StS6 Deep Space - Hidden Terror Read online

  Emmanuel gave him a long sad look, then nodded. “This might be one of the best things you ever do for her.”

  Chapter Two

  AP Florence, Italy, Europe—Today, Alphonso Amato of Amato Industries announced that the company would begin selling household food stazers next month. The company has been supplying industrial food stazers under a license from Staze for several years now. Agribusinesses use the large stazers in fields and feedlots, allowing delivery of farm products to processors without refrigeration or concern about spoilage. The companies destaze for processing, then restaze the food until delivery at retail grocery stores. This has also allowed the storage of surplus foodstuffs in bountiful years. Those stored products can then go on the markets in lean years, a practice that has markedly stabilized the food futures market.

  With the advent of such stazing, food deliveries to areas stricken by famine, even in warzones, is much improved. This became evident last year during the war in Kurdistan, where the resumption of hostilities between Iraq and Turkey left some of the disputed territories with their infrastructure bombed, fields burned, and contact with the outside world eliminated. Isolated and without access to international aid, the people were in the early stages of starvation when the World Food Bank began dropping stazed food out of airplanes, set to destaze itself a few hours to a few days later.

  Now that they’ve helped stabilize the world’s food supply chain, Amato says, they’re ready to take on the home market with a series of appliances ranging in size from ones the size of an oven, down to a version the size of a toaster. Foodstuffs put in the appliances are stazed, coming out with a label that includes a photo of what’s inside the Stade. Not even the bigger, oven-sized stazers will handle something as large as a turkey. Instead, their interiors have a range of different-sized compartments to better fit various food products, from a couple of slices of pizza on up to a large loaf of bread or a bunch of bananas (just think, you’ll never have to eat a brown banana again!) If you want to staze a watermelon, you’ll have to cut it up and staze it in pieces.

  These appliances won’t completely replace your freezer and refrigerators. After all, if you have a quart of ice cream stazed and you repeatedly destaze it to dish up a bowl, it’s eventually going to be warm and melty. Therefore, you’ll still need to have something that can cool it back down. Some food producers are planning to try to work around the need for another appliance by stazing cold foods and drinks in single-serving sizes that people will consume at one sitting. They also expect to staze foods at the perfect temperature for consumption of, say, a particular fruit.

  Most food experts, however, think the eventual solution will be a single appliance with the ability to cool its compartments before stazing them, well below freezing if so desired. Amato has already started work on such a device that will allow you to easily set a particular temperature that a compartment should reach before it stazes. With that, you’ll be able to cool food down to what you think is the ideal temperature before stazing it. Ice cream can be stazed at ten degrees Fahrenheit, which is not cold enough for long-term storage but is an excellent temperature for consumption. If you like to drink one kind of beer at forty-five degrees Fahrenheit, you can cool it to that temperature, staze it, and then have it ready to serve at your preferred temperature. You could also cool a different brand to thirty-five degrees before stazing it.

  Amato is also selling commercial stazers to restaurants with the expectation that they will staze their leftover food for food kitchens, that they’ll be stazing take-out meals for an additional income stream, and that they’ll even find ways to partially or fully prepare meals ahead, stazing them hot so they can be destazed and immediately served during rush hour. Some well-known restaurants are expected to do a brisk business in fully cooked hot gourmet meals that people can take home, destazing them and having a fine dining meal at their convenience.

  When Mahesh Prakant arrived at work, he was surprised to see that one of the big screens on the wall inside the building was displaying the weather. At first, he felt irritated that people were wasting their time on the weather but then he realized the image showed the east coast of the U.S. with a large cone-shaped overlay that curved in from the Atlantic and passed over Virginia. Ed Nagy, the young engineer with the great sense of humor, approached, looking like he wanted to ask a question. He wasn’t smiling today. Remembering that Nagy’d grown up in Virginia, Mahesh headed him off by indicating the screen and asking, “What’s going on?”

  Nagy glanced that way, then said, “Hurricane Gareth.”

  Mahesh had heard something about Hurricane Gareth but hadn’t been thinking it impacted him so he’d ignored it. “Um, I come from California, where hurricanes aren’t an issue. You know enough to give me a primer on them?”

  “Um…” Nagy shrugged looking as if he didn’t know where to start. “Big rotating tropical storms that start down near the equator in the Atlantic. Generally, they sweep up to the northwest, going through the Caribbean and into the southern or eastern states.” Nagy glanced at the screen, “Gareth’s aimed right at Virginia and it’s a Category 5, the most powerful.”

  Crap! I should’ve been keeping up with this! Mahesh thought. “I thought they petered out over land,” he said. “Could it come this far inland?”

  Nagy scratched his head, his ready smile absent. “They have come this far in the past, though they’ve usually weakened quite a bit by the time they get as deep as Charlottesville.” He looked around the room. “And metal buildings like this one usually hold up pretty well, though there’s likely to be damage to some people’s houses, especially from falling trees. Um, I think a lot of people are worried about what it might do to the space launch facility since it’s down near the coast.”

  “Damn!” Prakant said, unable to believe he hadn’t considered the launch facility. I vaguely remember Kaem talking about hurricanes back when they were designing the tower, he thought, I’d better talk to him. He started to turn away from Nagy, then remembered the guy had looked like he wanted to talk. “Sorry, Ed. Did you need some help?”

  “No, um, I just wanted to tell you I wouldn’t be able to finish that assessment on time.”

  “Um, why? Has something happened?”

  “Yeah. The hurricane. My folks live down near the coast. I’ve got to help them board up their house.”

  “Oh!” Mahesh said, not completely sure what boarding up a house involved, but having the impression it mostly consisted of screwing sheets of plywood over the windows. “Of course. Take care of your family. Stay safe and best of luck to you.”

  As Nagy headed for the door, Mahesh turned to look around for Kaem.

  Kaem was with a small group over near one of the wall-mounted screens. As Mahesh approached, Kaem leaned back to look at the hurricane track projected on the biggest screen. Mahesh said, “Trying to plan for the hurricane?”

  Kaem nodded distractedly, “Let the people over in HR know if you can put up any of our space-launch people, okay?”

  Startled, Mahesh said, “Sure. I’ll call my wife in a minute, see what she says. Are we evacuating all of them then?”

  “The State wants everyone evacuated; we’re just trying to help them find places to stay.”

  “Charlottesville’s not in danger?”

  “Probably just high winds and rain. Unless you’ve got big trees, especially pine trees, near your house you’re probably safe.” Kaem gave Mahesh a quick look, “You’ll probably have some damage though.”

  “What about our facilities, especially the launch tower?”

  Kaem turned back to the screen he’d been looking at earlier. “The farmhouses on the Staze campus are old enough that they’re probably vulnerable to wind damage. We’ve told our people to get the hell out of them, but,” he frowned, “when they get to this end of the hyperloop there’s no way for them to get anywhere from there. Uber etcetera are stretched to their limits. Arya’s managed to rent a bus that’s taking people to hotels but almo
st all of the buses are bringing people up from the coast and most of the hotels are full.” Kaem looked at Mahesh, “Got any ideas?”

  “I’m from the west coast. This is my first experience with a hurricane so I probably don’t know enough to be helpful. You think the tower itself will be okay?”

  “Yeah. It’s a hell of a big tripod with very solid foundations. The engineering numbers say it won’t even notice.”

  “What about that huge flagpole sticking up above the top of the tripod? Seems like it could act as a huge sail to lever the whole thing over, yanking the foundation screws of the tripod bases right out of the ground.”

  Kaem didn’t answer, apparently thinking about something else. Mahesh repeated his question.

  “Hmm? Oh. The foundation screws are really deep, there are a lot of them and they’re at steep angles to one another. No way they’d pull out. There’s also the fact that hurricanes don’t usually go over 50,000 feet, the altitude of the top of the tripod, so it won’t blow much on the part of the tower that’s above the stabilizing legs.”

  “Ah,” Mahesh said. “Is there anything else we should be worrying about?”

  Kaem was staring into the distance. “The possibility that Gareth won’t be weakened over land as much as most hurricanes? If it arrives in Charlottesville, still packing the kind of punch it’s going to pummel the coast with, that’d be a huge problem for us. We should be thinking about what we, as good corporate citizens, might be able to do to help people. I keep wondering if there’s something we could do with Stade to reduce the damage.” He shook his head, “With time we could reinforce houses with Stade, but I’m not coming up with anything we could get down to the coast fast enough to help ameliorate this storm. You have any ideas?”

  “Um, in case we’re wrong about the stresses on the tower, maybe we could adjust the lengths of the support arms to take some of the load off? Move it out of the highest wind zones and relax the length a little if the stresses peak?”

  Kaem frowned, “Moving it away from the highest velocity winds sounds doable. It’d be great if you could work on making that happen. Unfortunately, I don’t know how we’d know the stresses are peaking so we could relax the lengths.”

  Mahesh closed his eyes, frustrated. “Oh, of course, we can’t.” Can’t measure the stresses in Stade because it doesn’t deform, he’d realized.

  “In case I’m wrong and it does look like it’s going to tip over, we’ve tested the circuits to the explosive bolts to be sure they’re ready to break the tower into segments that’ll float far above the storm.”

  “Let me think a bit,” Mahesh said.

  “Sure,” Kaem responded, turning back to the screen.

  After reading up on hurricanes, Mahesh’s eyes widened. Stepping back over to Kaem, he said, “One of the things I’m seeing is that a lot of people are gonna lose their homes. If you’re talking about being a good corporate citizen, maybe we could use one of the blimp molds to provide temporary shelters wherever they’re needed.”

  Kaem turned, smiling, “Great idea! Let’s go talk to Gunnar.”

  Once they’d explained the idea, Gunnar said, “We’ve got a couple of the Mylar blimp bags folded up down at Staze East. They’re inside one of the Stade blimps so they shouldn’t get damaged by the hurricane. But, how’re you gonna get permission to set them up? And, don’t forget that, even though we’ve worked out how to cast them with flat floors, those floors would be slippery Stade. They’ll need concrete or some other kind of flooring put in them before they’ll be very usable. Concrete might be in high demand and hard to come by after a disaster like this.”

  Mahesh said, “Maybe we could ask Dez for flooring ideas. Or some other civil engineer, though she’s by far the best I’ve ever known. I’m thinking that, at the least, we could find out whether there’s a formulation of concrete that could be poured thin since it’s sitting on an absolutely rigid surface.”

  “Definitely,” Kaem said. “She’s been interested in how to build houses out of Stade. Maybe she could come up with quick individual shelters people could put up on their own land. We could cast a bunch of her snap-together Stade panels and sell them in sets with directions that let you build a little house as if it were a prefab. Having watched people work with them, I think you could put up a little house in a couple of hours.”

  Gunnar frowned, “That’d be nice, but we’d have to provide Stade welders or they’d be easy to knock down.”

  “Dez has a system that uses steel bolts to hold them together until they’re welded. I’ll bet the bolts would hold them for years if need be.”

  Gunnar said, “I’ll call her. She’s down at Staze East and I need someone down there to make sure those Mylar blimp forms are locked safely inside the blimps, not laying around where they might get damaged.”

  “Um, Gunnar,” Kaem said. “She’s really busy. You should consider driving down there and doing it yourself. There’re a lot of people down there who want to be evacuated with some of their valuables but don’t have vehicles. If you could bring a few of them back with you… every little bit would help.”

  Gunnar’s eyes narrowed, “I’ve gotta play taxi because they don’t wanna take Ubers?”

  “All the ride services are swamped, my man. Dez is gonna load up her truck and bring as much of their stuff as she can when she comes back. Those who can’t get rides are gonna have to stay in the launch tower basement, though I’m trying to talk them into just leaving their valuables there and taking the hyperloop back here.”

  “Oh. Sorry. Sure, I’ll head down there in a few minutes.”

  “Um. HR’s taking names if you think you could put some of them up for a while.”

  Gunnar rolled his eyes, “Now you want me to clean out my spare bedrooms?!”

  “I could come help,” Kaem said, guilelessly. “Or the people who’re going to stay in them could help when they get there.”

  Gunnar just turned and stalked over to HR, still shaking his head.

  Mahesh turned to Kaem, “Is he really upset?”

  Kaem laughed, “No. He’s got a heart of gold. He just doesn’t want anyone to know it. I’ll bet those spare bedrooms are neat as a pin.”

  “I don’t know,” Mahesh said dubiously, “his work areas are usually a mess.”

  “But they’re always cleaned up by the time he leaves at the end of the day.”

  ***

  When Ed Nagy pulled up in the back of his childhood home, his dad was nailing 2x4s over the kitchen window. “Jeez, Eddie. What took you so long?”

  His dad had always been crotchety, so, tired as he was, Ed restrained himself from snapping back at the older man. Instead, he patiently said, “Hard to find a truck to rent. Then, before I could even start down here, I had to drive the truck west to find a place that had any plywood left. Or a chainsaw for that matter.”

  “What the hell’d you get a chainsaw for?!”

  “Usually there’re a lot of trees down after a hurricane. And, I think we need to drop the old sycamore before the storm hits.”

  “The sycamore?!”

  “Dad, it’s leaning toward the house, and that’s the same direction the wind’s most likely to be blowing.”

  “Exactly. It is leaning toward the house. You try to cut the damn thing down and you’ll drop it on the house yourself. You do know that insurance doesn’t cover stupid, don’t you?”

  Ed rolled his eyes but knew better than to argue. He just started pulling sheets of plywood out of the back of the truck.

  ~~~

  It was nine o’clock and the wind was picking up before Ed and his dad finished screwing the last sheet of plywood over one of the side windows. When they trudged inside, he saw his mother had laid out a big meal. “Um, Mom, I don’t think we should take time to eat. We need to get out of here while we still can.”

  His dad turned, an astonished and angry look on his face. “We’re not leaving the house! You’ve gotta be kidding! I’m not tucking my tail between
my legs and leaving my home undefended!”

  “Dad…” Ed said with a sigh, thinking he should’ve seen this coming. “Come on. A Cat 5 hurricane’s dangerous. The winds knock down a lot of houses even if trees don’t fall on them. Especially old houses like—”

  “I call bullshit on that,” his dad said angrily. “They built houses a lot better back when this went up than they do now. These modern pieces of crap don’t hold a candle to the way we put ’em up back in the day.”

  Ed shook his head, “They did not. The building code’s far stricter now. The roof sheathing has to be screwed on and the—”

  His dad had been shaking his head disgustedly. Now he interrupted, “Son, I know you’ve got that fancy-prancy engineering degree, but some things just require a little common sense. I was around when they built houses like this one and let me tell you…”

  His dad’s harangue about the good old days went on through dinner. Ed thought about leaving but his mother wouldn’t leave without the old man and if she got hurt, he knew he’d never forgive himself.

  The power went off just before ten. Ed wasn’t surprised to hear his dad say, “What the hell?” as if he were astonished.

  Patiently, Ed said, “Power’s almost always out after a major hurricane. Sometimes for months.”

  His mom got out her phone and turned on its light, laying it on its back to light the table.

  Ed said, “Mom, I wouldn’t waste the charge in your phone. You may be needing it for calls. Do you have any candles?”

  With a trembling hand, she picked up the phone and scurried off to look for them.

  The old man called after her, saying, “Don’t worry, Martha. The power’ll probably be back on in a couple of minutes.” He turned to Ed and hissed in a low voice, “What the hell are you scaring her for?”

  “Dad, we should be scared.”