The Thunder of Engines

by Laurence Dahners

  “Hi Aaron,” Branzon said with a little chuckle.

  “You dog you! Good thing I didn’t verbalize any of my innermost thoughts about your character.”

  Branzon snorted, “None of those’d be news to me. But how about if you and I come to an agreement regarding the purchase of their rockets? I don’t want to get in a bidding war so I’m gonna suggest we both get rights to have them exclusively cast rocket parts for us.” He turned to Kaem, “What would you say to that? We’d both buy at your exclusive price and you’d have double the sales.”

  “So,” Kaem said thoughtfully, “you’d pay four million for an engine, forty million for a body, etcetera, etcetera?”

  Branzon nodded, then realizing Marks couldn’t see him, he said, “Something like that.”

  Marks said, “I could go for that.”

  Arya said, “What’s your minimum buy?”

  Branzon said, “Minimum buy?”

  “Yes. When you were bidding against one another, Mr. Marks pointed out that GLI’s volume wasn’t as great as Space-Gen’s and so, even though you might pay more per rocket, you might not buy very many.”

  Branzon snorted, “Aaron? You already sold me down the river?”

  “I was just trying to hold onto my shirt Jerry. I know you can outbid me.”

  “Okay…” Branzon looked thoughtful, “How about if GLI agrees to buy… Wait, over what period?”

  Kaem said, “A minimum total number of rockets. Remember, you can reuse them forever, so if you aren’t doing a lot of launches, our fear would be that you’d only buy one.”

  “Ah. Okay, how about if GLI and Space-Gen each promise to buy ten rockets?”

  Marks said, “We can buy more if we want, right?”

  “Uh-huh,” Branzon responded.

  Kaem said, “That’ll get you exclusive rights for three years.”

  “Five,” Branzon and Marks said almost in chorus.

  “Four then,” Kaem said. “But we’ll need a million from each of you upfront so we can get Staze on its feet. A million you agree not to ask to have back, otherwise, Arya still won’t let me get our business going.”

  The two tycoons agreed. Marks made a halfhearted attempt to have the million he’d paid to guarantee the right of first offer act as his up-front start fee, but gave in quickly when Kaem said no.

  Arya said she’d bring Sylvia Contreras up to date so she could work with the lawyers from Space-Gen and GLI while they hammered out the contracts.

  ***

  Over the weekend, Kaem worked hard redesigning circuits for a new, purpose-built stazer. It’d be a heavy-duty one capable of generating the high-powered microwave and laser emissions he’d calculated would be required to staze large segments of space-time. Once designed, he again swapped around important components in the design, trading capacitors with inductors, and resistors with diodes. The new arrangement would produce a functional circuit, which would, however, be incapable of generating the proper microwaves or correctly exciting the lasers. It certainly wouldn’t be able to induce stasis.

  In fact, by his calculations, the nonsense circuit would blow itself out at most of the settings that could be chosen through its integrated controller chip. Yet, with certain settings, it would produce outputs he could use to confirm the board was functional. Once he was sure each board worked, he’d swap the components to make it functional for stazing, test its ability to induce stasis, then put it in the stade box that would protect Kaem’s secrets from being discovered. To make the swaps easier, he specified that many of the connections wouldn’t be soldered—until the board went into the stade box—relying instead on plug and socket connectors to that point.

  Finished with the design, he spent a few minutes committing the swaps needed to change it back to a functional state to memory.

  The design work helped take his mind off his father’s illness.

  Once he’d ordered the necessary parts and components, he went through the videos of the classes he’d missed during the negotiations and the trip to Texas. That done, he fell back to thinking maudlin thoughts.

  To distract himself, he called Gunnar. “Tell me about your thermite idea.”

  “Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, Kaem! It’s like you guys vanished off the face of the Earth! What the hell’s going on! Last I heard you and Arya were flying off to Texas to try to get the stazer back. Did you get it?”

  “Oh. Sorry. I was thinking Arya brought you up to date. She probably thinks I did it.”

  “You guys treat me like the dumb ugly cousin you only talk to when you need something!”

  “Sorry. You’re right,” Kaem said. He put a sly tone in his voice, “You want us to buy you out?”

  “Buy me out?! Hell no! I made an investment; I want to reap the rewards… if there ever are any.”

  “Sorry,” Kaem said, “I was trying to make a joke… Arya says I’m not a comedian. You definitely do not want out. Let me bring you up to date.” Kaem described what’d happened with Caron, Branzon, and Marks and how they now had three million in the bank that Arya finally agreed they could spend. “…she’s agreed that each of us can have our share of one and a half million to spend. Your one percent means you should have fifteen thousand in your account on Monday sometime.”

  “Big whoop. That’s about what I invested.”

  “So, you’ve broken even already. And, a lot more’ll be coming in. Don’t cry in your soup.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Gunnar said grumpily—no change from his usual demeanor.

  “You can imagine, after getting two versions of the stazer stolen, I’m liking your idea of protecting the secrets of the stazer with something like thermite. Can we meet at Staze’s building to talk about it?”

  ***

  When Kaem entered Staze’s big room, Gunnar was already there. He said, “So, you’ve decided to go ahead and pack stazers in thermite to keep anyone from stealing the tech?”

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “What about Arya’s fear that we might go to jail if someone got hurt?”

  “I was counting on your idea of putting only a little bit of thermite under a few parts of the circuit board. Just enough to destroy the board so no one could figure out how it worked.”

  “Hmm,” Gunnar said, sounding as interested as he typically did when confronted with technical problems. “We’d probably want to use a thermate…” He trailed off thoughtfully.

  When he didn’t say anything more, Kaem stimulated him, “And the difference between thermite and thermate is…”

  “Hmm…? Oh, thermates are various nonstandard mixes of thermite. Usually, they have some added chemicals to accomplish various goals. Thermite’s really hard to ignite, so we’d want a modified version that’s easier to light… Or maybe just part of it would be easy to light. We wouldn’t want the whole thing going up just because your circuit got hot.”

  “I saw something about using magnesium to light thermite?”

  “Yeah, but even though magnesium burns like hell, it isn’t all that easy to light either. Maybe we could have something easy to light that starts the magnesium. Then the magnesium lights a thin slab of regular thermite right under the circuit board?”

  “It’d be nice to rearrange the stazer’s components after they burned. Wouldn’t want the thieves analyzing the arrangement of the crisped parts and figuring out how the stazer was built from that. Maybe something that explodes once the board’s burned enough to lose its structural integrity?”

  “This is getting pretty complex. Besides, you know Arya’s not going to go for something that explodes. Prison, remember?”

  “Here’s what I’m thinking. There’re outer and inner stade boxes. When you start trying to open the outer box, it ignites a fuse that sets off the thermite in the inner box.”

  “So,” Gunnar said, “the thermite in the inner box burns, generating a lot of heat and pressure and nasty gas. The stade doesn’t let any of that escape, not even the heat. When they open the inner bo
x, boom!”

  “No, we’ve got to include some pressure relief holes that let the pressure escape the inner box before they can open it…” Kaem hesitated. “Um, the thermite reaction’s supposed to convert aluminum and iron oxide into iron and aluminum oxide, plus heat. The chemical formula (2Al + Fe2O3→2Fe + Al2O3) doesn’t call for anything else to be produced. Where’s this nasty gas you’re talking about coming from?”

  “Well, the reaction’s so hot it vaporizes some metal. Breathing aluminum or iron vapor isn’t healthy. Plus, if we want our thermite to be a solid rather than a powder you need to stick it together with something, usually something organic. The heat of the thermite can turn organic binders into toxic fumes. And that’s not counting the circuit board and all its components that might release toxic byproducts when they burn…” Gunnar cocked his head, “Um, the safest explosive might be a steam bomb.”

  “Steam bomb?” Kaem asked.

  “Yeah, you put a capsule of water in the middle of your circuit board. When the thermite gets it hot enough, the steam explodes the capsule, blowing the board’s components apart, without adding any more toxic products.”

  “Crap. I thought this was gonna be simple.”

  “Um, I… kinda like this kind of stuff,” Gunnar said suddenly sounding eager, though a little embarrassed. “You give me a budget and I’ll do some experimenting until we get something that works without being too… dangerous, or toxic, or whatever. It’ll still need a lot of warning labels on it though. ‘DANGER, DO NOT OPEN!’ That kinda thing.”

  “Okay, you’ve got yourself a project. Ask Arya for money to do it.”

  Gunnar said, “Wait. What if they use your… whatever it is you figured out how to do to break down a stade?”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Kaem said, “That would be a problem, wouldn’t it? It’d break down the outer stade, and then, you’re wondering, what if they just ran the sequence again to break down the inner stade while the stazer was still in the chamber from breaking down the first one?”

  Gunnar nodded.

  “And then the burning thermite’ll be exposed…,” Kaem said slowly, “We’ll need a steel box inside the two stade boxes. That way, if they quickly destabilize the outer two stade boxes and the thermite reaction’s still in full bloom, busily destroying the electronics, they’ll still be protected from it by the steel box. To hurry things along in that event, we could even put an ultracapacitor in the outer box. As soon as they destabilized the stade, the capacitor’s electrodes would make contact and send power to the inner box to jumpstart everything by blowing out all the electronics and igniting the thermate.”

  Gunnar shook his head, “That’s not going to work. Capacitors don’t hold their charge very long. Even a battery’d probably be dead by the time, a couple of years later, someone stole the stazer and started taking it apart.”

  “The capacitor’d still have its charge if it was part of the outer shell stade.”

  “Oh!” Gunnar grinned. “Yeah. You’d charge it up right before you formed the stade the outer box was made of. Then as soon as the big cap comes out of stasis, boom, it discharges into the circuit board, frying everything and I mean everything. A big ultracap can deliver so much current the conductors in the board and a lot of the components on it’ll just vaporize. It’ll have plenty of juice to ignite the magnesium that lights the thermite…”

  Gunnar halted because Kaem had been motioning for him to slow down. “Don’t forget that if the crook doesn’t break the stasis, but just starts disassembling the boxes, that ultracapacitor won’t come on line. We need a mechanical way to light the thermite in that situation.”

  “Ah, yeah. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “You should think about how we’re going to assemble the stade boxes. I’m thinking of a box with a lid that’s bolted on. When someone starts unscrewing one of the bolts without the proper password having been put into the electronics via the controller connection, it sets off the thermite.”

  Gunnar frowned, “What if they just chisel the heads off the bolts?”

  Kaem chewed his lip. “If the bolts were made of stade they couldn’t be chiseled, but they’d just come unscrewed. Maybe we could have the head end of the bolt be made of stade, while inside the case, the threaded end of the bolt and the nut itself are made of steel?”

  Gunnar frowned, “How do we make a bolt that’s stade on one end and steel on the other?”

  “We start with a shiny stainless-steel hex bolt and cast a slightly bigger stade head and shaft around that end.”

  “Can you cast stade around steel when part of it’s sticking out of the mold?”

  Kaem looked puzzled. “I was thinking we could. Maybe not. Or, maybe the shaft of the bolt that’s inside the mold will get stazed as well.” He sighed, “There’re so many things we need to try so we can find out how or whether they’ll work.”

  Kaem’s phone spoke in his earbud, “You have a call from April Lee.” Eagerly, he stepped away from Gunnar, saying he’d take it.

  ~~~

  Lee felt relieved when Kaem took her call. “Hi Kaem, sorry to bother you on the weekend.”

  “That’s okay. I can use the distraction. My dad’s sick and I keep worrying about him.”

  “Oh! What’s wrong?”

  “Sorry, we don’t even know what it is yet. I shouldn’t be bothering you with my personal problems. What’s up with you?”

  “Gosh,” Lee said, not knowing what to say. “I’m so sorry to hear about your dad. My call’s not urgent. You could call me, um, um… when you know what’s going on with him?” She immediately regretted the words. Why’d I say that?! If he doesn’t call, I won’t know if he just forgot, but also won’t feel comfortable calling in follow-up.

  To her great relief, he said, “No, no. Talk to me. Distract me. What can I do for you?”

  “Well, maybe Arya talked to you?”

  “About you?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “I mentioned to her how you’d said you could only tell me more about the nature of stade if I hired on with you guys. Um, do you even remember saying that? You also said Staze needed an engineer,”

  “No, I remember. I was half kidding, half-serious. Are you thinking you’d like to jump ship? Space-Gen’s pretty cool.”

  “It is. It’s been my dream job forever. Even though there’ve been some hassles since I started working there, I’ve been really happy. But… I think Staze is going to be far cooler. There’re so many things you could make with a material having stade’s properties. It’s… going to let us build… astonishing things.” She sighed, “So, yes, Space-Gen’s great, but I think Staze’ll be even better and, and… I want to be in on the ground floor. I think we could change the world.”

  She could hear the smile in Kaem’s voice. “Yeah! That’s what I’m always talking about. Changing the whole damned world! Not just making money but making things better. We’d love to have you here. Just say the word.”

  “Um, I think you should check with Arya. I talked to her about it the night of the dinner and… I don’t think she’s too keen on the idea of me joining you.”

  “That was probably because we didn’t have the money to be hiring anyone back then. We’re solvent now.”

  “I… I kinda got the impression that she might not want any… any other women around.”

  Kaem sounded astonished. “Why not?! She’s big on equality for women. ‘Equal pay for equal work’ and all that.”

  “I, uh, think she might have a thing for you. Have you guys been dating?”

  This seemed to surprise Kaem even more. “No! I mean… I’d like to because she’s pretty, and smart, and really capable. But she pushes me away at every opportunity. I don’t think she’s at all interested in me and never will be. She’s never laughed at a single one of my jokes. I think she just puts up with my personality for the sake of our business.”

  Lee laughed, “That’s funny, s
ad, and probably true. I told her I liked your sense of humor and she said I was misinformed, that you actually have a terrible sense of humor.”

  Kaem cackled, “Sounds like her. She does hate my jokes and… I tease her, which I know I shouldn’t. I’m trying to stop, but now I’m thinking I should insist we hire you just so there’ll be someone around who thinks I’m funny. It’d be so good for my ego to occasionally get a laugh.”

  “Well, I’d like to work for you guys, if it doesn’t cause too much friction. Or you could just keep me in some dark room where Arya never has to see me. As long as I get to work with stade I’ll be happy.”

  “Great! You’re hired.”

  “I am? Don’t I… need to formally apply or something? I’m sure there needs to be some kind of contract, right?” What am I doing? she wondered. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth! He just offered me the job. Take it!

  Sounding abashed, Kaem said, “Sorry. You’re right. I’m getting ahead of myself. You’d need to know what you’re getting paid and what the benefits are and things like that. I haven’t even thought about that stuff ’cause you’d be our very first hire. Let me talk to Arya and she’ll get back to you.”

  “I hope she’s okay with it.”

  “I’m sure she will be. All I’ll have to do is tell her you’ve promised to laugh at my jokes, so you’ll be easing that burden for her.”

  Lee said, “I’ll be out there in a few days with our mold for a small rocket engine. Maybe we could talk then?”

  “You know I’m having to build another stazer?”

  “You didn’t get the one back from Martin Aerospace?”

  “The police are keeping it as evidence, so I’m having to build another. I don’t mind. I wanted to make some improvements anyway. But you’d better call before you come to make sure I’ve got the new one built and working.”

  They said a few more words then ended the call. Lee hung up, wondering whether Kaem was right, and Arya wouldn’t actually object.

  And whether he actually could build a stazer?

  ~~~

  When Lee signed off, Kaem put in a call to Arya, “Hey, April Lee wants to come work for us. What do we need to do to hire her?”