Comet! Read online

  Fred interjected, “Especially if D5R lets us keep the port building techniques we worked out as proprietary IP. It would take our competitors quite a while to figure out how to do it so we’d have good head start on the big companies that might otherwise crush us.”

  Viv said, “We’d like you to be part of it too, of course.”

  Ell glanced at Brian. Even though he’d actually had the breakthrough idea that let D5R finally build workable ports, it looked like he was letting the other two run this show. Or at least trot it out. Ell suspected that once again he didn’t want to speak up in front the “big brains” that had all the “education.” He did look pretty enthusiastic though.

  Addressing all of them she said, “I think that’s a great idea. I’m pretty sure I can sell it to the big shareholders, especially if…”

  “Especially if what?”

  “Well, one thing they’re worried about is the potential for ports to be used for terrorism or other awful things.”

  “What!”

  Ell looked at them with some surprise. “A terrorist could build a solid steel rocket with a tungsten nose cone, send it out into space, get it up to maximum velocity and send it back down to hit a city. It’d be hard to get it through the atmosphere without burning up, but it could be done and a kinetic strike like that would be terrible. Or just send a small rocket across town and into someone’s window. A terrorist could even mail a port to someone. Once it arrived, he could pour gasoline through it and send a spark after. I’m sure you could imagine some other things if you thought about it.”

  Eyes wide they stared at Ell, then back and forth at one another. “Holy crap!” Fred breathed.

  Vivian narrowed her eyes, “Are our shareholders thinking that we could do something to the ports that would keep such things from happening? How?!”

  Ell shrugged. “Well, the rocket scenario for instance. If every port had a GPS in it followed by one of our supercomputers, the computer could take note if it looked like the port was flying somewhere, or at velocities that it shouldn’t.”

  Viv’s eyebrows drew together, “What could the computer do about it?”

  “Disable the port that was fueling the rocket for one.”

  “So it wouldn’t hit as hard?”

  Ell chuckled, “If they had planned a trajectory that depended on a certain velocity to hit its target, and their rocket never achieved that velocity, then it wouldn’t hit its target. You might still have damage to whatever it hit instead and that issue deserves some thought.”

  Viv’s eyebrows went up as she considered. “And when they come to complain about a defective port?”

  “Ask them what they were trying to do, arrest ‘em if they don’t have a good explanation. Refund with damages if they do.”

  Fred frowned, “How would we prevent the gasoline scenario?”

  Ell shrugged, “I don’t know, but maybe you could figure something out? If a port had sensors that turned it off when it became submerged in liquid?”

  Brian finally said something. “And you think that your investors would be more likely to fund us if we had ways to stop some of these scenarios?”

  Ell grinned, “I think they might sell you an exclusive license to be the only port manufacturer if you were willing to go the extra mile to prevent terrorism.”

  Brian frowned, “What would keep the bad guys from making ports themselves?”

  “Cover every part of ‘em you can with Dexin. We don’t license to anyone else or publish anything about how they’re made. They’d be pretty hard to reverse engineer from the shredded mess you get digging tiny electronics out of Dexin. I’ll bet that the port would still work even with Dexin over the entangled buckyballs. So if you coated most of the port itself with Dexin, then it’d even be hard to figure out the entangled buckyball part of it.” She shrugged again, “Some evil genius might figure it out from the original paper, but it’d be pretty hard. They might hire your people away, but you could try to arrange your manufacturing process so that no one employee understood the whole thing.”

  They looked at each other, “But the government wouldn’t let us have a monopoly… would they?” Vivian asked.

  “I think they would, if it reduced terrorism. I had a thought… You could make only a few ports that would tolerate high velocities like for space and require that they only go to specially licensed space launch people. You could still sell to amateur space launch enthusiasts. You’d just require that they jump through a few hoops to weed out the crazies. The majority of your ports could be built so they were only good for low velocities or for stationary ports.”

  Fred frowned, “Why would anyone want a stationary port?”

  “Oops,” Ell grinned. “You haven’t been thinking of selling ports just for space launch have you?”

  They looked at one another in confusion then back to Ell and nodded quizzically.

  “OK,” Ell looked conspiratorially at them and lowered her voice. “Suppose you’re a power company and 7% of the power you produce is lost to resistance during transmission over power lines from your hydroelectric dam to the city you supply?” She raised an eyebrow questioningly, “And another huge part of your budget is spent on purchasing and maintaining those power lines, trimming trees around them and repairing them when storms blow them down?” Ell grinned as eyebrows began to go up. “Now along comes ‘Sharkden Enterprises’ and says they can replace that huge transmission line with three ports and a few feet of power cable?”

  They laughed, “Is ‘Sharkden’ supposed to be an amalgamation of Short, Varka and Marsden?” Vivian asked.

  Ell raised an eyebrow, “Of course! Also be thinking of how stationary ports could pipe oil, gas and other liquids across the sea instead of in boats and across the country instead of in pipes or trucks. Water from places with too much rain to places with too little. Jet fuel to airplanes so they don’t have to take off with such a huge load of fuel. Yadda yadda…”

  The three stared at Ell, “My God…” Brian breathed.

  Ell saw Roger over at the coffee stand. She got up distractedly, “I’m gonna go talk to Roger. See you guys later.”

  Roger squinted at the coffee machine despite his sunglasses. He had his cup under the spout but he’d pulled up, down and sideways on the lever and it hadn’t moved. Then his thumb bumped the button on top and he finally realized how it worked.

  Cup full, he shuffled over to put in large quantities of cream and sugar. He turned to find a seat and found Ell in front of him. His stomach lurched.

  “Hey, Rog. How’re you feeling?”

  “Not so good. I need to sit down.”

  Ell followed him to a table and sat beside him. “I’ve never seen you put away that much Guinness before! I can believe you’d be feeling a little under the weather. Can I find you some Tylenol?”

  Roger shrank down into his chair. “Sure, thanks.”

  When Ell returned with the Tylenol, Roger remained slumped in his chair, gripping his coffee in both hands and looking miserable. He took the Tylenol, thumbed them into his mouth and slugged them back with the last of his coffee.

  “Want another coffee?”

  Roger nodded and Ell headed back to the coffee urn. She put a lot of sugar and cream in it like she’d seen him do and brought it back.

  Roger whispered, “Thanks,” but didn’t look up.

  Ell patted him on the shoulder, “I think I’ll leave you to your misery.” She headed off to talk to people in better moods.

  That afternoon they loaded up the chartered jet to fly back to Raleigh. Ell found Roger slumped in a window seat near the back and dropped down next to him. “Hey, Rog. Feelin’ any better yet?”

  Roger nodded minutely, but said nothing.

  After a long pause Ell said, “I’ve been talking to people about plans for the future of D5R. You up to talking about it too?”

  Roger cleared his throat, then said, “Sure,” in a low voice. He didn’t look at Ell.

  Ell shrugge
d, “Vivian, Fred and Brian are thinking of forming a company to make the ports for people that D5R licenses ports to. Ben and Rob want to develop space resources. Prospecting, and mining of asteroids mostly, but I think they want to look around the rest of the solar system for valuable resources too.

  “I’m sure either group would welcome you if you wanted to join them. Or…”

  Roger was staring out the window as the jet taxied to the end of the runway. He said, “I’ll have to think about it.”

  “You don’t want to hear about my, ‘or…’ idea?”

  “Sure,” he said. Still without looking at Ell.

  “Maybe I should wait until you’re feeling better?”

  “I feel OK.” The jet started roaring down the runway.

  “Really? ‘cause you’re acting pretty… weird.”

  “Yeah, well…” He cleared his throat and said very quietly, “I just found out I don’t have a, a...chance.”

  Ell frowned, “Don’t have a chance of what? Did you get some bad news?” Ell’s heart constricted at the thought that Roger might have learned he had some dread disease.

  Roger stared at the seat back in front of him. “Yeah. A chance...with you.”

  Ell’s eyebrows ascended in surprise. “What? Why wouldn’t you have a chance with me? A chance of what?”

  Roger sighed and scratched the armrest of his seat with a fingernail, “I saw.”

  “Saw what? I don’t understand at all. What are you talking about?”

  “You and...Phil.”

  “Phil and I…? What?”

  “Hugging and carrying on before he left.” Roger said with some exasperation as if he couldn’t believe it wasn’t obvious.

  Sudden realization flashed over Ell. “You’re jealous?!”

  Roger shrugged morosely.

  Ell squeaked and smacked him on the arm. “I’ve never had anyone be jealous over me before! I had no idea what was going on with you!”

  “Well, good for you.” Roger said glumly. “Glad to know my distress is making your day.”

  “Hey dummy! You’ve never even asked me to be your girlfriend! You’ve got no right to be jealous of Phil when you’ve never even told me you might want a relationship that you could be jealous about! You take me out occasionally, yes, but you haven’t been acting like I thought ‘boyfriends’ were supposed to act.”

  “Well…” Roger petered out, evidently not having considered that Ell might not understand the depth of his feelings.

  “Besides, Phil hasn’t stated his intentions either and he’s a long ways away… And, he’s a friend, even if you were my boyfriend I should get to hug him!”

  “If I were? Can I be?”

  “Hah! Not a chance! Not acting like this you can’t! Getting drunk, passing out, moping around with a hangover. I don’t like version 2.0 of Roger. I liked version 1.0 way better.”

  Roger blushed a little and looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “You don’t like me?”

  “Well, I liked Roger 1.0 if you can reboot to that version. But, I’m not sure I’m ready to settle down. I’m only nineteen you know?” She elbowed him and whispered conspiratorially, “Remember, Grandmother Emmerit thinks I’m much too young for you.”

  He looked over at her. She was grinning impishly. He said, “But… I’m crazy about you. I want you to feel the same about me!”

  Ell stared at him seriously for a long time. Then, quietly she said, “Before Dad died, I complained to him that the other kids didn’t like me… You know what he said?”

  “What?”

  He said, “That, if I wanted the other kids to like me, I needed to be more likeable.”

  Roger frowned, “So I...need to… ‘sweep you off your feet’ or something like that?”

  “Sure, something like that. But you’ll probably need to be patient too. I agree with your grandmother. I’m too young to settle down yet. So for a while you’re going to need to be my boyfriend but maybe not my exclusive boyfriend. Do you think you can hack that?”

  He stared at her. “How would you feel if I was going out with other girls?”

  She shrugged, “OK,” she wrinkled her nose, “maybe they’d smooth off some of those rough edges you’ve been displaying here the past day or so?”

  Roger closed his eyes a moment. Would I be able to stand it? Yes! It isn’t that she already loves someone else. It’s that I need to earn her love. He opened his eyes and grinned at her. “Maybe they could give me the ‘sweeping off feet’ practice I apparently need?”

  Ell put her hand over his on the armrest, “Yeah! That’s more like the Roger 1.0 that I used to know.” She leaned back and frowned, “But, no breaking other girls’ hearts! I don’t like mean boys either.”

  He sat up straighter and said, “So, tell me about your ‘or’ from before?”

  “OK,” Ell said, looking at him intently, “I’m figuring that if most of our D5R team is breaking off to build businesses based on what we’ve already done with ports, we need a new team that can focus on what new things we can do. Not on building businesses out of what we’ve already figured out, but on new research to see if there’s anything else we can do? I’m hoping you’ll join that team?”

  “Sure! What are we going to work on?”

  “Whatever grabs our interest, but for sure your research on whether we can send living beings somewhere?”

  Roger’s eyebrows jumped up, “Oh! Yeah, we do need to keep working on that.”

  Ell grinned, “I have a few other ideas too.”

  Roger rolled his eyes, “I’ll just bet.”

  Chapter One

  Kitt’s Peak National Observatory, Arizona—The Observatory confirmed the discovery of a new comet by amateur astronomer Wilson Daster. Though the comet is not very large, initial observations suggest that this comet will pass fairly close to Earth so it should put on quite a show when it does…

  The D5R charter landed and taxied to the terminal at the RDU airport. People got off in good spirits. Ell thought about making an announcement to everyone about the formation of the new companies but decided to wait until their first day back at work on Friday. Sitting in the back of the plane with Roger she was one of the last ones off. As she walked down the jetway she felt like something was odd or different from usual. Is there something different about the jetway for charter flights? She wondered. The lights in the terminal seem really bright. Then Ell stepped out into the terminal and suddenly the difference and the lights responsible for it became blindingly obvious.

  Video crews with high intensity lights surrounded the gate. Ell blinked and shaded her eyes. I knew they’d find us, just not this soon!

  Reporters began calling, “Ms. Donsaii, Ms. Donsaii! Please?! How was the Space Station? What are your plans for…” They waved their hands and stuck microphones in her face.

  Ell stopped, closed her eyes a moment, then opened them and smiled. “Yes, I’ll answer a few questions.” She passed her bag to Roger and asked him to go on ahead.

  Andrew Bilstock watched the young strawberry blond move over to one side trailing all of the reporters. She wore jeans and a t-shirt with running shoes. The t-shirt said “E=MC2” across the front. He considered. One would expect her to look plain and ordinary in such typical everyday clothes. Clothes like hundreds of other travelers wore right here in this very airport. She should look rumpled after a plane flight. Yet, somehow the plain clothing looked stunning on her. She looked fresh as a model just made up for a photo shoot. He would have sworn she was wearing high heels if he hadn’t seen the shoes for himself. She moved gracefully and turned to face the cameras again saying, “I’ll take one question from each of you.” She pointed at Sherry Simson, one of the reporters in the front, “Yes?”

  Bilstock winced when the young reporter asked, “Is it true that you’re the same Ell Donsaii who won four gold medals in the Olympics three years ago?”

  If Donsaii thought it was stupid question she didn’t show it. She merely smiled and s
aid, “Yes,” as she pointed to another reporter.

  “We understand that you have developed a significantly cheaper means to ‘launch to orbit.’ Is this new technology related to the recently developed PGR chips? Those chips are said to be based on the paper you published in Nature.”

  “Yes, the two technologies are both based on that paper and on the mathematics described in it… Next?”

  “Wait, wait!” the second reporter exclaimed, “I have a followup. Did…”

  Donsaii shook her head. Still smiling, she waggled a finger at him, “One question each please. Make ‘em good.” She pointed to the next reporter.

  “The PGR chips have caused tremendous upheaval in the communication industry, can we assume that something similar might happen in the satellite launch business?”

  “Well, certainly there will be changes. As it becomes easier and less expensive to get into space, the number of businesses that will benefit from a presence in orbit will increase exponentially. However, I expect that you are actually concerned that the current space launch industry could be facing stiff competition from this revolutionary new technology? Please rest assured that President Teller has already begun taking steps to ensure that those companies will be able to license the new technology from D5R and continue to compete on a relatively level playing field. Next?”

  “Do you favor Vice President Mansfield or Senator Flood in the coming Presidential election?”

  “Oh, I won’t comment on political issues. I’m sure that each candidate plans do the very best they can for our country, each according to his own perspective.”

  The questions went on for quite a while and Donsaii let each reporter ask a single question as promised. When all of them had had an opportunity she said brightly, “Thank you for your attention and interest,” and slipped out of the lit area. A milling gaggle of reporters and videographers followed her through the terminal but, without seeming to hurry, she quickly left them behind. By jogging occasionally Bilstock managed to follow closely enough to see her slip into a car in front of the terminal and pull away. He noted with surprise that she’d been alone in a Ford Focus. Somehow he’d expected her to take a limo or drive some exotic car. Oh well, I guess just because you’re famous it doesn’t necessarily follow that you’re filthy rich, he thought.