Comet!

by Laurence Dahners

Horton nodded, “And the theory is pretty hard to understand…”

  Ell grinned, “So I’ve been told.”

  When Horton called an end to the meeting Bayless shut down his video and cancelled his next meeting. Putting his head in his hands he pondered this disaster, its ramifications for the country he loved and the annoying girl that was shoving it down their throats. How dare she wave a finger at him as if to tell him to shut up! He needed to put a stop to this!

  ***

  Waiting for class to start Ell was watching her HUD as Allan scrolled rapidly through information on Tau Ceti. About 11 light years away and spectrally similar to the Sun, Tau Ceti had long held interest as a possible nearby location for earthlike planets. It was known for having a particularly large “debris disk” so there was concern that, even if it did have an earthlike planet, advanced life couldn’t develop because of a likely high frequency of cometary extinction impacts. Though large gas giant planets had been ruled out, whether or not there actually were Earth sized or smaller planets remained in dispute. There was some evidence for them from recent studies but it was weak. Probably any planets that were present were smaller than Earth.

  Someone thumped down in the seat next to her. She looked up, “Hi Gordon!”

  “Hey, yourself.” He looked a little down.

  “Somebody shoot your dog?”

  “Nah, you just got my hopes up about your crazy aunt.”

  Ell grinned, “Yeah. She must be completely nuts. She said to forward this to your AI.”

  Gordon looked up at his HUD and saw a deposit for $30,000. He leapt to his feet and looked down wide eyed at Ell, “Seriously!?”

  Ell shrugged, “I told you she was crazy.”

  “Do I need to sign some kind of agreement?”

  “Nope. She liked the terms you outlined when we spoke on Wednesday and kept a copy of our conversation as a ‘contract.’ If those terms are still OK with you?” She raised her eyebrows.

  “Freakin’ awesome!” Gordon pumped a fist. “I gotta tell the guys! Thanks!” He turned and ran up the stairs toward the back of the classroom.

  Ell called after him, “Send me your tour schedule?”

  “Sure!” he said as he slammed out the door.

  Ell sat back in her chair, somewhat disappointed, though she wasn’t sure what more she had expected?

  Professor Norris came in and her class started.

  ***

  Secretary of Transportation Bayless looked up as his secretary buzzed. She said, “Administrator Overstreet is here Secretary.”

  “Send her in.” Bayless got up and stepped around his desk, “Hi Cindy.”

  “Hey Jim. What’s so urgent?” She frowned, “I had to cancel two meetings to make it over here.”

  “Yeah. Sorry. We’ve got a serious problem with a diabolical genie that needs to be stuffed back in its bottle.”

  Overstreet raised an eyebrow. This wasn’t the first time Bayless had gotten a twist in his underwear over something. “What’s the problem?”

  “You remember that gymnast from a few years back? Ellen Donsaii?”

  “Yes, though I thought her first name was just ‘Ell.’”

  Bayless shrugged, “Ell. Are you aware that she’s being credited with saving the Space Station a couple months back?”

  Overstreet’s eyebrows ascended, “Sure.” She seemed surprised that Bayless hadn’t known about it.

  “Really.” Bayless sounded offended. “I mean, come on! She’s cute and I’ll grant that she’s a good gymnast but get serious. Saving the Space Station?! She’s practically a teenager! Obviously someone else saved the Station and they’re assigning credit to her for some unknown reason. Probably just to have a famous and pretty face on it.”

  Overstreet frowned, “She works for a space launch company doesn’t she?”

  “No… well kinda. Apparently they’ve developed some kind of ‘trans-dimensional’ pipeline. It lets them fuel small rockets that can thereby fly into space. Then they just delivered oxygen to the Station through one of their ‘pipelines.’”

  Overstreet had an “A ha” moment. Bayless had called her because of her role as Administrator of the “Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration” or PHMSA. She frowned, “Do they really call them ‘trans-dimensional pipelines?’”

  “No, no. They call them ‘ports.’ But they function like pipelines, just without the pipe between the two ends.”

  “Honestly Jim, this sounds ridiculous! Are you sure someone’s not pulling your leg? Have you actually seen these things in action?”

  “No, but Horton convened a meeting of half the Cabinet with this jumped up teenager and he certainly seems to be a true believer.”

  Overstreet leaned back in her chair rubbing her chin. “And you think we should get involved because?”

  Bayless spoke as if he were lecturing a child, “My God Cindy! These ‘ports’ can be used to transport hazardous materials and any idiot or terrorist will be able to buy one if we don’t get this in control pronto! Even if we discount the terrorists wreaking havoc with them, imagine what’s going to happen to the economy when all the pipeline companies suddenly go broke!”

  Overstreet narrowed her eyes, “Why would they go broke?”

  “Because any fool could use a trans-dimensional pipeline to move liquid goods! Not just the pipeline companies either. Your local distributor of, say, natural gas, suddenly would find itself competing against a national distributor that could undercut their rates and sell gas directly to the consumer through a little port!”

  Overstreet’s eyes widened a moment but then she said, “But I assume we wouldn’t have to worry about pipelines leaking oil out in Timbuktu either?”

  Bayless leaned forward, “Cindy! What if some Saudi Arabian prince started porting gas directly to your car?!”

  “What if?”

  “Yes. What if? Think of all the folks that would go broke! The oil tanker companies. The national importer. The pipeline that gets it close. The trucker that gets it to your gas station. The local gas station. My God! It would be a disaster!”

  “My gas would be a lot cheaper for not having all those middlemen taking a chunk too.”

  Bayless rolled his eyes, “Like anything, there would be a few upsides to go with all the downside, yes. But overall this is a disaster. I’m officially directing you to consider these ‘trans-dimensional pipelines,’ like any other pipeline, to be under your purview at PHMSA. Doubly so because of the possibility that they might be used to ship hazardous materials. They need to be regulated, and by that I mean regulated strictly. I want them shut down with only very limited licenses granted a few exceptional situations such as the Space Station where an actual pipe won’t serve.”

  Overstreet opened her mouth to protest but paused. Then like any good bureaucrat she said, “I’m going to need funding to take all this on.”

  Bayless grinned, knowing he’d won. “Cindy, this is only one company. You only need one agent to show up there and tie them up with red tape. You aren’t getting more funding for something like this. I’d recommend that cowboy of yours, Brad Mullins. This is one place where overly zealous enforcement would be good.”

  Chapter Four

  Roger took Emma around and introduced her to folks at D5R and showed her some of the fabrication equipment. She felt pumped to be working on something so cool. At the same time she was apprehensive that she might not measure up. To her surprise Ell didn’t arrive until nearly 11AM. Emma considered tweaking her about it but then noticed the deference that everyone else seemed to afford Ell. She decided she needed to get a better feel for the social dynamic at the company before she started teasing the CEO… even if that CEO had once been a junior grad student in her own program.

  “So, did Roger show you a port in action?”

  Excitedly Emma said, “Yeah, he poured some water through one while I held its pair over the sink there! It’s freaking amazing! I mean I thought your PGR chips were incredible
but this is just so… so… much more!”

  Ell grinned, “Glad you like it! Now, I told you at dinner the other night that I think we can make ports that aren’t defined on both ends?”

  Roger and Emma both focused on her. Roger said, “You know, you’ve mentioned that a couple of times but I have enough trouble mentally coming to grips with a port that is defined on both ends with those quantum entangled pairs. How in the hell can you send something through a port where the other end isn’t defined?”

  Ell tilted her head. “It’s kinda weird but the math is actually simpler for a single ended port. I think of it as shoving something into that fifth dimension that then has to pop back into our dimensions somewhere. That’s why the first ports I tried to make were single ended. The problem is that it’s really difficult to control the distance that an object travels before it pops back out in our universe. However, even if that is difficult, I think we could still find uses for single ended ports.”

  “Like what?

  “Hmm, you know, even at 22 kilometers per second it will take a long time to fly our rockets to other planets and the asteroids?” She raised her eyebrows.

  Roger and Emma nodded thoughtfully then looked as if the light were dawning.

  “But we could just send a rocket through a one ended port. It would arrive somewhere close to where we want it to go. Admittedly not right where we want it to be because of inaccuracies in the distance sent, but then we just fly it the rest of the way. This would cut a 200 plus day average trip to the asteroid belt down to 20 days. Well, it would cut it down that much if we are able get our accuracy down to an average “miss” of 10 percent of the total distance of the trip.” She tilted her head, “We may be able to get more accurate than that. Anyway, it’s worth working on, I think. Remember, once that first rocket gets there it could be carrying the other end of a dual ended port and we could then send more objects and devices to that location instantly and accurately.”

  Roger had a far away look as he said, “Oh yeah.”

  After a long pause of dreamy distance staring, Roger said, “Hey, I forgot to tell you that our bee results are in.”

  Emma looked quizzically at Roger, “Bee results?”

  “We put a group of worker bees through ports to determine if passing through a port was bad for your health. We know it’s painful to go through a port ‘cause Ell and I have both put fingers through a port, but we don’t know if it does permanent damage. So about a month ago we put some worker bees through ports because they only live about 4 weeks. That way we could see if it shortened their life span.” He paused expectantly.

  Finally Ell said exasperatedly, “Well?”

  “Nope.”

  “’Nope’ what?! It didn’t shorten their lifespan? Or, ‘nope’ you aren’t answering?”

  “Nope.”

  Ell glared at him.

  “It didn’t shorten their lifespan.” He grinned. “Actually, the ones that had been through the port lived an average of a half day longer. That difference isn’t statistically significant but it certainly didn’t shorten their lives. Pretty cool, huh?!”

  Emma thought to herself that he looked really cute when he was happy…

  ***

  On the Space Station Dave Slager spoke to his AI, “Call Ell Donsaii.”

  After a momentary pause Ell came on, “Hi Dr. Slager.”

  “Hi yourself, I thought you were going to call me Dave?”

  “Hi Dr. Dave.”

  Slager snorted. “OK, so that’s how it is huh?”

  “Yes sir. What can we do for you guys?”

  “Houston just let me know that they’ve made up a bunch of our ‘space’ food into packages that’ll fit through five centimeter ports. I’m calling on their behalf to find out where they should send them?”

  “Hah, I’ve been looking for an excuse to visit Houston. Tell them to hold on to it and I’ll pick it up.”

  “Pick it up?”

  “Yeah, now I won’t feel guilty about taking the company Lear Jet down there ‘cause I can bring your food back to send through.” Her brow furrowed, “Actually, maybe I should take our ends of the Space Station’s ports down to Houston and then they could supply you directly?”

  “What, no more of Jose’s amazing fruit-urritos?”

  “Well,” Ell grinned at him, “I hear they make pretty good burritos in Houston. You’ll just have to teach them about fruit-urritos.”

  Resignedly Slager sighed, “I knew it was too good to last.”

  ***

  Wilson Daster turned to his wife with a sick looking expression on his face. “I don’t like these trajectories, Em.”

  “What? Are you still thinking your comet might hit us?”

  “Well… that’s what I keep getting.”

  She frowned, “Are you sure it will?”

  “Gods no! I’m just an amateur, feeding numbers into a program that my AI runs for me. But I think I’m doing it right.”

  “Wouldn’t the people at Kitt Peak and NASA be keeping an eye on it too?”

  “Well, for God’s sake—I sure hope so!”

  “Well, don’t you think they’d be telling us then?”

  “I… don’t… know? What if they’re afraid of inciting panic?”

  “Oh, come on. Wil, don’t you think you’re overreacting...at least some?”

  “Em, it would… it would wipe out civilization at the very least. Probably no humans would survive.”

  She shrugged. “Yeah, but didn’t you tell me that, even though you were getting it as a possibility, it still wasn’t likely?”

  “Yeah, the numbers I get are about 5-20 percent, but still… Even a five percent chance of extinction of the human race seems kind of… concerning.”

  ***

  Walking to the machine shop to talk to Manuel, Ell passed behind Brian and Fred walking across the room. A shock went through her. Brian had a pistol in his hand! Horrifying images of a disgruntled employee gone wild and shooting people flashed through Ell’s mind. She felt herself slipping into the zone. Heart throbbing slowly in her ears she slid up behind Brian and, grasping his index finger with her right hand, plucked the gun from his hand with her left. As she did so she was somewhat relieved to note that his finger had been outside the trigger guard and, as she brought the Smith and Wesson toward herself, to see that the safety was on.

  “What the hell!?” Brian shouted as, to him, the gun was ripped out of his grip. He turned wildly to see Ell holding it, eyes laser focused on him. The look on her face, usually so friendly, was deadly fierce. In somewhat of a panic he remembered that—at the Olympics several years ago—this girl had taken a weapon away from one of a group of seven hardened terrorists and shot them all!

  The popular descriptions he had heard of the episode and about her shooting had been hard to countenance at the time, but now he felt his heart thumping wildly in his chest. Without difficulty, she had ripped the gun out of his hand so quickly that his fingers were stinging. He suddenly had no doubt whatsoever that she could kill him before he could even begin to stop her. His hands slowly went up in surrender. “What?”

  Fred found himself stepping away from Brian, more frightened by the unfamiliar and terrifyingly intense young woman in front of him than he would have dreamed possible.

  Quietly Ell said, biting the words off one at a time so that her speech would be slow enough to understand, “Why, do, you, have, a, gun?”

  Brian waved his hands placatingly, “We’re worried about another terrorist application of the rings… That’s all... Really!”

  Ell aggressively tamped down her zone. She narrowed her eyes. “What?”

  “We’ve been brainstorming things terrorists might do with ports. We got to supposing, ‘what if a terrorist carried a port onto a plane.’ He could point the port at someone and have his buddy terrorist back home shoot them through the port!”

  Ell said, “Wouldn’t work” her voice grating like a steel rasp. Her eyes narrowed, “Wh
y do you have a gun here?”

  Fred said, “We were going to try it and find out.”

  “Oh my God! Where?!”

  “In the dangerous reaction room where we tested the rocket motors.”

  “OK, I’ll grant you it should be tested, but not with a gun! The math predicts that as the velocity of an object entering a port increases, the energy drawn to keep the portal open increases. At first it should increase so slowly that you hardly notice it but it increases exponentially starting at about…” she looked up at the ceiling, “at twenty two meters per second it should begin to get noticeable.” She looked up again, “At around thirty meters per second a graph of it should be climbing very steeply and at around thirty one meters per second it should approach infinity.”

  Fred got a glassy look, “Thirty meters per second…”

  Ell said, “Sixty seven miles an hour. Starts climbing at forty nine mph and is infinite around sixty nine mph. A pitcher throws a baseball faster. A bullet would hit the port and turn the port and itself into shrapnel. Test it if you want, but don’t have anyone in the room, set it up mechanically. You could test it better with a high speed water jet. Might not even ruin a perfectly good port if you gradually increase the speed of the water. You should see the energy draw mounting, unless of course I’m wrong. Always worth checking to be sure.” Ell turned to walk away, then looked down at the gun in her hand. She popped out the magazine and jacked the slide. She sighed, “At least you didn’t have one in the chamber. Please don’t walk around in here with guns in the future?” She raised her eyebrows.

  Fred and Brian both said, “No Ma’am,” then felt kind of embarrassed to be saying “Ma’am” to a 19 year old. They watched her gracefully walk away, their pulses gradually slowing.

  Brian drew a deep breath and cocked an eyebrow, “Well… Let’s set up a water jet shall we?”

  Suddenly Ell turned around and walked back to them. “A terrorist could have his buddy back home shove a sword through a port into someone on the airplane. Or pass a gun through a port. Maybe you should find a way to make sure that ports are picked up by security during boarding? Keep thinking, there’ll be other things to worry about.” She turned again and left in the same direction she’d been going originally.