Rocket! An Ell Donsaii story #4)

by Dahners, Laurence

  Ell said, “Well if your whole body felt like it was on fire like my finger did when it went through, I can imagine you’d be pretty excited alright.”

  Roger said, “What am I gonna do with the mouse now? I didn’t think of that when I bought him at the pet store.”

  Ell frowned, “I think you need to get whatever we need to keep him around the rest of his life. We need to make sure that going through a port doesn’t make you sick or shorten your life span. Call him ‘John Glenn.’ He’ll be famous as the first ‘port traveler.’ How long do mice live anyway?”

  Roger said, “I don’t know. I guess I’d better get back to the pet store for a cage and food etc.”

  Allan said, “Mice live an average of 18 months.”

  “I think you really ought to get twenty mice. Put 10 mice through a port and keep 10 as controls so we can compare average life spans between the two groups and to be sure they all stay healthy? Someday we may want to put a human through a port and we’ll want some idea whether it’s OK.”

  Roger said, “18 months is a long time to wait. I’ll find some shorter lived animals to put through the ports too.” He paused, then said, “My AI says worker bees live about 4 weeks. I’ll see if I can get some freshly hatched workers from a beekeeper and put half of them through a port. Hmmm, I’ll have to figure out what to feed bees…”

  Roger wandered off and Sheila came back in with a bag full of fresh, hot burritos and started shoving them through the port to the delighted astronauts.

  Slager said, “Ms. Donsaii…”

  Ell said, “Please call me ‘Ell.’”

  Slager said, “Well, you should call me ‘Dave’ then.”

  “Ouch! That makes me uncomfortable. I’ve been taught to respect my elders.”

  “Now you’re making me feel old. That’s not respectful! Anyway, I wanted to again express our gratitude for your rescue.”

  “We were so excited to be able to help. We’d been working on these ports for quite a while and when we suddenly realized they might be able to help you guys in a time of crisis it really gave us something to work towards. The group had been working long hours and sleeping here on cots trying to get this whole thing to work before you ran out of air so I hope you don’t mind them taking the day off yesterday?”

  “Oh, my goodness no. I’ve worked to a few deadlines in my time too. You’d completely stabilized our situation here by Saturday afternoon.”

  “Well, we want to make sure we’ve done everything we can to make you safe and to make things better for you guys. We do appreciate, even more now, the risks you’ve been taking in our name out there on the Station. So, are you fully bunkered up with water and oxygen in case something should happen to our ability to supply you?”

  “I think we’re full up, my AI’ll check. But what in the world could happen to you?”

  “Well, I don’t know, but personally I’ve been kidnapped a few times and we were the victims of some industrial espionage a while back. Maybe, a fire? Who knows, but if something should happen to us we don’t want you guys to immediately be back in desperate straits.”

  “Thanks for your concern. My AI tells me that our gauges are reading full for all of our water and oxygen storage systems now. We’re a little iffy on food but the flat packages of preserved food that NASA normally sends up here won’t fit through a two inch port.”

  Ell said, “Sheila got you some stuff at the store. Let me pull back the soda nozzle and hose.” Ell tugged on the hose. “Can you push from your side. Be careful not to stick your finger through the port, it hurts.”

  Slager said, “Let me brace myself so I can push.”

  Ell put her hand on the port so she could pull harder. Suddenly with a snap the hose came loose and fluid started spraying everywhere! Ell realized something had cut the hose. She turned the spray down into a wastebasket and reached over to the main line, turning off the valve there. Sheila turned off the water at the sink and Ell cut power to the pump for the syrups.

  Slager was saying, “What happened? Something cut the hose right across. Is there a sharp edge in the port?”

  Ell wiped off her end of the hose. It was sheared cleanly across. “Um, I think I wiggled one of the wires supplying the field to the port down here and the port shut off. Glad I didn’t do that when my finger was in the port! Did it make a mess up there?” she asked, looking at the water and syrup dripping off the surfaces in front of her.

  “No, just a few drops here and there.”

  Ell leaned down and looked into the port, seeing Slager’s eye looking back at her on the other side. “I guess wiggling the wire only cut it off momentarily and it’s back working again. We’ll send some food through now and clean up our mess in a minute.” Ell gestured Sheila at the port. “Don’t touch the wires.”

  Slager was astonished to see a banana wiggle through the 5 cm port, followed by ten more. Then packets of beef jerky held together with rubber bands, followed by bundles of sweet peas, little baggies full of blueberries, blackberries, cherries, strawberries and several salamis and pepperonis.

  Ell said, “We’re getting some dried fruit and more preserved meats that come in narrow diameters. We really don’t know much about supplying you guys though, so we’re thinking you should make some requests. Also you could talk to NASA about sending us some of the ‘space food’ they’ve worked out for the station. Well, that’s if they can package it to less than a five centimeter diameter anyway. Then we could send you a ‘back up’ supply that you could store in case you were cut off again for some reason.”

  “Oh, but we’d so much rather eat the fresh food you’re sending us!”

  “We thought you would, and we’ve contracted with Jose to bring his taco truck every day to make you whatever you want that can be rolled up into tortillas. If you give us ‘grocery lists’ of food you want—if it will fit through the port we’ll send that up too. I’m just talking about a backup plan of preserved food from NASA in case the ports fail or something happens to us.”

  “Well, I appreciate your concern but I sure hope nothing happens to you guys! I’ve been thinking about how the ports change everything to do with space science. For starters we’ll be able to send up materials for research experiments and send the results back down. Also, with an endless supply of fuel we could fire up the thrusters and move the Station to a higher or otherwise different orbit. Is five centimeters or two inches the limit on the size of port you can make?”

  “Well, no. But a port’s energy requirements go up as the square of its diameter. These five-centimeter ports require about 8,000 watts to keep them open and quite a bit more power just to transfer stuff through because of the relative velocity of the Station. Also about five watts of power have to be supplied up on your end to energize the field of the port components that’re up there. Right now we’re doing that with a fuel cell that has its own pair of small ports supplying oxygen and hydrogen to it. That fuel cell and its own tiny ports are a big part of the size of the port ‘devices’ you have up there. However, a ten centimeter or four inch port should require about 30,000 watts, plus the velocity change watts, and need 10 watts supplied at your end. We’ll have to build power conditioners and electronics to supply that much power in the correct format to energize the port on our end. And we’ll need to make a much bigger fuel cell to supply your end. We’re working on it, but it’ll take us a while.”

  “Hmm, we could supply 10 watts up here. We have plenty of energy from our solar cells.”

  “Maybe? It has to be very smooth DC power, which I expect the solar cells could supply though the fuel cells do provide a great source. The biggest problem is that the port has to be constantly supplied with a little bit of power to ‘stabilize’ it, even when it isn’t open and transferring materials. The fuel cell does that, even when the port is in transit, so it’s easier for us to make the fuel cell and send it up. But, we’re working on it. Then we could send you canned food!”

  “Oh boy! We’re l
ooking forward to that!” Slager said in a facetious tone. “But canned food would be a great back up.”

  “Well, we’re also working on how to send your replacement nozzle for the CRV up there so you’d have a way to escape if you had to.”

  “You can’t put that through a port! It must be about a half meter in narrowest dimension.”

  “Well, no. We’ve ordered larger rocket nozzles and are trying to work out methods for launching our own larger rockets. Hopefully ones that would be big enough to carry the CRV nozzle up there to you.”

  “Oh! Yeah! That’d be great! Have you talked to NASA about it? I think ILX currently has an exclusive contract on deliveries to the Station.”

  “We’re currently finding NASA a little hard to talk to. We’re never sure who to talk to and they view me as just a kid. Every time we call them we get the run around. But we’re building the rocket anyway and can just drop the nozzle off on our way to somewhere else, free of charge. It shouldn’t impinge on the ILX contract if we don’t charge for the service. We would need to get them to let us have the nozzle to take up there though. I guess I’ll have to talk to them once we’ve gotten to that point.”

  “How are you financing all this if you won’t even have a contract for delivery?!”

  “Oh. Well, we’re pretty well funded at present. Besides sending stuff to orbit isn’t all that expensive when you’re doing it with ports. You’re probably thinking about how expensive it is to launch a regular rocket?”

  Slager was silent a moment, then mused, “Oh yeah, if you aren’t having to launch your fuel, it’s probably a lot less expensive isn’t it…”

  Chapter Two

  Clarkson knocked on his boss’s door. “Mr. Dennison?”

  “Yeah, what do you have for me?”

  Clarkson pointedly unjacked his AI so that Dennison would know that the conversation shouldn’t go ‘on the record.’”

  Dennison unjacked his and raised his eyebrows.

  “The Space Station rescue seems to be really hush hush at NASA. No one really seems to know what happened. However, there’s a rumor that a private company sent up a rocket using some kind of new technology.”

  “What!!! Who?!!”

  “No one seems to know. Our guy heard someone say ‘D5R’ but he’s not sure if they were talking about the company that did the rescue. A net search for ‘D5R’ turns up a camera model, a Sony brand AI, a research company in North Carolina, an art community, etc. etc. No space launch or rocket companies.” He shrugged.

  “Push ‘our guy.’ We need info, he needs to earn his keep.”

  “Yes sir. We’re working on it.”

  ***

  It was 7:30 when Ell stepped out the door of D5R to head home. She thought to herself that she desperately needed a social life so she would have something to do besides D5R. She and Roger went out sometimes. “Dinner and a movie” dates mostly, but they were pleasant. Sometimes she thought Roger wanted more, but he could hardly invite her and her entourage of security people to move into his apartment. She didn’t feel right about asking someone who worked for her—even though their friendship pre-dated his employment—to move in with her at the farm. Gordon from her astronomy class had gone home for the summer. She didn’t even have a good girlfriend to hang out with!

  Amy and she did things together sometimes but Amy wasn’t as fixated as she used to be on her boss’s social life. Amy had been spending a lot of time with Randy from Ell’s security detail. Usually when Ell and Amy went out to do something it was with Amy’s kids Mike and Janey. They’d been down to Jordan Lake for a day and up to Asheville for a weekend trip. Those trips had been great fun, but still there was a hole of some kind...

  If anyone acted too friendly to her as “Ell” she started worrying that they knew about her money. Even though she felt like she’d been fairly successful playing up the “investors” for D5R and playing down her royalties from PGR Comm she would suspect that they’d figured it out. Roger probably suspected, but she trusted him because he’d been her friend even when she was broke and disguised as “fat Ellen with the big nose.”

  She didn’t like going out as “Ell” because people recognized her and acted weird. She often thought about going out on the town as “Belle” and had even gotten some silicone padding and bigger pants in order to make herself a little less attractive if she did. Not as “fat” as Ellen had been but just something to decrease a little of the unwanted attention she frequently received. But she hadn’t done it yet. She couldn’t bring herself go out to a bar like “Top of the Hill” by herself, she’d feel too weird and desperate.

  She’d been thinking about taking more than one class when the fall semester started up. Maybe she’d meet some more people her age on campus?

  Suddenly she heard a car door open in the row in front of her. Memories of her kidnapping in Morehead City flashed. She began crashing into the zone! How had she let herself be so distracted while walking across an empty parking lot! A big guy stood up out of the car...

  “Phil!” she shouted in delight. “What are you doing here?! Why didn’t you call before you came? How did you know where I’d be?”

  He grinned. All six foot three inches of Norse God good looks grinned and held his arms open wide. She rushed into them, throwing her arms around his muscular back and squeezing.

  Phil said quietly, “I wanted to surprise you like you did me back around Thanksgiving. Your Mom told me you were working at this place so I thought I’d surprise you when you got off.” He leaned back and raised his eyebrows, “I had no idea they’d be making you work this late or I would have thought better of this harebrained plan!”

  “Oh no! How long have you been waiting?!”

  “Since 4:30, when reasonable people get off work. What do they have you doing in there anyway?”

  “Some research. I could have come out anytime if you just called me!”

  He shrugged, “Then it wouldn’t have been a surprise, would it?”

  Ell hugged him hard again then let go and leaned back. “How did you get past the gate guard?”

  “Your Mom. She called someone named ‘Sheila’ who put me on the ‘list.’”

  “Hmmm,” Ell lowered an eyebrow, “I’m going to have to talk to Sheila I guess. Let me take you out to dinner?”

  “Nope.”

  Ell frowned up at him.

  Phil said, “I’m about to have a real paycheck. I’m taking you out to dinner!”

  She quirked an eyebrow, “But I’ve already had a paycheck for a while. Shouldn’t you wait to start paying for stuff until you actually have some money in the bank?”

  “Well… Now that you mention it…” he turned to his car. “Your chariot awaits, Madam.” He opened the door.

  Ell delightedly got in. While Phil walked around to his door she had Allan tell her car to follow them and let her security know what was happening.

  Once he was in he asked, “Do you have a recommendation for Italian?”

  “Tarantinis. It’s a really great little place. Been around for quite a while.”

  “Tarantinis it is.” he said, telling his car’s AI to take them there.

  Ell said, “So are you on your break between the Academy and astronaut training?”

  “Yep,” he grinned, “I report to the Johnson center in July and am enjoying a well deserved rest until then.”

  “Cool!” She leaned back in her seat, “I never thought I’d be going out to dinner with Buzz Lightyear.”

  At the restaurant Phil asked, “What kind of research do they have you doing at this D5R?”

  She raised her eyebrows, “It’s mostly to do with my physics theory on quantum entanglement. So of course I really like it. I stay late a lot of nights, ‘cause my social life sucks. Or anyway it did until tonight when you came along!” She patted him on the arm.

  Phil said, “Say, I heard that these new ‘PGR Com’ chips that are overthrowing the world of telecommunications are based on your theory?”


  Ell shrugged and nodded.

  “Are they the same kind of chips that you made for the military to replace satellite communications during the Taiwan thing?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.”

  “Wow! They’re really great!” he said. “Look at this!” he pulled off his AI headband and pointed to the back of it. “No wire! My actual AI is sitting at home on my desk so I don’t have to carry around a beltpack anymore. All I had to do was plug a PGR chip into the head band and another one into the AI!”

  Nonplussed to be having something that seemed “old hat” to Ell, described as the latest thing by Phil, it brought the realization home to her that most people were just beginning to see the potential of the PGR chips. To Phil she said, “Pretty cool!”

  He narrowed his eyes at her, “Wait a minute. Let me see the back of your headband.”

  Blushing a little, Ell turned her head.

  “No wire! You already knew about this! And you’re just nodding and going along with ‘country bumpkin’ me so I won’t feel bad!”

  Ell ducked her head, “Sorry?”

  He gave her a hug, then a little shake, “Hey no problem. I should have known you’d be way ahead of the curve on something you’d invented. Say, do you get any royalties on this?”

  “Yeah, I do get some.” Ell hoped he wouldn’t ask how much.

  “Woohoo!’ He raised his glass to clink against hers. “I know an inventor!”

  Ell felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see a woman in her thirties there.

  “Ms. Donsaii?”

  Ell nodded.

  “My daughter does gymnastics and just idolizes you. Would you be willing to sign an autograph for her?”

  Ell saw a wide eyed girl of about 11 sitting at the neighboring table staring at her. She smiled, “I’d be happy to, Ma’am.” She got up and walked the few steps to that table then knelt and put her arm around the girl. “How about a picture?”