A Pause in Space-Time

by Laurence Dahners

  ~~~

  Arya felt bad about leaving Kaem in the dorm while Harris was downstairs. It seemed unlikely that Harris would follow him into the private living areas so he was probably safe, and she was going to be cutting it close getting to the dojo. This afternoon she was supposed to test for her shodan black belt and her sensei would not be amused if she were late.

  Her step faltered. One of the basic tenets of her dojo was to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. Could there be a better reason for me to be late for my test than that I needed to protect Kaem? In fact, couldn’t I be criticized for rushing off to the dojo to take my test rather than fulfilling that responsibility?

  She stopped and turned around. As she started back, she saw Harris crossing the quad in front of the dorm.

  He was on his way out of the area.

  I guess I don’t have to decide, she thought gratefully, turning to hurry on toward the training facility.

  ~~~

  As Harris drove away from the campus, he thought, Well, that’s that. I gave it my best shot and… Wait… Harris felt like little sparks of electricity were shooting back and forth in his brain. Sometimes he got great ideas when that happened.

  Ah! If I hired a PI, he could follow this Kaem Seba guy around and find out who he meets with. In fact, we can call Seba and tell him we’ve got a hard copy of the testing results ready. We’ll tell him to pick it up at the lab so there’s no possibility someone might skim an electronic copy off the Internet.

  The PI can latch onto him when he comes out to get the results.

  ***

  Phil Sherman parked at the bike shop across the street from Harris Laboratories. He told his phone’s AI to dial James Harris. When the man picked up, Phil said, “I’m across the street. Let me know what the guy’s driving when he pulls in.”

  Harris said, “Thank God you made it. I’ve been worrying you might miss him.”

  Patiently, Phil said, “I told you I was only ten minutes away. Besides, even if I missed him this afternoon, I’d be able to pick him up some other time. Try to relax.”

  “It’s my party. I’ll worry if I want to,” Harris said truculently.

  “Up to you, but I promise you, I’ll pick him up and tell you everywhere he goes. That’s what a PI does.”

  “I hope so. They tell me last time he was here he came in an Uber. So, whatever vehicle he comes in today, it may not be his long-term ride.”

  “Good to know.”

  Phil settled in to wait, using his rearview mirror to keep an eye on Harris Lab’s parking lot. When some time had passed, he called Harris to make sure there hadn’t been some screw-up with the phone call he was supposed to get.

  Harris told him the kid hadn’t come yet.

  Phil was getting sleepy, so he opened his thermos of coffee.

  It was another two hours, close to closing time for the lab, when Harris called sounding excited. “He just came in. In case you saw him in the parking lot, he’s the skinny, kinda light-skinned African-American kid, probably 5’8”, jeans and an orange UVA T-shirt. Arrived with a good-looking, dark-skinned girl, same height. Short, straight hair, jeans and some kind of stretchy blue top. They came in the blue Nissan parked out front.”

  Harris is really getting into this investigative stuff, Phil thought. Stroking his new employer’s ego, Phil said, “Great description. I’m on it.”

  ~~~

  When they left, Phil followed them to the UVA dorm where Harris said the kid lived. They got out and went into the dorm. The car drove away—not to the parking lot, but back to the street—suggesting it was, as advertised, an Uber.

  Harris’s gonna be pissed the kid didn’t go right to the place they make that stuff, Phil thought, settling in to wait. He called Harris to let him know what was going on. As he’d expected, Harris was unhappy.

  I’d better order a food delivery, he thought, reclining his seat and settling in to wait.

  ***

  Up in Kaem’s room, he and Arya were going over the results sheet Harris Labs had provided. To their relief, Harris himself hadn’t been in evidence. They’d just picked up the envelope containing the results from Cathy, the lab’s admin, and were back out the door in no time.

  Kaem had managed to restrain himself from tearing the envelope open until they were out in the car. He’d only opened it there to be sure they had the results they’d come for. He hadn’t wanted to pay to Uber back to the dorm, then find out they had the wrong data sheet.

  They settled down to really study the report. Arya looked up at him, “So what do these mean? Especially the ones that say ‘tested to limits.’”

  “Easy ones first,” Kaem said. “There, at the top, it’s just giving us ordinary measurements. Telling us that, in fact, the two specimens were 7.49 x 15.01 x 1.09 mm. Not exactly the dimensions we thought they were, but certainly close enough. Also, not surprisingly, that their density was 1 g/cm³, the density of the water in the stades.

  “Next we’ve got the thermal resistance which they recorded as infinite.”

  “Thermal resistance?” Arya asked.

  “A measure of how much heat’s conducted from one side of the plate to the other. You might have heard of the ‘R-value’ which measures the same properties for insulation in buildings.” He looked up at her, “They’re saying that heat doesn’t flow from one side of a stade to the other.” He winked, “Lousy for your frying pans.” He looked back down at the numbers, “But awesome for a lot of other uses!”

  “So,” Arya said thoughtfully, “you’re thinking stades could be used for housing insulation?”

  He looked up at her as if surprised. “Well… sure. But, more importantly, you could use them to hold hot or cold fluids.”

  “Ah, like the ultimate thermos. Woohoo, coffee that never gets cold?”

  “And, liquefied gases. Liquid nitrogen, oxygen, helium. There are significant losses because heat leaks into the storage bottles, turning the liquid back to a gas that has to be released so the bottle won’t overpressurize.”

  “Oh,” Arya said thoughtfully.

  “Reflectance, or the percentage of light and other radiation that bounces back was measured at 100%... They’re calling the static coefficient of friction zero.” Kaem snorted, “When I dropped it off, the guy told me there ‘was no such thing.’”

  Arya looked over his shoulder, “You’re finally getting to the part where they say, ‘tested to limits.’”

  “Yeah, those were the tests of bending strength and heat tolerance. Apparently, the strength testing machine is limited to ten tons and their furnace only goes up to 3,000°C. The specimens didn’t break and they didn’t melt. So, they ‘tested them to the limits’ of their equipment without achieving failure.”

  “Ten tons sounds like a lot?”

  Kaem nodded, “Especially for a plate that’s only a millimeter thick. It looks like stade’s stronger than graphene, which is theoretically the strongest material known.”

  “Is 3,000°C hot enough for a rocket engine?”

  “No… But I suspect stade’ll tolerate a lot more heat than that. Unfortunately, we don’t have lab proven results to send to Space-Gen.”

  Arya chewed her lip for a moment, then said, “Maybe, once we’ve applied for a patent, we can send them a specimen to test for themselves.” She looked over at him, “I got us an appointment with a patent lawyer tomorrow at two in the afternoon. I assume you’re free?”

  “I’m cheap,” Kaem said, “not free.”

  Arya shook her head and got up. “I’ve gotta go.”

  ~~~

  As Kaem watched her leave, he thought, Dammit! Another joke, another departure. I’ve got to control myself!

  ***

  Harris looked up when Cathy stepped into his office. “Yes?”

  “Um, that young man, Kaem Seba?”

  Trying to cover his jitters, Harris sat up attentively, “What?”

  “When he came by to pick up the results, we forgot to give h
im his test specimens. Do you… Do you want me to send them by messenger or something?”

  “No!” Harris said, exclaiming out of momentary dismay at the possibility. “Sorry, no. We’ll keep them unless he asks for them. We don’t want to waste money sending them to him when he may not want them. If he did, I’m sure he would’ve asked for them when he came for the results.”

  That’s great, Harris thought after Cathy left his office. He hadn’t wanted to give the specimens back, but he’d decided that it’d be worth it in order to let the PI follow the kid to wherever he took them. Now, if only I could think of some more tests to do on the specimens. He leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes to think. Wait! Did Raymond test for electrical properties? He got up and headed down the hall. Part way there, he thought, How about corrosion resistance?

  When asked, Raymond shook his head. “Those tests weren’t ticked off on the request sheet.” He eyed Harris, “They aren’t gonna want to pay for them.”

  “Yeah, but I want to know the results. Besides, we could justify the corrosion testing under his request that we test the specimens to destruction.”

  Raymond nodded, looking interested. “You want me to do the testing this morning, or wait till I finish the rest of the stuff in the queue?”

  Harris said, “Do it now. I’m really curious about the results. I’m hoping to get the tests done before they realize they forgot their specimens and come back for them.”

  ***

  Raymond set one specimen up in a salt fog corrosion chamber, then did electrical properties testing on the other one. He wasn’t surprised that the mirrors not only didn’t conduct electricity, but were as perfect an insulator as he’d ever encountered. They were completely nonmagnetic as well.

  The next day Raymond checked on the mirror specimen he’d put in the salt fog chamber. As he’d expected, he couldn’t tell that the exposure to salt had done anything to the specimen. And why would anyone think it would? Nothing fazes this stuff. He glanced at the chemicals cabinet. I’m gonna go right to the big guns.

  Raymond dug through their glassware and found a 10 x 20 cm glass pan. He put it in the fume hood and filled it with a few centimeters of 12 molar hydrochloric acid—as concentrated as you could get. Because he couldn’t hold the slippery specimen with anything like gloves or forceps, he took a bit of time over a burner, bending a couple of glass rods into little triangles he could hook around opposing corners of the specimen. Cradling a plate with them, he slowly lowered it into the acid. He took away the glass triangles and left the plate floating on the surface of its corrosive bath. It appeared undisturbed by the acid.

  Raymond turned to get a pH meter—the meter wouldn’t be accurate in such a concentrated solution, but at least he could see if the pH changed with time, suggesting corrosion that might not be visible.

  When he turned back, the plate had vanished. Stunned, he blinked a couple of times. He dipped a glass stirring rod in the beaker and swirled it around. The plate wasn’t invisible, it was gone, presumably completely dissolved! Well, we’ve finally found something that’ll damage the stuff, he thought. I don’t understand how it dissolved so fast though. Shouldn’t it have dissolved the lower surface that was in the acid first, leaving the part that’d been floating up out of the acid behind for a bit?

  He stood and stared at the bath for a few minutes. Maybe after it ate through the lower surface it was able to race through the rest of it?

  Raymond went to tell Harris about it.

  “Really?!” Harris said.

  “My sentiments exactly,” Raymond said. “It isn’t actually indestructible after all.”

  “But the salt fog test didn’t hurt it, right?”

  Raymond shook his head.

  “Try the other specimen with a weaker acid.”

  “Acetic?”

  “Yeah, but even with that, start with a dilute solution. Oh, and Raymond, be sure to check the pH before, during, and after this time, okay?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  It only took a few minutes to set up the test. Once he’d recorded the pH of the solution alone at 2.38, he dipped the glass rod triangles in and swirled them around to confirm the pH didn’t change. Then he used them to settle the specimen into the bath. It floated, like the other specimen had floated on the hydrochloric acid, though it didn’t ride as high since acetic acid wasn’t nearly as dense as HCl.

  The pH was still 2.38.

  Since dilute acetic acid isn’t very strong, Raymond felt certain it wouldn’t hurt the specimen, but when he looked up from noting his pH values this specimen had disappeared too!

  The pH settled at 2.44.

  It’d changed the pH, but only a little. Could it just be dilution rather than a buffer effect? he wondered. He tried to do some calculations and decided that diluting the acetic acid with 11.25 milliliters—the volume of the plate—of water should have raised the pH approximately that much.

  Oh! He started for Harris’s office. Arriving in the doorway he didn’t wait to be acknowledged, instead, he just exclaimed, “It’s a different state of matter!”

  Harris was on the phone, but he quickly finished up and disconnected. “What?”

  “Remember? Its density’s 1 gram per cc, same as water? Something about putting it in acid converted it back to water from some kind of ‘super-ice.’” He shrugged, “Or whatever you want to call this new state.”

  “Is the acetic acid doing anything?”

  “Completely dissolved it. It didn’t take long either.”

  “What?” Harris said, wide-eyed. “How dilute was it?”

  “I diluted it down to the same concentration as vinegar.”

  “You’re telling me this stuff tolerates temperatures over 3,000°C, bounces neutrons and plasma torches, takes 10 tons of bending load, but dissolves in vinegar?!”

  Raymond nodded.

  Harris sagged back in his chair, deflated. “Not exactly the kind of stuff you’d want to build with if it goes pfft on exposure to a weak acid.”

  Raymond said, “I don’t know. For material properties like that it’d probably be worth dipping it in plastic or something else that completely seals it away from the environment. Hell, you’re probably going to have to cover it anyway, just to keep everything from slipping off it.”

  “There go my frictionless railroad skids though.”

  “Yeah, but the kinds of things you could build out of it if you just protected it from acid… I mean, Holy Shit!”

  Harris nodded thoughtfully, “There is that.”

  Raymond said, “The industries built on this are going to be worth billions! Trillions! Have you figured out who’s making it yet? I’ve gotta buy some stock!”

  Shit! Harris thought, worried about loose lips giving away his game. Though how I could’ve thought Raymond wouldn’t figure this out is beyond me. The guy’s not stupid. To Raymond, he said, “No, I have no idea. They didn’t write it on the forms.” He didn’t say anything about his other efforts to determine the source, but had a feeling that Raymond somehow suspected them. He gave the man a serious look, “You shouldn’t joke about buying stock. Remember, the test results are supposed to be confidential. Buying stock would be insider trading.”

  Raymond gave him an odd look for a moment, then said, “Absolutely right boss, I wouldn’t even dream of it.” After a moment’s hesitation, he followed up with, “I was just joking with you. I wouldn’t joke about that with anyone else.”

  For a moment Harris thought Raymond was going to wink at him, but he didn’t. Harris said, “The question’s whether we owe them a report about the fact that we finally found a way to test their plates to destruction?”

  Raymond shook his head, “They didn’t ask for electrical properties, corrosion testing, or chemical resistance.”

  They did ask us to test to destruction though, Harris thought. After a moment, he said, “Agreed. We won’t tell them unless they ask. But we’ve got to realize that they may want their specimens back. If
they ask for them, we’ll have to tell them they were destroyed by low pH.”

  Raymond nodded, “Sure… If.”

  Chapter Seven

  Contacting Space-Gen

  As Kaem got in the Uber, Arya said, “I realized we left those two stade specimens out at Harris Laboratories. I was thinking, after we finish talking to the patent attorney, we should swing by and pick them up. Save the cost of a third Uber to go get them some other time.”

  Kaem gave her a little smile. “I think that’d be a waste of time.”

  “You want to let Harris keep the specimens? What if he figures out something about them?”

  Kaem said, “I really don’t think there’s anything to be figured out from them. It’s not like there’s any kind of analysis that’ll let him discover what they are. Pretty much everything he does just bounces off. In fact, I was thinking there wouldn’t be any great harm in sending some specimens to Space-Gen. They can do testing and see that stade’s essentially the perfect material for a rocket, but there’s no way for them to figure out what it is or make it themselves.” He shrugged, “In fact, I think it’d be so impossible to reverse engineer, that we just don’t have to worry much about a patent. All we need to do is keep our ‘formula’ for making stade a secret.”

  “I don’t know,” Arya said unhappily. “What if someone decides the only way to get the formula’s to beat it out of us?”

  “If they’re that evil, why not wait till we make millions, then steal the money?”

  She shrugged, “But they’re good at making rockets. They don’t have the skills for stealing money.”

  “I don’t think people that’re good at making rockets are the kind of people who’d try to beat the formula out of us.” He hesitated, “Out of me, actually, since you don’t know how it’s made.”

  “But, they don’t know that. I think I’d be in for a beating too.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m sorry. I hadn’t considered that possibility.”