The Thunder of Engines

by Laurence Dahners

  She straightened again, “No, you’re right. But maybe you’re just using all this stuff to do the same thing Martin’s device does.”

  “I’m not, but there’s no way I can prove that.” He stopped suddenly, staring away into space. “Oh, that’d be evil…” he said, as if speaking to himself.

  “Whatever it is, let’s don’t do any evil,” Arya said.

  “No. Listen. I’ve still got all those parts from the first version.” Kaem was still staring off into space, but he could sense her nodding beside him. He continued, “So, I could kludge something together that looked like it’d been built to, to staze things, right? I mean, it wouldn’t even be close to right but they wouldn’t know that. We could send it to ’em and they could waste months trying to understand it and get it to work!”

  “But… they’d be furious when they figured it out.”

  “Good! What are they going to do, sue us because they couldn’t figure out how to make a stazer? Something they claim we stole from them.” He blinked, “Oh, and I’ll make a second version and keep it in my dorm room. That’s the one they’ll get when they try to steal a working model.”

  Arya smiled at him. “That… would be evil…” she blinked, “but what if they take your rack of electronics?” she asked waving at the equipment she’d just examined.

  “Instead of just disconnecting it the way I’ve been doing when it’s not in use, I’ll leave the wires hooked up, but all wrong. Maybe even remove a component and hide it somewhere. We’d lose the equipment, but they wouldn’t get the secret.” He glanced toward the anteroom, then started disconnecting the wiring and cables from the test sample mold and moving them to the mold for the cube. “And, thanks to Lee, we have enough money to buy another rack of electronics if they steal this one.”

  Arya asked, “What’re you doing?”

  “I promised Lee one more piece of stade. Let me just staze it for her.” A moment later the capacitor snapped and he stepped to the mold. It took him a little work to get the piece of stade out of the cube because it was air density and he didn’t think he could use gravity to help get it out. After some extensive prying with the knife, it came shooting out and right off the edge of the table. Rather than tumbling and floating the way air-density stades usually did, it immediately started falling. It didn’t roll, its bottom face stayed down.

  Kaem grabbed it, not sure why it was falling.

  When he caught it, the glass fell out of the bottom face, hit the floor and broke. It didn’t shatter, the pieces being somewhat restrained by the foil. Kaem said, “I’m an idiot,” and let go of the—now floating—cubical stade. He caught it again with a cluster of fingers around opposing corners and turned the bottom face upward. There was a cavity in that surface the same shape as the glass had had before it fell out and broke. He held the cube out to Arya, saying, “Hold this.”

  She took it and watched as he felt the inside of the cavity.

  Saying, “Not bad,” Kaem turned to the rack of electronics and started scrambling the switches and dials. Then he opened the back of the cabinet and scrambled the connections of all the wires. He used his toe to push a couple of pieces of broken glass under the table, then turned back to Arya, “Shall we go talk to Lee?”

  “What’re we going to tell her?!”

  Kaem took the cube of stade with the cavity in it from Arya, lifted it a little, and said, “That my experiment with making something shaped like a rocket nozzle worked great.” He started for the door.

  “No! I mean, what’re we going to tell her about this thing with Martin Aerospace?!”

  “Nothing for now. The fact that Martin’s trying to steal our IP isn’t Space-Gen’s problem, it’s ours.” He frowned a little, “It might be theirs too, someday. That’s when we’ll ask them for help.” He stopped at the door. “Can you open it?” He held up the block of stade to show why he wasn’t opening it himself.

  “Oh, yeah, sorry,” Arya said, opening the door. “It’s easy to forget how many hands it takes to hold a piece of stade.”

  ~~~

  Lee gave them a curious look when they stepped out into the anteroom. Kaem set another cube of stade on the anteroom’s table and said, “It worked!”

  It bodes poorly if he’s excited he was able to staze another block. How often does it fail? She wondered. Then Kaem stuck his thumb down into the top of the cube and Lee suddenly realized it wasn’t just a cube, but a cube with a cavity in it. She stepped closer.

  He said, “Have a look. I used a glass drinking tumbler wrapped in aluminum foil to make a cavity in this block of stade. A cavity that’s not shaped too differently from the bell of a rocket nozzle.”

  “Aluminum foil? Are you saying it doesn’t have to be a mirror?”

  “The theory just says it has to reflect light. So, maybe you could make it out of clear plastic wrapped in foil, though a foil wrap’s going to give you a rippled surface like you’ll feel in here.”

  Lee gingerly reached in and felt the inside of the cavity. It was gently wrinkled, but not like you might get wrapping something with foil. Other than the bumpiness, it still felt impossibly slippery like stade always did. She said, “I feel little lumps, but they don’t feel like the crinkles you get in aluminum foil.”

  Kaem shrugged, “Stazing doesn’t form small features, so it smooths out those crinkles.”

  “Ah…” she said thoughtfully. “Um, I know you can “aluminize” some plastics. Would that work for casting stade?”

  Kaem shrugged. “I think so. If you send us some small test molds, we can check that out for you.”

  She narrowed her eyes, “At the price of gold by volume?”

  Kaem produced a tight smile. “We’ll do those for free. After all, we need to know those answers too. We aren’t charging you for the samples we made today either. We will charge for your test engines though. Don’t want Space-Gen getting us to make them hundreds of different test versions on our dime after all,” He waggled his head, “Once you decide to do business with us, then we can work out a deal to do test versions for less money. We’ll charge two million per engine for the final versions of the engines you’re going to use to launch rockets.”

  “Um,” Lee said, “while you were in the other room, I got to wondering whether we could make the combustion chamber and the nozzle separately, using a threaded connection to screw them together?”

  Giving her a contemplative nod, Kaem said, “I think so, though we haven’t made any threaded devices out of stade to know the difficulties you might face. But remember, normally when you screw something together hard, it holds because of friction between the parts. Those parts also deform to fit together more closely. That isn’t going to happen with stade. I predict that, no matter how tight you screw it, stade’ll come unscrewed unless you come up with a non-stade mechanism that keeps it torqued. Also, because its surfaces won’t deform to fit together better as they come in contact, it’s going to leak through little gaps along the threads. Rocket exhaust is going to seep out between two surfaces your threaded mechanism forces together—because they fit together imperfectly, leaving tiny gaps where the surfaces didn’t deform to fit together better. If I were you, I’d try to put a tungsten or carbon gasket in the interface, near the outside so the exhaust has to travel a long way through the tiny gap between the threads to get to the gasket.”

  Feeling better about herself for thinking of these problems on her own, Lee said, “I’ve already been giving consideration to some of those issues. I have some ideas for a mechanism to keep them screwed together and how to position the gasket. Are you saying that if we made up some test models to learn about threads and gasket positioning, you’d… what do you call it…? Staze them for us?”

  “Sure, we need to know how that kind of technology works.”

  “I’m assuming that the fuel feeds to the combustion chambers can be made out of normal materials?”

  “Mm, I’d build the chamber so it has the last part of the feed tubing
integral to it and therefore made out of stade. That way heat in the chamber can’t melt your feed pipes.” He frowned, “You should consider that there won’t be any flex in the stade parts of the piping, either at the engine, or up at the cryogen tank. That could lead to high stresses in the non-stade piping material at the junctions when the rocket body deforms under the stress of launch. I’d consider building the body of the rocket out of stade to prevent any flexing and shifting between the tank and the engine that might overstress the joints between the normal piping and the stade piping.”

  “Oh, good point,” Lee said thoughtfully. “Um, how much are you going to charge for making the body and tanks out of stade? We only have your price on the engines so far.”

  Kaem glanced at Arya, then back to Lee, “We’d… have to negotiate that.” He jerked his head at the main room of their new facility. “We obviously don’t have room to staze even a single cryotank for one of your boosters. I’ve been thinking it’d be easier for all of us if you built the molds for big things like the tanks near where you wanted to assemble the rockets. Then we could just show up and staze them on-site.”

  “The stazing equipment is portable?” Lee asked, surprised.

  Kaem nodded.

  Whoa! That changes things. Lee thought. She said, “I’d been thinking stade’s light weight would be nice for transportation, but it’d be even better to just cast it where we want to use it. Because of the size of finished rocket parts, transporting your ‘base liquid’ in a tanker would be a lot easier. If we set up reusable molds at the launch facility and just cast the big parts, all the rest of the small, normal-material parts could be brought in for assembly on site.” She shook her head, realizing she’d been thinking out loud. “Thank you so much for sharing all this information with me. I’m going to call myself an Uber and get out of your hair. Can I call you with more questions?”

  “Sure…”

  ~~~

  After Lee left, Arya and Kaem stepped back into the big room. Not for the first time, she noticed a shiny birthday balloon tethered to a weight and hanging near the table. Pointing at it, she asked curiously, “Did you get us a birthday balloon because this is kinda the birth of Staze?”

  Kaem looked surprised, then looked up at the balloon. “Um, no, sorry. I wanted it for an experiment.”

  “Experiment?”

  “Uh-huh,” Kaem said, pulling the balloon down. He took a knife out of his pocket and cut into the balloon, deflating it. He extended the cut and peered inside. “No such luck.”

  “What do you mean?” Arya asked, thinking that cutting into the balloon wasn’t much of an experiment.

  “I was hoping, though not very optimistic, that the Mylar was metalized inside and out. Turns out it’s only on the outside.”

  “Why would you want that?”

  “So I could try using it to make stade.”

  Arya drew back, “Is this the ‘clear plastic’ and foil thing you were talking about with Lee?”

  Kaem nodded, “Yeah, then I was thinking of hard plastic. But using Mylar would be even simpler since you could just buy the Mylar with reflective surfaces already on it. Mylar’s transparent and the reflective surface on shiny balloons like this is aluminum, same as most mirrors. I think it might work. Then we could just put something in a reflective Mylar bag and staze it.”

  “But… how would you make it into the shape you wanted?”

  “Oh, I’m thinking about the rest of your pizza, or a doggy bag from a nice restaurant. Just staze it for twenty-three hours and have it for dinner tomorrow night. Or, forty-seven or seventy-one hours if you want to eat it in a few days.”

  She stared at him. “You wouldn’t even have to refrigerate it, would you?”

  Kaem shook his head. “I’m going to order the thickest Mylar film I can get that’s metalized on both sides so we can try it out.”

  She frowned, “I think we’d better figure out what we’re going to do about the Martin Aerospace debacle first, don’t you?”

  Kaem sighed, “Maybe. Thinking about that’s not as much fun though.”

  The door banged open. Gunnar stood there. “I’m back,” he said resignedly. “Arya’s message said you’re going to fight. What the hell is the deal?”

  Kaem explained how he thought Martin Aerospace was just trying to intimidate them into giving up their secrets. When he got to the part about making fake stazer machines, Gunnar’s eyes brightened. “Oh, yeah! I could get behind that! And you could design a real, purpose-built one and we could staze it so they can’t get at it!”

  Arya felt confused and from the look on Kaem’s face, he was puzzled as well. He said, “Two problems. What do we do with the stazer we stazed it with? And, if it’s been stazed, how are we supposed to use it?”

  “Well, crap.” Gunnar grimaced, “That wasn’t such a great idea, was it? He looked thoughtful. What if…?” Gunnar paused.

  After a few moments, Kaem said, “What if what?”

  “What if you made a stade box and put your stazer electronics in it. It’d have a hole for the cables and wires to come out through. It’d be booby-trapped so if anyone opened the box, boom.” He clapped his hands together to emphasize the explosion.

  Arya stared for a moment, “And if this booby trap kills someone? I don’t want to go up on murder charges.”

  Gunnar tilted his head in thought, then said, “Maybe just a little thermite under the important bits. Something to melt the secrets beyond retrieval. The thermite goes off as soon as they start to unscrew the lid while the stade’s still protecting everyone.”

  Kaem sighed. “Maybe. I think that kind of protection comes later too. We need to work on more immediate problems. Can you help me make us a bunch of the thin stades so Arya could assemble more of her bulletproof vests?”

  Chapter Three

  They made big stacks of the testing stades for Arya to build vests out of. Then Kaem and Arya Ubered to Attorney Morales office. As they described their invention to him, his eyebrows went up in astonishment, then lowered as he became doubtful. Kaem thought Morales figured they were fantasizing.

  When Morales started to shake his head, Kaem reached into his pocket, clawed his fingers around the test stade he had there and pulled it out. He tossed it to Morales.

  The attorney reached out to catch it, but—being an air-density stade—it tumbled in the air and came to a halt without reaching him. Throwing air-density stades felt like throwing balloons or feathers—they just didn’t go very far.

  Looking much more interested, Morales stood and reached out to grab it. The usual comedy of his repeatedly grasping after it when it slipped away ensued.

  Kaem finally stood and trapped it in a basket of fingers.

  Wide-eyed, Morales reached to take it in the same fashion. “This is…” he looked up at Kaem and Arya. “This is truly unique, isn’t it?”

  Restraining a strong impulse to accuse the man of ignoring them, Kaem merely nodded. Morales probably hadn’t believed a word they’d said until confronted with the specimen.

  Morales looked down at the piece of stade, then back up into Kaem’s eyes. “And this’ll be useful for building rocket engines?”

  Kaem tilted his head. “It’ll be useful for tens of thousands of things. Rocket engines are just very expensive things which stade’s properties will make far better than existing tech. Thus, it should be able to gain nearly 100% of rocket engine market share.” He shrugged, “So, that’s where we’re starting.”

  Morales blinked, “Can you give me an example of something else it could be used for? Something high value?”

  “Bridges.”

  “Um, how would you use it for bridges?”

  “You were listening when I told you about its strength, right?”

  Morales nodded.

  “If the Golden Gate Bridge failed, a quarter-inch thick sheet of stade holding up concrete pavement could replace the entire span of the bridge without any posts, pillars, or suspension cables. And, do it
cheaply.”

  Morales stared, “That’s hard to believe.”

  Kaem nodded slowly. “But true.”

  “Okay,” Morales said slowly. “And you say Martin Aerospace invented the same thing and they’re suing you for infringing their patent?”

  Kaem shook his head. “They claim to have invented stade and already patented it. They haven’t.”

  “And how do you know that?”

  “If they had, they’d be launching rockets and talking it up in the news. If they did have someone call us, it’d be a lawyer, not a thug making threats.”

  “Perhaps they just haven’t finished building their first rocket.” Morales snorted, “And some lawyers are thugs.”

  “If they knew how to make stade, they could’ve built a rocket in a month or two. It’s my understanding that applying for a patent and getting it issued takes several years, right?”

  Morales shrugged but nodded, “Sometimes less. Often substantially longer. But for something as obviously unique as,” he glanced at the sample of stade he’d corralled between some pencils on his desk, “as this stuff, maybe less. There wouldn’t be any argument about whether it was sufficiently different from existing art to justify a patent.”

  “Still, if they have a patent, they should’ve been flying stade rocket engines for a while now.”

  “Maybe they have been, but they’ve just been keeping it on the down-low until they had their patent in hand.”

  Kaem rolled his eyes, “I tell you they don’t know how to make it. It’s just such an unlikely process…” He shook his head, “The chances that it’d be invented twice in the same hundred years are so low they’re laughable.”

  Morales slowly shook his head, looking sympathetic, but said, “I’m sorry, young man. You might not know that inventions tend to occur in clusters as soon as the technology necessary to build them has been created. The history of invention is replete with literally thousands of things that were invented almost simultaneously by more than one, sometimes many, inventors. Inventors who didn’t know anyone else was working on the same idea. The telephone, the telescope, the airplane, the thermometer, calculus, the typewriter, the steam engine. The list goes on and on.”