Vaz

by Laurence Dahners

  Davis pointed to Jerrod’s AI with a questioning look.

  Jerrod signaled that his was off.

  “Jerrod, I’ve done a little recon on this new patent of Gettnor’s. Get this, it’s for fusion!”

  Jerrod frowned, “You mean like the Ford?”

  Stillman winced a little at the depths of Jerrod’s ignorance. “No, atomic fusion. That’s what the Ford was named after.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes, it’s a way to make energy, electricity. Solve the energy crisis.” He saw Jerrod’s interest waning, “It’s worth billions.”

  Jerrod perked up, “And you think your Chinaman would pay how much for the plans?”

  “Millions.”

  “And how are we going to get the plans out of Gettnor?”

  “Um, that’s your field. I was thinking you’d threaten him or something.”

  “How do we make sure he gives us the right plans?”

  “If he doesn’t,” Davis lowered his voice and sounded threatening, “we’ll be back.”

  Jerrod leaned back, staring at the ceiling and thinking. “Sooo, we show up at his place one night, scare the crap out of him, make him export his files to a drive, then tell him, if he talks, or if he stiffed us on functioning files, we’ll be back to make him sorry he ever lived?”

  Stillman nodded, “Something like that.”

  “What about what happened to Billy?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean Billy’s a big tough guy, how’d Gettnor manage to take him out?”

  “There’s got to be more to that story. A geek like Gettnor doesn’t ‘take anyone out.’ I suspect Billy’s too embarrassed to tell you what really happened. Maybe he fell down the stairs.”

  Jerrod grunted, Billy was out on bail awaiting trial on the home invasion charges but Jerrod hadn’t talked to him directly, not wanting there to be any record that he had anything to do with Billy. Billy hadn’t worn his AI to Gettnor’s house and Gettnor’s AV records wouldn’t be available until the trial, so Jerrod hadn’t seen an audio-video record of the events that day.

  Davis said, “Besides, if you’re worried that Gettnor’s dangerous, just take some weapons.”

  “Guns will increase the charges if we get caught.”

  Davis shrugged, “Bats… or something else. And don’t get caught for Chrissake.”

  ***

  Vaz looked up with some irritation as Lisanne opened the door to the basement. He would have a hard time finishing the new fusion setup if he kept getting interrupted.

  “I was thinking that it might be nice for the family to go out to dinner and watch the new JumpGirl movie this coming Saturday night.”

  “OK.” Vaz didn’t want to go, but even more, he wanted Lisanne to be satisfied and go back upstairs, leaving him to work.

  “Great! What’re you working on?”

  “Putting together the new fusion device. I need to get it done quickly, so please don’t take up my time if you don’t have to.”

  “Quickly?”

  “By Thursday.”

  “Why?”

  “Someone’s coming to watch it work.”

  Excitement warred with alarm in Lisanne’s mind. Did someone actually believe it could work, and therefore was coming to witness it? What would happen to Vaz’s psychological balance when it didn’t? After a pause she said, “Oh. Can I help?”

  “No! Like when we cook together, that would be a disaster.”

  “OK. I’ll leave you then.” She said with some irritation and turned to go, hoping he’d call her back and apologize.

  He didn’t.

  Upstairs she worried about what might happen Thursday to Vaz’s stability.

  ***

  Vangester stepped into Dennis’ office and dropped into a chair, “We are well and truly screwed as regards that alloy! The weak links we’ve got working in the lab have absolutely no idea how to crystallize it correctly. Have you found a legal way to stymie Gettnor and his trained attack dog?”

  Dennis stared at him a moment, then slowly shook his head back and forth. “You’re ‘well and truly screwed’ there too. I’ve taken the liberty of seeking opinions from outside counsel, not once, but twice. They’ve both advised that you do your very best to negotiate favorable terms because the most recent court precedents regarding AV records and contracts are very much in Gettnor’s favor.”

  “Shit, shit… shit!” Vangester reached up to put his palms on his forehead, rubbing his temples with his thumbs. “The board’s gonna have my ass!”

  Dennis said nothing. He agreed with Vangester’s assessment.

  Vangester peered up with bloodshot eyes, “Do you have any other ideas?”

  Dennis shook his head, “You need to take Singh’s offer. Save yourself the cost of the interest on Gettnor’s money and get the formula for that alloy. If you can turn the alloy into a big success you might be able to convince the board that you actually made chicken salad out of chicken shit.”

  Vangester buried his face back in his hands and mumbled, “I doubt they’ll give me time to turn it into a success.”

  “Get your sales and business people together and draw up ambitious plans for how you’re going to turn it into a huge win for the company.”

  Vangester slowly raised his head, considering, then visibly brightened, “Good idea, thanks.” He got up and left the office with purpose in his stride.

  ***

  Smint called Vaz, “I’m going to the airport to pick up John Vernor. Is the device working?”

  “I’m just finishing the assembly. I’ll have it put together by the time you arrive.”

  “You haven’t actually had a trial run yet?” Smint said in a panicked tone.

  Oblivious to Smint’s distress, “No, I just finished assembling it.”

  “Wait, which one are you setting up? The Mark 2 that we know works or the Mark 3 that you’ve been working on?”

  “Mark 3, it’ll be much better than the Mark 2.”

  “But Vaz! What if it doesn’t work?”

  “Then he’ll have to come back another time.” Vaz said this as if surprised that Smint could be so obtuse.

  “Oh, Christ. We’d better hope it works, we’ll never get him back if it doesn’t.”

  “There’s no reason it shouldn’t work. I haven’t changed any of the underlying principles.”

  “Shit happens, my friend, shit happens. Well, we should be there at your place just after noon, come what may.”

  ***

  Wondering what had his old friend Jack Smint so riled up, John Vernor picked up his bag off the luggage slide. He was only staying overnight and usually would have just carried on a small bag but Smint had suggested he bring a variety of radiation detectors, an ammeter, a voltage multimeter, and some thermocouples. He wondered why, surely they had such equipment available at Querx. Why he should bring his own was a complete mystery to him. Smint was practically dancing from one foot to the other and John couldn’t tell if it was excitement or anxiety. As he got in Smint’s car he said, “OK, I’m here. Can you tell me what I’m going to be looking at?”

  “I’d rather not. It’s a surprise you’re not going to believe… I don’t want to spoil it.”

  Vernor sighed, this all seemed a little childish to him. But GE had made some tremendous profits on Gettnor’s high temperature superconductor, so if he had something new, it would be crazy not to come down and check it out. “Do you have patent protection?”

  “Patent applied for.”

  The rest of the ride they talked about baseball.

  To Vernor’s surprise, the car parked itself on a residential street of ordinary two story houses. He turned to Smint in some surprise, “This isn’t Querx.”

  Getting out of the car, Smint said, “Ah, no, I retired. Neither Vaz nor I work at Querx anymore. Vaz has set himself up with a pretty amazing research lab in his basement.”

  Vernor’s heart sank. Had he come all the way down to North Carolina ju
st to look at someone’s home science project? Was this some shabby, poorly thought out garage experiment that he would be embarrassed to look at? He got out of the car and followed Smint up the walk, trying to remind himself that Gettnor had a truly amazing track record of fairly important innovations. However, his mind kept tracking back to just how weird he’d thought Gettnor was, the one time they’d met. “This is Gettnor’s house?” he asked

  “Yes,” Smint said, introducing himself to the house AI which let them in. “Right this way, he’s set up the lab in the basement.”

  Vernor practically cringed as he descended the stairs, a basement lab! How could I not have checked this out a little more before I bought tickets and flew down here? He started thinking about the work he could have been doing back home instead of wasting his time down here. He quietly asked his AI whether there was a flight he could still catch back to New York this afternoon or evening. Checking his HUD, he saw that it had found one in three hours, he whispered, “Find me a seat.”

  The door into the basement opened and Vernor stepped into a brightly lit, large space that, to his surprise, looked much the same as many industrial labs he had visited. Maybe this won’t be as embarrassing as I thought, he mused. Then he noticed a cot and clothes in the corner with a punching bag and other exercise equipment. He sighed.

  Gettnor sat at a bench wearing head mounted magnifiers and working down inside a long stainless steel pipe that was bivalved open on hinges. Smint said with a nervous laugh, “Isn’t it finished?”

  Gettnor looked up blandly, “Almost.”

  Vernor felt a muscle twitch in his cheek and tried not to grind his teeth.

  Smint said, “Can I help?”

  “No.”

  “How much longer?”

  “I think about ten minutes.”

  Smint sighed and his shoulders drooped.

  Trying not to fume Vernor said, “Why don’t you tell me what it is while we’re waiting?” He eyed the device which seemed to for the most part consist of a big coil. The part Gettnor was working on appeared to have a stainless steel frame around a concave device, kind of like the mirror in a reflector telescope, except the concave device looked like it was a ceramic with a non-reflective metallic surface. At the focal point of the “mirror” was a thin disk then the beginning of the coil. The entire thing was hooked up to heavy duty tubing and wiring. It looked very professional, but Vernor had never seen anything like it and wouldn’t have been able to hazard the first guess as to what it was for.

  Smint cleared his throat. “Well, Vaz has found a way to achieve fusion.”

  Vernor waited a moment for Smint to finish the sentence by telling him what two objects, or processes Vaz might be fusing together. Then he realized that the sentence was complete. In an effort not to explode he slowly closed his eyes and tried not to squinch them. He opened them and looked at Smint, he forced a smile, “Fusion of?”

  “Hydrogen and boron.”

  Vernor frowned, maybe they weren’t talking about nuclear fusion? “Hydrogen and boron?”

  “Yes, it should be much harder than deuterium fusion and, of course, even now no one has achieved positive energy yet with deuterium fusion. However, through a happy accident, hydrogen-boron is what he’s accomplished. H B is much more desirable than deuterium fusion because it’s aneutronic.”

  Vernor sighed, vaguely remembering some of this from his nuclear physics courses in college, “Come on. Surely you didn’t bring me all the way down here…” He stopped as he realized that, of course, they had. And they must believe that it worked or they wouldn’t have brought him down. But being called to look at a device that just happened not to be working at the time was such a classic story in scientific chicanery.

  Smint said, “I know just what you’re thinking, but it really does work. As soon as Vaz finishes…” he trailed off at the look in Vernor’s eyes. “It really does work…” he trailed off.

  “Sure it does. Sure it does,” Vernor said and glanced up at his HUD. “Well, I’ll give you 45 minutes. That’s when my taxi back to the airport will arrive.”

  “But, I thought you were here until the morning!?”

  “That was before I knew what you thought you were going to show me,” Vernor said in an irritated tone.

  Smint glanced at Vaz who was working on the device as if he hadn’t heard a word that had been said. He pulled the soldering iron back, switched it off and laid it down. He picked up the leads of a multimeter and began touching them to points in the mechanism. Vaz spoke to his AI and the wall screens lit, showing the views from small cameras mounted here and there inside the stainless steel pipe. Then he spoke again and one of the screens popped up some graphs, all flat at present. He reached back in to the mechanism, touching a probe to points inside and looking up to see the graphs reacting.

  Once all the graphs had responded to his probe, he set the probe down and started closing the bivalved cover on the tube. With a power socket wrench he screwed bolts along both sides to squeeze the pipe shut. Once he’d done that he turned to Smint, “Help me carry it to the tank.” The two men lifted the pipe and carried it over to set it in front of a very large stainless steel box where they snapped ropes to it. This was the first part of the whole thing that struck Vernor as looking a little sloppy and unprofessional.

  They pulled on the ropes, lifting the pipe up the front of the box and over the edge into it. Once it had disappeared their eyes turned to the screens. One screen showed a video of the pipe floating on a liquid. Despite his irritation Vernor couldn’t stifle his curiosity, “What’s the liquid?”

  “Water,” Gettnor said.

  Smint clarified, “Even though the main reaction is aneutronic there are some side chain reactions that release a few neutrons. The water absorbs them.”

  “And the boron inside the tank,” Gettnor said, motioning to Smint to pull on a different rope on his end. As they pulled, the pipe could be seen submerging into the tank. Once it was submerged they stopped and Gettnor studied the monitors for a moment. He said, “Leak. Let’s lift it out.”

  Vernor hadn’t seen any leak but they lifted the pipe back out with the rope and pulley set up. Gettnor tightened a couple of the bolts and they lifted it back in. This time Gettnor was satisfied and they pulled the pipe down into the water to rest on a cradle that appeared to be centered in the tank. The ropes were tied off and Gettnor said, “Check systems,” to his AI. He looked up at his HUD a moment, then said, “Stop test.” He turned to Smint, “We need to take it out,” he said stepping over to the ropes holding the pipe submerged in the tank.

  “What’s wrong?” Smint asked, darting a nervous glance at Vernor. He began untying his rope and they started letting the pipe rise to the surface of the water.

  Gettnor said, “The coil doesn’t have a good connection.”

  As they carried the pipe back over to the cradle on Gettnor’s bench Vernor looked up at his HUD. “Thirty more minutes,” he said. He thought Gettnor might start moving a little more rapidly, but no, he continued moving deliberately, using his power wrench to open the pipe and bivalve it again. Once it was open he tightened a connection, spoke to his AI, looked at his HUD and then began closing the pipe back up.

  Smint began fumbling bolts into place to help close the pipe. Gettnor looked up at him and said, “Calmly Jack.”

  Smint took a deep breath, “We don’t have much time.”

  “We have plenty of time to run the test, what we don’t have time for are mistakes.” He began tightening the bolts with his power wrench.

  Smint said, “But if Dr. Vernor has to leave before we get it working…”

  Expressionlessly Gettnor said, “Then he will have made a serious mistake.”

  Vernor narrowed his eyes at Gettnor’s arrogance but only said, “Twenty two more minutes.”

  The pipe went back into the tank, didn’t leak, and was pulled down into its cradle. “Check systems,” Gettnor said to his AI. After studying his HUD a moment he n
odded, turned to the wall screens and said, “Begin test run.”

  Gettnor sat down and after a moment Smint pushed the other chair over to Vernor. For a moment he thought of politely refusing the chair since there wasn’t one for Smint, but then, irritated, he sat down and turned his attention to the screens. He wondered what he was looking at. Smint must have thought the same thing because he bent, pointed to the different graphs and said, “If you look at the little graphs, the upper left graph is thermal, registering the temperature inside the device.” Vernor saw that the graph had risen slightly. “The next one is the x-ray detector, then the neutron detector. The next lower ones graph the same things, but out in the tank. The bottom graphs measure the same things on the outside of the tank. The big graph at the far end is the current induced in the coil by the alpha particles.”

  As Vernor watched the graphs all began to rise. Well, except the neutron detectors. The neutron detector graph from inside the pipe occasionally had little blips on it. the other two stayed quiescent. As did the x-ray graph for the detector outside the tank.

  Vernor blinked, the graph for current had just dropped suddenly and was rising again. It got near the top of the graph and dropped again. It happened one more time and he said, “What’s happening to the ‘current’ graph?”

  “It’s going off scale, so the scale is being readjusted.”

  It readjusted again. Vernor whispered to his AI to bring him up a summary of the properties of hydrogen-boron fusion. He scanned a summary on his HUD. It should indeed produce heat, x-rays and some side chain reactions that would produce some neutrons. He looked back at the graphs. And lots of energetic alpha particles that would induce large currents in coils.

  Current commercial energy production from nuclear reactions first produced heat, which then had to be used to heat water to create steam. The steam then turned turbines to produce electricity. He felt a frisson of excitement as he realized just how desirable H-B fusion would be.