Comet! (an Ell Donsaii story #5 ) (3 page)

Fred interjected, “Especially if D5R lets us keep the port building techniques we worked out as proprietary IP.
It would take
our competitors
quite a while
to figure out how to do it so we’d have good head start on
the
big companies that might
otherwise
crush
us.”

Viv said, “We’d like you to be part of it too, of course.”

Ell
glanced
at Brian. Even though he’d actually had the breakthrough idea that let
D5R
finally build workable ports
,
it looked like he was letting the other two run this show.
Or at least trot it out.
Ell suspected that once again he didn’t want to
speak up
in front
the “big brains”
that
had all the
“
education
.
”
He did look
pretty
enthusiastic though.

A
ddress
ing
all of them
she said, “I think that’s a great idea.
I’m pretty sure I can sell it to the
big shareholders,
especially if…”

“Especially if what?”

“Well, one thing they’re worried about is the potential for ports to be used for terrorism or other awful things.”

“What!”

Ell looke
d at them with some surprise. “A terrorist c
ould build a solid steel rocket
with a tungsten nose cone
, send it out into space, get it up to
maximum velocity
and send it back down to hit a city. It’d be hard to get it through the atmosphere without bu
rning up, but it could be done and a kinetic strike
like that
wo
uld be
terrible
.
Or just send a small rocket across town and into someone’s window.
A terrorist c
ould
even
mail a port
t
o someone. Once it arrived,
he could
pour gasoline through it and send a spark after. I’m sure you could
imagine
some other things if you thought about it.”

Eyes wide they stared at Ell, then back and forth at one another. “Holy crap!” Fred breathed.

Vivian narrowed her eyes, “
Are our
shareholders
thinking that we could do something to the ports that would keep such things from happening? How?!”

Ell shrugged. “Well, the rocket scenario for instance. If every port had a
GPS
in it followed by one of our supercomputers
, the computer
could take note if it looked like
the port
was flying somewhere
, or at velocities that
it shouldn’t
.”

Viv’s eyebrows drew together, “What could
the computer
do about it?”

“
Disable the
port
that was
fuel
ing
the rocket for one.”

“So it
wouldn’t
hit as hard?”

Ell chuckled, “If they
had
planned a trajectory that depended on a
certain
velocity to hit
its target
, and
their rocket
never achieved that velocity, then it wouldn’t hit
its target
.
You might still have damage to whatever it
hit instead
and that issue deserves some thought.
”

Viv’s eyebrows went up as she considered. “And when they come to complain about a defective port?”

“Ask them what they were trying to do, arrest ‘em if they don’t have a good explanation. Refund with damages if they do.”

Fred frowned, “How would we prevent the gasoline scenario?”

Ell shrugged, “I don’t know, but maybe you could figure something out?
If a port had sensors that turned it off when it became submerged in liquid?
”

Brian finally said something. “And you think that your investors would be more likely to fund us if we had ways
to stop some of these scenarios?
”

Ell grinned, “I think they might sell you an
exclusive
license to be the
only
port manufacturer if you were
willing
to
go the extra mile to
prevent terrorism.”

Brian frowned, “What would keep the bad guys from making ports themselves?”

“Cover every part of ‘em you can with Dexin. We don’t license to anyone
else
or publish anything about how they’re made. They’d be pretty hard to reverse engineer from the shredded mess you get digging tiny
electronics
out of Dexin. I’ll bet that the port would still work
even
with Dexi
n over the entangled buckyballs. So if you coated most of the port itself with Dexin,
then it’d
even
be hard to figure out
the entangled buckyball
part of it.” She shrugged again, “Some evil genius might figure it out from the original paper, but it’d be pretty hard. They might hire your people away, but you could try to
arrange your
manufacturing
process
so
that
no one employee understood the whole
thing
.”

They looked at each other, “But the government wouldn’t let us have a monopoly
…
would they?” Vivian asked.

“I think they would
,
if it reduced terrorism. I had a thought… You could make only a few ports that would tolerate high velocities like for space and require that they only go to specially licensed space launch people. You could still sell to amateur space launch enthusiasts. You’d just require that they jump through a few hoops to weed out the crazies. The majority of your ports could be built so they were only good for low velocities or
for
stationary
ports
.”

Fred frowned, “Why would anyone want a stationary port?”

“Oops,” Ell grinned. “You haven’t been thinking of selling ports
just
for space launch have you?”

They looked at one another in confusion then back to Ell and nodded quizzically.

“OK,” Ell looked conspiratorially at them and lowered her voice. “Suppose you’re a power company and 7% of the power you produce is lost to resistance
during
transmission
over power lines from your hydroelectric dam to the city you supply?” She raised an eyebrow questioningly, “And another huge part of your budget is spent on purchasing and maintaining those power lines, trimming trees around them and repairing them when storms blow them down?” Ell grinned as eyebrows began to go up. “Now along comes ‘Sharkden Enterprises’ and says they can replace that huge transmission line with three ports and a few feet of power cable?”

They laughed, “Is ‘Sharkden’ s
upposed to be an amalgamation of Short, Varka and Marsden?”
Vivian asked.

Ell raised an eyebrow, “Of course!
Also be thinking of how stationary ports could pipe oil, gas and other liquids across the sea instead of
in
boats and across the country instead of
in
pipes
or trucks
. Water from places with too much
rain
to places with too little. Jet fuel to airplanes so they don’t have to take off with
such
a huge load of fuel. Yadda yadda…”

The three stared at Ell, “My God…” Brian breathed.

Ell saw Roger over at the coffee stand. She got up distractedly, “I’m gonna go talk to Roger. See you guys later.”

Roger squinted at the coffee machine despite his sunglasses. He had his cup under the spout but he’d pulled up, down and sideways on the lever and it hadn’t moved. Then his thumb bumped the button on top and he finally realized how it worked.

Cup full, he shuffled over to put in large quantities of cream and sugar. He turned to find a seat and found Ell in front of him. His stomach lurched.

“Hey, Rog. How’re you feeling?”

“Not so good. I need to sit down.”

Ell followed him to a table and sat beside him. “I’ve
never
seen you put away
that
much
Guinness before!
I can believe you’d be fee
ling a little under the weather.
Can I find you some Tylenol?”

Roger shrank down into his chair. “Sure, thanks.”

When Ell returned with the Tylenol
,
Roger remained slumped in his chair, gripping his coffee in both hands and looking miserable. He took the Tylenol, thumbed them into his mouth and slugged them back with the last of his coffee.

“Want another coffee?”

Roger nodded and Ell headed back to the coffee urn. She put a lot of sugar and cream in it like she’d seen him do and brought it back.

Roger whispered, “Thanks,” but didn’t look up.

Ell patted him on the shoulder, “I think I’ll leave you to your misery.” She headed off to talk to
people in better moods
.

That afternoon they loaded up the chartered jet to fly back to
Raleigh
. Ell found Roger slumped in a window seat near the back and dropped down next to him. “Hey, Rog. Feelin’ any better yet?”

Roger nodded minutely
,
but said nothing.

After a long pause Ell said, “I’ve been talking to people about plans for the future of D5R. You up to talking about it too?”

Roger cleared his throat, then said, “Sure,” in a low voice. He didn’t look at Ell.

Ell shrugged, “Vivian, Fred and Brian are thinking of forming a company to make
the
ports
for
people that D5R licenses
ports to
. Ben and Rob
want
to develop space resources. Prospecting, and mining of asteroids mostly, but I think they want to look around the rest of the solar system for valuable resources too.

“I’m sure either group would welcome you if you wanted to join them. Or…”

Roger was staring out the window as the jet taxied to the end of the runway. He said, “I’ll have to think about it.”

“You don’t want to hear about my, ‘or…’ idea?”

“Sure,” he said. Still without looking at Ell.

“Maybe I should wait until you’
re feeling better?
”

“I feel OK.”
The jet started roaring down the runway.

“Really? ‘cause you’re acting pretty
…
weird.”

“Yeah, well
…” He cleared his throat and said very quietly,
“
I
just found out I don’t have a,
a
...
chance.”

Ell frowned, “Don’t have a chance of what? Did you get some bad news?” Ell’s heart constricted at the thought that Roger might have learned he had some dread disease.

Roger stared at the seat back in front of him. “Yeah. A chance
...
with you.”

Ell’s eyebrows ascended in surprise. “What? Why wouldn’t you have a chance with me? A chance of what?”

Roger sighed and scratched the armrest of his seat
with a fingernail
, “I saw.”

“Saw what? I don’t understand at all. What are you talking
about?
”

“You
and
...
Phil.”

“Phil and I…? What?”

“Hugging and carrying on before he left.” Roger said with some exasperation as if he couldn’t believe it wasn’t obvious.

Sudden realization flashed over Ell. “You’re jealous?!”

Roger shrugged
morosely
.

Ell squeaked and smacked him on the arm. “I’ve never had anyone be jealous
over
me before! I had
no
idea what was going on
with you
!”

“Well, good for you.” Roger said glumly. “Glad to know my distress is making your day.”

“Hey dummy! You’ve never even
asked
me to
be
your girlfriend! You’ve got no right to be jealous of Phil when you’ve never even
told me
you might
want
a relationship
that you
could
be
jealous about
! You take me out occasionally, yes, but you
haven’t been
acting like
I
thought
‘
boyfriends
’
were
supposed
to act.”