everyone was used to billowing smoke and slow liftoffs from years of watching launches televised from Canaveral. Even those who should have known better were surprised by the pop of ignition and screech as the rocket shot out of sight into the sky. Some of those watching feared it had simply exploded after the “pop” and disappearing act they had witnessed.

Seeing her team looking worried Ell said, “No worries team, launch was successful! You can see a faint steam trail going up if you look hard. Let’s go back inside where we can watch the take from the cameras on the rocket.”

An exited babble greeted this announcement and everyone shuffled back inside. Allan put the feeds from the cameras onto several of the big screens scattered around the main research room. There were cameras on four sides of the rocket and one in the nose transmitting back to D5R over a PGR chip. The camera in the front showed a red glow. As they watched, the upper right part of the screen turned bright red, the image distorted and shifted, then with a snap all of the images disappeared. A moan came from many throats at once. Ben could be heard cursing in the back of the room.

Ell’s heart sank. After a moment to work the frog out of her throat she said, “Allan, what happened?”

“The PGR chip became un-entangled and telemetry was lost.”

Ell relayed this to the room, “What do you guys think went wrong?”

Braun said, “It looked like the optics of the forward camera melted in the heat of atmospheric passage. What do you have protecting them?

“Of course!” Roger said, “The PGR chip and communication board is right behind the front camera. If we had a melt through there, it would have burned through the electronics right away.”

Brian said, “The camera’s behind high temp glass, but the seal around that glass might not be able to take the heat.”

Ell closed her eyes, it sounded right to her. “OK, that sounds like the most likely source of failure to me. Anyone have a good solution?”

“We could travel up through the atmosphere more slowly?”

“That might work but would take a very long burn on the rocket nozzle. Even though it wouldn’t even be at 80% the nozzles might not take it.”

Fred said, “Cover the entire nose with high temp glass?”

Brian shook his head, “We don’t have equipment to shape that kind of glass. We’d have to get it from an outside supplier and that’d be too slow for the Station.”

“Can’t we cover the nose with a tungsten alloy cap until the rocket gets up through the atmosphere?” Roger asked.

Fred said, “But wouldn’t we lose orientation?”

Viv said, “We’re already using GPS to determine location. We can use GPS for orientation too, at least until we’re out of the atmosphere.”

Ell frowned, “OK, we’ll have to put a forward facing thruster that we can use to blow the cap off the end of the rocket once we’re up there. Anyone see a problem with that plan?”

“What if the heat makes the cap stick so it won’t blow off?”

“I think the heat will make it expand so it will be looser but we’d better keep making plenty of rockets. OK team! Let’s get on with finishing rocket number two with a cap and a forward thruster. Anyone not busy on number two, keep working on numbers three and four. Number three we could send up slow and see if the nozzle will last through a slow launch and the camera tolerate the lower velocity. Set number four up for a ‘cap’ in case that looks like it would work but we need to do something different.”

Two hours later some of the group gathered outside to launch the second rocket. Unfortunately, once the rocket started its test Allan said, “The thrust vector is not coaxial to the rocket.”

Ell asked hopefully, “Is the vector misalignment small enough to compensate with the nose thrusters?”

“No.”

“Damn! Shut it down. The rocket nozzle’s misaligned or something folks. Let’s trouble shoot it.” Inside Ell felt a little frantic at the thought that they seemed to be flailing around when the lives of the people on the Space Station could depend on their ability to launch a functional rocket. Nonetheless, she did her best to project calm assurance to her team, as if the minutes weren’t ticking away.

When they got the rocket back inside it turned out that the nozzle was aligned with the body of the rocket. However, it was slightly off center inside the “water shroud.” The steam blasting out of the water shroud as the water absorbed the heat of the rocket nozzle was asymmetric enough to produce the misaligned vector.

“OK, let’s get the rocket engine from number 5 and mount it on number 2.”

The switch only took thirty minutes and they mounted the rocket on the rail again. This time Allan reported thrusts were nominal and aligned. “Are we in a satisfactory launch window to the station?”

“Yes, but it is closing.”

Ell closed her eyes, “Is the airspace above us free of craft?”

“No.”

Ell sighed and her shoulders drooped.

Braun said, “Wait, ask if we can still launch safely. Remember that you told your AI that you wanted the airspace ‘completely clear’ but it may be that the aircraft is actually pretty far out of our path.”

Ell checked and Allan confirmed that the aircraft in question was actually near the periphery of their immediate airspace and should be safe.

Ell had Allan launch without a countdown this time. They turned to go back inside.

When they got back inside the views from the camera were already black! Depressed, Ell said, “Allan, play back the minute up to failure please.”

A video image popped up showing the familiar red glow. In fact it looked exactly like the first failure!? “Allan, is this feed from the first or second launch?”

“First launch.”

“Show the failure from the second launch please.”

“The second launch has not failed.”

Ell’s eyes widened and then she slapped her forehead. Of course! The cameras are black because they’re covered by the cap! “Are we high enough to remove the cap yet or is there still significant atmosphere?”

“The rocket is at 125 kilometers and thus above significant atmospheric drag.”

“OK, pause thrust.”

“Thrust paused.”

“Fire forward thruster to remove the cap.”

“Forward thruster firing.”

They all eagerly watched the screens but they remained black.

In an agonized tone Ell said, “Is the forward thruster on full?”

“Yes.”

She scrunched her eyes shut… “Fire the forward attitude thrusters in an alternating pattern, 1,3,2,4, each one for 50 microseconds and repeat the cycle times 3 keeping the forward thruster on full.”

Behind her Ell heard Fred say, “What the hell will that do?”

Roger answered, “She’s shaking the nose of the rocket around, like a dog trying to shake off its collar.”

Nothing happened.

Ell closed her eyes in despair. “OK, let’s try rocket number four that has a front thruster. We need to loosen the fit of the cap first though.”

Fred said, “Wait! Try the rotational thrusters, maybe you can twist the cap off?”

Ell nodded but said, “Brian, can you work on the cap for number four?” As Brian nodded and left she gave the directions for rotational thrusting to Allan. Long moments passed with no change. She sighed, “OK, plan C folks…” She paused as light blossomed across the screens and the front screen showed the cap tumbling away. “YES!!!”

Excited shouts filled the room. Stars whirled across the cameras with the Earth appearing randomly on different screens. The rocket was tumbling wildly.

Ell said, “Can you stabilize the rocket Allan?”

“Working” First the spinning stopped, then the tumbling came under control. Finally, three of the side cameras showed the black of space with steadily glowing stars. One showed the Earth below. Only blackness was visible in the nose camera at this point.

“Allan,” Ell asked, “How are we tracking on our planned trajectory?”

“By GPS the rocket is on track. We need an additional burn to reach the station without an extended chase.”

“OK resume burns to reach the station in the shortest possible time but stay below 70% thrust if possible?”

“Calculating… The rocket can join the station in orbit in 50 minutes with constant burn under 70%.”

“OK, up the thrust to 85%,” she said with a grimace, worrying that the motor would burn out. “Proceed with that flight plan and put me in contact with Ed Candela at NASA.”

Their earlier search for a NASA contact had come up with Candela. He was supposed to be a “can do” kind of guy. Ell hadn’t wanted to talk to NASA until she was reasonably sure they had something to offer. She hoped they weren’t too late.

Ell turned to the group, “Is number four ready to go?”

“Almost, Brian’s milling the cap out a thousandth to make it easier to blow off. Do you want to launch it as soon as it’s ready?”

“No. If something goes wrong with this flight we’ll want to implement fixes before we launch. But let’s put it on the launching frame and do our test burns. Same with number three for a slow launch.”

Ell wandered over to stare out the window at their “launch pad” across the parking lot.

In her ear she heard, “Hello, this is Mr. Candela’s assistant.”

“Hi, this is Ell Donsaii. We believe we have a means to resupply the Space Station. May I describe our plans to Mr. Candela?”

“You and every one else I’m afraid. We must have a million callers, each with their own sure fire solution. Mr. Candela is in a NASA brainstorming session to attempt to put together a rescue at the present. I’m sorry to say that I cannot interrupt him.”

Oh crap! Ell thought, this is going to be just as hard as I had feared. On the other hand it seemed unlikely that she would have gained any traction with people like Candela before she even knew that they could launch to orbit. “Is there anyone else I could talk to about our plans?”

“Sure, you can tell me.”

Double crap! It seemed unlikely in the extreme that Candela’s assistant intended to do anything but “listen politely.” However, Ell said, “OK. We’ve launched a rocket to orbit that is presently closing on the Station. We would like to be able to communicate with the people on the Station so that we can tell them of its impending arrival. They will especially need guidance from us on how to make use of it.”

There was a long pause, “Umm, sure. Where did you launch this ‘rocket’ from?” From some of the irregular pauses in her response, Ell thought that the woman was struggling not to laugh out loud.

“North Carolina.”

Another pause, “And what’s it carrying?”

“Devices called ‘transfer ports.’”

“And they would help the astronauts how?”

“They’ll be able to deliver oxygen as well as water for the oxygen generators.”

Ell could practically hear the woman’s eyes rolling in her head as she said, “Sure, sure, I’ll let Mr. Candela know as soon as I see him.”

After she was disconnected Ell mused a moment then said, “Allan, see if you can connect me with the President Teller’s Science Adviser Chip Horton.” Then she walked back over to the group watching the screens. There wasn’t much to see from the rocket’s cameras so Allan had displayed a graphic of the rocket’s trajectory and position relative to the Station. “Hey group, I’m running into trouble finding anyone at NASA that’ll talk to me. Candela’s aide shot me down. Do any of you know someone that might know someone else who could get us connected over there? We’re looking for second and third order connections now. I know we went over this before but we need more ideas. Braun, how about you? We need to be able to talk to the astronauts so we can tell them that the rocket is coming and how to use it.”

Many of the group got a far away look as they considered their contacts. Braun said, “I don’t know anyone that would be able to put us in contact, but my friend Ed Janssen works in Candela’s division. I’ll touch base with him and see what he says.”

Allan spoke in Ell’s ear, “Mr. Horton is in meetings at the White House regarding the Space Station and his AI refuses a connection. He has instructed his AI not to allow ‘any interruptions.’”

“Leave a message with Horton’s AI that I have a solution for the Space Station problem and see if you can find an underling who’ll talk to me.” To the group watching the monitors she said, “OK, the rest of you who don’t know any person that might help us speak to the astronauts, come brain storm with me over here.”

She walked over to one of the big stainless tables that was mostly empty and turned to the members of her team who gathered with her. “Let’s brainstorm how we can communicate with the Station even if they don’t have radio access. The first thing I’ve thought of is that we should have written a message on the outside of the rocket that they could read through the Station windows. It shouldn’t be hard to have the rocket knock on the window, we just need to pulse the attitude thrusters with it next to the window. But how do we convince them to open the airlock and let it in? We didn’t even put a radio on it! As soon as we break up we should start working on launching another rocket, this time with a radio on board.”

Brian said, “Rocket 3 is ready. Vivian, if I open it up, can you install a radio? Someone could try to find out what frequency the capsules use to communicate with the Station?”

“I can do that.” Braun said.

Brian said, “Viv, remember that whatever we put inside has to be less than 1 7/8” diameter.” He thumped his forehead. “No it doesn’t. I can insert a section in the rocket that has a bigger diameter if I have to.” Brian, Viv and Braun turned to go.

Ell said, “Thanks guys.” She turned to the rest of the group. “Any other ideas?”

Sheila tentatively put up her hand, “Is the thruster control good enough that the rocket could actually write something out?”

Ell frowned, “Seems like it would be hard to recognize that it was writing if it wasn’t leaving a trail. Let’s keep that as an ‘if nothing else works.’”

Roger said, “We have those LEDs on it for ‘running lights,’ maybe we could turn them on and off in Morse code.”

Ell raised her eyebrows, “Good idea, can you look up the Morse code and figure out if we can actually turn the LEDs on and off?”

Allan said, “I have control of the lights and can use them to relay Morse code messages.”

Ell said, “Roger, stay here with us. My AI says he can do Morse code with the lights already. Anyone have more ideas?”

***

Floating in the middle of one of the Space Station’s modules Dave Slager felt just a tiny bit drunk. He suspected that it was because the oxygen was starting to get low. A mildly oxygen deprived state made people feel and act drunk. When he’d checked the atmosphere a little while ago the oxygen had been a tiny bit lower than standard and he assumed it was slowly getting worse.

He pondered the situation pleasantly. This drunken mood was better than the depressive funk he’d been in before. In fact he kind of liked the frame of mind he was in now. He stretched. I hope that low oxygen has the same effect on the others. Maybe it will help them through this countdown to our deaths? I wonder if I should re-record that depressing message I did earlier for the family? He heard a tap from over near the observation window. It repeated itself. Lazily he turned his gaze that way. Huh, maybe the oxygen is really low? He giggled. Cause I’m seeing someone’s model rocket outside the Station’s observation window! Hah! It bumped the window again making another tapping sound.

Emil Taussan pulled himself into the module, “Hey, I’m going to try to use the CRV, even with the damaged rocket nozzle. You wan’ go wi’ me?”

Slager turned toward him, “I thought the nozzle was destroyed?”

“Yeah,” Another tap sounded and Taussan turned toward the window. He stared that way a moment, then turned back to Slager. “It’s got a big hole in the side of the nozzle and a crack in the chamber. But maybe it would generate enough thrust to get us low enough for atmospheric braking?” At another tap he turned toward the window again. Turning back, he shrugged, “What do we have to lose?”

Slager didn’t point out that he’d already used the oxygen from the CRV’s tanks to extend the Station’s supply. Instead he said, “Do you see a model rocket in the window? Or something else?”

Taussan turned back to Slager, “I see a rocket too, about this long,” he separated his hands a couple of feet, “with blinking lights.” He grinned, “What do you see?”

***

Ell and the others watched in horror. On the screen showing the view from the rocket’s side camera they could clearly see two of the astronauts inside the module. They looked drunk!

“Have they been drinking?” Ell asked in dismay.

“Maybe? They’re about to die for God’s sake. Don’t judge.”

Braun said, “If the oxygen concentration is getting low it could be making them act drunk.”

“Oh, my God. What if we can’t get them to open the airlock in time?”

Ell said, “Sheila, please ask Brian and Vivian how much longer until they can launch the rocket with the radio?”

“If they’re already low on oxygen, it might not get there in time even if it took off now.”

Feeling desperate, Ell said, “Allan, make the rocket tap the window harder.”

***

Slager’s scalp prickled, “Tha’s… tha’s what I see too. Let’s take some extra Oh-two and see if it’s still there?” He reached out for the masks used to pre-breathe oxygen for EVAs. They were still hooked into the 100% source though it must be low because it fed the main supply. Slager and Taussan hung at an angle to one another in the module, breathing a little extra oxygen and watching the rocket tap their window. As they sobered up they recognized small puffs of gas were pushing the rocket to make it tap the window.

“Wow, it’s really banging on the window now!” Slager said. “Hey, the lights are blinking fast-slow, think it could be Morse code?”

“Morse code?” Taussan’s brows drew together. “Why not use the radio?” Taussan looked toward the comm center, confirming that it was still on.

To his AI Slager said, “Jimmy? Analyze those blinking lights for Morse code, can you read it?” He held the rocket centered in his field of view so the AI’s video cameras would get a good reading.

In his ear Jimmy said, “Morse code translates the flashing as, ‘…you, understand, wave, if, you, understand, wave, if, you, understand, wave, if, you …’”

Slager waved.

Jimmy said, “thank, you, this, rocket, can, deliver, oxygen, and, water, if, you, will, open, the, airlock, and, let, it, in, thank, you, this, rocket, can, deliver…”

Slager turned to Taussan and said, “Open the outer door to the airlock. That thing says it can deliver oxygen.”

Taussan looked querulously at Slager, “Are you crazy?”

Slager shrugged and repeated Taussan’s earlier question, “What do we have to lose?”

Taussan shrugged, pursing his lips, “Only a few minutes of oxygen.” He started pulling himself toward the lock.

Slager watched the rocket puff its way out of view of the observation window in the direction of the airlock, then he followed Emil.

***

Ell watched the two men pull themselves out of the module in the direction of the airlock. She directed Allan to move the rocket over to the airlock where they all waited anxiously to see if the door would open. A few minutes later a lusty cheer arose from the group when a slight puff of gas preceded the slow opening of the airlock door.

Ell pumped her fist and told Allan to fly the rocket into the opening.

***

Slager pulled himself up next to Taussan to watch through the window as Emil opened the outer door of the airlock. He was feeling drunk again now that they were away from the oxygen masks. Before the door had completely opened, their friendly little rocket sauntered through with a few judicious puffs of gas. Emil closed the airlock door behind it. The rocket promptly put its nose against a surface and began visibly blowing streams of gas out of all the little thrusters it had been maneuvering with. It wavered a bit before the thrust from the different nozzles balanced out. A torrent of gas poured out of the big nozzle at the base, pushing the nose firmly against the bulkhead.

Slager turned to look wide eyed at Taussan. If this was a hallucination it was a weird one, he thought to himself.

Taussan said wonderingly, “I haven’ op’n the valve but the pressure in the lock is risin’!”

Slager turned to gaze back through the window. As he stared at the rocket in the airlock chamber his AI, Jimmy said, “inner, airlock, door, this, rocket, is, releasing, pure, oxygen, when, pressure, is, equalized, you, may, open, inner, airlock, door, this, rocket…”

Slager turned back to Taussan, “My AI says tha’ tha’ toy rocket ish fillin’ the lock with oxygen.” Slager could feel his eyebrows crawling up his forehead.

Taussan said, “The preshure ish above station normal! Sensors shay itsh 100% 0.” He shrugged and said again, “Wha’ do we have to loosh?” He cracked open the inner airlock door and gas puffed into the station through it. Cold gas. Both of them backed away from the door. Taussan opened the door wider and a minute later the rocket came through the door with a few judicious puffs, then resumed blowing cold gas out of multiple nozzles.

They stared at the rocket a few moments. Slager realized he was feeling more sober. To his AI he said, “Jimmy, ask all crew to come down to the main module.”

In his ear Jimmy said, “communication, working, on, better, communication, working, on, better, communication, working …”

***

Ell was out back of D5R at the big LOX (Liquid Oxygen) tank. She’d closed the valve to the pipe where their ports were located. “I can’t believe I didn’t think harder about communications!” she said exasperatedly to Brian as she pulled out the port module for one of the thrusters. Holding it up she said, “Allan, energize this port.” Then she moved it closer to her lips and said, “Hello? Can you hear me?” If she was right, the sound of her voice would go in through the port and out through the thruster nozzle on the side of the rocket. It wouldn’t be loud, but hopefully the astronauts would be able to hear her. She repeated herself.

***

Anya Stolchya pulled herself into the main module. She hoped Slager hadn’t called them down there for some morbid final speech. The low oxygen concentration had made her clumsy drunk and given her a splitting headache. She wondered if Slager had intentionally dropped the oxygen concentration to make everyone a little drunk. Maybe feeling drunk would be good for the rest of the crew but Anya was a maudlin drunk and had been sobbing uncontrollably. Besides, she wanted to meet her maker sober. Dying drunk seemed the rankest cowardice to her. She wiped her eyes with the back of a hand before leaping clumsily for the opening.

As she pulled herself into the module, she noticed with some surprise that her headache had faded. Briefly, she wondered why. Hmm, I don’t feel drunk anymore! She looked around. The rest of the Space Station crew had reached the main module before she did. Dave Slager hung in the middle of the group holding a two foot long tube that looked suspiciously like a large model rocket. It even had some areas of blackened soot on it as if it had been launched.

Anya narrowed her eyes. Hissing came from the device as if it was leaking gas. Slager was staring at it like a mother might at a new-born babe. She wondered if it might be some kind of oxygen tank Slager’d found? If so, could it be responsible for her headache going away? Well, she thought dismally, if that were the case, it wasn’t big enough to last them very long.

A small tinny voice came from the tube. “Hello? Can you hear me?” It sounded like a little girl! The voice repeated itself.

Slager’s eyes widened. After the first repeat he leaned toward the device and said, “Yes. We hear you. Who is this?”

“Great! Sir, this is Ell Donsaii. Can you unscrew the screws down the sides of the rocket? There are screws down two sides and if you remove them you should be able to open it up… I hope to God you have a screwdriver up there?”

What the hell? Ell Donsaii the gymnast? Or someone else? Slager wondered to himself. Wasn’t there a physics paper by someone with a name like that that caused quite a stir? Nonetheless he said, “We have screwdrivers.” He looked to Taussan who unzipped a pouch on his coverall and pulled out a multi-tip screwdriver. Slager showed him the ordinary Phillips head screws inset down one side of the rocket and Taussan put on the correct tip. Slager positioned the rocket between his knees, careful not to cover the little ports that were still gushing freezing cold oxygen. He began unscrewing the screws. “We’re unscrewing it,” he said.

Slager wondered briefly at the fact he was following this unknown person’s instructions without question. He reminded himself that this unknown person had apparently just saved his life. For a little while anyway.

Anya said, “Vat in all da hells is dat ting?”

Shrugging, Taussan turned toward her, “We don’t know. It just showed up and started tapping on the window,” he jerked a thumb toward the observation window.

Anya said incredulously, “And how did it get in here?”

“We opened the airlock and it flew itself in.”

Anya blinked slowly several times, “Are you crazy Emil? You don’ even know what it eez!”

Taussan smiled lazily and shrugged his shoulders lazily, “What did we have to lose, Anya?”

Anya blinked owlishly at Taussan several more times, then pivoted her head back to watch Slager unscrewing the last few screws. “How did it get here?” she asked musingly, not really expecting anyone to answer.

The last screw came out and Slager tried to pull the two halves of the rocket apart. They wouldn’t come. He pulled the Phillips tip off the screwdriver and chose a blade screwdriver tip which he stuck into a crack between the two sides. He pried and twisted. The cover popped off and sailed lazily across the module. Anya caught it.

Slager had been expecting to see little tanks but instead he found himself looking at a row of nozzles with different thread fittings on them! What the hell! He said, “The cover’s off.”

The little voice said, “Sorry sir, it’s hard to understand you. I hear people speaking in the background and can’t understand them at all. I think you have to put your face near the nozzle for me to hear.”

Nozzle? He thought. It did seem like her voice was coming from one of the nozzles that had been outgassing oxygen earlier. But why communicate through what appeared to be an attitude thruster? He pulled the rocket closer to his face and said, “The cover is off. I see a row of threaded nozzles.”

“Yes sir! What do you need the most? Water? Food? Oxygen?”

Slager pulled his head back in astonishment, torn between wanting to ask questions and wanting to get at whatever this thing had inside it. His forehead creased as he realized that it had already blown far more oxygen into the station than he would have ever believed it could contain. “Water,” he croaked. The mere question had made him feel parched. The Station’s oxygen generators hydrolysed water to make oxygen, so running out of oxygen meant they had already run out of water. They’d been on low water rations for quite a while, trying to conserve it to have enough oxygen.

“OK sir,” the tinny little voice said, “We’re set up to deliver water through the nozzle that looks like an ordinary hose bib. We don’t want it to spray water into your module so we’ll wait for you to hook it up to something to contain the water. We didn’t know what kind of connection you would normally use to fill your tanks? If the hose bib won’t work, we can put the water through one of the other nozzles?”

Taussan frowned. There couldn’t be more than a half a liter of water in that cylinder. He pulled out a medium sized plastic bag with a drinking nipple on one end and an opening on the other. They were normally used for drinking liquids so that the liquids wouldn’t spill into the weightless environment. He slid the opening over the hose bib and used his fingers to close the opening around the bib. Moving his face closer to the rocket he said, “OK, turn on the water.”

Water began blasting out of the hose bib, like a household spigot turned suddenly full blast. His bag, almost immediately full, slipped off the bib as he shouted “Stop!” A spray of small globules and one large one floated away from the rocket into the free fall environment of the module as the astronauts choked out laughter and amazement. Taussan sealed off the bag and grabbed another. The astronauts fell to catching and sucking up free floating globules with their mouths, though Anya pulled her straw out of her pocket and used it. Seeing her, Slager also pulled out a straw and stuck it in the big globule floating by his head. He drank to his heart’s content. As the laughing died down he could hear the small tinny voice from the rocket saying, “What happened! Are you OK?”

He pulled the rocket nearer and said, “Yes, yes, we’re fine. We just didn’t think there could be that much water in this thing.” He eyed the huge globule Taussan had inserted his straw into. The globule certainly consisted of a larger volume of water than the rocket could possibly have contained! “How did you do it? Water’s supposed to be incompressible!”

“Sorry sir! That’s probably quite a mess up there in a weightless environment.”

“Yeah, well, we’re experienced with weightless messes.” He saw Jim Sasson uncoiling a small vacuum hose to start sucking up the floating water. “Please. How did you get that much water in this thing? You’re breaking some physical laws as near as I can tell.”

The tiny voice said, “Oh, sorry sir. The water isn’t in the rocket.” All the astronauts fell silent to listen to her explanation. She continued, “The hose bib has a ‘port’ behind it that connects it to a big tank of distilled water here in North Carolina. You do need distilled water for the oxygen generators right?”

Confusion crossed the expectant faces hanging at all angles around Slager. He blinked several times. “Port?” he said, did she just say that that bib is connected to a tank in North Carolina? “I’m afraid we didn’t understand that last part?”

“It’s like the PGR Comm chips sir. It’s a ‘quantum entangled’ port that connects the bib you have there, to a water tank here in North Carolina, through the same 5th dimension the PGR chips use.”

A confused and excited babble exploded from the surrounding astronauts.

Slager’s brows drew together, he pulled the rocket close as if he were speaking into a microphone. “Did you say ‘Ell Donsaii’?”

The tinny voice replied, “Yes sir.”

“The physicist, not the gymnast?”

“Physicist, gymnast—same person sir. Though I only have an undergraduate degree in physics.”

“You’re… You’re the girl that won the Olympics?”

“No. No sir. Only some gymnastic events sir.”

Sugi Nishikawa thumped Slager’s shoulder, “She said she could send us food! I’m starving!”

Slager, feeling like his head was spinning, relayed the request.

“Yes sir. We can send food. But we aren’t very well prepared for it yet. It needs to be something we can push through a 10mm diameter hole that won’t get loose and float all around in your weightless environment. So we’re thinking pasty foods? I brought in a couple of big tubs of peanut butter? If you have suggestions for other foods we can put through without messing up the station I can send someone out to buy some.”

Sugi said, “I’d kill for some peanut butter right now!”

The tinny voice said, “Yes Ma’am, I heard that. Here comes some peanut butter.”

To the astonishment of the group of astronauts, the end of what had looked like a “stubbed out” pipe in the row of nozzles turned dark as the people on the ground activated the port on the disk covering the “stub.” Then it turned brown as peanut butter started extruding from it in fits and starts—as if someone was pushing it in the other end with a spatula (which they were). Sugi darted a hand out and snatched a finger-full that she stuck in her mouth. “Mmmm!” she literally moaned.

Chapter Eight

The vid crews were setting up cameras in the Oval Office. One of President Teller’s staff came into his study and handed him a slate with the script for his speech opened on it. Teller turned to NASA Director James Epaulding and said, “Do we know for sure that they’re already dead Jim?”

“Uh, no sir. Telemetry showed the oxygen concentration started falling about sixty minutes ago telling us that the generator had run out of water. Even though the Station holds a pretty large volume of air, they can’t have long to go. It’s possible that they might have some ‘oxygen candles’ or pressure bottles in the emergency locker that we don’t know about.”

“You don’t have them on the line?”

“Uh, no sir. That seemed like it would be pretty morbid. The Station crew expressed a desire for privacy in their final moments. They did record some brave final words to be shared with the world after they’re gone.”

The President sighed, “Crap! What an awful thing.” He looked over at his Science Advisor, Chip Horton, who nodded gravely. “How will we know for sure?”

“Telemetry will show us when the oxygen level is too low to sustain life. We expect that to be within the hour and well before your scheduled broadcast. Let me check what it is now.” He looked up as he spoke to his AI.

He frowned, “What?”

He turned to the President, “The oxygen level is back up. In fact right now it’s higher than normal. They must have had an ‘oxygen candle’ or a pressure bottle or something we didn’t know about and used it to boost their levels for a while. We may need to reschedule the broadcast.”

The President’s secretary whispered “OK” and looked up at the ceiling as she listened to a message through her AI. She blanched and darted a glance at the President. “Sir… Dr. Slager… the, uh, Space Station commander is asking to speak to you.”

Teller’s stomach roiled. He reached into his pocket for a Tums. Talk about a “dead man walking.” He didn’t want to talk to this man who was about to die anymore than the next person. He grimaced; I didn’t take this job so that I could shirk the tough stuff. “OK, put him on,” he said, suppressing a sigh.

“Mr. President?” He heard a voice say.

“Yes Dr. Slager? I would like to express my sympathies in these bleak hours.”

“Tell Chip Horton he really ought to answer his calls! Can you shift us to a video screen so we can have a real conversation?”

“Do as he asked, Cindy,” Teller said to his AI. The large video screen on the other side of the study popped to life showing the eleven current astronauts floating in the main module, weightlessness evident in that they were all oriented differently. Teller noted with astonishment that they looked like they were in good moods. Slager, right side up and close to the camera actually had a huge smile on his face. Teller said, “What’s this about Chip’s calls?”

Slager raised an eyebrow, “He’s had his AI blocking all calls except those from NASA for hours now.” Seeing Horton near the President he said, “Hey Chip, you know a young lady named Ell Donsaii?”

Horton glanced at Teller and Epaulding in puzzlement, then back at the screen. He wondered if the astronauts were drunk from oxygen deprivation? Were he and the people in the President’s study about to watch the astronauts die on screen? To Slager he said, “Yes I do. Brilliant young woman.”

“You don’t know the half of it. Says you promised her she could call you any time but she’s been locked out by your AI for the past few hours. Couldn’t get anyone at NASA to listen to her either Jim,” Slager said, focusing on Epaulding.

Horton said, “Uh, OK Dr. Slager. What does she…” Need? Want? Have to do with why you’re calling? Horton couldn’t imagine what Donsaii had to do with the Space Station and the dying astronauts. He did remember her talking about satellites and her technology a little back last year. But, much as he respected the young lady, her claims had seemed entirely too outrageous. He squinted as he realized he had mostly erased that conversation from his memory.

Slager looked at him exasperatedly, “Chip! Tell your AI to connect the young lady into our conversation!”

“Uh, OK.”

A window popped open on the big screen. It moved Slager and the other astronauts to one side. The slender young lady on the screen was in three quarter profile and was evidently speaking into some kind of small microphone she was holding in front of her mouth. A number of other people were in the background. She was saying, “Dr. Slager, please! I don’t have to be part of your conversation with the White House! Just ask NASA to let us connect to you over an audio video channel so we can hear better and especially so we can visualize the connection problems you’re having…”

President Teller cleared his throat, “You’re already part of the conversation with the White House Ms. Donsaii. Dr. Slager feels it is very important that we speak with you?” Though for the life of him he couldn’t see why?

“Oh!” She turned to face the camera, which evidently was on a screen beside her, because her eyes seemed to take all of them in. She blushed and came to attention. “Excuse me sir. I’m just trying to help…” her voice trailed off.

Teller marveled again at how pretty the young lady was. He shook his head. “Do you need something?” And just why do you have a crew of dying astronauts on the Space Station putting your calls through for you?

“Uh, yes sir. We need an audio video channel to the Space Station so we can troubleshoot their port hookups…”

Epaulding had turned to the President, “Sir, perhaps I could take her call about a ‘channel to the Station’ down the hall while you talk to the crew?” He raised his eyebrows and jerked his head to the side.

Slager barked a laugh, “Jim, do not try to pawn this young lady off. She’s just saved the Space Station for you!” His voice rasped, “She’s saved all our lives too, for which we’ll be forever in her debt.”

President Teller felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck.

The astronauts hanging around Slager said, “Hear, hear.”

Part Two

Chapter One

President Teller drew a deep breath and looked Ell in the eye. “Ms. Donsaii, your country once again finds itself in your debt.”

“Sir, I just got lucky in finding this ‘port technology’ and realizing it might help the crew of the Station. These people around me are the ones that actually made it all work. I can’t emphasize enough what a great team they’ve been. They willingly put in exhausting hours once it became evident that we might be able to help the astronauts.”

Teller thought to himself. What a leader! Willingly spreading the credit she could claim herself to her team. Out loud he said, “What can we do for you?”

“Oh! We don’t need anything… But… if you don’t mind…”

“What?”

“It would be helpful if this technology and our role in the rescue were kept confidential for a while?”

“My goodness! Why?”

“We don’t really understand what we’re doing very well yet and have only just applied for patent protection. I’m afraid that if this becomes public right away we’ll be besieged with attention that will prevent our achieving a better understanding of what we’re doing and what the safety issues might be.”

Teller shrugged and his eyes swept the room. “OK. We’ll keep it a secret for now.” He looked at the screen where the astronauts were still visible. “Dr. Slager, would your people also be willing to keep it a secret for a while?”

Slager glanced around at the other astronauts, “I think we’d be willing to do almost anything that young lady asked of us?”

Heads nodded all around the crew of the Station.

***

Cape Canaveral—People who had gathered here for a vigil honoring the astronauts expressed ecstatic relief when the news broke that a clandestine relief mission had extended the survival of the astronauts on the Station. Speculation as to the nature of the undisclosed relief mission is rampant. The most commonly accepted view is that the Department of Defense launched one of its “black” experimental craft with…

Holding up his hamburger, Ben called out, “Brian, you should give up that career as a machinist—open a restaurant and get rich!”

Brian lifted his spatula in salute. Reaching back to the grill to turn a couple of pieces of chicken, he said, “You should give up the micromanipulation career and start blogging as a restaurant critic.” He raised an eyebrow at Ben. “You do know great food when you taste it.”

After Friday’s rescue of the Station they’d spent a tumultuous Friday evening and Saturday morning straightening out how to supply the station properly with water. This had culminated with the launch of another rocket which had two of their new 50mm diameter ports. Then they passed the correct fittings and hoses to connect their “hose bib” to the Station’s water holding tanks through those ports. At about two inches the ports were plenty big enough for the hoses. They’d also sent through a bunch of PGR chips so the astronauts could be directly connected to the net through their AIs. With them connected D5R could easily talk to the people on the ISS. Once the crew of the station was temporarily safe, Ell insisted that everyone at D5R go home Saturday afternoon to get some well-deserved rest. Then to celebrate, Ell had invited the D5R team out for a Sunday afternoon cookout at her farm. She’d had Amy arrange a caterer but when Brian found out she was using a caterer he’d pitched a fit, insisting that it was an insult to his skills as a “master griller.” They’d finally compromised by having Brian grill the meats and the caterer bring everything else. He certainly had grilling down to an art.

Ell had had a hamburger, a drumstick, some potato salad and was dishing herself some blackberry cobbler with ice cream. Ben said, “Whoa, little lady! You keep eating like that and you’re gonna be as big as Brian there.”

Roger laughed, “She’s been eating that way as long as I’ve known her. Don’t know where she puts it all.”

“I used to think she must be bulimic.” Amy said.

Ell rolled her eyes, “I just have a fast metabolism guys.”

Viv asked, “Are you one of those exercise freaks who runs ten miles before breakfast every day?”

“Oh, my goodness no! A mile is about my limit. I do some martial arts with the guys.” she said, nodding toward the other end of the porch where the majority of her security crew were sitting with their plates. “But I don’t get nearly as much exercise as I should.”

Mary from Ell’s security team turned her head, “She may not get much exercise, but she kicks all our butts when we spar.”

Ben glanced over at Steve. Six foot two inches of hard muscle Steve, looking like a big cat. “All? Even Steve?” he asked Mary.

“Yeah, even Steve.” Mary grinned, “Really pisses him off to get beat by a girl.”

Ben looked over at Ell, then, at Steve. He turned speculatively back to Mary. “Remind me not to pick a fight with her! Does she beat you guys with some kind of gymnastic moves?”

“Not really. She’s just faster than anyone has a right to be.”

Ben turned back to Ell, “Why do you need a security team Ell? Especially if none of them are as good as you are when it comes to hand to hand combat.”

Ell shrugged. “I’ve been kidnapped a couple of times. Once they drugged me, once they Tasered me. These security guys are gonna rescue me if that ever happens again, right Mary?”

Mary smiled, “You bet your bippy!”

Ell said, “That’s a huge part of why I asked the President to suppress our role in the whole Space Station thing for now. I don’t want more notoriety bringing people like the Chinese down on my head.”

Janey leapt down off Randy’s lap and ran up to Amy, “Mom, can we have ice cream now?”

“Did you eat all of your salad?”

“All but the tomatoes, you said I didn’t have to eat them.”

Amy rolled her eyes, “OK.”

Janey ran back to her brother, “Mikey! We can have ice cream now!”

Roger rocked his chair back on its back legs. “Ell? What’s next for D5R? Now that you’ve conquered space?” He grinned at her.

“Now that we’ve conquered low earth orbit you mean?”

He shrugged, “Mostly you. And ‘low earth orbit’ is still space. What’s next?”

Ell’s eyes swung to take in the researchers sitting nearby and she lifted her chin in a questioning gesture, “What do you guys think we should do next?”

Fred said, “Well, so far we’ve only temporized the problem at the Space Station by providing them supplies. We need to figure out a way to get them back home. Or at least send them up a replacement nozzle for their Crew Recovery Vehicle.”

Vivian said, “Why don’t we just send up a huge port and have them step through it to come back home?”

Ben’s assistant John frowned, “What if going through a port isn’t good for you?”

Roger said, “Check your displays.”

Everyone looked up at their HUDs. Roger piped them video that showed a number of objects squiggling against a clear background. Ell frowned, “What are we looking at Roger?”

“I put a drop of pond water that’d been through a port under the microscope.”

“So?”

“So, those are protozoans swimming around, looking perfectly healthy after a port transition.”

“Hah! Cool, we need to try it with multicellular animals.”

Roger reached in his pocket and pulled out a small vial, setting it on the table. He grinned, “Way ahead of you.”

The group leaned forward. An ant was crawling around inside the vial. Ell said, “You put that ant through a port too?”

“Yup, just stepped outside D5R and scooped him up.”

“Worker ants are female.”

Roger rolled his eyes, “Scooped her up. She was pretty excited after I dropped her through the port but seems fine now.”

Ell said, “Cool! There is a small problem sending people through though.”

Roger raised his brows at her.

“You know that we’re powering the fields for the 10mm ports with about 300 watts?”

Heads nodded.

“Theoretically, the minimum would be about 248 watts for a 10mm port. The minimum energy requirements for a 1 meter diameter port—one meter would be big enough to send a human through lengthwise—would be four orders of magnitude larger or about 2 and half million watts. That’s the power consumption of 2000 homes, i.e. a small town.”

Eyes were wide as they digested this.

“Also, as Vivian noticed the other day, the ports draw a lot more power when we’re sending something through them to the Space Station. That’s because the station is about 230 miles high. That means that raising a kilogram up to the ISS means we have to add about… 1 kilowatt hour of electricity to provide that potential energy. And, the ISS is traveling somewhere around eight kilometers per second relative to us and so we have to inject about… 9 kilowatt hours to provide the kinetic energy. We may be getting a ‘free lunch’ in ‘crossing the distance’ but we don’t get a free lunch in changing the altitude or velocity. Sending a 70 kilogram person would require about 700 kilowatt hours to provide the potential and kinetic energy. That’s in addition to the 2.5 megawatts to hold the port open.”

Roger whistled.

Fred had narrowed his eyes at her, “Did you just calculate those energy requirements in your head?”

Ell shrugged, “The kinetic energy formula is only one-half mass times velocity squared.”

“In your head?”

She shrugged again, “Yeah, really, it’s not that hard.”

He snorted.

Ell said, “And remember, there’d be some waste energy in the form of heat. That could make a port that size pretty hot to pass through. So even though a meter is a bigger port than you’d need to pass most people through lengthwise, the person would probably need to be protected by something to shield them from the heat. Person plus shielding may add up to a meter diameter.”

Roger said, “Ouch, those are some pretty significant problems.” He grinned, “But they don’t sound insurmountable. If you don’t mind, tomorrow I’m going to try sending a mouse through a 50 mm port?”

Ell said, “Oh yeah, I think that’s a great idea. Let’s figure out what the possibilities are. However, I think we’ll find that the energy costs to launch one of our rockets to orbit are quite a bit lower than the energy cost of a big port.”

Braun said, “Ms. Donsaii, I know I’m kinda new to this group but I’d like to put in my two cents?”

Ell grinned at him, “This whole group is pretty new Rob. We don’t stand much on precedence or ceremony. Tell us what your ‘rocket scientist’ brain is thinking?”

“Well, I might be biased by my skill set, but I really want us to build a rocket that can move people, not just ports. We need to go to the Moon, and Mars, and, and Venus! We should start with little rockets like the ones we’ve been building. We can send them to those places with cameras and maybe some manipulator arms.”

“Wow!” Ell grinned at him. “Rob, now you’re making it sound like you may believe the ports really do work?”

He rolled his eyes, “Somebody rubbed my nose in it!”

Ben said, “Don’t forget we’ve also got to visit the asteroids! Maybe bring one back to earth orbit for raw materials.”

Ell looked around the group. “Well, I think those are great goals. However, I think we all need to recognize that none of you originally hired on to explore the universe. You hired on to build ports and despite some frustrations on the way to it, that goal’s been achieved.” She raised her eyebrows at the group. Ell saw a mixture of emotions crossing their faces, ranging from satisfaction to apprehension that she might be about to shut down the company.

Suddenly Ben Stavos stood and raised his beer in the air, “Hell yeah we did! Gimme a hooah!”

To Ell’s bemusement the rest of the crew she’d assembled at D5R came to their feet hoisting their own glasses and cheering.

Fred Marsden said, “To the ball busters!”

Ben said, “Back at you ring a dings!” Then he pointed his beer at Brian Short, “and to Brian who had the real breakthrough idea!”

Ell raised her Coke with the rest of them, cheering heartily.

When the group had settled back down Ell said, “OK, next. You guys all hired on for a salary and hopefully for a chance to do some cool science.”

Many of the group raised their glasses again.

She continued, “How many of you read your contract carefully enough to know you’ve got some shares in D5R?” She tilted her head, “Or remember me telling you that?”

Eyes widened and people looked at each other. Fred said, “We do?”

“Hah! I knew it! None of you thought this ‘port stuff’ had a snowball’s chance did you? So you either didn’t read about your shares, or skimmed over that part of your contract. Or forgot what I said about it. Well, all of you have shares, so all of you should care about what we do with our intellectual property.” She raised her eyebrows at them. “Right? The way I see it, we have some choices. One, we could just license the technology to NASA or the highest bidder. Two, we could build our own company to explore space and do all the things Rob and Ben suggested a little bit ago. Three, we could explore a little ourselves, then license. What do you guys think?”

There was a lot of looking at each other, staring at the ceiling and quickly whispered conversations. Fred said, “I think option one is ‘get rich quick.’ Option two is ‘get really rich slowly.’ Option three is in between. But hell, I want to be at the forefront of some of these explorations, I vote for number two with the option to go to three.”

A tumultuous, “Hear, hear!” followed Fred’s assessment.

Ell grinned at them, “OK, we keep it to ourselves for now. Next, do we expand to become a huge company that gets us out there into space fast, or do we stay small for at least a while?”

After some occasionally vociferous discussion they decided to stay small for at least a while longer. They would just contract out the production of large components that they couldn’t make by themselves in the machine shop.

***

John Clarkson closed his eyes and contemplated the best spin to put on the news. He always felt like he was walking on eggshells when he spoke to the Chairman of ILX. He opened his eyes and spoke to his AI, “Place a call to David Dennison.” He closed his eyes again while he waited.

“What’s happened now?” Dennison’s gravelly voice demanded without preamble.

“Good news Mr. Dennison. Someone has successfully resupplied the Space Station.”

“Really?! That’s great!” Clarkson could almost hear the wheels turning. Initial relief that ILX wasn’t going to get slapped with wrongful death lawsuits by the astronauts families. Then suspicion regarding a possible competitor. Dennison was absolutely ruthless about competition. That had gotten him where he was and no one was going to change him. “Who?”

Clarkson could hear the narrowed eyes in that “who?” He tried not to sigh. “No one seems to know at present sir. May have been some secret defense department launch?”

“Find out. Our people at NASA need to…” Dennison ground to a stop before he said something on record about the people at NASA that were on ILX’s secret payroll. “Find out.”

***

Sheila walked outside at 7:30 AM Monday and saw the “lunch on wheels” taco truck pulling up outside D5R as Jose had promised. She walked out to move the cones that she’d set out to keep anyone from parking right in front of the door. The truck pulled into the space she’d saved for it and a young man got out. “Jose?”

“Yes Ma’am.”

“I know it will take you a while to get set up but I’m hoping to take some samples and a couple of menus inside so people can place orders?”

“Just a minute.” The man shuffled some papers and pulled out a small stack of menus, handing them to her.

“Thanks. We’re still good on our agreement that you’ll put whatever ingredients in the burritos are requested?”

“Oh, yes Ma’am, and I bought premium ingredients like you asked. You’re really going to pay double the menu prices?”

“Yep, but that’s for steak and fresh tomatoes, not hamburger and tomato sauce etc. right?”

“Sure, that’s why I got all the premium ingredients.”

“OK.” She handed him a metal ring. “This ring is one and seven eighths inches in diameter. Everything you make has to fit through it, right?”

“Ma’am, are you sure? The burritos’ll have too much tortilla and not enough filling. They’ll be better if I make ‘em bigger.”

“Jose, we talked about this last night. They’ve got to fit through that ring because we have to pass them through a hole a tiny bit bigger than that. Tear your tortillas in half or something. We want good burritos but they have to fit!”

“OK,” he said dubiously. She could tell he thought she was out of her mind, but the customer was always right, right? He tilted his head, “Are you feeding a prisoner or something through that hole?”

“No!” she laughed, “But it’s a secret why we’re passing the burritos though the hole, OK?”

Jose shrugged, “OK.”

“Do you have the sample burritos like I asked?”

“Just a minute.” He lifted a side panel that made an awning, slid open a window then walked around to the back of his truck and got in. He stepped up to the window and set out the ring and a couple of burritos. He tried squeezing one of the burritos into the ring but it was obviously too big. He sighed, “You’re sure you can’t make the hole bigger?”

She rolled her eyes and nodded.

“OK, just a sec.” He unrolled the burrito, scraped off some of the filling, tore a strip off the tortilla and rolled it up smaller. This time the ring slid over it. He laid it on a piece of paper and rolled it up, handing it to Sheila. “OK?”

She picked up the ring and slid it over the burrito and paper. “Yep. I think your salsa is a little watery though. These shouldn’t be ‘sloppy’ at all, OK?”

“OK,” he said, again sounding dubious. He took the two burritos back and put them in the microwave to warm them up. “They’re gonna want more to drink with dry burritos. I sure don’t have any cups that’ll fit through your ring.” Jose raised an eyebrow at her.

“Hmmm, I’ll have to ask about drinks, but we may not be able to use them.” Sheila took the two burritos and headed back into D5R.

Ell had been working out some issues with connecting the astronauts, through PGR Comm’s servers, to the rest of the net and world when Sheila came in with the two burritos and set them next to her. She glanced at them and then said, “Dr. Slager, I believe we have a treat for you. I’m going to activate one of the 5 cm ports and push something through to you.”

Ell had Allen energize the port and she slid the burrito through it.

Slager grabbed it as it floated out his end, noting the warmth. He unwrapped the end and the smell broke out into the module. “Whoa! A hot burrito?!”

Taussan turned toward him, eyebrows lifted. “Really?”

The second burrito floated out. Slager passed it to Taussan then took a bite of his, “Awesome!” he mumbled around a mouthful.

Ell said, “We have a ‘taco truck’ outside D5R ready to make burritos to order for you astronauts as long as I’m right that you’re able to eat burritos when you’re weightless?” She picked up the menu, rolled it into a tube and slid it through the port too. “You can pick from the menu but the guy has agreed to roll up anything in a tortilla that you want him to.”

Slager looked at the end of his burrito, “Whoa, fresh tomatoes in this! Awesome! It has been sooo long since we’ve had anything fresh!” He turned and bellowed to the Space Station in general. “Hey! A taco truck’s pulled up outside, come place your orders!”

Sheila turned to the grinning Ell, “Jose is making the burritos a little ‘dry’ so that they won’t squirt or dribble juice out into the Station. He suggested that they would need more to drink with drier food. I can’t think of a way to make a coke fit through this sized port though.”

Ell frowned, “Ohhh, they don’t drink carbonated beverages in space anyway. Without gravity you can’t burp out the carbonation and all the little bubbles just travel through your intestines. Maybe lemonade?”

A female voice in the background said, “Oh yeah! I’d love a fresh lemonade. Could you send a hose through and we could fill some drink bags with it?”

Ell frowned, “Maybe? I’ll talk to the guy.”

Ell went out to talk to Jose and after a bit she and Sheila came back in with his soda dispenser set up without its carbonation tank. It had a water line and a syrup dispenser that dispensed several different syrups for different flavors of soda. It also dispensed un-carbonated lemonade, limeade, several juices and tea. Sheila went back out to the truck with the astronauts’ burrito orders. Ell hooked up a water line and fed the dispenser nozzle through the port tube. The nozzle was a tight fit for the 50mm port. Ell shoved and wiggled it into the tube leading up to the actual port on her side. For a moment she thought she’d have to pull it back out and shave off some of the plastic but then it suddenly slipped through the port. Ell felt a burning, stinging sensation as the finger she’d had been pushing it with plunged momentarily into the port behind the dispenser. At first she thought her finger had struck something on the other side that had injured it. Then she realized that the finger had crossed the port interface into the Station and something about crossing the interface had caused the burning. When she pulled the finger back out it continued to burn for a moment, even though it looked completely normal. Ell shook the finger a few times as the burning sensation faded away. Hmmm, if it always feels like that to go through a port, it wouldn’t be very pleasant to travel that way, she thought. Maybe that’s why the ant was so excited?

Roger had arrived and he, Ell, and Sheila watched the take from Slager’s AI video camera as the delighted astronauts filled drink bags with lemonade, OJ, tea and even one bag of flat Coke.

Ell told Roger about the burning sensation when her finger had gone through the port momentarily and he said, “I put a mouse through a port like you suggested and he flopped around for a bit, then seemed pretty excited for another minute or two. He seems fine now though.”

Ell said, “Well if your whole body felt like it was on fire like my finger did when it went through, I can imagine you’d be pretty excited alright.”

Roger said, “What am I gonna do with the mouse now? I didn’t think of that when I bought him at the pet store.”

Ell frowned, “I think you need to get whatever we need to keep him around the rest of his life. We need to make sure that going through a port doesn’t make you sick or shorten your life span. Call him ‘John Glenn.’ He’ll be famous as the first ‘port traveler.’ How long do mice live anyway?”

Roger said, “I don’t know. I guess I’d better get back to the pet store for a cage and food etc.”

Allan said, “Mice live an average of 18 months.”

“I think you really ought to get twenty mice. Put 10 mice through a port and keep 10 as controls so we can compare average life spans between the two groups and to be sure they all stay healthy? Someday we may want to put a human through a port and we’ll want some idea whether it’s OK.”

Roger said, “18 months is a long time to wait. I’ll find some shorter lived animals to put through the ports too.” He paused, then said, “My AI says worker bees live about 4 weeks. I’ll see if I can get some freshly hatched workers from a beekeeper and put half of them through a port. Hmmm, I’ll have to figure out what to feed bees…”

Roger wandered off and Sheila came back in with a bag full of fresh, hot burritos and started shoving them through the port to the delighted astronauts.

Slager said, “Ms. Donsaii…”

Ell said, “Please call me ‘Ell.’”

Slager said, “Well, you should call me ‘Dave’ then.”

“Ouch! That makes me uncomfortable. I’ve been taught to respect my elders.”

“Now you’re making me feel old. That’s not respectful! Anyway, I wanted to again express our gratitude for your rescue.”

“We were so excited to be able to help. We’d been working on these ports for quite a while and when we suddenly realized they might be able to help you guys in a time of crisis it really gave us something to work towards. The group had been working long hours and sleeping here on cots trying to get this whole thing to work before you ran out of air so I hope you don’t mind them taking the day off yesterday?”

“Oh, my goodness no. I’ve worked to a few deadlines in my time too. You’d completely stabilized our situation here by Saturday afternoon.”

“Well, we want to make sure we’ve done everything we can to make you safe and to make things better for you guys. We do appreciate, even more now, the risks you’ve been taking in our name out there on the Station. So, are you fully bunkered up with water and oxygen in case something should happen to our ability to supply you?”

“I think we’re full up, my AI’ll check. But what in the world could happen to you?”

“Well, I don’t know, but personally I’ve been kidnapped a few times and we were the victims of some industrial espionage a while back. Maybe, a fire? Who knows, but if something should happen to us we don’t want you guys to immediately be back in desperate straits.”

“Thanks for your concern. My AI tells me that our gauges are reading full for all of our water and oxygen storage systems now. We’re a little iffy on food but the flat packages of preserved food that NASA normally sends up here won’t fit through a two inch port.”

Ell said, “Sheila got you some stuff at the store. Let me pull back the soda nozzle and hose.” Ell tugged on the hose. “Can you push from your side. Be careful not to stick your finger through the port, it hurts.”

Slager said, “Let me brace myself so I can push.”

Ell put her hand on the port so she could pull harder. Suddenly with a snap the hose came loose and fluid started spraying everywhere! Ell realized something had cut the hose. She turned the spray down into a wastebasket and reached over to the main line, turning off the valve there. Sheila turned off the water at the sink and Ell cut power to the pump for the syrups.

Slager was saying, “What happened? Something cut the hose right across. Is there a sharp edge in the port?”

Ell wiped off her end of the hose. It was sheared cleanly across. “Um, I think I wiggled one of the wires supplying the field to the port down here and the port shut off. Glad I didn’t do that when my finger was in the port! Did it make a mess up there?” she asked, looking at the water and syrup dripping off the surfaces in front of her.

“No, just a few drops here and there.”

Ell leaned down and looked into the port, seeing Slager’s eye looking back at her on the other side. “I guess wiggling the wire only cut it off momentarily and it’s back working again. We’ll send some food through now and clean up our mess in a minute.” Ell gestured Sheila at the port. “Don’t touch the wires.”

Slager was astonished to see a banana wiggle through the 5 cm port, followed by ten more. Then packets of beef jerky held together with rubber bands, followed by bundles of sweet peas, little baggies full of blueberries, blackberries, cherries, strawberries and several salamis and pepperonis.

Ell said, “We’re getting some dried fruit and more preserved meats that come in narrow diameters. We really don’t know much about supplying you guys though, so we’re thinking you should make some requests. Also you could talk to NASA about sending us some of the ‘space food’ they’ve worked out for the station. Well, that’s if they can package it to less than a five centimeter diameter anyway. Then we could send you a ‘back up’ supply that you could store in case you were cut off again for some reason.”

“Oh, but we’d so much rather eat the fresh food you’re sending us!”

“We thought you would, and we’ve contracted with Jose to bring his taco truck every day to make you whatever you want that can be rolled up into tortillas. If you give us ‘grocery lists’ of food you want—if it will fit through the port we’ll send that up too. I’m just talking about a backup plan of preserved food from NASA in case the ports fail or something happens to us.”

“Well, I appreciate your concern but I sure hope nothing happens to you guys! I’ve been thinking about how the ports change everything to do with space science. For starters we’ll be able to send up materials for research experiments and send the results back down. Also, with an endless supply of fuel we could fire up the thrusters and move the Station to a higher or otherwise different orbit. Is five centimeters or two inches the limit on the size of port you can make?”

“Well, no. But a port’s energy requirements go up as the square of its diameter. These five-centimeter ports require about 8,000 watts to keep them open and quite a bit more power just to transfer stuff through because of the relative velocity of the Station. Also about five watts of power have to be supplied up on your end to energize the field of the port components that’re up there. Right now we’re doing that with a fuel cell that has its own pair of small ports supplying oxygen and hydrogen to it. That fuel cell and its own tiny ports are a big part of the size of the port ‘devices’ you have up there. However, a ten centimeter or four inch port should require about 30,000 watts, plus the velocity change watts, and need 10 watts supplied at your end. We’ll have to build power conditioners and electronics to supply that much power in the correct format to energize the port on our end. And we’ll need to make a much bigger fuel cell to supply your end. We’re working on it, but it’ll take us a while.”

“Hmm, we could supply 10 watts up here. We have plenty of energy from our solar cells.”

“Maybe? It has to be very smooth DC power, which I expect the solar cells could supply though the fuel cells do provide a great source. The biggest problem is that the port has to be constantly supplied with a little bit of power to ‘stabilize’ it, even when it isn’t open and transferring materials. The fuel cell does that, even when the port is in transit, so it’s easier for us to make the fuel cell and send it up. But, we’re working on it. Then we could send you canned food!”

“Oh boy! We’re looking forward to that!” Slager said in a facetious tone. “But canned food would be a great back up.”

“Well, we’re also working on how to send your replacement nozzle for the CRV up there so you’d have a way to escape if you had to.”

“You can’t put that through a port! It must be about a half meter in narrowest dimension.”

“Well, no. We’ve ordered larger rocket nozzles and are trying to work out methods for launching our own larger rockets. Hopefully ones that would be big enough to carry the CRV nozzle up there to you.”

“Oh! Yeah! That’d be great! Have you talked to NASA about it? I think ILX currently has an exclusive contract on deliveries to the Station.”

“We’re currently finding NASA a little hard to talk to. We’re never sure who to talk to and they view me as just a kid. Every time we call them we get the run around. But we’re building the rocket anyway and can just drop the nozzle off on our way to somewhere else, free of charge. It shouldn’t impinge on the ILX contract if we don’t charge for the service. We would need to get them to let us have the nozzle to take up there though. I guess I’ll have to talk to them once we’ve gotten to that point.”

“How are you financing all this if you won’t even have a contract for delivery?!”

“Oh. Well, we’re pretty well funded at present. Besides sending stuff to orbit isn’t all that expensive when you’re doing it with ports. You’re probably thinking about how expensive it is to launch a regular rocket?”

Slager was silent a moment, then mused, “Oh yeah, if you aren’t having to launch your fuel, it’s probably a lot less expensive isn’t it…”

Chapter Two

Clarkson knocked on his boss’s door. “Mr. Dennison?”

“Yeah, what do you have for me?”

Clarkson pointedly unjacked his AI so that Dennison would know that the conversation shouldn’t go ‘on the record.’”

Dennison unjacked his and raised his eyebrows.

“The Space Station rescue seems to be really hush hush at NASA. No one really seems to know what happened. However, there’s a rumor that a private company sent up a rocket using some kind of new technology.”

“What!!! Who?!!”

“No one seems to know. Our guy heard someone say ‘D5R’ but he’s not sure if they were talking about the company that did the rescue. A net search for ‘D5R’ turns up a camera model, a Sony brand AI, a research company in North Carolina, an art community, etc. etc. No space launch or rocket companies.” He shrugged.

“Push ‘our guy.’ We need info, he needs to earn his keep.”

“Yes sir. We’re working on it.”

***

It was 7:30 when Ell stepped out the door of D5R to head home. She thought to herself that she desperately needed a social life so she would have something to do besides D5R. She and Roger went out sometimes. “Dinner and a movie” dates mostly, but they were pleasant. Sometimes she thought Roger wanted more, but he could hardly invite her and her entourage of security people to move into his apartment. She didn’t feel right about asking someone who worked for her—even though their friendship pre-dated his employment—to move in with her at the farm. Gordon from her astronomy class had gone home for the summer. She didn’t even have a good girlfriend to hang out with!

Amy and she did things together sometimes but Amy wasn’t as fixated as she used to be on her boss’s social life. Amy had been spending a lot of time with Randy from Ell’s security detail. Usually when Ell and Amy went out to do something it was with Amy’s kids Mike and Janey. They’d been down to Jordan Lake for a day and up to Asheville for a weekend trip. Those trips had been great fun, but still there was a hole of some kind...

If anyone acted too friendly to her as “Ell” she started worrying that they knew about her money. Even though she felt like she’d been fairly successful playing up the “investors” for D5R and playing down her royalties from PGR Comm she would suspect that they’d figured it out. Roger probably suspected, but she trusted him because he’d been her friend even when she was broke and disguised as “fat Ellen with the big nose.”

She didn’t like going out as “Ell” because people recognized her and acted weird. She often thought about going out on the town as “Belle” and had even gotten some silicone padding and bigger pants in order to make herself a little less attractive if she did. Not as “fat” as Ellen had been but just something to decrease a little of the unwanted attention she frequently received. But she hadn’t done it yet. She couldn’t bring herself go out to a bar like “Top of the Hill” by herself, she’d feel too weird and desperate.

She’d been thinking about taking more than one class when the fall semester started up. Maybe she’d meet some more people her age on campus?

Suddenly she heard a car door open in the row in front of her. Memories of her kidnapping in Morehead City flashed. She began crashing into the zone! How had she let herself be so distracted while walking across an empty parking lot! A big guy stood up out of the car...

“Phil!” she shouted in delight. “What are you doing here?! Why didn’t you call before you came? How did you know where I’d be?”

He grinned. All six foot three inches of Norse God good looks grinned and held his arms open wide. She rushed into them, throwing her arms around his muscular back and squeezing.

Phil said quietly, “I wanted to surprise you like you did me back around Thanksgiving. Your Mom told me you were working at this place so I thought I’d surprise you when you got off.” He leaned back and raised his eyebrows, “I had no idea they’d be making you work this late or I would have thought better of this harebrained plan!”

“Oh no! How long have you been waiting?!”

“Since 4:30, when reasonable people get off work. What do they have you doing in there anyway?”

“Some research. I could have come out anytime if you just called me!”

He shrugged, “Then it wouldn’t have been a surprise, would it?”

Ell hugged him hard again then let go and leaned back. “How did you get past the gate guard?”

“Your Mom. She called someone named ‘Sheila’ who put me on the ‘list.’”

“Hmmm,” Ell lowered an eyebrow, “I’m going to have to talk to Sheila I guess. Let me take you out to dinner?”

“Nope.”

Ell frowned up at him.

Phil said, “I’m about to have a real paycheck. I’m taking you out to dinner!”

She quirked an eyebrow, “But I’ve already had a paycheck for a while. Shouldn’t you wait to start paying for stuff until you actually have some money in the bank?”

“Well… Now that you mention it…” he turned to his car. “Your chariot awaits, Madam.” He opened the door.

Ell delightedly got in. While Phil walked around to his door she had Allan tell her car to follow them and let her security know what was happening.

Once he was in he asked, “Do you have a recommendation for Italian?”

“Tarantinis. It’s a really great little place. Been around for quite a while.”

“Tarantinis it is.” he said, telling his car’s AI to take them there.

Ell said, “So are you on your break between the Academy and astronaut training?”

“Yep,” he grinned, “I report to the Johnson center in July and am enjoying a well deserved rest until then.”

“Cool!” She leaned back in her seat, “I never thought I’d be going out to dinner with Buzz Lightyear.”

At the restaurant Phil asked, “What kind of research do they have you doing at this D5R?”

She raised her eyebrows, “It’s mostly to do with my physics theory on quantum entanglement. So of course I really like it. I stay late a lot of nights, ‘cause my social life sucks. Or anyway it did until tonight when you came along!” She patted him on the arm.

Phil said, “Say, I heard that these new ‘PGR Com’ chips that are overthrowing the world of telecommunications are based on your theory?”

Ell shrugged and nodded.

“Are they the same kind of chips that you made for the military to replace satellite communications during the Taiwan thing?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Wow! They’re really great!” he said. “Look at this!” he pulled off his AI headband and pointed to the back of it. “No wire! My actual AI is sitting at home on my desk so I don’t have to carry around a beltpack anymore. All I had to do was plug a PGR chip into the head band and another one into the AI!”

Nonplussed to be having something that seemed “old hat” to Ell, described as the latest thing by Phil, it brought the realization home to her that most people were just beginning to see the potential of the PGR chips. To Phil she said, “Pretty cool!”

He narrowed his eyes at her, “Wait a minute. Let me see the back of your headband.”

Blushing a little, Ell turned her head.

“No wire! You already knew about this! And you’re just nodding and going along with ‘country bumpkin’ me so I won’t feel bad!”

Ell ducked her head, “Sorry?”

He gave her a hug, then a little shake, “Hey no problem. I should have known you’d be way ahead of the curve on something you’d invented. Say, do you get any royalties on this?”

“Yeah, I do get some.” Ell hoped he wouldn’t ask how much.

“Woohoo!’ He raised his glass to clink against hers. “I know an inventor!”

Ell felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see a woman in her thirties there.

“Ms. Donsaii?”

Ell nodded.

“My daughter does gymnastics and just idolizes you. Would you be willing to sign an autograph for her?”

Ell saw a wide eyed girl of about 11 sitting at the neighboring table staring at her. She smiled, “I’d be happy to, Ma’am.” She got up and walked the few steps to that table then knelt and put her arm around the girl. “How about a picture?”

“Oh, thank you!”

Their dinner arrived and Ell and Phil fell to eating. Ell asked, “So how long is your astronaut training?”

He rolled his eyes, “Just the basic training alone is a couple of years. Once you finish basic you hope to get assigned to a mission and then have to train for that particular mission for a while before there’s even a chance you can go up.”

“So you aren’t going to be coming back to Earth and your legions of ‘googly eyed girls’ for quite a while yet?” Ell grinned at him.

“I thought you promised to be my googly eyed girl?”

“You bet! You let me know when you get a long weekend and I’ll even come visit you in Houston.”

“Really? That’d be cool.” Phil felt a surge of delight at the thought that she’d be willing to do that. He leaned forward, “What I’m really hoping is that things might loosen up in the astronaut business.”

Ell frowned and tilted her head, “How come?”

“Well I’m sure you heard about the trouble the Space Station was in?”

Ell nodded and bit her lip.

“I was down in Houston for a briefing/orientation last week and everyone was excited about some kind of ‘new technology’ that was used during the rescue of the Station. It’s all really top secret right now but the rumor is that it might make it easier to get into space!” Phil leaned back and raised his eyebrows.

Ell released her lip from between her teeth and said, “Oh! That would be really cool huh?”

“Yeah! Maybe I’ll get to go up sooner? Of course, astronauts wouldn’t be so rare then and I’d have to share my legion of googly eyed girls with all those other astronauts.”

Ell slapped his shoulder, “What about girl astronauts? Do they get googly eyed boys to chase them around?”

Phil’s eyes widened, “Oh no, no, no. Boys are intimidated by intrepid girl astronauts.”

Ell laughed, “I guess I won’t apply then.”

After their dinner Phil took her to downtown Chapel Hill and had his car drop them off at UNC’s “Old Well.” The evening was pleasant and he sat beside her on the bench in front of the landmark. After a moment he turned to her and said, “I thought we should return to the scene of my crime so I could apologize again for the way I acted that day we first met four or five years ago.”

Ell grinned at him, “Hey I forgave you for that years ago… I think… long before you forgave yourself.”

“Well that’d certainly be true, since I still haven’t forgiven myself.”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “I was hoping you’d brought me back here to have another try at getting that kiss?”

He grinned, “Well, I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that had crossed my mind.”

She reached up and cupped the back of his neck, pulling him down to her…

***

Clarkson knocked on Dennison’s door again. Once inside he held out his AI’s jack to remind Dennison to unjack his. “One of our guys at NASA says he’s pretty sure the rocket was actually launched by that company in North Carolina, ‘D5Resarch.’ He’s the only one of our people at NASA who has any clue. Doesn’t seem possible because they don’t have any contracts to launch from Canaveral or any other launch facilities, but that’s what he claims. Rumor has it that they have some new tech that lets them launch small rockets to orbit! The theory is that they are small enough that they don’t show up much on space watching radar. Maybe they send them up to high altitude with balloons or something?” Clarkson shrugged.

Dennison looked like he had indigestion, “Get Phelps after them. Hire some of their people, buy the tech, buy the company, whatever. Just make sure we wind up in control. Whoever they are, they are not going to cut ILX out of its own business! Tell our people at NASA to do what they can to stonewall them for now.”

***

Ell looked around at her D5R group. “OK, who wants to go first?”

Braun put a hand up and said, “We’ve placed rush orders with GE for the construction of D3 type rocket motors with surrounding water shrouds. They’ve got experience working with the alloys we want for our nozzles though one of their engineers has repeatedly told me that the cooling shroud around the nozzle is a dumb idea. He’s patiently explained how I should run the propellant through the nozzle walls to cool them instead. I get the impression he thinks he’s working with a complete idiot, but I’ve just told him he has to build it my way.”

Ell grinned at him, “Seems like I remember someone talking to me that way when he first came to work here.”

Braun sheepishly mumbled, “Yeah, that guy was a complete idiot.”

“What about a fuselage?”

“I gave it a lot of thought and we’re going to order a used Lear Jet, assuming the budget’s up to it. We’ll remove the engines and install rockets. The nose has radar built in, a cockpit for our eventual astronauts, though we’ll need to brace the chairs, and a comm section that already meets FAA standards.”

Ell frowned, “Will it hold up to the vacuum out there in space?”

“Hah! Caught you thinking old school! If it leaks, we just pump more air into it through a port.”

It was Ell’s turn to look sheepish.

Braun shrugged, “But it should be pretty airtight, Lear jets are pressurized to fly at high altitude and so they have to be fairly airtight. Of course, they do leak some at altitude but they just pump in more air. I’m planning to do some leak testing and tighten it up before we send it up. But, if you think about it we actually do want it to leak some because replacing losses with fresh air simplifies our problems. That way we won’t have to scrub out the carbon dioxide and put in new oxygen etc.”

“What about heating during liftoff and reentry?”

“We just ‘fly’ it up to altitude so it doesn’t heat so much going through the dense air down low. Then we ‘retro’ it down rather than aerobraking so it doesn’t heat so much on the way down.”

“Sounds good, are there other problems?”

“Oh yeah! There’ll be hell to pay getting the FAA to let us launch and land a rocket on a regular airfield. They are gonna take forever to decide it’s safe! Have you had any luck getting NASA to let us launch and recover from Canaveral?”

Ell frowned again. “No. We’ve hired a lawyer with some experience in this kind of stuff, though no one has really ever done what we’re trying to do of course. He’s getting the run around too. He thinks that ILX has connections in NASA that are resisting us just on the principle of stifling competition. NASA is supposed to let private companies launch from their facilities, though there usually is a lot of red tape. In our case though, we can’t even seem to get the red tape started. We’re looking into whether we could buy an island in the Caribbean? Or maybe launch from a boat at sea? Would that be possible?”

Braun looked aghast, “A boat? Like an aircraft carrier?”

“No, like a big boat. Vertical takeoff from a launching cradle on the boat. Land the same way, or in the water and crane it out.”

“Whoa! I’ll have to think about those options. The boat certainly wouldn’t work with my Lear Jet idea though.”

Ell looked around the group. Fred lifted a hand briefly and said, “Brian and I have pretty much automated a ‘port constructor.’ My ‘entangler’ feeds in the entangled buckyballs as the discs rotate under the jet. Brian set up the machine to rotate ports of five mm and one, two, five, 7.5, ten and twenty centimeters under the jet. We’ll have to retool to make bigger ports than that, but energizing big ports will be a bigger problem than making them.”

Vivian said, “You can say that again! I’ve drawn up a design for the electronics to energize a ten centimeter port and ordered parts. We’re having to ask Duke Energy to bring in a bigger power line though. We could run a ten centimeter port with the power the building already has but,” she chuckled, “we might drop breakers if people used many other machines at the same time.”

Ell turned to Ben, “How about you, Ben? What are you working on?”

He shrugged, “We don’t really have need of my micromanipulation skills. I thought for a while about just quitting here and finding another job.” He made a wry face. “But I didn’t want to miss out on all the excitement… So. I’ve started working with a couple of the new guys in the machine shop on ‘macromanipulators.’ Essentially we’re making small rockets that we can fly up to space, open up an aerodynamic shroud, then extend arms that we can manipulate stuff with.” He reached under the table and pulled up a rocket that he set on top of it. “Meet Armstrong.” He looked up to his HUD and gave a command. The tubular body of the rocket hinged open, exposing a lot of mechanical looking insides. An arm extended out of it, reached down, grasped a nut that lay on the table, lifted it and placed it into a chamber that had opened near the top. Nothing happened for a moment, Ben gave another command, repeated it, then said, “Dammit! The specimen drops onto a 50mm port inside the rocket and was supposed to fall through that port and into the specimen jar over there,” he pointed to a five gallon glass jug with a port apparatus on top of it. “We’ve obviously got a little work to do yet, but the idea is that it could fly to the moon like ‘Neil Armstrong’ then use its ‘strong arms’ to retrieve specimens, or do some other kind of work. I’m a little worried about whether everything will work in a vacuum, but as you can see, we haven’t even gotten everything to work here on Earth yet.”

Ell had been staring at it. It had fins like model rockets do, or like you would see on pictures of “spaceships” in old magazines. With a puzzled frown she said, “Are the fins decorative?”

“Oh! No. It has port nozzles at the bottom and top of the fins. Obviously it can use its main rocket to travel long distances. But what about when you just need to move it a couple of feet? Watch this!” Ben gave a command and with a hiss the rocket scooted across the table top. “You just open the nozzles at the bottom of all three fins and it skids across surfaces like a hover craft! If you want to hold it still while you use the arms, you blow gas out of the nozzles on top of the fins to pin it down to the surface and stabilize it.”

“Cool! When are you going to launch?”

“Maybe this afternoon?” He shrugged. “As soon as we work out the rest of the bugs. Then I’m sure we’ll have to fix some bugs that occur up there in space before we’ll be ready to actually send it on a mission. I thought that for its first mission we’d send it to Tranquility Base where Neil Armstrong first stepped on the moon?”

“Hey! That’d be really amazing!”

Ell looked around the group. They were bemused by her childlike enthusiasm. “Any other updates or issues?”

Sheila said, “I’ve arranged for Aerogas to deliver some really huge LOX and RP-1 tanks to our ‘tank farm’ out back tomorrow. The tanks’ll have sensors to let Aerogas know how full they are and Aerogas will start making daily trips to top them off if needed. Also Vivian says we need insurance against a power outage that could ruin all the ports we have already existing if it lasted long enough that the fields stabilizing the entanglements dropped. I’ve ordered a very high end generator to go out back.”

Ell said, “I thought we already had a small back up generator?”

“We do, but it hadn’t been tested for a while and when we did, it didn’t work. It’s been repaired now but the new one tests itself once a week and runs off our natural gas line, presumably indefinitely. The old one will back up the new one.”

Ell said, “Great work, appreciate your thoroughness.”

Brian lifted a finger, “I’ve just about finished making a connector that can hook up to the airlock on the Space Station. Sheila hasn’t been able to get us permission from NASA to test it against the dummy lock down at Canaveral though, so we don’t know for sure if it will work. We might have the same problem that the Chinese had with their connector.” He grimaced, “You’d think after we saved their bacon, the people at NASA would be falling all over themselves to help us help them. Instead they’re acting like a bunch of assholes and treating us like we haven’t a clue just because we’re new at this.”

Vivian shrugged, “No one likes being shown up.”

Ell looked around at her team. “I’m kinda surprised myself. From some of the friction we’ve seen, I’m getting the sinking feeling that ILX is looking at us as an adversary and doing whatever they can to make our lives harder in an effort to ‘break’ the competition. Our patent attorney says we should expect them to start making attempts to infringe our patent soon. He figures that if ILX can figure out how to make them, they’ll just try to build ports commercially and let us sue them for infringement. They’ll be happy to fight it out in court, expecting that we won’t have the ‘juice’ to stop them there. To figure out how to build their own ports he thinks their most likely strategy would be to hire some of you guys away from D5R rather than trying to figure out how ports might work by reading the original paper themselves.

“I think he’s right because the electrical fields for the ports are very weird, to say nothing of the issues with placing entangled molecules around the periphery.

“Anyway, D5R has decided to preemptively ask you to come to them, through me, if they make such an offer. Let us make a counteroffer. I’d also like to remind you that you stand to make a pretty penny on your share of our port technology if you stay and we win any battle with ILX. Your contract specifies that you must maintain confidentiality about what you’ve learned here about ports if you want to keep your D5R shares.” Ell raised her eyebrows at them.

Fred snorted, “ILX already made me an offer. I told them to ‘take a hike.’” He snorted, “It didn’t hurt that D5R was already paying me more than they offered.”

Ell shrugged, “They may just keep coming back with better offers, but you can rest assured that D5R intends to match any offer they might make.”

***

Emma was staring at her screen, trying to absorb a paper that had implications for her research when her AI announced a call from Ell. “Put her on! Hey, Ell! How’re you doing?”

Ell sounded depressed, “I’m in bad need of a social life. Do you ever go out on the town?”

“Occasionally. Mostly I’m too busy and too broke.”

“Well, I’ve got a job now. I could finance us going out on the town?”

“Sure! I could go out a lot more if I had a sponsor!”

“Alright! Saturday night?”

“Sure, what about Roger? Or your hunky wrestler in the Air Force?”

“Well Roger and I are good friends and we go out sometimes. But I’m kinda his boss, so even though I’d like to do more with him, it feels too weird pushing our relationship. Phil is in Houston doing astronaut training.”

“Woohoo, you’re dating an astronaut?”

“Correction, I occasionally see a guy who’s in training to be an astronaut.”

“Okaay. I guess I can see why you’d need a night out.” They spoke a few minutes more making arrangements.

***

Ell was working on a tiny rocket when Ben came up and said, “Hey, we’re about to launch ‘Armstrong.’ D’you want to come watch?”

“Yeah!” She picked up the tiny rocket and said, “This little guy is ready to launch too, I’ll shoot him off right after Armstrong.”

As they walked out to the parking lot launch pad Ben looked at the little rocket Ell had in her hand. It was only about three quarters of an inch in diameter and eight inches long. “What’s that one for?” he asked, thinking it couldn’t really carry much except its guidance package and the port apparatus for its engine.

“This guy?” she said holding it up, “He’s to test one of the predictions the math makes about the ports. The math predicts that the ports will un-entangle above a certain speed relative to one another.” She shrugged, “That obviously has tremendous bearing on whether we could use ports to send something to another star so I want to test it.”

Ben’s eyebrows went up. “Wow, you’re thinking a long way ahead.”

She frowned at him, “Isn’t that what you’re paying me to do?” She grinned and winked at him.

He said, “Well that speed must be pretty high or we wouldn’t be able to send our rockets up into orbit right?”

“Yeah, I’m estimating that it’s high enough to reasonably travel around the solar system, but not to another star. But, that’s just what the math predicts, we’ve got to test to see if it’s really true.”

A few minutes later Allan checked for overhead traffic, then they counted down together and watched Ben’s rocket streak into the sky. Ben and his team went back inside to watch the take from “Armstrong’s” cameras on the big screens inside. Ell went over to the launching rack and clipped “Percent-c” as she had named the little rocket onto the test rail. She had Allan test all of its thrusters and then it shot into the sky as well, accelerating at 5 gravities once it got to a high enough altitude that it wouldn’t overheat.

Ell went back inside and found Ben and his little team cussing and looking disgusted. The doors on Armstrong had failed to open in space and they had it coming back down for some more work. Ell said, “You’ve checked to be sure our airspace is clear before you bring it back, right?”

Ben grinned sheepishly, “I’d forgotten, but that high performance AI you sicced on me reminded me. We’re holding altitude at 40,000 feet for a couple minutes before we come the rest of the way back down.”

Ell was momentarily grateful she’d upgraded all her science crew’s AIs to PGR connected near supercomputers and had Allan put the launching guidelines onto them. She said, “Great! I’m coming out to watch us land our first rocket.”

As Ell stood outside with the others watching for their first glimpse of ‘Armstrong’ coming down, Allan said, “You have a call from a Manfred Phelps of ILX.”

Deciding that she could both talk and watch the landing Ell said, “Put him on.”

“Ms. Donsaii of D5 Research?” a deep voice said.

“Yes?”

“Hello, I’m Manfred Phelps and I represent ILX, the space launch company.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve been authorized to offer your investors up to 10 million dollars for the exclusive rights to the new rocket technology D5R has been using.” His tone implied that Ell should be stunned by the amount of money he was offering.

“Oh! I’m sorry Mr. Phelps, that tech isn’t for sale at present. At some point in the future we do expect to license it, but that won’t be for a while yet.”

Unperturbed, Phelps said, “Alternatively we’re prepared to offer 25 million dollars to purchase D5R outright.”

“Uh, the company isn’t for sale either Mr. Phelps.”

“Ms. Donsaii,” Phelps said in a patient tone one might use to lecture a child, “please let me talk to whomever’s actually in charge there.”

Having no doubt that Phelps’ AI had provided Phelps with her vital statistics and he didn’t want to be speaking to a nineteen year old, Ell said, “I am D5R’s CEO, Mr. Phelps.”

“Ms. Donsaii,” he said, with the air of someone whose patience was wearing thin, “I haven’t been able to find your articles of incorporation on the web as yet, but surely even you realize that, once we do, we can simply make this offer to your Board and that they’ll override you?”

Ell saw a bright light appear above as Armstrong began decelerating hard approaching a landing. With an internal grin that she hoped she kept out of her voice she said, “Oh, I don’t think that’ll happen, Mr. Phelps.”

“Ms. Donsaii, I assure you that investors are surprisingly fickle when they see a chance to obtain a very large return on their investment. Especially,” he said ominously, “when they learn that the alternative would be for their little company to compete against a corporation such as ILX which has billions of dollars in resources.”

Ell watched Armstrong smoothly decelerate to a halt just above the pavement and then its main engine popped off. It settled the last inch or so, apparently lowered on jets of gas from the thrusters in the fins as well as oxygen alone from the main thruster nozzle. The watching crew applauded. The noise of the landing and applause had made it difficult to hear so Ell stepped back inside and closed the door. “I’m sorry about the noise Mr. Phelps,” she said politely. “Back to what you were saying, I’m confident that our investors won’t be fickle. Also, since the technology D5R is using is based on completely new theoretical physics, the patents should stand up well to any assaults by well heeled lawyers.”

“Mizz Donsaii! A patent search doesn’t even turn up any new rocketry patents!”

“Well that would be true. You can rest assured; however, that patent protection has been applied for. It is so recent that the application hasn’t been made public as yet.”

“You don’t even have a patent?! It is entirely possible that a patent might not even be granted! All the more reason your investors may jump ship! I would strongly urge you reconsider before ILX reduces this offer.”

“Sorry Mr. Phelps, but we really don’t have anything to worry about, either regarding the uniqueness of the intellectual property nor the confidence of our investors.”

“Ms. Donsaii you are going to regret this decision!” Phelps said ominously, then broke the connection.

Ben had just walked up as Ell finished speaking. “Confidence of our investors?” he asked. “Is there a problem?”

Ell said, “No, but ILX is trying to bully us into selling the rights to the ports and they think our board will roll over if they offer enough money. They actually are asking to buy our ‘rocket tech’ and don’t seem to be aware of, or at least understand, the presence or function of ports.” She grinned at him, “I’m not helping them figure it out.”

As they walked into the research area Allan spoke in Ell’s ear, “The ports supplying ‘Percent-c’ have lost entanglement and closed.”

“Oh! That seemed early, what speed did it get up to?”

“It accelerated at 5 gravities for 51 minutes which should have produced a velocity of 0.0510% of the speed of light though there is not a direct way to confirm that velocity.”

“I know that’s pretty close to what we calculated, but what did the theory predict exactly?”

“0.0531% of the speed of light.”

“Close enough! I’m sure our measurement error calculating the velocity from the acceleration and the time of flight isn’t all that accurate.”

Ben had been watching her curiously. “Do I take from that that your little rocket performed as expected?”

Ell raised her eyebrows, “Closer than I thought we’d be!” She frowned, “But it definitely isn’t gonna go fast enough for interstellar travel. I’ve got to go spend some time in my office.”

Ben admiringly watched Ell walk away, musing over his mixed feelings about her. On the one hand she seemed so young and naïve and pretty that his instinct was to dismiss her or ask her for a date. On the other hand, talking about physics and ignoring her looks and age left no doubt that she was a frigging genius. Hearing her security team talk about her hand to hand combat skills gave her an eerily frightening aura. He shook his head and turned back to “Armstrong.”

Ell sat in her office staring at the ceiling. She’d quickly disposed of the administrative work that always stacked up, approving some Physics grants at NCSU and expenditures by her teams at D5R.

Now she was worrying about the possibility she’d thought of while talking to Ben. What if she was making horrific weapons available to the general public? Somehow, hearing Allan say “speed of light” this time had made her think about the fact that the little rocket was traveling so fast that it therefore had a lot of kinetic energy. It was actually still well under the speed of light so relativistic energy wasn’t a big issue. However, calculation showed that, weighing one kilogram and traveling at 0.05% of the speed of light it had a kinetic energy of 11,000 megajoules. That was the same energy as blowing up 2.7 tons of TNT! It surprised her to calculate that 1 ton or 260 gallons of a mixture of kerosene and liquid oxygen had the same energy. She’d always had the impression that TNT had more, not less energy than kerosene. It really wasn’t too surprising since the little rocket had consumed nearly 400 gallons of RP-1/LOX getting up to that speed.

When Ell first started worrying about the issue she’d been concerned that a terrorist or even a teenager could build a little rocket like her “Percent-c” and send it out into space to circle back and impact somewhere on earth. However, Percent-c at 0.05% speed of light or 150 kilometers per second was only going about twice as fast as the fastest meteorites. Meteorites that started out weighing one kilogram almost always broke up going through the atmosphere of Earth.

However, Ell had built a special circuit to stabilize the ports up to 0.05% of the speed of light. The regular ports they had been building should un-entangle at much lower speeds. She had Allan run the calculation and it predicted loss of entanglement for standard ports at about 22 kilometers per second for the regular ports. That speed was nearly double Earth’s escape velocity and a 1,000 kilogram spacecraft traveling that speed would be carrying 250 gigajoules or the equivalent of blowing up 60 tons of TNT. That sounded bad but even a 1,000 kilogram spacecraft would burn up to a large degree coming through the atmosphere at that speed. Also your hypothetical terrorist would have to burn about 38 tons or 10,000 gallons of kerosene/LOX to get it up to speed. Probably it would be significantly easier for a terrorist to just move TNT itself into position with a truck than to send a “port” rocket out into space and back.

After thinking a while longer Ell resolved to build a “Percent-c #2” with standard ports to confirm the 22 kilometers per second figure. Until she knew for sure she went out and found Ben, “Hey, what accelerations are you using with Armstrong?”

“Five gravities.”

“OK, I’d suggest you accelerate no longer than…” she looked up in concentration, “seven minutes to make sure you don’t disentangle your ports and lose control of him. You want to stay under 20 kilometers per second. At least until I check a few more things.”

His eyebrows rose, “Thanks! Will do.”

Ell decided to keep the circuit that stabilized ports to higher speeds her own personal secret. She hoped no one else would stumble across the stabilization circuit. After all it had come to her late one night in what she thought of as a lucky flash of insight.

Chapter Three

Manfred Phelps and John Clarkson arrived at Dennison’s office in ILX together. Clarkson knocked and they entered.

Dennison, looked up and at the look on their faces demanded, “Don’t tell me bad news unless you’ve got a solution too!”

Phelps and Clarkson glanced at each other. Neither said anything.

Dennison sighed, “OK, just tell me what’s happened now.”

Clarkson motioned to Phelps who said, “I’ve contacted this D5R. It’s being run by a nineteen year old! I’ve talked to some of their people, offering them jobs. They’ve shut me down without telling me what’s going on there…”

Dennison frowned as he interrupted, “How much did you offer them?”

“Twice what we’d normally pay someone with that education and experience.”

Dennison rolled his eyes.

Phelps continued, “I tried to talk to this girl, Donsaii that’s in charge, about licensing their technology. It’s a little hard to know what to offer since we don’t even know what the tech is, just that it let them send some kind of rocket to the Station. So I offered 10 million, sight unseen, figuring we could back out after we got a look at it if that was too much. She didn’t even blink!”

“Oh Jeez,” Dennison muttered.

Phelps said, “I also offered to buy the entire company, near as I can tell a four million dollar building and 20-50 employees, for 25 million. Again, she just said ‘no!’ No discussion, no consideration, nothing!”

“For Christ’s sake! Just go over her head to the owners.”

“Tried that, haven’t been able to figure out who the owners or investors are. Not even who’s on the board.”

“Donsaii…” Dennison frowned, “Name’s familiar?”

“Yeah, you’re probably remembering the gymnast with that name from the Olympics a few years back. There’s also a physics paper by someone with that name that stirred some people up. That paper is what the PGR chips are based on that are shaking up the Comm industry. But, I’ve talked to a couple of our physicists and they don’t see how that paper could be related to rocketry—in any way. Maybe this kid that’s running D5R is a relative of the physicist Donsaii? Who knows? There is jack squat about D5R on the web. They don’t even have their own website; all they get is peripheral mention on a few other people’s websites. It’s like they don’t care about advertising or public opinion or building a business or anything. I only got put through to this kid that’s running it by calling their main office and asking to talk to the CEO, not by knowing who the CEO was before I called!”

Dennison leaned back in his chair and narrowed his eyes. “So hire some PIs. Have one follow that girl CEO and learn everything about her. Another one to dig up everything there is to know about D5R, especially who sits on their board. Another to try to hire on as Security or Admin at D5R or to enter the building some other way and get us some photos. Another to make friends with people who do work there and get someone to describe what’s happening. Make things happen! We need to take those guys down!”

***

Emma skipped down the stairs of her apartment building and out to Ell’s car. She pulled open the door and dropped into the passenger seat. Her eyes flashed open wide, Ell was dressed as “Ellen” with the dark skin bronzers, the black spiky hair the beaky nose prosthesis, and, Emma looked down, the silicone padded “fat pants!”

“What the hell are you doing in that outfit? I thought we were going out to meet guys?!”

Ell ducked her head, “Well, kinda. But people act all weird around ‘Ell.’ I know I’m not really famous, but too many people know who I am and treat me differently. I want them to like me for me, not because of who I am.”

Emma threw her head back and laughed. “I’ve been upstairs putting on my makeup and little black dress, trying to look as good as I could for a night ‘out on the town’ and you’ve been trying to look terrible?! Most of the reason they treat you different is ‘cause you look great, not cause you’re a gymnast!”

The car was rolling toward downtown Raleigh. In a small voice Ell said, “Sorry.”

“Don’t sorry me! I’ve been worried about being the ‘beautiful girl’s ugly friend’ that the handsome guy’s wingman has to hang out with. Instead I find it’s the other way around! It’s all good by me.”

Ell and Emma walked down the stairs into a dance club. Emma eyed Ell, “Ellen lost weight, huh? Those ‘fat pants’ aren’t as ‘fat’ as the ones you used to wear are they?”

“No, I think of these as my ‘intermediate’ fat pants. The ones I used to wear as ‘Ellen’ are for when I really don’t want men to notice me.” She grinned, “The really fat ones make me completely invisible to the opposite sex. I swear I could walk into a fraternity and steal them blind wearing those.”

Emma giggled. “Well let’s hope someone asks you to dance.” She stopped turned to Ell, “Seriously now, before we get down into the club and it’s hard to talk?”

Ell said, “Yes?”

“In my experience, if we do talk to some guys, don’t tell them we do physics!”

Ell frowned, “Why not?”

“Guys are intimidated by smart women. You tell them you’re a physicist and they just fade away. I usually tell them I’m a waitress. I did used to work as one.”

Ell laughed, “Really? Boys are that insecure?”

“Oh, you have no idea!”

“OK,” she looked off into the distance a moment, “I’ll say I work in the office at D5R. I don’t like to lie, but I do work in the office part of the time.”

They went to the bar and got a beer for Emma and a Coke for Ell then found a standing table near the dance floor to put their drinks on and looked around. Ell felt a little weird because most of the girls were wearing dresses or skirts. Tres Locos in Las Vegas had mostly been populated by people wearing jeans and Ell hadn’t thought that her jeans would stand out here. There were some people out on the floor doing some form of a line dance, Ell grabbed Emma’s wrist and dragged her out onto the floor.

Emma protested, “I don’t know how to do that!”

Ell shouted over the music, “This is how you learn.”

Ell was almost immediately able to follow the dance the people were doing and it only took Emma a couple runs through the various “walls” of the dance to catch on. Once Emma was comfortable with the dance she began to notice Ell’s dancing when they were turned so that Ell was in front of her. Despite the fat pants there was something graceful and fascinating about the way she moved and the small extra moves she inserted.

Eventually they walked off the floor and back to their drinks laughing. After they’d had a few sips a pleasant looking guy came over and asked Emma to dance. Emma glanced at Ell who nodded and they went out onto the floor. Ell stood and sipped her drink through a couple dances. Emma and her friend looked like they were having fun. Ell winced internally, thinking that she’d overdone her disguise. If she wanted to avoid men’s attention, she’d certainly succeeded. She grimaced; it did seem a little silly to go out to meet guys dressed as “Ellen.”

As a song wound down she glanced at Emma and saw her shake her head at the young man she was with. Emma pointed at Ell. Ell cringed inside as it became obvious that Emma was telling him she had to come spend time with her less attractive friend. When Emma got back to the table Ell said, “You could have stayed out there and danced some more! I’ll be OK.”

Emma wrinkled her nose at Ell, “It is your own fault for dressing that way. But Mike has a friend that he’s going to get to dance with you.”

Ell’s brows rose, “A ‘pity’ dance?!” She snorted, “I think I’d rather stand here by myself!”

Emma laughed, “Get down off your high horse girl! If you’re gonna dress up like an ‘ugly duckling’ you’re gonna have to accept your friends help.”

Ell glared at her momentarily but then smiled as she saw Mike and his friend walking their way.

Mike stopped at their table and said “Hey Emma, Ellen. This is my buddy Arco.” He waved at his obviously shy friend who stood looking at the table, holding the elbow of his straight left arm with his right hand. Arco had curly reddish hair and a mild case of acne. He stood just a little taller than Ell’s five foot eight. Ell thought he looked like he was about to bolt back to his own table.

Attempting to produce a chipper voice over the music, Ell said, “Hi Arco.”

He lifted his chin in acknowledgement but said nothing.

Mike said, “Hey is it OK, if I go get our drinks and bring them over here?”

Emma said, “Sure!” and he turned to go.

Internally Ell rolled her eyes. Externally she turned back to Arco, “Have you known Mike long?”

He nodded. Still didn’t say anything.

Ell wondered if he was only shy or actually just hated being paired up with her. Internally she shrugged, “Do you dance?”

He nodded.

Ell grabbed his hand and pulled him toward the floor. To her surprise, he didn’t resist. Once they were out amongst the crowd she let go and he started moving to the beat. It was as if he were transformed by the music from the awkward guy who’d stood at her table to a happy disciple of the beat. He followed the rhythm effortlessly and soon was turning and moving his hips enthusiastically. Ell beamed at him. He grinned sheepishly back. She reciprocally matched the steps he was making and turned when he did.

Ell and Arco danced their way through a few songs then returned to the table and their drinks. Emma and Mike were still out on the dance floor. Ell’s eyebrows rose when she saw that they were swing dancing. Mike looked like he was teaching Emma the steps but Emma was a fast learner. Ell nudged Arco and pointed them out to him.

Arco finally said something. He leaned close and in a surprisingly deep voice said, “Mike took lessons to learn to dance like that.”

Ell looked at Arco, eyebrows up again. “Do you swing dance?”

He nodded.

Ell tilted her head at the dance floor, lifting one eyebrow in question.

Arco shrugged and started out to the floor, taking Ell’s right hand in his left. When they reached the floor he pulled Ell under his arm to twirl her onto the floor. Ell misjudged the width of her “fat pants’” hips and they had a little “butt collision” as she twirled under. Arco carefully led her through some more turns, then cuddles. He was a good dancer though and Ell thoroughly enjoyed it.

Eventually they stumbled out of the club and went for a 2AM “breakfast” at Centro, an old Mexican food place a couple of blocks from where they’d been dancing. Mike and Emma carried on a spirited conversation during the walk over but Arco said nothing. Once they had a booth at Centro, Mike said, “So what do you girls do for a living?”

Emma laughed and put a hand to her hair, fluffing it, “I’m a fashion model.”

Mike’s eyes widened, “Really?!”

“No silly! You have to be at least five-eight, like Ell-en there.” she pointed to Ell making a little grimace at her in apology for almost using her real name. “I’m only five-four.”

Ell said, “Yeah, I’d be a fashion model if only I was as thin as Emma.” She rolled her eyes.

“So seriously, what do you do?”

Emma said, “I waitress and take a few classes.”

Ell said, “I work for a company out in RTP, what do you guys do?”

“We work for SAS. It’s in RTP too. I’m a statistician and Arco there, he’s a programmer.” He grinned, “Hard to get anything done with him in the next cubicle, talking all the time!”

“Really?” Ell said, looking at Arco and trying to imagine him speaking entire sentences.”

“No!” Mike laughed. “Though when you get to know him he does occasionally speak spontaneously. When you google ‘introvert’ his picture comes up”

Ell snuck another glance at Arco who was blushing and staring at the table. “Well, he’s a great dancer! That doesn’t seem all that introverted to me.”

Arco grinned shyly but gratefully at Ell.

The conversation migrated to other topics and they broke up to go home. In the car on the way home Emma said, “I liked Mike. What did you think of Arco?”

“He was nice. Awfully quiet though. I thought I was introverted until I met him.”

“Hah! I’ll bet that’s the last time we see ‘Ellen’ out in public!”

Ell shrugged and blushed, “Maybe.” She felt a little embarrassed to realize how much her appearance actually did mean to her. When she was Ell, she thought her attractiveness was unimportant. But when she was ‘Ellen,’ she realized that it did matter.

***

Ell grinned as she looked around the group. “Things are looking pretty good group. Let’s update everyone’s particular projects.” She turned to Braun, “Rob?”

Braun looked around, “You’ve probably all heard D5R bought an island in the Bahamas. It had a jet capable airfield for the succession of rich people who’ve owned it in the past. We’ve got two used Lear jets. One to refit as our spacecraft and one to fly back and forth to the island. We’ve been testing the integrity of the one we’re refitting and have patched a few leaks. We pumped the cabin up to two atmospheres pressure to be sure nothing would rip out or pop loose out in space. We’re flying them to the island tomorrow with the rocket engines on board ready to be installed in place of the two rear jet engines. Also, of course, a passel of attitude thrusters to use in space and the airlock connector that should hook to the Space Station. We’re taking a bunch of aircraft engineers and mechanics. We should be ready to lift off for space next week!”

Vivian looked aghast, “You’re not sending people up in an untested craft?!”

“No.” he laughed, “unmanned for the first few flights until we’re sure a window isn’t going to pop out in the vacuum.”

She frowned, “Do you have space suits?”

He shrugged, “Not like you’re thinking of probably. Nobody’s made a space suit that you can actually do much in yet. If you try to use them at full atmospheric pressure in a vacuum they’re inflated so tightly you can hardly move. To use them very well at all you have to be at a lower pressure which means you have to slowly decompress to that lower pressure to keep from getting the bends. It’s a huge hassle.”

“What do you have?”

“We’ve got ‘emergency bags.’ Essentially they’re carbon fiber bags that are shaped like jumpsuits. They have a hole your head sticks out through that can be sealed with a glass bubble in case of an emergency decompression. In such an emergency we’ll inflate them full of good old North Carolina air through a port. That port will stay open the entire time we’re in space as assurance against getting into a pocket of stale air in the ‘spacecraft.’ So in case of an emergency decompression all you have to do is shut the bubble over your head. You won’t really be able to manipulate your environment very well in it though because it’ll be blown up so hard.”

Vivian rolled her eyes, “Doesn’t sound very safe.”

Braun shrugged, “The plane shouldn’t be affected much by decompression so it can just fly you back down to earth.”

“What if it can’t?!”

He shrugged, “If it can’t, having your hands free probably won’t help you much either.”

Ell turned to Marsden.

Fred said, “Vivian and I have set up an assembly line to make ports that are ready to energize. We’ve made hundreds of the small ones, dozens of the bigger ones and we should be ready to test a ten centimeter port today now that we have the new high power lines.”

Ell narrowed her eyes at him.

He said, “Is something wrong?”

“Oh! No, I’m just worrying about people out there that may not be our friends. Let’s stockpile most of your extra ports off site in case something happens to this facility.”

Vehement exclamations rose from the group.

Ell waved her hands in a calming motion, “I’m probably just paranoid ‘cause I’ve been kidnapped a few times. But I was just thinking about what would happen if someone set this place on fire?”

Eyes widened all around the group.

Roger looked around the metal building. “It doesn’t look like it would burn.”

“It would if you turned some of the RP-1 loose in here first.”

He swallowed, “I guess it would.”

“Also,” Ell said. “Viv, lets dip the electronic modules for the ports in ‘Dexin.’” Dexin was a relatively new epoxy used to cover proprietary electronics because it was almost impossible to remove without destroying the circuits imbedded in it. It had metal shavings in it to conduct heat and frustrate x-rays.

They looked at her wide eyed.

Ell grinned at them, “I’m sure I just worry too much. Ben, what’s happening with ‘Armstrong’?”

He grinned widely, “He’s working great!”

She winked at him, “And where would Armstrong be at present?”

He waggled his eyebrows, “Orbiting the moon! Due to land at Tranquility Base in…” he looked at his watch, “forty five minutes or so… if you guys’d like to watch?”

Cheers erupted from the group.

Ell smiled at their enthusiasm. When it calmed she said, “And this afternoon at 3 we’re knocking off early for our biweekly social hour and a send off for Rob and his crew as they take off for the Bahamas!”

“Where are we going?” someone in the back said.

“I was thinking about another picnic at my little farm but, it being August, it’s pretty hot. Fred has volunteered his racquetball club where we can hang out in air conditioned comfort. He says those of us who don’t play racquetball can play ‘wallyball’ in one of the courts.”

John said, “What’s wallyball?”

“Volleyball in a racquetball court. You can play balls off the walls.”

***

Clarkson knocked on Dennison’s door and entered at a growled, “What?”

He unplugged his AI and waited until Dennison had unplugged his. “Donsaii. Gymnast, physicist, CEO of D5R. All the same person!”

“You’re kidding!”

Clarkson shook his head.

“Who’s funding the place?”

Clarkson shrugged, “No one seems to know. The PIs can’t find the articles of incorporation or figure out who’s on the board either.”

Dennison rolled his eyes, “Am I the only one that ever gets anything done around here? We’ve got enough trouble with the Vulcan 5 without these pipsqueaks pulling the rug out from under us! God almighty! Get out there and make things happen!”

Clarkson pressed his lips together against a retort about who’d pushed them to leap to the Vulcan 5 motor based on test stand firings without waiting for it to establish a track record on actual launches. Instead he turned and left Dennison’s office without saying anything.

Dennison jacked his AI back in, “Get me Sonny.”

***

The D5R crew gathered excitedly in the big room to watch the moon landing together on the big screens. The rocket was descending so the center screen showed black space and the four peripheral screens showed the moon at their inner edges. Brian said, “You’re bringing it down far enough away that you won’t scrub out the astronauts’ foot prints aren’t you?”

Ben’s eyes widened, “Oh! I didn’t think of that!” He grinned at Brian’s indrawn breath, “What do you think I am, some kind of idiot? Of course we’re coming down off to one side to protect those historic foot prints!”

The inner parts of the screens slowly filled with more and more of the moon. Then someone drew a breath as the Apollo 11 Lunar Module Descent Stage came into view in the top screen.

A few minutes later Armstrong had settled into place on the lunar surface. “Where’s the flag they planted? Did someone get here before us and steal it? I’ve seen it in videos.” Roger asked.

Brian said, “No it was blown over by the blast of their takeoff. Buzz Aldrin saw it happen. It wasn’t in very firm soil and was pretty close to the module. I think I see it lying down off to the side there.”

They all stared in wonderment. Fred, in a tone of reverence said, “Should we take back a souvenir?”

“Nah, it’s historic, leave everything there. But do take some photos from all sides, then grab some moon rocks and bring him home.”

“OK, but check this out.” Ben said with a waggle of his eyebrows. On the screen Armstrong’s arm came into view holding a stake with a small plaque at the top. The arm brought the sign up close enough that it could be read in the camera. “Here landed the second visitor to this desolate place. ‘Armstrong’ a robotic mission from D5R. He also ‘came in peace for all mankind.’”

A few minutes later Armstrong had planted the stake and then lifted an inch or so off the surface. It skidded slowly around the periphery of Tranquility Base getting views from all angles for the cameras. A great deal of excited talk and pointing to the various items left on the surface went on. Finally it skidded off across the surface looking for some interesting looking moon rocks to send back. The arm to gather them with as well as the port they would be sent through were both fairly small. Therefore they had to settle for pebbles that would fit, rather than some of the more interesting rocks they saw that would have been too big. The arm picked up a pebble, moved toward Armstrong and disappeared from the view of the camera. A moment later, with a clink, the rock fell into the five-gallon jar sitting on the table. It bounced a couple of times as cheers went up around the room.

Roger went over to the jar and tried to lift the port apparatus off the top of it. Ben frowned, “Roger, what are you doing?”

“I want to look at our first moon rock!”

“The port on top of that jar is connected to the moon dummy. The jar’s full of vacuum. That’s why you can’t pull the lid off. If it wasn’t for the vacuum we could just let the specimens fall on the table.”

Roger colored, “Oops! That was dumb.”

Everyone shared a little laugh at his expense. Though a number of the others had forgotten about the vacuum themselves, none of them volunteered that embarrassing information.

Armstrong continued scooting around the Moonscape picking up pebbles and sending them through the port into the jar.

Several interesting pebbles it picked up proved to be too large for the port. Ben exclaimed, “Next time Armstrong needs to take a hammer!”

“Are you going to post this video on the net?” Fred asked.

“Yeah!” A couple of the team shouted excitedly.

Feeling like a wet blanket, Ell said, “Let’s hold off a little while until we’ve done a few more of the things we want to do. I’m worried that once this goes public we’ll be completely swamped with publicity and attention. We won’t get much done once that happens.”

The group groaned in disappointment but finally agreed that it would be better to hold off until they were ready for the notice the video would bring.

Chapter Four

Dennison unjacked his AI and slid into the booth at the rear of the IHOP. The taciturn Sonny Jones was already there. Dennison wondered momentarily, as he had in the past, if “Sonny Jones” was an alias. Sonny, as usual wasn’t wearing an AI so Dennison didn’t need to ask him to unjack. In the odd accent he had cultivated for these meetings Dennison said, “We’ve got a problem suited to your unique skills.”

Sonny lifted his chin questioningly without saying anything.

“There’s a facility called D5R in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina that supposedly is launching rockets to orbit with some new kind of technology.”

Sonny shrugged disinterestedly.

“They need to have a ‘setback.’ We need samples of the ‘tech.’”

Sonny’s eyes narrowed but still he said nothing.

Dennison waited a moment, then said, “How much?”

Sonny said, “Ten grand to look it over and price it.”

Dennison rolled his eyes but agreed. Sonny’d been worth his high prices on previous jobs.

***

Fred Marsden sat down next to Ell on one of the bleachers outside the main racquetball court at his club. That court had been converted to a “wallyball” court for D5R and a number of the researchers were enthusiastically playing that racquetball court version of volleyball. He nudged her, “How come you’re not playing?”

“Oh! I don’t think I should. I used to play volleyball in High School and I’m afraid my competitive spirit might get me in trouble in a ‘fun’ game like this one.”

He frowned, “What do you mean.”

“Well, having played volleyball competitively I’m afraid I might not ‘tone it down’ enough for a friendly game. Don’t want to spike the ball into someone’s face.”

He tilted his head. “Want to try racquetball instead?”

Ell leaned back, shaking her head.

“What, are you ‘too competitive’ at that sport too?”

Horrified that he seemed to have plucked the thought from her mind, Ell said the first thing that came to mind, “Oh, no! I just don’t know much about it.”

Marsden almost stopped chiding her because he hated playing with beginners, on the other hand he did want to put her in her place after her comment implying that she was too good for a friendly game of wallyball. “Come on. It won’t hurt you to lose a game or two.” He got up and started off to the club desk as if he expected her to follow.

Ell looked at his retreating back, then back at the wallyballers, then back toward Marsden who waved her on impatiently. With an imperceptible sigh she got up to follow him, resolving to lose quickly and graciously.

Marsden checked out a rental racquet and protective eyewear handing them to Ell. He removed his AI headband to put his own goggles on.

Ell removed her AI too, feeling naked without it. Normally she even slept in her headband. She put on the racquetball goggles and they stepped into the court next to the wallyball court.

Marsden quickly explained the rules and objectives then said, “We’ll hit a few balls to warm up.” He hit a nice soft shot up the middle of the court to Ell. Beginners, even fairly athletic ones, usually had a hard time placing the ball or knowing where it would be after it bounced so he was pleasantly surprised when she returned it right back down the center of the court. Her shot was too soft and barely reached the front wall. He scooped it up and hit it to her again. This time she hit it a little harder and it struck the front wall about where his had. They took turns hitting and he was happy to see that she seemed to be able to control the ball pretty well for someone who hadn’t played before.

For her part Ell was desperately wondering how she was doing. Once she had a feel for how hard to hit it the ball, the game seemed surprisingly easy. She wondered how points were to be won when the ball always went where you expected it to go.

Marsden hit one up and off the ceiling, it came down struck the back wall. He expected her to “whiff” it like most beginners would when they encountered their first ceiling shot. In fact she was pretty far out of position when the ball came down to hit the floor. But, with the startling quickness he’d seen when she was in the Olympics, she leapt to position and hit it, exclaiming, “Wow, that one wasn’t where I expected it to be!”

With amazement Marsden realized that, out of position and leaping to the ball late, she had nonetheless replicated his own ceiling shot almost perfectly. “You ready to try a game?” he said, wonderingly. How good will she be able to play? Sure she was the world’s greatest gymnast, but that’s a completely different sport isn’t it?

“Sure, go easy on me OK?”

Fred demonstrated a serve for her, suggesting she attempt to land the ball close to the corners. He motioned to her to serve first.

Determined not to overplay, Ell thought about what she’d learned so far hitting the ball around. It seemed surprisingly easy to control the ball’s position and she was sure it could be hit a lot harder than Fred had been hitting it so far, so she suspected that he was going easy on her as a beginner. Therefore she should probably be hitting it even softer than he had been hitting it and probably shouldn’t put it too close to the corner on the serve.

She bounced the ball then served it softly aiming it to land about eight inches from the corner. She winced, it was going to miss her aim point and land about four inches from the corner instead.

Fred watched her bounce the ball too high and hit it softly, typical beginner’s moves but realized that it was going to land tight in the corner. He leapt over and hit it before it landed, a little harder than he wanted against a beginner, sending it up along the side wall. She gracefully stepped over to it, as if she never had any doubt where to go to meet it and again hit it easily, this time to his backhand corner.

Fred strode to the left back corner, caught the ball after it landed, about eight inches from the wall, and lofted a ceiling shot from there.

As he stepped out of the back left corner, Ell stepped unhurriedly into that corner as if she already knew that that was exactly where his shot would end up. When it did, she carefully hit it to the other corner, this time about twelve inches out.

Fred strode over to that corner, astonished that a beginner was keeping a rally going beyond one or two hits. This time he stroked the ball down the right wall, pretty hard and pretty low. Still, without seeming to hurry, Ell appeared at the right wall to plonk the ball back to the left corner, again about twelve inches out! He had to put some significant effort in to get back to the left corner and stroke a backhand down the left wall, this time quite a bit harder.

Ell was thinking that the game was pretty fun. The ball was moving fairly fast and it was enjoyable to figure out where it was going to be and move to that spot to return it. She returned it to the right corner.

Fred was amazed. She’d just returned a hard, low shot, with her backhand and placed it about 10 inches from the right corner. The way she was hitting it from one corner to the other reminded him of watching an instructor challenging a pupil. Was she playing with him?! He hustled to the right back corner and slammed a drive up the right side, only a few inches off the floor and rocketing off the sidewall about half way up the court. It was the kind of shot he’d used to win the club championship shortly after moving to the area. To his astonishment, Ell was there, racquet stretched out to return the shot. He could swear that at the last moment she slowed in her reach for the ball to let it go by. Later he would review the video from his AI and continue to have the eerie feeling that she’d intentionally missed the shot.

For her part, Ell had realized as she excitedly stretched to return the shot, that Fred had hit it really hard and might be freaked out if she returned it. She turned to see his eyes narrowed on her.

“You’ve never played before?!”

“Nope, but it is kinda fun chasing that ball down. I got in a lucky series of returns didn’t I?” She smiled disarmingly.

The rest of the game Ell continued to hit the ball with the same velocity but placed it at least two feet from the corner. She continued to chase the balls down because it was fun, but if Fred had hit it hard, she hit hers into the floor or lofted it to his forehand to lose the point. When she realized that he was going to win 15-0, she returned a couple of his shots so that they hit the front wall only an inch or so up to pick up a couple of “lucky” points. The final score was 15-2.

“Wow! You’re really good.” Ell said.

“Wow! You’re really fast! I hope you don’t keep playing or you’ll be beating me pretty soon.”

Ell widened her eyes and gave him an innocent look, “Oh no, that’d never happen.” They went back to watch the wallyballers.

After a bit Roger came and sat next to Ell. In a low voice he said, “I watched a little of your game with Fred.”

Ell looked at him questioningly.

“Why’d you let him win?”

She thought about denying it but he’d been there for her foosball faux pas when she’d demonstrated what she could really do when she played “full on.” “Don’t want too much attention Roger. Please help me keep my little secret?”

He snorted. “What, that you can kick anyone’s ass, at any sport?”

“I can not!”

Roger rolled his eyes, “Did you know he’s the club champion?”

Ell’s eyes widened. “Damn!” she whispered.

***

Sonny climbed slowly down from the tree overlooking the parking lot of the D5R facility. I’m getting too old for this shit, he thought as he stretched his sore muscles.

Back in his motel room, he used a one time website to send an encrypted message to Dennison that said only, “125.” Since he worked in increments of a thousand dollars, Dennison would know it meant $125,000.

An hour later, he checked the single use offshore account he’d set up for this project and it had the 125 grand in it. He transferred the money to his own account. He stretched. No time like the present, he supposed. Get this done and I can retire.

Sonny cursed as he humped his heavy backpack back through the woods to D5R in the dark. The night-vision attachment on his AI showed him general details but it was so dark this moonless night that its cameras didn’t have enough light to work with. He kept tripping over roots and underbrush that the cameras hadn’t shown him.

Once he’d reached the back wall of the building he opened the backpack and got out a tarp. He pulled off a sticky strip and stuck one edge of the tarp to the wall. He draped the rest of it over himself. He pulled out the business end of his torch and sparked it up by feel, Ah, finally, I can see! He began a horizontal cut about two feet up and cut until he hit a metal stud. Then he cut the other way to the next stud and down on both sides. He lifted the sixteen by twenty-four inch metal segment out and thumped on the inner wall. Sheet rock. He reached into his backpack and pulled out his Sawzall, pulling the trigger to activate the little light. A few minutes later he’d cut out the sheetrock. He pulled his stocking mask down and crawled into the building. He was in some kind of machine shop. Nothing in here looks proprietary. He moved into the next room which was huge. He wandered around it using a dim light and his night vision attachment, looking for something that looked like it might be important tech. Big stainless tables, fancy research machines, various electronics fabrication equipment but nothing that looked like rocket technology. He found a pile of disks that were wired to what looked like epoxy bound electronic packages. They were all plugged into a power source. They didn’t look like things that had been purchased, but they didn’t look like rocket technology either. He shrugged and slipped two of them into one of the pockets of his cargo pants. Ah, a model of a rocket! It was sitting on one of the benches. About 3 inches in diameter and about 3 feet long, with big fins on the back like the rockets in the old sci-fi pulp stories. When he picked it up he nearly dropped it. He’d been expecting an empty shell of lightweight plastic but it was made of metal and must be more than an empty shell from its weight.

Sonny didn’t see anything else and trying to break into encrypted AIs wasn’t his strong suite. He headed for hole he’d made in the wall, rocket in hand. Hopefully there would be a hose on one of the chemical tanks out back that he could drag in here and start a fire with. That should provide the “setback” that Dennison had asked for.

***

Allan said, “You have another intruder at D5R. This one came in through a wall.”

Ell leapt out of bed, pulled on jeans and ran for her car. “Tell Steve and ask him to meet me there.”

***

Sonny climbed out the hole and left the rocket under his tarp. He walked over to the tank farm.

After a few minutes he paused with his hands on his hips in frustration. All these big tanks of chemicals and no hoses! What were they doing, coming out here to get the stuff in buckets? He turned in place and finally saw a hose coiled over in a corner. He sighed and got it. Fortunately it fit the dispenser on an enormous tank of kerosene.

He dragged the other end of the hose into the building through the hole he’d cut and dropped it in the middle of the big room with all the research gear.

Sonny turned the corner back into the machine shop and was startled to find a girl standing there, obviously having just crawled in through the hole he’d made. She was a skinny kid, though kinda tall. Damn! He didn’t like hurting people but maybe he could just tie her up? She wouldn’t be able to see anything in the dark.

He wondered if she was hoping her eyes would adjust to the dark. That wasn’t going to happen because it was really dark in here. He could barely see her even with his low light goggles. He reached into his bag and pulled out the duct tape then stepped toward her. Her hand moved and he heard a “pop” sound. Taser! He thought as his muscles spasmed and he fell to the floor. The girl actually stepped forward and caught him on the way down, keeping him from hitting his face! For a moment he was grateful, then he remembered that she was the one that shot him. Before his muscles began to respond again, she’d professionally pulled his hands back and plastic tied them behind him. Then she bound his ankles. Then she turned on the light. She must have been using some kind of night vision too!

She squatted down next to him and he realized she was wearing jeans and a camisole! The girl looks like a Victoria’s Secret model! She pulled out the dart. Then she pulled off his stocking mask and his AI headband. She looked at the back of it and popped out the PGR chip to disconnect him from his actual AI. Then she pulled off her own AI headband and plugged his chip into it instead. She grabbed him by the armpits and lifted him into a sitting position, leaning his back against one of the big machines. He was surprised at how strong she was. She gazed at him a moment, looked up at her HUD and said, “So, Sonny Alston, who sent you?”

A spike of fear shot through him, how did she figure out who I was so fast?

Sonny had no way to know that Ell’s supercomputer AI could search enormous databases for his face almost instantaneously.

He shrugged.

She was looking up at her HUD. She said musingly, “I see you’ve been in the ‘joint’ a couple of times. Breaking and entering seems to be a specialty of yours? But you went ‘up the river’ for beating some guys in a bar.” She quirked the corners of her lips down. “Hmmm, not a very nice person are you? You went up another time for using a weapon in a robbery? Hmmm.” She turned to pick up his back pack, then glanced at him before she unzipped the front flap, “Hope you didn’t bring a weapon on this little jaunt cause my AI tells me you go up the river again if you’re found carrying a weapon… Aw, Sonny, look at this.” She pulled open the flap to show him the gun within. “It’s starting to look pretty bad for you. Breaking and entering, theft of that rocket you took outside, carrying a weapon as a felon.” She shook her head back and forth. “And this hose makes it like you were planning to commit arson. You want to tell me who sent you?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you the police? You haven’t read me my rights.”

“Nope.” She said cheerfully. “So I’m not bound by all those rules that restrain them.”

“You can’t make me a deal then either.”

“Sure I can…” she paused. “I…” she paused again pointing to her chest, “can just let you go without pressing charges.” She quirked an eyebrow at him.

“Why would I trust you?”

“Well, you’d just have to look into my honest eyes and see if you could. Course, the alternative is to go up the river for sure, isn’t it?”

Sonny glared at her for a minute. “General Electric.”

“What’s GE got to do with this?”

“They hired me.”

“Now, now, now, GE didn’t hire you, somebody hired you. Maybe they work at GE, maybe they work somewhere else? Who is that somebody?”

Sonny felt like he had pretty good control of his muscles again. It wouldn’t do him much good while he was bound hand and foot. However, if he could take her out of the equation a moment, he knew he could get his hands around in front of himself. In a machine shop there’s bound to be plenty of tools to cut these damned cable ties, he fumed to himself.

He moaned a little. He just needed to get her close enough. Sonny’d been in hundreds of fights. His fists might be restrained but he knew from personal experience what a good head butt to the face could do. His own crooked nose was the result of a head butt he’d received in a fight that had practically crushed it. He’d been dazed and confused for minutes after that had happened. How could he get her close enough? He tried another piteous moan. She grinned at him. “Sonny, you can stop the moaning. I know you haven’t been hurt all that bad.” Then her eyes narrowed as they focused on his leg. She leaned toward him to him to pat at the lump in his pocket where he’d put the discs with their attached electronics. Sonny lunged up, hard, aiming his forehead at her nose. She had gotten close enough that he couldn’t possibly miss!

To his astonishment, though he would have sworn it to be impossible, she easily moved her face out of the way. Then she casually slapped him in the nose. His nose exploded with pain and tears poured out of his eyes.

How in all the Hells did she do that?!

She leaned back, “Sonny, Sonny, Sonny. That wasn’t nice. I have to tell you, the encryption on your AI wasn’t very good. My AI has finished extracting its memory, including the secret recording you made of your conversation with Mr. Dennison from ILX. I guess I’d just as well call the police.” She stood up and stepped away, just as a couple of beefy security types trotted in the door, out of breath. “Hey guys,” she said to them, “please keep an eye on Mr. Alston here for me, would you?” She left as the security guys narrowed their eyes at him and then one of them squatted down to check his restraints…

***

Ell watched with the group on the big screens in the main research room. The exterior of their modified Lear jet was visible on one. Another showed the virtual remote cockpit. The plane would be flown by AI just like almost all modern jet flights, but they still had one of their pilots standing by at a console to take over in case of bizarre problems. The set up was much like the UAV control stations Ell had been using a year ago. On one screen you could see the throttles advancing on the virtual station, on another they could see flames and steam blasting out of the engine fairings at the back of the jet itself. The rocket engines had been mounted inside the fairings after the jet engines had been removed. They could have removed the fairings and just mounted the much smaller rocket nozzles but they suspected there may be times when they wanted it to look like a standard jet so they left the fairings in place. Other than the bump on the middle of the back of the plane where the airlock adaptor had been mounted, it looked much the same as it had before being upgraded for space. The attitude thrusters were hardly noticeable. Allan said in her ear, “All thrusters except the main engines have tested to full thrust as nominal.”

“What’s wrong with the main engines?”

“The wheel brakes and chocks aren’t strong enough to hold the plane still if they were tested fully.”

“Oh, yeah.” Ell chuckled at herself.

A few minutes later they watched on the screen as the little plane shot down the runway and into the sky, quickly fading to a dot. They turned to watch the view out the front windows of the plane but it was a boring sky blue. They all went back to their own projects until someone called out that the view out the front windows of the jet was gradually fading to black.

Ell said, “Allan, how high are we?”

“Fifty three miles.”

“How is the cabin pressure doing?”

“At the equivalent of 8,000 feet, like a commercial airline, Dr. Braun had us start valving air into the cabin to hold it at that pressure.”

“Are we having any trouble maintaining pressure?”

“No. Dr. Braun has installed a large excess of 5cm ports. They have high pressure blowers on them but, without a hull breach, he is just letting standard atmospheric pressure air from the D5R facility leak in through a few of them without using the blowers. The facility is at 456 feet altitude so a much higher pressure than the 8,000 foot setting in the cabin. It would require a major cabin breach to cause decompression that the blowers couldn’t handle.”

“How did the main engines perform?”

“102% of expected thrust.”

“Please contact Braun for me.”

Ell heard Braun’s voice, “Hello?”

“Rob, congratulations! It looks like a complete success from here. Are there any problems we’re not seeing?”

“No! It’s amazing, first launch with everything going right! That’s never supposed to happen!”

“Bring it back down and we’ll get you some supplies to send up to the Station.”

“You don’t want to go on up to the station this trip?”

“I’d rather go when we can send them some supplies.”

“What’s wrong with the supplies we’ve got on board?”

“You’ve got supplies on board this trip?!”

“Sure, my daddy told me to never to plan for failure. We loaded it with fresh and canned food, bottled juices and a bunch of stuff we found on a “wish list” one of the astronauts put on the net a couple of years ago.”

“You sneaky devil! Way to go! Station here we come. How long will it take to get there?”

“I’m doing it slow to give us lots of time to determine if we have any vacuum induced failures long before we arrive and find that a failure has resulted in poor control. It won’t be for about three hours.”

“Good thinking. I’m going to contact NASA and see if we can get the replacement rocket nozzle for the CRV to send up on your next mission.”

“OK, I’ll let you guys know about 20 minutes before we arrive at the Station.”

Ell walked back to her office and sat in her chair thinking for a bit. Then she said, “Allan, let me see an organizational chart for ILX.” It popped up on her screen and she studied it. David Dennison was listed as CEO as she’d already known. “Let’s see if we can contact Norman James.” James was the Chief Technology Officer.

Allan said, “Mr. James’ AI says that he’s unavailable.”

“Leave him a message that I called and let’s see if he calls back.”

Ell had Allan try several others near the top of the organizational chart, receiving the same “unavailable response” until she got to a “John Clarkson” who was listed as a “special assistant” to Dennison. “Mr. Clarkson?”

“Yes.” The voice sounded suspicious.

“Can we have a full audio-video chat?”

“OK.”

The screen in Ell’s office blinked to life showing a taciturn man staring at her with a look of intense interest. “Do you know who I am sir?”

“You’re the gymnast from the last Olympics.”

Ell nodded. “Is that the only reason you know my name?”

“What is this, some kind of twenty questions?”

“No sir, it just seems surprising that you’d take time out of your busy day to respond to a call from a gymnast?” His eyes flashed. Ell wasn’t sure whether in anger or perhaps in trepidation?

“Yeah, I know that you work for D5R too.”

Ell frowned at him, “And why would you be interested in D5R?”

“D5R is one of our competitors, it’s my business to know.”

“Really? What makes you think we’re a competitor for ILX?” Ell saw the surprise in his eyes as they darted around momentarily.

He swallowed, then said, “It’s our business to know.”

“But there isn’t any public information about our company even suggesting that we would be competitors for ILX.”

His eyes flashed, “It’s our business to know.”

Ell frowned, “Have you been investigating us by illegal means?”

“I don’t have to listen to this.” The video screen snapped off.

Allan said, “He’s disconnected.”

Ell rubbed her chin, “Let’s try an audio video connection with Manfred Phelps next.”

“Ms. Donsaii? I hope you’re reconsidering our offer to purchase your technology.” said the deep voice Ell remembered. Phelps had thin dark hair and a beard. He overfilled his chair suggesting that he was as large and burly as his voice suggested.

“No sir. I’m just wondering what made you think we had any new ‘rocket technology’ such as you wanted to purchase”

“Are you trying to say that you don’t?”

“No sir. But it was supposed to be a secret. How did you find out about it?”

“Oh come on kiddo. You used it to rescue the Space Station. Surely you don’t think that’s a secret?”

“Well in fact I do. Otherwise we’d have reporters all over us here.”

He leaned into the camera. “Ms. Donsaii, you’re playing with the big boys now. I’d strongly advise you to take our offer before you get squashed in the gears of a machine much bigger than you’d imagine.”

“No thanks.” This time Ell cut the connection.

Allan said “You have a call from Norman James, ILX’s Chief Technology Officer.”

“Put him on, audio video if you can. Mr. James?”

“Yes, Ms. Donsaii?” A video image snapped open showing a slender small intense dark man. His eyes tracked over to a spot just below Ell. Presumably the screen below the camera she was seeing him on. “To what do I owe this honor?”

“‘Honor’ sir?”

“Well, I consider it an honor to receive a call from someone I fully expect to win the Nobel Prize in physics very soon. How may I help you?”

Ell squeaked delightedly. “Really? I don’t think so. I just got very lucky with that paper.” She grinned, “Most people only know me for my gymnastics. I’m always excited to meet someone who’s heard of my scientific endeavors.”

“Well rest assured, I admire you for both, but my admiration of your scientific endeavors is much greater, probably due to my own bias.” He grimaced, “I truly hate to cut this short but I’ve made some people wait in my outer office while I speak to you. What can I do for you?”

“Well I work for a small company, maybe you’ve heard of it? D5R?”

James looked mildly embarrassed. “I’m afraid not. What does it do?”

“Research. Manfred Phelps is trying to buy some of our technology.”

James eyes widened. “Really!?” His tone was somewhere between surprised and dangerous.

“Yes sir. I’m sorry to have interrupted you. I’ll let you get to your meeting, I’m sure we’ll be talking more in the near future.”

James nodded, a furrow between his eyes. He said, “OK, sure, talk to you later.”

The connection snapped off and Ell leaned back musingly, rubbing her lower lip. The Chief Technology Officer doesn’t know anything about a major tech purchase? What was going on at ILX? At least it didn’t seem that James was likely to have been involved in the hiring of Sonny Alston.

Chapter Five

NASA Director James Epaulding was walking down the hall to a meeting with some ILX reps about the Vulcan 5. He had been wondering how the new rockets that Donsaii’d developed should bear on these meetings. Several times yesterday he’d considered calling her company to find out how they were coming with their new technology. Then his AI said, “You have a call from Ell Donsaii?”

“Put her on! Ms. Donsaii?” a picture of her snapped up on his HUD but since he wasn’t near a screen with a camera she wouldn’t be able to see him.

“Yes sir. We’ve significantly improved our technology.”

He grinned, “Yeah! I’ve seen video of your larger ‘ports’ delivering fresh fruit to the astronauts. They’re pretty pumped! How much longer do we need to keep this a secret?”

“Not much longer sir. I’ll append a little video that you might want to use when it comes time to make an announcement. But what I want to ask about now is whether we can pick up the replacement nozzle for the CRV and deliver it to the station? We have a vehicle big enough to take it up there now.”

“Really, that’s great! When will you launch?”

“Well, we’ve launched a flight to take supplies to the station this morning.”

“Really? I hadn’t heard.” He frowned, “Usually the guys make me aware of all the launches from Canaveral.”

“We couldn’t get permission to launch from Canaveral sir. We’ve launched from the Bahamas.”

“What! Why couldn’t you get permission?”

“I’m not sure. I even hired a lawyer with experience in obtaining launch permits but he tells me he was completely stonewalled.”

“Well there is a lot of red tape.”

“He couldn’t even get the red tape started sir. Perhaps if they had known who we were? But we’ve wanted to keep that on the down low.”

“Really?” Epaulding said in a speculative tone. “Well, I’ll find out where that replacement nozzle is and get back to you.” After the connection closed he went on into the ILX meeting still thinking furiously. He’d sat down when he remembered the video that Donsaii’d sent and told his AI to put it up on his HUD.

He watched in amazement as he saw a desolate landscape slowly filling his screens from the bottom. An object came into view. My God is that… is that one of the lunar landers?! They’ve sent a mission to the moon? Already? He suddenly found it hard to concentrate on this meeting about things that now seemed inconsequential. Suddenly he realized that a bunch of amateurs were about to try to dock with the Space Station! What am I doing in this meeting? He stood and said, “Sorry, I’ve just become aware of an urgent event with the Station. I’ll have to go; my deputies will handle the rest of this meeting.” He strode from the room to shocked looks.

***

Dave Slager’s AI said, “You have an urgent call from Houston.”

“Yes?”

“Commander Slager, we’ve picked up a large object moving toward the Station.”

His heart skipped a beat, “How big?”

“Largest dimension is about 18 meters sir.”

“My God, that’s half as big as the old shuttles.” Much bigger than the current supply capsules, he thought to himself. “Where did it come from?”

“We only recently picked it up and believe it was just launched from somewhere in the eastern Atlantic sir.”

“Just launched? From Canaveral?”

“Nothing’s been launched from Canaveral sir.”

“Well, is it going to hit us?!”

“We don’t know. It is decelerating at present and may be going to match orbits with you. However, sir, we would suggest you stand by to maneuver the ISS in case it does look like it might hit you. We’ll try to give you warning but you might check your radar and start looking out your windows.”

“OK, thanks.” A shiver went over him and he started calling out to the rest of the astronauts.

Slager’s AI said, “Ell Donsaii would like to speak to you.”

“Sure! Put her on. Ell?”

“Yes sir.”

“Sorry to have to rush you but a large object is closing on the Station and I need to deal with it.”

“Oh! I’m so sorry sir. That’d be our ‘object.’ We’ve launched you a resupply mission. I should have let you know a couple of hours ago but we were waiting to make sure it was going to make it all the way up there.”

“Hah! I should have known it would be you!” to his AI he said, “Let Houston and the other station personnel know what’s happening.” Then back to Ell, “Are you sending up our CRV nozzle?”

“No sir. In case we’re successful with this mission I’ve just asked Director Epaulding if we can pick it up for our next flight.”

“Hmmm, how are we going to transship materials?”

“Well we’ve built an airlock adapter according to the engineering specs that were available. We couldn’t get NASA to let us test it against their dummy lock so we aren’t completely sure it will work. But we thought we could try it. Worst case, it leaks some atmosphere out of the lock and the air has to be replaced. Best case, you get some supplies.”

“You’re kidding. NASA wouldn’t let you test against their copy of the lock?!”

“Well to be fair, remember we’ve asked their brass to keep our involvement with you a secret, so the people who have the lock had no idea who we are.”

Slager rolled his eyes. “I still don’t know why they wouldn’t let you test. It isn’t like it would hurt the… Woops, wait one, I have another ‘urgent’ call from Houston.”

“Commander Slager, this is Director Anthony Willis at the Johnson Space Center. Your AI just informed us that the object approaching the Station is expected?! Expected by whom?!”

“Sorry, the people who sent up our previous rescue mission are sending up another mission. They just forgot to tell you folks.”

“Who?!! Who is this secret group?”

“Sorry sir, I’m not at liberty to say at present.”

“Commander, you cannot keep me out of this loop any longer! This has caused a major panic here and I and my people have a right to know what’s going on!”

“Just a minute, I’ve got a call from Epaulding…”

After a moment they were joined in a four way connection. Epaulding said, “Dave, I assume you’re aware that D5R is sending you a capsule?”

“Yes, but,” he cleared his throat, “someone forgot to warn us until after Houston had called in a panic.”

Director Willis was astonished to hear the voice of a young girl, “We are so, so sorry. This is the first time we’ve launched anything big and we just didn’t even think about how it would look on your radar. It won’t happen again. I will need to know whom I should notify though.”

Willis said, “Who are you?!”

Ell said, “Uhh…”

Epaulding said, “Sorry Tony. We’ve promised some people to keep this secret a little while longer. Right Miss?”

“Uh, yes sir. Maybe a week more?” Ell almost squeaked.

“OK, one week.” Epaulding said, “Tony, I promise you’ll be the first to know, and it will be before the public announcement. OK?”

“I don’t like it Jim. I think we have a right to know now.”

Ell broke in. “Director Epaulding, it would be OK with us to let Director Willis in on the story, if he’ll promise it goes no further?”

Epaulding barked a laugh, “Well Tony? Can you keep a secret?”

“I don’t think it’s right…”

“Tony,” Epaulding interrupted, “it’s you alone, or it’s no one in Houston. What’ll it be?”

“OK.” Willis muttered reluctantly.

“OK,” Epaulding said, sounding like he was rubbing his hands together, “Let’s get full video on this conversation.”

Willis blinked as his screen popped on and showed Epaulding in the upper left, Slager in the upper right, a familiar looking reddish blond girl in the lower left and a glowing dot in the lower right.

Epaulding said, “Tony, meet ‘Ell Donsaii.’”

The girl made a little wave. “Sorry Director Willis.”

“The gymnast?!”

“Yes sir.” She said quietly.

“And just what in the Hell do you have to do with this whole mess?!”

“Tony, calm down. Her company’s the one sending up the mission. We’ll explain it better later. First though, how close are we to matching orbits?

Willis realized that the dot had grown in the lower right part of his screen. It looked like a little cross now. A gust of material jetted out of the lumpy end of the cross.

The girl said, “Just a few more minutes.”

In the background Willis heard them talking about how to transship materials but his eyes were focused in horrified fascination on the screen as the cruciform structure grew into what, for all the world, looked like a Lear jet! “Is that an airplane?” he asked querulously…

***

Dennison said, “What?!”

“They want the rocket nozzle for the CRV back sir.”

“Why?! We’d just have to get it back from them again when we’re ready for the next launch.”

“Uh, they said they wanted to send it up sooner.”

“Who do they think is going to take it up there? We have the contract to supply the Station! Get me Epaulding on the line!”

There was a faint click in Dennison’s earpiece, then, “Hello Dave.”

“Hi Jim. Someone on your team is asking us to send the CRV nozzle back over to NASA? What’s this all about?”

“Yeah, we have another way to get it up there and so for the safety of the astronauts, we’d like to get it up there now rather than waiting until your next launch is ready.”

“We’ll be ready in six weeks!”

“But we can get it delivered tomorrow.”

“Jim,” Dennison said dangerously, “You know ILX has the contract to supply the station.”

“Don’t get frosty with me Dave, or do I have to remind you just what a fine job you’ve been doing of supplying the station this past year?”

“Sure, we’ve had a few bobbles but…”

“Dave! Those ‘few bobbles’ nearly cost the lives of eleven astronauts!”

“We’ve fixed our problem and we have a contract!”

“And are you going to honor your contract now that your ‘high efficiency’ Vulcan 5 motor is out of the picture?”

“Well, we might have to renegotiate…”

“If, you try to renegotiate, I’m afraid you’re going to find yourself out of a contract. However, for right now, our other supplier will deliver the nozzle gratis, so it falls outside the ‘contract’ between NASA and ILX. Please tell your folks to turn our nozzle back over to us.”

“Who the Hell is this other supplier?”

“I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Is it that damned D5R?”

Epaulding’s eyes narrowed, “Who gave you that name?”

“It is, isn’t it! You haven’t heard the last of this!”

To Epaulding’s surprise Dennison broke the connection.

***

Ell looked around at her team. “So, “Amelia,” as Rob has named our first launch vehicle,” Ell waved at Braun, visible on the screen though he was actually on the island in the Bahamas, “successfully landed after delivery of a big load of supplies to the Station. Kudos to Brian; the airlock adaptor worked perfectly! We did have an issue with a couple of the aileron motors freezing up. Their regular lubricant hadn’t been completely replaced with vacuum tolerant molybdenum disulfide and their bearings froze. The AI was able to compensate with the attitude thrusters in the wings though. So! A little ‘hooah’ for the team that put up a nearly perfect first space mission!” Ell pumped her fist and led a lusty “hooah.”

“Next—we have one more week, then I’ve agreed to let NASA tell the world what we’ve been doing. After which,” she rolled her eyes, “we’ll be besieged by reporters. So—I’d like to land small rockets on Mars and on an asteroid so we have some footage to show them when the time comes. And, of course,” she rubbed her hands together, “I’ve got to go up into space myself. You guys have any other ideas or suggestions? Can we do all that or do we need to pare back?

The room stared at her in shock for a moment. Then Fred said, “You can’t go! If something happened and you died out there it would be an immeasurable loss!”

Ell frowned, “I can so go! It’s my life, to do with what I wish. Besides, if someone else died out there, riding my idea, it would destroy my life anyway! We’ll send Amelia up a bunch more times to be sure she’s safe before anyone goes up.”

The people in the room glanced at one another and several rolled their eyes. Then Ben said, “Armstrong has a couple of brothers ready to go. We’ve named them Buzz and Collins so that we have the first three letters of the alphabet and the full crew of the first moon mission. They have bigger specimen containers and their collection arms have little electromagnetic jackhammers on them to chip off specimens. For the Mars mission we want to send back some of the polar ice. John already picked a near earth approach asteroid, 2021 MG12, that’s expected to pass close to earth next year. If a specimen looked promising, it might be worth trying to divert it into earth orbit for mining.

Rob said, “Amelia is ready to go up for another trial run as soon as the other Lear Jet returns with the replacement motors for the ailerons. Should be sometime tonight, so we should be able to launch again in the morning.

As the meeting broke up Ell touched Fred on the arm, “Hey Fred, I do appreciate what you were saying about me there. But really I’m just someone who’s been extraordinarily lucky with a few guesses in physics. I’m not actually irreplaceable like you implied.”

Fred stared at her for a moment, then in a husky voice said, “I think the human race needs someone as lucky as you then.”

To her surprise Ell realized his eyes were glistening. “Hey, Fred…”

He put a hand on her shoulder as his throat labored for a moment. Finally he said, “Working with you has been an honor and a, a, privilege. I hope to brag about it to my grandchildren someday.”

Ell found a frog in her own throat, “Thank you for—for what you’re saying. I don’t believe I deserve it, but I truly appreciate the sentiment.”

***

“Buzz” had been launched on its journey to asteroid 2021 MG12 and “Collins” had been launched to Mars. Ell had installed her modified circuits on the ports on Collins to allow it to reach 150km/sec. Since Mars wasn’t very far from Earth at present Collins could make the trip in six days. Allan was flying Collins so others wouldn’t be aware of the speed it was achieving, at least until someone tried to replicate the feat someday. She hoped no one would think to calculate how long it should take Collins to reach Mars. It would be landing sometime around their 1 week deadline for going public.

Ell and Roger were on their way to look at Roger’s mice and bee colony when Allan said, “You have a call from the President.”

Roger was surprised to see Ell stop and come to attention. “Yes sir,” she said.

President Teller said, “Ms. Donsaii, I’ve been approached to help broker another deal like I did between PGR Comm and the existing telecomm industries. I’ve been informed, and my advisers agree, that your new ‘port’ technology threatens to produce huge upheavals in the space and satellite launch industries like it did in telecomm?”

“Yes sir. Probably some other industries as well.”

“Really?”

“Yes sir. This tech should result in significant changes in the delivery of liquid or gaseous commodities currently transported by pipeline and ship. The obvious ones are oil, natural gas and fresh water from areas of abundance to areas of scarcity. The Navy should want this technology for submarine supply, perhaps for surface ships. The Air Force could keep planes in the air indefinitely. In fact, probably all aircraft should be supplied with fuel by ‘port’ so that they don’t have to lift all that fuel into the air. I could go on?”

For the first time in his life President Teller felt his own eyes “goggling.” He cleared his throat, “Uh, OK. But back to the purpose of this call. David Dennison, CEO of ILX tells me that he has attempted unsuccessfully to negotiate with you for a license?”

Ell restrained herself from hissing. She’d been talking to the police about how to go about charging someone like Dennison. She said “One of Mr. Dennison’s minions, a Mr. Manfred Phelps did call about ‘purchasing’ the technology, yes sir.”

Teller thought that the term “minion” sounded a little prejudicial but decided to push on. “I was hoping that you might be willing to join myself and Mr. Dennison here in Washington sometime in the next few days so that I could attempt to ‘broker’ a renegotiation?”

After a pause, she said, “I’d be happy to negotiate and to have you mediate. However, NASA has given us a six-day deadline to go public and I am very heavily committed to achieving certain goals prior to that deadline. My AI tells me that the best time to fly up to D.C. would be late tomorrow afternoon?”

“One moment… Yes that would be fine.”

“May I make a couple of conditions?”

“Such as?”

“I would like to have the ILX board or at least a majority of it present as well?”

“Okaay…” Teller said, wondering why the CEO wouldn’t be enough. He shrugged, she has the whip hand. Dennison’ll just have to lean on his board to be there.

“And I feel like it would only be fair to invite some of ILX’s competitors to such a meeting as well?”

Oh ho! Teller chortled to himself, Dennison is gonna be pissed! But he’s going to have to give and take if he wants to get his hands on this tech. Teller nodded, “That seems acceptable in the light of trying to prevent upheavals in the industry. Would three thirty be acceptable?”

“Yes sir.”

“I’ll expect you here at the White House then. Directions for getting through security will be sent to your AI. I’m also going to ask Chip Horton and some of my economic advisers to video conference with you about these ‘other upheavals’ you spoke of?”

“Yes sir. Perhaps Defense Secretary Amundsen also? But could those conferences wait until the next week after we’ve gone public?”

“Sure. I’ll see you tomorrow.” The President disconnected, then stared at the ceiling a moment before asking his AI to set up a video conference with Horton and Amundsen.

Ell said, “Allan, please make a reservation for me and the on duty security team for a flight to D.C. tomorrow that will arrive by at least 2:30.”

Allan said “OK.”

Roger said, “Why aren’t you using your Lear Jet?!”

Ell stopped in her tracks. She’d completely forgotten the Lear Jet! She grinned at Roger, “You mean the company’s Lear Jet?”

Roger rolled his eyes.

Allan said, “You’ll have to fly out of RDU at 11:30 in the morning to make D.C. in time.”

Ell cringed, she wanted to be here at D5R to watch Amelia’s flights with the team tomorrow! “Allan, is the Lear Jet busy tomorrow?” She chewed her lip.

“No. But we’d need to fly it back from the Bahamas this evening to allow for crew rest.” Allan said.

“OK,” she rolled her eyes, feeling terribly frivolous, “we’ll take it to D.C. tomorrow.”

The mice and bees all seemed healthy. Roger expressed concern that he wasn’t all that great at taking care of such animals. He worried that some of them might die from poor care rather than the effects of going through a port.

Ell suggested that he call the pet store and see if they had anyone he could “outsource” the animal care to.

Walking back Ell heard Allan say, “You have a call from NASA Director Epaulding.”

“Put him on. Yes Director Epaulding?”

“Hello Ms. Donsaii. I’m calling about the public announcement of D5R’s role in the rescue of the Space station.”

“Yes sir?”

“That video clip you sent me. Was that… was that doctored video? Or was it really from another landing at the first Lunar landing site?”

“Oh! That wasn’t a manned landing sir. It was just filmed by one of our small rockets.”

“Just filmed by a small rocket!” he thought to himself, My God, she says it like anyone could have done it. “Uh, so—so far you’ve sent a mission to the Space Station and, and to the Moon?”

“Yes sir.”

“Is there anything else we’ll need to be announcing?”

“Sir, that depends on exactly when you decide to make the announcement. We’ll have one of our little rockets landing on an asteroid sometime this week. And late Sunday morning we’ll be landing a small rocket on Mars. We’re planning to land at the South Pole to collect some ice but could land somewhere else if some of your scientists would prefer?”

Epaulding felt like someone had just kicked him. He’d been walking to a meeting while talking to Ell but suddenly turned into an empty room and sat down. Leaning forward he rested his elbows on his knees and his forehead on his hands. He said, “Anything else?”

“Well, if you’ve got the CRV nozzle back from ILX, I was thinking we could take it up, plus perhaps any new astronauts you’re wanting to send up, make the announcement from the Station, and return with any astronauts that are due to return?”

Epaulding sat, stunned, contemplating the enormity of the changes that had just arrived in his world as director of NASA.

“Director? Are you still there?”

Epaulding shook his head. “Yes, Ms. Donsaii,” he sighed, “I’m still here. How many flights has your modified Lear Jet made into space?”

“It just took off on its second one sir. Our only issue with the first one was the boiling off of vacuum unsuitable lubricant that hadn’t been adequately replaced on two of the aileron motors. But we do want to make several more unmanned flights into orbit before we trust it to fly any people. I’ll be going on that first manned flight, so I’ll want to be pretty confident that it’s going to be OK.”

Epaulding closed his eyes. “Ms. Donsaii, I get the impression that you are the ‘brain trust’ of D5R. Are your investors really going to approve your taking a jaunt into space?!”

“Um, yes sir. The investors are OK with it.”

“OK…” he said heavily, “how about if we send a couple of experienced aviator-astronauts down to your island to inspect your air… er, spacecraft and watch some of the unmanned flights. Then we can decide whether we believe it to be safe as well? Perhaps we might be able to use some astronauts that are due for a rotation to the Station at the same time. I’ll have to check.”

“That would be great sir.” Ell said brightly. “Might I request one of your inexperienced astronauts as well?”

Epaulding blinked several times, “Why?”

“Personal favor, sir. Lieutenant Phillip Zabrisk has recently begun his basic astronaut training, but he’s a friend who’s always wanted to go to space. I’d like to be part of his achieving his dream early.”

“But, but he’d be virtually untrained!”

“Pardon sir, but so am I. Flying up in Amelia will be much like a long airplane flight. Well, except for the weightlessness of course. It would, of course, be great to have some experienced people along too.”

Chapter Six

Ell and five of her security team trotted across the tarmac at the RDU airport to D5R’s Lear Jet. With them, bouncing excitedly, came Mikey and Janey and their mother Amy. When Amy found out they were taking their private Lear Jet to D.C. in the summer she had decided it was prime time for a field trip with her kids and boss.

On arrival in DC Amy and her kids headed to the Smithsonian while Ell and her team took taxis to the White House. Amy had arranged a limo, but Steve cancelled it, feeling that it was more secure, at least as concerned kidnappings, to take a random taxi than a pre arranged limo.

At the White House there was some confusion over the arrival of guests by taxi, but after some checking of IDs, Ell was admitted and her security team given a place to wait.

When she arrived in the conference room the table was moderately well populated with people in suits. To her surprise, many of them were asking one another if they knew the purpose of the meeting. No one seemed to know who she was, though several narrowed their eyes as if thinking that she looked familiar. However, they may have just been wondering what a teenager was doing at the meeting.

Eventually the President entered with David Dennison. Their entry together concerned Ell. She wondered how much cronyism it indicated. Dennison’s eyes flashed angrily around the room at his competitors.

Ell had led the rise of the roomful of people to their feet when the President entered and he looked at her and nodded, “Please be seated,” he said, looking around the room. “I appreciate your willingness to attend this meeting of aerospace industry representatives upon my request. Especially, I appreciate your coming without more foreknowledge of the topic to be discussed and for agreeing to keep it confidential until next week.”

The people at the table glanced at one another questioningly.

Teller said, “As you will recall, a company called PGR Comm recently released new communication chips onto the market that threatened to result in calamitous upheavals in the communication industry and in the financial markets as a whole. My administration and I were able to ‘calm the troubled seas’ as it were, by bringing together the industry’s major players and brokering a licensing deal that has allowed many of the involved companies to survive and prosper, rather than being overwhelmed by a competitor who had a crushing technological edge.

“What you likely do not realize, is that a similar sea change is about to occur in your own industry. A very small company by the name of D5Research actually launched the rescue of the International Space Station during the recent ‘perfect storm’ of problems it had.

“D5R accomplished this feat after developing a revolutionary new technology that is going to upend the space launch industry just as substantively as the PGR chips did telecomm.”

Startled looks had broken out around the room though no one appeared to be panicked yet.

Teller turned to Ell, “Ms. Donsaii here represents D5R. Would you mind giving us a brief summary of the capabilities of D5R’s new technology please?”

Ell felt the eyes of the room turning to focus on her as she rose to her feet. She could almost hear their thoughts as they wondered why D5R hadn’t sent someone with more seniority to a meeting at the White House. She cleared her throat, “Thank you Mr. President. D5R has developed a means to create small ‘ports’ or ‘wormholes’ through the 5th dimension from one location in our 3D universe to another. The two ends of the wormhole must both be defined by a quantum entangled device which we have developed. Although it is theoretically possible to open large portals, large portals require extremely large energy inputs. Thus we have focused on small portals. These have enabled us to fuel small rockets that have been able to ascend to orbit. For those of you who haven’t had time to consider the possibilities it may not be obvious that the huge rockets we use currently are only necessary because of the need to launch fuel for the rest of the flight. With our ability to ‘port fuel’ to the rocket it doesn’t need to lift the huge tanks that are currently necessary. More recently we’ve been able to fuel a craft large enough to transport eleven people to orbit in this fashion. In addition we have been able to supply the International Space Station with oxygen, water and food through such ports since the time that our first small rocket arrived there…” Ell paused as the room exploded in exclamations, expletives, and vehement denials of the possibility that this could be true. With some amusement she heard someone muttering “pipe dream.”

Even Dennison, who’d known that D5R had some kind of technology that he wanted for his company, couldn’t believe what he’d just heard.

After a minute of vehement protest by individuals who just couldn’t believe such things were possible, President Teller banged a small gavel at his place. Once the room had fallen silent he said, “You may shout your disbelief as long as you wish after this meeting is completed. I’m here to tell you that what Ms. Donsaii has just told you is indeed verifiable fact. I’m also here to determine whether we can negotiate a settlement that might allow your companies to survive and thrive, rather than wither and die in the face of such a competitive edge.”

Teller turned back to Ell, “ILX tells me that you have not been receptive to offers from them, yet you implied when you and I spoke that you would be willing to consider licensing your technology. Can you explain?”

“Yes sir. The following is an audio recording of my first contact with ILX.

Phelps - “Hello, I’m Manfred Phelps and I represent ILX.”

Donsaii - “Yes?”

Phelps - “I’ve been authorized to offer your investors 10 million dollars for the exclusive rights to this new rocket technology D5R has been using.” Everyone in the room could hear Phelps’ implicit assumption that Ell should be stunned by the amount he’d offered.

Donsaii - “Oh! I’m sorry Mr. Phelps, that tech isn’t for sale at present. At some point in the future we do expect to license it, but that won’t be for a while yet.”

Phelps - Unperturbed, “Alternatively we’re prepared to offer 25 million dollars to purchase D5R outright.”

Donsaii - “Uh, the company isn’t for sale either Mr. Phelps.”

Phelps - “Ms. Donsaii,” Phelps patiently lecturing now, “please let me talk to whoever’s actually in charge there.”

Donsaii - Quietly, “I am D5R’s CEO, Mr. Phelps.”

Phelps - “Ms. Donsaii,” with the air of someone whose patience was wearing thin, “I haven’t been able to find your articles of incorporation on the web as yet, but surely even you realize that once we do, we can simply make this offer to your Board and that they’ll override you?”

Donsaii - “Oh, I don’t think that’ll happen, Mr. Phelps.”

Phelps - “Ms. Donsaii, I assure you that investors are surprisingly fickle when they see a chance to obtain a very large return on their investment. Especially,” he said ominously, “when they learn that the alternative would be for their little company to compete against a corporation like ILX with billions of dollars in resources.”

Donsaii - (Crowd noise in background) “Back to what you were saying, I’m confident that our investors won’t be fickle. Also, since the technology D5R is using is based on completely new theoretical physics, the patents should stand up well to any assaults by well heeled lawyers.”

Phelps - “Mizz Donsaii! A patent search doesn’t even turn up any new rocketry patents!”

Donsaii - “Well that would be true. You can rest assured; however, that patent protection has been applied for. It’s just so recent that the application has not been made public as yet.”

Phelps - “You don’t even have a patent?! It is entirely possible that a patent might not even be granted! All the more reason your investors may jump ship! I would strongly urge you reconsider before ILX reduces the offer.”

Donsaii - “Sorry Mr. Phelps, but we really don’t have anything to worry about, either regarding the uniqueness of the intellectual property nor the confidence of our investors.”

Phelps -“Ms. Donsaii you are going to regret this decision!” Phelps said ominously, then broke the connection.

Ell’s eyes swept the room. “I would not characterize that conversation as a ‘negotiation.’  I would characterize it as more in the nature of a ‘browbeating.’ There was no question posed regarding what we might be willing to license for, or when we would be ready to license. There was simply an extremely undervalued offer which was rejected with no further offers forthcoming.”

“Undervalued!” Dennison exclaimed. “Twenty five million dollars!”

“Yes undervalued, Mr. Dennison. That offer to purchase D5R amounted to less than 10% of what ILX charges for a single orbital flight.”

Dennison took a deep breath, but before he could say anything, Ell held up a hand, looked to Teller and said, “I believe I have the floor?”

The President nodded.

Ell resumed, “The next contact we had from ILX came in through the back wall of our building.” Video popped up on screens all around the room showing someone lifting a tarp off to reveal a hole cut in the back of a building.

A spike of fear shot through Dennison. He hadn’t heard from Sonny since he deposited the hundred twenty five thousand in an account for him. But Sonny wasn’t very communicative under any circumstances. Dennison had only been worrying because he hadn’t heard anything about the expected “setback,” nor received his information about D5R’s tech yet.

The camera, obviously on someone’s AI headband, ducked down to enter the building, then rose up in what appeared to be a machine shop. The lighting was odd, though some recognized it as typical for what is seen through self lighted infrared night vision goggles. A man wearing gloves and a stocking mask turned the corner into the machine shop and appeared startled to find someone there. He paused a moment, then reached into his bag and pulled out a roll of duct tape. He stepped toward the camera reaching out, obviously intent on restraining the person with the camera. A “pop” sound could be heard and the man’s muscles spasmed. He fell to the floor. Before his muscles began to respond again his hands had been professionally pulled back and plastic ties used to restrain them behind him. Then his ankles. Then the lights were turned on.

Dennison shouted, “What does a break in at your facility have to do with ILX?!”

Ell paused the video, raised a finger and waggled it back and forth, then the video resumed.

The man’s stocking mask was pulled off and then his AI headband.

Dennison’s stomach clenched. It was Sonny!

Sonny was grabbed by the armpits and lifted into a sitting position, his back to one of the big machines. “So, Sonny Alston, who sent you?” It was a girl’s voice. Donsaii’s!

She said musingly, “I see you’ve been in the ‘joint’ a couple of times. Breaking and entering seems to be a specialty of yours. But you went ‘up the river’ for beating up some guys in a bar.” There was a pause “Not a very nice person are you? You went up another time for using a weapon in a robbery? Hmmm.” She turned to pick up his back pack, then turned back toward him momentarily before she unzipped the front flap, “Hope you didn’t bring a weapon on this little jaunt cause my AI tells me you go up the river again if you are found carrying a weapon… Aw, Sonny, look at this.” She pulled open the flap to show him the gun within. “It’s starting to look pretty bad for you. Breaking and entering, theft of that rocket you’ve got outside, carrying a weapon as a felon.” She shook her head back and forth. “And this hose makes it like you were planning to commit arson. You sure you don’t want to tell me who sent you?”

He narrowed his eyes. “Are you the police? You haven’t read me my rights.”

“Nope.” She said cheerfully. “So I’m not bound by all those rules that restrain them.”

“You can’t make me a deal then either.”

“Sure I can…” she paused. “I…” she paused again, “can just let you go without pressing charges.”

“Why would I trust you?”

“Well, you’d just have to look into my honest eyes and see if you could. Course, the alternative is to go up the river for sure, isn’t it?”

The man glared at her for a minute. “General Electric.”

“What’s GE got to do with this?”

“They hired me.”

“Now, now, now, GE didn’t hire you, somebody hired you. Maybe they work at GE, maybe they work somewhere else? Who is that somebody?”

She leaned near to him to pat at a lump in his pocket. The man lunged up to head butt her. To everyone’s astonishment she easily dodged him.

She leaned back, “Sonny, Sonny, Sonny. That wasn’t nice. I have to tell you, the encryption on your AI wasn’t very good. My AI has extracted its memory, including the secret recording you made of your conversation with Mr. Dennison from ILX. I guess I’ll just go ahead and call the police.” She stood up and stepped away, just as a couple of beefy security types trotted in the door, out of breath. “Hey guys,” she said to them, “please keep an eye on Mr. Alston here for me, would you?” She left as the security guys narrowed their eyes at him and then one of them squatted down to check his restraints…

Dennison lunged to his feet, so angry he was shaking, “I can’t believe you are trying to imply…”

Ell simply waggled her finger again and tapped her ear. She said, “Mr. Dennison used an odd accent in his surreptitiously recorded meeting with Mr. Alston, but even without an AI’s confirmation, I believe that you will all recognize his voice.”

Dennison - “We’ve got a problem suited to your unique skills.”

A pause where nothing is said.

Dennison - “There’s a facility called D5R in the Research Triangle Park in North Carolina that supposedly is launching rockets to orbit with some new kind of technology.”

Another pause where nothing is said.

Dennison - “They need to have a ‘setback.’ We need samples of the tech.’”

Another pause where nothing is said.

Dennison - “How much?”

Alston - “Ten grand just to look it over and price it.”

Ell said, “So, Mr. Dennison claims to have attempted to negotiate a deal. But, actually, through Manfred Phelps, made a single, ridiculously lowball, offer. Then he arranged for a common criminal to attempt to steal our technology and provide us a ‘setback.’ The police tell me that the night that Mr. Alston broke into our facility, Mr. Dennison transferred $125,000 to an offshore account that was closed an hour later. Mr. Alston had already dragged a fuel hose into the building from the tank farm out back when he was apprehended. He has admitted to the police that the ‘set back’ he had planned involved running kerosene into the building through the hose and starting a fire. At the end of the kerosene hose stood a device that was set to generate sparks after a delay of one hour.”

She took a deep breath. “Mr. President, D5R is willing to license this technology to other companies, nonexclusively, at rates that will allow those companies to do what they’ve already been doing but at tremendously reduced cost. Even ILX may obtain a license, but only if Mr. Dennison, Mr. Clarkson and Mr. Phelps are relieved of their positions.”

Ell looked at the people from the ILX board. “The police are almost ready to file their charges against Mr. Dennison anyway. I doubt you want to have a felon leading your company.” The board looked grim.

The room was dead silent. People in the room looked at Dennison as you might regard something particularly disgusting you had found on your shoe. His face was completely ashen. He licked his lips and said, “That video has been doctored. I never said that to anyone…”

President Teller looked as if he had a very sour taste in his mouth…

***

In his ear, Phil’s AI said, “You have just received instructions to leave this class, get your travel kit with clothing etc, for one week and report to the main entrance.”

“Leave class?!”

“Yes, the orders come from the Director’s office.”

Phil shook his head, he did not want to fall behind on his training. On the other hand, you didn’t get assigned missions by pissing off the director. He put up his hand and when the instructor recognized him said, “Sir, I have just received orders from the Director’s office to report to the main entrance.”

The instructor rolled his eyes and said, “Well, you’d better go then hadn’t you.”

Phil wasn’t sure whether the eye roll was because he’d asked permission or because the Director’s office had seen fit to remove him from the instructor’s class.

When he got down to the main entrance he found two of the more senior astronauts waiting there too. He recognized Chuck Lane who was an Air Force Academy grad about fifteen years his senior. He’d been a fighter pilot before opting for astronaut training. Phil introduced himself and they shook hands. They’d all apparently received similar instructions. Lane introduced Phil to Zeke Potter, who also turned out to be an academy grad with flying experience. None of them knew where they were going or what for but they all had their travel kit with them. Phil said, “Hope it’s something good!”

Zeke shook his head sadly, “It rarely is my friend, it rarely is.”

One of the ubiquitous vans showed up and took them to the airfield where a Lear Jet waited. They were welcomed aboard by one of the pilots who, when questioned said, “I’m supposed to take you to the Bahamas.” I don’t know much more than that and I’m not sure I’m even supposed to tell you that much. The three of them rode in comfort in a cabin with seating for nine. They raided a well-stocked pantry, taking a few drinks to the pilots who finally confessed that they were going to a private island in the Bahamas that had its own airfield. At that point they reached a dead end on either the knowledge of the pilots, or what they were willing to tell.

Phil leaned back and waved his Coke expansively. “The Bahamas! Can’t be all bad.”

Zeke morosely shook his head. “Such naiveté.”

At sunset they landed on a small island and were shown to rooms in a large whitewashed mansion by a staff of very polite native Bahamians. They were offered a dinner of locally caught snapper and eagerly agreed. While they drank High Rock Lager on a huge patio and waited for their food another jet landed. It appeared to be another Lear Jet but the engines had a bizarrely high pitch.

Silence settled and the sound of the surf below the porch took over. Phil tried again, “A beer, the Bahamas, someone cooking fish. Can’t be all bad.” He looked at Zeke out of the corner of his eye.

Zeke looked pleasantly relaxed. Nonetheless, he said morosely, “Just wait for the other shoe to drop.”

Chuck snorted. “Give it up Zabrisk. Potter here has a deep suspicion of things that go well and feels that the only antidote is moaning about how bad the future will be. He’d be complaining if you hung him with a new rope.”

Phil leaned back in his chair, “Well, I’m happy.”

Zeke moaned piteously.

A waiter brought out their fish and was followed by a slender man with a crew cut carrying a plate for himself. He said, “Hey, you guys must be the astronauts. I’m Robert Braun.” He pointed to another man behind him, “This is Gene Mort, my assistant. And those guys,” He pointed to a group of four behind Gene, “are our aircraft mechanics, ‘Joe,’ ‘Manny,’ ‘Meg,’ and ‘Dennis.’”

The mechanics waved and sat at another table, Braun sat with the astronauts and leaned forward, “Do you guys know what you’re doing here yet?”

The three slowly shook their heads.

Braun grinned and rubbed his hands together, “We’re going to fly up to the International Space Station Saturday!”

“What?” Chuck exclaimed.

Zeke moaned but said nothing.

Phil’s hair stood on end. Did Braun work for the company that had rescued the Space Station?!

While they ate, Braun gleefully told them that he did indeed work for the company that had “rescued” the Station. However, he explained that they had done it with a small, AI piloted, rocket.

To their wide-eyed consternation, he explained what “ports” were and how they allowed a small rocket to fly all the way to orbit. “But we haven’t flown a manned flight yet.” Braun said, “You guys are here to help us figure out if we’re ready to do so.”

Apparently, in the morning they were to inspect a new spacecraft and evaluate it during an unmanned flight to orbit. They were to use their aeronautical and space experience to determine whether they felt it was safe enough for a “manned flight.”

Phil said, “Why am I here? I just started training.”

Braun stared at him. “Really?”

Phil nodded.

“Sorry, I have no idea.” He shrugged, “My understanding was that we were getting experienced pilot-astronauts.”

After a sleepless night, the astronauts were horrified to find that the craft being sent into orbit was a modified Lear Jet! Chuck and Zeke began listing all the reasons why that was a terrible idea and would never work. Braun met each objection with a well-reasoned explanation. Chuck rapped the wing, “Without ceramic tiles it’ll burn up on re-entry!”

Braun looked at him in exasperation. “Have you been listening? It’s already re-entered four times! With essentially unlimited fuel, we simply retrorocket until it gets down to where it’s just beginning to engage the atmosphere. Then we point the nose up so that the rocket’s thrust maintains that altitude while continuing to reduce speed until it’s moving slowly enough to tolerate the airspeed. Then we lower the nose and let it ‘fly’ into the atmosphere!”

Zeke grunted, “The tires are going to fail in vacuum.”

“Once again! It’s been to space and landed four times. The tires have spun fiber and are vacuum tolerant. But, we use ports to lower the pressure in them after take off and re-inflate them before landing. We’re still planning to change them before the manned flight though.”

Eventually convinced that it might be possible, if all this “port” stuff actually worked, the astronauts inspected the modified Lear Jet. They had the mechanics open and close panels and answer questions. While they were doing that the other Lear Jet took off and turned back towards the States.

Late morning they launched “Amelia” again, watching her turn west and climb at an astonishing rate that had Zeke shaking his head. Then they trooped back inside to watch the screens at the control station as the sky went from blue to black and the curve of the Earth became apparent. When Amelia reached an altitude of 200 miles, the instruments showed the cabin was still pressurized. In fact it maintained the 8,000 ft altitude pressure using only about 10% of the ports that had been installed to pressurize the cabin and compensate for leaks. It did it without the blowers being activated at all. All the equipment on board apparently still functioned. Zeke sat down at the duplicate controls and undertook some maneuvers—rolls, accelerations, end over end flips and decelerations. Then he morosely got up and let Chuck fly it some. Eventually, they had the AI turn it for home and trooped in for a late lunch.

Phil took a nap to make up for his lost sleep the night before and when he got up saw Zeke out going over Amelia with the mechanics again. Phil went for a swim. When he got back up to the airfield, many panels were still off Amelia and Zeke had his head up inside the underbody of the plane. From behind him Chuck said, “Zeke may piss and moan, but there isn’t anyone that’s more careful or more thorough. If he says it’s safe to fly—it’ll be safe to fly.”

That evening as they sat down to dinner, Braun said, “So what do you think guys? Is it safe for us to take it up tomorrow?”

Chuck and Phil both looked to Zeke who sat frowning at his paella. Finally he shrugged, “I guess so.”

Braun exploded, “You guess! Did you find anything wrong, or not?!”

Chuck laid a hand on Braun’s arm, “Dr. Braun, ‘I guess,’ is as good as it will ever get from the chronically gloomy Major Potter.” He patted Braun’s wrist, “Take what you can get.”

“Well then, are we ready to take her up for a manned flight tomorrow morning?”

Zeke shook his head, “Chuck and I’ll take it up alone the first time.”

Braun said, “I built it, I’ve got to go.”

Zeke rolled his eyes.

Chuck said, “It’s just crazy to risk a lot of people on the first manned flight. It’s also poor planning to take passengers on a test flight. If something goes wrong, Zeke and I will be worrying about our passengers, not how to handle the bird.” He looked back and forth at the others.  “How about this. What you really want is to get up to the ISS tomorrow night, right?”

Braun shrugged, then nodded.

“OK, in the morning we take it up to 65 miles, ‘the edge of space.’ We do it in an oxygen atmosphere and pre-breathe O2 before we go so that if there is a decompression we won’t get the bends. If something happens, we can get down quickly and we’ll be prepared for it. We come back and land, if everything went smoothly, we go up in the afternoon with you guys.”

Braun said, “I should go too. In an emergency bag if you want, but I know Amelia’s systems better than anyone, if you’re in trouble, you’ll need me.”

“What you know, you can tell us over the comm. You’ve never been in free fall have you?”

Braun shook his head.

“Seriously, if we have trouble you’ll likely be contributing to it by flailing around in the weightless environment.”

As they finished eating, they discussed safety precautions they could take during the manned flight.

Zeke and Chuck slept in the plane that night so they could be in a pure oxygen environment in case of decompression. A couple of hours later, when they landed in Amelia, even Zeke admitted that everything had gone perfectly. Well, he didn’t say “perfectly,” he said, “OK,” but everything had gone exactly as planned.

The two astronauts and all four mechanics spent a couple of hours going over the modified Lear Jet again. Phil followed Chuck around, trying to learn but actually so excited he could hardly pay attention. The thought, I’m going up into space! kept ricocheting through his mind.

They loaded a rocket nozzle for the Station’s Crew Return Vehicle and some more supplies and strapped them securely into place. Finally they all got in and put on their emergency suits. Braun watched while Phil practiced reaching back to grab the slightly dome shaped transparent cover for the suit and sealing it.

The mechanics were still working on something so Phil heard the other Lear Jet land. Braun leaned up into the cockpit to tell the two astronauts it’d be a little longer. Apparently, a few more supplies had been delivered for the Space Station along with another passenger.

Zeke exploded, “This is not a joyride!” Phil heard him bitching.

Braun spoke quietly but Phil heard snatches, “…our CEO… deserves a ride…”

Phil rolled his eyes, picturing a pompous businessman with not a clue about space, horning in on what Phil thought of as “his trip.”

Phil’s nerves jittered and he wondered if he should go back to the head and empty his bladder one more time. Then he heard the chatter of the mechanics and the door of the jet was being closed back behind him. Braun went back, apparently to help the CEO into his emergency suit and Phil wondered if he should offer to help. After all the guy was probably clueless and would need baby sitting for every little thing.

Phil wasn’t contributing much otherwise, at least he could baby-sit. Before he actually unbuckled he heard them coming up the aisle so he settled back and tried again to relax. Someone leaned down next to him. He had started to turn when he heard Ell’s voice! “Hi Phil,” it whispered in his ear.

He leaned back wide eyed to see her grinning down at him. She winked, “I’m all googly eyed already…”

Epilogue

Dave Slager closed his eyes in satisfaction as he bit into his “fruit-urrito.” Taste sensations exploded across his palate and he grinned to himself. It had been his idea to have Jose roll peanut butter, chunks of banana, grapes, blueberries and blackberries all into a tortilla. He loved fruit-urritos and the other astronauts had begun ordering them as well. As he took a second bite, his AI said, “You have a call from Ms. Ell Donsaii.”

He chewed quickly and swallowed. “Yes?”

Ell’s bubbly voice came over his earphones, “Dr. Slager, sorry, Dave! We have a CRV nozzle to deliver! We should be there in about an hour and a half.”

“Really! That’s great! We’ll be expecting you.”

After they signed off, he turned back to his fruit-urrito with relish.

Eighty-five minutes later he watched as D5R’s modified Lear Jet approached on little jets from its thrusters.

Anya Stolchya manned the robotic Canadarm to grab Amelia and bring her adaptor to the airlock, though Slager suspected the precision control of the AI flying Amelia with all those attitude thrusters could have done it without the arm. Once they had a good seal and pressurized the airlock Slager opened the lock door and asked Ell to open Amelia’s side of the airlock. As it had before, air gusted from the sea level pressure in the Station’s lock into Amelia where the pressure was about the same as 8,000 feet. The pressure held. Slager said, “OK, Ell go ahead and close the door and we’ll put someone in the lock to start the unloading.”

He heard her grunt, then say, “Wait until we put some stuff in the lock for you.”

A box slowly sailed into the lock, followed by another one. Startled, Slager realized this mission was manned!

One by one the boxes kept coming until the lock was moderately full. Then a slender, reddish blond girl squirmed into the lock amongst the boxes and said, “OK, close the lock and bring up the pressure.”

A couple of minutes later a few boxes sailed into the Station followed by Donsaii still yawning to crack her ears from the air pressure change. Slager reached out to catch her expecting her to flail like most people do when they first try to do things in zero gravity. He was astonished to see her sail to a stanchion and grab on without difficulty, then she launched herself to him and grabbed on, giving him a big hug. “Hi, good to finally meet you in person!” she said, grinning from ear to ear.

“Wow!” Slager said, astonished to realize that the girl was just as beautiful as she looked on screen and wasn’t wearing any makeup. “You’re handling yourself very well for someone experiencing free fall for the first time.”

“Hah!” She laughed, “Am not! I spent 20 minutes barfing when we first went weightless.” She grinned and raised an eyebrow, “Sure glad I brought my toothbrush! But I feel fine now, probably because my stomach and ninety percent of my intestines are emm-teeeee!” Suddenly, she looked over his shoulder and launched herself off of him saying, “Mr. Taussan! Dr. Stolchya!” Slager turned to see her hugging both of them at the same time, they looking somewhat taken aback, but pleased nonetheless. “We can take you back down home if you guys want! I know you’ve been here longer than your missions specified.” By the time Slager had cycled the locks to let in more cargo and a couple more people Ell’d enthusiastically met and hugged everyone in the ISS.

Then she opened a Styrofoam container and started passing out small bottles of wine and lemonade with nipples on their tops. “Let’s have a toast!” she exclaimed, holding her lemonade out at arms length. “To a new era in space travel.”

“Hear, hear.”

***

Kristen Donsaii’s AI spoke in her ear. “Breaking news on CNN references Ell Donsaii.”

A spike of fear shot through her and Kristen turned to look at her mother, sitting beside her on the pew at First United Methodist Church. Her mother was turning anxiously to look at her as well. Doubtless, she’d gotten the same information from her own AI. She looked the other way and saw Miles looking concerned as well. They all stood and worked their way out of the pew and from there down the outer aisle and out of the church.

Looking up at her HUD Kristen said, “Play it for me.”

The familiar face of one of the CNN anchors filled the screen, saying. “Breaking news. After weeks of intense speculation, NASA today announced that the last minute supplies that saved the lives of the dying astronauts on the International Space Station were delivered by a little known North Carolina company called ‘D5Research.’ This company has virtually no presence on the web so we can tell you little about them other than what NASA has told us. Apparently, D5R’s CEO is none other than Ell Donsaii, whom many of you will remember to be the girl who shocked the world with her gymnastic performances a few years ago. NASA Director James Epaulding is about to commence a joint press conference on the new technology that allowed the rescue to be undertaken.”

Gram sighed and seated herself on a bench, “Why couldn’t the girl have told us this was gonna happen?!”

Kristen and Miles sat beside Gram, “Probably didn’t think it was a big enough deal to mention.” Kristen said exasperatedly.

Kristen looked back up at her HUD. Her AI, recognizing that she was focused back on her HUD, resumed the video. The screen split in two with a somber man in a suit on one side and Kristen’s grinning daughter Ell on the other. A little subtitle identified each of them. The man was Epaulding. He launched into a long winded speech, thanking D5R and its investors and researchers for applying themselves, their resources and their new technology unstintingly to the rescue of the multinational crew of the International Space Station. “The world is in your debt.” he said.

As the church service ended people started filtering out of the building. Instead of heading to their cars as usual, most of them stopped to look up at their own HUDs.

Epaulding continued, “The second purpose of this press conference is to make the world aware of the technology which made this possible. This technology is based on a new math devised by Ms. Ell Donsaii, the young lady you see in the other half of your screen.” For a moment the video zoomed in on Ell. There was something funny about her? Epaulding continued, “As you can see from the way Ms. Donsaii’s hair is floating around, she is currently aboard the International Space Station and therefore weightless. She and some of her D5R team flew up there last night in D5R’s second manned mission.” Ell waved and tossed an obviously weightless apple slowly across the screen. “To continue, this math explains many of the bizarre quantum phenomena that have long puzzled scientists. Apparently, there are ties between ‘entangled’ particles through bridges crossing a ‘fifth dimension.’ This connection is responsible for the phenomena that Einstein referred to as ‘spooky action at a distance.’ Ms. Donsaii’s paper which explained this new math led to the technology behind the ‘PGR chips’ many of you are already using in your communications devices. D5R was founded to explore other possibilities resulting from this fifth dimension. I won’t explain the technical details but their discoveries have allowed them to build small rockets capable of flying to the Space Station to deliver supplies. Such rockets also have other, even more astonishing capabilities.”

The screen blanked, then showed a black upper half and a grey lower half. “Here you see video from a two foot long rocket called “Armstrong.” This video was taken when Armstrong landed last week at “Tranquility Base” on the moon. Tranquility Base is the location where Armstrong’s namesake Neil became the first man to step onto the moon in 1969.” The descent stage of Apollo 11 came into view. The picture panned around the site and she said, “Unfortunately, you can see that Buzz Aldrin was correct when he said that he thought that our flag blew over when they took off.”

The screen blacked and then cleared showing a number of pebbles on a black background. “Here you seen a number of ‘moon rocks’ that Armstrong returned from the moon. These are the first moon rocks returned to Earth since the 1970s.”

The screen blacked again, then opened to show a lumpy mass in the middle. “This next video shows Near Earth approaching asteroid, 2021 MG12, during the approach of “Buzz,” another small rocket from D5R. The video jumped closer, then closer, then showed what were apparently the tail fins of the rocket gradually reach and touch down on it. Again the screen blacked and then showed some different lumps on a black background. Our preliminary analysis of specimens returned from this asteroid confirm that it is metallic with high levels of platinum and tantalum in addition to the usual iron and nickel. Those metals would make the space mining of this asteroid a very rewarding endeavor.”

The screen showed Epaulding’s face again. “Finally, if you’ll watch with me a moment, another small rocket named ‘Collins’ is currently landing at the Martian South Pole.”

After the landing had screened, the broadcast returned to the CNN anchor. He blinked a couple of times, then said, “Ladies and gentlemen, our world has just been irrevocably changed…”

The End

Hope you liked the book!

If so, please give it a positive review on Amazon.

Try the next in the series, Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5)

Author’s Afterword

This is a comment on the “science” in this science fiction novel. I have always been partial to science fiction that posed a “what if” question. Not everything in the story has to be scientifically possible, but you suspend your disbelief regarding one or two things that aren’t thought to be possible. Then you ask, what if something (such as faster than light travel) were possible, how might that change our world? Each of the Ell Donsaii stories asks at least one such question.

“Rocket!” asks, what if wormholes were possible, connecting one location in our space-time continuum to another? This isn’t a new idea in science fiction. Many, many novels have explored this possibility, but almost all have considered the “what if we could travel from one location to another instantaneously” question. Instead “Rocket” asks, “what if we could only make little wormholes, not ones big enough to step through to a new location? Would they still have an impact?”

In short, yes they would! “Rocket” explores some of the impact such small wormholes could have and the next story will continue that exploration.

Some of you may have been interested in the energy that needs to be injected when porting things up to orbit. This is to avoid the possibility that a port could become a “perpetual motion machine.” If you could port water from the bottom of a hill to the top without any energy cost, then you could let it run through a hydroelectric turbine on the way back down and generate electricity for free!

One reader has expressed concern that a port that got loose in the vacuum of space could eventually suck all the air away from our planet and become a “planet killer.” Such a port would have to be beyond an Earth orbiting location or the air would eventually fall back to Earth. But, if you did have a port that far out, by my best calculations it would take more than 10,000,000,000 years for all of Earth’s atmosphere (a HUGE volume) to leak out through a 5cm port.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the editing and advice of Gail Gilman, Elene Trull and Nora Dahners, each of whom significantly improved this story.