Tiona (a sequel to "Vaz") (16 page)

***

Zack sighed in frustration. Ralph had sunk one of their conical heaters into one of the large collections of ice while Zack had disconnected the feeder hose from the big ion engine and was pointing it at the frozen clamp still holding their spacecraft Bellerphon to the big ion engine. He’d been blowing the warm gas at the fitting now for about twenty minutes. It wasn’t really warm, just a lot warmer than the ambient temperature of space around Kadoma.

He moved a little further around the junction to play his stream of gas on the junction from a different angle. He’d noticed the gas condensing and freezing on various surfaces of the spacecraft and the engine and kept telling himself that a little frost wouldn’t hurt anything. He reached up and shoved on the spacecraft.

Rather than the rigid resistance he’d been feeling every time before, he thought it gave a little! “Ralph! This might be working!” He moved a little further around, checked where the gas was going and reached up to shove again. Again he felt a little give and then with a bang he could feel through his gloved hand Bellerphon gave way and floated free. “Ralph!” he shouted, “we’ve got her loose! Turn off the heat and get on back here.”

Zack grabbed on to the frame of the big engine and tugged gently on one of the tethers they had attached to be sure Bellerphon didn’t float away from Kadoma. Next he took the end of the hose he’d been using to heat the clamp and reconnected it to the big ion engine.

Over the next couple of hours, Zack and Ralph securely strapped Bellerphon and the asteroid to each other. The next morning they would see if the big ion engine would work.

Back inside Bellerphon, Zack checked back in with Houston. “We’ve finally managed to separate the Bellerphon module from the engine. Abbott’s idea to warm it with gas from the heater was successful.”

After a few seconds for the transmission to go back and forth, Sophie’s voice came on the response, “Oh Ralph, I’ve always known you were a genius. Why did you have to run off with Zack?”

“Sophie!” they said excitedly. Ralph continued, “What are you doing at the comm center?”

“Well, you know how you two have been bitching at each other like an old married couple? The people here in the comm center have been getting so tired of listening to it that they asked for volunteers to deal with the two of you. I didn’t really want to listen to it either, but you know what a kind soul I am.”

Zack said, “Sophie, I’ve had my marriage to Ralph annulled! He never consummated, so the church declared it invalid. So, the way’s clear for me to propose to you Sophie. I know you can’t tell it over this link, but I’m on one knee. I don’t have a ring either, but I’ve just acquired this 3.6 kiloton rock?”

Sophie laughed, “Oh Zack, you say the
sweetest
things!”

***

Tiona’s AI said, “You have a call from Dr. Eisner.”

Tiona said, “I’ll take it… Hello Dr. Eisner, have you had any other ideas on how to explain the thrust phenomenon?”

Eisner said, “No, I just finished talking to Dr. Weitzel. He hasn’t thought of a way to disprove your dark matter hypothesis either. However, he’d like to send some of your disks up to a high altitude. Based on the theory that dark matter and normal matter do interact by gravity he believes that there should be more dark matter wherever there’s a high concentration of normal matter. If one kind of matter generates a significant gravity well, the other kind of matter should gather in that area. Therefore, there should be more dark matter down here at the Earth’s surface than there is up in the stratosphere. Assuming you don’t object, he wants to send some of your disks up with a high altitude balloon to test the hypothesis that they should produce less thrust up there.”

“So he’s rejecting my idea that it will produce the same amount of thrust, no matter the density of the dark matter because it will simply accelerate the dark matter to a higher velocity?”

Eisner gave a little laugh, “Well, it does seem a little unrealistic to think that your disks could accelerate dark matter to relativistic speeds in just a centimeter! But, we should certainly be testing such an idea by experiment. Of course, we don’t really know that dark matter is less concentrated at high altitudes, but it seems reasonable to postulate that and to test the idea experimentally.”

Tiona gave a small laugh of her own, “Yeah, even I think
that
idea is crazy; I just haven’t been able to come up with a better one. By all means, we should test it. Would you like me to work on setting up a self-contained experiment that will measure and record the thrust from a disc as its altitude increases?”

“Sure, then Weitzel can focus on trying to get us a ride on a balloon.”

“Wouldn’t it be better to get it on an orbital mission?”

“Sure, but, as I’m sure you recognize, the expense of an orbital mission is astronomical. We aren’t going to be able to get grant funding for a mission like that without a
lot
of preliminary data.”

Tiona headed down the stairs into the basement, “Dad?”

There was no response, Tiona walked around the basement to be sure her dad wasn’t hidden behind some of the equipment. She had been fairly certain that he hadn’t come up out of the basement when she’d been upstairs, but he must have. Speaking to her AI, she said, “Connect me to…” She didn’t finish the request as her eye had caught on a door at the back of the basement that was ajar. She didn’t remember that door from when she lived at home, but there seemed to be a light on the other side of it. She walked over and pushed it open, thinking that it might be some kind of storage room.

The room she stepped into was enormous! It held more lab benches and a
lot
more equipment. She stepped back through the door and looked up at the ceiling of the lab she’d always known, trying to picture their house above. She felt fairly certain that the door was in the wall underneath the western edge of their house which would mean that the door entered a large space that was completely out from under the house!

Stepping back into the new space she tried to estimate distances.
This looks like it goes all the way over to the Johnson’s house! In fact, it looks like it goes under the Johnson’s house! How can that be?
Tiona started walking through this extension of her dad’s lab. The first part of it looked like new construction; then there was a very large area that looked like a remodel of an old basement.
Is this the Johnson’s basement?!
“Dad?” she called out again.

Still no response. Tiona saw a set of stairs leading up. She went to the bottom of those stairs and peered up. The door at the top was ajar, just like the door between the two labs had been ajar. Slowly she climbed the stairs, listening for the sounds of the Johnsons going about their lives.

Not wanting to simply burst out into the Johnson’s kitchen, or wherever the stairs entered their house, Tiona called out once again, “Dad? Anybody?”

A second later she heard her dad’s voice, somewhat distant, say, “Tiona, I’m in the garage. Come on in.” His voice came from the other side of the door leading out of the basement. She pushed the door open slowly and found herself in what had evidently been the Johnson’s kitchen. Not any longer, evidently. The kitchen counters were serving as additional lab benches. She could see a toaster and a microwave but the rest of the counter space was covered with scales, centrifuges, and other scientific equipment. The dining room was stacked with boxes labeled with the names of various scientific equipment and supply companies!

To Tiona’s left there was a laundry room and another door standing slightly ajar which looked like it probably led into the Johnson’s garage. Stepping that way, she tentatively called out again, “Dad?”

This time she heard him clearly from the other side of that door. He sounded distracted as he said once again, “In the garage.”

Tiona pushed the door open and leaned through. Her dad was kneeling at one side of the Johnson’s enormous garage door holding the reel of a big tape measure which stretched across to the other side of the door. “What are you doing?”

“Measuring the garage door,” he said matter-of-factly.

Tiona looked around; the garage was almost completely empty. It certainly didn’t look like a garage where someone lived. It looked more like the garage in a house that was for sale. “Where are the Johnsons?”

Vaz had rolled up the tape measure and had begun measuring the height of the garage door. “They moved to Tennessee,” he said.

Tiona took another look around the garage, “And you’ve just moved your stuff into their house?! What are the new owners going to think?” As soon as Tiona said it, she remembered the room that connected the Johnson’s basement to the Gettnor’s.
Obviously,
she thought
, he didn’t just move junk into their house, he had that connection built…

Before Tiona could completely process that thought about the connection, Vaz said, “I bought their house.” He shrugged, “I needed more lab space.”

“And you had someone dig the connection from the one basement to the other?”

“Uh-huh, can you hold the tape against the back wall of the garage?” He held the tip of the measuring tape out to her.

Tiona took the tape and walked across the garage to the back wall, “Don’t the neighbors wonder about this house being empty?”

“I don’t know. Maybe?” Vaz said disinterestedly. “I think they believe that the owner is some rich guy who only stays in Raleigh occasionally. Has Dr. Weitzel gotten back to you about the dark matter hypothesis yet?”

Tiona laughed to herself. The owner was certainly rich, but he essentially never left Raleigh. “Dr. Weitzel wants to send some of our discs up in a high altitude balloon.” She went on to explain to Vaz about Weitzel’s ideas on dark matter density and altitude.

Vaz glanced around one more time; then walked out of the garage and back into the house.

Tiona followed.

As Vaz started down the stairs into the basement underneath the Johnson’s house, he said, “Why use a balloon when you have a thruster that could lift your experiment up to that altitude all by itself?”

Tiona blinked, “Surely you don’t think your fuel cells will have enough energy to lift that disc into the stratosphere?”

Vaz turned to her, eyes first registering confusion, then widening a little in surprise. “Oh, no. No, the one meter disc is too small and batteries don’t have enough energy. We’ll just build a bigger disc that can carry a small fusion plant. With the fusion plant on board, we can fly it as high as we want for as long as we need.”

They were back in Vaz’s usual lab in the basement of the Gettnor’s house. Vaz sat down in front of his big screen where Tiona saw a schematic of a disk. Tiona’s eyes narrowed, “Wait a minute,” she was thinking about the shielding that even a small fusion plant needed. “How big a disk are you talking about?”

Vaz had been murmuring to his AI. Distractedly, he said, “Huh?”

“This big disc with a fusion plant. How big are you thinking it needs to be?”

“Oh… That’s why I was measuring the Johnson’s garage. It’s a huge three-car garage and it’ll hold a disc twenty-seven feet, or eight meters in diameter. They used to park an RV in it so it’s really tall too.”

“Holy crap Dad! You aren’t thinking about building one that size in the Johnson’s garage are you?”

“Umhmm,” he agreed, giving little attention to the conversation he was having with Tiona as he focused on his screens.

“Dad!” Tiona said, grabbing his shoulder and giving it a little shake. This got little response, so she slowly started turning his chair around.

For a moment, as she rotated his chair, his eyes and then his head rotated to stay fixed on his screens. When she had turned him far enough that he could no longer see his screens she had the impression that something snapped. For a moment he looked angry, then as his eyes focused on Tiona, his expression softened. “What?”

“You’re really planning to build a disk big enough to fill the Johnson’s three-car garage?!”

Vaz simply nodded.

“And you’re planning to power this with one of your fusion plants?!”

He nodded again.

“And you’re going to use this disc to lift an experiment up into the stratosphere to do Dr. Weitzel’s test?” Tiona asked disbelievingly.

Vaz tilted his head and gave a little shrug, “Well, that and other things.”

Tiona drew her head back in dismay, “
What
other things?!”

Vaz frowned, “It’ll be able to go well beyond the stratosphere you know?” His eyes lost focus for a moment, then he said, “Unless, of course, there’s a lot less dark matter up there and our theory about acceleration is wrong. Then we might not have enough thrust to get out to orbit.

Wide eyed, Tiona stared at her father. She didn’t know what to say and when she didn’t say anything for a minute, Vaz turned slowly back to his screens. A couple of moments later he had resumed murmuring to his AI. Her eyes rose slowly to the screen.

There was a flying saucer on it!

Tiona stood there in stunned silence for several minutes watching her father manipulate elements on what appeared to be a CAD/CAM drawing. Several times she started to interrupt him, but remembered how angry he’d been when she’d interrupted him before. Finally she turned for the stairs and headed up;
I think I’ll talk to Mom about this.