Discovery: Proton Field #1 Read online

  After a wide-eyed look at one another, they powered down and went inside to examine the hair. They couldn’t detect any changes in the little snippet of hair. Feeling a little freaked out by this bizarre outcome, Vinn said, “Okay, that I didn’t expect. Do you have any idea what the hell it means?”

  Myr appeared to be staring at the focal point, though Vinn thought her eyes were probably actually focused on something off at an infinite distance. “It probably means the effect isn’t electromagnetic,” she said, a little dreamily.

  Vinn thought about it and had to agree. If it affected hair but not wire, it probably wasn’t electromagnetic. However, he couldn’t think of anything except gravity that’d attract hair. Then he realized he’d seen hair stuck to balloons by static electricity. “Maybe if it’s working on hair, it’s your electrostatic effect?” Then he tilted his head with puzzlement, “Although, I thought your field suppressed electrostatics?”

  “Yeah,” Myr said, a distant tone in her voice. Then she shook her head, “It also pulled on my face so we should try some other organic materials.” She glanced at Vinn’s waist, “You ready to sacrifice your belt to science?”

  At first he was surprised, then Vinn realized that his leather belt was made out of cow skin. He said, “Um, okay…”

  She looked him in the eye, “First though, we should see what happens with the hair when it gets even closer to the focal point.”

  “I’ll move it,” Vinn said.

  Moved six inches closer, there appeared to be quite a bit more pull on the little tuft of hair, with it looking like it was straining and stretching the bend in the wire. As Myr powered the equipment down in the little puff of vapor appeared as usual, Vinn said, “Closer yet?”

  Myr had had an intense look of concentration on her face. At his question, she blinked as if her thoughts had bumped over something. “Yeah, but let’s do it with just one hair instead of that entire bundle… In case something weird happens.”

  This time when Myr turned on the power the wire bounced toward the focal point and then sprang back to its starting point. It quivered there for a moment then became stationary. When they powered down and went to examine it, they found that the hair and the little bit of scotch tape holding it to the wire were gone.

  After quite a search, they realized a tiny ball of material on the floor beneath the focal point looked, under magnification, like it might be partly plastic and partly hair. They just hadn’t considered the possibility at first. When Vinn looked up, he found Myr already staring at him. “I’m glad we didn’t test it with a finger,” she said quietly. She stood and stretched, “I’m getting punchy. I think we should quit for the day, think about it for a while.” She started zeroing her dials and switches.

  Vinn nodded, “I guess you’re right.”

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  As they left the lab, Vinn considered offering to walk Myr to her car. He wasn’t sure why, but he decided it was too early to make such an overture. He liked her, wanted to spend more time with her and wanted to see her safe, but he knew he wasn’t good at figuring out such interpersonal interactions. In any case, only earlier that same day Myr had been evincing a strong dislike for him. That alone suggested he’d probably better move very slowly. Instead, as they left the building and turned their separate ways, Vinn simply said, “See you tomorrow.” Then he put a little enthusiasm in his voice and made a little fist pump, “We’re going to figure this out!”

  Looking around, Vinn was surprised to realize that the sun had already gone down. It was later than he’d expected and he felt tired. They hadn’t done anything physically difficult, but something about the weird complexities of the day had kind of taken the energy out of him.

  Not wanting to eat his own lousy cooking, he stopped by Jack’s Grill for a burger and a beer. The place was packed with people watching the Chiefs play Thursday Night Football on the big screen TV. Vinn wasn’t very interested in football, so he took a table in the back, far from the action. The incessant cheering and shouting was a little much, so he left as soon as he’d finished his burger and beer.

  By then his tiredness had dissipated. He’d previously asked around about places where he might be able to play some pick-up basketball so he decided to go check out one of the spots that’d been recommended. Arriving at a gym with a tired old sign out front, he found a good crowd in the large facility. It looked old but was actually in pretty good shape. Since he only had street clothes he told the people at the desk he was considering joining and asked if he could just stand in the gym and watch. They didn’t object so he walked in. He found several half-court games and one full-court game in progress.

  After a few minutes, he managed to strike up a conversation with one of the guys who was waiting to sub in. He learned there were leagues that played on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Mondays and Wednesdays were mostly set aside for volleyball, and Friday nights were reserved for pick-up basketball. The guy said, “Most people start out playing pick-up ball on Friday nights. Once people get to know you, you can ask to join a team in one of the leagues.” He shrugged, “Teams won’t take you if you can’t play at their level.”

  Vinn decided to try playing pick-up ball a few Friday nights to see how he might fit in. After signing up for a membership he headed home.

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  On Friday morning Vinn woke up early. He couldn’t get back to sleep for thinking about what’d happened with Myr’s apparatus the day before, so he got up, took his shower and ate some cereal. He puttered around for a while, but finally went in to work early. He knew he wouldn’t be able to start doing anything in the lab because Myr hadn’t shared the combination for the lab door with him. Besides, she’d carefully kept him from getting a good look at the settings on her apparatus, so he doubted that he’d be able to replicate them and get any results even if he did get in her lab.

  He didn’t feel resentful; they’d hardly worked together yet and had certainly gotten off on the wrong foot. His plan was to go to his office and take care of any stuff that might have piled up there yesterday while he was gone. He wanted to be ready so when Myr arrived, they could get right to work.

  Instead, when he walked by her lab, he saw her out in the hall with the cart containing the monitor and the power supply. “Hey, what are you doing here so early?”

  “Couldn’t sleep,” she said, glancing at him, but then going back into the lab to adjust the position of the video camera.

  “Neither could I,” Vinn said, thinking her eyes looked a little hollow. He carried his backpack into the lab and set it against the wall. “Have you got a plan for today’s tests?”

  “We need to try to make sense of what kind of objects are attracted to the focal point,” she said. “I’m figuring we’ll tape a bunch of small samples to the wire so we can see which ones are pulled in.”

  Vinn bit back his immediate temptation to react sarcastically. Instead, he said, “Isn’t it going to be a problem that the tape itself seems to be attracted?”

  Myr squinched her eyes shut and thumped her head with the heel of her hand. “Yes! Of course it is. I didn’t sleep worth a damn and now I’m not thinking very well either.” She eyed him, “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m glad you’re here to keep me from doing something dumb.”

  Vinn frowned, “How could I take that the wrong way?”

  She turned back to study her apparatus, “You might think it meant I liked you.”

  Not sure whether she was joking or serious, Vinn said, “Um… Oh no, I wouldn’t want to presume.”

  “Good.”

  Uncomfortably uncertain, Vinn tried to think of something to say. After a moment, he ventured, “You think we can wire the test objects to the springy wire?”

  “Yeah, I’ve got a big spool of malleable wire. But, instead of wiring them to the springy wire we used yesterday, I think it’d be better if we just dangled the objects from the side arm of the ring stand on pieces of the malleable wire. That way we’ll get
a rough idea of the strength of attraction by how close to horizontal the dangling wire pulls up,” she shrugged, “if it gets pulled up at all.”

  “Good idea. First we better make sure the malleable wire isn’t attracted by itself.”

  “Obviously,” Myr said dryly.

  “Um, how about if I set up the ring stand with a piece of wire hanging from it while you finish setting up your apparatus?”

  “Good idea, but don’t forget we don’t know whether the ring stand itself might be attracted. Better make sure it’s at least eighteen inches away itself to start with.” She pointed out the spool of malleable wire.

  A few minutes later the ring stand with a dangling piece of wire was in place. Myr powered up her equipment and nothing happened. Nothing happened when they moved it closer either.

  Myr rummaged around in a cabinet and found a tiny 5 milliliter glass beaker. Handing it to Vinn, she said, “Wire this up.” While he was twisting wire around the beaker to securely dangle it about twelve inches from the focal point, she rummaged through cabinets.

  Vinn said, “Okay, it’s ready.”

  When Myr powered up, there was no evidence of attraction for the glass beaker either. “Okay,” Myr said, “we can put test substances inside the beaker if we can’t attach them to the wire.”

  “Vinn blinked, why wouldn’t we be able to attach them to the wire?”

  Myr raised an eyebrow, “Liquids, powders?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Myr handed him the rubber eraser from a pencil and said, “Drop that in the beaker.”

  The eraser pulled the beaker up and tensioned the wire toward the focal point.

  The pencil’s lead wasn’t attracted. Neither was a piece of copper wire, a paperclip, some aluminum foil, a penny—which was mostly zinc—or salt from a shaker Myr kept on her desk.

  Myr went next door and came back with a collection of bottles from the chemical cabinet there. They tested barium sulfate, calcium carbonate, magnesium hydroxide, mercury, potassium iodide, sodium carbonate, titanium dioxide, and tungsten; all of which were not attracted.

  Calcium bicarbonate was attracted. So were aluminum hydroxide, boric acid, calcium hydroxide, latex, mineral oil, paraffin, and sodium bicarbonate. Among the ordinary objects in the lab that were attracted were a piece of plastic from an ink pen, the wood from the pencil that had given up its eraser and lead, sugar and creamer from the coffee supplies, and a bit of leather that Myr had brought in from home so Vinn wouldn’t have to sacrifice a piece of his belt.

  When they put a little water in the beaker, it was attracted. However, the interesting thing was that when the beaker jerked toward the focal point, some of the water splashed out. On the video it could be seen spiraling into the focal point and disappearing. When Myr powered down, the puff of white was bigger than it usually was, supporting the idea that the vapor they’d been seeing was indeed water.

  Curious to see what was happening, Arlan Miller stopped by. When he looked in the door of Myr’s lab he found Myr and Vinn staring at a whiteboard with two lists on it. The lists included what appeared to be a mixture of chemicals and ordinary objects. They hadn’t noticed him so he stood and stared at the two groups of materials, wondering what in the world the whiteboard was all about. After a few moments, with neither Myr nor Vinn moving or saying anything, Miller cleared his throat, “What’ve you got there?”

  They turned to look at him with odd expressions. “Dazed” wasn’t quite the right term for the way they looked. He decided they looked more bewildered or baffled. Myr said, “It turns out that some things aren’t attracted to the focal point of the field. Remember how we were puzzled about why the field might pull in water vapor but not nitrogen, oxygen, or carbon dioxide?”

  Miller nodded.

  “So far we’ve found that the field attracts the things on this list,” she pointed to one topped with, “rubber eraser.” She turned back and said, “It doesn’t attract any of the things on this list.” She tapped the top of the other list, topped with, “wire,” and “glass.”

  Myr turned back to Miller, “We’re trying to figure out what the things on either list have in common.” She shrugged, “Since the first observed effects of the field were on static electricity, it’s easy to focus on the fact that a lot of the ordinary objects in the ‘not attracted’ category are electrical conductors.” She turned to look back at the whiteboard, “But, most of those chemicals are powders that aren’t conductors.” She glanced at Vinn, “Maybe they’d conduct if they were a solid chunk rather than a powder?”

  Vinn said, “Glass.”

  At first Miller had no idea what Vinn meant. Then he realized that glass, a well-known insulator, was on the list of substances that were not attracted, along with the various metals and other well-known conductors.

  Myr gave a self-deprecating snort, “There goes that stupid theory.”

  They all stared at the lists together in silence for a couple of minutes, then Miller said, “Hydrogen.”

  Myr and Vinn turned to look at him with puzzlement on their faces. Vinn said, “Are you saying we should test hydrogen?” He glanced back over his shoulder, “We’d have to seal it in a stoppered glass flask and we wouldn’t be able to get much in, because if we pressurized it the stopper’d pop out. We’d have to…”

  Miller interrupted, “No, I meant that everything in your list on the left—the one that’s attracted, has hydrogen in it.” He gestured, “The organic materials like plastic, wood, leather, and rubber,” Miller glanced at Myr, “and your face, are really obvious because they’re loaded with hydrogen, but look at your non-attracted sodium carbonate and your attracted sodium bicarbonate. The only difference between those two is that that the sodium bicarb has a hydrogen substituted for one of the sodiums.”

  “Oh!” Myr said, sounding embarrassed. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice those two were the same except for the hydrogen.”

  Vinn said, “What would hydrogen have to do with it?!”

  Miller said, “That’s a damned good question… And good questions make for great science. But you better check that hypothesis with some pure hydrogen and some more materials that don’t have hydrogen to make sure the pattern really holds true.”

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  Joe looked up when Arlan Miller came in to the office. Joe could tell that Miller was almost ecstatically excited, even though the man looked like he was trying to appear blasé. Joe said, “Well, what rang your chimes?”

  Miller grinned at him and said, “Myr Sevii. She finally struck gold. Big-time!” Miller gave Joe a sly grin as he continued on into his office.

  Joe knew that the sly grin was as much about Miller’s marking another W in his column of talent selections as it was about whatever discovery the girl had made. Especially because of all the times Joe’d expressed his doubts about Sevii’s capabilities. Starting with when Miller had been excited over a high school science project, continuing when he’d wanted to fund her college education, and on to when he’d offered her a job after she dropped out of grad school. He’d offered her the job without even interviewing her! At every juncture Joe’d rolled his eyes at his boss, always implying that Miller had to be out of his mind.

  Actually, Joe really liked his boss and was glad that he was getting another win. Also, he felt pleased to know that he’d be able to string John Smith along a while longer, extracting cash for little dribbles of information about whatever Sevii’d found. Joe didn’t feel very guilty about it, he felt pretty confident that he’d never given Smith any really useful information.

  ***֎֎֍֍***

  Vinn opened the door to the lab and stepped in, carrying the cylinder of hydrogen. No one at Miller Tech had had any hydrogen. They’d considered trying to hydrolyze some water, but had wanted to have larger volumes readily available. Praxair had had cylinders available but no one to deliver them on a Friday afternoon.

  So, Vinn had gone over to pick one up while Myr had stayed behind testing some
more chemicals.

  Now that they were focused on hydrogen, Myr had been purposefully testing chemicals and objects which would or would not contain hydrogen. Vinn said, “Any exceptions to the hydrogen thing?”

  Myr shook her head, glancing around to look at the cylinder Vinn was carrying. “I got Mark Wilms, who blows some glass for his research, to make this for us,” she said, holding up a fragile looking two-inch glass globe.

  The globe had glass valves at each end and one of the valves had a pressure adapter. They were able to hold it vertically and blow hydrogen into it from the top to push heavier gases out the bottom. Then they closed the bottom valve and blew in more hydrogen to get some pressure inside of it. They couldn’t get very high pressure with the set up they had, but if they had only had atmospheric pressure, there would only have been six milligrams of hydrogen which would also have meant only six millimoles and didn’t seem like enough. They’d had much more of the other substances they’d tested, for instance a penny weighed two and a half grams or 2500 milligrams, which would have been thirty-eight millimoles of zinc. Even at the fifteen psi—above atmospheric—that they could get in their glass globe, they only had twelve millimoles of hydrogen in it.

  Vinn suspended the glass globe from a piece of wire, saying, “You really think we still need to go out in the hall? Nothing dangerous has been happening.”

  Myr was already standing in the door. She turned and thoughtfully looked back at the set up. “You may be right, but we’re all set up to run this test. Let’s do it, then we can move the cart with the monitor and stuff back into the lab.”

  Even though Myr was out there running the experiment Vinn decided it was ridiculous for him to go stand out in the hall and watch on video. Instead, he stood in the lab to watch what happened firsthand. When nothing happened for a moment, he turned to look at Myr and found her waiting expectantly for him. Impatiently, he waved for her to go ahead. She rolled her eyes, then reached for the switch.