'See you later!' David called after them.
'See you tonight, David,' said Paul. 'And thanks.'
' 'Bye, David!' said Jeff and Melissa together as they walked down the hallway, balloons bobbing.
David turned back to the problem at hand. Too bad, he thought as he arranged himself on the floor again, that doing physics experiments isn't all flash and dash and helium balloons. The dogwork always has to be done first, and sometimes after it's done there isn't any good stuff anyway. Carefully he resumed the checking of each of the several hundred connections, gradually eliminating possibilities and progressively closing in on the obscure wiring mistake. He looked at his watch. Vickie ought to be here after lunch, he thought.
Victoria Gordon, her red hair overflowing her yellow helmet and streaming in her wake, eased her ten-speed down the long gentle slope of Densmore Avenue North, squeezing a brake handle occasionally to kill excess speed. She'd worked quite late last night, completing most of the wiring for their new experiment. This morning she'd slept in until nearly noon to make up some of the missed sleep of the previous week. Her head still felt muddy, but it was clearing in the crisp air.
The view of Lake Union with its backdrop of downtown high-rises spread below her at the end of the street, opening ever wider as she coasted downhill. The morning drizzle had burned off. The transcendentally wonderful smell of baking bread grew as she approached the Oro-Wheat Bakery on Pacific Avenue North. She sometimes bought their day-old bread in the little bakery shop, but the smell of the bread baking was the best part, a treat she savored every morning.
A gap in the traffic on Pacific allowed her to head east to join the Burke-Gilman Trail. It paralleled Pacific above the lakefront north of Lake Union and the Ship Canal. When gaps in the massive blackberry vines along the trail permitted, there were marvelous views of the city, the waterway and its boat traffic. She enjoyed riding on the pleasant and relatively automobile-free link between her co-op house in the Wallingford district and her laboratory at the university. The breeze off the lake now smelled fresh and clean, with the barest hint of fish and diesel oil from the boatyards down the slope. She contoured around a slower cyclist, deftly threading through the walkers and joggers, taking their lunch-break exercise.
She glanced downhill to the right. It was cool, but that didn't seem to have deterred the wind surfers who dotted Lake Union near Gasworks Park. Victoria considered their dedication to an essentially empty activity and smiled to herself. It was nice to have something better to do with your life.
She passed under the I-5 bridge, so high above her that the hum of her own wheels was louder than the freeway noise. The massive bridge pillars near the trail were rather like giant redwoods, but done in concrete gray. Now the sequence of marinas, run-down boatyards, and the occasional posh lakefront restaurant was giving way to the outer fringes of the university's sprawl: converted older buildings, landscaped parking lots, new buildings under construction, plots of grass, and rhododendron beds.
Victoria's mind began to slip into work mode as she neared the campus, reviewing what was on the menu for today. First on the list was the redesign of the radio-frequency control interface. Those nifty phase-control chips were going to allow a whole range of new tricks with the RF control system, if she could just find a way to shoehorn them into the crowded control card.
She pictured the card layout. Those analog-to-digital converter chips took lots of space on the present card, and that new LSI chip from National might just be substituted for the whole mess of them, if only it was fast enough. She'd have to check that with Sam.
The upper stands of Husky Stadium in edgewise perspective loomed ahead like the twin jaws of a monumental bear trap. Fuzzy thinking is a trap, too. She tried to bring the design problem into sharper focus as she turned off the trail at Rainier Vista and pedaled harder. She liked to use this last upslope beside the lush green lawns of the campus leading to Physics Hall to add some final stress to her leg muscles.
A new card layout clicked into place in her mind's eye. It wasn't even going to be very difficult, she thought, grinning. David would be delighted.
Allan Saxon reached down and massaged his rump. It was getting numb, he decided. Arthur Lockworth, Presidential Science Advisor, had been droning on and on for most of an hour. He was informing the NSF's National Science Board, of which Saxon was a member, of all the wonderful things that the administration had done for science in the past year and was planning for the coming year. He painted the bright canvas with broad strokes, skipping over the damage done by political pork-barreling, the opportunities missed through shortsighted budgeting, the initiatives lost because Lockworth's masters had no real understanding of science.
Lockworth's resonant voice shifted timbre, a clue that he was at last reaching his conclusion. Saxon breathed a sigh of relief and glanced around the room. The board members, their chairs oriented to face Lockworth at the podium, sat around a long oak table. Behind them was a ring of seats occupied by National Science Foundation people, a few news reporters, and some observers from the scientific societies and organizations.
This had been a miserable meeting. The big-science contingent of the board had grabbed the initiative and never relinquished it. All the plums distributed here had dropped into other pockets. Funding for the NSF's Science/Industrial Initiatives, Saxon's pet project, had been neglected. The board's enthusiasm had focused on new funds for the National Gravity-Wave Telescope Project and the Neutrino Earth-Scan Initiative. Well, there would be other meetings, Saxon thought. His time would come.
Lockworth finally droned to a stop. There was determined applause when he finished. Lockworth looked up inquiringly, and Saxon put up his hand. 'Yes, Allan?' Lockworth said.
'Arthur,' said Saxon, 'we're all impressed by the breadth and vision of the administration's long-range plans for science . . . ' He paused while Lockworth absorbed the compliment and smiled. ' . . . but there is one area that this administration persists in neglecting.' The smile faded. 'I refer,' Saxon continued, 'to the NSF's longstanding program for promoting the infusion of the fruits of basic science research into the industrial sector. The Science/Industrial Initiatives program has been at a flat funding level for the past three years, without even adjustments for inflation—'
'Allan,' Lockworth cut him off, 'the administration has a vigorous program aimed at the preservation of the competitive edge of our nation's industries. We have worked with Congress to implement a generous investment tax credit program for promoting more private-sector funding of scientific research . . . '
'That's fine for Bell Labs and IBM, Arthur,' Saxon broke in, 'but it does nothing for the small entrepreneur who's trying to start a business based on high-technology innovation. He'll be taking a loss for the first few years of operation. Those tax credits are worthless to him. The small innovator is the wellspring of our technology-based economy, yet your administration is stifling this important activity by neglecting the Science/Industrial Initiatives.' Saxon looked up at Lockworth, now standing beside the podium and leaning on it with one hand. The squeaky wheel gets the grease, he thought, and this is a better place to squeak than most.
'I would agree with you, Allan, if I believed that the S/I Initiatives were the best vehicle for matching our excellent university research base into the technological development stream. But I and my staff at the OSTP have made a detailed study of the effectiveness of that S/I program, which the previous administration pushed rather hard. We've determined that in the balance it just wasn't cost effective. That's why we're de-emphasizing it. There has to be a better way. I would, of course, be interested in alternative approaches . . . '
Saxon nodded. That was a foot in the door, at least. Lockworth fielded several questions from others, but Saxon ignored them and gathered his papers in preparation for the cab ride to National for his flight to San Francisco.
'Professor Saxon?'
Saxon glanced up. A man stood looking down at him. He wore a
rumpled tweed sport coat, a stained yellow necktie, baggy brown slacks, and scuffed loafers. He needed a haircut. He might have been a faculty member, except that this wasn't a university.
'I'm Gil Wegmann from Newsweek,' the man said. 'I wonder if you'd tell me what was behind your dialogue with Lockworth just now. Would you say that the administration was screwing over the tech-innovation entrepreneur?'
'I wouldn't want to say that,' Saxon answered carefully. 'They're phasing out an NSF program that I consider to have been highly successful. I think they're making a big mistake.'
'Are you an entrepreneur, sir?' Wegmann asked.
Saxon looked uncomfortable. 'Well, in a way . . . '
'In what way, Professor? Do you have a business on the side?'
Saxon cleared his throat. 'I'm part owner of a small venture-capital company that specializes in exploiting certain aspects of condensed matter physics that may have applications in, for example, the computer industry.'
'Did you have one of those grants you were talking about when you started the company, Professor?'
'Well, uh, yes, we did have a small S/I grant, but most of our startup was funded by the private investment of venture capital.'
'Don't you think you have a conflict of interest, Professor, sitting here on the National Science Board and pushing federal programs that would directly benefit your company?'
Saxon stood up. He could feel his scalp prickling in the back, a sign that his blood pressure was rising. He took a deep breath. 'No indeed, Mr Wayland. My company is already started, and is unlikely to get any further federal research support, particularly under the present administration. I bring to the board an experience in both basic research and private enterprise, and that is very valuable in our deliberations, as I'm sure the chairman will tell you. I resent your implication, Mr Wayland—'
'Wegmann, sir. I think I understand, Professor Saxon. Thank you for your comments.' He turned and moved to corner another board member before he could escape.
I hope none of that gets into Newsweek, Saxon thought. We don't need that kind of publicity just now.
David sat at the control console. The snarl of wires had been folded back into its recesses. During his lunch break, after the elusive wiring fault had been discovered and fixed, David had stopped by his apartment to change from the jeans and loafers of the morning to a white shirt, creased slacks, and polished black shoes. A dark tweed jacket hung from the window handle, and through the panes behind it campus buildings were visible in the gathering darkness.
Across the room Vickie sat at the little design computer, manipulating a pattern of red, green, and blue circuit traces on a circuit board layout. She moved a mouse over a large digitizer pad, circuit structures popping into existence and reforming themselves as she coaxed the design slowly toward an optimum.
'Jesus H. Christ!' said David, peering more closely at the vacuum gauge. 'Vickie, watch this! When I take the RF up by a megahertz, the vacuum gauge goes down! It just clicked down to the 10-9 scale and then popped back up. Look, it reproduces! There it goes again!' He moused the cursor to a spot on the control screen labeled OSCILLATOR [INCREMENT], clicked, and then leaned back in the swivel chair, trying to watch the row of orange digits labeled FREQUENCY (MHZ) and the meter labeled VACUUM (TORR) at the same time, although they were at opposite sides of the console.
Vickie rose from the design computer and walked over to the control console. Despite the loose jeans, rumpled sweatshirt, and unbrushed red hair, David noted, she seemed remarkably attractive this evening. He felt distracted, and recalled Allan's warning comments about involvements with the female physics graduate students.
'Really, David!' said Vickie, pointing at the apparatus that they had meticulously designed, constructed, and assembled over the past few months. 'I told you this kludge had ground loop problems – ' Walking up behind him, she peered intently over his shoulder at the console vacuum meter, then reached out and tapped it sharply near the bottom. ' – but you had to start running the full-blown experiment before we'd done the final component debug. The vacuum can't be that good. Considering all that Apiezon bear-crap you pasted over the leaks, we're lucky it isn't hissing at us.'
The object of her derision was the beach-ball-size stainless-steel sphere in the center of the room, girdled by sculpted coppery coils and spiked with vacuum feed-throughs and a large blue-and-silver ion pump. A plume of condensed water vapor and a rim of frost marked its nitrogen exhaust vent. Silvery dewars stood at one side to supply liquid nitrogen and helium for the cryogenics inside.
Yesterday David had used the department's only functioning helium leak-checker to discover tiny air-to-vacuum leaks in several of the welded joints. These he had peened shut with a small hammer and then for good measure temporarily sealed them with dark brown leak-sealant putty. The sharp chemical smell of a spray-on vacuum sealant still hung over the equipment. These were stopgap measures until the machine shop foreman could spare some welder time to fix the leaks properly.
The sphere stood on aluminum I-beam legs attached to an elevated concrete slab in the center of the room. Framing the apparatus in three dimensions was the outline of a cube made of thin wooden sticks. Along the surfaces of the sticks were taped many turns of chestnut-brown enameled wire. These formed Helmholtz coils that nulled out the Earth's magnetic field in the central region of the apparatus.
David leaned back and looked beyond the control computer, studying the red-and-black coaxial cables and gray ribbon leads that snaked across the floor from the control console's underside to the components of the experiment. 'Guilty as charged, ma'am,' he said, looking up at her. 'Guess I've been pushing too hard. I wanted us to get some good data today before I had to bug out for dinner. I'm having my weekly Wednesday night dinner with the Ernsts.' He gestured at a brown sack in the corner, the red top of a wine bottle projecting above its edge. 'I'm bringing that bottle of Chateau La Tour '82 tonight. It cost me too much so I wanted to have something to celebrate.'
'But instead,' she said, 'it looks as if Vickie Fix-It has some work to do while you're gone. We've gotta find this bug before we can make any more progress.' Her eyes unfocused. 'Hmmm. Maybe if I hooked a 'scope to the vacuum meter drive circuit I might zero in on the problem
David nodded. 'Sam Weston was down in the electronics shop about half an hour ago. I think he's working late on something tonight. Perhaps you could persuade him to help.'
There's an idea,' said Victoria. 'Sam's super at debugging electronics. If I can just keep the topic of conversation away from sex and survivalism, he should be a big help.'
'Just kick in his kneecaps if he gets out of line,' said David. Although he'd never seen any evidence of it, Vickie had a reputation among the graduate students as a martial arts expert.
She smiled. 'You're coming back tonight?' she asked.
'Yeah,' said David, 'I should be back by about midnight. As we both know too well, "Physics is what physicists do late at night.” At least it's when I seem to get the most done. If you can fix this RF glitch, maybe I can accomplish something on the owl shift. I should be good 'til about three A.M. Allan's still in D.C. smooth-talking the NSF, so I have the honor of teaching his Physics 122 class again tomorrow morning at eight-thirty. Guess I can't stay up too late; I haven't made any notes for the lecture yet.' He grinned.
'I was under the impression that you real physicists didn't need lecture notes,' said Vickie, grinning back. 'They did give you a Ph.D. in physics at Illinois, didn't they? Doesn't that mean you know everything in the 122 textbook, at least?'
'Oh sure,' said David, 'only the students get kinda upset when I start using partial differential equations and Riemann tensors to demonstrate that water runs downhill. It's real work to get it on the right level. But there are compensations. It's just amazing how much you learn when you want to explain what you already know to somebody else . . . ' He shook his head, musing. 'Particularly to the articulate, socially adjusted algebra-illiterates that are
admitted to our institutions of higher learning these days. This morning I had to spend ten minutes to get across the idea that when you divide by a number smaller than one, the result gets bigger. I guess they couldn't do that one on their fingers and toes.'
She laughed, a rich contralto.
'Anyhow, Vickie, I gotta go,' he said, reaching for the wrapped wined bottle. 'If the food's overdone because I'm late, I may not be invited back. If you can bring some modicum of order to this chaos by the time I get back, it will be sincerely appreciated.'
'OK,' said Vickie, 'but you go easy on that Chateau La Tour. I can't have you staggering back and falling into my apparatus. I need a Ph.D. too, you know.'
As David turned down the long hill toward the university's east gatehouse, Lake Washington appeared on his right. The water shimmered with the reflected lights of the lakefront houses of nearby Laurelhurst and the longer reflections from posh Hunt's Point across the lake. A row of stationary red taillights punctuated the long low silhouette of the Evergreen Point Bridge, indicating to David that there was another jam-up there, on that well-known 'car-strangled spanner.' It was nice that Paul lived on this side of the lake.
David thought about Vickie. She was a remarkable young woman. He'd never before worked with anyone so capable, so smart, and at the same time so nice to have around. The traffic light at Twenty-fifth Avenue Northeast turned green, and he accelerated.
He was going to have to watch himself. Romance at the workplace is generally a bad idea. Particularly the physics workplace. He could think of a few cases where scientific coworkers had become romantically involved. Almost never had it ended well. If the relationship broke up, it became difficult working together afterwards. And if it lasted it was even worse. The conflicting demands of two careers, of retaining scientific objectivity in criticizing each other's work and ideas, and the eventual problem of finding jobs together usually seemed to destroy such pairings within a year or so.
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