Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (30 page)

“Way to go!” Dex exclaimed, admiring the large swimmer. “That’ll make a good dinner!”

Syrdian smiled happily at Dex. “Did you find us a cave?”

“No. I’ve been trying to figure out how we might build a shelter amongst those big rocks up in the meadow.”

Syrdian let hies wings sag sadly, waving
hies
head in disappointment, “I guess I just have to do everything,” hie sighed.

Dex’s head rose
indignantly
up and back
.
After all I’ve done!
Then
hie
realized that Syrdian’s wings were quivering with laughter.

Syrdian said, “Behind you.”

Dex’s back eyes picked up the large shadowed area before hie turned
hies
fore eyes to see the
shallow
cave cut back under the rocky bank hie’d just walked down. Grinning
,
hie
turned and beat a wingful of air at Syrdian. “Way to go
again
. Dinner
and
a place to stay. A good day’s work I’d say.”

Syrdian stretched, “Ah yes,
and
now I’m all tired out. Perhaps you’d fetch some firewood while I rest up?”

Dex laughed and sent another wingful of air Syrdian’s way. “OK.” Hie beat back into the air
and flew
to the verge
looking
for deadfall.

When Dex returned to the cave by the stream
,
Syrdian had broken
down
the swimmer
Dex
’d watched Syrdian catch
,
as well as
two smaller ones that hie’d apparently caught before Dex had arrived.
Dex looked around. “Looks like I should get some green sticks to cook
with
. Anything else?
”

“More firewood.”

***

Dr. Fladwami felt quite proud of the conference he’d arranged
at
President Flood’s direction.
The companies he’d invited had
presented
a number of strategies that they were proposing to use to further diminish greenhouse gas creation or to increase removal of the
gasses
from the atmosphere.

One thing that had surprised him was how many of the new strategies presented depended to some extent on the new ports created by Donsaii’s company D5R.
This included
plans
for the
capture of methane, to burn it for energy instead of allowing its release
. O
ne company
actually did believe
that each cow could be fitted with a
flatus catching
port. Fladwami’s
e
yebrows had risen at this proposal and he
still
seriously doubted that cattle would tolerate the device they
had
proposed but,
he wasn’t sure
. The transportation industr
ies
all had plans to deliver electricity to motors in cars, trucks, boats, ships, airplanes and helicopters directly via wires passed through ports. Of course that only passed the CO
2
problem to the
power companies. Admittedly
,
the big power companies
were more efficient
and produced less CO
2
than
a hydrocarbon burning motor
in each
vehicle did,
but there would still be a lot of CO
2
production going on.

However, p
orts were even going to
figure
in carbon sequestration projects.
Weighted ports dropped into deep-sea formations could inject CO
2
into basalt where CO
2
hydrates would sink, keeping them from escaping.

Well, with the exception of those wind and water powered projects. Wind and water power were nice
,
but expensive and couldn’t provide a very
large
percentage of the energy that we use
,
so Fladwami
didn’t feel very enthusiastic about
them. The administration would support them because of politics but not because they believed they would significantly change things.

Fladwami
was looking fo
rward to the next talk though. It was t
o be given b
y Donsaii’s associate Emmerit. F
ladwami wondered whether they were going to run with his suggestion to export CO
2
to
space somehow.
If so, he hoped that they had a plan to store it somehow
. Then
if needed
someday
,
the carbon and oxygen
somehow
could be ret
riev
ed to earth?

Emmerit and
the young girl assisting him
had wheeled a small table to the front of the room and put it up on the podium before this session. It had some coiled piping on each side of what looked like some kind of pump hooked up to an electric motor. He wondered what
the device
could
show
that couldn’t be more easily demonstrated with a few slides.

The previous speaker left the podium and the moderator introduced Emmerit. As he approached
,
he pushed the table up beside the podium where everyone in the small auditorium could see it
,
then turned to the microphone. “We appreciate the invitation to present our own contribution to
the
modification of
the energy-CO
2
axis. Since this is the last talk of the session you should all be able to come up and examine this… apparatus after I’m done speaking. It is a fairly simple and pretty crude ‘proof of concept’ device. We are certain
significant
improvements can be made by qualified engineers. Essentially on your left you see a tubing coil. What you can’t see is that
inside
that coil is an interior coil that is connected via small ports to a black tube we’ve placed in a near solar orbit
.
There,
the
high
incidence of solar radiation
will
maintain the temperature
of a black
body
at about 315 degrees Centigrade. That’s about 650 degrees Fahrenheit for those of you more comfortable with that system
. A ‘heat transfer fluid’ can be circulated through the solar tube then back through the tube here.” He turned a switch, “I’m initiating pumping now. The outer tube
here is filled with water. That water is
now being converted to steam
by the heat from the
transfer
fluid and…” he pointed to the pump/motor, “beginning to turn this small steam turbine which in turn is turning th
is
generator.”

Fladwami sat up straighter, realizing that he’d had it backwards.
He could see it beginning to spin.
It
wasn’t a motor to turn a pump. I
t was a generator being turned by a turbine!

Emmerit continued. “
Thus,
this
device is generating electricity from ‘solar energy’ without producing any CO
2
.
Additionally, r
ather than exhaust
ing the spent steam
out where it would
heat
the
planet, th
at
steam
is then
circulat
ing
into this tubing over here on your right. This
second
tubing has a
tube in it
through which a low temperature heat transfer fluid is being pumped. This
second
fluid goes through a finned pipe out in
‘
deep space
’
beyond most of the asteroids. We’ve chosen that orbit because a black body there receives enough solar radiation to maintain a temperature of about minus 100 Centigrade. That’s warm enough that our low temperature heat transfer fluid doesn’t freeze even if we aren’t pumping fluid through the pipe. But it’s still cold enough to quickly
re-condens
e
the
steam into
water to be r
ecirculated back to the engine.”

Emmerit looked back up at the audience. “This little demonstration model
is pretty inefficient
,
but
it still
generates about five kilowatts. Ideally it should be able to produce nearly ten times that.” He shrugged, “It needs a good engineer to optimize it
, especially the fluid flows
.
However, e
ven poorly optimized, it is producing five kilowatts without producing CO
2
or heat.

“I’m sure you recognize that electrical generation is only one possible use. The shaft from the steam engine could be used to directly drive wheels or ot
herwise power machines directly
.

“Also,
of course,
heat transfer could
be used directly to
heat or cool homes and buildings…” Emmerit stopped speaking as
the
initially stunned audience broke into
pandemonium.
Some people were cheering. Some were angrily protesting something they could see would break their companies
and destroy their livelihoods
. Many were rushing the exits, presumably to call their corporate headquarters.

Fladwami
stood uncertainly. After a day and a half of presentations on small incremental improvements in the way we use fossil fuels to generate power and energy with slightly diminished production
s
of greenhouse gasses… Donsaii’s group was going to produce power,
heating
and
cooling, without using fossil fuels
at all
. Not only weren’t they going to produce greenhouse gasses doing it, but they were going to
do it
without producing excess heat!
He walked down
toward the front,
wanting to speak to Emmerit
.
For a moment h
e wondered
where Donsaii was, she’d promised him she’d be here.

Damn! The girl who’d been helping
Emmerit
wheel things in and set
them
up
was
Donsaii! She had been wearing a baseball cap but her reddish blond hair could be seen
as a fringe
sticking out from under
it
and he should have recognized her. She just looked so young! The crowd had gathered around Emmerit, apparently
too excited to recognize
Donsaii
either. He walked over to where she
bemusedly
watched Emmerit trying to handle the crowd of excited people. “Hello, Ms. Donsaii. I’m Kant Fladwami, thank you for coming. I’m reminded of my predecessor Chip Horton’s admonition that I should try to stay abreast of what you are doing
at all times
. I cannot believe that
, after his warning,
I
still failed to
ask you what you were going to present to us today.
”

“Well, in retrospect it seems like a pretty obvious extension of the use of port technology. But like many brilliant ideas it only seems obvious now that Dr. Emmerit realized it could be done. He’s licensing the technology to
‘
ET
R
esources
’
who plans to place the heat transfer tubes into near solar and deep space orbits and then sell the “heat” or the “cold” to users here on Earth.”

Fladwami shook his head. “You realize that you made most of the other talks at this conference irrelevant?”

“Oh, no sir. It is going to take quite a while to roll this tech out and we’ll need those things in the meantime.”

Fladwami’s eyes narrowed, “Why would it take quite a while? It seems to use ports
,
which you have well worked out
and heat transfer fluids
which are an established technology
. The steam turbine technology is very mature once you’ve created the steam
,
and pumping the hot or cold fluid through air conditioning coils shouldn’t take much engineering.”

“Ah. Because it’
s going to destroy the petroleum industry and I think we should let them down easy
.
As with the other new technologies resulting from ports
,
I think i
t
should be
releas
ed
slowly. I’m hoping President Flood’s administration will provide us with an extension on the patent, like President Teller’s people did for ports themselves—so that our investors
will
be willing to release it slowly?”