Allotropes Page 7

  “A lot of things. First I wanted to apologize for… Jordan… and for the fact that I hang around with such a shallow jerk.”

  Ell laughed, “Well, you should be embarrassed about that. Apology accepted. What’s number two?”

  “Well, numbers two and three are related. I find myself thinking about Morgan all the time since that weekend. Does she have a boyfriend who just didn’t come on that ski trip?”

  “I’m pretty sure she doesn’t. But Jordan might have poisoned the waters for you with the Kinrais sisters.”

  “Yeah, I kinda figured that. That’s why I’m talking to you. I’m no fast talking lady charmer like Jordan. So I’m thinking that when I graduate I’d like to move to North Carolina and try to ‘run into her,’ far, far from Jordan.”

  “Wow! That’s a serious commitment to a romantic goal!”

  “Yeah, when I say it out loud, it sounds crazy to me too. But, I think about it all the time.”

  “So what’s item number three?”

  “Well, I’d need a job in North Carolina and I’d really love to work for D5R. I’m hoping you’ll be my inside connection. Would you know if they might have any use for a ‘wet behind the ears’ civil engineer? I can’t find them advertising any jobs, much less a civil engineer job.”

  “Hah!” Ell laughed, “Well HR always says they ‘just want good people’ and they get most of them by word of mouth. There’s a philosophy at D5 that says if you’re smart and decent and they hire you, they’ll find something useful for you to do. They do need engineers. If you send me your résumé, I’ll get it to the HR people and put in a good word.”

  “That’d be great!”

  “Don’t get your hopes up too high.”

  “I won’t. I’ll still be looking at other possibilities.”

  “Good move, catch you later.”

  A moment later Ell was studying AJ’s records. He looked pretty good ‘on paper’ with impressive grades and scores though Ell was well aware that some people who tested well didn’t actually do all that well in the real world. And, he’d as much as admitted he had to work hard for his grades, so he probably wasn’t a genius. However, the fact that he hadn’t brought his good scores up, either while in Colorado skiing or during his call, rubbed Ell the right way.

  After a moment Ell said, “Nancy.” Trusting that her AI would hook her up to Nancy in human resources, she continued, “I have a résumé I’m forwarding you. Raquel met him and liked him. Check him out and if you don’t find anything odd, I’d like to hire him. I’m thinking that we might try him out by having him work with Carter to engineer better processes for collecting the ore from the asteroids. I think the waldoes are still spending too much ‘hands on’ time just to keep the mining going.”

  Nancy chuckled, “He’s cute. You sure that his picture isn’t influencing your decision making process Dr. Donsaii?”

  Ell sighed theatrically. “You have got to start calling me ‘Ell.’ And, no, I hadn’t noticed his looks at all. Let me look back at his picture. Hmm,” she sniffed, “I’ll grant you that he is somewhat attractive. That had no bearing on my recommendation though.”

  Nancy chuckled, “Sure Bosslady. Of course... No doubt.”

  ***

  Ryan looked up from working with John Parker to refine the control of his prosthetic hand. Most of the remaining issues were related to interpretation of sensory input regarding “position sense.” Those sensations were hard for John to describe. Programming the neurotrodes to deliver appropriate signals to the correct fibers of John’s sensory nerves that would give him proprioceptive perceptions like he had experienced from his real hand had been very difficult. Far more difficult than touch and heat and cold anyway. However, they were gradually understanding what type of signal they had to inject into the proprioceptive axons of the nerve for John to have a correct sensation of his hand’s position.

  Ryan saw Ell Donsaii step out of the machine shop.

  He got up and walked her way. “Ms. Donsaii…?”

  “Mr. Keller?” She smiled, “Though I would hope that we would be on a first name basis by now?”

  He looked abashed, “Ell.” He found it difficult to believe that he had a hard time calling her by her first name when he so desperately wanted to ask her out. “Um, I know you love Velos. I happen to have tickets to the show in Greensboro?”

  She grinned at him, “I’m really flattered.”

  Ryan’s heart thumped hard as she leaned closer to him. He noticed a fresh clean evergreen smell. Probably her shampoo he thought.

  But then she dashed his hopes by saying quietly, “Sad to say I already have a boyfriend. I just go to great lengths to hide him away from my public life here.” She glanced aside, then back. “So much as I’d love to go to the Velos concert, you should take someone else with that extra ticket.” She grinned at him again and raised an eyebrow, “By the way, Bridget likes Velos.” Ell poked him gently in the chest, “And she thinks you’re really cute.” Ell winked and was gone before Ryan’s mind got back on track.

  ***

  Emma rapped on the frame of Ell’s open door. “Hey, have you seen the latest tirade from Michael Fentis?”

  Ell looked away from her screen, a bemused expression on her face. She slowly shook her head.

  “This time no one trapped him or badgered him. An interviewer said something about him being the ‘world’s fastest man’ and he just went off. The interviewer hadn’t said anything about you or your run up to the vault, but apparently Fentis thought he had, or was about to, imply something about it. Anyway, Fentis exploded, saying that he’d had that video of you analyzed, that parts of it were fake and that it didn’t actually show you going very fast at all. Then he implied that you were the one that faked it.”

  Ell tilted her head curiously, “Do you think he’s lost touch with reality?”

  “You mean, ‘gone crazy?’”

  Ell nodded.

  “No, I think he’s completely sane, just a jerk. Well… and this thing about you is really irritating him.” Emma grinned, “He said if you could run even close to the speed claimed on that video, you would have entered a track meet a long time ago. He says that the fact you haven’t done so proves that you can’t, and that if you were a decent person you would just come out and admit it.”

  Ell grinned crookedly, “Well, you’re right… he is kind of a jerk.”

  Emma looked at her musingly for a moment, “Can you run that fast?”

  Ell just shrugged. “Who knows? Never tried.”

  ***

  Emma watched in growing excitement as Querlak landed in front of a large building. Finally an end to the interminable fields of crops! Her AI said, “Shan is contacting you. He’s ready to take over for his shift with Sigwald.”

  “Connect me to him… Shan! Querlak’s taking us to a building! We’re just about to enter. I’m turning over control to you, but I’m going to stay to watch a few minutes. I’ve been bored senseless and I’m not leaving just as something finally happens.”

  “OK…” Shan said. “Looks like the building is made out of the same stuff as the road. Do you think they make everything out of carbon? Is it all graphene?”

  “No, graphene’s too flexible to hold up a wall. It’s incredible in tension but in compression it’d just fold. It’d be like trying to build a house out of nylon cloth.”

  Querlak looked a little tentative as she entered the building. She looked around a moment, then waved Sigwald forward almost furtively. Emma had the feeling they were doing something illicit.

  To Shan and Emma’s astonishment the huge building, though filled with equipment, had not a single sigma, other than Querlak, in it. Querlak led them into the building, at first looking about as if she were curious herself. Then another of those transformations rolled over her, changing her from a somewhat confused and dull appearance, to sharp and confident.

  Emma wondered why she had that feeling of a change in Querlak. There wasn’t any way she coul
d truly be comprehending Querlak’s body language.

  Querlak stopped in front of a large machine and began pointing out its features in the pidgin English-sigma that they had been speaking. She opened the front of it like she worked with it all the time. From the look of the seals at the opening it appeared as if the inside was pressure tight. Inside were nozzles of varying sizes hanging on arms over a long bed.

  When Shan tried to ask how it worked. Querlak closed the door and turned, looking about. She led Sigwald across to a different, much smaller machine. She worked with it a bit, evidently powering it up. She closed the door which proved to be transparent. Sigwald’s sensors registered the machine heating, then the bed at the bottom took on a red glow. They could see motion through the door. A broad nozzle passed back and forth laying down a spray of hazy material. After a couple of passes a bright beam began playing over much of the surface. Sigwald’s cameras registered it as coherent light, probably from a laser. The pattern rapidly changed and a different color beam began tracing a finer pattern on the surface. Excitedly Shan realized that the machine seemed to be working something like a 3D printer. He turned Sigwald toward Querlak, intending to draw some molecules in the dust again. However, there wasn’t much dust. Then he realized that they were in dim enough light to project a picture with Sigwald’s laser. He drew Querlak’s attention to the dark side of the machine and, signaling an interrogative, Shan had Allan use Sigwald’s laser to project graphene’s chickenwire hexagons with sixes at the nodes to indicate carbon.

  For a moment Querlak seemed startled by the projection, then giving an impression as if she’d shrugged, she walked off, looking around as if trying to find something. She came back with a disk that had one side lit up. She inserted a small flat square in the side of it and scrolled through pictures until she came to one diagramming a layer something like the one the machine appeared to be making. Off to the side of the layer was diagrammed a molecule that had boxed sixes at the nodes. Not chicken wire hexagons though. Instead of three lines emanating from each carbon like in graphene, each carbon had four lines tetrahedrally emanating from it. Emma gasped, “Is that diamond?”

  They heard the voice of Allan, Ell’s AI speak. “I’ve been monitoring. That isn’t quite diamond’s structure. It’s lonsdaleite. They look very similar.”

  Ell’s voice appeared in their conversation as she said, “Allan told me something was happening. Is this some kind of fabrication machine?”

  “We think so. Why would it be making lonsda… whatever?”

  “Well the first layer it lays down would be the outside eventually. So probably they want a hard outer coating.”

  “If they want it hard and can make a tetrahedral carbon, why not diamond? It would be a lot harder.”

  “Actually no,” Allan said. “Pure lonsdaleite should theoretically be about 15 on the Mohs hardness scale while diamond is only 10. Unfortunately, all the lonsdaleite we’ve found or created so far on earth has a lot of impurities and flaws that weaken it.”

  “What?!” Shan said. “I thought the top end of the Mohs hardness scale was set at 10 based on the fact that diamond was the hardest material?”

  “It was when the scale was established.”

  “Holy crap!” Shan whispered.

  Querlak’s disk now showed a different structural layer. This layer had a diagram beside it showing layers of the chickenwire pattern of graphene. Querlak pointed to it and said in pidgin English, “like graphene… but layers bonded… we say…” At this point Querlak uttered one of the tones that served the sigmas for words.

  Allan said, “That tone has many of the same harmonics that their tone for graphene does but a few tones from their word for diamond. I suggest we call it graphend.”

  Shan said, “That looks just like graphene to me?”

  Emma said musingly, “No, look. Some of the hexagon corners have a tetrahedral diamond type bond to the carbons in the graphene layer above or below them. That would keep the graphene layers from sliding past one another. It wouldn’t have quite the same tensile strength that graphene does but, because the layers won’t slide past one another, a thick stack of them would resist bending. You could use it for structures that need bending strength, not just tensile strength.” She looked around at the building, “Maybe the walls of this building and of the machines are made of it?”

  Querlak’s disk indicated a different material being laid down like a trough in the ongoing layer deposition. With time, the trough became a pipe designated with more tetrahedral molecules. The material inside the little pipe that was being formed was designated with the hexagonal pattern of graphene. Shan asked, “Is that more lonsdaleite?”

  “No, the tubular structure is diamond,” Allan said.

  “Why diamond in the middle of this machine?”

  “Diamond’s an insulator and properly oriented graphene’s an excellent conductor,” Ell said musingly.

  “Oh my God!” Shan said wonderingly. “They’re laying down, layer by layer, a machine that has an incredibly hard lonsdaleite outer shell to protect it. Then a layer of graphend, similar to the strongest stuff we know of, made a little weaker in the process of giving it some bending strength. And then, instead of installing wiring inside of cavities in the machine, it has diamond insulator built right around graphene conductors!?”

  “It’s a single element 3D printer! Most of our 3D printers only build things out of one or a few materials, mostly plastics that aren’t all that strong and really can only be used as models. When we need different material properties, we use completely separate machines to print parts from each different material and then have to assemble them. This thing only uses one material, carbon, but it’s using the different allotropes of carbon to make parts with different properties as it goes along. It’s making entire machines out of practically indestructible materials with electrical circuits built right into them. If they have to put any non-carbon parts into this thing when it’s done, I’ll bet it only needs a few!”

  “What’s it making?”

  “Who cares?” Emma laughed, “It isn’t what it’s making, but how it’s making it that’s important.”

  Ell snorted, “Well, I’m still a little curious as to what it’s making.”

  Shan turned Sigwald toward Querlak to ask what the machine was making, but then they heard a rapid burst of the sigma language that they’d been trying to learn. Querlak turned away from Sigwald. Turning Sigwald to look that way they saw that another sigma that had entered the building behind them.

  Sigwald’s manipulators and wings looked droopy. Even though they didn’t understand sigma body language, they were pretty sure Querlak was not happy to see the stranger.

  Querlak was in fact, horrified.

  “What are you doing here?” the stranger had barked.

  For a moment Querlak hoped that Sigwald would remain motionless and that the stranger wouldn’t notice him. But as she faced the stranger she saw Sigwald’s head turning toward the new sigma. Diffidently, Querlak indicated the small constructor, “Making a small transporter.”

  “You aren’t part of the local build-repair group! Who gave you permission to use our constructors? And what is that thing?” The stranger indicated Sigwald.

  “I’m Querlak, one of the local surveyors. I discovered this alien,” Querlak waved an upper manipulator at Sigwald, “in the fields.” Querlak desperately hoped to claim Sigwald, and any new knowledge arising from him, as value added by her own clade. “I am taking him around the ringworld trying to win his goodwill. He has much to teach our people. As part of that effort to be friendly I am demonstrating the function of this small constructor to him.”

  Querlak could see the stranger’s eye brighten as he expanded his TS and turned fully toward Sigwald. “Why haven’t I heard about any ‘aliens’?”

  “I think this is the only one.”

  In an exasperated tone the other said, “And why haven’t I heard about this singular alien? I am Keenar of the
Delnitch clade, we would have known… unless you’ve been keeping it secret?!”

  Querlak drooped further as despair flashed through her clade. Delnitch clade, one of the very largest, had tremendous resources and power. The chances that Querlak could keep Sigwald to her own clade had just about evaporated. If only Sigwald had already taught her something of value! “We haven’t learned much as yet. We’ve been working to learn his language and just begun learning a few things about him. It isn’t the time yet to tell the world.”

  “You mean,” Keenar sneered, “that you were hoping to keep it secret a while longer until you had learned anything of importance for your own clade. Which clade do you belong to Querlak?” Keenar’s voice dripped disdain.

  Querlak drew herself up, “I am of the Osnak clade… and we claim precedence on any discoveries made through this alien.”

  Keenar blew air derisively through his spiracles. “Sure you do. What does it know that we don’t?”

  Querlak blew a snort through her own spiracles, “For a start… how to travel between the stars. I thought you were working a TS?” Implying that a TS’d sigma wasn’t actually linked to its clade was an insult implying the clade lacked intelligence.

  Keenar darted a look at Sigwald, evidently just now considering that the presence of an alien implied star travel. He turned a staring eye back to Querlak. “He’s told you how to travel to the stars?”

  “Not yet.” Querlak tried to sound confident. “But he’s implied that if I teach him something, he’ll teach me something. I’m teaching him about how we manufacture with carbon.”

  “Why is he covered in magnesium?”

  Querlak had confirmed with Sigwald that his outer surface was made of the 12th element but still wasn’t sure whether the magnesium was a covering like a space suit or whether Sigwald was some kind of intelligent machine. She didn’t want to give up any precedence with Keenar however. Trying for Keenar’s sneering tone Querlak said, “Why don’t you ask him?”