Allotropes Read online

  Allotropes

  An Ell Donsaii story # 8

  By

  Laurence E Dahners

  Copyright 2013 Laurence E Dahners

  Kindle Edition

  Author’s Note

  Though this book can “stand alone” it will be much easier to understand if read as part of the series including

  “Quicker (an Ell Donsaii story)”

  “Smarter (an Ell Donsaii story #2)”

  “Lieutenant (an Ell Donsaii story #3)”

  “Rocket (an Ell Donsaii story #4)”

  “Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5)”

  “Tau Ceti (an Ell Donsaii story #6)” and

  “Habitats (an Ell Donsaii story #7)”

  I have minimized repetition of explanations that would be redundant to the earlier books in order to provide a better reading experience for those of you who are reading the series.

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  Preprologue

  Allan Donsaii was an unusually gifted quarterback. He was widely recognized to be startling strong and a phenomenally accurate passer. During his college career he finished two full seasons without any interceptions and two games with 100 percent completions. Unfortunately, he wasn’t drafted because the pro teams felt he was too small.

  Kristen Taylor captained her college soccer team and was extraordinarily quick. She rarely played a game without a “steal” and usually had many.

  Allan and Kristen dated more and more seriously throughout college and married at the end of their senior year. Their friends teased them that they were only marrying so that they could start their own sports dynasty.

  Their daughter Ell had Kristen’s quickness, magnified by Allan’s strength and accuracy. The child also had a new mutation affecting the myelin sheaths surrounding her nerves. This mutation produced nerve transmission speeds that were nearly double those of normal neurons. Nerve impulse transmissions being faster, she had much quicker reflexes. Yet the new myelin sheath was also thinner, allowing more axons, and therefore more neurons, to be packed into the same sized skull. These two factors resulted in a brain which had more neurons, though it wasn’t larger and a more rapid processing speed, akin to a computer with a smaller scale CPU architecture that enables faster processor speeds.

  Most importantly, under the influence of adrenalin in a “fight or flight” situation, her nerves would transmit even more rapidly than their normally phenomenal speed.

  Much more rapidly…

  Prologue

  New York—PROOF WE ARE NOT ALONE! Today the journal Science announced the publication of a trio of papers regarding the third planet of the star Tau Ceti. The low key release belied the astonishing content of the material presented. The first paper describes the planet and its solar system. The second paper covers the biosphere and the intelligent though primitive inhabitants. The third paper outlines the early efforts to translate the language of the “Teecees,” as the inhabitants have been called. Though the scientific world has reacted to this announcement with shock and disbelief, the editors of the journal describe the evidence as “incontrovertible.” It is unlikely that many will be surprised that this technological feat was accomplished through the fifth dimensional ports described by Ell Donsaii, nor that she is a co-author on all three papers. While it is far too early to judge the impact this announcement will have on our world, several religious groups have already…

  Shan rolled up onto his side, propping his head on his hand to look down at Ell. “How are you wanting to do this wedding? Are we just going to go to a justice of the peace?”

  Ell’s eyes flashed wide. “You have got to be kidding!” She dramatically placed a hand on her heart, “I am a girl you know! Like almost every other girl in the world I’ve been dreaming since age four about my amazing, gorgeous, fantastic wedding!” She snorted, “Justice of the peace! Just when I’d been thinking you were different from all those other unromantic slobs.”

  Grinning, Shan drew his head back, putting a hand up to deflect her ire. “Wait a minute! Wait just a minute. I’m only trying to understand. If I’m marrying ‘Raquel,’ who are you going to have as bridesmaids? What about a ‘mother of the bride’ and someone to give you away?”

  Ell gave him one of her trademark crooked smiles and waved the backs of her fingers at him in a brushing away motion, “Tsk, details, mere details. Wedding plans are not something for the groom to concern his pretty head over you know. Your job is just to show up on time, look stunningly handsome and,” she pointed a finger, “do as you’re told.” Her expression faded to chagrin, “I wouldn’t want to admit that you have some good points there, however I will admit that I shall have to give this just a wee bit more thought.”

  ***

  Shan looked up at the bank’s loan officer, “So you’re saying we don’t qualify for this loan. Even with both of our salaries? You are looking at my new salary from UNC aren’t you?”

  “Yes Mr. Kinrais, but we’re also looking at the unpaid debts from your education. And, despite Ms. Blandon’s relatively good salary, especially for someone who didn’t finish college, it isn’t quite enough to qualify you for this particular house. Perhaps a little bit smaller house? Or if you could scrape together a little larger down payment?”

  Ell sighed, “My grandmother gave me access to her account in case we needed a bigger down payment. Would $10,000 be enough?”

  The loan officer spoke quietly to her AI (Artificial Intelligence) then looked down at her screen. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid you’d need a minimum of $14,000 more for us to clear you. Even then my advice would be to look for a smaller house. Financial modeling says that stretching your salaries to a mortgage this big will significantly stress you.” She raised her eyebrows, “I assume you’re getting married?” At their nod she said sympathetically, “Money problems are a common cause for the failure of young marriages. Don’t make things too tight for yourselves.”

  Ell and Shan looked at one another. She tried to look concerned but winked with the eye away from the loan officer. Turning back she said, “I’m sure we’ll be OK. Figure the loan as if we’ve upped the down payment by $15,000 and we’ll borrow it from my grandmother.”

  “OK,” the lady said dubiously.

  As they walked out Shan said worriedly, “What kind of interest is your grandmother going to want on her loan?”

  Ell squeezed his hand, “I have enough money in my account. We aren’t really getting it from Grams.”

  Shan frowned and looked at her quizzically, “So, if you’ve got the money, why the song and dance then?”

  “Because,” she gave him her crooked grin, “my Raquel persona shouldn’t have that kind of money in the bank.”

  As they got in his car Shan wondered what the state of Ell’s finances actually were. As CEO of D5R he’d imagined that the board paid her a pretty good salary. But D5R was a startup and a lot of its promising technology might lay in the pipeline, without significant quantities in production. He suddenly realized that, compared to whatever the initial investment had been, the company might not be bringing in all that much revenue as of yet. She loved the stuff they were doing out there at D5R so much that she might have signed on for a much lower salary than a more experienced CEO would have demanded. He considered it a moment, thinking that she really shouldn’t even be the CEO. After all she didn’t have the experience or the training in financials. At most she should be the Chief Technology Officer. That would be much more reasonable than CEO because, after all, much of D5Rs tech did depend on her special math.

  And Ell must have some large expenses. For instance, that little farm she lived on. Even if her roommate Bridget paid part of it, rent on that farm had to be pretty pricey. And she had a s
ecurity team following her around. Who paid for them? And that woman Amy who seemed to assist with her life away from work. Did the company pay for Amy too? Or did she have to come out of Ell’s salary? And now she was buying another house?

  Shan was in love but knew that the banker was right, marriages often foundered on financial shoals. He wondered how best to approach Ell about the issue. Could he be stepping into a boat with a huge hole in its bottom? He turned to Ell, “Remind me why we have to get this house now?”

  Ell looked at him and shrugged. “We need a house near my farm to support my dual lifestyle. This one’s for sale right now and we don’t want to let someone buy it out from under us.”

  ***

  Vanessa stepped into USA Gymnastics head coach Natya Kolmenya’s office. “Have you seen the December video of Ell Donsaii ‘dancing’ at a gymnastics exhibition for little kids in Morehead City North Carolina?!”

  Natya nodded.

  “Well!?”

  “I suppose you’re excited because she can still do some of those floor elements that no one else can do?”

  “Yes! We have got to recruit her to our team for this summer’s Olympics!”

  “And I told you a few years ago that she’s not interested. I also told you that if you wanted her on the team you should ask her if she’d be willing to just show up and perform.”

  “You really don’t think she’d be willing to practice with the team?”

  Natya shook her head slowly. “You can ask, but I’ll bet you a hundred bucks the answer will be ‘no.’” She shrugged, “On the other hand, if you can get her to agree to just show up and perform, I’ll give her a spot on the team without a tryout. I’ve watched that vid at least fifty times, just trying to figure out how she does what she does. That’s enough of a tryout for me.”

  “And why am I calling her, instead of you?”

  Natya snorted, “Her AI refuses my calls. I called her so many times before the last Olympics that I’m persona non grata. I’m hoping you might at least get to talk to her.”

  “Okaay,” Vanessa said musingly. She wandered back out to the gym pondering how best to go about this strange mission.

  ***

  “So, it’s done?” Ell asked.

  “Yes Ma’am.” The small man said.

  Ell had been surprised when they’d hired Joe Spall, a retired miner, to build her tunnels. She’d had a stereotype in her head that the man would be a dwarf. The man wasn’t a dwarf by any means but he was burly and only about five foot three. Taciturn too.

  Spall had worked small underground mines by himself for most of his life. Though it would be easy to think he’d be an out of touch hermit, in actuality he used an impressive array of modern tunneling equipment with tremendous proficiency. He’d bored Ell’s tunnels in very short order, saying that he’d never dug though anything so soft before.

  Ell grinned at him, “Are we ready to go on a tour then?”

  He shrugged and wordlessly got up, leading the way down the stairs into her basement. Punching a catch, he pivoted a set of shelves full of electronic equipment out of the way. They stepped into the darkness and closed the door behind them. As the door switch closed and the sensors noted that someone stood in the tunnel, the lights came on. A relatively well lit tunnel stretched away to the southwest of the house. The fiber-reinforced shotcrete walls were fairly smooth and painted white. They got in a golf cart that stood ready in a small recess.

  Ell drove. The golf cart shot down the tunnel like it had taken steroids. She slowed as they came to a widened area. A recess on one side held another golf cart. On the other side of the tunnel stood a vertical shaft with a ladder up the side where Ell stopped. They got out and Ell climbed the ladder. At the dimly lit top she peered out through a fisheye lens. She saw nothing but darkness. Snapping another catch she pushed open the door. It had shelves mounted on the other side like the one back in Ell’s farm house. Ell stepped sideways off the ladder and out into the little shack. The shack had been built over a “basement.” Once the shack was constructed, Spall had opened up the basement walls and used the opening to work the tunnel, taking dirt out the shack’s garage door. Now the shack, standing over that first shaft, served to hold the mowers and other grounds maintenance equipment for Ell’s little farm. The grounds keeper had no idea that his shack even stood over a “basement,” much less over a tunnel that served as a clandestine passage that could also act as an escape route.

  Climbing back down from the shack into the tunnel, they drove down a split in the tunnel to one of the houses where some of Ell’s security team lived. A different split in the tunnels led to the other house where the remainder of her security people lived. A third split would take her to her assistant Amy Reston’s house. Finally the center tunnel took her to the house that she and Shan were in the process of buying. She went down that tunnel and parked next to another of the golf carts. Exiting the cart they got out and Ell patted the outer surface of the concrete blocks of the basement of that house. “You’re confident that when we cut the door it will enter the basement right next to the bottom of the basement stairs?”

  “Yes Ma’am. As long as the stairs are actually where they showed them on the blueprints for the house.”

  “They are; I’ve toured the house.” Ell said, getting back in the cart. “And you understand the deal on secrecy? We’ll pay you $5,000 per year for twenty years if this remains a secret. If secrecy is lost, even through no action of your own, we’ll only pay $2,500 per year. If we determine you’re responsible for the loss of secrecy, then you get nothing at all.”

  “Yes Ma’am. No one will learn about these passages from me.”

  “Great. Thanks for a job well done!”

  ***

  Amy Reston looked up when Ell came in. “Hey Bosslady. I used the tunnels to get to your place. They’re pretty nice. I was expecting dark and rough from a miner.”

  “Yeah, I thought he did a very nice job. You sent him his money?”

  “Yep. It also looks like 301 Brostridge, the closer of the two security houses, needs a new roof.”

  Ell waved a hand, “Minor details, Ms. Reston, minor details. I’ve got an important new job for you to take on.”

  Amy raised her eyebrows, “What’s that?”

  “I find myself in dire need of a wedding planner.”

  Amy shot to her feet, “Shan? That guy Bridget’s been oohing and aahing about?”

  “The same,” Ell grinned broadly.

  Amy threw her arms around Ell. “I can’t wait to meet this godlike being that thawed the ice queen!”

  “Ice queen!?” Ell drew her head back to glare, “Just because a girl waits for Mr. Right, she gets labeled cold?”

  Amy, gave Ell another squeeze, then let go and frowned, “But I don’t know much about wedding planning!”

  “You have time to read up on it. I’ve got to have someone planning this affair who’s already aware of my split personalities.”

  “How long do I have?”

  “Um, I don’t know. Late May?”

  ***

  The small rocket squirted its attitude jets a couple of times as the rim of the enormous ring approached. The jets pivoted it so its main engine would push it in over the wall of the ring. The main engine exhausted hydrogen at full thrust for a minute, then turned and thrust the opposite direction to bring the rocket to a halt over the top of the sidewall.

  As the sidewall rose to meet it, the main nozzle turned downward and opened up, gently bringing the rocket down to a landing on the upper surface of the wall. It stood there motionless for a minute, then a circular area on the large, odd fin sticking off to its side went fuzzy. A rolled up metallic tube slid through the port, dropped onto the sidewall and also stood motionless for a moment.

  The band that had been holding the tube in its rolled up condition snapped open. The tube unrolled, revealing a much larger circle printed on its surface. That circle also vanished and an object three feet long with a max
imum width of seven inches extruded through the 20 centimeter circle.

  The object lay motionless for a few moments, then sat up, revealing an anthropomorphic form with two legs, two arms and a head. It picked up the sheet of nitinol on which its port to the ringworld had been printed and tossed it off the edge into the endless black of space, flung away by the rotation of the ring. The band that had wrapped the nitinol sheet into a tube went off the edge next.

  The waldo stood and walked to the edge of the ring’s sidewall. There it stood a while, looking out over the enormous expanse of apparently flat, open land that faded into the misty distance ahead. It turned to take in the distant, upwardly curving shape of the ring on either side.

  The PGR chip inside it sent back data:

  “Apparent gravity 0.338G”

  “Apparent atmosphere inside ring, Oxygen 28%, Nitrogen 71%, Others <1%”

  The waldo knelt and fired a laser at the material near its feet. It did this for about thirty minutes with minimal apparent effect, intermittently tugging on the material. Finally a small piece of the material broke off. The waldo inspected it for a moment and dropped it into a port on its chest. After looking out over the vista ahead another minute, Sigwald—Ell’s name for this waldo on the Sigma Draconis ringworld—lifted on a jet of highly compressed air and floated out over the incredibly deep valley ahead.

  Ell watched on her HUD (Heads Up Display) as her view through the waldo’s eyes dropped down along the rimwall that held in the ringworld’s atmosphere. The rimwall was hundreds of kilometers high, making for a tremendous drop down onto the floor of the interior of the ring. After a moment she said, “Allan, go ahead and correct for the Coriolis drift we’re getting out of the ring rotation and move us forward to keep us off the wall.” The rimwall curved steeply up from the ring rather than standing straight up. This meant that the waldo had to move forward or it would simply come down on the ring’s wall a little farther in.