Einstein's Bridge

by Cramer, John

  “Ah, yes,” said Larry, “I read that quote in the New York Times. Not very politic of Schwitters to say things like that to the press.”

  “He’s a very unhappy man running a troubled project,” said Alice. “We’re trying to help him by ending it.”

  Larry chuckled.

  “I should mention,” Alice continued, “that this isn’t the first Siciliano memo to come to light. In 1991, with a bit of help from our people, Congress learned of the existence of the string of highly critical and sarcastic reports on the SSC from Siciliano to Admiral Watkins. An oversight subcommittee subpoenaed them. That produced a great uproar within the DOE. First they claimed the reports didn’t exist. Then they admitted they did exist, but withheld them on the basis of ‘executive privilege’. Finally they allowed Committee Staff to come to the Admiral’s office, read the memoranda, and make notes. But they would not allow copies to be made. One of the staff members told me afterward that it was all a waste of time. The Siciliano memos were full of innuendoes, accusations, and venom, but they contained no hard information the Committee could use.”

  “The Admiral has sailed away, and there’s a new Secretary of Energy now,” said Larry. “I saw her on C-Span just last night. She said, as I recall, that she was ‘nearly passionate’ about the SSC and that she was planning to switch major contractors for the project. I take it that Mr. Siciliano has made the transition to Ms. O’Leary’s DOE successfully.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Alice. “O’Leary is as leery of the SSC scientists as the Admiral was, and she’s added about thirty more people to Siciliano’s operation in Dallas to provide even more DOE oversight.” She pointed to the envelope on the desk. “Our new Siciliano memo is addressed to her.”

  “I see,” said Larry. “This time you’re taking different route to reveal a damaging memo.”

  “Ah ... yes,” said Alice carefully. “Our whistleblower is a person who was working as a temporary clerical helper in Siciliano’s operation. One evening when he was working late, he happened to come across this new memorandum, which happened to have been left on the screen of Siciliano’s very own PC.”

  “Wow!” said Larry. “Can you prove that’s where it came from?”

  “There’s a floppy disk in the envelope,’ said Alice. “It contains an MS Word file for the O’Leary memorandum and files for some other inter-office memoranda and correspondence. Enough to prove its origins, if you need to. There is also a copy of an unreleased GAO report on the SSC project that we delivered to the press last June. That may also interest you as background, although perhaps it’s no longer news.”

  Larry opened the envelope and its contents. Finally he looked up and smiled. “This is good stuff,” he said. “Siciliano wants to fire the SSC Director and stop the project for a year while they do a ‘complete management overhaul’. That, I believe, is bureaucrat-ese for a kangaroo court. I can imagine who he would put in charge of that.”

  Alice nodded. “The best thing that can be done for the SSC project now is a quick and merciful death.”

  Larry looked at her closely. “Why is your group so interested in ‘oversight’ for the SSC in particular?” he asked. “Surely there are many bigger and more appropriate targets for oversight in this town.”

  “The SSC is only one of several of our projects,” said Alice. “It happens to be coming up for a vote in the Senate soon, so we’re focusing our attention on it just now.”

  He nodded, scanning the papers again.

  “Do you think you’ll be running a story on this Siciliano memorandum?” she asked.

  “Oh, yes,” said Larry, “Definitely. I’ll have to call him first and ask for a clarification of the contents of the memorandum. That will serve as a confirmation of its validity, and it may also produce additional information for the story. Is your source still working at Siciliano’s office? My call might compromise his job security.”

  “No, problem,” said Alice, smiling. “He was only there for a week. He’s off on another project now.”

  CHAPTER 8.7

  Battery

  ROGER stopped the car and peered again at the crudely drawn map. He had never been on the Stony Brook campus before, and so far he’d found that it was dismayingly large and diffuse by Cambridge standards.

  Finally, after several detours down wrong roads, he located the physics building and parked his rental car in the large lot nearby. Like most of the rest of the campus, the physics building was constructed of bare pre-cast concrete of what must have been considered bold modern design in the late 1960’s, but now looked rather dated and unfinished.

  Roger found Sheldon Reynald’s laboratory in the basement of the building. The lab door was open, and he walked in. A graduate student was seated before a bench in the corner, reading a paperback book. He looked up as Roger approached.

  “I’m looking for Professor Reynald,” said Roger. “Is he around?”

  “Actually, I’m Sheldon Reynald,” said the ‘student’. “How can I help you?”

  “Roger Wilkins of the Iris Foundation,” said Roger, pressing the graying beard to make sure it secure before extending his hand.

  “Dr. Wilkins,” Reynald said, “this is a surprise.”

  “I couldn’t really stay away,” Roger said, “after I learned of your success with the alloy we’d suggested. I had to come and see the thing for myself. Where is it?”

  “Over here,” said Reynald, pointing to a cluttered lab bench. “Behold the spin battery.”

  Roger walked over and looked closely at the setup. An object that might have been an oversize doughnut covered with dull gray frosting occupied a central location on the table. Shiny coils of plastic-coated copper wire had been wound around and through the torus in several orientations, and leads were connected to standard laboratory measuring instruments, power supplies, and oscillators.

  “It’s in charge-up mode now. Would you like me to run our little demo?” Reynald asked.

  “Of course,” said Roger.

  Reynald wheeled over a tall rack that had been against the wall. It supported a vertical slab of plywood on which were mounted row after row of light bulbs. “This is a standard 2 kilowatt load,” he said. “It’s made from twenty 100 watt light bulbs plus a cooling blower that uses another 20 watts. It’s about equivalent to what an electric stove might use with most of its burners on. We’ve been pumping up the alignment of the spin battery for about an hour since the last full discharge. Now I’ll disconnect the charging lines and hook it up to the load.” He disconnected the doughnut shaped object from its attached leads, picked it up from the bench, placed it in a receptacle at the top of the rack, and connected several large diameter cables. “Ready?” he asked.

  “Sure,” said Roger.

  Reynald flipped a switch. Immediately all the light bulbs came on at full brightness, and the blower motor began to hum. “There you are,” he said. “As you can see, there are no external connections. The electrical power is all coming from the spin battery. It’s present output is about 2 kilowatts. It will hold that output for several days before it need recharging. Amazing, isn’t it?”

  Roger looked at the gray doughnut again. “Does it get hot?”

  “No,” said Reynald. “Go ahead, touch it. The copper wires heat up, but the alloy itself doesn’t, except by conduction if it’s in contact with the wires.”

  Roger put his finger on the gray surface of the doughnut. It felt cool to the touch. “The spin alignment stores the energy?” he asked.

  “Actually,” said Reynald, “our preliminary evidence indicates that there may be a kind of ‘avalanche’ of spin alignments and modified atomic structure, resulting in an unprescedentedly large internal magnetic field. Most of the energy is stored in the magnetic field. The energy density increases as the square of the magnetic field strength, you know.”
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  “From your energy numbers, the magnetic field must be enormous,” Roger said, “and the internal forces too. How can the thing stay together against such forces?”

  “We’re not really sure,” said Reynald. “The effect doesn’t work at all if there are any cracks or structural imperfections in the alloy of the toroid. The magnetic field and degree of spin-alignment are largest at the center of the alloy, while the surface field is very small. We’ve arranged to do some neutron scattering studies on one next week at Brookhaven to verify the size of the internal field.”

  “But don’t you have estimates of the field?” Roger asked.

  “Of course,” said Reynald, looking slightly embarrassed. “On the basis of output and size, the energy density inside the thing is about half a megajoule per cubic centimeter. Therefore, if the energy is stored completely in the magnetic field, the average internal field would be around 1,100 Tesla. Of course, some of the energy is stored in the aligned spins themselves, so that’s probably an overestimate.”

  “That’s amazing,” said Roger. “That’s ten thousand times the energy density of gasoline. Internal forces should tear the thing apart. With that amount of stored energy it should explode like a ton of TNT, yet it just sits there, not even getting warm.”

  “We’re aware that the thing could be dangerous,” said Reynald, “if the structure that holds it together were disrupted. We did some tests to determine what it takes to disrupt one of these and cause it to dump its energy. As it turns out, it’s very difficult to disrupt. This one is perfectly safe, even it was dropped on the floor. But with a suitable detonator it would make a spectacular explosive that would fly apart in a plane like a ruptured flywheel. One of the graduate students suggested that you could make a bomb that would explode in a plane five and a half feet off the ground, decapitating all the men while saving the women and children.”

  Roger winced. “How can it be so stable?” he asked.

  “No one knows,” said Reynald. “I’ve been playing with a theory which suggests that the same phenomenon that aligns the spins also provides increased atomic binding and structural strength.”

  Roger nodded. “Sounds plausible,” he said.

  “Now I have a question,” said Reynald. “Our choice of this particular copper-bismuth-holmium alloy was done at the suggestion of your foundation. I’d like to know where that suggestion came from, and if you know any more that you haven’t told us. Dammit, I feel like a fraud, discovering something that is clearly of great importance, but which may actually have been someone else’s idea.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t tell you the origins of the suggestion,” Roger said. “Not yet. But I can assure you that no one is going to claim that you stole their idea. When you publish your results, you’re free to say anything you wish, including nothing at all, about the source of the information.”

  “But the spin battery is a major breakthrough,” said Reynald. “It should be worth a Nobel prize. This discovery is more important than warm superconductors, because it has immediate applications. And the patent rights are going to be worth a fortune.”

  “Yes,” said Roger. “You’re about to become very wealthy. According to our contract, the patent rights will be shared equally between you, the Foundation, and your university. We’ll file the patent application as soon as you’re ready and push it through the inspection process rapidly, to minimize any delay in publishing your results in physics journals.”

  Reynald nodded. “If there are no hidden problems, the chemical storage battery is obsolete. Soon everyone will be driving high performance electric cars powered by a bank of spin batteries weighing a few pounds. It’s a revolutionary technology. The availability of a cheap portable device for storing energy changes everything.”

  “I know,” said Roger, recalling the wonders described in the Maker download.

  CHAPTER 8.8

  Connections

  STEVE approached the desk. “Are you Larry Walker?” he asked.

  “That’s me,” said the man sitting there. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m Steve Brown. I’m a law student in Tallahassee, and I just drove up from Florida. I came because I saw the piece in the Post you did last week about the Super Collider Project and the Siciliano Memorandum. It was an impressive piece of investigative journalism. It caused quite a stir, even in the Florida papers.”

  “I was lucky,” said Larry. “I had some help on that one from a DOE insider.”

  “You’re being modest,” said Steve. “But anyhow, I came here to give you more help. There is another whole story on the politics surrounding the SSC that needs to be brought out into the open.”

  Larry flipped to a blank page of a yellow legal pad and selected a sharp pencil from those collected in a broken coffee cup on his desk. “Tell me about it,” he said.

  Steve opened his briefcase and placed a sheaf of papers on Larry’s desk. “Have you ever heard of PetroGen, Inc.?” he asked.

  “Hmm. Yes, I think so. A relatively new oil company that been using bio-engineered organisms to make old oil wells produce again.”

  “That’s right,” said Steve. “The founder and president of PetroGen is a man named George Preston. I’ve discovered that his whole identity is a fraud. He appeared out of nowhere in 1987. There are no records at all on him before that, not even a social security number. I’ve found evidence that a child with his name, birthdate, and birthplace died in 1949, the year Preston claims to have been born. He claims to have studied in Europe, but the first U. S. passport in his name was issued in 1987.”

  “Interesting,” said Larry, “but not particularly newsworthy, I’m afraid, unless he runs for public office. Lots of people change their names for one reason or another.”

  Steve nodded. “It’s what Preston’s been doing that I think is newsworthy. Preston has a lot of political influence. He was an influential Bush supporter and contributor in 1988, but more recently he’s done a lot to get Clinton elected.”

  Larry nodded, making notes.

  “I’ve recently discovered that he’s also been systematically causing problems for the Superconducting Super Collider project in Texas for a number of years. Here’s a list of the anti-SSC organizations PetroGen has contributed to. It includes the Citizen’s Project for Government Oversight that was mentioned in your article.” Steve placed a sheet on the desk.

  “Wait a minute,” Larry said, looking sharply at Steve. “This is some kind of conspiracy theory you’re pushing?”

  “Oh, no,” said Steve, “it’s an elaborate money-making real estate deal by a sharp operator. Preston wants to kill the SSC project to shake loose a couple of billion dollars in the federal budget this year. If the SSC is canceled, the eliminated expenditures represent funds that will still reside within the overall budget cap of the Energy and Water subcommittees in the House and Senate. Preston’s plan is to divert that money from the SSC to an almost completed water project in Alabama. Do you know about the Tombigbee Waterway?”

  “Ah, yes,” said Larry. “I believe that Senator Moynahan once described that project as ‘the Cloning of the Mississippi, at taxpayer expense’.”

  “Yes,” said Steve. “Well, Preston wants to snatch SSC money for the Tombigbee.”

  “This year that wouldn’t be so easy,” said Larry. “The first-term Democrats in the House want to cut budgets, not move money from one pork barrel to another.”

  “Ah,” said Steve, “but you’ve been a reporter in this town long enough to know how that works. The congressional old-timers always use the enthusiasms of the freshmen for their own purposes. Tom Bevill, Chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee for Energy and Water, is from Alabama. He’s well known as a master of the pork barrel. For years he’s moved federal money into the Tombigbee project from anywhere it could be found. Now the project is almos
t finished, and the plum of the SSC cancellation is about to drop into his lap. What do you think will happen?”

  “But why is George Preston involved?” Larry asked.

  Steve placed more papers on the desk. “These are the deed records of recent land purchases in Alabama. PetroGen has been buying up land along uncompleted sections of the Tombigbee Waterway. The land values there are low right now because nobody believes the project will be completed any time soon. But if the SSC money is transferred to the Tombigbee, the land values will go up like a rocket. If this swindle succeeds, Preston will come away from the operation with a profit of several hundred percent, which amounts to perhaps a billion dollars.”

  Walker scratched his head. “Interesting,” he said, “but there’s not a story here. At least not yet.”

  “Why not?” Steve demanded, frowning.

  “Because it’s all too speculative,” said Larry. “The Post is not the National Enquirer. The SSC has not been canceled, and if the congressional leadership and the powerful Texas delegation has anything to do with it, it won’t be. Even if the project is canceled, it’s very uncertain if the funds generated could be moved anywhere else. And while your information on Preston’s mysterious background and land purchases seems provocative, it isn’t enough to base a story on. Sorry.”

  “Look,” said Steve, struggling to control his rising anger, “I’m just a college student who has devoted some time to checking up on this Preston creep. With only the small amount of time I’ve been able to spare from my studies, I’ve turned up all this. I’m certain that there’s a lot more there, that what I’ve found is just the tip of the iceberg. An investigative reporter like you, with the resources of the Washington Post behind you, should be able to turn up a lot more.”

  “Yes,” Larry said, “that may be true. You’ve convinced me that something might be going on here. But there still may not be a story in it. I have other work to do too, you know.”

  Steve shrugged. “Well, Larry, you’re the reporter. Now you know what I know.”