Tiona_a sequel to Vaz

by Laurence Dahners

  Nolan turned his eyes back to Tiona. I should offer to go buy some drinks, he thought, but I think I’ll wait. Maybe Tiona will go back to get herself a drink and I can bump into her back at the bar. If Susie complains because I haven’t gotten her a drink, I’ll say I’ve been waiting for a waitress. For a moment, he looked at Winters up on the stage. As opposed to the calm demeanor the man had had when he played at the Cat’s Cradle, he did look a little bit wild tonight. Nolan wondered why. He turned his attention back to Tiona.

  As the songs went by, Nolan began to get a little bored. He did like the music, but Susie just sat there staring at Winters. It wouldn’t have been easy to talk over the loud music anyway, but it felt to Nolan like he was there by himself. He enjoyed watching Tiona, but even that seemed unfulfilling. He wanted to be talking to her.

  There was a waitress, but she was apparently working the large crowd solo. At first, Nolan was irritated that she wasn’t coming by to provide any service. Then he started to worry that she would come by to take their order right before Tiona headed back to get herself a drink, thus blowing Nolan’s chance to meet her back at the bar.

  Thus it was with some relief that Nolan saw Tiona turn and start to thread her way through the crowd back towards the bar. He leaned to Susie and called over the music, “The waitress is never going to get here. I’m going to make a bar run. What would you like?”

  Susie tore her eyes away from the band for a second. Nolan could tell she had to replay his question as she hadn’t been paying attention. Then she smiled, “Thanks! I’d like a rum and Coke.”

  Nolan stood and headed for the back of the room in Tiona’s wake. However, Tiona turned into the ladies bathroom. At first, Nolan felt a little adrift, feeling like his plan had been derailed. If he went to the bar now, Tiona would be behind him. She might choose a different part of the bar from where he was standing and there wouldn’t be any opportunity to “accidentally” encounter her.

  With a snort at his own dimwittedness, he turned into the men’s room. Knowing that women usually took a long time, he dawdled a little bit. The volume of the music dropped, suggesting that the band was taking a break. To Nolan’s dismay, when he stepped out of the bathroom his eyes found Tiona already standing at the bar. Nolan tried not to rush across the room. He stepped up into the spot behind Tiona.

  The bartender was fawning all over her, chattering inanely as he drew her a beer from one of the taps. Nolan smiled over his own irritation that a pretty girl was getting so much better service than he knew he would be getting when he stepped up to the bar. If I were that bartender, I’d be acting like an idiot too.

  Tiona took her beer and turned away from the bar. Nolan put a surprised look on his face, “Tiona!”

  She blinked in surprise; then her eyes narrowed, “Nolan! What are you doing here?”

  Nolan panicked for a second, Does she somehow know that I planned this whole night on the off chance that I’d encounter her? No! She’s just surprised and making conversation! “Ringing in the New Year. I’ve been dating a girl who loves Ronnie Winters… Um, he’s the lead vocalist and guitarist in the band.”

  “Yeah… I know,” Tiona said drolly, her eyes going over Nolan’s shoulder.

  Suddenly a guy shouldered past Nolan. Irritated, Nolan opened his mouth to bark a protest.

  The guy threw his arms around Tiona, “T!”

  It was freaking Ronnie Winters himself! Keeping an arm around Tiona, Winters stepped up to the bar and raised his hand in the air. A second later one of the bartenders handed him a beer and Winters stepped away from the bar, towing Tiona behind him.

  Nolan heard Tiona say, “I thought you’d quit drinking?”

  “Hey babe,” Winters said, “it’s New Year’s Eve!”

  Feeling frustrated and disappointed Nolan turned back to the bar. Sure enough, it was forever before one of the bartenders deigned to notice him.

  Tiona eyed Ronnie. She’d been worried that he’d had a few drinks when she’d been watching him up on stage. Things had been going so well between Ronnie and herself recently, something she had attributed to his recent sobriety. She’d felt dismayed when he’d commented over lunch two days after Christmas that he thought being sober was stifling his creativity. She knew he wrote more songs when he was drunk or had done other drugs, but the songs were crap. He’d only written a couple since he’d been sober, but Tiona thought their quality was much better.

  She’d tried to convince him of this and thought he’d been listening. Then tonight he’d looked a little drunk and her heart had fallen. Tiona thought of Nolan as a pretty-boy, preppy nerd, but she still felt irritated that Ronnie had just shoved the guy out of his way, then thrown a sweaty arm around her. She’d thought she should introduce Ronnie to Nolan, but, oblivious to her thoughts, Ronnie had simply dragged her off. By the time she’d been able to glance back at Nolan, he’d turned to the bar to order his own drink. Nolan might be a dweeby nerd, but at least he’s not a jerk like Ronnie.

  Ronnie said, “How do you like the show tonight babe?”

  Tiona crossed her arms over her chest and frowned, “You play better when you’re sober.”

  “We talked about this babe!” Ronnie said plaintively. “Technically, I may play better, but the spirit’s not in me. Artistically I don’t play as well.”

  Tiona shook her head, “You should listen to recordings of yourself playing sober and playing drunk. You just think you play better when you’re drunk. Actually, you play like crap!”

  “Yeah… technically,” Ronnie said sourly. “You just don’t hear the soul in the music. You’re too… too,” he paused, searching for words, and then said exasperatedly, “You just don’t feel it!”

  “Yeah,” Tiona said, her lip curling, “that must be it.” She turned and strode away.

  Behind her, Ronnie called out, “Come on T. Don’t be such a bitch!”

  The bartender finally gave Nolan his beer and Susie’s rum and Coke. He turned away from the bar and started maneuvering through the crowd behind him, his eyes scanning the room for Tiona. She’d just stalked away from Winters! She looks really pissed! Could I make some points by “being there” for her at a trying time? He started walking faster so that he might catch up to her. Or could I just piss off and embarrass her by horning in on her private drama? Tiona glanced back over her shoulder. She did not look like she was about to burst into tears.

  Nolan felt glad that she hadn’t seemed to see him back there behind her. He had a feeling that she wouldn’t be happy to have a witness to whatever just went down. She certainly didn’t look like a woman who thought she needed some guy she worked with to come over and try to comfort her.

  Nolan glanced back at Winters. The guy was back at the bar, sucking down the last of the beer he had in one hand and holding up his hand with two fingers for a couple more. Nolan looked back at Tiona just as she set down her nearly full beer and went out the exit.

  With a sigh he headed back over to the table and Susie. For a moment, he contemplated telling Susie that Winters had a thing going with his lab mate. Susie was the kind of girl who’d be excited about even such a distant brush with someone of some fame, but Nolan really didn’t feel like capitalizing on it.

  Winters dragged out the break until the crowd was pissed. By the time he got back to the stage he was visibly drunk. Nolan thought Winters was awful, playing a lot of sour notes and singing off key, but Susie didn’t seem to notice. When Nolan suggested they might want to leave early, Susie looked at him like he was out of his mind.

  Eventually they stayed until the bar closed.

  As he took Susie home, Nolan swore to himself that he would never go out with her again.

  ***

  “Thrust is down to 425 Newtons!” Zack said as Ralph came out of the airlock and into their space capsule.

  Ralph sighed, “It looks like it’s a gradual problem developing in all of the engines. At least they all look like they’re firing, rather than the problem being
that a few of them have completely failed.” He nodded his head at the ion engine he had in his hand, “I brought this one in so we could have a look at it.”

  Hours had passed. Ralph and Zack had partially disassembled the engine that Ralph had brought in. They’d sent photos back and forth to earth comparing different parts of this engine to an unused engine they still had in Houston. They’d done all the electrical measurements that they had equipment for and most of them seemed just a little bit off spec. The electrodes appeared to be discolored compared to the new engine, but it could have been lighting differences.

  One of the engineers in Houston came on, “We don’t know. It’s possible that the ice you’re harvesting there on the asteroid contains some impurities that are depositing on or corroding the electrodes. So far we haven’t come up with a way to evaluate that with the equipment you have there in the capsule.”

  Zack said, “But we’re running all of it through a filter!”

  “There are a lot of molecules that will pass right through a filter, but might still be corrosive or could deposit.”

  “There must be some way to better purify the stuff before we use it for fuel!”

  “Sure. We could do it here on earth. But it would require knowing what the contaminant is and might require some pretty sophisticated chemistry.” The engineer shrugged, “We might have some better ideas if we knew exactly what the problem was.”

  Once Houston signed off Zack turned to Ralph, a look of dismay on his face. “We’ve already filled Bellerphon’s tanks with that crap!”

  “Umhmm,” Ralph agreed while still thinking about what might have happened to the engines and not considering how upset Zack had sounded.

  “Ralph! Dammit, if the shit that’s in that tank ruins Bellerphon’s engines, we won’t get home!

  Trying to keep Zack calm, Ralph said in an even tone, “We can pump the tanks back out if we can find a way to purify the ice.”

  Zack tilted his head back and closed his eyes for a minute. They snapped back open. “What if we only heat the ice a little bit and then don’t pump the liquid? That way we’d only get the gaseous molecules that vaporize at low temperatures. We leave behind all the heavier crap. It’d be like we distilled it!”

  “Don’t forget that chlorine gas is pretty corrosive. Not sayin’ chlorine is the problem, just that distillation might not solve it. We really need to try to figure out which molecules are actually the issue before we start firing random solutions at it.”

  ***

  In a funk about Ronnie, Tiona slept in. When she finally got up and headed downstairs, her mood had not improved. Lisanne said, “Hey, good to see you up. Your dad’s all in a twist about the big saucer and hoping you’ll come help him troubleshoot.”

  Darkly, Tiona said, “He’s going to have to wait.”

  Lisanne grinned, “You hung over from that New Year’s party you went to?”

  “No!” Tiona said irritatedly, as she set out a bowl of cereal. “I drank about one and a quarter beers. No hangover for me.”

  “You sound disappointed that you don’t have a hangover. There must be something else wrong?”

  “Yeah, Ronnie’s acting like an ass again,” Tiona said, getting strawberries and milk out of the fridge.

  Lisanne felt bad for her daughter, but she didn’t like Ronnie so she couldn’t help but feel good for her as well. She sat down across from where Tiona was building her breakfast. “What did he do this time?”

  Not taking her eyes off the strawberry she was viciously chopping up, Tiona said, “Drinking again.” She sighed, “He was so much nicer when he was sober. Played better too. Of course he thinks that ‘being sober stifled his creativity.’”

  “A lot of drunks think they are doing great, but it’s just because they don’t even notice their own mistakes.”

  “Exactly! I tried to tell him that but…”

  Lisanne waited for her daughter to continue, but when she didn’t, she ventured, “But he didn’t want to hear it, huh?”

  Tiona didn’t say anything in response. She poured milk on her cereal sat down and scooped up a spoonful that she put in her mouth. Then around the mouthful, she said, “No!”

  Lisanne let her shoulders sag a little, then said, “Lots of times the guys who seem talented and exciting and handsome etcetera turn out to be crappy relationship material…” she trailed off.

  Tiona rolled her eyes, “I’ve heard this sermon before. It’s not like the guy you chose is ‘great relationship material.’”

  Lisanne barked a laugh, “No, but I went into our relationship knowing that. I also didn’t think I’d somehow magically change him into the guy I’d always pictured in my dreams.”

  Tiona stared at her mother for a moment, “Why did you marry him, Mom?”

  Lisanne stared back for a couple of seconds, then said in a quiet throaty voice, “I know he’s not the easiest person to live with, and he surely can’t be the easiest person to have as a father. But I do love him.” She looked directly at Tiona “And never doubt that he loves you in his own way. He might not be able to display his emotions like other people, but he does love his family. As to why, like I said, ‘because he’s an astonishing genius.’” She winked, “And because I hoped he’d stoke me with a couple of amazing kids.”

  Tiona made a disgusted face, “Stoke you! Where did that come from?”

  Lisanne laughed, “I was quoting my high-school aged daughter.”

  “I said that?!” Tiona said, looking horrified.

  “It was a stressful time.” Lisanne shrugged, “Like the teenage years are for most people and you had the extra issue that we couldn’t figure out what was going on with your dad.” She gave a little grin, “I’m sure you’d never say something that rude today.”

  Tiona got a distant look in her eyes, “I sure don’t remember saying that.” She turned back to her mother and grinned, “But it was kind of a stressful time.” She winked, “Maybe all that stress made you dream an episode in which your incredibly sweet daughter acted as if she were rude?”

  “Maybe,” Lisanne laughed. She got up and walked around to give Tiona a hug. With her ear close to Tiona’s, she whispered, “I’m sure you couldn’t actually have said anything rude when you were a teenager. I must have dreamed it.”

  Tiona put a finger to her chin in a “thinking” pose; then pulled it away with a smile, “Yeah, that’s probably it.”

  “Now that you’ve finished your cereal, are you going to go see what’s up with your dad? Or should I take him some Valium?”

  “I’m going. I’m going…”

  Down in the basement, Tiona found Vaz with CAD/CAM drawings up on every screen in his lab. “Mom said you were looking for me?”

  Vaz murmured something to his AI; then spun quickly in his chair, looking excited. “Yeah! I wanted you to look over the plans I’ve drawn up for the big disc.” He frowned with a slight look of worry, “I’ve already ordered quite a few things that I feel very sure of. But I didn’t want to order the big items until you’d looked at the plans. Maybe you’ll see an issue that I’ve missed?”

  “Okay…” Tiona said doubtfully. “I’m not really qualified as a structural engineer, but I’m happy to look.”

  Vaz said, “Yeah, I’m not an engineer either. I’m just over-designing everything rather than trying to cut anything close.” He turned back forward, “Here, let me show you…”

  Tiona watched in amazement as he took her through his design. The basis of the entire thing was a half a meter thick by eight meter disc. It was divided into six 2.66 meter circular membranes arranged hexagonally like a honeycomb around a 2.66 meter opening in the center. The membranes at the top and bottom of the big disc would propel dark matter and could be powered individually for attitude control. The area between the six discs was also covered with membrane and could also be powered to make it into one huge eight meter disc with a 2.66 meter hole in the middle. The empty space between the top and the bottom of the big disc
had storage tanks for water as well as an electrolysis system to break water down for oxygen. There was also a large activated charcoal air filtration section with multiple canisters of soda lime to absorb CO2. The 2.66 meter opening in the middle of the big disc allowed access for service and passed plumbing and wiring up and down. Vaz had tested putting a hole through the center of several of their discs and said it had only a small effect on efficiency of thrust. A hole in the center certainly didn’t cause the big problems that a corner on the outside did.

  Rows of half meter discs were arranged perpendicularly inside the big disc to provide forward, lateral and rotational thrust if needed.

  Suspended underneath the main disc was a ten megawatt fusion plant, based on the patent Vaz had licensed to GE. The water, boron, and layered metal necessary for shielding contributed five of the eight and a half metric tons of weight of the overall craft. However, Vaz had calculated that the big disc should be able to produce about 95,000 pounds of thrust while only using a little over 70% of power from the fusion plant. Since this would produce accelerations over five gravities, he didn’t ever expect to run the plant full out, although he’d designed the power runs and the structural strength of the craft to be able to tolerate full power and thrust with a substantial safety margin.

  Mounted on top of the disc was a living area with five acceleration seats arranged in a fashion that reminded Tiona of the inside of a big SUV. Around the seats was storage, a small food prep area, a closet with a camping toilet and a little airlock in the back! “Dad! This is way more than you need to go up to the stratosphere, or even to LEO, to test the dark matter thrusting hypothesis!”

  Vaz looked a little embarrassed. “Well, it seemed kind of silly to design something that could only do that. Why not design something that could do more?”

  Tiona frowned, “How long would that water last, using it for both oxygen and for drinking?”