Lieutenant (An Ell Donsaii story #3)

by Laurence Dahners

  She patted him lightly on the back of his hand, “I know what nanotubes are—tubular sheets of graphene with incredible tensile strength. Did you think you were eating pizza with a complete bimbo?” She grinned, “How are you doing it? If it’s not a secret?”

  “We start with a field of nanotubes created by ordinary methods so that they are standing on end with the open ends of the nanotubes exposed. Then we establish certain conditions of heat, pressure, catalyst molecules and vaporized carbon. Those are the secrets, and voila, the nanotubes get longer. So far, not long enough, we’re still measuring in meters, but, if we find the right conditions, we hope we can just spin them out forever!”

  “Wow! That would be really cool. Maybe long enough to use for the space elevator that they’ve been hoping to build for so long?”

  “Yeah,” he grinned conspiratorially, “riding up a skyhook that I had a hand in building, that’s my secret hope.”

  “That’s so cool!” She touched the back of his hand and he felt a tingle where her fingers rested.

  “What do you do for fun?”

  “I like to go out to clubs sometimes. I’m a real music aficionado.” He looked embarrassed, “Believe it or not, I like to swing dance, though I’m not the greatest.”

  Raquel clapped her hands, “Cool! A friend of mine took me to Tres Locos once and I learned to do a little swing dancing. We should go together sometime!”

  “OK, when?”

  She grinned and leaned across the table toward him, then whispered, “It’s Saturday, how about tonight?”

  “I thought you had a big project?”

  She quirked an eyebrow, “Not one that can’t wait on some dancing.”

  “Then sure! Should I pick you up?”

  “Oh, no. You don’t want to come to my ghetto. I’ll meet you at Tres Locos, say nine?”

  “He shrugged, OK.”

  The waitress arrived with the pizza and Gary dished a slice for Raquel, then another for him. The waitress said, “Will there be anything else?”

  Raquel smiled at her and said, “Jar of parmesan please?”

  After the waitress left, Gary held up his Mountain Dew, “To 4MA.”

  With a serious look Raquel held her Coke up and said, “To 4MA and long nanotubes,” she intoned and touched her cup to his.

  Gary asked, “So what do you do for a living?” suddenly his stomach clenched. She looked awfully young. It would be horrifying if she said “Go to high school.” Why didn’t I ask any of these questions while we were in the dojo?

  She swallowed a huge bite of pizza and arched an eyebrow, “I’m just a spoiled little rich girl. But I’m happy to buy a starving grad student a pizza.”

  “Um,” he squinched his face, “how old are you?”

  Ell grinned at him and whispered, “Fifteen.”

  He blanched.

  She took pity on him and, with a little smirk said, “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said that—actually I’m twenty-one—I could tell you thought I might be too young though.” Though she was actually eighteen her “Raquel” ID said twenty-one.

  Gary took a deep breath and said, “That was despicable!” He grinned at her, astonished at the way she was wolfing down pizza—how could she eat like that yet be so slender?

  ***

  Ell walked into Tres Locos early at ten ‘til nine and looked around. Her eyes slid over Barrett and Mary without stopping and she claimed a table near, but not right by the dance floor. A waitress came by and she ordered a Coke, then leaned back to listen to the warm up band and wait for Gary. She watched a pretty large group of line dancers do their thing and carefully noted the routine they were using. Someone tapped her shoulder.

  Ell looked up, expecting to see Gary. Instead, a dark haired guy she didn’t recognize held his hand out, “Dance.” He said. It was a statement, not a question. His breath smelled strongly of beer.

  Ell said, “Sorry, I’m waiting for a friend.”

  “Dance while you wait!”

  Ell thought to herself, it wouldn’t be all that bad to dance while she waited, but somehow it seemed like it would be rude to Gary. Besides, she didn’t like this guy’s attitude. She shook her head.

  The guy actually grabbed her wrist and tugged, saying, “Come on, you’re here alone, sitting near the dance floor. Don’t be such a bitch!”

  Ell glanced over at Barrett who’d gotten out of his seat and shook her head minutely. She was considering a number of possible responses to the man with his hand on her when she heard Gary’s voice, “The lady said she didn’t want to dance.”

  In a low menacing tone, without letting go of Ell’s wrist or looking at Gary, the man said, “Back off, asswipe!” Ell realized with dismay that the man was quite a bit bigger than Gary.

  Gary grabbed the man’s wrist in one hand and his shirtfront in the other. The man let go of Ell’s wrist and—cocking his fist back—said, “Butt out!” He threw a punch.

  Gary—as if he did it every day—dodged the wild swing and, as it flew past, he stepped in and executed the “O Goshi” throw they’d learned at 4MA. The man sailed over Gary’s hip and landed clumsily on his side. He cried out and Gary suddenly looked ashen, “Hey, man, are you OK?”

  Bouncers materialized around them as the man on the floor grated out, “I’m fine, back off shithead!”

  One of the bouncers helped the man to his feet and escorted him to the door over his protests. The other bouncer looked at them a moment then said, “Normally we’d throw both of you out, but I saw the guy hassling the young lady and was just too far away to stop him myself.” He waved a finger at Gary, “But don’t be gettin’ in any more fights, OK?”

  After the bouncer left, Gary slumped down into the seat next to Ell. “Whew! I’m taking jujutsu for ‘confidence and exercise.’ I didn’t actually expect to use it!”

  Ell gave him an admiring look, “Wow Gary! Thanks. I had no idea what to do with that guy! I appreciate the rescue!” She beamed sunnily at him and his heart soared.

  “Had he been bugging you long before I got here Raquel? I thought I was meeting you at nine.”

  “No, I got here a few minutes early and had just claimed this table. Can I get my white knight a beer?” She waved at a passing waitress.

  “Sure!” he winked, “I think it’s the least you can do for my saving your life.”

  After half his beer had disappeared, Gary nudged her, “Raquel, you ready to dance?”

  She got up and led the way to the floor. Gary enjoyed following her. She had on snug jeans and little western boots and the view was great!

  They began making some circuits around the floor. Though nothing like Cody, who Ell had learned to dance with, Gary was a pretty good dancer and Ell enjoyed herself immensely.

  After they sat down, Ell saw Cody over near the edge of the tables, he raised his beer in her direction and she gave him a little wave. Gary asked, “A friend?”

  Ell shook her head, “He taught me to dance one night here at Tres Locos. Just a nice guy, taking pity on a poor girl with two left feet.”

  Gary snorted, “He must be a great teacher if you learned to dance this well in ‘one night.’”

  “I guess so, you ready to dance again? Or are you just gonna lay around in that chair and drink beer?”

  Gary grinned, “Ready Ma’am. Anytime you say Ma’am. Let’s get out there now Ma’am.”

  After another session on the dance floor, Ell excused herself to visit the bathroom. When she came out Cody leaned up off the wall, “Raquel.” He nodded his head at her. “Are you and that guy serious or could I take you out for a real dance? Kinda show him what he could aspire to, so to speak?”

  Ell grinned at him, “He’s a very sweet guy Cody, and you’ve got no call to be tryin’ to make him feel bad.”

  “Maybe just a little bit?”

  “No. But one of these nights when I’m here with Amy, you can show me what we can really do, OK?”

  He looked enthusiastic, “It’s a date!�
��

  When she got back to the table, Gary asked with some concern, “You sure he isn’t an old boyfriend or something?”

  “Nah, just a dancin’ friend. Don’t you go getting all serious on me.” They danced a few more times and when it came time to leave Gary settled for a polite kiss on the cheek in the parking lot before Ell got into her little pickup.

  ***

  Ell finished placing the last of a tiny ring of carbon nanotubes with entangled tips in a circle around the spot on the platinum coated surface. The circle constituted what she planned to be her “port.” She sat back up rolling her shoulders to ease their stiffness. She opened the valve to let liquid nitrogen start running through the plate that the nanotubes were on. The cold should fix them in place. She clamped the cover on the chamber they were in and opened another valve to pressurize it. Once the pressure had reached two atmospheres she closed the valve and watched the gauge to make sure it was stable indicating no leak.

  She’d pressurized the empty chamber a couple of days ago and it had held pressure until this evening, thus indicating that it didn’t leak. She hoped that her nanotubes would form a “port” as her calculations said they might, allowing gas to leak out of the chamber through the port. The port would be pretty small so it might take a while to detect the loss of pressure. Unlike her previous experiments, this time she wasn’t trying to see if the material leaking out of the chamber was showing up in the correct location. She’d realized that just like when she’d done the experiments with which she’d discovered photon-gluon resonance, she could do her experiment one part at a time.

  So first, could she create a port that let material leak out of a chamber? Where the gas actually went wasn’t that important, at least for now.

  Confident that the chamber didn’t have a gross leak she energized the platinum plate. She put her finger on the newer, bigger power supply to be sure it wasn’t about to burn out like the first one. It was warm but didn’t seem to be getting hot.

  Ell looked at the gauge, nope it hadn’t dropped yet. Well, it was half past two in the morning, she’d check it again when she got up. She had Allan turn out the room lights as she walked to the door. Just before exiting the room she glanced back at the glowing lights of her setup.

  What the Hell! There are tiny sparks falling down underneath the table! “Damn it!” Ell muttered, Did the power supply burn out again? She stepped back over to the table in the dimness, expecting to see the power supply glowing or something. Everything was dark, she noted with puzzlement. She stepped back and crouched to look under the table. A line of sparks still trailed down from the table, straight down, seemingly unaffected by any air currents. She blew at them but the puff of air didn’t affect them. In fact the sparks didn’t seem to be falling, just appearing, then winking out at different levels, all in a line! And, they weren’t appearing under the power supply which was over to the right.

  Ell crouched lower to peer up at the bottom of the table. The line of sparks went right up to the bottom of the table. The light was too dim to see the hole they were coming out of. She noted the location and stood up, it looked like the sparks were coming from directly under the chamber she’d just spent all that time setting up. She had Allan turn the lights back on. Everything looked OK about Ell’s apparatus on top of the table. She sniffed, nothing smells like it’s burning. She crouched to look under the table but if the sparks were still there, they were very hard to see in the brighter light. The bottom of the table looked OK but it was pretty dim under there. Looking around Ell found the flashlight she kept in one of the drawers and shone it up under the table. She couldn’t see any hole for the sparks to be coming out of?

  A chill ran over her and she picked up a pencil then had Allan switch off the lights. Ell knelt again and looked up under the table at the sparks. She put the pencil into the line of sparks but they weren’t deflected or changed in any way below the pencil! Slowly she reached up and drew a small circle around the spot on the bottom of the table that the sparks seemed to be emanating from. Then she had Allan turn the light on again. Crouching, she peered up under the table. The area inside the circle she’d drawn was unmarked! No hole there for the sparks to be falling out of! Using the pencil as a measuring stick she placed the tip of it at the center of the circle and then gripped the pencil with two fingers at the edge of the table. She knelt back up and moved the pencil to the top of the table sliding it back. Yes, the sparks are coming from directly beneath the chamber! Slowly Ell sagged back from her kneeling position, to her buttocks… then to her back where she lay, staring unseeing at the ceiling as her mind raced with the implications.

  A couple of hours later, still lying unseeing on the floor, Allan spoke in her ear, “You have less than two hours before you must leave for work, I recommend that you get some sleep.”

  Ell shook herself and got off the floor to go into her bed, but it was another thirty minutes before she fell asleep.

  The fact that she’d actually completed the reading for the entire course helped out the next day in class. Instead of listening, Ell spent the time running her equations through her mind and pondering the meaning of the sparks she’d seen last night. She’d had so little sleep that she expected to have trouble staying awake. She felt so excited though that dozing off wasn’t a problem, just that it was impossible to keep her mind on the UAV class. The alignment of the line of sparks just below the “port” she’d tried to create strongly suggested the sparks were related to the port. Ell now hypothesized that the port might be working. She thought that as molecules squeezed through the port in the fifth dimension and appeared back into Ell’s observable universe, a energy leakage resulted in the visible light emission that appeared as a “spark.” After she considered it she realized that the distance traveled in this universe when a “port” opened through the fifth dimension could vary enormously depending on the conditions in the port at the moment it opened. After all, an atomic distance in the fifth dimension equaled an enormous distance in this universe, so minor voltage and current fluctuations could result in the other terminus of the portal being either much further from, or much closer to, the near terminus of the port than calculated.

  Setting up the experiment Ell had calculated conditions to open a port across a ten mm distance in this universe, intending that the port would open outside the chamber itself and into the empty space above the table below where she’d fixed the chamber in position. But now she realized that microscopic fluctuations in the field could open the port anywhere from microns to meters away. She wondered if some of the “sparks” of portal openings had appeared in the apartment below hers?

  Back home in her apartment Ell walked past Amy who was waiting with her dinner and stepped into her “office/lab” leaving the light off and looking for the “sparks” in the dim light coming from the curtain covered window. There weren’t any visible, maybe there’s too much light? Amy called out, “You’ve got to eat, your damned experiment can wait that long!” Ell stepped over to check the pressure gauge—it read a little lower. Is that enough lower to truly indicate that some molecules actually did escape from the chamber through the port? Or could it be a leak? Or just inaccuracy in the gauge?

  Ell picked up a sheet of paper and sat down to look under the table. Locating the circle she’d marked the night before with the pencil she wrapped the paper around the other side of it to block light and leaned in close. No sparks! She sighed as her shoulders sagged. Moments later she had the cover off the power supply, Yes it’s burned out again! She ordered a large, stand alone power supply that could provide voltages and currents far higher than what she’d been using and went back out to eat dinner. She raised an eyebrow at the exasperated Amy, “You’re turning into a nagging wife!”

  Amy snickered, “You’re making me into one!”

  Chapter Five

  The car had been parked across from the Nellis entrance for two days, a small but powerful video camera mounted next to the visor and focused on
the exit. In a van across the parking lot a man watched a screen displaying the take from that camera. He said into his mike, “There she is! In a Blue Ford Focus, turning right, pulling into traffic… now.” One of the chase cars, a nondescript small Chevrolet, pulled out into traffic a block back behind Ell. As she drove down the road, the other chase car, parked down the road the other direction in case she turned left, pulled out and fell in three blocks behind her.

  ***

  Ell knocked on the door of the classroom and a few moments later it opened to reveal a short, plump, red headed young woman. She grinned up at Ell with a sparkle in her eye. “Oh, thank you so much for coming in Ms. Donsaii, oops, I mean Lieutenant. The kids will love meeting you. I’m Diane Smithers.” As Ell stepped into the room Ms. Smithers turned to the kids in her class who were all staring at the newcomer. “Kids, I know it’s not time for ‘Show and Tell’ right now and it normally isn’t allowed to bring anything ‘living’ to Show and Tell either, but today we’re making an exception. Janey, would you like to come up to the front?”

  Janey got out of her seat and shyly walked up to stand beside Ell. Like she often did when she was nervous, she had the tip of a finger in the corner of her mouth.

  Ms. Smithers said, “OK, Janey has brought a very special person in for her sharing and, as always with Show and Tell, you can ask questions and try to guess what is special about this person.

  Hands shot up around the room and Ms. Smithers pointed to a boy near the front, “Jimmy?”

  “She’s a lieutenant!” Jimmy volunteered excitedly.

  Ms. Smithers raised a questioning eyebrow at Ell. Ell leaned forward and said, “Yes, I am. These bars on my shoulders,” she leaned forward so they could see the embroidered bars on the shoulders of her BDUs, “mean that I’m a lieutenant, a rank in the military. I’m in the Air Force.”