by S MacDonald
None of this cut any ice with Commander Mikthorn, who stood adamant on his points that his comp was authorised by the Second themselves for storing even the most sensitive data, and that he had no intention of interfacing it anyway since it served the function of a confidential notebook. His manner implied that he would not interface his comp with the Heron’s systems because he didn’t trust them not to spy on his files. In the end, they had compromised with a security check to ensure that interface and camera systems were disabled, so it really was no more than a notebook.
The notebook, however, had been very much in evidence, and was so now. Commander Mikthorn brought it out with a thunderous air of portent, pressing his lips tightly together while writing an extensive entry. This might have been more impressive had it not been for the fact that at the first sight of the notebook, Professor Parrot had uttered something suspiciously like a giggle and wandered off to do something else.
It was Kit Travers, later, who attempted to enlighten the commander.
‘We have these team meetings from time to time, at points where the research is either stymied or branching off in different directions. Like now – we’re pursuing the possibilities of deploying the bods in pairs. There are…’ he remembered who he was talking to and kept the explanation simple, ‘energy issues – we need to make the bods much more powerful in order to increase the speed of transmission, but they become unstable at high energies and the failure rate means the web would collapse in a matter of days. So we’re thinking it might work to deploy them in pairs, linked pairs which should stabilise one another just like mix cores.’
Commander Mikthorn inclined his head, as even he was familiar with the process by which superlight cores were linked into pairs by a simple telemetry cable. Nobody really understood why, but when they were linked like that they moved into a harmonious resonance which became very much more stable. So the principle, at least, was not beyond him.
‘Clearly, in nanotech, a physical link is impractical. We believe that the optimum distance between the paired bods is around eight nanometres, and even a nano-chain link that big would be billions of times more massive than the bods themselves. So we are, as I daresay you gathered, looking at linking them via a process of quantum entanglement – basically programming at the quantum level so that the two entangled quanta will resonate together. A key question in that is whether we entangle quanta which are already built into the bods, or whether we add them as an additional interface module. Both ways have potential benefits and drawbacks, but since nobody has ever engineered tech both this small and this powerful, we won’t know which is the most efficient option until we model them extensively and, ultimately, make prototypes. That’s what you saw this morning, the discussion on how best to proceed and the forming of teams to investigate both options. I know,’ he grinned suddenly, boyish and charming, ‘it looked fairly chaotic, but that’s the way things roll in the lab. We keep meetings to an hour, otherwise they’d be liable to go on all day. And it is a valuable sharing of ideas. Now the teams have formed, the leaders will put a research programme on the board ready to start tomorrow, specifying first the range of virtual models to be created and tested. Each model is put through our usual run of simulations, then the most promising – if there are any – will be taken through to physical modelling and testing, construction of the nano-engine within the testing core. Only if that works out do we go to full prototype construction, creating a nano-case for the engine and going first to lab tests and then, if that works out, to field testing in actual deployment. Normally, in a university or commercial R&D setting, a reasonable expectation from first models to field testing would be between three and four years. Here, we expect that if there are any hard outcomes, we should be there in eight to ten weeks.’
Commander Mikthorn looked shocked. That sounded dangerously like skimping the research to him. In the training provided for his transfer to the Second, he had been told to be wary of any project which brought in results far sooner than expected. Alarm bells, he had been told, should ring at that, as it often meant that the research was unsound in some way and the outcome unsafe. The question he should ask, and have other scientists answer on a rigorous review, was how that result had been achieved.
‘How?’ he asked.
‘Well, there’s a variety of factors,’ Kit informed him, with another easy smile. ‘For a start, the computers we have here are more powerful than those in any university, and our IT team has created software specifically for the research, so the modelling phase can be done in minutes and the data analysed far more quickly than anywhere else. The power of that and the breadth of our research brief means that we can test hundreds of possibilities simultaneously – most projects, as I am sure you know, work on the basis of testing one idea at a time, starting with what’s considered the most promising and working through whatever list their research brief has allowed. Here, we don’t have to consider that at all, we can test every idea we have, and do test every idea we have. This means, of course, that we get a high proportion of models which crash, burn, implode or spin themselves silly, but all of that is useful data too in guiding us towards ideas that will work. And then, you see, every service that we need is right there to hand, not even waiting for us to say what we need but anticipating and working right alongside us, as with, for example, developing the nano-case. That would normally be a separate project undertaken by a different team, quite probably on another world entirely, once the engine had been brought to the physical stage. Here, we have the workshop and techs who create casings as and when we need them, and I mean, you know, that day, not having to wait months for another project to come back with their models. And IT, my God.’ He shook his head and laughed. ‘If you’ve ever worked in a university and asked IT to fix a glitched monitor – the form to fill in, the call to chase it up and the tech who ambles in a couple of days later – you would understand how miraculous it is to have the hottest IT people in the League right here and happy to do anything you ask for, straight away, at once, no problem. And you shouldn’t underestimate, either, what I call the powerhouse effect. There is a very strong academic culture on this ship, commander. There’s the Mindful society, of course, which is actively involved in the research, but by powerhouse I mean just the general atmosphere of the environment. Can you imagine a university in which everyone, everyone, takes a well informed and intelligent interest in your research, right down to the canteen staff and the people who clean the labs? The sense of support and encouragement is just incredible, quite apart from the invaluable practical help. This is, you know, academic paradise.’
Commander Mikthorn could well believe that. What he couldn’t believe was that anything worthwhile would arise from this delirious extravagance. There was no order to it, no method, no discipline, just a bunch of self-indulgent scientists running rampant on unlimited funding. It could not, he decided, be allowed to go on. And if he had anything to do with it, the lab on the Heron would be taken out of use, too, or at least, far more strictly supervised.
‘I am sure,’ he said, with heavy sarcasm, ‘that you are enjoying yourselves tremendously. What I am not clear on is what you have achieved, or are likely to achieve within any reasonable timeframe.’
Kit looked at him with blank incomprehension.
‘The nanoweb?’ he suggested, with a note of incredulity, as if he suspected that Commander Mikthorn might not have heard of it.
‘Which is,’ the commander observed, ‘too slow to be of any practicable purpose.’
Kit stared at him some more. ‘Er…’ he said, and after a moment made a visible effort to pull himself together. ‘It is the most powerful nano-engine ever produced,’ he offered, tentatively. ‘And while we ourselves are still focussed on the defence project and working towards a web which will create an effective warning system as well as provide long range comms, we have of course passed all our results to Chartsey, to be passed on to other teams working on weapons, medical and industrial pro
jects. It is, I assure you, already a significant advance in our nano-engineering ability.’
Commander Mikthorn looked unimpressed. He had heard the claim of ‘significant advance’ from too many scientists to give it any credibility – in his embittered experience, it was what they usually said when their project had failed to meet its targets.
‘And you expect,’ said the commander, ‘to achieve this hypothetical defence system by randomly experimenting on ideas put forward by ratings?’
Kit looked blank again for a moment, then realisation dawned.
‘Micky?’ he queried, and at that the commander bridled, giving the younger officer an outraged glare. The Fleet tolerated crew giving officers nicknames as long as they were appropriate. Traditionally, they were usually alliterative, as with Buzz Burroughs and Very Vergan. Commander Mikthorn, however, had never allowed himself to be called Mick or Micky. He was sensitive to the allusion in the term ‘taking the micky’ and considered it disrespectful. For a junior officer to call him that to his face was insolence almost beyond belief. Fortunately, Kit clarified the matter before the commander could do more than utter a preparatory humph of fury.
‘Micky Efalto,’ he explained. ‘He’s our chief artificer. Brilliant guy. He’s the guy who made the Ignite missile work. Built one, too,’ he added, with a smile at that astonishing achievement, ‘from scratch.’
That was not entirely fair, since every member of the Heron’s crew at the time had made some contribution to the missile building which had so astounded Devast Industries and the Admiralty. Commander Mikthorn, however, was oblivious to the marvel of what had been accomplished there. He was focussing in on what he considered to be a far more astounding, even unbelievable revelation.
‘He made it work?’ he challenged. The Ignite project had been a major undertaking for the Fleet, in partnership with Devast Industries. Hundreds of people had been involved in a project which had taken several years and occupied several labs and buildings. It seemed unlikely, somehow, that a humble leading star rating could be credited with the success of the project.
‘Uh huh,’ said Kit, blithely. ‘He spotted the design flaw after the first test went so spectacularly bum-upwards, and sent his analysis and solution to Devast. They came out with another field team; we fitted his solution and bingo, one working missile. Like I said, brilliant. And then when we needed another missile for Samart, he built one from scratch just from what we had on the ship. Devast and the Second have both tried to get him to go work for them, but he likes it here. He could be a petty officer, in fact, he’s done all the training, but time management is always an issue for Micky – when he says ‘give me ten minutes’, you know, we all understand he means ‘come back in a couple of hours’. He prefers to stay a leading star and be happy in himself than have the pressures and responsibilities of a PO. But yes, he is very much a member of the team. It was Micky who came up with the design for the hard casing we use for the bods – that’s what he was saying this morning, that if we go for an additional module on the quantum interface that it will need a significantly bigger casing, which has its own issues. As it is, we’ve perfected the technique of enclosing the engine within a single molecule of duralloy.’
Like most people, Commander Mikthorn found it hard to comprehend the truly minute scale of nano engineering. Also like most people, he was irritated by things he didn’t understand. The idea of building a powered comms system so tiny that it could be fitted inside a single molecule of duralloy was so mind-blowing that he rejected it immediately.
‘I do not,’ he said, in a statement which would enter Fourth’s legend, ‘see any advantage to making things that small, when we already have far more reliable, efficient and economically produced technology.’
He was not the first person to say so. The field of nanotech had languished in the League for centuries, in fact, with a general belief that it was a blind alley for technological development. Projects wanting to research nanotech found it hard to get funding, and such little research as there was had tended to confirm the view that it was, at best, only able to match the performance of existing tech, and at that, at huge expense. There were issues of practicality, too. With macro-tech, if something went wrong then any technician could take the thing to bits and fix it. With nanotech you’d need highly specialised equipment and highly qualified scientists. Nanotech, therefore, was an academic backwater, with general surprise at the sudden surge in interest and projects.
To hear such an opinion expressed by any member of the Second, though, still less by the officer supposed to be supporting the project, left Kit lost for words. He gazed at the commander with an awed expression, slowly coming to terms with the realisation of how deeply ignorant the other man actually was.
He could, and perhaps should have explained to the commander, slowly and carefully, how much they had learned from the Samartians about how powerful and resource-economic nanotech could actually be, and what advantages there were. A single tube of Samartian nano-processors, for instance, could hold more than several crates of the pin chips commonly used in the League, and they were faster and more powerful.
Kit, though, found himself incapable of speech. A tide of pink was rising through his neck and into his cheeks, his eyes were bright and he appeared to be struggling not to choke. Finally, after several seconds of this, he managed an incoherent gargling noise, jumped up and fled from the lounge, just about making it through the door before the first whoop of hysteria escaped him.
Generally, though, Commander Mikthorn’s presence was far from amusing. Those who remembered the infamous Professor Candra Pattello said that Commander Mikthorn had a similar effect. They had coined the term ‘miserons’ for the cold depressing misery that Professor Pattello had emitted like a radioactive cloud everywhere she went. Commander Mikthorn, too, emitted miserons, although in his case it was suggested that they should really be called angerons or resentathons. He seethed with poorly suppressed resentment directed against anyone and everyone, evidently feeling that he was being very badly treated. He seemed to believe that there was a conspiracy not only to prevent him doing his duty, but to humiliate him personally, too. At the heart of this conspiracy, for sure, were Captain von Strada and Professor Parrot, both doing very well out of a set-up in which they could claim unlimited funding from the Second with no questions asked and no results required.
‘Isn’t it astonishing,’ Martine Fishe observed, after a day in which the professor had spread grumpiness about the ship with a liberal hand, ‘how the presence of one strongly negative personality can impact on the morale of more than a hundred people?’
Buzz, to whom the remark had been addressed, gave a soft chuckle. He knew better than anyone how and why Commander Mikthorn was causing such annoyance amongst the ship’s personnel. He had published an article in a prestigious sociological journal in the aftermath of Professor Pattello’s calamitous visit, and could see just the same conditions and forces in play here.
‘We’re a closed group,’ he said, ‘with strongly shared values and an even more powerful sense of shared endeavour just now. We take pride, even, in functioning as a well-oiled machine. So the presence of anyone we perceive as working against us is like grit in that machine, creating friction. Initially, of course, we try to absorb the newcomer, to bring them into the community sharing our values and purpose. When that fails…’ he shrugged and gave a wry smile, ‘friction.’
Martine nodded. There was nothing you could put your finger on, no actual complaints or reportable incidents. But there was a subtle change in the tenor of the ship, little rattles and grumbles there hadn’t been before. And they were almost all generated around Commander Mikthorn. There was, naturally, a sense of closing ranks against him. There was also, however, a sense of unease, with little spikes of irritability as if the commander’s miserons were infectious. There was a feeling, too, amongst the crew, that neither the team in the lab or they should have to put up with this, that Somebody ought t
o do something. And by Somebody, of course, they meant the senior officers. Several people had asked Martine, unofficially, how long they were to be expected to put up with the commander and couldn’t he be got rid of any sooner.
‘I could make a case,’ Martine suggested, watching the Exec carefully, ‘for negative impact on the mission justifying him being asked to leave, or at least to restrict him to the interdeck.’
Buzz smiled, but shook his head. ‘Not a healthy way to respond,’ he told her. ‘If we start justifying getting rid of someone because they don’t share our values and purpose, we are closing the group too tightly. And that can very easily become a process of rejecting anyone we feel does not share our values and purpose wholeheartedly, and where does that stop? He isn’t having any material impact on the success of the mission, and having to deal with contrary views, even negative personalities, is a normal and healthy part of any working community.’