Tau Ceti

by Laurence Dahners

  However, ports were even going to figure in carbon sequestration projects. Weighted ports dropped into deep-sea formations could inject CO2 into basalt where CO2 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 forward to the next talk though. It was to be given by Donsaii’s associate Emmerit. Fladwami wondered whether they were going to run with his suggestion to export CO2 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 retrieved 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-CO2 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 this 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. It was a generator being turned by a turbine!

  Emmerit continued. “Thus, this device is generating electricity from ‘solar energy’ without producing any CO2. Additionally, rather than exhausting the spent steam out where it would heat the planet, that steam is then circulating 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-condense the steam into water to be recirculated 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, even poorly optimized, it is producing five kilowatts without producing CO2 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 otherwise 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 productions 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 he 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 Resources’ 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 it should be released 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?”

  Fladwami tilted his head. “Damn, you’re right. I should have considered the economic implications of rapidly releasing this myself. I’ll talk to the president.”

  She tilted her head as well, “You might want to also do a press release on the low tempo rollout to slow the run on petroleum stocks?”

  Fladwami’s eyes widened, “Crap! There are reporters and bloggers here who’ve probably put this out on the net already! I’d better call the President now.” He turned and began trotting out of the auditorium. He called back over a shoulder, “Sorry to leave you so suddenly!”

  Chapter Nine

  Dex wearily flew back to camp. Hie’d unsuccessfully stooped on several burrowers. At this altitude, beating back into the air after a miss felt exhausting, though hie kept telling himrself it couldn’t really be that bad. The snares hie’d put out hadn’t produced, and hie couldn’t imagine why. Hie’d caught several animals at those locations a while back but after a while they just stopped catching anything. Hie’d even gone out
into the forest with hies “flyer swatter” but the little flyers that attacked didn’t seem to live this high on the mountain. Swatting flyers that weren’t attacking never seemed to work, they easily avoided himr. Maybe Syrdian caught some swimmers? As hie coasted in over the meadow hie saw that a family of zornits had taken up residence in the meadow. Zornits were larger cousins of the zornic they’d encountered in the forest. Omnivorous, but leaning toward eating mostly meadow vegetation they could be bad news. Too big to kill, dangerous to attack and territorial to a fault, they were likely to drive away some of the smaller prey.

  Dex landed just above the cave and looked back at the zornits. Hies wings drooped. Hie looked down at the camp. An empty handed Syrdian looked back up at himr. “No luck?”

  Syrdian shook hies head. “I’ve caught all the swimmers in the nearby parts of the stream. Maybe I could teach you how to catch them and you could fly farther up than I can hike?”

  Dex dipped hies head yes. “Some zornits have moved into the meadow. I think we should try to chase them away.”

  Syrdian’s wings drooped also, “I’m not sure we could. Maybe we need to move to a new area? Then you could put your snares on new paths? I could try a fresh section of stream?”

  Dex’s head rose. Put the snares on different paths? What a great idea, maybe I’ve just caught all the animals that use the paths I’ve got the snares on. “I’m going to go move some snares.”

  “OK, I found a big nodule of flint. Do you know anything about making blades?”

  Dex shrugged, “Not much.”

  “I’m going to try making a knife. I’ve re-flaked mine a couple of times and they’re getting small.”

  “Good luck,” Dex said, turning back out to the meadow and hies traps. Syrdian looked thinner. Dex found himrself liking Syrdian more and more, no longer a distant infatuation, but now what hie thought of as true love. To hies horror, just as hie fell in love, Syrdian seemed to be wasting away because Dex couldn’t provide enough food high up here on the mountain.

  Just before hie took off, Dex noticed that hies meteor was standing erect on the top of the bank above their cave. For a moment hie wondered why Syrdian had put it there, but then hie shrugged and took off to move hies snares.

  ***

  Wall Street Journal—The Presidential Conference on Global Warning was stunned today by an announcement from D5R, the technology startup responsible for the ports that saved the space station and deflected Comet Hearth-Daster. As if the ports themselves weren’t going to result in enough changes to our world, D5R revealed plans to provide very cheap solar power. Oil stocks have plummeted…

  Ell walked into Five Eighteen West restaurant in Raleigh and looked around for Gordon but didn’t see him. As she approached the hostess stand the woman’s eyes widened. “Good evening Ms. Donsaii. How may we help you?”

  “I’m meeting a Gordon Speight. Is he here yet?”

  “Oh my, yes!” She grinned, “Having him here has caused quite an uproar. Having you here at the same time is really going to…” She ran down.

  Ell thought the girl would go cross-eyed pondering it. “Can you take me to him?”

  “Oh! Yes, sorry. This way please.”

  They went up the stairs and around a corner. Ell looked around as they entered the room. She didn’t see a table with only one person at it? Then she tracked the direction the hostess was heading and realized that Gordon was sitting at a table for four that had girls in each of the other three seats!”

  The hostess approached Gordon and said, “Mr. Speight, Ms. Donsaii says she’s here to meet you?”

  “Yes, yes!” Gordon bounded to his feet. “Ell, how are you?” He looked down at the girls at his table, “Ladies, it’s been nice meeting you. I need some time to myself now, OK?”

  With moues of disappointment the young ladies slowly got up and moved away, one of them giving Gordon a desperate looking peck on the cheek before she departed. Another said “We love you!”

  They didn’t go too far. It turned out they had a table nearby. Gordon said, “Man, Velos fans seem to be everywhere nowadays! I guess you’d know what dealing with fans is like though, huh?”

  Ell shrugged and sat, reflecting that in her experience women seemed to be much more aggressive in their pursuit of famous people than men were. She’d certainly never had three men approach her in a restaurant and sit down with her. “Are they going to the concert tonight?”

  He grinned, “Yeah, and pretty pumped to have run into me at dinner.”

  He glanced at them so Ell did too. All three were still looking his way. As Ell watched, one of them blew Gordon a kiss. Ell said, “They’re pretty assertive. Do you run into a lot of girls who are so aggressive?”

  Gordon shrugged, “More and more, yeah.”

  Their waiter arrived and interrupted their conversation with questions about their dinner. After he departed Gordon turned the talk to Ell and what was happening in her life. The dinner was excellent and they enjoyed themselves but the three girls came back over during dessert to ask Gordon for autographs. Ell was torn when he acquiesced, both disappointed because he interrupted his time with her to sign them, and proud that he hadn’t been rude like the Olympic sprinter Michael Fentis had been to Ell years ago.

  At the auditorium Ell entered with Gordon through the “artist’s entrance,” surprised at the way people kowtowed to him. Gordon introduced her to his business manager and a sound man that he’d had train with Vic. Then there were some other musicians that Velos had hired to “round out” their sound. Ell and Gordon didn’t really have any more time to talk as Velos prepped itself for the show.

  Ell put on her ball cap and went out into the audience to take in the show. She stood in the shadows, tapping a foot, enthralled by the music and happy that the few people that recognized her moved on without making a big deal of it. Velos sounded good, though not as good as the recordings they’d made at Vic’s which had been climbing the charts. The crowd went crazy when they played their hits.

  Gordon had been fun at dinner, and she kept rationalizing the girls at his table. He needed to be good to his fans after all. As an entertainer, fans were his lifeblood. But Ell felt put off by the whole thing. She wasn’t sure she was ready to come in second to his fans—if her relationship with Gordon developed further could she take it?

  She wondered if these issues afflicted the relationships of many famous people. Since getting into music Gordon had pretty much ignored Ell’s alter ego and his old friend “Belle.” He had returned her the money “Belle’s aunt” had loaned him to jump start his career. As she thought about it she realized she felt uncomfortable with the way he seemed fascinated with the famous “Ell,” but uninterested in the ordinary “Belle.”

  On the other hand, she wondered if it was fair to be hurt because he wasn’t as interested in the version of herself that she had purposely made less attractive? Her head swam just considering all the ramifications.

  Over the break Ell went back to Gordon’s dressing room. When she pushed the door open she found the dressing room packed with fans carrying VIP passes. Ell’s eyes narrowed, all but one of the “fans” were attractive young girls. The three girls from dinner were among the crowd gathered around Gordon. As she watched one of them threw her arms around him, crushing her body against his and kissing him on the lips! He broke the kiss after a moment, looked around the dressing room, saw Ell and disentangled himself. “Ell!” he called, “Come have some of the goodies!” He waved at a large table set with hors d’oeuvres.

  Reluctantly Ell entered the room and made her way to the table. Gordon chattered brightly with the girls gathered around him while she filled a little plate. She stepped closer to Gordon who put his arm out, “Stancil!” he called to Velos’ manager, “Get a picture of me with Ell.” He put an arm over her shoulders, saying, “Are you going to dance during the second set?”

  Ell swallowed, smiled for the picture, then shook her head.

  “Aw, come on. I
t’ll make you even more famous.”

  Ell grinned at him, “I’m already more famous than I want to be.”

  Gordon’s eyebrows rose, “You can never be too famous! Stancil, get a picture with all my fans here!”

  Ell slipped out from under Gordon’s arm as the rest of the girls crowded in for the picture. As she squeezed out the door a last glance showed her another of the girls from dinner plastered to Gordon’s side.

  Tears trickled down Ell’s cheeks during the ride back home. Recognizing that many men would be intimidated by her success, she had been thinking of Gordon as someone so successful that he wouldn’t be affected that way.

  He’d seemed like someone she could love but… not any more. Would she ever find someone? Someone not just chasing her for her fame or money? Someone undaunted by her fame? Someone who loved her for herself, unaffected by her fame and reputation?

  ***

  Dex woke hungry. Hie and Syrdian had collected and eaten a few edible plants the night before, but plants alone would not sustain them. Hie climbed up the bank to where the meteor stood. Again hie wondered why Syrdian had put it up there. Though hie liked the thought of it up there, watching over them at night.

  Hie looked out over the clearing, the zornits were nearby, grazing. Hie looked at them speculatively. Even a little one would feed Syrdian and himself for hands of days. But dalins usually hunted large animals by dropping onto them with knives. Zornits were awfully big for that method. Dex’d never heard of anyone hunting zornits by any means except driving them over cliffs. That was difficult because they were said to be pretty wary of a precipice and cliffs that were tall enough weren’t very common. Trying to attack a zornit with a knife could get you killed. A zornit’s dorsal limbs were somewhat dangerous, the zornits used them to drive away small flyers, but even if you braved the dorsal limbs and did land on a zornit’s back it would promptly roll. This forced you to either lift back off or be crushed. Hie didn’t think the steep bank at the edge of the stream would hurt a zornit, even if hie did manage to drive them over it somehow.