Allotropes

by Laurence Dahners

  Querlak bobbed her head. “Yes, because have connection in dimension five.”

  “In dimension five?” Ell said slowly.

  “Yes, like ports. Make think better. You comprehend?”

  “Yes,” Ell whispered, desperately trying to come to grips with the concept. When they’d first seen the Teecees on Tau Ceti Dr. Norris had jokingly proposed that the Teecees might communicate via PGR with a queen creature that entangled all her offspring as they were born. Norris had meant it as a joke but… could something like that actually be present in the Sigmas? Some kind of naturally formed quantum entangled molecules in their brains? And could Querlak mean that combining minds through such a connection allowed them to think better? Raised their intelligence?

  The very possibility made Ell’s hair stand on end. Querlak had been learning English at an astonishing rate without the use of any AI assistance that Ell could see. Ell had Allan to remember words for her and reproduce them when Ell spoke, but Querlak seemed to be doing it biologically. In fact, the sigmas didn’t seem to understand computing, nor to have any great desire for such technology. Ell had been thinking that they just didn’t understand what a computer could do. Now she wondered if several sigmas, as a group, could function like a biological computer? Just how smart are they? Or could they be? Don’t they need computers to prop up their thinking like we humans do? Is this why sometimes she seems smarter than at others? Because sometimes she’s connected to other sigmans?

  Suddenly Keenar shouted in his pidgin English, “Speak, us, stars!” He stepped toward Sigwald, turned slightly and kicked the waldo in the head with one of his front feet.

  Since the waldo’s head didn’t have sensors or the ability to transmit motion to Ell’s head she didn’t feel anything though her vision jerked a little. It was hard to read the sigman’s expression but she would have sworn Keenar looked surprised. Since Keenar was a flying animal Ell thought he must be much more lightly built than Sigwald who was made of metal and structured for a full earth gravity. Likely Keenar was surprised at how little effect the kick had produced. Perhaps, kicking Sigwald’s hard magnesium structure had hurt as well?

  For a moment Ell wondered what Keenar would do next. After a brief pause he began kicking Sigwald repeatedly, still having little effect. She thought about hitting him back, but doubted it would get them anywhere. Instead she backed away and started Sigwald down the road again. This time she boosted his speed up to about 250 kilometers per hour, thinking it unlikely that the sigmas could fly that fast. A glance back over Sigwald’s shoulder showed them fading back into the distance.

  For a moment she wondered if they would get a car or plane or some other device to allow them to pursue her. Probably by the time they got it Sigwald would be far enough away to be lost in this bland environment. However, they may have access to a sensor system that could find her. She had Sigwald glance up at the cables that ran from one side of the ring to the other like bicycle spokes. If the sigmas had some kind of video viewing apparatus mounted up there on the cables, they might be able to use it to follow Sigwald. On the other hand, without computerized video storage and image analysis they might not be able to sort through whatever data they had.

  Ell wondered if she should slow Sigwald down again and let them catch up, she liked Querlak. No, she decided, we’ll just check out more of the ringworld and meet some other sigmas. Maybe I’ll see Querlak again, maybe not.

  “Allan,” she said to her AI as she got off the waldo controller, “Keep Sigwald going at this speed for an hour, then, if you’re sure Keenar is out of sight, slow back down and fly spinward around the ring about a hundred miles, just high enough that we don’t leave a trail in the dust. Then resume traveling toward the middle of the ring for a look at that central circle sea. Let me know if you see anything but crops. Otherwise, just tell me when we get to the sea.”

  She headed for the machine shop to see how Manuel and his team were coming on some of her many requests.

  ***

  “Well, Michael, it’s great to have you here with me at the IAAF World Indoor Championships. I’ve been reporting on track and field events for decades now but I personally only competed at the college level.” Roger Larbach turned to the cameras. “It will be a real treat having Mr. Fentis here with us to give us the perspective of someone who not only competed in the Indoor Championships but won eight medals in these events.”

  “Thank you Roger. It’s my pleasure to be here. Looking out across the inside of this stadium brings back a lot of memories.”

  “Well, let me take you back to those days. Tell me about the sixty meter sprint we’re about to watch. Significantly shorter than your signature hundred meter dash, the sixty relies more on acceleration than it does on a sustained top speed. Tell us what it takes to get up to the world’s fastest speed in so little distance?”

  Fentis, who had seemed amiable a moment before, now looked at Larbach with an expression of deepest loathing. He said nothing

  A wrinkle of concern between his brows, Larbach said, “Mr. Fentis?”

  A muscle twitched on Fentis’ temple a couple of times, then he growled, “I told you I wouldn’t stand for this!”

  With astonishment written large on his face Larbach said, “What…?”

  “I told you I didn’t want to talk about that bitch Donsaii or her ridiculous claims. Yet your very first question focuses on her asinine contention that she reached a higher top speed in 25 meters than anyone else in history has in sixty or a hundred!”

  Larbach tried to interrupt with, “I never said…”

  Fentis rode over him, “I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. If she really thinks she can run, she should enter a track meet. I for one am sick to death of her nattering assertions that she’s some kind of great athlete just because she turned the heads of a few gymnastic judges eight years ago.”

  Larbach said, “I don’t think she said…”

  Fentis slammed a hand down on the desk and stood, “She might be pretty, she might be graceful, she might even run pretty fast, but there is no way that smug little twit could compete in any of today’s real sports.” He ripped off the head mounted microphone, tossed it on the floor and walked away.

  Larbach stared after him uncomprehendingly, then turned to the cameras, “Well folks, I’m sorry about that. I knew Mr. Fentis was sensitive about Ell Donsaii and the claims—made by others, not her, I must point out—that she ran very fast going in to her vault. I didn’t think I said anything about her, but I guess I’ll have to go back over this vid to see if I somehow implied it…”

  ***

  Gary stopped Ell in the hall at D5R. “Hey, you know some of those pressures you’re wanting me to use just aren’t achievable? Any chamber we might use would just blow out if we tried to reach those levels.”

  Ell grinned at him, “So you’re saying that the chamber would have to be wrapped in something with really high tensile strength?”

  “Uh…”

  “’cause we’ve got someone here at D5R who makes really high tensile strength stuff. I think it’s called ‘graphene.’ Maybe I could put you in touch with him?”

  Gary blushed and snorted, “What about the pump?”

  “Hmmm, maybe the cylinder of a piston pump would have to be wrapped in graphene too? And it might need a long, solid piston with a diamond coating?”

  Gary’s eyebrows shot up, “That’s gonna cost!”

  “Little is achieved if nothing is ventured. Don’t be cheap Gary, do what you have to do.”

  ***

  Carter stepped into the waldo controller room to start his shift and found AJ there before him practically dancing from foot to foot in excitement. “Carter!” he said, “I’ve got an idea!”

  Carter had to grin at his enthusiasm but made him wait until Carter’d waldoed up and checked to make sure the shift at the asteroid had gotten off to a good start. Once that was done he pulled his gloves off and turned back to AJ, “OK, let’s hear it
.”

  “So I’ve been trying to figure out how to process ore without gravity…” he waggled his eyebrows. “But then I thought, why not just do it with gravity.”

  Carter lifted an eyebrow, “So you figured out how to create gravity on our rock? That’d be pretty cool, but I have a feeling if you had gained control of gravity you’d be cashing in, not talking to me.”

  “Well no. First I tried to figure out how to bring the rock back to the moon but Joe told me about how any attempts to fly asteroids toward the earth would run into legal problems over the risks of an impact. Then I thought about trying to spin the asteroid and put some kind of bag around it to catch the ore as it flew off.”

  “Yeah,” Carter shrugged, “I’ve considered that but the ore would be flying off in all different directions. So as the ore flew off we’d have to have a bunch of ‘socks’ I’ve called them, to catch stuff and each sock would need a crusher and port at the end of it.”

  “That’s what I was thinking too, but… how about if we crack the asteroid into two big pieces? Drill some holes through the center and load explosive, fire just enough of a charge to break it without sending the pieces flying apart. Before you fire the charges, attach them to each other with a 500 meter graphene cable so they can’t fly too far apart.”

  “How are you going to put the cable on the surface between them before you break them apart?”

  “Don’t have to. Attach the cable anywhere you want. That attachment point will become the ‘surface between them’ once they fly apart and the cable comes taught.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Carter said, getting excited, “Then we spin them around one another.”

  “Uh huh. They don’t have to spin very fast. Just barely enough that anything that we break off of them will fall into a single funneled ‘sock’ that will catch the ore and feed it into the crusher.”

  “And, said crusher will work without so many hassles because it has gravity feeding the ore into it!”

  “Yeah!” AJ’s eyebrows bobbed, “And, one more thing. Instead of a crusher we put some big ports across the openings of the sock at each step where it narrows.”

  “Wait a minute AJ, the whole reason we want to crush the ore out there is so we won’t have to hold open big ports to send the ore back here to process it. It takes a lot of power to hold big ports open and send stuff through them.”

  “Yeah!” AJ said with a big grin. “We build ports that have holes in them! I know all the ports the company has built so far are built on solid plates. But that’s only because the middle of the port disappears when the port opens. So there’s a plate across the opening until the port comes on and you’re suddenly looking at an opening to wherever the other end of the port is. But I got the research guys to give me a ten mm port pair.” He held a port pair up, “and I drilled the plates out to just under the diameter of the actual ports and glued them, one to the other with a five mm gap between them. I’ve modified the port controller to pulse the ports on for a microsecond, then back off every quarter second. Watch what happens!” He turned the ports so they faced downward over a piece of paper on his desk. He picked up a five mm steel rod, sliding it down through the hole in the ports a little. To his AI he said, “Turn it on.” A buzzing sound came from the port and the end of the rod that had been sticking out the bottom fell onto the paper. AJ let go of the rod and it slid through the two ports falling to the table in a pile of small chunks.”

  Carter’s eyes were wide as he stared at the little pile of metal fragments. “Jeeez… that’s great AJ. Are you saying it doesn’t take much power to run the port like that?”

  “Nope. The port’s only on four microseconds out of every second. With the big ones they’d probably only be on one microsecond out of every minute or so and you’d use an AI to decide when to turn them on, so that they’d only come on to slice the ore when a big chunk of ore was actually in the port’s throat. Even though big ports use a lot of power when they’re running, they wouldn’t use a lot of power over time.”

  “Awesome!” Carter clapped AJ on the back. “I think the company might actually be glad they hired you.”

  ***

  Steve heard a roaring sound outside the small office Ell’s security guys had in the outbuilding on her farm. Slamming out the door he looked around urgently … and saw Ell under whirling… blades? He assumed it had to be Ell. She wore a complete set of motorcycle leathers and a helmet. The leather rippled and dust blew up around her as he slowly stalked her way. She held onto something like a set of motorcycle handlebars attached to a vertical rod going up to the rotating blades above her. Another rod curved away from the vertical rod, around, over her, and down along her back. The curved rod looked to have a bicycle seat and a “Y” shaped set of bars at the bottom that had wheels for it to stand on. It had a small cross bar that her feet rested on.

  Ell saw him and took one hand off the handlebar to wave at him. With the other hand she untwisted a motorcycle like throttle and the roaring began whistling down in pitch as the blades on the fan slowed. As they slowed he could see there were actually two coaxial sets of blades, one above the other, turning in opposite directions. The whole thing settled a little and Steve realized that Ell had its three feet locked down to a small concrete slab. The settling confirmed to Steve that the rotors had been actively trying to lift into the air. He fixed her with an eye and, concluding the noise level had reduced enough for her to hear, said, “Are you trying to build a personal helicopter!?!?”

  Ignoring his horror-struck expression, she grinned at him and said, “Yeah! Cool huh?”

  “For God’s sake Ell! Helicopters are dangerous! The smaller they are, the faster they act, the harder they are to control, and the more dangerous they are.”

  “But fun!” she twinkled at him.

  Steve closed his eyes and took a deep breath. His job was to keep her safe… from others, not from herself. “Ell…” he began.

  “Come on Steve, You know you’re gonna want to go up in it!”

  Taken aback he looked at the device, “It won’t lift me!”

  “Well, maybe not,” she raised her eyebrows, “but physics says it can.”

  Looking at it harder he said, “Where’s the motor?”

  “In the barn.”

  Steve’s eyes widened, “You mean… power drive shafts are coming through ports? The motor etcetera is somewhere else?”

  “Yep, just like we’re doing for my new car.”

  Steve’s eyes ran over it again, “So the throttle on that handlebar just turns up the power to some electric motors in the barn?”

  “An electric motor. That single motor uses a differential to turn the two opposing rotors so that it supplies torque to whichever one is the easier to turn. Keeps it from spinning me around.”

  Steve mused, “Pulling the handlebar toward you leans the rotor forward and speeds you up?

  “Yup, pushing it away leans the rotor back to slow me down or back me up. Leaning the rotor to either side sends me that direction.”

  “How do you turn?”

  “Oh, that works pretty neat too. Turn the handlebars, it’ll rotate you that direction. When you twist the bars they actually grip one or the other of the counter-rotating drive shafts to turn you the correct direction.”

  Steve shook his head, “This is crazy dangerous and you really shouldn’t be allowed to try it you know.”

  She crinkled her nose at him, “I know! Good thing I’m old enough that no one can tell me I can’t do it, huh?”

  “No Ma’am. That’s a bad thing,” Steve said, thinking of the tremendous loss the human race would sustain should she kill herself.

  She twisted the throttle and the blades started to speed up, “Well, step back in the shack. If I crash this thing,” she winked, “I don’t want to take you with me.” She knocked her visor back down over her eyes.

  Shaking his head Steve turned and walked back to the corner of the shack where he could keep an eye on her. The rotors conti
nued to speed up until the little copter was straining upward once again. She leaned it forward and back, then side to side. He could see her twisting the handlebars and got the feel that the entire thing was trying to turn.

  She ran through more tilting and twisting as if wanting to get a good feel for the dynamics of its responses. Then to his amazement, she twisted the throttle harder and slowly lifted off the ground, little concrete slab and all. The slab, he realized, had long horizontal bars sticking off of it in four directions.

  She only lifted to about six inches where she performed a number of very slow maneuvers. First she turned to the right and left, then moved forward and back and side to side. Finally she settled it back to the ground.

  Steve walked back over as the blades spun back down. “What’s with the concrete and the long bars?”

  “The weight slows the response time and the bars make it harder to tip it over. I flew some radio control helicopters when I was designing this thing. The first one I had came with some long sticks to attach to the undercarriage. They made it hard to flip over while I was learning.”

  “Did you think about having an experienced helicopter pilot teach you how to fly this?”

  “I learned to fly a helicopter myself.” She pointed her thumbs back at her own chest. “You’re looking at an ‘experienced helicopter pilot.’”

  Steve frowned at her, “How many lessons did you take? Are you licensed?”

  Ell barked a laugh, “Not even close to a license. But,” she tilted her head, “I can fly one, never fear.” She shrugged, “Experience on a full sized helicopter isn’t really that helpful for flying this thing though. Real helicopters pitch the rotor blades differently during each rotation to lift one side or the other of the ‘rotor disc.’ Almost all of them only have one lifting rotor and use a tail rotor to counteract the torque from the main rotor… So commercial helicopters work a lot differently and a trained pilot wouldn’t really understand, nor have a feel for this one. This thing is really simple. The blade pitch is always the same. For more lift we speed them up, for less lift we slow them down. No tail rotor because the coaxial counter-rotating blades cancel torque. Finally, I’m tilting the rotor disc relative to the weight suspended below it—me—rather than tilting the disc and the copter using blade pitch.”