Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (11 page)

Overstreet narrowed her eyes, “Why would they go broke?”

“Because any fool could use a trans-dimensional pipeline to move liquid goods! Not just the pipeline compan
ies
either. Your local distributor of, say, natural gas, suddenly would find itself competing against a national distributor that could undercut their rates and sell gas directly to the consumer through a little port!”

Overstreet’s eyes widened a moment but then
she said, “But I assume we wouldn’t have to worry about pipelines leaking oil out in
Timbuktu
either?”

Bayless leaned forward, “Cindy! What if some Saudi Arabian prince started porting gas directly to your car?!”

“What if?”

“Yes. What if? Think of all the folks that would go broke! The oil tanker companies. The national importer. The pipeline that gets it close. The trucker that gets it to your gas station. The local gas station. My God! It would be a disaster!”

“My gas would be a lot cheaper for not having all those middlemen taking a chunk too.”

Bayless rolled his eyes, “Like anything, there would be a few upsides to go with all the downside, yes. But overall this is a disaster. I’m
officially
directing you to consider these ‘trans-dimensional pipelines,’ like any other pipeline, to be under your purview
at PHMSA. Doubly so because of the possibility that they might be used to ship hazardous materials. They need to be regulated, and by that I mean regulated
strictly
. I want them shut down with only very limited licenses granted a few
exceptional
situations such as the Space Station where an actual pipe won’t serve.”

Overstreet opened her mouth to protest but paused. Then like any good bureaucrat she said, “I’m going to need funding to take all this on.”

Bayless grinned, knowing he’d won. “Cindy, this is
only
one company. You only need
one
agent to show up there and tie them up with red tape. You aren’t getting more funding for something like this.
I’d recommend that cowboy of yours
,
Brad Mullins. This is one place where overly zealous enforcement would be good.
”

Chapter
Four

Roger
took
Emma around and introduced her to folks at D5R and show
ed
her some of the fabrication equipment. She felt pumped to be working on something so cool
. At the same time she was
apprehensive that she might not measure up.
To her surprise Ell didn’t arrive until nearly
11AM
. Emma considered tweaking her about it but then noticed the deference that everyone
else
seemed to afford Ell. She decided she needed to get a better feel for the
social dynamic
at the company
bef
ore she started teasing
the
CEO…
even if that CEO had once been a junior grad student in her
own
program.

“So, did Roger show you a port in action?”

Excitedly Emma said, “Yeah, he poured some water through one while I held its pair over the sink there! It’s freaking amazing! I mean I thought your
PGR
chips were incredible but this is just so… so… much more!”

Ell grinned, “Glad you like it! Now, I told you at dinner the other night that I think we can make ports that aren’t defined on both ends?”

Roger and Emma both focused on her. Roger said, “You know, you’ve mentioned that a couple of times but I have enough trouble mentally
coming
to grips with a port
that
is
defined on both ends
with those
quantum entangled pairs. How in the
hell
can you send something through a port where the other end isn’t defined?”

Ell tilted her head. “It’s kinda weird but the math is actually simpler for a single ended port.
I think of it as shoving something into that fifth dimension that then has to pop back into our dimensions somewhere.
That’s why the first ports I tried to make were single ended. The problem is that it’s really difficult to control the distance that an object travels before it pops back out in our universe. However, even if that
is
difficult, I think we could still find uses for single ended ports.
”

“Like what?

“Hmm, you know, even at 22 kilometers per second it will take a long time to fly our rockets to other planets and the asteroids?” She raised her eyebrows.

Roger and Emma nodded thoughtfully then looked as if the light were dawning.

“But we could just send a rocket through a one ended port. It would arrive somewhere close to where we want it to go. Admittedly not right where we want it to be
because of inaccuracies in the distance sent,
but then we just fly it the rest of the way. This would cut a 200 plus day average trip to the asteroid belt down to 20 days
. Well, it would cut it down that much
if we
are able
get our accuracy down to an average
“
miss
”
of 10 percent of the
total
distance of the trip.
” She tilted her head,
“
We may be able to get
more accurate than that.
Anyway,
it’s worth working on
,
I
think.
Remember
,
once that first rocket gets there it could be carrying the other end of a dual ended port and we could then send more objects and devices to that location instantly
and accurately
.”

Roger had a far away look as he said, “Oh yeah.”

After a long pause of dreamy distance staring, Roger said, “Hey, I forgot to tell you that our bee results are in.”

Emma
looked
quizzically
at Roger
, “Bee results?
”

“We put a group of worker bees through ports to determine if passing through a port was bad for your health. We know it
’s
painful
to go through a port ‘cause Ell and I have both put fingers through a port
,
but we don’t know if it does permanent damage. So about a month ago we put some worker bees through ports because they only live about 4 weeks. That way we could see if it shortened their life span.” He paused expectantly.

Finally Ell
said exasperatedly
, “Well?”

“Nope.”

“’Nope’ what?! It didn’t shorten their lifespan? Or, ‘nope’ you aren’t answering?”

“Nope.”

Ell glared
at him.

“It didn’t shorten their lifespan.”
He
grinned.
“
Actually
, the ones that had been through the port lived an average of a half day longer. That difference isn’t statistically significant but it certainly didn’t shorten their lives. Pretty cool, huh?!”

Emma thought to herself that he looked really cute when he was happy…

***

On the Space Station
Dave Slager spoke to his AI, “Call Ell Donsaii.”

After a momentary pause Ell came on,
“Hi Dr. Slager.”

“Hi yourself, I thought you were going to call me Dave?”

“Hi Dr. Dave.”

Slager snorted. “OK, so that’s how it is huh?”

“Yes sir. What can we do for you guys?”

“
Houston
just let me know that they’ve
made up
a bunch of our ‘space’ food into packages that’ll fit through five centimeter ports. I’m calling on their behalf to find out where they should send them?”

“Hah, I’ve been looking for an excuse to visit
Houston
. Tell them to hold on to it and I’ll pick it up.”

“Pick it up?”

“Yeah, now I won’t feel guilty about taking the company Lear Jet down there ‘cause I can bring your food back to send through.” Her brow furrowed, “Actually, maybe I should take our ends of the
Space Station’s
ports down to
Houston
and then they could supply you directly?”

“What, no more of Jose’s amazing fruit-urritos?”

“Well,
” Ell grinned at him,
“
I hear they make pretty good burritos in
Houston
. You’ll just have to teach them about fruit-urritos.”

Resignedly Slager
sighed
, “I knew it was too good to last.”

***

Wilson Daster turned to his wife with a sick looking expression on his face. “I don’t like these trajectories, Em.”

“What? A
re you still thinking your comet might hit us?”

“Well… that’s what I keep getting.”

She frowned, “Are you
sure
it will?”

“Gods no! I’m just an amateur, feeding numbers into a program that my AI runs for me. But I
think
I’m doing it right.”

“Wouldn’t the people at
Kitt
Peak
and NASA be keeping an eye on it too?”

“Well,
for God’s sake
—
I sure hope so!”

“Well, don’t you think they’d be telling us then?”

“I…
don’t…
know?
What if they’re afraid of inciting panic?”

“Oh, come on. Wil, don’t you think you’re overreacting
...
at least
some?”

“Em, it would… it would wipe out civilization at the very least. Probably no humans would survive.”

She shrugged. “Yeah, but didn’t you tell me that
,
even though you were getting it as a possibility
,
it still wasn’t likely?”

“Yeah, the numbers I get are about
5-20
percent,
but still
…
Even a
five percent chance of extinction
of the human race
seems
kind of
… concerning.
”

***

Walking to the machine shop to talk to Manuel, Ell
passed behind
Brian and Fred
walking across the room
. A shock went through her
. Brian had a pistol in his hand!
Horri
fying
images of a disgruntled employee gone wild and shooting people flashed through
Ell’s
mind. She felt herself slipping into the zone. Heart throbbing slowly in her ears she slid
up behind
Brian
and
,
grasp
ing
his index finger with her right hand, pluck
ed
the gun from his hand
with her left
. As she did so she was
somewhat relieved
to note that his finger had been outside the trigger guard and
,
as she brought
the Smith and Wesson
toward herself
,
to see that the safety was on.

“What the hell!
?
” Brian shouted as
, to him,
the gun
was
ripped
out
of his grip. He turned wildly t
o see Ell holding it, eyes
laser focused
on him. The look on her face
, usually so friendly
,
was deadly fierce
. In somewhat of a panic he remembered that
—
at the Olympics several years ago
—
this
girl
had taken a weapon
away
from
one of
a group of
seven
hardened terrorists and shot
them
all
!

The
popular
descriptions
he had heard of the episode and about
her shooting had been hard to
countenance
at the time,
but
now
he felt his heart thumping
wildly
in his chest.
W
ithout difficulty,
she had
ripped the gun out of his hand so quickly that his fingers were stinging. He suddenly had no doubt whatsoever that she could kill him before he could even begin to stop her.
His hands slowly went up in surrender. “What?”