Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6) (7 page)

Syrdian’s parents approached Qes. Deltain heard them ask, “… seen Syrdian?”

Qes waved hies head in negation and the parents, wings drooping, returned to their vigil, looking out over the enormous valley below.

As Qes and hies parents moved back into the cave
Deltain approached
. “Did you maybe see Dex out there today?” hie asked.

Qes glanced at Deltain
, appearing startled,
then again waved hies head in negation.

Deltain returned to hies vigil at the front of the cave thinking how unlikely it would have been that Dex and Qes would have encountered one another. Hie racked
hies
memories, trying to remember if Dex had told himr where hie was going when hie left that morning.

***

Allan,
Ell’s AI
(Artificial Intelligence)
said, “You have a call from
Kant
Fladwami
PhD., President Flood’s science advisor.”

Ell stood up from the table where she and Roger had been looking at some of the components for the next TC3 rocket, “I’ll be back
in a sec
Rog’.” To her Allan, her AI she said, “Put him on. Yes
,
Dr.
Fladwami
?”

“Hello, Ms. Donsaii. Chip Horton, my predecessor here
in the President’s Science Advisor’s office s
uggested that I get to know you. Something about, ‘not knowing what you were doing’ being a frequent source of embarrassment.”

Ell laughed, “I don’t think that
’s
really
true
,
Doctor.”

“Nonetheless I thought I’d check in to see if you had any new technology that was about to turn our entire economy upside down?”

“No sir.”

“Nothing exciting happening at D5R anymore?”

“Well, e
xciting things are happening, but they shouldn’t really impact the economy.”

Fladwami chuckled
“
Are you
telling me I don’t have
a
‘need to know?’”

Ell laughed again, liking
Fladwami
a lot already. “I guess you
could
say that
,
Doctor.”

“OK, the President
also asked me to find out why nothing seems to be happening with putting your ‘ports’ into action out there in the real world. Our understanding from Horton was that you were going to try to slow down the release of that tech some so that there wouldn’t be too many economic upheavals. But we’re surprised that we don’t seem to be hearing
anything
about it so far?”

“Uh, yes sir. Outgoing Transportation Secretary
Bayless
was vehemently opposed to the release of that tech, so the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration has been refusing us licenses except for space portals so far. We’re hoping that the new Secretary will get them to loosen up a little. We’ve made all
the
applications as required and they haven’t told us that anything is wrong with the app
lications that we need
to fix, just that ‘approval is pending.’”

“Really?”

“Yes sir.”

“Well that’s just the kind of government interference with private enterprise that President Flood campaigned on. I’ll bring
that
to the Secretary’s attention for you.”

“Thank you
,
sir.”

“You’ll let me know if anything else world changing is about to pop out of your labs?”

“Yes sir. I may be calling to tell you about something that won’t change the economy
,
but is still scientifically important?”

Fladwami
raised his eyebrows.
He wondered
what that could be. “You do that
… Next item on my agenda, the President has asked me to invite you to the White House for a personal meeting next week. Would you be able to come up?
”

“He’s my Commander in Chief. Of course I can come. Is there something in particular on the agenda that I should prepare for?”

“No preparation needed. Would Thursday evening, dinner at the White House,
6:30 PM
be satisfactory?”

“Yes sir. Just show up?”

“Well,” he laughed, “Wear something nice, the dinners tend to be formal.”

“Yes sir.”

***

Disconnected,
Fladwami
leaned back in his chair. It was hard to reconcile the respectful young voice on the other end of that call with what Horton—and he had to agree—had called ‘the greatest scientific mind in of the century.’ Well, Horton, had said ‘of all time,’
but
Fladwami
wasn’t sure about that yet. He shrugged,
that might well be true too…

***

Ell turned to go back to her Quantum Tech group but found Wilson Daster standing between her and the rest of the group. She raised her eyebrows. He said, “I’m afraid I have some bad news.”

Ell closed her eyes. “You’ve found someone diddling the books?”
she sighed.

“Yeah.”

She laughed hollowly, “Well
,
I guess this isn’t as bad as when you called to tell me that a
comet was going to wipe all of us out?
”

“No
t
quite
that bad, no
.”

***

Dex woke in the night to find the fire out. H
i
e heard snarling
and snapping
from the direction of the talor’s carcass. When h
i
e got up
,
Syrdian’s voice came out of the stygian darkness, “Where are you going?”

“To restart the fire.” Dex got up and felt around for the firewood
. A meteor
fireball
streaked over
,
starkly lighting the area for a moment. With the wood and the fire’s locations fixed in hies mind hie quickly found several sticks and stirred through the fire until
the motion
activated a few coals. The sticks caught and Dex moved some more wood close by. Hie looked out into the darkness and saw the eyes of some nocturnal creature looking back at himr. Hie shivered and lay down, closer to the fire this time.
After all h
e would have to add wood frequently.

***

“OK,” Ell said, looking around. “The test ports still functioned after we sterilized them with chlorine dioxide. So each of us need to look over the plans again to be sure there are no cavities inside the TC3 rocket that are closed off, we want the chlorine dioxide to be able to get into every area. Dr. Norris, your ethanol-peroxide rocket engines are working fine. I’m confident that we’ve protected TC3 from Earth microorganisms. I’m still worried about backflow from TC3 to Earth, especially through the attitude jets that we usually just blow gas through. Firing and killing ethanol-peroxide rockets doesn’t happen fast enough to give us the fine control we’re used to
for attitude
.
”

Roger
said, “I’ve been worrying about that too
,
and I have a suggestion that I think is doable with port tech?”

They all turned to him. “
You
put a long pipe out in space through a port. I’m talking hundreds of meters. It has a port at one end that we put compressed air into from down here. At the other end
you
put a series of ports that go to the attitude jets. Then we wrap the Earth end of the pipe with heating elements that we use to keep the 20 meters closest to earth at about 500
0
C. That is far, far beyond the temperature that an
y earth spores can survive at. P
resumably
it would sterilize
any TC3 organisms too. So air flows in one end, gets heat sterilized in that first 20 meters, then flows down to the cold end of the pipe where it cools back down. Anything back-flowing through the port at the TC3 end would have to pass through the hot end before it could get back here to earth.
You
put the pipe into a decaying orbit
around
the sun so that, after we’re done with it, if it
were
contaminated
with something bad
,
no one could pick it up and accidentally encounter any TC3 microorganisms.”

Roger said, “We could ‘black’ the hot end and ‘mirror’ the cold end so that the sun would help us keep one end hot and the other end cool. I’d also suggest that we make it so that we can heat 40 meters when we’re expecting to use the jets and only 10 meters between jet uses. Then we can be sure that nothing from this end might move through the hot section so fast that it doesn’t get killed.”

They added to the list of instruments they wanted on the rocket and finally included
one
of Ben Stavos’ mechanical arms and a port behind a glass window that they could shine light through at night or use to fire lasers through, ablating materials for spectroscopic analysis. That port was a double port with the intermediate section on the “space pipe” and filled with toxic gas.

Wilson Daster suggested that every port to the TC3 rocket have an intermediary on the space pipe
, if possible in the hot end
.

Eventually, h
appy with the design
,
they all divided up to order materials and
design
the machining of parts.

Ell reluctantly headed back to the offices.
Wilson
caught up to her, “Do you want me to be the bad guy? I’ve done it before and I don’t know her like you do.”

Ell looked at him, sorely tempted. “No. I actually don’t want people to know what your secondary task is. Don’t want them trying to ‘work around you.’ And, believe it or not, I might not fire her.”

Daster’s eyebrows went up. “
You’re kidding, s
he’s been stealing from you!”

“She’s a great employee.” Ell shrugged, “I think she deserves a second chance.”

“
Okaaay
.” Daster shrugged, “You’re the boss.”

Ell knocked on Sheila’s doorframe and Sheila looked up saying
brightly, “Come
on
in Bosslady.”

Ell entered her office, closed the door and sat down, then she just stared at Sheila.

A minute passed while the blood drained from Sheila’s face, then she crumpled, “I’m so sorry,” she gasped, “so sorry. I’ll be packed up in a minute.”

Ell said, “What do you think I should do?”

“You
should
c
all the police. I’m hoping against hope that you’ll settle for just firing me… I don’t know what’s
wrong
with me. I love working here. You’re paying me more than anyone else ever would. My shares…” She blinked rapidly, then grabbed for a Kleenex.

Intently focused on Sheila Ell said, “I’ll bet this isn’t the first time?”

Sheila blew her nose, “First time I’ve gotten caught.”

“So if we fired you, you’d probably just wind up preying on your next employer.”

“I hope not. Course, I probably,” she choked a little, “probably I wouldn’t be able to get another job.”

“Sheila, you’ve been a great employee. Probably one of the most important
people we’ve had to
making all of D5R work. I don’t want to ruin your life. I don’t want to send you out there to prey on someone else. So I’m going to offer you a chance to stay here…”

Sheila’s eyes widened and she stared at Ell.

“But, I suspect you have a personality disorder that compels you to do these kinds of things
. Will you
seek treatment?”

Sheila nodded spastically, gulping.

“And you have to be aware
now
that we’ve got systems in place to catch you if you do it again?”

Sheila nodded again.

“And you need to return everything you took, plus 10%?”

“I will, Thank you,
”
she whispered

Ell nodded and got up. “I
thought
of you as a friend, and
I
still do. I hope you don’t make me regret this.”

“No Ma’am.”

When Ell got back to her office, Roger was waiting for her, “Hey, who shot your dog?”