"Jon," April asked, "why in the world do we have such heavy weapons here?"
"It wasn't my idea," he assured her. "A space habitat is classed the same as an airport by the government and if they have their own dedicated police force they are encouraged to buy all sorts of counter-terrorist equipment. The Security Chief before me got what amounted to a big free catalog on disk, from which he could order equipment for just about any environment or threat. The government would pick up almost all the cost for us. He just couldn't say no to all the free toys. I'm surprised he didn't order the snow skis and scuba equipment, just because they were nearly free. I think they may come to regret the policy," he predicted.
"But solid slugs? If somebody starts shooting with those we'll have pressure emergencies all over the habitat. I'm not sure there are enough patching kits to seal the place up if there is a real battle," Jeff objected.
"Yes, you are right. But the fact is, if an external force like the Chinese invaded, which is what this equipment was procured to counter, they will almost certainly have battle armor. Frangible rounds are fine for law enforcement, but they are simply going to shatter on armor like nothing."
The entry chime was sounding again.
"Margaret, why don't you go straight home and Frank and I will take your crime scene roll back to the office with us?" Jon offered.
"If you see a need to disperse the weapons, why don't you do the same with the other vital equipment? I have room to take the testing roll home with me if you'd like."
"An excellent idea. Just tell Theo in the morning, to start a list of where everything is dispersed and keep updates sent to everyone's pad," Jon instructed. Margaret took it for her dismissal and went back for the roll.
With a start, Jeff realized Jon was deferring to him to answer the door, since it was his home. He wasn't used to being treated like the man of the house at his age.
"Come on in," he called out, wondering suddenly if he should have locked it back up, after Jon and his crew came in.
The gentleman who came in immediately focused on Jon and came forward with an envelope. He was trim, with salt and pepper hair and dressed in a white shirt with a colorful bow tie and a dark blue cardigan sweater.
"If you would sign the flap sir, these are the key cards you requested."
"Thank you. You know, I recognize you from last night. I remember you got my crew coffee and sandwiches and I don't think I ever thanked you. Could you remind me of your name?" Jon asked, scribbling a signature on the envelope.
"I don't believe Mr. Harris ever got around to introducing me, but everything seemed quite in control without my input. I'm Neil McAlpine, Mr. Davis."
"You know, Mr. Harris referred to you, I believe it was loss control, or some such title, but just now he said on the com you are security. I find it interesting what a low profile you are able to maintain," Jon purred.
"Well, I'm not really much on titles and such," Neil demurred. "I've been working on Mr. Harris for some time, to drop the expression security from his usage entirely. It alarms some of our guests needlessly, who are from areas where any sort of security is the usually the same as secret police and it might create the impression I am intruding on areas properly your department's concern, which I don't want to do."
"Would you excuse me a moment Mr. McAlpine? Oh, I'd be perfectly happy for you to just call me Jon if it wouldn't make you uncomfortable."
"Yes, actually I enjoy American informality. I would be pleased if you would call me Neil," he offered.
Jon turned and slid one of the cards before each of them and tucked his own in his shirt pocket. "I would feel much better Jeff, if you would stay in the Holiday Inn at least tonight and possibly until your father gets back," Jon advised.
"If you're comfortable with it, I'd like you to give me access to the apartment, in case we want to do more testing and in exchange I can get the decking repaired and the carpet replaced. By the time your dad gets back we should have his room safe and all fixed up for him to use again. Could you throw some things in a bag and go with April now, to deliver these things of yours to be put in the Hotel safe?
"Sounds good to me, Jon. "House, Mr. Davis is allowed access anytime until revoked. He will be the next person to touch the contact pad and then he will give you a voice sample. Go ahead, Jon," he said.
Jon when to the com desk rather than the entry door and laid his hand flat against the plate. "Testing," the house informed them. It took about twenty seconds and then the voice asked him, "Please read the text appearing on the screen." Jon read the material, which appeared to be a section of some old novel. After about a minute the system said." Database established. Rights are granted."
"The only other thing," Jeff said, before going for his bag, "is I would like you to see Heather home safe and she'll be taking some of my things home for me, I don't need at the hotel."
"We can do that," said Jon. "I have the cart here to take our equipment and I am sending Frank with you three to the Holiday Inn. He'll see April home after Jeff is in his room and I'll see Heather home OK."
Heather spoke up. "Before we split up, do you have your scanner April?" April was surprised she brought it up in front of Jon, but retrieved it from her pouch and slid it across the table. Heather sat it beside her identical unit and bent over them.
"Jon," Neil said, the name sounding funny from him the first time they heard it, "I can escort these two back to the Inn if you need your man Frank," he offered.
"No offense, Neil. I'm sure you may be hell on wheels, but Frank has a Taser on him and I would like an armed escort tonight," Jon explained.
"I rather expected that you see," Neil countered. "I stopped by the manager's safe on the way and retrieved my own armament. I can keep it in my own room as long as you want to keep your room, if it would help secure it. I also put your room next to mine, all the way at the end of the corridor so I could keep an eye on it."
"What are you carrying Neil?" Jon seemed tired.
Neil reached under his cardigan, in the small of his back, with his right hand and produced a fifth generation Taser. It still used wires, unlike Jon's and had the yellow stripes which visually designated it as non-lethal.
"Just out of curiosity how did you go about bringing the Tas' on M3?" Jon asked. "I not objecting, I'm just finding there is a lot more hardware aboard than I thought and I need to reassess things."
"If you mean did I try to hide it, not at all, Sir," Neil said surprised. "I read the handbook before coming up and it said to refrain from bringing firearms, so I did. However it never mentioned air powered arms, or electronic weapons, so I assumed this was permissible and just packed it with my important valuables, like my papers. No one ever complained. If it is prohibited, I will certainly surrender it to you right now,"
"No, no, no. Sorry," Jon said. "Have you had training with it?"
"I qualified with this and a great deal more for His Majesty's Royal Marines."
"McAlpine."
"Neil if you would, Sir."
"Neil, would you consider extending yourself even further and allowing me to deputize you into our police force?" Jon asked. "It may be more obligation than privilege and we could be in for some turbulent times in the months ahead, but I think you would enjoy the company of my crew. Several of them are Marines, although not British. It might be a convenience for the Inn, to have a security man with full police powers."
"I would be honored," Neil assured him.
"Consider it done. We'll swear you formally, with tea and cookies and introduce you to everyone tomorrow," Jon promised. "Meanwhile, keep yours," he nodded at the man's own weapon, "and take this also." He unclipped his own sixth generation wireless Taser, blackly lethal and offered it to Neil. "It's almost like yours, but it will reach out past a hundred meters in any atmosphere which has enough Oxy' to breathe. This switch is for normal charge, lethal charge, or high output, which will disrupt even vehicles or machinery."
"I would use the weapon you ar
e used to and leave this as a backup set on lethal. You have about thirty shots. I'll give you a charger, a spare power pack and a practice target tomorrow."
Neil accepted it with his left hand and slid it in the small of his back with a practiced motion as smooth as he had his own weapon.
"You shoot lefty also?" Jon wanted to know, catching the switch.
"In the service, I qualified master marksman, both hands tested separately, with small bore through the14mm recoilless pistol."
"You and Margaret are going to have a lot to talk about," Jon predicted, smiling.
"Jon. I'd like to show you something," Heather said.
He looked at her, giving her his full attention.
"This is a very brief radio transmission, Jeff and I were curious about last night. Now, knowing what we have learned since about the jumper, I bet it's him calling for his ride. She addressed April's machine. "Scan, describe unique transmission in millimeter band at 17:29:38 yesterday," she ordered.
Jeff rejoined them with a soft bag and a small box.
"This transmission was in a band used for shuttle communications and consisted of .23 second burst of encrypted data, followed by a .62 second transmission in the clear," the machine reported.
"Play the clear message for us, boosted 6 decibels," Heather instructed.
"End," the machine enunciated one word clearly. It was a male voice, very clipped.
"Heather, does your machine do voice matching?" Jon asked.
"Sure, scan match in clear portion of last accessed transmission, to the audio sample provided next," she instructed and slid the scanner closer to Jon. He pushed a last key and set his pad on the table next to the scanner. They sat silently, listening to April's conversation with the spy, in front of the radio room two days ago. At the end Heather said, "Scan, what is the match of the transmission to the sample?"
"A match of 83% to male voice, limited by the small size and stress distortion of the first sample," it reported.
"83% on a single word?" Jon said. "He's our boy. He should be stress distorted. He knew it was time to trot out of Dodge."
"Could you show us the jump video? Jeff asked, returning with his things. "We've heard about it, but I'd love to see it."
"What? You kids haven't hacked it off station com yet?" he asked drolly, giving their scanners an evil glance. "Never mind," he waved the question away at their stricken looks. "Sure, let's put it on the com screen," he agreed. "House, accept video from my pad and display it on the wall screen," he ordered. Frank had finished packing up his equipment and silently joined them on the living room couch. All of them made a real crowd in the tiny apartment. Jeff spoke up to dim the lights somewhat. Neil joined him and sat at the near end to watch. As the video started, Jon explained the story of the spy, omitting how April had detected the gun.
Jon watched Neil carefully in the dim light, but the only reaction he detected was a little straightening of the back, when they got to the part where the jumper drew the seal on the wall.
"Lights up," Jeff commanded at the end.
"What is the small handle sticking up behind his gun?" April asked.
"It's a small utility knife." Jon told her. "It doesn't have a guard, or ultrasonic blade, but it is still handy as a weapon and for other things."
"Everybody ready to leave?" Jon asked getting up. He got nods all around. Everyone was tired and still had lots to do. Heather came around to April, slipped her scanner back to her and gave her a quick hug on the way out.
Chapter 10
When they were out in the corridor Neil asked if they knew the way to the Holiday Inn. Assured they did, he suggested they walk ahead and he would follow back a ways and catch up if he needed to say anything. As they walked along April asked Jeff, "Is there any chance you can explain how your generator works, so I could understand it? Or is so exotic and difficult I might as well not try?"
"I've given a lot of thought to how to explain it. I just haven't had much opportunity to try it on anyone but Heather, but I don't think you will have much trouble at all. You remember late in the last century, the cold fusion fiasco where they were never able to reproduce the results and a bunch of people lost their credibility and their careers were ruined?" he asked.
"I remember reading about it as an example of really bad science and an example of how not to publish if you wanted a respectful review from your peers."
"It certainly was," he agreed. "And yet lost in all the condemnation and bluster, was the fact there was some real effect observed. Tritium is not something you get from normal chemical reactions. They couldn't reproduce it and they could not explain it with any consistent model, but it's often the case where it's what I call kitchen science. You set up an experiment according to a recipe. We won't dignify it with calling it a formula. Sometimes it would work and sometimes it didn't and nobody had a clue why."
"The Japanese spent huge sums trying to understand it. Much more than they let on to the rest of the world. But the metallurgy of the time was far from being able to understanding what about the metal lattice was causing a fusion reaction to occur, well below any energy threshold where it should. Then there is the theory of proton-electron quantum capture creating a neutron directly, but still, it is irreproducible. They still can't make an electrode which does anything reliably, but self-destruct after running a set period and getting saturated."
"I'm able to read a lot of research which was never translated into English, because my father started me learning Japanese at home very early. Something I'm very grateful to him for doing. And I still don't have an answer to making a traditional cold fusion cell, able will crank out a steady reaction anymore than others."
"However it did give me the insight, to build a nano scale fusion generator. It uses basic common nanoelectronic foils and fabrication. It's thousands of tiny linear accelerators, fabricated in the foil, but the end is a quantum trap. It's a crystalline cage which holds the deuterium ion, if it tunnels through an aperture one atom thick and is held in the trap."
" Now the real twist is, if you shoot another ion into the same spot on the crystal, it can tunnel through just like the first. But when it enters there is basically not room for both of them to occupy the same hole, so the way to a stable condition in a lower energy state is for them to merge - and they do - at much lower energy than in a free state. But when the nuclei merge of course there is so much energy released the helium ion comes bursting out of the trap it was in and runs the accelerator in reverse, pumping power out instead of in. The sweet spot in, is it's only route of escape too."
"The engineering to make the accelerators and traps is really like die work. A thin ribbon of soft material with a thinner layer of stronger material on top moves along in set increments. And as it is stopped, a diamond die comes down and presses a shape into the thin material and it folds and is pushed down into the material under it. This takes place with a flat diamond anvil under the ribbon for the die to work against. The titanium-palladium alloy crystal is the only shape built separately and the complete crystal inserted in this line as a unit."
"The electrical leads and tubing for the gases, are made with conventional microchip masking and overlay techniques and electron beam cutting. The ribbon gets embossed and cut pretty fast and when it is all done you roll it up into a cylinder and encapsulate it in the ceramic tube. Two or three percent of all these tiny accelerators never self tune to the sweet spot on the crystal but there are built in allowances for these errors." Jeff said. "It's similar to the way you always have bad sections to an integrated circuit, but you design it to self correct and work without being perfect."
"Isn't it slow and expensive getting the metal crystals assembled?"
Jeff checked how far back Neil was again and almost whispered. "That's another thing our lunar buddies took care of for us. The sent us some bacteria, altered to grow one crystal in each cell before it dies. You harvest them and remove the organic material."
"I knew you could d
o stuff like insulin and special proteins and waxes, but metal?
"They can do all kinds of things that aren't public. I don't think they have told us the half of it. Without their help this idea would have been impossible and I have to trust them to honor the terms we agreed on. We made them stuff that is secret too and traded for an exclusive on this particular bacteria. They are the same sort of bacteria used to recover gold tailings and clean up pollution. I think I can trust the Loonies."
"Why?" she insisted.
"Because I think they are in a situation very much like our own here, but on the moon. Otherwise they would be rushing to make a buck off these things, instead of keeping them secret. I think the Earthies are putting some kind of squeeze on them too, but they've never been frank about how."
"Have you offered the fusion generator to them yet?"
"No," he admitted. "I'm not sure what I want to do. I may offer them sealed units. I'm reluctant to actually offer the design and license them to build them. I might regret it later, just like they regret licensing the storage units to us."
"So the storage cell. The battery version from the Loonys, is it as simple to explain as the generator?
Sorry, but it's a bit more exotic. It involves the storage of positrons in an artificial atom of very high atomic number. Suffice it to say, at very high atomic numbers - in the hundreds. Positrons and electrons form separate structures of distinct energy levels binding them tightly. They are held far too tightly to leave where they are bonded and interact with each other. The crystal, which absorbs the energy, actually shrinks as it holds more energy. I suspect it will also get stronger and more rigid, but testing that theory will be really difficult. It is just one of the things quite counter intuitive about the device."
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