“Sir, we built a fixture for this very specimen and loaded it in three-point bending to 14 metric tons-force, which is when the bearing surface of the fixture sheared off. As you can see, the specimen was undamaged.” Lee paused at the confused look on Prakant’s face, then spoke as if she were comforting him, “I know it looks like it must be weak. You can stress it with your fingers while I’ve got it immobilized if you’d like?”
Prakant stepped closer and reached between Lee’s fingers to try to bend the mirror. He grunted, blanching his fingers with the pressure, then let go, shaking his head in disbelief. He leaned down to study it more closely. “There aren’t even any fingerprints on it!”
“No, sir. Nothing sticks to it.”
Prakant blinked. “What’re you thinking we could use it for?”
“Sir, it’s a perfect insulator. If you made a tank out of it and filled it with liquid hydrogen, it’d stay liquid without any active cooling. Indefinitely, sir.”
With a small shake of his head, Prakant said, “Well, there’d be some losses…”
He trailed off as Lee shook her head. “There wouldn’t be if the tank and its cap were entirely made of stade. Its thermal resistance seems as close to infinite as it can be.”
“Stade?”
“That’s what they call their material.” She waited a beat for Prakant to comment, when he didn’t, she continued, “And, it’s incredibly heat tolerant. We’ve been unable to heat it to its limits. Hell, we can’t even heat it enough to turn it black. We clamped this one I’m holding inside the combustion chamber of one of the test engines. After a firing, it looked exactly like it does now—like a perfect, unsmudged mirror. Essentially, it’s the perfect material for a rocket engine. We wouldn’t have to cryocool the walls to keep them from melting and, even if the walls of the combustion chamber were only a millimeter thick, like this test sample, the propellant couldn’t generate enough pressure to blow it out.” She snorted, “Though there’s no need to make it with thin walls. After all, an engine and tanks made of this stuff wouldn’t mass any more than if they were made of air!”
Prakant abruptly sat down and picked up the sheet with the results of Lee’s material testing. After perusing the results for a minute, he asked, “How much do they want for this stuff?” His eyes went back to the sample. “And how are we supposed to machine it into an engine?”
Looking as if she felt uncomfortable looming over her boss, Lee sat down too. “Sir, I called the phone number they gave for technical questions. I had to leave a message. The guy who called me back said if we’d provide them with a glass mold suitable for pouring the components, they’d pour us an engine.”
Prakant stared at her for a moment. “Pour?” He looked down at the sample Lee still held in her basketed fingers. “It starts as a liquid?”
“Well, he said it isn’t really a liquid, but that we could think of it that way.”
“And how much does the stuff cost?”
“He read somewhere that each engine costs us $2 million. He said they’d make engines to our design out of stade for that price.” Lee gave him an inquisitive look, “How much do our engines cost us?”
Prakant waggled his hand, “A little more than that. But that includes a lot of plumbing that they’re probably not planning to make.”
Lee gave him a curious look, “Wouldn’t most of that plumbing be unneeded if the material for the engine didn’t have to be cooled by pumping cryo fuel through it?”
Prakant gave a thoughtful nod. “A lot of it wouldn’t. A glass mold?”
“Yes, sir. It has to be transparent to light.”
“How do we get the glass out of the combustion chamber after it’s formed? A combustion chamber can’t be made in pieces that we can disassemble to take the glass out of the mold.”
“I asked him that. He said we had two choices. One, we could break or melt the glass that filled the chamber—”
“But…!” Prakant interrupted, then he paused. “Sorry, I keep forgetting this material’s practically indestructible. Of course, we can break or melt the glass out of it.”
Lee nodded. “I had the same reaction. The other possibility is that, using stade, we actually could make a two-part chamber that screwed or bolted together. Um,” Lee hesitated, “the technical guy pointed out that threads in stade have to be coarse because so far they can’t form features under 1mm. Also, because stade’s frictionless and non-deformable, anything that’s threaded together will just come unscrewed. You literally won’t be able to screw it tight. We’ll have to work out a system for holding the bolts tightly screwed.”
Looking dazed, Prakant said, “Ask them if they can make us some samples that aren’t just flat plates.”
“Already did. He said if we can make a glass mold, they’ll fill it with stade. But they won’t give us any more free samples. They’re going to charge us like it’s made of gold.”
Prakant snorted, “That’ll be cheap, the stuff’s practically weightless.”
“Priced like gold by volume, not weight.”
“Damn!” Prakant said, though Mary didn’t think he was really angry. He leaned back in his chair and laced his hands behind his head. After staring into space for a moment, he sat back up and looked at April. “Great job and an amazing find Ms.…” He trailed off, “Sorry, I knew your name when you came in here, but I’ve become rather discombobulated…”
“Lee, sir. April Lee. Thank you.”
“Okay, I’m not taking this away from you, but you’ve got to move it along. Get help from whoever you need to. Demand it. Tell me if anyone stonewalls you. I want you to call these people and tell them we’re interested. Ask them if we can get exclusive rights to the material. Figure out what constraints there are on making molds. Talk to the people in prototyping and tell them we need to form a glass mold for a small engine and a LOX tank. Big enough to work burning liquid hydrogen and oxygen but small enough not to break the bank at the price of gold, eh? That means you need to engineer it to use as little stade as possible. Anytime someone gives you trouble, use my name. Liberally. If they resist, call me.”
He gave her a hard look, “I want this to happen and I want it to happen NOW. We do not want one of our competitors to beat us to the punch, understand?”
Lee looked like she’d gained an inch. “Yes, sir!”
Prakant waved her away, “Go, go, go, go!”
Lee turned and left the room. As she passed Mary she mouthed, “Thank you!”
Mary followed her out. As she left, she heard Prakant phoning his second-in-command, telling him to provide Lee all available support.
Mary smiled.
Chapter Nine
Harris “negotiates”
Harris took Phil Sherman off the case, telling the PI that he’d tired of throwing good money after bad. Sherman had the gall to ask Harris if he was feeling okay when he’d called. Like he thought I was sick or something!
Harris took up watching Seba and Vaii himself.
On Tuesday it was late afternoon before Vaii picked Seba up at the Physics building. Harris followed them to one of the dining halls.
Then he sat and waited. And waited. He obsessively kept checking through the window for fear he’d miss them if they left by some other exit. They were leaned toward one another as if having an intense conversation, though he couldn’t tell whether they were arguing or professing their love for one another.
No kissing though.
In either case, the girl’s relationship with Seba promised to provide a lever Harris could use to moderate the young man’s attitude.
He rose and peeked in the window again. They were getting up. He watched until he could be sure they were coming out the same door they’d entered, then moved ahead along the path he thought they’d follow toward Seba’s dorm. He called up a satellite view of the area on his phone, then contacted his SUV and had it move to a spot close to their presumed course.
A spot he thought would be relatively secluded.
<
br /> ~~~
“…and when companies call, you’ve been telling them we’ll build test engines for them?!” Arya asked, surprised.
Kaem nodded, “Small ones.”
“I thought we weren’t going to give them any other samples until they agreed to pay for the patent?”
Kaem shrugged, “I think they’re having a really hard time coming to grips with the material properties. After all, it’d be a disaster for them to agree to pay a fortune, then find out that the only shape we can make’s a flat 1mm thick plate.” He snorted, “I think they fear being like the proverbial farmer that paid good money for a ‘surefire’ organic way to kill crop insects—which subsequently turned out to be instructions to put a bug on one stone and squash it with another. They want to be absolutely sure we can build a workable engine out of stade.” He glanced at her, “Did we get our trademark on ‘Stade’ yet?”
Arya gave a dismissive wave as if it weren’t important, “Yeah, now you can put a ‘TM’ symbol on it anytime you use it.” She gave him a concerned look, “But, how do you think we’re going to afford these test engines?”
“Oh. I told them they had to make the glass molds for the engines. Gunnar can silver the glass and I told them we can ‘pour’ stade into the molds.”
Arya frowned, “Pour?!”
“I told them that wasn’t exactly how it worked, but if they make us molds that we’d be able to pour full of material, that they’d work for our method.”
“Can we afford that much silver?”
“Mirrors don’t use that much silver. Besides, I told them they’d have to call you and you’d make them prepay.”
“How much?”
“Current price of gold by volume. Believe me, we’ll come out way ahead. At the price of gold by volume, the test samples we sent them would cost over $10,000 each. If several companies decide they want test engines before committing themselves, we’ll be able to afford a patent by ourselves.”
“You think they’ll pay that much?”
Kaem shrugged, “They will if they’ve got any sense. Besides, the price will make them want to do their tests using smaller motors. Engines small enough Gunnar can silver them without building another entire setup.”
“How do we get the glass back out of them?”
“That’s their problem. I pointed out they could either break or melt the—” Kaem stopped talking when someone stepped out on the path in front of them.
Harris! Arya thought. What’s he want now?
Hair standing up in clumps, Harris looked raggedy and wild-eyed. He said, “I’d like to have a confidential conversation with you two.” He nodded to one side where a vehicle stood with its doors open, “If you’ll get in my SUV, we’ll just go have a nice talk.”
Kaem moved to the other side of the sidewalk, and sped up, saying, “Sorry, Mr. Harris, we’re just not interested.”
Harris stepped closer saying, “I have a gun.” He pulled a pistol partly out of his jacket pocket then shoved it back in. He waved his other hand toward the SUV. “No need to get excited. I only want to talk.”
“Shit!” Kaem said resignedly, eyes on Harris’s jacket pocket.
Arya considered their situation. She knew several techniques for disarming an assailant but they were risky and none of them applied to a gun that was inside a jacket pocket where she couldn’t get a grip on it. On the other hand, she’d been repeatedly told not to go to a, presumably secluded, location with a kidnapper. That forfeited the help of bystanders. And, she thought Harris looked like he’d lost touch with reality. She said, “We’re not going anywhere with you.”
Harris had Kaem by the arm and was pushing him toward the SUV. To Arya, he said, “I don’t really give a damn whether you come or not. But, if you don’t come, I’ll have to kill you so you can’t raise an alarm.”
Arya saw Kaem shoot her a frightened/questioning glance, as if he thought she’d know what to do. Why didn’t I consider the possibility of a gun? I know Americans love weapons! Then Kaem was getting in the passenger seat of the SUV. Harris was waving impatiently for her to approach. His gun hand was still in the pocket, but she could see the barrel of the pistol tenting the material.
As best she could tell it was pointed right at her.
And a crazed man had his finger on the trigger.
She said, “Well this isn’t like a Hawaiian vacation.”
Kaem and Harris both gave her confused looks.
~~~
Sylvia said, “911 operator. What’s your emergency?”
No one answered, but when Sylvia listened carefully she could hear a man in the background giving orders. “Open the door and get in!”
A female voice resignedly spoke from close to the phone, saying, “Yes, sir.”
Sylvia heard what sounded like a car door open, then she heard a second door open. The first voice said, “Stay in your seats while I get in.” A moment later Sylvia heard two car doors close and the timbre of the sounds she was hearing changed. Whoever’s calling just got in a car. And it sounds like she was told to get in. Sylvia pressed the button to call her supervisor.
As Sylvia listened, the man gave an address to the car’s AI. Sylvia wrote it down.
Her supervisor arrived at her side, “What’s going on?”
Sylvia told her AI to copy the call to her supervisor’s headset. “I think this is a code-phrase call, made by a phone’s AI. When the call connected, the caller didn’t report an emergency but I heard a man’s voice directing a woman to get in a car.” She showed the supervisor the address she’d written down. “The man told the car to drive to this location. I’d like to scramble an unmarked car to that location to wait for them to arrive. And a car to try to follow them there: the phone’s sending us GPS location data.”
Her supervisor nodded, “Send some backup too. It’s dark, so even marked cars would be hard to recognize as police if they keep their flashers off.”
~~~
Harris had the kid and his girlfriend get in the front seats of his SUV. He got in behind them so he could keep them covered with his gun. A quick conversation with his AI started the vehicle toward an address near a hunting cabin he’d stayed in before.
Once they were underway, he said, “I hope you guys’ll relax. I only want to talk. Sorry to have to do it this way, but,” he tried to control his temper but knew his exasperation was coming through in the tone of his voice, “you rebuffed all my earlier efforts.”
The girl’s eyes were narrowed and she looked concerned.
The kid said, “What do you want to talk about?”
“I’m offering to help you develop your new material for the market. You’re trying to do it by yourselves, right?”
“Yes,” the kid said dismissively. “We don’t need any help.”
“You have no business experience. I’m sure you don’t have sufficient funding since I find you on a list of Curtis scholars. It’s common knowledge that those are only awarded to financially destitute students.”
“Nonetheless, we’re doing fine.”
“We’ve realized that what you’ve done is induce another state of matter. That somehow you can turn water into something completely different. ‘Ice,’ so to speak, but incredibly hard and strong.”
The kid said, “Okay, so?” He didn’t sound surprised. Nor dismayed that someone knew their secret.
“Once people realize this’s just a different state of matter, which after all isn’t too difficult to figure out since it has exactly the same density as water, it’ll only be a matter of time before they figure out how to do the same thing.”
“Perhaps.”
Getting more irritated, Harris said, “Besides, we’ve discovered a way to make your wonder material fail catastrophically.” This time Harris saw them glance at one another as if they were finally surprised, and perhaps concerned.
Tightly the kid asked, “And what’s that?”
“That’s something I can tell you once we’re on the same t
eam. A lack of that knowledge would be a disaster for you if you sell this stuff and people start building important projects out of it. When those projects fail disastrously, you’re going to be subject to astronomical lawsuits.”
“Why wasn’t this in your report?”
“We thought of a few more tests to undertake after you picked up your results. Since you’d left the specimens behind, we did those tests a couple of days after that. The outcomes were alarming.”
For some reason, upon hearing that, rather than tensing further, Seba seemed to relax. He said, “Okay, thanks for letting us know.”
Having expected more consternation, Harris pushed the issue. “This… test turned your samples back into water! I’d think you’d be more concerned about what could happen if such an event occurred with one of your products while it was being used in, say a rocket engine.”
“Uh-huh,” the kid said calmly. “We’ll have to keep that from happening.”
Harris exploded, “You don’t even know what we did!”
“What’d you do?”
“I’m not going to tell you now! That knowledge is one of the things I’m bringing to the table! I want to negotiate a deal to help you by providing financing and business acumen in return for a piece of the company we build together. Learning what can destroy your product is simply a minor benefit I’ll be providing alongside those two. I absolutely guarantee the value of my contribution will be far greater than my share of the income!”
~~~
Sylvia and her supervisor had been listening to this conversation between the two men with more and more confusion. “Wonder materials… new states of matter… catastrophic failures. It sounded like an argument of some kind but not an emergency. She’d have sworn she’d heard a girl’s voice initially but she hadn’t heard it lately. She looked up at her supervisor, “I’m going to try querying the caller again?”
Her supervisor nodded.
Sylvia pressed a button to connect her mic and said, “This is the 911 operator. Do you have an emergency?”
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