by Bob Blanton
“They think they’ll be done at six hours, the hour to get there and the five hours we’ve tentatively allocated,” Catie explained. “But it depends on how the experiments run. I think the Zelbars are the key; they have the most complex experiments. But some of them we’ll leave at the space station, and they’ll run them remotely.”
“I hear they want to move up to the station,” Liz said.
“They sure do,” Catie said. “They’d move up there now if we’d let them.”
“What’s the holdup?” the admiral asked.
“Until we finish the first ring, we’re not really set up for permanent guests,” Catie said. “We’ve got limited space and only one-half-G of gravity. Liz, how long ‘til we have the ring ready for habitation?”
“We’re halfway through the extrusion,” Liz said. “Give us one week to finish that, then we have to attach the shafts, stop the rotation, push the ring into position, weld it all together, add atmosphere, and then we can start putting in the infrastructure so people can live there.”
“I’m sure you have to do all that,” Catie said. “But I asked how long, not what you have to do.”
Liz leaned forward and punched Catie on the shoulder. “A little respect and recognition are all I ask for. Anyway, the answer is four weeks.”
“How can you do it that fast?” the admiral asked with amazement.
“We have one hundred workers up there now,” Liz said.
“I thought you couldn’t have permanent guests,” the admiral said.
“They’re not guests, and it’s a little primitive,” Liz said. “We’re just putting in a treatment system to handle all the waste. In fact, Natalia is up here to check on it and make sure they’re doing it right. She’s going to stay for a week to get it up and running.”
“Maybe I should go back and check on Pam,” the admiral said.
“I’ll go with you,” Catie said, “that is if you’re okay taking over, Liz?”
“I’m okay with it,” Liz said. “I’ll review some reports and prepare for my inspection.”
Catie popped her straps off and pushed herself out of her seat. She floated up, and then she slowly fell as the microgravity pulled her toward the back of the cockpit. She cycled through the airlock, leaving the admiral to figure things out on his own.
“Hi, Catie,” the twins said as she entered the crew compartment.
“Hi, did they chase you up here?” Catie asked.
“No, we were waiting for you,” they said.
“Remember what we talked about,” Catie said. “Let’s go back and see how they’re doing.”
“Okay!”
When they cycled through the airlock, they found Natalia guarding the door. “Are you making sure nobody sneaks in?” Catie asked.
“Just making sure certain people are escorted while they’re back here,” Natalia said as she winked at the twins.
“Catie already told us what we have to do,” the twins said.
“That’s good, then I don’t have to worry about you,” Natalia said. “But I probably have to worry about the admiral.”
“Yes, you do,” the twins said. “Here he comes.”
The admiral cycled through the lock, carefully holding onto something to keep himself oriented.
“Your boots have magnetics in them; if you clench your toes; they’ll turn on,” Natalia said. “They’ll keep you on the deck.”
The admiral clinched his toes right away, “That was easy, thanks.”
The twins just sailed down the length of the cargo bay, using their arms to make minor adjustments to their flight. They bounced off the ceiling once and landed next to the Zelbars. Catie followed them, although not as gracefully.
“Hi,” the twins said to the Zelbars. “What are you testing?”
“I’m trying to prove that we can make transparent polysteel,” Nikola Zelbar said.
“Is it working?” the twins asked.
“It looks like it is,” Nikola said. “But I have to run a bunch of tests to see how thin we can make it, and how thick we can make it.”
“Thin would be nice, like on our comms,” the twins said.
“Yes, if we can make it thin enough, then we could use it for glass on your comms and people’s phones,” Nikola said. “Then your glass wouldn’t scratch or break if you dropped your phone.”
“That would be nice,” the twins said. Catie, who was standing behind them, gave a silent sigh of relief that the twins didn’t point out that the glass on their comms already couldn’t be scratched or broken.
“What else are you working on?” the twins asked.
“Those are tests to see how thin we can make it,” Nikola said as she pointed to two other experiments. “And this is testing to see if we can tune the plasma field so that the nickel will separate from the iron and not foul up the polysteel.”
“Why are you doing that?” the twins asked.
Nikola gave Catie a curious glance before she replied. “Because some of our iron has nickel mixed in it. And we don’t want to have to separate the nickel out before we run it through the plasma field.” Catie kept a straight face; she and the twins both knew the primary source of nickel-iron alloy was meteorites, or more precisely, asteroids.
“What is he doing?” they asked as they pointed to Dr. Zelbar.
“Oh, he is trying to see if we can make flexible polysteel,” Nikola said. “He’s been thinking it should be possible if we leave a little hydrogen in the mix. He’s hoping it will be like Kevlar. Do you know what Kevlar is?”
“Yes,” the twins said. “They use it in armor vests.”
“That’s right,” Nikola said. “If it works, they could make better exosuits for you; it would be more flexible than the ones you wear, or at least we could reinforce the joints better.”
“Cool,” the twins said. “What’s he working on now?” they asked as Dr. Zelbar moved to another table.
“That’s his superconductor,” Nikola said. “He’s been working on it for weeks; now he needs to see if he can really make it. Like transparent polysteel, it can only be made in space.”
“Supercool,” the twins said with a giggle at their play on words.
“What’s that one doing?” the twins asked, pointing to another experiment that Nikola was running.
“That’s the one where I’m trying to make really thick transparent polysteel, and that one is for really thin,” Nikola said. “When they finish, I’ll test them to see how much thicker or thinner I can make it.”
“Oh, a boundary condition experiment,” the twins said. “We’re doing those in our chemistry class.”
“Do you like chemistry?” Nikola asked.
“Yeah, it’s pretty fun,” the twins said. “We did experiments with sulfur last week. Boy did they stink.”
“Yes, sulfur does have an obnoxious odor,” Nikola said.
“Ha, it works!” Dr. Zelbar exclaimed.
“Yay!” the twins cheered.
“Oh, Leo, we knew it would,” Nikola said. “What temperature is the substrate at?”
“Just twenty-five C,” Dr. Zelbar said. “I’m starting to raise it now.”
“Can we watch?” the twins asked.
“As long as you promise not to touch anything,” Dr. Zelbar said.
“We promise,” the twins said as they hopped up to the ceiling and pushed themselves back to the floor right next to Dr. Zelbar.
“Oh, they are so cute,” Nikola said. “But I do want to trip them when they make it look so easy.”
“And you haven’t seen them with their spacesuits, running around outside,” Catie said. “That’ll really make you jealous.”
“And tripping them doesn’t work,” Natalia said. “Believe me, I’ve tried. They just adjust and keep going.”
Catie and Nikola laughed at that. “I’ll go keep an eye on them,” Catie said. “Holler if you need help.” Catie did the same maneuver the twins did and landed behind them.
“Thirty,” on
e twin said. “Zero ohms,” the other said.
Dr. Zelbar was slowly turning up the temperature of the substrate that the superconductor was deposited on.
“Thirty-one.”
“Zero ohms.”
“I think you should go faster,” the twins said.
“You do, do you? What if I break it?” Dr. Zelbar asked.
“Then you can make another,” the twins said. “But you’ll know where to start then.”
“Okay, take that,” Dr. Zelbar said as he dialed up the temperature setting.
“Thirty-five.”
“Zero ohms.”
“Fifty-two.”
“Zero ohms.”
“Seventy.”
“Zero ohms.”
“One hundred.”
“Zero ohms.”
“One fifty.”
“Zero ohms.”
“One seventy.”
“Zero ohms . . .” the second twin said as she looked at the dial carefully.
“One eighty.”
“Not zero ohms,” the second twin said.
“Well, how much is it?” Dr. Zelbar asked.
“A lot of zeros then a one,” the twin said as she started counting zeros.
“Push this button,” Catie said, “and it will tell you how many zeros.”
The twin pushed the button, “It says 1.2, E minus ten.”
“Now, what does it say?” Dr. Zelbar asked as he dialed the temperature up some more.
“Two hundred.”
“9.1, E minus five,” the second twin said.
“Now?”
“Two hundred ten.”
“2.5, E minus four,” the second twin said.
“Now?”
“Two hundred fifteen.”
“7.3, E minus four.”
“Two hundred twenty.”
“2.1, E minus three.”
Dr. Zelbar walked the temperature back down to one seventy C as the twins kept calling out the readings. The impedance came back down to zero, following the curve almost precisely.
“That’s good,” Dr. Zelbar said. “It comes back down to zero, so it doesn’t get damaged.”
“What happens if it gets cold?” the twins asked.
“That is an excellent question,” Dr. Zelbar said. “It should just stay at zero, but we should check, don’t you think?”
“Yes, we should,” the twins said. “You always have to verify your assumptions.”
“That is correct, now how do we make it cold?” he asked.
“You could just take it outside,” the twins said. “It would get cold real fast.”
“But what if I don’t want to go outside?” Dr. Zelbar asked.
“We could take it outside for you,” they volunteered.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Dr. Zelbar said. “But there must be a way to cool it off in here.”
“There is a cooling terminal right behind that panel,” Catie said. “It connects to a radiator on the hull, so it should be getting nice and cold by now.”
“Thank you,” Dr. Zelbar said. “Now I need some heavy wire to connect it so we can start cooling this substrate down.”
“There’s some in the front,” the twins said. “Do you want us to get it for you?”
“That would be nice,” Dr. Zelbar said as he watched the twins rocket off toward the front of the bay. They were back in a flash, giving him one end of the wire and uncoiling it to the panel Catie had pointed out.
Catie was impressed as she watched the twins patiently wait for the doctor to finish connecting his end. They continued to wait patiently while he examined everything about his setup before giving them the word to plug their end in. They had even tied it up so that it went up to the ceiling and across to the panel, coming down the wall, so nobody could trip on it or accidentally knock it loose.
Once the substrate cooled below minus sixty C, both the twins and Dr. Zelbar lost interest. Dr. Zelbar left the experiment to run on its own while he went back to his flexible polysteel experiment. The twins decided to check in on Mrs. Michaels for a while. Mrs. Michaels had just finished explaining all of her experiments when Liz announced that they were approaching the space station. Everyone quickly made their way back into the crew compartment since it had windows, an addition that Catie had made to the second run of Oryxes.
“There it is,” the twins said with awe. “It’s really big.”
“I thought you two had been up here before,” Admiral Michaels said.
“Not since it’s been finished,” Catie said to cover the fact that the twins got all their space-time on the asteroid mission. Although the admiral knew about the asteroids, his wife and the Zelbars didn’t. “That partial ring really makes it look bigger,” Catie added as she pointed out the four sections of the ring that were being extruded. They were all about forty-five degrees through their arc or about halfway.
“What will happen when they start meeting up with each other?” the admiral asked.
“The form is designed so that the inside part will just slide into the next section,” Catie said. “The plasma guns will weld them together, then stop.”
“How do you get the form out?” the admiral asked. “You wouldn’t want to waste it, would you?”
“We have to cut it in half to get it out,” Catie explained. “Once they cut it in half, they can then slide it through the holes that were left for the elevator spokes. If you look closely, you can see the discoloration that’s coming out of the form now. That’s where the hole is. They slide a piece of foam in as the form moves to make the hole.”
“You sure know a lot about it,” Mrs. Michaels said.
“That’s because she’s the one who figured out how to make it,” Natalia said.
“You did?” Admiral Michaels asked.
“Only partially, I only told them they should extrude it,” Catie said while blushing. “They had to figure out all the hard stuff.”
“Don’t be so modest,” Natalia said. “Your Uncle Blake said it cut months off of the schedule for the station.”
“They would have gotten there,” Catie said. “I just figured it out first. Hey, we’re actually going to dock to the station,” Catie said to change the subject. “If you want to, you can go inside. It’s pressurized, and you can even go into the area that’s spun up, it has one half-G of gravity.”
“I might do that,” Admiral Michaels said. “What do you think, Pam?”
“I’ll be happy to join you,” Mrs. Michaels said. “I know the Zelbars are planning to go see the place. They’re working on setting up a lab there.”
“What are you going to do?” Admiral Michaels asked Catie.
“The twins and I are joining Liz on her inspection. We’re going to check out the new ring and the elevator shafts they’re extruding,” Catie said. “After that, we’ll come inside to check out the latest construction. Nattie will take care of you guys and make sure you get around okay.”
Catie walked over to the Zelbars who were having an in-depth discussion about the space station construction. “How are you two doing?” Catie asked when she approached.
“We’re doing fine,” Nikola said.
Dr. Zelbar huffed at that. “Can you tell me why you have me working on a high-temperature superconductor when you already have one?” he asked.
Catie knew it was a bad idea to bring Dr. Zelbar up in the Oryx, but her father had agreed to it. “The one we have is a thick-film superconductor,” Catie said. “We have you working on a thin-film one,” Catie lied. The one that Dr. Zelbar had detected was a thick-film one, but they did have a thin-film one they were going to use in the semiconductors they were getting ready to manufacture.
“Am I wasting my time?” Dr. Zelbar asked.
“I don’t think so,” Catie said. “Your process for the one you’re working on looks very promising compared to what we have.” In this case, Catie was telling the truth. The Zelbars’ formula and process for transparent polysteel were far better than what
the Paraxeans, the aliens that had built the Sakira, had. And they had never developed flexible polysteel. ADI had also told her that the process and formula for the superconductor were promising to be thinner than the one they already had, which would be a big boost for the computer chip designs.
“You wouldn’t lie to me?” Dr. Zelbar asked while giving Catie a steely look.
“Only a little,” Catie said. “But we are really looking forward to the results from your superconductor test. It looks like you might get down to atomic numbers for thickness.”
“That is my plan,” Dr. Zelbar said, feeling somewhat mollified.
“Aren’t there going to be any windows?” Nikola asked. “Do you need the transparent polysteel to make them?”
“We wouldn’t put windows in even if we had the transparent polysteel,” Catie said. “Cameras and displays work better; that way, the scene won’t be moving. Although the motion would be slow, it would still be disconcerting to some people. And as your husband pointed out, we’re embedding a superconductor in the polysteel to convert the heat into electricity and transfer it to the power banks.”
“Is that how these things can go up and down so often?” Dr. Zelbar asked.
“There are two reasons for that,” Catie said. “First, we have the fuel to slow our reentry down; and second, we can absorb the heat from the reentry and convert it, so it drives our engines, which slows us down more.”
“Clever,” Dr. Zelbar said. “Okay, I’m going back to my experiments. We’ll see you when you join us inside the station.”
◆ ◆ ◆
Catie and Liz went out to inspect the progress of the ring extrusion. The twins went with them to play, train, show-off, it was hard to tell. They did various acrobatics the whole time. They loved holding hands and using their thrusters to send them into a spin, their clasped hands at the center of the spin. Then they figured out that they could rush toward each other and grab hands just as they passed, causing them to spin. A few times of that and they quickly figured out that they could release and continue their flight in any vector in their common plane of travel.
“They look like Elroy from the Jetsons,” Liz said.
“Who?” Catie asked.
“The Jetsons, it is an old cartoon from the sixties,” Liz said. “You can watch it on the net.”