by M J Kendrick
Both he and Carlton knew that figure could be improved on even further and he would continue to research that aspect. But, for now, Per had enough to start final outline designs of the spacecraft.
Anton had re-designed his flat laser to incorporate a small PMG and had been working with Carlton and Haru on adapting Carlton’s lens composite to enhance the flat laser’s output.
Carlton had discovered that by introducing nanotubes into the lens composite mix and passing an electrical current through the lens, it further amplified the laser’s output so much that on first testing it vaporized a clean line through Anton’s lab test area and out straight through the side of the hangar wall. Had anyone been in its path they would now be in two pieces!
Anton would continue his testing outside of the hangar, a good distance away from the others. They had set him up a test area a quarter of a mile away from the hangar, where there was a heavily forested, boulder-strewn depression that would naturally contain any stray or dangerous beams and keep them from reaching Quantum.
Carlton had been finding the going to be physically exerting. With the exception of Lucy’s work, he had been balancing his time between his own work and helping all of the Smarties on improving the development of their research by introducing his nanotechnology into their projects. He had found it hard to keep pace with being deeply involved with Miles’s sheet material composite that would eventually be needed for the spacecraft construction, Anton’s laser and Haru’s PMG work.
On top of all that, they were all beginning to feel the stress of the workload and the living arrangements. It was time to call a meeting to discuss the current setup and address the growing problems.
By the time everyone had aired their concerns, and they had all discussed what was needed, Carlton had made the decision that they needed to get Marek and his team back to build them some permanent housing. He would also have them beef up the security around the hangar and make some internal modifications that were needed.
Also, they all knew that they needed help. Carlton knew it too and would have to figure out how he could safely increase Quantum’s personnel with people that would be suitable, able to fit in, capable, and, above all, trustworthy. That was going to be a very difficult task and one that he feared to be easier said than done.
They would need a very secure and thorough way to vet people, and he would need to think hard how to best proceed.
With the money Carlton had saved from the gamma-sourcing trip, he had enough funds to pay for all of the work, but the need to generate revenue was becoming imperative.
William had been talking to Anton about Calisto’s operation in South Africa. He had kept the closest contact with Calisto, speaking to her almost on a daily basis as their relationship blossomed.
Calisto had stepped officially into the role of CEO at the mine, the position she had always been groomed for and for all intents and purposes had been doing before she had joined MIT. She was once again enjoying running the entire operation while her father retreated from the frontline into a kind of semi-retirement.
William had been researching industrial processes that used high levels of power in their processes. Ore refining came out as one of the highest, and William wanted to explore Calisto’s energy uses at her mine.
Anton was more than happy to bring it up with Calisto when they next spoke and see if there was any way to utilize the PMGs. If they could, then it would be a good indication of a possible revenue stream for Quantum.
Calisto was excited at the possibility of being involved in some way with the Smarties again, and when they learned that the annual expenditure on power for the refining process averaged $11,000,000, it was an easy task for Calisto to persuade her father to agree for the Smarties to trial a new power source that would reduce that bill to zero and split the savings between them.
***
Anton and Miles flew out to South Africa within a week, armed with ten PMGs to set up the trial. Anton and Calisto were all over each other from the moment she had collected them from the airport, leading Miles to realize that they had been a little more than “just friends” when they were at the house in Wakefield.
He smiled to himself as he began to recall all of their “accidental” meetings as not being so accidental after all. He’d had no idea, but now he found it highly amusing. Picking up both their bags, he pushed his way between them.
“Here, you sly old dog, save that for later.”
Anton took his bag, and, smiling, he shrugged his shoulders at his friend. Miles just shook his head. “Yeah, I know, should’ve seen it coming. Come on, lovebirds, let’s get out of here; it’s hot.”
Moving to Calisto’s other side, the three laughed all the way to the car as they all walked affectionately arm in arm. Calisto had the boys stay in a guest bungalow that was on the family estate, but they would dine with her and her family each night as her parents were just as happy to see them as Calisto was.
After a day of rest to recover from the journey, Anton and Miles were keen to see the mine and look at the setup.
Calisto’s mine was an hour’s drive to the main entrance and a further half an hour’s drive to the mine itself.
Miles and Anton were amazed at the scale. Despite this being classed as a small concern, it still covered a large area, and the whole operation was impressive. For the rest of the day, Calisto painstakingly showed them every aspect of the mine, explaining every stage in great detail, so they had a full understanding of how the mine worked. For the next three days, Miles and Anton conducted a survey of the mine’s power grid and current usage. When they had finished, not only had they had drawn up the specifications needed to make the power transfer to the PMGs without interrupting the operation, but they also made a recommendation that would increase productivity by fifty percent.
The Millers were very much in favor of the improvements and agreed to let them go ahead.
***
Anton advised Carlton of the good news and after the Smarties were informed it was decided that it would be a good idea for them all to be there to help. Carlton was happy about that, and, even if he did suspect that some of the Smarties just wanted a holiday, it would be great to have all the Smarties together again. They all missed Calisto.
It took two weeks for Carlton to arrange for Quantum to be secure for the month that they would be away. William’s father had Marek and his team fly in to build the Smarties eight single-story homes in an area that Lucy had chosen to be their “village,” and William’s father had also taken care of the materials list that Marek would need, as he had before.
He also arranged for four security personnel to remain at Quantum until the Smarties returned. Carlton was extremely grateful, especially when he learned from William’s father that the security guards were all ex-Special Forces and his own specialist go-to guys who were 100 percent loyal and trustworthy.
Even so, the Smarties went to great lengths to ensure that nothing even remotely sensitive could be found at Quantum during their absence.
Chapter Twenty-Six
On arrival in South Africa, the Smarties first experience was by way of a huge “Welcome to South Africa” dinner party thrown by Calisto and her parents.
The whole of the evening was nothing but laughter, loud excited conversations and plenty of banter. It was a reunion they would all remember fondly for a very long time.
Lucy spent the next day with Calisto, catching up on the female perspective of the boys and life at Quantum. She’d been excited to see her friend whom she’d grown so close to. There was a special bond between them that clearly showed. It was almost a sisterly love, and she knew that Calisto felt it too and that she dearly missed being involved, and, just like Carlton and the rest of the Smarties, she missed having her around.
Calisto always added something special that they all felt and somehow the group didn’t really feel complete without her. Lucy knew her friend well enough to know that she felt the same. It came through in
their conversations, which began to weigh heavily on her mind.
Calisto was still unaware of the plans to build a spacecraft, and, although Lucy desperately wanted to tell her, she knew that decision would be Carlton’s alone, so she reluctantly had to bite her lip.
She would, however, talk to Carlton about it at the first opportunity.
***
Anton had asked Carlton and Haru to disassemble his flat laser and bring it with them. In its component parts, it was just a pile of nondescript machinery that looked like nothing special and would even stand up to inspection. The mine had several worked-out tunnels that would be the perfect place to run a proper series of trials.
While Anton was reassembling the laser and setting it up for calibration, the others were working with Miles on the final stages of the PMG installation and the alterations to the refining processes, so that as the PMGs kicked in, the upgraded system would also start.
Three days later, Anton was ready to start his laser trials. He would wait until the PMG upgrades were operational and functioning as designed, then the Smarties could help him.
On the following day, all the checks were complete, and it was just a matter of throwing a series of switches to start the PMGs’ power flow and cut the existing supply. Miles had configured the changeover to take place over a ten-minute period, swapping the feeds over at ten percent per minute intervals. This would allow them to monitor the transition for faults or anomalies without interrupting production.
Miles looked nervous as he threw the first switch and engaged the cross over the program. He needn’t have worried. After ten minutes, the new power source was quietly humming and operating perfectly. Fully powered, the mine was only using forty-five percent of the PMGs’ capacity. They had done it! The mine was now fully independent of external power requirements, and the ore-refining upgrades had seamlessly morphed into the cycle.
All that was needed now was to run a twenty-four-hour monitoring shift between them over a seven day period as a final check that the new system remained steady and consistent and continued to perform with faultless reliability.
That evening, Calisto and her father, Wikus, had asked to see Carlton before dinner. When Carlton had told them of the success, and what the new production figures would be, Wikus took a moment to talk privately with Calisto in the next room.
Carlton could just hear them going through the figures followed by a loud “woohoo” from Calisto. When they came back into the room, Wikus bottom-lined things and informed him that the new production processes would be so efficient that they would more than double what was currently being produced, but without their massive costs. The savings and additional yield would reflect in trebling the mine’s profit margin, so if Calisto agreed, then he would happily increase Carlton’s fee to $12,000,000 per annum, plus all the iridium he could use—as, even then, the mine would still be twice as profitable as it was before.
Carlton was lost for words, but both Calisto and her father took it that he was happy with the news.
That night, as Carlton lay awake in bed, all he could think about was the fact that he had achieved another milestone for Quantum. They had secured their first revenues, which would give them $1,000,000 a month to use on further projects. He slept very well that night.
***
William had been volunteered to take the first monitoring shift which had started the next day, while Calisto’s mother Evelyn had taken Calisto and Lucy off to pay a visit to her brother, Calisto’s Uncle Roger. He was also a mine owner and had a larger but far less successful operation that was about 125 miles away in a difficult location.
Calisto had explained that she was always keen to see her uncle and would never miss an opportunity to visit. On this occasion, though, she wanted to sound him out, to see if she could finally help him streamline his operation by having Carlton and the Smarties give him the same upgrades as her mine now had. They planned to stay, giving them plenty of opportunities to discuss it.
Miles had constructed a rotating circular frame to centrally hold Anton’s flat laser. They needed a way to measure how far into the rock the laser would penetrate. The ring-shaped frame would allow them to make a complete 360 degree cut as the laser’s flat beam slowly rotated and vaporized the rock face.
Anton was standing at the power controls with Haru monitoring the readouts, and Miles was operating the manual rotation. As Carlton completed the final checks, he said, “We had better mask up for this. If the rock face vaporizes as we think it will then there’s going to be some considerable gas ejection.”
Fortunately, breathing masks were plentiful in the mine, and it was well ventilated. Once the Smarties were all through with their Darth Vader impressions, Carlton gave the signal for Anton to power up the laser to 30 percent. When the dials steadied, the laser’s flat beam was engaged. It lit up the tunnel with a strong red beam that had a slight multicolored shimmer. Almost immediately, a loud high-pitched hissing sound caused the Smarties to wince.
The tunnel was entombed in thick billowing clouds of smoke that assumed a deathly glow as it billowed off the rock face. It took Miles fifteen seconds to complete one full rotation of the laser, at which point he shouted, “Stop!”
Immediately Anton disengaged the beam, and the tunnel fell into darkness, the tunnel lighting unable to pierce through the thick haze. Even the proficient ventilation system struggled to clear the tunnel, but after four minutes the lights became visible and eventually the gases were evacuated.
The Smarties stood speechless, looking at the dark hole that was before them. Anton moved to peer inside and said, “Pass me a flashlight.”
Haru handed him a powerful torch which failed to illuminate the end of the hole.
Carlton disengaged the PMG and went to study the inside walls of the five-foot diameter hole.
“This is fantastic,” he said excitedly. “Absolute precision, just look how it’s sliced through the rock like butter! We need to see how far it has penetrated.”
Haru was peering down the hole. “The atmosphere is far too gaseous in there to use a laser measure. We need a blower. Even then, I doubt it would get very far. Someone is going to have to go in!”
Miles said, “That could be one hell of a crawl, and we’ll need full breathing apparatus.”
Carlton said, “Okay, let’s get the most powerful blower we can find, I know Calisto’s equipment store will have some. They’re used a lot at the cutting face. Miles, can you rig up a rolling sled that will work in the hole, preferably motorized and reversible?”
“Yep,” said Miles enthusiastically, “it’ll take me a couple of hours, but that should give the blowers a chance to clear some of the gases.”
“Great,” said Carlton. “Haru, can you relieve William for an hour? I want him to see this.”
Haru and Miles set off straight away. Carlton was still amazed and continued looking closely at the hole’s inner walls.
Anton said, “At least we can see that the first twenty feet of rock has gone. Hopefully, it will be considerably more.”
Carlton peered into the haze. “Even if that was all it was, twenty feet of tunneling through this hard stuff in fifteen seconds is incredible. What we have to figure out is how wide we can make the beam without loss of efficiency.”
“Well, we were only at 30 percent power and don’t forget this is just the first prototype, I’m certain we can increase the beam’s width and power after a few modifications. It may only be a small amount as I’ve already pushed the boundaries pretty much as far as possible.”
Carlton had a serious expression. “This has incredible potential, and I know it will give us the means to fully fund the spacecraft, but can you imagine what would happen if this was ever weaponized?”
Anton shrugged his shoulders and, seeing the worry creeping over Carlton, he said, “Look, Carlton, every single thing we do at Quantum carries that threat. Maybe it’s more apparent with the laser, as it could be devastating. As it is, it would
n’t take much to make it a full-on weapon and any sniff of something this powerful will definitely have every government and agency on the planet doing everything in their power to get it. That’s a certainty, so we, in turn, must do everything we can to prevent that from ever happening. It’s something we will have with us every step of the way, and it’s bound to become even more of an issue the further along we get.”
William had arrived as Anton was speaking. Haru had filled him in, and he picked up on Carlton’s concerns. Standing between them and peering down the hole, he said, “Wow, now that is a hole! And don’t worry too much about Quantum’s secrets being weaponized. You are both right to be concerned, but, fortunately, it’s something that I realized from the moment I first laid eyes on Anton’s laser and figured out what it might be capable of. Since then, I’ve been working on an idea for further down the line to protect us.”
Carlton said, “You’re talking about developing this as the tunnel boring machine we spoke of as a revenue source?”
“Yes, partially that,” said William, “but with the revenues that we’ll generate, and I am talking about literally billions of dollars here, we need to be seriously off the grid, I mean real James Bond off the grid. Let’s face it, just the Quantum bank account alone is going to draw too much attention.”
Carlton knew he was right. The more they accomplished, the more they were at risk of exposure.
“What do you suggest?” he asked.
William hopped up to sit in the mouth of the hole to face them. “Quantum current base is the one that will eventually be seen. No matter how low a profile we adopt there, it can be found. So it needs to operate above board and as a front company with nothing associated with our research or discoveries present in any way shape or form. The real Quantum and everything about it, including its wealth, operation, the discoveries, the research, and the spacecraft build, must be away from any jurisdiction, impregnable and completely out of sight.”
