Allotropes Page 9

  Perhaps if she could get Sigwald to tell Osnak clade something of importance they could abort the connection to Delnitch?

  Chapter Four

  It was 6:30 in the morning when Shan stepped into Ell’s spare bedroom and said, “What’s up with the sigmas?”

  Ell said, “Querlak, please wait.” She paused a moment, then said, “Allan, pause waldo function.” She pulled her hands out of the waldo gloves and pulled off the head set. She lifted her feet out of the toe clips and leapt off the saddle into Shan’s arms. “Hey there good lookin’,” she grinned up at him.

  Smiling down at her Shan said, “Hey yourself. I wonder what Querlak thinks when Sigwald goes motionless like this?”

  “I don’t know what she thinks. I think I’m desperately in need of a kiss.”

  Shan grinned, “There you go, thinkin’ only of yourself.” He leaned down for that kiss.

  A minute or so later they broke apart and Shan waggled his eyebrows, “Oooohh, that was good for me too. Maybe Querlak could wait a bit longer?”

  Ell said, “Nope, Keenar’s gone for the moment so we need to get back to business. Querlak’s been able to define a lot of the pressure and temperature conditions of the plasma in their additive carbon manufacturing for me. At first I thought some of the pressure figures were in error due to translation problems. A lot of the pressures are very low. Actually, they’d qualify as vacuum. But, some are unbelievably high. However, I’ve reconfirmed them every way I can think of. After a bit I realized that the chambers were made of lonsdaleite, diamond, graphend and graphene. I ‘accidentally’ banged the side of the constructor with Sigwald’s hand and, as expected, it damaged his hand but didn’t leave a mark on the constructor. They probably can achieve those pressures inside chambers made out of their carbon materials. From some of the diagrams Querlak’s shown me, I’m pretty sure they use infrared lasers to jump the temperatures in areas where they want certain allotropes. I’m also getting the impression they use a squirt of ionized carbon to convert from one allotrope to another in specific areas.” She shrugged, “We’re a long way from going out and building something that’ll do what their little box will do.” She raised eyebrows over a grin, “But, just knowing that it can be done and approximately what conditions are correct will move us along a lot.”

  Shan got into the saddle of the waldo controller. “How about our friend Keenar?” he asked putting his toes in the clips.”

  “Still acting like a total jerk. I mean we only get a few words because he talks so fast and Querlak almost always has to translate. And of course, I shouldn’t claim to understand their body language, but despite my cognitive comprehension that I really don’t know what’s going on, it still comes down to… I can’t stand the SOB.”

  Shan snorted and pulled on the goggles, “Well I’m glad to have such a rational thought process laid out for me. I didn’t know they had female dogs out at Sigma Draconis.”

  Ell stood admiring Shan’s lanky, ropy muscularity as he pulled on the waldo gloves. She brushed her hand over his arm, “Thanks for running Sigwald this morning. I’ll take him back over using the controller at D5R as soon as my meeting is done.”

  “Umhmm,” he murmured, “No big rush, I don’t teach my class ‘til 10.”

  Ell smiled at him a moment longer. Shan really liked teaching math, though he tried to make it out to be a pain. She turned and headed down to her car.

  Shan looked around through Sigwald’s eyes. Querlak stood patiently waiting, staring into the distance. When Shan switched on the waldo connection and Sigwald moved again Querlak turned her focus back onto him. He saw Keenar approaching a little ways in the background.

  “You… well, Sigwald?” Querlak asked.

  “Yes, just a moment’s rest.” Shan said, wondering how many of his words Allan was able to translate correctly. “Allan what were you able to say as a translation for that?”

  “‘Yes, sleep little.’” Allan said, “I don’t have words for ‘moment’ or ‘rest.’”

  Keenar arrived and brusquely pushed Querlak aside, rapidly speaking the sigmas’ language. Allan translated, “Doesn’t… matter… what is… important… stars.” Keenar stopped speaking and moved his eye very close to Sigwald. It felt somewhat threatening to have him so close. Like he was in Shan’s personal space, even though he was actually nineteen light years away.

  Behind Keenar, Querlak said in her own version of English, “Keenar want know, how go, stars. Say, very important.”

  Shan pondered a moment, then said, “Allan, tell them Sigwald was sent to Sigma Draconis by others and doesn’t know how it was done. He cannot teach that. He would be happy to continue trying to teach them about computers in exchange for more information about carbon manufacturing.”

  Allan said, “I’m saying, ‘Others make go Sigwald to Sigma. Sigwald not know how. Cannot tell how. Can say more of thinking machine if you say more of carbon making?’”

  Querlak bobbed her eye up and down and said, “Yes…” Then turned and spoke rapidly to Keenar.

  Keenar shoved Querlak violently aside and stepped very close, putting his eye inches from Sigwald’s right eye and spouting his own language.

  Allan translated, “You… say… stars.”

  Shan stared a moment and thought about giving Keenar a shove himself. Since Sigwald was strong enough to walk around in a full earth gravity, he should be immensely powerful compared to the sigmas. Taking a deep breath he let it out. No need to get in a fight. We desperately want knowledge—so other sigmas probably do too. And there’s a lot more ringworld to look at. Bound to be friendlier sigmas to talk to somewhere. He said, “Allan, hover please. Then back us away from Keenar, turn us around and head back onto the road toward the circle sea.”

  Keenar’s eye widened when air began hissing out from under Sigwald’s feet. A jet of air struck him in the mouthparts as it pushed Sigwald back away from him in a skidding fashion. Keenar had only seen Sigwald walk in his ungainly clomping fashion on those two excessively thick lower extremities. When Sigwald spun and began to slide more and more rapidly away down the roadway, he turned to Querlak. “How is he moving?! I haven’t seen that before.”

  Querlak drew herself up, “I told you he moved by sliding on his feet.”

  “I thought you meant sliding them one past the other to walk like he has been doing! When will he be back?!”

  Querlak swung her lower manipulators in an exaggerated shrug. “I think you made him angry. Maybe he won’t come back. You sigmas from the big clades all think you can just demand something and it will happen, but it makes other people angry.”

  “You’ll be part of a ‘huge clade’ soon enough,” Keenar said darkly. “Let’s go after him.” He lifted into the air with a couple of violent wing beats and started down the road behind Sigwald.

  Querlak thought of refusing, but Keenar was right. Soon enough she would be part of his clade. She blew a long sigh out her spiracles, letting her TS go, then lifted into the air. After all it didn’t require a TS to fly after Keenar.

  ***

  Gary knocked on Ell’s door frame, a little worried about why he might have been called in to see the boss first thing in the morning. In her office no less. Ell almost always met with people wherever they were working rather than calling them to her office.

  Ell looked up and said, “Hey Gar’, close the door and have a seat.”

  Gary swallowed as he did what she asked. He knew Ell’s famous open door policy wouldn’t be violated lightly. What could be wrong? He absolutely loved working here and the progress that her company’s investment had allowed him to make on graphene synthesis had been nothing short of astounding. The graphene spinner he’d installed in D5R’s space habitat might just as well be printing money. There was so much demand for product that the prices just kept rising. He currently had four more spinners in construction and had been wanting to talk to Ell to see if the D5R board would consider adding another weightless module to the habitat just
for spinning.

  She said, “I’m wanting to talk to you about something that I don’t want anyone else to know, would you mind disconnecting your AI?”

  Fingers almost trembling, Gary pulled off his headset and popped out its PGR chip to disconnect it from his AI.

  Ell steepled her fingers and looked at him as if trying to decide how to say something important. Gary’s heart sank further as he tried to think what he had done wrong. Ell said, “You’re getting pretty good at making graphene.”

  Gary nodded, desperately wondering where this could be going.

  Ell looked distantly up toward the ceiling then looked back at him. She quietly said, “How would you feel if someone gave you some hints on high speed carbon macromolecule assembly?”

  Gary felt goosebumps, “You mean, an even better way to make graphene?!” He had mixed feelings, first that it would be wonderful to be able to make it faster or better in some fashion. But he also felt disheartened that someone else had figured it out instead of himself.

  Ell’s eyes came back to him as she nodded, “And other carbon allotropes.”

  “Diamond?!” Gary whispered.

  She nodded, “And lonsdaleite. Proton bombarded magnetic carbon. Graphene with some bonding between layers. Doped graphene.”

  Gary felt lightheaded. Lonsdaleite! Magnetic carbon! Weakly he said, “You’ve already figured out how to do these things?”

  Ell shook her head, “No, but I have some ballpark methods and I’m working on a theory that I think will let us calculate precise conditions. To flesh out the theory I need experimental data from approximations of those conditions.”

  “If you already know how to do this… why are you talking to me?”

  “Let’s just say I know it can be done… and I have a good but not exact idea what the conditions would be for some of the different allotropes. However, I’m not a carbon macromolecule expert like you. I need someone who can help me understand why those conditions work and whether my theory on how they work has holes in it or not. If my theory is in fact predictive, it should let us make what we want, where we want it.”

  “So, you want to form a team to work on it?”

  Ell shrugged, “Kinda. What I envision is that I tell you the approximate conditions and you test around them, as well as some other ‘non-forming’ conditions that would check my theory. You provide me results from your tests so I can work on my theory.”

  “And if we get it to work? I mean so we can synthesize, say lonsdaleite? Do we form a company to make it?”

  “Gary,” Ell leaned forward and focused a serious eye on him, “Take it as a given that it does work. What we need to do is refine and understand the process. Then you patent it, assigning rights to D5R and we decide whether we license the processes to make it, or make stuff ourselves.”

  “Stuff? You mean lonsdaleite? We can make graphene right now and I assume you know that people have been synthesizing diamond for a long time.”

  Ell tilted her head, “Gary, you’re thinking small. Imagine you want the world’s best sword. What if I told you I could make you one out of diamond in a couple of hours?”

  “Well,” he said, drawing the word out. “That would make an amazing display item. But it would break too easily to actually be a good sword.”

  “Now suppose I told you I could lay it down in layers of diamond alternating with layers of graphene. So we’d have a composite laminated material with the graphene supplying tensile strength of over 120 gigapascals and the diamond supplying compressive strength of over 230 gigapascals. Then we coat the outer surface and cutting edge with lonsdaleite having a Mohs hardness of 15.”

  “Holy crap!” Gary breathed. “That would be the ultimate sword. If you could swing it hard enough you could cut right through a steel sword.” He glanced up at her, “You know most steels’ strengths are only about one to two gigapascals?”

  “I’m sure you can imagine that such a sword wouldn’t actually see much use, no matter how awesome it would be. But, how about knife that never gets dull, lenses that never scratch, a car you couldn’t dent. Or buildings made with such structural materials, think they might last for quite a while?”

  Gary sank back in his chair, a dazed look in his eyes. “I doubt knives, cars or buildings would be the first things we made. Our current cars work pretty well. There are too many other things that are pushing the edge of our current mechanical performance envelope that we’d want to make first.”

  “I’m pretty sure that limitless uses would be found once we developed the technology.”

  Gary’s eyes refocused on Ell and he sat up. “How do you know about these ‘conditions’? You’re telling that you ‘have a theory’ that needs to be tested, but that I should, ‘take it as a given that it does work’ as if you’ve seen it work? If you’ve seen it work, why do you need for me to test it?”

  “Gar’, this whole thing is very complex but it all comes down to… I don’t want to tell you or anyone else how I know that this works. Nonetheless, I can guarantee that it does work.” She stared intently at him, “I want you to ‘discover,’” she held her fingers up to make little air quotes, “these principles so we can attribute the invention to you. The ‘theory’ explaining how it works can be mine, if the theory pans out. You’ll share in the financial proceeds according to the file I just sent you. The deal isn’t a lot different from the one you already have with us for your graphene, just a little more weighted in D5R’s favor.”

  Gary swallowed. “So you’re going to send me a file with these ‘conditions’ you want me to try?”

  Ell grinned, “Nope. I’m going to tell you some conditions that you’re going to try. You can write them down if you want but they should be in your handwriting. You can attribute them to a half-baked ‘theory’ of mine if you want. But I don’t want there to be any record of me giving you any settings.”

  His eyes widened, “Gosh, you sound a little paranoid.” He grinned, “You didn’t steal this from someone else did you? Someone who might come after me when I try to use it?”

  “Nope,” she snorted, “nobody’s going to come after you. Let me give you some numbers…”

  ***

  Ell climbed on the saddle of her waldo controller at D5R and put on the gear. “Allan, give me video from Sigwald and let me talk to Shan… Hey Mr. Fiancé, how’s it been going with Querlak?” Her eyes narrowed as the video came on and she realized that they weren’t at the site where they’d been watching the constructor. Instead Sigwald was zooming down one of the ring-crossing roads toward the circle sea.

  Shan’s voice came over the connection, “Keenar got confrontational and demanded we tell him how to get to the stars. I thought about poking him in the nose, but instead I backed away and left. I figured we want what they know about carbon, but they want what we know pretty badly too. I decided that just taking off would show them that we weren’t selling that particular bit of info. If you want to talk to them some more we can slow down and let them catch up. They’ve been following. Or if you’re as sick of Keenar as I am, we could go even faster. Leave them in the dust and find a friendlier sigma to talk to.”

  Ell snickered, “‘Poking him in the nose?’ My sweet Shan, instigator of the first interstellar incident?!”

  “Hah, you wait, I’ll bet that if we keep hanging around those two, Keenar takes a poke at Sigwald pretty soon.”

  “I’m not taking that bet. You’d better head to your class. I’ll slow Sigwald down and see if their attitude has changed.”

  Once Shan relinquished control, Ell slowed Sigwald’s pace while rapidly reviewing Shan’s interactions with the two sigmas. Then she slowed Sigwald further and came to a stop, turning back to face the direction Sigwald came from. She could see the two sigmas approaching, Keenar in front. She waited as they settled in to land.

  Querlak had a sick feeling about how things were going with Sigwald. She recognized that a large part of her unease related to her clade’s quick acceptanc
e of a union with Delnitch clade combined with her strong dislike of Keenar. Usually a union with another clade was considered at length because reproduction permits were so precious. But Osnak had been seduced by a free permit and the prestige of a large, powerful clade like Delnitch. Though a many in Osnak had been apprehensive, a majority had favored the union so it had been approved—Querlak thought far too quickly. It was a union that Querlak thought they were going to regret. She felt sure she was going to hate being in a TS with Keenar…

  Keenar dropped to a landing rudely close to Sigwald. Querlak alighted behind and to the right of him. Keenar said with a disdainful tone, “Are you tired?”

  Sigwald’s head rotated side to side like he did when signifying the negative. He said only, “No.”

  Querlak got the feeling that Sigwald didn’t get tired. That maybe he was a machine.

  Keenar asked in a peremptory tone, “Are you ready to tell us how you travel between the stars?”

  Sigwald’s head rotated again. “No. Cannot say that,” he said in his pidgin sigman speech using Querlak’s voice as he always did. Then he rotated his entire body toward Querlak and slightly away from Keenar. “I prefer speaking of knowledge with Querlak. Can we speak without Keenar?”

  “No!” Keenar shouted stepping between Sigwald and Querlak. “Tell me how you got here or the full strength of Delnitch clade will be brought to bear. You will regret it if that becomes necessary.”

  “Clade?” Sigwald moved and again turned to Querlak. He said in sigman. “What is ‘clade’?”

  Using her English so that Keenar would have difficulty following Querlak said, “Your mothers and fathers and children. Those who make connections.”

  “Connections?”

  “Yes those that not need to speak with we.”

  Ell’s eyes flashed wide inside the waldo goggles. Those that don’t need to speak…! What could that mean? Aloud she said, “Don’t need speak?”