Transporter (an Ell Donsaii story #16), page 11
“Oh, heck no. I’m the original silver-tongued devil. I’m the one that got the girl and the job at D5R aren’t I? Ol’ Jordan never stood a chance.”
Ell shook her head, but couldn’t help laughing.
“However,” AJ frowned, “it turns out that the big boss flushed some of my earliest contributions to D5R right down the drain. Very disappointing.”
Ell gave him a puzzled look, “You made contributions?”
“Oh, come on,” AJ said, putting on a hurt expression, “you used to say nice things about me. You particularly complimented me on my role in breaking ETR’s asteroid in two and spinning it up so we could cut chunks off it and catch them in funnels.”
Frowning, Ell asked, “Are you whining because the new hemispherical ports let a waldo just lower a powered ring onto the surface of the asteroid, then power it off so its hemi-port cuts and sends a chunk directly back to Earth?”
With a morose expression, AJ nodded. “We’re even taking the spin off our asteroids because it’s easier for the waldoes to work if there isn’t any pseudo-gravity.”
Putting on a straight face, Ell shook her head. “I just didn’t know your life was so difficult. If you’d like, I’ll point out to the ‘big bosses’ how you were instrumental in developing large hemispherical ports.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’d like that a lot.”
Ell rolled her eyes, “Not if you’re going to go back to ma’am-ing me.”
Morgan sat down on the other side of AJ. “What’s he been doing? Am I going to have to whip him back into shape?”
“Calling me ‘ma’am,’” Ell said, a distasteful expression on her face.
Morgan’s eyes widened then turned to AJ, “That’s a terrible thing to do to my sister-in-law!”
AJ grinned at her, “Sorry, ma’am.”
Morgan’s eyes widened further, then narrowed, “You’re asking for it, buddy.”
***
Sophie was teaching Zage to milk one of Nature Learning’s mild-mannered goats when he noticed something on her cheeks. Curious, Zage asked, “Is that stuff on your face makeup?
Sophie, drew back, looking embarrassed, “Um, yeah. We ladies like to wear it sometimes. To look pretty, you know?”
He frowned, “I’ve heard of makeup. Most of the time my grandmother and my aunt have on something like what you’re wearing. But I’ve never seen you wear it here at Nature Learning before.”
As if involuntarily, Sophie’s hand moved up toward her face, but then dropped away. She shrugged, “Sometimes we ladies just feel like looking special.”
Zage studied her a moment, “Oh, I’m sorry, you’re covering that bruise by your eye, aren’t you?”
She winced, then said, “Yeah, I fell. It was stupid. I’m embarrassed about it so please don’t tell anyone else about it, okay?”
“Of course,” he said, eyeing it thoughtfully a moment longer before turning back to the goat.
Chapter Five
“Holy crap, Phil! There’s a waldo with a huge box standing in front of the tunnel entrance!”
Phil looked up at the screen Carol had her eyes on. He could see the Martian landscape and the vast canyon of the Valles Marineris in part of the image, suggesting it was indeed showing the view from one of the cameras that looked out over the ledge in front of their tunnels. It was a little hard to judge size since—other than the waldo—there wasn’t anything man-made in the field of view. But, though he couldn’t be certain, he thought the waldo was one of the big three-meter tall construction models. If he was right about the waldo’s size, he’d estimate the box it was holding at one and a half meters square by two and a half meters tall. The waldo was just standing there holding the box up on one shoulder. A human would’ve put it down, but, of course, waldoes didn’t get tired. “Have you heard about any deliveries?” he asked.
“No! If I had,” Carol said sarcastically, “I wouldn’t be all surprised now, would I?”
“No need to bark at me, Carol. I don’t know what’s going on any more than you do.”
Ignoring his response, Carol tensely said, “I’ll bet it’s another dome they want us to position for inflation.”
Phil’s AI said, “You have a call from Ell Donsaii.”
He said, “I’ll take it… Hi, Ell.” He restrained his tone to keep from showing his excitement. There wasn’t all that much to do down in the tunnels so they’d been pretty bored since they’d stopped working on the surface. But sounding excited to talk to Ell was something he’d learned not to do around Carol. To avoid potential problems, he continued, “I’m putting you on speaker so Carol can hear too.”
“Hey,” Ell said as the waldo outside lurched into motion on the screen. “I’m outside your front door in-waldo. Any chance you could open the lock and let me in?”
“Sure,” he said blandly. “Is that a three-meter waldo like I think? If so, we’ll need to bring you in through one of the big tunnels.”
“It is. I’m heading for the big opening as we speak.”
Phil got up and started for the main tunnel to the outside, telling his AI to deflate the outer balloon of the three-balloon airlock for that tunnel. His hip had stiffened up while he’d been sitting, so it took him a couple of steps to lose his limp. Carol followed along wordlessly. Phil just felt grateful she didn’t make any sniping comments. Though that might only be because Ell’s on speaker. She never says anything rude directly to Ell, only about her to me.
“Okay, I’m past the first balloon,” Ell said.
Phil spoke to his AI, having it reinflate the outer balloon and deflate the middle one of the airlock. A minute or so later, he had the AI reinflate the middle one and deflate the inner balloon. He felt a small spike of excitement when the waldo stepped through carrying the big box.
A feeling came over him that Ell was there with him, even though he knew she was still back on Earth. It was surprisingly easy to think of someone’s waldo as actually being that person. “Hey,” he said restraining the impulse to touch or try to shake hands with the big waldo. “What’s this you’ve brought us?”
“First, you’ve got to promise not to tell anyone else about it until I say it’s okay?”
“Sure.”
The waldo turned to look at Carol, “Is that okay with you too, Carol?”
She nodded.
Ell said, “Next, you need to find me a place to set it up,” Ell said, “Off the beaten path somewhere, since this is a secret. A place where someone who’s just wandering around, either in person or in-waldo won’t come across it and start wondering what it is.”
Phil glanced at Carol who walked the tunnels for exercise. She jerked her head, “There’s a short piece of dead-end tunnel over this way.” She led off.
Typical for dead-end tunnels, the one Carol took them to ended in a “Y.” The tunnelers were very slow backing up, so it’d melted a tunnel ending in a “Y” where the tunneler could make a three-point turn and then drive forward on its way back out of the tunnel it’d created. Carol pointed out the sign saying it was a dead-end and said, “There’re some other dead-end tunnels that’re used for storage, but no one comes down this one. It’s too far out of the way.”
Ell put the big box down and pushed it back close to the corner.
It was made of featureless metal, Phil thought aluminum. He said, “So, do we need to get some tools to open it up?”
Ell said, “No need. It’s got a door on the far side.”
“A door?” Phil said, walking around to the back side, confusion warring with excitement. He realized that the way the waldo had been holding it, the back side had been the side tilted up and away from him. When he got around to the backside, he saw she’d set it down about a meter from the back wall. That surface of the box did indeed have a door in it. Phil reached for the handle.
Ell said, “Wait a sec.” There was a momentary fairly loud hum, then a “thump.” The box shifted slightly and Ell said, “Okay, you can open it now.”
Phil grasped the handle and turned it, opening the door. When it came open it revealed a gap, then a cylinder inside the box. The cylinder had another smaller door in its wall.
Ell said, “Go ahead, open that one too.”
Phil opened the door on the inner cylinder, finding another cylinder inside of it. This cylinder was a little taller than Phil and, he estimated, a little more than thirty centimeters in diameter. “What’s this?” he asked. “A set of those Russian nesting dolls?”
Sounding distracted, Ell said, “A test dummy. Just a minute…” Her voice brightened, “Everything’s nominal.” The waldo’s head turned toward them. “What you’re looking at is a human capable transporter. How’d you like to go home?”
“What?!” they said, almost in unison.
Ell asked Phil to close the doors again. As Phil did so, Ell said, “That thump you heard was the test dummy arriving here from Earth. It weighs 100 kilos, so almost as much as Phil. Now that you’ve closed the door, I’m going to send the dummy back and forth from Earth ten more times to be sure the transporter’s working and not showing any strain. This is the farthest this transporter’s sent anything.” The transporter began whirring.
“But,” Carol said, “you can’t port people without anesthesia… can you?” A thump came from the chamber, followed by whirring again.
“Well,” Ell said, “we could always port people. It’s just that it hurt like hell and made them have seizures. The anesthesia was to prevent such undesirable effects.”
Phil turned to look at the box, “Are you saying that something about this one prevents those effects?”
Ell gave a little laugh, “Turns out those effects only occur when you’re close to the edge of a port. The port in this box is 1.5 meters in diameter and the cylinder you stand in is 1.3 meters to make sure you stay at least ten centimeters from the edge.”
“Oh,” Phil said, “so this one draws a lot of power huh?”
“Uh-huh, seven megawatts. But it’s only open for about a second so it only uses about two kilowatt-hours of power to transport somewhere on Earth and five kilowatt-hours transporting to Mars. There can be significant additional requirements adding the kinetic energy required when you’re transporting back to Earth’s faster orbit. And we’ve had to install some special power reserve monitoring and switching equipment to be sure there’s enough power available before we start porting. We can’t have the juice cut out halfway through a transport.”
Wide-eyed, Phil asked, “You’re using these to port people from place to place on Earth?!”
The waldo nodded—it was hard to control habitual movements when you were operating one. Ell’s voice said, “Only on a very limited and secret basis at present. We’re still working out the kinks and we haven’t announced transporters to the public yet. That’s why this needs to stay a secret for now.”
Carol blinked, “What happens if the power does go off halfway through a transport?”
Soberly, Ell said, “That’d be a real disaster. It’d cut the transportee in half. In addition to equipping each transporter with an AI that checks that there’s sufficient power before starting, we’re equipping them with hyper-capacitors that store enough energy to complete the transport even if the external power somehow gets cut off.”
The transporter had been regularly whirring, humming, and thumping as they spoke. Carol looked at it, “What’s all the noise?”
“Each transportation event involves powering up a 1.5-meter ring at the top of the big box. That power draw produces the hum you’re hearing. Then the ring falls down rails to the bottom of the compartment, transporting the cylinder and whatever’s inside of it to the other box. It lands with the thump. The motors make the whir as they move the ring back up to the top of the box to reload for another event.”
Surprised, Phil said, “So when you brought the box in here it was empty? The cylinder only appeared after the first transport event?”
“Uh-huh. In fact…” she paused and the machine hummed and thumped. “Open the door now. I’ve just sent the cylinder back to Earth so the box’s empty.”
Phil did so, finding the box empty except for a ring at the bottom of rails in each corner. He turned, “Wait, things fall slower here on Mars than they do back on Earth.”
“Yeah, the motors in this box drive the ring down so it falls at the same rate as the ring back on Earth falls. Even the ones back on Earth have their motors making sure they fall at the same rate, since there’re slight differences in the gravity at different altitudes. It’ll get to be a huge deal when we start porting people up to orbit since there won’t be any gravity there to move the ring. There’re all kinds of redundancies in the systems and motors moving the rings to make sure we don’t have a transport mismatch.”
Phil glanced at Carol, seeing she looked as stunned as he felt. “Wanna go back to Earth?”
She gave a slow nod. “But we need NASA’s permission, don’t we?”
“Pish,” Phil said dismissively. “Better to ask forgiveness than permission, right?”
“Dammit, Phil,” Carol started angrily, then her eyes flicked to the waldo, indicating she’d momentarily forgotten they weren’t alone. “I don’t want to lose our careers,” she finished in a calmer tone, though her flashing eyes told Phil she was still pissed.
Phil drew breath for a retort, but Ell said, “Let me give you a couple of things to think about, then I’ll leave you two to duke it out, okay?”
They both nodded, somewhat warily.
“Okay. Remember how you wanted to be able to come back home without a long transit in a rocket? That’s what I’m offering you. I’m sure it’s the way all transits will be carried out in the near future; I’m just offering you an early trip. You can wait till then if you want, but I have no doubt we can talk Epaulding into approving it if you want to do it with his permission. You also wanted to be guinea pigs for the radiation gene therapy. You can have that too. One doesn’t depend on the other. We can transport you home for the gene therapy without NASA knowing about it if you want.” The waldo’s gaze shifted back and forth between them as if assessing their thoughts. “You should consider that you probably aren’t high on NASA’s list of gung-ho astronauts since you’ve staged your little sit-in. On the other hand, this transporter,” the waldo waved at the box, “means NASA isn’t going to have a lock on space travel anymore. There’re already a lot more civilians in Earth orbit than there are NASA trained astronauts. Once the transporter becomes available to the public, anyone’s going to be able to travel the solar system. This will include a lot of people who won’t have the training for it. There will be a lot of jobs for people who do have such training, so you won’t be dependent on NASA for your livelihood, but you might want to stick with them so you can keep doing interesting things instead of handholding space newbies—”
“We haven’t been doing much that’s interesting here on Mars,” Phil grumped.
“I know,” Ell said. “If you can swear secrecy on another front, I can tell you about another thing that’s coming up? Something interesting where you could help now without leaving the Martian tunnels. It’d at least keep you busy while we were figuring out the transport and gene therapy part.”
Phil glanced at Carol and wasn’t sure what her expression meant. “You okay with this?”
After a moment’s hesitation, she nodded.
Phil turned to Ell’s waldo, “I imagine you can tell Carol’s reluctant, but if she’s agreed she will keep your secret.”
The waldo turned to Carol, “What’s worrying you, Carol?”
“Too many secrets. I’m worried that I’m not going to be happy keeping them from my employer NASA. I may be pissed at them, but I’m still loyal.”
“Ah…” after a long hesitation, Ell said softly, “Let’s just stop at the secrets I’ve already kinda forced on you, sorry.” Then going on with an upbeat tone, she said, “I’ve gotta go, so I’m gonna let an AI take this waldo back to the construction site I borrowed it from. Let me know if you want to come home and, or, get the radiation treatment.”
With that the waldo stilled and a moment later started to move, though more clumsily. “Can you help me get out the airlock?” it asked in a mechanical voice.
Phil turned on his wife, “What the hell, Carol?!”
She stared at him for a moment, then turned to the waldo. “This way,” she said, leading off.
***
After their lab meeting, Reggie headed back to her office. She’d only been there a minute when a diffident knock came on her door frame. Looking up she saw Zage standing in the doorway, looking uncertain. She smiled at him, “Think of something after the meeting was over?”
“Just something… I wasn’t sure you’d want me to talk about in front of the others.”
“Oh,” she said, puzzled. Holding back an impulse to say that nothing should be confidential in the lab, she asked, “What is it?”
“You know the testing you said I could have done by Dominion Biolabs?”
“Because we couldn’t get you approved to do your own animal handling, yes. That’s the trial of your amyloid unfolding peptide in the Alzheimer’s mice, right? Has something gone wrong?” A little spike of fear went through her that it’d proven to be toxic and hurt someone at the facility.
“Um, well I don’t think so. They shouldn’t be able to fudge the results because they didn’t know which solution has the active peptide and which one’s the placebo.”
Feeling a trickle of relief, she said, “So it’s just that your results are unexpected? That happens all the time in science. Sometimes you learn more by figuring out what produced the unexpected outcome than if the experiment had simply born out your hypothesis.”
“They’re unexpected all right, but not bad unless they’ve been falsified. Here, let me put up their radial maze scores.”
The wall screen in her office flickered, the Rembrandt she usually had up disappearing and a line graph replacing it. At the zero time point on the left side of the screen there were red and blue vertical bars with hash marks at the top and bottom indicating the standard deviations of the results. The two bars almost completely overlapped one another. Zage said, “So, these are the maze scores before treatment. The red bar represents the control group and the blue one’s the treatment group that’s going to get the active peptide.”
