Lisanne stared at her daughter for a moment; then laughed again. “Well, I’m getting cross eyed again, but at least that analogy makes it a little bit easier to understand.”
Tiona made herself some lunch too and ate with her parents. Vaz was finished eating long before she was and immediately started fidgeting. He watched her eat and Tiona had the strong sensation that he wished she’d hurry up. Finally she said, “You don’t have to wait for me. You can head on back down to the lab and whatever you’ve been working on.”
He glanced up towards the basement door as if thinking about it, but then said, “No, I’ve got something interesting to show you.”
Tiona smiled at her mother, “Do you think mom would be interested in it?”
Vaz looked at Lisanne, considering the question as if it were extremely perplexing. “I don’t know,” he said dubiously, “maybe?”
Tiona smiled at Lisanne, “Well, what do you think Mom? You want to take a chance on coming down to look at something you only ‘might’ be interested in?”
Lisanne grinned back, “Sure.”
Once the dishes were put away, all three of them trooped down to the basement to see Vaz’s “something interesting.” As soon as they got down there, Tiona’s eyes were immediately drawn to a disc about a meter in diameter and a couple of inches thick that was sitting in the middle of the floor. It had a pole sticking up out of the middle of it that had some switches and buttons up near the top. “You built a big one?”
Vaz nodded eagerly. “I divided the surface of the big membranes on this disc up into partitions. Each section can be energized separately, but if they are all powered up it generates the same amount of thrust you would expect from a disc with a diameter of a meter.” He looked at Tiona to see if she grasped what he was saying.
“So… the fact that the individual sections aren’t actually circles doesn’t matter as long as they all work together to make a circle?”
“Yes! And, in fact if I vary the power to the different sections somewhat it still generates good thrust, but it tilts away from the one with the most power!”
“Oh! So you have control! It can tilt and fly around?”
“Yeah,” Vaz said sounding very satisfied and staring at the disc like a proud father would at a newborn child.
“Well let’s plug it in! I want to see it in action.”
Vaz blinked at her, as if surprised by her lack of perception. “It runs on batteries.”
Tiona turn to stare at it, “Where?” she began, then ran down. She turned to look at her father, “They’re between the top and bottom discs?”
Vaz nodded, “With the current generators and the control processors.”
Tiona turned back to look at the disc again, “Wait a minute, there isn’t room between the two surfaces of the disc for a current generator.” As soon as she said it, she saw their current generators still sitting there on the lab bench.
Vaz said, “Those current generators are big because they need to be adjustable. They can produce a lot of different frequencies and amplitudes, with various biases. I ordered some that just produce one gigahertz and modified their circuits for the bias. They’re much smaller.”
Tiona said musingly, “Processors?”
“Yeah, I put in a low level AI to control the current to the different sections so that it stays level. Unless you want it to go somewhere. Then the processor adjusts the current to tilt it the direction you want to go.”
“And you did all this in the past couple of days while I’ve been talking to Eisner and Weitzel?”
Vaz blinked, “Well, I ordered the current generators a few days ago when it looked like they might be cool things to have around. Then all I had to do was precipitate the membranes, modify the generator current and assemble it. I did almost all of it this morning.” He got a distant look, “Except for the precipitation yesterday.”
Tiona felt bemused by the way he described putting the project together like it was something very simple. “So, we have our own flying saucer, huh?”
Vaz frowned and turned to look at the disc, “You’re calling it a saucer because it’s round?”
“And it flies. You know, like in science fiction, where the aliens fly a saucer?”
Vaz looked a little confused, “Um, no, I don’t read science fiction. Why would they fly saucers?”
Tiona laughed, “Never mind. Let’s see this thing fly.”
“Okay,” Vaz said, walking over and stepping up on top of the disc.
He flipped a switch and Tiona heard a hum coming from the electronics. Just as she was thinking, Wait, this thing can’t have enough power to… it lifted off the floor a couple of inches.
Lisanne gave a little shriek and clapped her hands together in delight.
Astonished, Tiona watched the disc hovering there. As Vaz moved his weight around it shifted and wiggled a little bit, but seemed much more stable than Tiona would have expected. “What’s keeping it from skidding around? I mean, you’re standing there on a practically frictionless interface. You should be sliding around the room running into things!”
“I put some two inch discs all the way around the edge of this big disc,” Vaz said. “They push the big disc sideways when the AI energizes them. There are some infrared lasers on the bottom of the disc that lets the AI station-keep. One detects its altitude and the others detect motion like the lasers on the optical mice that people used to use to control their computers.” All of a sudden, the disc started sliding towards Tiona. It stopped before it hit her and Vaz said, “When you do want it to move, you push this little joystick,” he pointed to a little joystick on the top of the pole he was gripping, “and it shifts the current among the various disks so that you will slide that direction. The idea for the program came from me thinking of the old Segway two wheeled scooters.”
Tiona narrowed her eyes, “Wait a minute. How does this thing have enough power to lift you up and move you around on just batteries?”
Vaz shrugged, “Remember, energy storage was my old job at Querx? I developed quite a few systems for them. The A7 fuel cells that are in this disc store more power for their weight than any other battery in the world. They can put out twenty kilowatts for a little while.”
Lisanne asked, “Can it lift you higher, or can it only hover a few inches off the floor?”
Vaz said, “This scroll wheel adjusts the altitude.” As he said it he rolled the scroll wheel with a thumb and the disc lifted up high enough that Vaz had to bend his head down so that he didn’t hit the ceiling. Then he scrolled it back down until he was only a few inches off the floor again. “Until the tech is more mature, I don’t think it’s safe to be high enough that you’d get hurt if something failed.”
He flipped a switch. It settled to the floor as he stepped off.
***
Zack sighed in frustration. Ralph had sunk one of their conical heaters into one of the large collections of ice while Zack had disconnected the feeder hose from the big ion engine and was pointing it at the frozen clamp still holding their spacecraft Bellerphon to the big ion engine. He’d been blowing the warm gas at the fitting now for about twenty minutes. It wasn’t really warm, just a lot warmer than the ambient temperature of space around Kadoma.
He moved a little further around the junction to play his stream of gas on the junction from a different angle. He’d noticed the gas condensing and freezing on various surfaces of the spacecraft and the engine and kept telling himself that a little frost wouldn’t hurt anything. He reached up and shoved on the spacecraft.
Rather than the rigid resistance he’d been feeling every time before, he thought it gave a little! “Ralph! This might be working!” He moved a little further around, checked where the gas was going and reached up to shove again. Again he felt a little give and then with a bang he could feel through his gloved hand Bellerphon gave way and floated free. “Ralph!” he shouted, “we’ve got her loose! Turn off the heat and get on back here.”
Zack
grabbed on to the frame of the big engine and tugged gently on one of the tethers they had attached to be sure Bellerphon didn’t float away from Kadoma. Next he took the end of the hose he’d been using to heat the clamp and reconnected it to the big ion engine.
Over the next couple of hours, Zack and Ralph securely strapped Bellerphon and the asteroid to each other. The next morning they would see if the big ion engine would work.
Back inside Bellerphon, Zack checked back in with Houston. “We’ve finally managed to separate the Bellerphon module from the engine. Abbott’s idea to warm it with gas from the heater was successful.”
After a few seconds for the transmission to go back and forth, Sophie’s voice came on the response, “Oh Ralph, I’ve always known you were a genius. Why did you have to run off with Zack?”
“Sophie!” they said excitedly. Ralph continued, “What are you doing at the comm center?”
“Well, you know how you two have been bitching at each other like an old married couple? The people here in the comm center have been getting so tired of listening to it that they asked for volunteers to deal with the two of you. I didn’t really want to listen to it either, but you know what a kind soul I am.”
Zack said, “Sophie, I’ve had my marriage to Ralph annulled! He never consummated, so the church declared it invalid. So, the way’s clear for me to propose to you Sophie. I know you can’t tell it over this link, but I’m on one knee. I don’t have a ring either, but I’ve just acquired this 3.6 kiloton rock?”
Sophie laughed, “Oh Zack, you say the sweetest things!”
***
Tiona’s AI said, “You have a call from Dr. Eisner.”
Tiona said, “I’ll take it… Hello Dr. Eisner, have you had any other ideas on how to explain the thrust phenomenon?”
Eisner said, “No, I just finished talking to Dr. Weitzel. He hasn’t thought of a way to disprove your dark matter hypothesis either. However, he’d like to send some of your disks up to a high altitude. Based on the theory that dark matter and normal matter do interact by gravity he believes that there should be more dark matter wherever there’s a high concentration of normal matter. If one kind of matter generates a significant gravity well, the other kind of matter should gather in that area. Therefore, there should be more dark matter down here at the Earth’s surface than there is up in the stratosphere. Assuming you don’t object, he wants to send some of your disks up with a high altitude balloon to test the hypothesis that they should produce less thrust up there.”
“So he’s rejecting my idea that it will produce the same amount of thrust, no matter the density of the dark matter because it will simply accelerate the dark matter to a higher velocity?”
Eisner gave a little laugh, “Well, it does seem a little unrealistic to think that your disks could accelerate dark matter to relativistic speeds in just a centimeter! But, we should certainly be testing such an idea by experiment. Of course, we don’t really know that dark matter is less concentrated at high altitudes, but it seems reasonable to postulate that and to test the idea experimentally.”
Tiona gave a small laugh of her own, “Yeah, even I think that idea is crazy; I just haven’t been able to come up with a better one. By all means, we should test it. Would you like me to work on setting up a self-contained experiment that will measure and record the thrust from a disc as its altitude increases?”
“Sure, then Weitzel can focus on trying to get us a ride on a balloon.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to get it on an orbital mission?”
“Sure, but, as I’m sure you recognize, the expense of an orbital mission is astronomical. We aren’t going to be able to get grant funding for a mission like that without a lot of preliminary data.”
Tiona headed down the stairs into the basement, “Dad?”
There was no response, Tiona walked around the basement to be sure her dad wasn’t hidden behind some of the equipment. She had been fairly certain that he hadn’t come up out of the basement when she’d been upstairs, but he must have. Speaking to her AI, she said, “Connect me to…” She didn’t finish the request as her eye had caught on a door at the back of the basement that was ajar. She didn’t remember that door from when she lived at home, but there seemed to be a light on the other side of it. She walked over and pushed it open, thinking that it might be some kind of storage room.
The room she stepped into was enormous! It held more lab benches and a lot more equipment. She stepped back through the door and looked up at the ceiling of the lab she’d always known, trying to picture their house above. She felt fairly certain that the door was in the wall underneath the western edge of their house which would mean that the door entered a large space that was completely out from under the house!
Stepping back into the new space she tried to estimate distances. This looks like it goes all the way over to the Johnson’s house! In fact, it looks like it goes under the Johnson’s house! How can that be? Tiona started walking through this extension of her dad’s lab. The first part of it looked like new construction; then there was a very large area that looked like a remodel of an old basement. Is this the Johnson’s basement?! “Dad?” she called out again.
Still no response. Tiona saw a set of stairs leading up. She went to the bottom of those stairs and peered up. The door at the top was ajar, just like the door between the two labs had been ajar. Slowly she climbed the stairs, listening for the sounds of the Johnsons going about their lives.
Not wanting to simply burst out into the Johnson’s kitchen, or wherever the stairs entered their house, Tiona called out once again, “Dad? Anybody?”
A second later she heard her dad’s voice, somewhat distant, say, “Tiona, I’m in the garage. Come on in.” His voice came from the other side of the door leading out of the basement. She pushed the door open slowly and found herself in what had evidently been the Johnson’s kitchen. Not any longer, evidently. The kitchen counters were serving as additional lab benches. She could see a toaster and a microwave but the rest of the counter space was covered with scales, centrifuges, and other scientific equipment. The dining room was stacked with boxes labeled with the names of various scientific equipment and supply companies!
To Tiona’s left there was a laundry room and another door standing slightly ajar which looked like it probably led into the Johnson’s garage. Stepping that way, she tentatively called out again, “Dad?”
This time she heard him clearly from the other side of that door. He sounded distracted as he said once again, “In the garage.”
Tiona pushed the door open and leaned through. Her dad was kneeling at one side of the Johnson’s enormous garage door holding the reel of a big tape measure which stretched across to the other side of the door. “What are you doing?”
“Measuring the garage door,” he said matter-of-factly.
Tiona looked around; the garage was almost completely empty. It certainly didn’t look like a garage where someone lived. It looked more like the garage in a house that was for sale. “Where are the Johnsons?”
Vaz had rolled up the tape measure and had begun measuring the height of the garage door. “They moved to Tennessee,” he said.
Tiona took another look around the garage, “And you’ve just moved your stuff into their house?! What are the new owners going to think?” As soon as Tiona said it, she remembered the room that connected the Johnson’s basement to the Gettnor’s. Obviously, she thought, he didn’t just move junk into their house, he had that connection built…
Before Tiona could completely process that thought about the connection, Vaz said, “I bought their house.” He shrugged, “I needed more lab space.”
“And you had someone dig the connection from the one basement to the other?”
“Uh-huh, can you hold the tape against the back wall of the garage?” He held the tip of the measuring tape out to her.
Tiona took the tape and walked across the garage to the back wall, “Don’t the neighbors wonder about
this house being empty?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?” Vaz said disinterestedly. “I think they believe that the owner is some rich guy who only stays in Raleigh occasionally. Has Dr. Weitzel gotten back to you about the dark matter hypothesis yet?”
Tiona laughed to herself. The owner was certainly rich, but he essentially never left Raleigh. “Dr. Weitzel wants to send some of our discs up in a high altitude balloon.” She went on to explain to Vaz about Weitzel’s ideas on dark matter density and altitude.
Vaz glanced around one more time; then walked out of the garage and back into the house.
Tiona followed.
As Vaz started down the stairs into the basement underneath the Johnson’s house, he said, “Why use a balloon when you have a thruster that could lift your experiment up to that altitude all by itself?”
Tiona blinked, “Surely you don’t think your fuel cells will have enough energy to lift that disc into the stratosphere?”
Vaz turned to her, eyes first registering confusion, then widening a little in surprise. “Oh, no. No, the one meter disc is too small and batteries don’t have enough energy. We’ll just build a bigger disc that can carry a small fusion plant. With the fusion plant on board, we can fly it as high as we want for as long as we need.”
They were back in Vaz’s usual lab in the basement of the Gettnor’s house. Vaz sat down in front of his big screen where Tiona saw a schematic of a disk. Tiona’s eyes narrowed, “Wait a minute,” she was thinking about the shielding that even a small fusion plant needed. “How big a disk are you talking about?”
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