Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2)

by Glenn Michaels

  The white globe shuddered, now leaking some of the excess material onto the ground where it hissed and sputtered on contact. When the mix ratio was correct, the leaks stopped, and the brilliance of the orb grew even brighter.

  “Nay, yer spell securing the brew of elements is not potent enough,” the hologram grumbled. “Nor will it hold when it flashes to plasma.”

  Beads of sweat formed on Paul’s forehead as he concentrated even harder, muttering inaudibly.

  “Tis better. Now, form the plasma arc.”

  A loud boom rattled the landscape, followed by the crackling roar of thunder. Flashes of lightning engulfed the globe, throwing forth a hissing cloud of molten metal droplets high into the air.

  “Fortify the containment spell!” growled the super-intelligence. “Quickly! Good! Now, hold the plasma arc steady and extrude the longeron ye’ve designed. Aye, out the top of the containment.”

  In front of the two of them, the flashing super-hot ball of now liquid metal began to squeeze forth at the tight opening at the top, a curved I-beam of glowing metal emerging slowly. The stalk grew longer, wending its way into the air, curving gracefully.

  “Aye, lad, keep it up.”

  The globe shrank, feeding its mass to the longeron, which would be an element of the ship’s engine assembly.

  With a loud snap, the thunder and lightning died away, the component now finished. A wave of Paul’s hand moved the still blazing hot segment of the ship over to lean itself against a rusty metal stand.

  “Ye’ve done it, lad,” beamed the apparition. “Of course, ye must temper it later. That’s an easier process.”

  Paul dropped his arms, his muscles twitching from the exertion. The energy level required to perform that one spell was enormous; close to the limits of what could be done, even with McDougall’s talisman. And there were a lot more longerons to go, first for the engine, then the tail assembly. And all of them to be made of the same titanium alloy.

  “How do you anneal the metal?” Paul asked, wiping the sweat from his brow.

  “The metal must be uniformly heated to 1,770 degrees,” the hologram said. “And held that way for an hour. Then water quenched quickly. And reheated but only to 1,090 degrees. After that, it should be allowed to air cool from four to eight hours.”

  Paul rolled his eyes. Yes, compared to making the titanium alloy, the annealing process would be easier, but it was all relative. No wonder titanium alloys cost so much!

  He took a sip of cold water from a bottle and squared his shoulders. One down and a dozen more longerons to go! And that was only the engines. Afterwards, there were the structural members of the ship’s tail assemble, the propellant tanks and even a potable water tank!

  And too, he really needed to do something about Daneel’s hardware. Capie was absolutely right. It was a hodgepodge of circuit boards and cables, all strung together in an unsightly mess. A couple of hours’ worth of work would make a vast improvement, with some brackets and screws and maybe a metal cage to hold the boards with the LCD monitor mounted to one side of that. Granted, that wouldn’t be the final design; he had something else entirely different in mind for that purpose, much sleeker and technically sexy. But that was for later. Right now, a lick and a promise would serve the purpose sufficiently well.

  With a small shake of his head, he gave a resigned sigh.

  His wife was right. This was going to take a while.

  Stretching forth his arms again, he closed his eyes in concentration.

  • • • •

  “It’s not working, sir,” Aduir commented softly, squinting up into the late afternoon sky, very much aware of just how furious the wizard McDougall was, who was standing a few feet away at that particular moment.

  “Obviously not,” snapped McDougall. “They’re too far away. Or too stupid to look in this direction. Normies! Ha!”

  The nine of them—eight Oni and McDougall—were standing on the beach of Flint Island in a circle, holding hands and doing their best to cast a combined spell. They were creating a display of light above the island (which due to their limited power without a talisman, was a rather weak light at best) in order to attract the attention of anyone who might see it.

  And therein lay most of the problem. This particular corner of the planet was pretty much empty of traffic of any type. Only on rare occasions during the last month, such as now, would a plane fly within visual range. And even then, only at high altitudes.

  This particular plane on this particular occasion was only a speck in the sky, but McDougall had seen it, and he and the Oni had scrambled into a circle and frantically put on their display. But this time, just like the other three times it had happened, the plane was just too far away.

  McDougall sighed and planted hands on his hips. “Maybe I should have learned some of that newfangled technology after all. It would be nice if one of us knew how to send a radio signal. Humph. I guess it will be fried fish again tonight. Aduir, round up some firewood and start a fire while Kenzo and I go do some fishing.”

  • • • •

  At Wednesday evening’s dinner, Capie sullenly pushed the food around on her plate, apparently suffering a loss of appetite.

  Paul sighed and shoved his plate to one side. He too wasn’t interested in eating right now. Oh, the food was good enough. But today’s news left a really sour sensation in his stomach.

  Another car bombing in Israel.

  Over the course of the last two weeks, there had been four such incidents. A truck bombing at a municipal park in Jerusalem, killing five people and injuring twelve others. A car bombing at the Ein Gedi Park on the west bank of the Dead Sea. Two families dead, including seven children. The third was a bomb in a backpack left on Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv, a very busy pedestrian thoroughfare. Eleven dead and sixteen injured in that one.

  The latest one, just today, was particularly bad. A bus bombing at the Hayovel School near Jerusalem, just as the kids were getting out of school. Twenty-eight dead, including a driver, and six more wounded. The news media was going freaking crazy with special bulletins and updates every few minutes, carrying all the latest information available from the scene.

  Capie was biting her lip, staring morosely at her plate.

  “It’s not your fault,” Paul told her, in an attempt to derail her thoughts.

  She glanced up. “What’s going on over there, Paul? I thought that after the Olympics, when we stopped Iran from killing all those people, that Errabêlu in the Middle East would back off for a while. Instead, they are now just going about it in a different way. Are they deliberately trying to start a war?”

  Paul thought about her question for a few seconds. “Yes,” he finally said. “I think they are doing just that. Trying to start a war.”

  “But why?” she asked, naked pain in her voice. “I mean, I know that they are responsible for most of the bad things that happen in the world and most if not all of the wars. But it is so incredibly wasteful! All the death, the terror, the destruction. Why are they doing this?”

  With a shrug, Paul said, “The simple answer, as McDougall said, is for power and wealth, mostly for the power. In this case, I don’t know the specific reasons why Iran wants a war with Israel.”

  His wife looked like she had swallowed a lemon and a very sour one at that. “So, what are we going to do to stop it? How are we going to stop these bombings in Israel?”

  “At the moment, there is not much we can do,” Paul sadly and slowly confessed. “This war has been going on for a couple of thousand years, in one form or another.”

  She stared at him in obvious disapproval. “So it’s inevitable? You’re just going to blow it off as too much trouble, so sorry, nothing can be done? All those people are going to die and we can’t stop it?”

  He sighed, looking down at the table and idly toyed with his fork. “We stopped the attack on the Olympics, thanks in large part to your efforts. And I am still very proud of that accomplishment. I also do care about
the people that are being murdered, dear. I really do. But let’s be realistic here. We are two people, by our lonesome, with McDougall’s talisman and eight Oni talismans between us. Yes, we could launch ourselves into the current situation and maybe we could do some good, save a few lives. And then the next crisis will pop up in a month or so and we would have to do it all over again. Sooner or later, the bad guys are going to catch us and probably kill us. At which point, the wizards of Errabêlu will continue killing Normals until the heat death of the universe or the death of the human race, whichever comes first.”

  Capie winced at his last comment. What he was saying was true. They didn’t have the tools to fight and win the war, not yet. A battle or two, like in Rio, maybe. But not the war against them.

  However, she still felt like there ought to be something she could and should be doing. Some small way that she could make a difference. The success of their efforts in Rio gave her considerable confidence in that opinion.

  “If they really are trying to start a war,” she commented, “then there are going to be a lot more incidents in the Middle East, a lot more people that are going to die.”

  It was Paul’s turn to wince. “I know how brutal and heartless that sounds. The good news is that we are doing something and, if we are successful, in the long run, we will free the human race from slavery and exploitation.”

  She adopted a very stubborn look. “I’m going to look for ways to help the Israelis,” she said, adamantly. “Just like the situation in Rio. I want to save as many lives as possible.”

  SEVENTEEN

  ‘Staging Area’

  Open Pit Goldfields Mine

  Southwest of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

  September

  Friday 4:11 p.m. AWST

  “What do you think?” Paul asked his wife with undisguised curiosity.

  Capie grimaced while she strolled through the clutter. Daneel, now a four year old, floated along behind her, gawking and pointing, naming everything in sight. Paul eyed the new titanium cage holding the A.I.’s PC boards and cable harnesses, with the monitor mounted along one side. Still not very pretty but a substantial improvement nonetheless. For one thing, it no longer looked as if the connectors were going to disconnect themselves at any second. Altogether, the new hardware was a temporary solution at best, and he intended on a more permanent solution later on.

  “It’s so…Mad Max,” she criticized, comparing the litter all around her to the 1979 film.

  Paul chuckled. “Considering that we are in Australia, there’s a lot of truth in what you say.”

  The three of them were in what Paul euphemistically was calling the Staging Area for the construction of the spacecraft. To be exact, this was at the bottom of an open abandoned Goldfields mine pit, seventy feet below nominal ground level. The mine was in a desolate area where even the scrub brush was having a difficult time subsisting.

  To disguise his activities here from aerial view, Paul had erected a large set of camouflage nets over their heads on tall poles, fastening the nets securely to stakes pounded into the cliff-like walls all around them. Underneath the nets, on the floor of the mine, there were a great many boxes and containers of all sizes and types scattered around. On one shelf was the tantalum block with the small emerald sitting next to it.

  Capie turned toward several large metal structures stacked up in the northwest corner of the mine pit.

  “And these?”

  “Storage compartments, of course, but these don’t have any quadro-triticale,” Paul answered with a smirk, referring to the Star Trek episode “The Trouble With Tribbles.”

  That got a faint smile in response from her. “Oh, so this is where you are storing the metals you mined. The titanium you’ve been talking about.”

  “And the other minerals,” he said, confirming her guess. “That bin there did hold the one hundred bags of charcoal briquettes which had the carbon I needed for the rocket engines.” He grinned widely. “I’m glad that the Australians like to barbeque a lot. Nobody in the store even blinked when I bought that many bags.”

  “And this strange…monstrosity?” Capie pointed towards the middle of the Staging Area at the object mounted on a rusty iron stand. “These are the engines that you’ve been bragging about? This whole…thing looks like a speed racer out of Star Wars Episode One: The Phantom Menace.”

  Paul laughed, reaching out to give her a quick hug. “Yes, very much like one of those speed racers.”

  The ‘racer’ in front of them consisted of two engines, mounted on each side of a small platform, on top of which there were two bucket seats. At the front of the platform was a large transparent shield tilted backwards from the front of the craft.

  “And yes, it has seatbelts too,” he added smugly in pride.

  Each engine was nearly spherical, roughly two feet in diameter and a dull black in color. Out the rear end of each sphere was a conical nozzle four feet in length and nearly as wide at the mouth. The nozzles, however, were coated with a shiny white material almost like high gloss paint.

  “The nozzle looks different from what I expected,” she noted inquisitively.

  “That’s because this nozzle is a totally new design, far superior to any other nozzle in the world today…I hope.”

  Capie tilted her head to one side. “I know that ‘look’ of yours already. What’s wrong?”

  No longer smiling, Paul slowly walked around to the open rear of one of the engines, pointing up into its depth. “The nozzle is a key component of the ship. In fact, it is the largest element of risk in the ship’s design. And I’m not totally sure how well my design is going to work. If it fails in mid-flight, it could leave us stranded in space. I have consulted with several holographic experts on the subject, and I’m pretty confident about this design, otherwise I wouldn’t have built them. However, before we take them into space, I will do a series of full scale tests, just to be sure.”

  “Oh,” Capie muttered, as she used a hand to touch the nozzle lightly. “If it’s that important, why not use a proven design? Something from NASA.”

  “I strongly considered it,” Paul admitted. “But none of their designs will work for our application. For example, the Space Shuttle Main Engines only burn for 8.5 minutes per flight and they’re designed for a grand total of 7.5 hours of operation. However, in our case, we need our engines to burn for almost 80 hours, just to get to Mars and another 80 to get back. NASA’s nozzles are designed to work with chemical fuels like LH2 and LOX with an ISP of 450 seconds. Ours is nuclear with an ISP of 550,000 seconds. The plume for our engine will be smaller, yes, but much hotter. Our nozzle must be a lot more robust than any proven design in the world today.”

  “I see. Well, I think I see,” she responded, putting hand to chin in thought. “But that Broom thingy you made in order to escape from Errabêlu in Mexico. That was just carbon steel…”

  Paul folded his arms and looked grimly at the ground. “Very true. However, the thrust achieved by the Broom was low, only a few hundred pounds force. And it lasted less than two hours. By my calculations, we will need a minimum thrust of 150,000 pounds force per engine if not more.”

  “Okay, that’s a big difference, I agree. So, what is different about this design?” she asked, leaning forward to touch it again.

  “The material is called multi-wall carbon nanotubes, or MWCNT for short,” Paul explained in a preoccupied fashion. “Much stronger than any metal and highly resistant to erosion effects, such as in a rocket nozzle. It’s very difficult for technology to synthesize, but relatively straight forward for someone with magical powers to make. Also, the bright white coating you see on the nozzles is a super-conducting ceramic material, commonly called YBCO. If I can use a spell to keep the superconductor below minus 300 degrees Fahrenheit, then I can use an electrical current through it to create a magnetic field. The field will keep the superhot plasma of the engine from touching the nozzle wall. It’s known as a magnetic nozzle and it’s the best way
to protect the nozzle, even if it involves a lot of magical spells to achieve that end.”

  But then he smiled at his wife. “However, don’t worry. We won’t go into space with them until they are thoroughly tested at full power.”

  “I thought the plan was to take the engines with us to Alice tomorrow, to get the 737,” she noted with a suspicious look.

  “Yes, that is still the plan. That’s actually part of the testing program for the engines,” Paul confessed. “But only a limited one. As it is, the stripped 737 only weighs about 35,000 pounds. That’s a little more than ten percent of rated design capacity of the two engines. Now, in a couple of months, after we modify the 737 and load it with fuel and supplies, our spacecraft will weigh more than 200,000 pounds. Lifting that into orbit will be quite the test.” Paul raised an eyebrow at her and decided to change the subject. “And how was your day?”

  She briefly smiled before looking serious again. “As you know, I’ve finished all the shopping here in town and I’m nearly finished shopping in Perth. The only things I don’t have yet are some specialty items and those tools you wanted, and the oxygen, argon, and helium bottles. Some of that is on order and will be here in a week or so. Everything I’ve bought so far is stored in Warehouse 13. Oh, and I have changed the locks, just to keep out anyone who noticed how much we’ve spent and who might have sticky fingers.”

  “Good idea, that,” remarked Paul, rubbing his chin in thought. “We’ve been pretty busy. I tell you what, after our little trip tomorrow to get the 737, we should take Sunday off and just relax. On Monday I can start modifying the 737 and you can finish up with your shopping, of course.”

  Capie’s expression communicated rather well her total lack of enthusiasm.

  “Oh. Goody,” she muttered.

  Paul nodded, with a sudden deep understanding of the need for a break. “Yep, a day off. Any ideas on where you would like to go? How about a day and a night on the town in Perth?”