The Thunder of Engines Page 6

When the numbers turned out to fit… He hadn’t believed that either. Even when Arya had agreed to help pay to get it built, he’d been full of doubt. Fear that he was wasting everyone’s time and Arya’s money.

  Right up till the moment it’d worked.

  Even then it hadn’t worked the way he’d expected. He’d expected his watch to disappear, then suddenly reappear at the date and time in the future he’d sent it to. Later he’d realized that having something reappear in a new place/time, co-inhabiting the same space as molecules already present in that place/time—even if those molecules were only air—would’ve resulted in an explosion. When the mirrored surface of that first stade became evident, he hadn’t had any idea what’d happened. Then he’d suddenly realized that the piece of space-time in the box was moving forward in time—just at the same rate as everything else—but that time had stopped within that volume of space-time. As far as things in the box were concerned, they were jumping forward and would suddenly reappear at that date in the future. But for everyone else, that volume had become a bit of space that was completely unbreakable, unreactive, and impenetrable.

  The time jump was important. He just didn’t think, in the long run, the time jump would prove as important as the unbelievable material properties of the staded segment of space-time.

  He blinked, realizing he’d been woolgathering during a crisis. He said, “Is it possible someone else could have come up with the same idea simultaneously? Or semi- simultaneously?” He shook his head, “No. That’s about as likely as a coin coming up heads a hundred times in a row.”

  “Are you sure?” Arya asked apprehensively. “I gotta tell you, I’m worried.”

  “I see three possibilities,” Kaem said slowly. “First, that they invented it simultaneously, an event less likely than winning two Powerball lotteries back to back. Second, and much more likely, that they think they’ve got something like stade, but they don’t. Third, and most likely by far, they’ve somehow stolen the idea. Perhaps James Harris over at Harris Labs managed to…” Kaem shook his head, puzzled, “Though I have no idea how he could’ve gotten…”

  Arya groaned, “We shouldn’t have talked to anyone without getting patent protection first.”

  Gunnar cursed, stormed across the room and slammed out the door.

  Lee caught the closing door and looked in questioningly. Kaem waved her off. Feeling weak all of a sudden, he grabbed a chair back, turned it, and slumped down on it. Dropping his head on his hands, he tried to think. “Did they say when they filed for their patent?”

  Arya fell into the other chair. “No. But they did demand we stop work on stade and turn all notes, equipment, and models over to them.”

  Kaem lifted his head and frowned. “What?! Can they do that?!”

  “I don’t know.”

  “We need to call our lawyer.”

  “And what are we going to pay him with?!”

  Kaem sat, staring into space, saying nothing.

  “And pay him with what, Kaem?! The way we’ve been spending, my bank account’s been vaporized!”

  Kaem’s vacant expression turned to a startled one. He said, “They don’t know how to make stade! That’s why they want our notes and models.”

  Arya gaped at him. “They have to know how to do it. They’ve filed for a damned patent!”

  “No, they don’t. We sent them samples, right?”

  Arya slowly nodded.

  “And they may have stolen some of my notes. Or, though I think this is doubtful, maybe they hacked them out of my computer. They could somehow have gotten into Gunnar’s place to take pictures of the molds. Or into my dorm room to take pictures of the electronics. So, they have some vague idea of how it all works. And a sample of the product.”

  Arya looked doubtful.

  “Patents aren’t long on specifics, Arya. I’ll bet if we saw their patent application, we’d be able to tell they don’t know how to do it. They’re just filing a patent on making stade because they know it can be done and they think we’re too small to fight them.”

  “Kaem! We are too small to fight them. Besides, patents take a long time! If they’ve got a patent, they do know how to do this and filled out their application a long time ago. Possibly years ago! Face it. They beat you to it somehow.”

  “I’ll bet they don’t have a patent. I think they’ve just now applied for one. Yesterday or the day before.”

  “They said they have a patent, Kaem. They’re a huge company and wouldn’t lie. Also, they have enormous resources. We can’t possibly fight them. You’re grasping at straws.”

  “You talked to multiple people? What’d they sound like? Could you recognize their voices?”

  “No, wait… what?”

  “You keep saying ‘they,’ as if a lot of people at Martin are involved. You need to consider that your nebulous ‘they’ might not be more than the one person you talked to and possibly one or a few others.” He leaned forward, “I’m assuming you only talked to one person. What’d he sound like?”

  “He… he sounded Asian, maybe Chinese.” She shook her head, “But that doesn’t mean anything, a lot of tech people are.”

  “Could you recognize his voice?”

  She shrugged, “Probably, he sounds as if English is his second language and he’s struggling with it. That’s not uncommon either.”

  “Does he sound educated?”

  “Well, no. But I think that’s just because he isn’t good with English.”

  “Or, maybe he’s just a thug.”

  She leaned toward him, speaking slowly as if trying to control her temper. “Even if the guy that called us is some low-level grunt, Kaem; we can’t fight Martin Aerospace. We don’t have the money or the resources to take them on.”

  Kaem studied her a moment, “You’re just going to give up, then?”

  Her face fell. “What else can we do?” she asked plaintively.

  “Call our lawyer. See what he thinks. Maybe he’ll take our case on contingency. Or, hook up with Space-Gen. Tell them that Martin’s trying to steal our IP and ask them for help fighting back.”

  Shoulders slumped, Arya said, “I don’t know Kaem…”

  “Come on, Arya. I can’t believe you’re just going to—”

  The door swung open and they turned, Kaem hoping Gunnar had come back. Schmidt might be grumpy, but Kaem thought he’d put up more of a fight than Arya was. And, Gunnar had money, if he was willing to spend it.

  Instead, it was Lee. She gave them a tense smile, “Check your account. The money’s been deposited. So, we do have a contract.” She looked at them a moment, apparently unsure what to make of their expressions. “I, uh, just wanted you to know… in case it made a difference regarding whatever you were deciding about Martin Aerospace’s offer.” She pulled her head back and let the door close itself.

  Arya looked at Kaem’s sudden smile. “No! You’re not thinking of…”

  “Damned right I am. You can quit if you want, but I’m gonna fight. And it sounds like there’re a million little helpers in our account.”

  “You can’t use Space-Gen’s advance to pay our legal costs!”

  “It’s not an advance. They paid that money to gain the right of first offer. We’re still planning to give them that right. We need to use that money to protect the IP they want to buy.” He waved at her phone, “Check to see if the money’s there.”

  Shaking her head, she spoke some commands to her phone. Looking up at Kaem, she nodded.

  He decided that if he acted like she was still on the team; she might resume functioning rather than turtling up and quitting. He started giving orders, “I’m going to make nice with Lee. I’ll do some more demos for her. You call our lawyer. See if we can talk to him today. Call Gunnar, tell him we’re going to fight this and we need him. We especially need him to help us make more of your bulletproof vests. The way the bastards at Martin are acting we each need a vest for protection. Call Martin and tell them we think they’re lying. Say we need
to see their patent so we need their patent number. Otherwise, we can’t know if we’re infringing them or they’re infringing us. Or, whether no one’s infringing anyone else. They’ll hem and haw because at best they’ve made an application—they don’t actually have a patent. Make them admit it’s just an application if you can. Then demand to see a copy of the application. Tell them we don’t think they know how to make stade. That we think they’re just trying to appropriate our invention. Record everything!” Kaem turned and walked toward the door to talk to Lee.

  Wretchedly, Arya said, “Kaem…”

  Kaem kept walking. Opening the door, he leaned out into the anteroom and said, “Lee, sorry. Come on in. I’ve kinda forgotten what we were doing when we were interrupted?”

  She held up the stade testing sample. “You’d just made this for me. I’ve been wondering if you could make me a denser one?”

  “Sure,” he said, motioning her into the room. “Can I make one that’s water density? Doing other densities would take a lot of setup time.”

  “That’d be great.”

  As they approached the worktable, Arya was on her phone saying, “Mr. Morales, this is Arya Vaii. We need to—”

  Kaem interrupted her with a firm grip on her elbow and started her out to the anteroom. Morales was their patent attorney and Kaem didn’t want Arya saying anything in front of Lee about how they needed to apply for a patent. When Arya flashed him a look, he cut eyes toward Lee.

  Arya got the idea and started for the door to the anteroom.

  Kaem smiled at Lee. “Now, let’s make you that denser testing specimen.” As he poured water into the mold, he asked—in his best affably unworried tone, “Have any other questions or concerns come up?”

  “So, as I understand it, we need a mold that we could quote-unquote, pour our engine’s combustion chamber and nozzle into. It should be made out of glass that can be silvered because you need a reflective surface facing the engine’s structure, both inside and out?”

  Kaem nodded, “Uh-huh.”

  “And the parts of the mold can be assembled out of tightly fitting smaller parts because stade won’t form in gaps smaller than one millimeter, right?”

  Kaem nodded again.

  “Um, do you mind making suggestions? Like, how you’d make the mold?”

  “Well,” Kaem said thoughtfully, “if you think of the engine as a bell with a can on top i.e. the nozzle bell with the combustion chamber on top…”

  “Yes?” Lee said, sounding eager.

  “Then I’d be thinking that I’d make the inner mold—the part that will form the inside of the bell and chamber—in two parts. The bell section and the chamber section. The bell piece could be solid for a small motor, or thick-walled for a large motor. The chamber piece would be thin-walled, probably formed by blowing glass into a mold. The two pieces would fit together well enough that they wouldn’t have any gaps bigger than one millimeter.” Kaem looked at her to make sure she was getting it. She didn’t look confused, so he said. “I’d be planning to reuse the heavy piece that formed the inside of the bell, but the blown glass piece inside the combustion chamber would be disposable. Once the engine was cast, you’d get the blown glass piece out of the engine by breaking it. So, you’d need a new piece for the interior of the combustion chamber for each engine.”

  “Um, okay,” Lee said, “I understand that part, but how would you make the outer shell? The part that’d form the outside of the chamber and bell?”

  “Ah, that part should be a lot easier. You can make it as a split mold. Two halves that fit around the inner molds leaving the right amount of gap for the casting. You wouldn’t have to worry so much about keeping gaps between the two halves down to less than a millimeter because a few bumps on the outside of the engine wouldn’t cause many problems.”

  She waved off that concern, “We could just grind…” She paused, looking embarrassed.

  Kaem gave a little laugh, “Yes, you see the problem, eh? You can’t grind or shape stade in any way. So, the mold has to be right,” he shrugged, “or you have to accept a few bumps.”

  “Does it have to be glass?” she asked wistfully. “It’s damned hard to work with.”

  Kaem shrugged again, “Maybe not. According to the theory, it just has to be a transparent material, so maybe you could do it with a clear plastic like acrylic. But the surface against the engine would need to be reflective. I think it can probably be done, but we haven’t tried it yet.”

  Lee gave him a look. “You really are just getting started, aren’t you?”

  “Uh-huh,” Kaem said. He got up from the electronic setup he’d been working at to make her test sample. Stepping to the mold, he unlatched it and popped out another testing stade. It looked just like the other one but it was much heavier. He handed it to her.

  Lee pulled the first air-density stade out of her pocket and, clawing her fingers around them to keep them from getting away, held them up to compare them. “They look identical, except this one’s heavier. If their physical properties in terms of strength and heat tolerance are even close, we’d want the lighter stuff.”

  “The material properties should be identical.”

  “Really?”

  Kaem nodded. He stepped over to the cube that Gunnar had been setting up before he left so precipitously. Peering into it, he tried to see what Gunnar’d accomplished.

  Lee said, a pleading tone in her voice, “Can you tell me anything about how this all works? It’s just killing me that I don’t have any idea. I mean, it’s so cool that you have something this strong and even cooler that I’m gonna be helping build rocket engines out of it, but I can think of so many other things it’d be amazing for…”

  Kaem laughed, “Can’t tell you anything unless you come to work for us.” He lifted an eyebrow, “We could use a good engineer.”

  Lee looked thunderstruck. “Really?”

  Kaem looked down into the cube. “Really. Though we aren’t ready to start hiring yet. Soon, though.” He moved the foil-covered glass and saw the silvering had been removed in a ring where the inverted glass would make contact. Looking at the glass he could see the foil had been neatly trimmed. “I’ve had an idea we could try. It might answer your query about making more complex shapes. Would you like me to try it? It’s pretty rough and ready. And… there’s a good chance it won’t work.”

  “Uh, sure! That’d be great.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to step out into the anteroom again, then.”

  She frowned, “I can’t watch to see how you do it? That could be very helpful in designing the, um, forms.”

  Kaem grinned, “Sorry, a boy’s gotta have his secrets, you know? Let me walk you to the anteroom, I need to talk to Arya again anyway.”

  ~~~

  Having swapped Lee into the anteroom and brought Arya back into the big room, Kaem asked Arya what she’d learned so far.

  Looking a little frazzled, Arya said. “Mr. Morales says we can come over at four o’clock. Gunnar won’t answer his damned phone. I talked to the guy at Martin and he was totally hostile. Kept demanding we turn over the working models we’d stolen. Wouldn’t tell us their patent number. Wouldn’t send me a copy of the patent application. Swore they’d destroy us in court.” She made finger quotes, “‘Make a you sorry! Veddy sorry.’” She looked at Kaem with frightened eyes, “Kaem, I’m scared.”

  He stepped toward her, wanting to put his arms around her and comfort her, then realizing she’d be pissed if he did. He backed up a step, “Arya, I’m scared too. But we’ve worked too hard to let them take this away from us…” He paused on a sudden realization, “He asked for the ‘models we’d stolen’?”

  She nodded, “Kaem, did you get some of your stuff from them?”

  Kaem snorted, “Arya, listen to yourself! You had me give you receipts for the components I bought for our first setup. You know I got some of it from the physics equipment room—it had the physics department’s tags on it. What piece
of equipment did I get from Martin freaking Aerospace?!”

  She stared at him a moment, “I don’t know! Yes, I know some items had physics department labels on them. Yes, I saw receipts for the equipment you bought. But the most important piece in the whole stack might have been the flangeron you got from Martin.”

  “The what?!”

  “Flangeron. You know,” a sly smile crept over her face, “that critical part you stole from Martin.”

  This time he stared at her. “Did you just try to make a joke?!”

  She nodded snorting softly and looking embarrassed, “A bad one.”

  Kaem belly laughed, looked at her, then laughed some more.

  Arya sniffed, looking offended. “It wasn’t that bad!”

  “No, no,” Kaem choked out, bending to brace himself on a knee, “It was hilarious. Just way, way funnier coming from someone like you who never jokes… someone who never thinks anything’s funny.”

  She drew herself up. “I think some things are funny,” she said indignantly. “Just not your stupid jokes.” She gave him an entreating look, “Kaem, do you promise me this is your invention? You really didn’t get it from Martin somehow?”

  “Wait,” Kaem said, turning to look at the rack of equipment he’d just used to form some stade. He started walking that way. He motioned her after him impatiently. “Come look at the rack of equipment we just used.”

  She came slowly, “I won’t be able to tell anything…”

  “Yes, you will. Look at the modules in this rack. Do you see that every single one of them has the trademark and logo of some company on it? And that none of them have a Martin Aerospace label on them?”

  Arya studied the rack. After a moment she straightened, “I can see that, but what if you put someone else’s label over Martin’s.”

  “My God, Arya, what do you think of me?” He leaned closer, “Look at them again. All the company logos are screen printed directly onto the front plates of the modules. There isn’t a single nameplate affixed afterward that I could’ve put over someone else’s label.”

  She leaned in close again. “I guess…”

  “You guess?! Come on!”