The Inosculation Syndrome

by D. B. Reynolds-Moreton

  One of the ‘new material seekers’ had found a tree like growth which exuded a sticky resinous liquid when cut, and had collected some in case it had a use, but the difficulty so far was that no one had found anything in which it would dissolve, to make it more varnish like.

  A few days later they succeeded by mixing it with the sap from another tree, and this held it in a liquid state just long enough for them to coat the copper wire and so form a layer of insulation. It was crude, but would probably work.

  The creation of simple battery cells to provide power for the magnetic test was quite easy, as they had dissimilar metals such as silver, tin and copper, and now they had refined zinc.

  Fruit acid would provide the necessary driving force for the voltaic cells, and it was only a matter of winding a coil of copper wire around the material they suspected of being magnetic, and seeing if it attracted another piece of the black rock to itself when energized.

  The test coil was wound, with a little difficulty, it had to be admitted, and the cells connected up ready for the great moment.

  A small piece of the heavy black rock was placed close to the end of the coil which was wound around a larger piece of the same rock, and Kal brushed the connecting wire against the home made battery.

  A tiny bright blue spark flashed at the connecting point, and the little piece of black rock leapt towards the coil, and stuck to the larger piece of rock. As he disconnected the battery, the small piece of rock fell from the coil, and the case was proven.

  The black rock was electromagnetic and what they needed for their generator.

  They now had the knowledge and materials to build a simple electric generator, and could power it from the water wheel. But there remained one more problem, and that was how to shape the electromagnetic rock into a suitable form for the coils to be wound on.

  Kal suggested that they crush it in the ore mill and mix it with a little of the low melting glass powder, and then refuse it all together in the kiln. This was done, and they later found that the magnetic properties of the material were not diminished by the process, as they feared it might be.

  It now remained for Kal to outline the basic principles of the generator to the ‘engineers’, and leave them to it.

  The casting and firing of the great magnetic cores for the electric machine got under way, and the wire manufacturing was soon much improved, as were most things done by the little people, and the machine began to take shape.

  On Kal’s instruction, they wound an extra coil on the generator to act as an ‘exciter’, through which a small electric current would be passed from their batteries to initiate the generation. Once current was being generated, some of it could be used to sustain the magnetic field.

  Kal thought it was time that he showed some interest in his offspring, not just because he was curious, but it may act as a delaying tactic with regard to the fathering of any more, as he was still not happy about the elder’s proposals.

  He enquired as to where the child might be, and was at once taken to see it. In all fairness, it was a handsome child, although a little alien when compared to himself.

  The little people seemed to grow at a prodigious rate, and the child was no exception to that rule.

  It was already taller than its mother and of a more slender build when compared to its height.

  The body hair or fluff, of the little people was hardly visible, but it had a light covering of hair on its head, as did Kal, although not quite so thick as yet.

  The features were different also, the lips being more pronounced and the nose a little longer. There was no doubt about it; the blending of the two races could produce a being with the attributes of both, and none, as yet, of the disadvantages.

  Kal had noticed that the vocal cords and possibly the hearing of the child were registering somewhere between the two races, as it seemed to have little difficulty in understanding it’s mothers squeaks and whistles, and replied in a lower frequency, which she in turn was not finding too easy to interpret.

  Now was the time to see if he could teach the child his language, as there was no way he could ever understand the squeaks and whistles of the others.

  If it worked, then maybe the child could act as a go between for them, and so a greater understanding between races could come about.

  Using the sketch board he explained to the mother what he proposed to do, and she understood and agreed.

  It was mid afternoon before Kal had got the little one to say his name, albeit in a very high voice, but it was clearly spoken along with a few other words. Kal was being very careful to clear the meaning of each word thoroughly.

  It looked as though at long last one of the barriers between them was about to come down, and he felt very satisfied with the day’s work.

  The mother must have explained to the child that Kal was its father, as the little one soon developed an attachment for Kal, and seemed to enjoy being in his company.

  He didn’t feel quite so uneasy about this as he would have expected, and to some extent found it an enjoyable experience; he also looked forward to their next meeting.

  The days went by, and Kal thought it was about time to pay the engineers a visit to see how they had progressed with the generator. He could hardly believe his eyes.

  They had made very good progress indeed, and were assembling the main generator coils on the outer section, or stator. It was the size of the thing that shocked him.

  They had scaled it up by about four fold, and had reached a point where they were having difficulty in lifting the sections of the machine into place.

  If this thing worked it would be very powerful indeed, but he doubted if they would have enough water to power the water wheel sufficiently to drive the generator to full capacity.

  The machine was housed in its own building, and this was the first sign of the little people having any interest in building construction, as opposed to hollowing out rooms in the soft rock of the cliff.

  They had constructed it from blocks of the sandstone-like rock cut from within the cliff, making new rooms and housing the electric generator in its own building at the same time, so wasting little material or effort.

  ‘A nice touch of efficiency’ thought Kal. He left them to it, as there was little that he could do to help, and made his way over to the glass blowers.

  Earlier he had explained the basic theory of fluorescent or discharge lamps to them, and they indicated that they would try and make some glass globes and tubes for him to experiment with.

  He needed some rare gasses for the lamps to work properly, and was at a loss as to where he could get them.

  The blowers were as good as their word, producing a selection of shapes of different sizes with fine tube like outlets at each end for the electrodes to be inserted.

  He had better come up with something or lose face over this one, as the blowers had obviously put a lot of effort into their work, and would be watching with interest to see how well they functioned.

  A workshop had been hollowed out next-door to Kal’s room, and he had a selection of basic tools supplied to his specification, manufactured by the forgers and engineers.

  Some of the tools were improved upon from their basic design and this indicated to Kal that their purpose had been fully understood by the makers.

  What still amazed him was the ability of one group of workers to understand basic principles so easily, modify them to improve them wherever possible, and then transfer that data to other groups of workers who were probably working in a different material.

  What came to mind were the smelters and casters, who later linked up with the forgers, all making one great team and able to do each other’s jobs when necessary.

  These later joined forces with the potters, who also made the firebricks for the furnaces and kilns, and the metal engineers, who made the tools for everyone else.

  So far, no doctors had shown up, probably because no one seemed to suffer from any illnesses. Even he had not no
ticed a sniffle or sore throat since he had been here.

  Everybody carried bacteria on their bodies, and he was no exception, but the little people had not suffered from anything he had introduced into their group, and he certainly hadn’t picked up anything from them. ‘Odd that’, was the best he could come up with.

  There were one or two broken bones, but no one made a fuss about it, as usually a splint was applied by someone, and the whole thing forgotten.

  There was no sign of religion in any form that he could detect, and to be honest, he had not given it much thought himself. When he came to think about it, there were a lot of things which were so different to what he would have expected, and yet it all seemed to be acceptable to him now.

  What was it about this strange planet, with its bizarre life forms, and the little people which didn’t seem to fit in anywhere, or even belong here, that somehow made him feel that it was all quite acceptable?

  Looked at in the cold light of day, he should have been scared out of his wits and sitting in some dark corner hoping not to be found. And yet he took it all in his stride, and was even thriving on it.

  There was some strange mystery here somewhere, and he was determined to solve it.

  Kal had spent several afternoons with the child, teaching it to speak his language, and thought he should give it a name, but what? And what should it call him?

  Dad seemed strange somehow, as if it belonged to a long time ago and far away, which in a sense, it did.

  He had never married, the exploration of space being his only interest, so the problem hadn’t occurred before.

  A smile started to curl up one side of his mouth. Tibs, that’s what he would call him. Taken from the initial letters of Trial Insemination By Subterfuge. Not exactly earth shaking, but it would do.

  He mustn’t tell the child how his name was derived, in case he got a complex, and then he remembered these people didn’t suffer from the same frailties as his race.

  That settled, he decided to name the child next day, and explain to the mother what it was all about, not that it really mattered, as he was the only one who would use the name.

  ‘Time to go and check on the generator again’ he thought, and headed for the workshops.

  There was a steady hum coming from the generator building, and Kal was surprised that they hadn’t called him before they started up the huge machine.

  He was in for another surprise when he got inside, as the generator was powered not by a takeoff from the water wheel, as he had suggested, but by the biggest Pelton wheel he had ever seen.

  The housing for the wheel was a good three metres high, which meant that the wheel inside it was not a lot smaller.

  There must have been hundreds of cups on the periphery of the spinning disk, and the power it could deliver would be enormous.

  Next to the wheel housing was a gear box to reduce the speed a little before it was feed to the generator proper.

  How they had cut the gears or even realized the necessity for them had him stumped.

  This would normally have been a major work of engineering, using very complex and expensive cutting machinery, and here they were, spinning around as if they had been made by the best engineering company in the galaxy.

  What amazed Kal most, was the fact that the whole machine was perfectly balanced and vibration free.

  That alone was an engineering feat which would have put his engineers to a good deal of trouble considering the size of the project, and these little people had done it in their stride, and not bothered him once about it. They were getting too clever by far.

  As yet, there was no electrical take off from the generator, and finding something for it to supply current to was going to be the next job.

  The voltage was not controlled in any way, except by the speed of the Pelton wheel, and that was only a crude method.

  This would limit the kind of things which they could use the machine for, as most things that Kal knew about relied on a constant voltage, and there was no way in which they could achieve that without some complicated electronics.

  Kal was very impressed with the whole set-up, and conveyed his thoughts on it to the team. They seemed pleased that he approved, but it was hard to tell what they really thought, as usual.

  Back in his workshop, Kal got down to some serious thinking about a discharge lamp, as the filament type was out of the question, needing tungsten for the filament, and that was something that they hadn’t got, yet.

  After several hours, he was still stumped, and thought the best solution was to give the problem to the engineers, and see what they came up with.

  He described the function of the gasses in the tube of glass, and how they were excited to a point where they gave off light in the ultra violet range, and the phosphor coating inside the tube changed that to visible light.

  They didn’t have a chemical with which to coat the inside of the glass tube, so he supposed they would find a way around it, one way or another.

  When Kal and the crew returned from the expedition, he noticed that as well as the oil lamps, there was also what seemed to be some other form of lighting, and in the excitement of the home coming and then the generator, it had completely slipped his mind to find out what it was.

  With sketch pad at the ready, he set off to find whoever was responsible for the lighting. In one of the workshop caves he was to find yet another example of the ingenuity of these people. Two of them had been experimenting with a lichen that had been discovered in one of the deep caves.

  It would seem that if the growth was fed a nutrient solution, it glowed quite brightly with a pale blue-white light. In so doing the lichen grew in volume, and could then be divided up into several batches, and more lamps were made.

  The life span of the strange growth when forced to grow at this increased rate was only a few days, so the glass containers had to be flushed out every so often, and a new stock of lichen put in.

  A team had been looking for new materials in the cave system, when they came across the lichen on the walls of one of the caverns. It was very thinly spread on the rock, and the glow from it was only noticeable from a distance, as the light from the oil lamps swamped its meagre light output when close up to it.

  One of the party thought it interesting, and scraped some off the rock, bringing it back. They had reasoned that it either used the light to attract whatever it fed on, or the light was an accidental by product of its growing cycle.

  Either way, they tried feeding it a range of compounds from ground up rock to liquids extracted from plants, and found that a finely ground mixture of a chalk-like rock, added to the juice from one of the acid fruits was what the lichen needed to accelerate its growth and light output.

  The only problem was, that to generate enough light to be useful, the life cycle had to be speeded up with the nutrient solution, which meant they had a permanent job refilling the light globes every few days.

  The light globes were a very good demonstration of the kind of basic research which these people were capable of, using only the simplest of tools, a lot of patience and an ingenuity that put Kal to shame.

  He wondered again what they would have come up with if they had been put into a fully equipped laboratory.

  Kal had asked for two insulated copper wires to be fed from the electric generator to his workshop. These were to be put on poles, and china insulators would stop the current leaking to the ground or to anything else, if it rained.

  As he had no idea what voltage the generator would produce, he was going to be very careful when handling it.

  The electric supply was duly put in, and he devised a simple fuse system using a thin wire which would burn out if he drew too much current in error, and so save the winding of the generator from overheating.

  The light tube experiments could now begin, and a little team of engineers looked on in fascination as sparks flew every now and then, but no light as such was produced.

  Kal had explained in as
much detail as possible the danger of electricity, as it was invisible and gave little warning of its presence, allowing them to experience a mild electric shock to drive the point home.

  They were even more respectful of the new energy source than they were of him, and for that he was pleased.

  A small hand operated vacuum pump had been made to his specification, with of course, the usual modifications which the engineers had anticipated, and generously added.

  It worked far better than he had expected, and he was now able to lower the pressure in the glass tubes enough to see if he could get an arc to strike. A couple of days later saw the first flash of light from the new fluorescent light tube.

  It was just a flash, as the tube blew apart with the force of the arc, but they had proved the point that it could work.

  Over the next few days, many tubes were brought to him; all coated with different substances on the inside, and were put on the vacuum pump, and tried.

  Kal had long ago explained the basic principles of the fluorescent tube light, and some bright spark had noticed that when certain minerals were heated in the smelting process, gases were given off.

  He had collected some of them in glass globes, and now offered them to Kal to see if they would be of any use in the light tube experiments.

  Having evacuated the tube of air, it was not too difficult to introduce the gases one by one, to see if they had any effect on the electric discharge. One did.

  Although an arc could be struck, most tubes didn’t produce any useful amount of light output, and Kal was on the point of giving up the quest. He thought that a higher voltage might be needed, and had wound a small transformer, using the black rock to make the core piece.

  It worked quite well, and had stepped the voltage up considerably. He was now able to control the current flow and the increased voltage enabled the arc to be struck more easily.

  Eleven days after the tube experiments had begun, they had their first success. The tube lit up and gave out a bright white light which illuminated the cave to a level that almost hurt their eyes.