The Thunder of Engines

by Laurence Dahners

  Ricard frowned, “Once you know how the disk is encrypted, can’t you decrypt the whole thing?”

  “Last time hacker stole two files while Seba is logged on computer but not watching system. That way, file computer sent was already decrypted when taken from hard drive. So, we no expect encryption at all. But, that time turns out file separately encrypted in addition to hard drive encryption. Decryption of one file containing diagrams took two days. We stopped because second file has different encryption key and many people mad about us using supercomputer. This time we have Seba’s whole computer but entire hard drive encrypted. Must decrypt drive first. Maybe take two day. Maybe longer. Hope shorter. Believe then each file separately encrypted like before.” Wang shook his head, “Don’t know how Seba keep many different encryption keys.” Chen shrugged, “Maybe has photo memory.”

  Ricard turned his back to swear long and hard. Still fuming, he turned back and said, “Wang! For what we’re paying you, you’ve got to do better than this! We need a working model, not a bunch of loose components he probably doesn’t even use any more. Get us what he’s using now!” Ricard restrained himself from stamping his foot ineffectually, “Come on man!”

  ***

  Teri Nunsen got a text from April Lee. “Plane has landed. Should be at Space-Gen in forty minutes. Team meeting then to compare notes. Sign up small conference room.”

  All business, isn’t she, Teri thought, texting back an “Okay.” She pulled the little conference room up online and signed up for it. Getting up, she walked over to Evan and filled him in. Evan didn’t look happy but he nodded without complaint. Next Teri headed over to Stitt’s desk. “Lee’s getting back at five. We’re gonna meet in that same small conference room.”

  Stitt’s eyes widened, “No way! A couple of my buds asked me out to drink beers and…!” He trailed off.

  Teri studied him a moment, thinking he’d trailed off before saying he and his buds were going to chase women. She turned and walked away. “I’ll ask Lee who’s taking your place,” she said back over her shoulder. “Meantime, write up what you’ve learned.”

  “No! Wait!”

  Teri kept walking.

  “Teri!”

  She heard his chair scrape back, then his footsteps coming rapidly after her.

  “Teri! Dammit!” He grabbed her elbow and pulled her around. “I’ll be there,” he said disgustedly.

  Teri looked pointedly down at her elbow until he let go.

  “Sorry,” Stitt muttered self-consciously.

  “Get your notes and let’s you and I go to the conference room. I’d like you to fill me in on what you’ve learned in case Lee wants you off the team.”

  “Come on, Teri! I was just upset about my plans is all. I will be there.”

  “Get your notes and let’s go. I’m planning on you being there. But I need a backup plan…” she gave him a look, “in case you touch me without permission again.” As she walked on, Teri couldn’t help feeling a little surge of triumph, but she cautioned herself, Don’t throw Stitt off the team out of spite. His competence is not in question.

  Teri got her stuff and headed into the conference room. Stitt was only moments behind her, a relief because she didn’t have to worry about whether he was slow out of insubordination.

  Then he impressed her with what he’d learned and his thoughts about how they should proceed.

  Really impressed her.

  When Lee arrived, she started by showing them pictures and describing the forms or molds the people at Staze used to create their super-material. Because the forms were mirrored inside, it was hard to grasp their shapes in the pictures. Lee said, “It’s kinda hard to understand them even when you’re looking at them in person. They’re like funhouse mirrors.”

  Lee spent quite a bit of time explaining what she’d learned, especially focusing on how you needed a clear material—with both surfaces mirrored—surrounding the volume you wanted to cast stade into. She pointed at the mirrors surrounding the cube-shaped mold. “These mirrors surrounding the cavity the cube is cast in are silvered, both on the side next to the cube and on the outside. Seba said you could think of it as if you needed the mold form to hold light within its walls, but keep that light out of the cavity you’re casting stade in.”

  Stitt pointed at the black man in one of the pictures. “Who’s this?”

  “Kaem Seba. The guy who invented stade.”

  “Really? He looks… unwell.”

  Lee nodded. “I think he’s sick somehow, but it’s not something we talked about.”

  “And what makes these forms work? You just pour the liquid in, close them up, and voila?”

  Lee shook her head. “After the form’s closed, Seba does a bunch of stuff with the electronic gear in this rack,” she brought back a picture that showed a rack for electronic gear, “that finishes with what sounds like a capacitor charging and discharging. Then ‘voila.’”

  “What’s he doing? Do you have a picture that shows what kind of electronics we’re talking about?”

  “He wouldn’t say. Wouldn’t let me look at it or take pictures of it either.”

  Irritated that Stitt was asking all the questions, Teri broke in, “And what’s the liquid substrate?”

  “Looks like water.” Lee said, “He acted like it wasn’t though. I wondered if it might be water with something dissolved in it.”

  Stitt frowned, “You sure he wasn’t doing some kind of sleight of hand. Distracting you with the electronics while a piece of stade just got slipped into the form?”

  Lee studied him, “What good would that do them?”

  He looked abashed, “I don’t know. I’m just a suspicious sort, I guess.”

  Lee reached both hands into her suitcase and carefully lifted out a six-inch cube of stade. “Here’s one they made in front of me. It’s water density.” She two-handed it to Teri, “Don’t let it get away from you, ’cause it’s over seven pounds. If it lands on your toe it’s gonna hurt.”

  Evan asked, “Did they put something different in the mold to come out with water density?”

  Lee shook her head, “Poured in the same stuff as far as I could tell.” She went back into her suitcase and pulled out another six-inch cubical block. “This one’s air density.” She turned it over, “Notice it has a cavity in the back, shaped a little bit like the bell of a rocket nozzle. Kaem said he’d just wrapped a drinking glass in aluminum foil and set it in the form to create the cavity.”

  “So, it doesn’t have to be mirrored glass?” Teri asked.

  “Apparently not. I’m pretty sure Seba figured that out by trying the glass and foil idea while I was there. He said his theory predicts we can use any transparent solid with reflective surfaces on both sides, but he hasn’t had time or money to try any others out. When you’re feeling the inside of the cavity the glass left in the stade cube, you’ll notice you can kind of feel wrinkles left by the aluminum foil. They’re smoothed out by the fact that features under one millimeter don’t form.”

  “Geez,” Stitt said, “it’s like these guys are amateurs!”

  “Yeah,” Evan responded, “but, amateur or not, their product’s… freaking unbelievable.”

  At that point, Teri, Jerome, and Evan took turns telling Lee what they’d accomplished while she’d been flying to Virginia and back.

  Teri’d found two glass fabricators she thought could make suitable molds. She’d been planning on solid molds but knew they blew glass too. She thought they’d be able to blow a hollow mold for the inside of the combustion chamber. They claimed they’d be able to grind and polish the junctions between the mold segments so the fit would leave defects smaller than a millimeter. For a premium, they said they’d be able to rush the production to complete the molds in less than a week.

  Jerome Stitt had found designs for a ten-centimeter-diameter hydrogen-oxygen motor and modified it for stade.

  Lee interrupted, “What modifications?”

  “It was designed t
o feed a layer of unburned fuel against the inner surfaces to prevent engine rich exhaust. I eliminated those design factors, so we should get more efficiency.”

  “Engine rich exhaust?” Evan asked.

  Teri answered impatiently, “When the walls of the engine melt and join the exhaust flume. Aren’t you supposed to be a rocket scientist?” She turned back to Stitt. “You sure this’s going to improve efficiency?”

  Stitt shrugged, not looking offended. “Pretty sure. Even if it doesn’t generate more thrust, I’m almost positive the exhaust’ll be hotter. That’ll test stade’s heat tolerance more thoroughly.”

  Lee said, “Okay. Evan. I assume you designed us a cryotank?”

  Evan put up his design. He was planning a cylindrical tank cast in two pieces that would be screwed together.

  Lee asked how he was planning to prevent leakage through the poorly fitting threads.

  “The threads are only to force the surfaces together.”

  “The surfaces won’t fit perfectly and won’t be able to be forced into a better fit because stade’s so rigid.”

  “We’ll use an indium washer. Even at cryogenic temperatures, it’s malleable enough to perfect the fit.” He shrugged, “If the threads won’t do it, we’ll have to use a crapload of bolts.”

  Lee said, “Redo it with a crapload of bolts. We want this one to work. We can try fancy stuff after we’re not spending a million dollars a week.”

  Lee told them about Kaem’s idea that the rocket body should be made out of stade as well, in order to lower stress on the plumbing between the tank and the engine. “In fact, I’ve been wondering if the tanks could be integral to the rocket body.” She waved dismissively, “But that’s for version 2.0 as well. I’ve also been wondering if multiple engine nozzles could be cast into one block at the back of a bigger rocket rather than bolting on a bunch of separate engines.”

  Stitt got a distant look for a moment, then said, “That’d probably work except for thrust vectoring. Without mounting the engines on gimbals you’d have to try to direct the rocket with differential thrust by feeding less fuel to the engines on the side you wanted to turn toward.”

  Lee looked distant for a moment, then said, “Okay, send me your design drawings. I’m going to message Mr. Prakant and tell him I can talk to him at his convenience, tonight if he wants.” She shrugged, “Probably tomorrow morning.”

  “You want us to come with you?” Teri asked.

  “Good idea. I’ll ask him. It’d be nice for you guys to get some face time with the man. That’s if he’s willing.” She stood up, then sat back down. “I forgot. Seba said they’d cast testing objects for us for free. Bolts, nuts, pipes, fittings, ratchets to lock pipes so they’d stay screwed together. We can also make molds out of metalized clear plastics to see if that works. Start thinking and working up such items. Just get molds made for them and we’ll take them out there next time we go. We especially need to know how we’re going to join pieces of this stuff.”

  ***

  Mahesh Prakant arrived early for a before-hours meeting with April Lee. He was pleased to see she was already waiting and had the three young engineers of her team with her. She began with her preliminary assessment that Staze, the company making stade, likely could make rocket engines. She showed him a fifteen-centimeter cube of stade they’d made for her during her visit. It had a cavity in one side shaped somewhat like a rocket nozzle. She said it’d been cast using a drinking glass.

  She said, “Looking at this block made me wonder whether there’d be an advantage to casting multiple rocket nozzles in a single large block across the five-meter base of the new launch booster. Then we’d just bolt combustion chambers on top of them.”

  Prakant shook his head, “If the nozzles were all in one large block you wouldn’t be able to gimbal the nozzles to correct the flight path.”

  Lee said, “Following the KISS principle, using stade, we could put vanes directly into the exhaust path of the engines. Angling them to vector the thrust would likely be much cheaper than gimbaling the motors.”

  Prakant blinked, feeling his eyebrows rise, “But when the boosters land…” He paused when his thought process caught up with what he was saying.

  Lee nodded, “Made from stade, the vanes would be strong enough to support the booster, though I suppose they might damage the landing pad. It’s hard to adapt to the phenomenal properties of this material, isn’t it?”

  Prakant nodded. Used to being the best and brightest, it was humbling to have a junior engineer point out such an—obvious in retrospect—thing to him. He said, “Undoubtedly it’s going to change all of engineering.”

  Lee had the other members of her team report on how they’d found glass fabricators they believed would be able to create the molds for casting engines, and how they’d designed a small engine and cryotank that would enable them to be sure stade would function in those specific and extreme situations.

  Slowly he said, “We don’t need to know anything more. We need to buy stade from them.”

  “For engines and cryotanks sir?”

  “No! The material itself. We’ll want to be the company that develops it. There are so many…” Prakant blinked. “This stuff’s going to change the world. Not just rocketry. Everything. With the license for stade, Space-Gen would quickly become the most important company in the world, not just in space launch.”

  “Um, sir,” Lee said, “I asked them about a license for all products and they gave me a definitive ‘No.’ Seba, the inventor, said they were going to develop everything else. They’re only willing to give us a time-limited exclusive license because they need capital to be able to develop stade for other uses.”

  “Time-limited?!”

  “Yes, sir. He said three years, though I got the impression he just picked that number out of the air. We could try to negotiate for more.”

  “If they won’t license it for all uses, what are they willing to license it to us for?”

  “Rocket engines and cryotanks for sure. He mentioned that if the rocket body was made of stade, it’d decrease strains on the fuel feeds. Strains resulting from deformations in the frame holding the tanks and engines in position relative to one another.” She frowned, “So, from that, I’m assuming we could get them to make the rockets bodies out of stade. Or, perhaps we could make the tanks integral to the rocket’s body.” She shrugged, “He also mentioned we might want high-density, high-weight stade for a launch blast shield. So, maybe they’d be willing to cast anything we need for the entire rocketry program. But I’m pretty sure they don’t want us building bridges or skyscrapers.”

  Feeling dazed, Prakant gave his head a quick, sharp shake to clear his mind. “We’ve got to go talk to Aaron. You’ve got your samples and spec sheets?”

  Lee nodded.

  As he got up and headed for the door of his office. Prakant said, “Let me have the spec sheets. Come with me, all of you.”

  Behind him, he heard one of the young engineers ask, “Aaron Marks?”

  Looking back over his shoulder, Prakant said, “Yup. And you know you’d better be at the top of your game talking to our CEO, right?” All four of the young engineers nodded, “Yes, he’s a genius. Yes, he’s a hardass. But, he’s actually a nice guy. It’s just that he will not stand for anything less than your best.” As Prakant walked by Mary’s desk he said, “Cancel my first two appointments this morning. Let Aaron know we’re coming and we need some time to make a presentation. Tell him it’s probably the most important thing he’ll hear this decade.”

  Mary said, “Yes, Mr. Prakant.”

  He shook his head and spoke back over his shoulder to the young engineers, “Probably the most important thing this century. I hope we’re in time.”

  ~~~

  Lee found herself hurrying just to keep up with Prakant. “In time for what, Mr. Prakant?”

  “In time for us to get some kind of toehold in this tech. I blew it when you came to talk to me. I shouldn’t have
had you trying to prove stade was good enough for rocketry. I should’ve been moving heaven and Earth to get us in on the ground floor.”

  “Um, they got calls from Orbital Systems and Martin Aerospace while I was there.”

  “Dammit!” Prakant sighed as he rounded the corner into the CEO’s suite. “I’ll be lucky if Aaron doesn’t fire me on the spot.”

  Prakant almost ran into Marks, who smiled and said, “I always knew I’d have to fire your ass someday Mahesh. Why’s today the day?

  Prakant held out the spec sheet with stade’s properties.

  Marks took it, eyes sweeping downward as his forehead furrowed. Lee estimated he’d only gotten halfway down the page before his eyes rose to focus on Prakant. “What the hell’s this?”

  Prakant squared his shoulders, “My reaction too. I was so stiff-necked I just trashed the first sheet I saw with these properties on it—”

  “Well, of course,” Marks interrupted, “but what the hell—”

  Prakant interrupted in his turn, “Then they sent us a sample of the material and we tested it in our own lab.” He held out a second sheet. Lee recognized the sheet she’d prepared for Prakant based on her own testing.

  Marks looked over this sheet. “Who ran this up? It doesn’t look different.”

  Prakant waved at Lee, “April Lee, one of our junior engineers. Prefers to go by Lee.”

  When Marks’ intense gaze fell on her, Lee felt like stepping back. She forced herself to hold her ground. “There are some differences, sir. The density listed on the sheet they sent us was one gram per cc. The density of water. The density of the specimen we received was the same as air. All the other differences we found show the material’s even better than they claimed. I think that’s because the material’s properties are beyond what their, or even our—presumably better—equipment can measure.”

  Marks frowned, “Beyond what we can measure?”

  “Yes, sir. So much stronger than steel that the hardened steel in our testing fixture failed before it did. Melting temperature so high we can’t generate such temperatures—”