by Rob Buckman
“Yes, I agree we have a problem, a big one,” the youngest of the group seconded. “We have to find a way to get our children back from those deviants.”
“Not having any children, I for one don’t care what they do to them,” the old man next to Skinner said with a sneer. “My concern is putting these deviants back in their cages where they belong!”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen, those sentiments are all well and good, and I sympathize with those of you who have children held by these …” Randolph stopped for a moment, thinking of the right word, “these animals, is the best way to describe them. But, you can always have more children.”
“I agree, filthy little things!” Director Skinner curled his lip in distaste. His face was still discolored, but the doctors had managed to put all his features back into their proper places, and implant new teeth, but he still looked a mess.
“It’s because of you we’re in this predicament, Skinner!” the young man snarled.
“I didn’t hear you complaining when you were getting the cream of the crop for your private use, Dagget! Or your share of the profits,” Skinner shot back.
“Gentlemen.” Randolph didn’t raise his voice, but it cut through the air like a knife. “Director Dagget is correct. If you had kept your, shall we say, experiment under wraps, and not ran off and try to sell it to Westwood, none of this would’ve happened.”
“Turning a profit is what I do, and without your approval or say-so, I might add.” Skinner looked disdainfully at the other members of the group, then sniffed a pinch of white powder up his nose.
“That is not what we’re here to discuss, at least not as the main point,” Randolph said.
“Then what is? I have other things I need to be doing.” The old man raised one bushy eyebrow.
“Yes, I’m sure your little boy toys are just pining away from the lack of your ‘attention’,” Director Dagget muttered.
“It’s the question of what to do about those rings, or gateways, that we are here to discuss,” Randolph snapped, cutting off the bickering.
“What about them, Randolph?” Dagget said.
“We no longer have them. Or I should say, they’re not where we left them. Nor do we possess the inventor or his wife, since they’ve disappeared.”
Director Skinner gasped. “Allah preserve us, Randolph. What happened?”
Dagget’s constant frown became a scowl. “Don’t tell us they died or had an ‘accident’.”
“No, nothing like that. It’s just …” Randolph sighed and took a deep breath. “The rings were purchased by this Scott Drake’s people before I could stop it. Then they somehow found out where Professor Ellis was being held and extracted him.”
“Good luck to him,” Dagget said. “If our people couldn’t get anything out of him in eight years, what gives you the idea that these people will?”
“Because, gentlemen, they do not think as we do, and might have more persuasive methods of extracting the information.”
“Har! I wish him luck.”
“Yes, I doubt he has access to the same drugs we do, and if they couldn’t get anything out of Ellis, I don’t know what will,” Skinner said. “Even so, they now possess the only rings in existence.”
“Why on earth you ever sold them in the first place is beyond me,” Dagget said, shaking his head.
“After our, shall we say, misadventure at the R&D facility in the desert,” Randolph said, “I thought it best for all concerned to disassociate ourselves from the others until we had the secret. It wasn’t as if anyone else was going to discover it. Also, at the time, we had no way of knowing if the upper council knew they existed.” Randolph kept silent on that point.
“So now they have all of the rings, and their inventor.”
“Not all of the rings, Director Kinarga, we still have one.”
“For all the good it will do us!”
“I don’t agree. My technicians tell me they will be able to ascertain the whereabouts and usage of the other rings though the one they have.”
Dagget glared at Randolph. “And this will help us how?”
“At this time it’s hard to say, but research is progressing on ways to identify and use the other gateways.”
“So we could pass someone through them to wherever they are, and …”
“That is one possibility, Director Kinarga, but only if we can find out how they are … put together and operate. Without that, they’re just interesting scientific curiosities.”
“And might be a way to eliminate these people as a threat once they have dealt with the aliens, if they can.”
Dagget rubbed his chin in thought. “Hmm, how is our training program coming on that? Can we duplicate these people’s training methods and turn out, what do you call them? Oh yes, soldiers.”
“To some degree. We had limited success recently using one of our people.” The members of the group looked at Randolph expectantly. “He was able to shoot one of their soldiers, with little success I might add, but was subsequently, um, killed by one of the women guards.” He saw one or two of the group shudder.
“The thought of a woman being able to, um, kill, let alone raise a hand to a man appalls me,” the old man muttered, obviously upset.
“Yes, it’s an unsettling thought.”
“And our intelligence network in their camp?”
“For the moment, I’ve directed the remainder to remain passive, and just gather as much information as they can. So far they’ve been unable to penetrate the building the rings are being kept in.”
“A wise precaution, but a little frustrating.”
“Even so, information is becoming more difficult to obtain. Now that they’re aware of the existence of our agents, they’ve increased their security measures. Also, many of our spy cam and listening devices have failed for some unknown reason.”
“So, what do we do about this man Drake’s threat?” the old man asked. “They will want to know who is passing information to the aliens, if, that is, he’s telling the truth.”
Randolph smiled. “Have no fear. I have convinced our gullible friend Westwood to place me in charge of all investigations into this matter. What he sees and hears will come though me.”
Dagget scowled. “These people are expecting some results.”
“Yes, and I will give it to them.”
“How?”
“Let’s just say, some of our agents, and a few fellow members on the lower council, will be offered up as sacrificial goats, with accompanying evidence to support it.”
“Excellent. That should keep these dogs at bay long enough for us to find a lasting solution.”
“We still have Kessler’s other solution,.” Skinner added.
“I for one wouldn’t put too much faith in Kessler’s little trick,” Randolph said, “but, as you say, it is an option.”
“So, your advice is?” the old man asked.
“For the moment, do nothing to attract these people’s attention, nor mine,” he said, looking pointedly at Skinner. “We will continue with our plans as before, with a special interest in seeing if these people have indeed found the secret to the rings. I’ll report to the upper council, and implement any suggestion they might have.”
CHAPTER FIVE: … "Then there are sheepdogs," he went on, "and I'm a sheepdog. I live to protect
the flock and confront the wolf."… LTC (RET) D. Grossman
Upon arrival at the hangar, Karl called the research team together and showed them the pad, and they all listened to the recording. At the top of the pad was an equation, but it was beyond most of them. One of the team did vaguely see the outline of what it represented, recognizing part of it from a physics class. The drawing on the other hand did make sense, after listening to the recording. It showed the positions for four electromagnets, and the sequence for activation. Karl was glad now that they hadn’t tried to force the rings apart. According to the professor’s story, when Solar Power Systems Energy Corporation tried to forc
e the stolen rings apart to find out how they worked, the resulting energy disruption not only demolished the research center, but the entire place vanished, to where, no one knew.
All that remained to show that anything had ever stood there was a large hole in the ground, and the “SPS Corporation” sign on the highway leading to the plant. It was one of the reasons the corporation was so successful in covering it up. By the time security got around to investigating the explosion, the corporation had moved in the construction robots and poured the footing for a new building. They claimed an experimental power unit had exploded, and with nothing to prove different, the security police bought it. The professor had tried to explain to them where the building and three hundred people had gone, but wasn’t believed: that two events had happened at the same time, first the energy release from the other dimension that destroyed the building, then the inrush of matter through the rupture into the void. If the energy state had not equalized itself, matter would still be falling into the rupture.
Only after listening to the tape did Karl’s team realize that each ring was, in fact, two rings held together, as they surmised from their careful inspection, by some yet unknown means. The narrow grooves across the outer, one-foot-wide flat surface, were so well machined, it was impossible to tell they hid the split. Karl had the team make the electromagnets and a control box, as Maddy had explained, placing them as per her drawing at the cardinal points of the compass. It did take a while to work out and rotate the ring, since the old lady hadn’t been very specific about that. Kim finally worked it out by checking the inside flat surface of the ring with an old-fashioned magnifying glass, finding the minute N-S-E-W stamped into the metal. They rotated the first pair of rings so the N was at the top, and positioned the electromagnets over each cardinal point. As a safety measure, Karl reset the jig to support each half of the ring instead of the whole thing.
After that, they stood back, and in sequence in reverse order West, East, South and North, he activated the magnets that withdrew the locking bolts. Nothing spectacular happened, at least nothing discernible to the human eye. It was only when one of the team stepped through the ring without displacement that they knew it was switched off.
After breathing a joint sigh of relief, they carefully rotated one-half of the rings a quarter turn, and gently pulled the two halves apart. Once divided, the inner working of the hidden side could be examined, and they saw just how well machined the locking mechanism was. The tolerances were so close that, locked together, it was impossible to tell it wasn’t a single, precision ring of polished metal. Karl wasn’t even sure what the metal was, suspecting some sort of antigravity material, and Maddy hadn’t told him. He made a note to himself to ask her when she woke up.
Once apart, it was a simple matter to unscrew the round, six-inch cover plates inside. Not that there was much to see. The old lady had warned them what to watch out for, and Karl had a box ready when Kim unscrewed the plate. The moment he took the cover off, a six-inch-diameter black sphere floated out of the matching cavity. With the box in the right position, it was easy to catch as it began to float up. Karl closed the lid and locked it before turning it over. Even so, he had to be careful, since the box now wanted to go flying out of his hands.
Karl walked over to a large steel cabinet, usually used for storing flammable liquids, and placed it inside, then carefully marked the outside of the box, remembering the warning about matching this sphere with its opposite in the matching ring.
“What the hell are those things?” Kim asked.
“My guess would be a monopole magnet,” Jugs muttered. That brought a look from the other team members. Beauty and brains in one delightful package was what more than one of them thought. They kept those thoughts to themselves, since voicing them could be dangerous to their health.
“Give the girl a cigar, she just hit the bull’s-eye.” Karl smiled and gave Jugs a wink.
“I thought that was only a theoretical possibility?” Kim said.
Karl shrugged. “Do your reading, Kim-san. It was reported in 1980 or 1990 that someone had managed to create a very small one in a lab, but nothing like this. From what Professor Ellis told me, each of the monopoles has an opposite charge. One positive, one negative, in each side of the ring.”
In all, there were eight monopoles in each side of the ring, and under Karl’s direction, they slowly and carefully removed each, only once almost losing one of the balls in the process, but a quick grab with a second box and it was safe. Karl hated the idea of climbing around in the rafters of the hangar trying to catch it, since each ball had a tendency to move away from anything that came close.
The inside of the ring wasn’t complicated at all. Each recess was simply a machined hole with a thin tube inserted, into which the monopole magnets fit. These took some effort getting out. Being made of anti-grav material, each tube was essentially forced into place in a corresponding hole machined into the ring. Rather like trying to force two powerful magnets of the same polarity together, although in this case it was two antigravity plates, each repelling the other. Getting them out was almost as hard as getting them in in the first place, but at last, they had everything laid out on the floor. The rings themselves were nothing more than an armored metal housing with a four-by-four-inch channel machined in each half, and filled with miles of superfine, gold-plated, superconducting material wound inside. It only took a moment for Karl to realize there shouldn’t be any major problem duplicating them, but he left the question of how it did what it did for later, and for other experts to figure out. The question for his team was: could they duplicate them? The answer was a resounding, yes.
* * * * * *
“Yes?” Scott asked, after Karl reported what he found.
Karl grinned like an idiot as he sat at Scott’s request. “Yes, and from the look of it, in any size you want.”
“Yeah, but how do we control these things, and how far does this effect go?”
“Control of destination is governed by a built-in wafer of memory crystal located under a plate on the outer surface,” Karl said. “But the ring has only twelve preset destinations at the moment: eleven for the ones they held, and the last for the ring set that was destroyed.” That, he’d discovered after removing the six recessed Allen bolts holding the outside plate. Not that it would have helped, knowing what was under the plate beforehand.” He nodded his thanks to the steward after he’d refilled his coffee mug.
“Wow!” Scott said.
“From what I can figure out from Maddy’s and the professor’s rambling notes, and from what I can see, with the capacity of the wafer, we can add any number of ‘destinations’ up to the number of rings in operation. I also think it would be a simple matter to add a voice-activated circuit so you can call out the destination you want.” Karl’s eyes shone with the thought of possibilities.
“That’s what the professor and his wife had in mind,” he continued. “You step up to a ring in New York, say, or Paris, and step through, while the next person calls out Los Angeles, and he’s there the next moment.”
“Or from the bridge of a starship to the launch bay, or engineering,” Scott murmured, looking thoughtful.
“Jesus! I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right.”
Scott rested his elbows on his desk. “Before we get ahead of ourselves, we need two things.”
“What?” Karl’s excitement was growing as his mind ran though the endless possibilities.
“One, they have to be one thousand percent foolproof power systems. Otherwise we could have people trapped all over the ship with no way out because of a power failure, and secondly, a way to control access.”
“I see what you mean,” Karl said, thinking of what intruders could do if they got aboard a ship.
An intruder would only need to call out the location he, or his team wanted to go to, and bingo, they’d be there. He could see the potential for disaster if unfriendly people got onboard; they could pop up anywhere an
d wreck havoc within the ship, or ship’s operations. He marked this down on his wrist pad, along with a few other thoughts that occurred to him.
“We were thinking of taking one set of rings to the moon for a test, but I think we’ll wait until we have the security angle worked out first, plus a safety shutdown system in case of a hull breach.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Scott said with a nod. “Can we get a neutral position for these rings when they aren’t in use? You might want someone to come through one way and not another.”
“I think it’s going to be more of a sensor system on the outside of each ring to monitor for vacuum, fire, destination, authorized personnel, and a few other possibilities.”
“You might talk to Lieutenant Allway and Lady Jane about that, and see if her program could help you.”
