Echo of Tomorrow: Book Two (The Drake Chronicles) (35 page)

                    the flock and confront the wolf."…
LTC (RET) D. Grossman

Upon arrival at the hangar, Karl called the research team together and showed them the pad, and they all listened to the recording. At the top of the pad was an equation, but it was beyond most of them. One of the team did vaguely see the outline of what it represented, recognizing part of it from a physics class. The drawing on the other hand did make sense, after listening to the recording. It showed the positions for four electromagnets, and the sequence for activation. Karl was glad now that they hadn’t tried to force the rings apart. According to the professor’s story, when Solar Power Systems Energy Corporation tried to force the stolen rings apart to find out how they worked, the resulting energy disruption not only demolished the research center, but the entire place vanished, to where, no one knew.

All that remained to show that anything had ever stood there was a large hole in the ground, and the “SPS Corporation” sign on the highway leading to the plant. It was one of the reasons the corporation was so successful in covering it up. By the time security got around to investigating the explosion, the corporation had moved in the construction robots and poured the footing for a new building. They claimed an experimental power unit had exploded, and with nothing to prove different, the security police bought it. The professor had tried to explain to them where the building and three hundred people had gone, but wasn’t believed: that two events had happened at the same time, first the energy release from the other dimension that destroyed the building, then the inrush of matter through the rupture into the void. If the energy state had not equalized itself, matter would still be falling into the rupture.

Only after listening to the tape did Karl’s team realize that each ring was, in fact, two rings held together, as they surmised from their careful inspection, by some yet unknown means. The narrow grooves across the outer, one-foot-wide flat surface, were so well machined, it was impossible to tell they hid the split. Karl had the team make the electromagnets and a control box, as Maddy had explained, placing them as per her drawing at the cardinal points of the compass. It did take a while to work out and rotate the ring, since the old lady hadn’t been very specific about that. Kim finally worked it out by checking the inside flat surface of the ring with an old-fashioned magnifying glass, finding the minute N-S-E-W stamped into the metal. They rotated the first pair of rings so the N was at the top, and positioned the electromagnets over each cardinal point. As a safety measure, Karl reset the jig to support each half of the ring instead of the whole thing.

After that, they stood back, and in sequence in reverse order West, East, South and North, he activated the magnets that withdrew the locking bolts. Nothing spectacular happened, at least nothing discernible to the human eye. It was only when one of the team stepped through the ring without displacement that they knew it was switched off.

After breathing a joint sigh of relief, they carefully rotated one-half of the rings a quarter turn, and gently pulled the two halves apart. Once divided, the inner working of the hidden side could be examined, and they saw just how well machined the locking mechanism was. The tolerances were so close that, locked together, it was impossible to tell it wasn’t a single, precision ring of polished metal. Karl wasn’t even sure what the metal was, suspecting some sort of antigravity material, and Maddy hadn’t told him. He made a note to himself to ask her when she woke up.

Once apart, it was a simple matter to unscrew the round, six-inch cover plates inside. Not that there was much to see. The old lady had warned them what to watch out for, and Karl had a box ready when Kim unscrewed the plate. The moment he took the cover off, a six-inch-diameter black sphere floated out of the matching cavity. With the box in the right position, it was easy to catch as it began to float up. Karl closed the lid and locked it before turning it over. Even so, he had to be careful, since the box now wanted to go flying out of his hands.

Karl walked over to a large steel cabinet, usually used for storing flammable liquids, and placed it inside, then carefully marked the outside of the box, remembering the warning about matching this sphere with its opposite in the matching ring.

“What the hell are those things?” Kim asked.

“My guess would be a monopole magnet,” Jugs muttered. That brought a look from the other team members.
Beauty and brains in one delightful package
was what more than one of them thought. They kept those thoughts to themselves, since voicing them could be dangerous to their health.

“Give the girl a cigar, she just hit the bull’s-eye.” Karl smiled and gave Jugs a wink.

“I thought that was only a theoretical possibility?” Kim said.

Karl shrugged. “Do your reading, Kim
-san
. It was reported in 1980 or 1990 that someone had managed to create a very small one in a lab, but nothing like this. From what Professor Ellis told me, each of the monopoles has an opposite charge. One positive, one negative, in each side of the ring.”

In all, there were eight monopoles in each side of the ring, and under Karl’s direction, they slowly and carefully removed each, only once almost losing one of the balls in the process, but a quick grab with a second box and it was safe. Karl hated the idea of climbing around in the rafters of the hangar trying to catch it, since each ball had a tendency to move away from anything that came close.

The inside of the ring wasn’t complicated at all. Each recess was simply a machined hole with a thin tube inserted, into which the monopole magnets fit. These took some effort getting out. Being made of anti-grav material, each tube was essentially forced into place in a corresponding hole machined into the ring. Rather like trying to force two powerful magnets of the same polarity together, although in this case it was two antigravity plates, each repelling the other. Getting them out was almost as hard as getting them in in the first place, but at last, they had everything laid out on the floor. The rings themselves were nothing more than an armored metal housing with a four-by-four-inch channel machined in each half, and filled with miles of superfine, gold-plated, superconducting material wound inside. It only took a moment for Karl to realize there shouldn’t be any major problem duplicating them, but he left the question of how it did what it did for later, and for other experts to figure out. The question for his team was: could they duplicate them? The answer was a resounding, yes.

* * * * * *

“Yes?” Scott asked, after Karl reported what he found.

Karl grinned like an idiot as he sat at Scott’s request. “Yes, and from the look of it, in any size you want.”

“Yeah, but how do we control these things, and how far does this effect go?”

“Control of destination is governed by a built-in wafer of memory crystal located under a plate on the outer surface,” Karl said. “But the ring has only twelve preset destinations at the moment: eleven for the ones they held, and the last for the ring set that was destroyed.” That, he’d discovered after removing the six recessed Allen bolts holding the outside plate. Not that it would have helped, knowing what was under the plate beforehand.” He nodded his thanks to the steward after he’d refilled his coffee mug.

“Wow!” Scott said.

“From what I can figure out from Maddy’s and the professor’s rambling notes, and from what I can see, with the capacity of the wafer, we can add any number of ‘destinations’ up to the number of rings in operation. I also think it would be a simple matter to add a voice-activated circuit so you can call out the destination you want.” Karl’s eyes shone with the thought of possibilities.

“That’s what the professor and his wife had in mind,” he continued. “You step up to a ring in New York, say, or Paris, and step through, while the next person calls out Los Angeles, and he’s there the next moment.”

“Or from the bridge of a starship to the launch bay, or engineering,” Scott murmured, looking thoughtful.

“Jesus! I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right.”

Scott rested his elbows on his desk. “Before we get ahead of ourselves, we need two things.”

“What?” Karl’s excitement was growing as his mind ran though the endless possibilities.

“One, they have to be one thousand percent foolproof power systems. Otherwise we could have people trapped all over the ship with no way out because of a power failure, and secondly, a way to control access.”

“I see what you mean,” Karl said, thinking of what intruders could do if they got aboard a ship.

An intruder would only need to call out the location he, or his team wanted to go to, and bingo, they’d be there. He could see the potential for disaster if unfriendly people got onboard; they could pop up anywhere and wreck havoc within the ship, or ship’s operations. He marked this down on his wrist pad, along with a few other thoughts that occurred to him.

“We were thinking of taking one set of rings to the moon for a test, but I think we’ll wait until we have the security angle worked out first, plus a safety shutdown system in case of a hull breach.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Scott said with a nod. “Can we get a neutral position for these rings when they aren’t in use? You might want someone to come through one way and not another.”

“I think it’s going to be more of a sensor system on the outside of each ring to monitor for vacuum, fire, destination, authorized personnel, and a few other possibilities.”

“You might talk to Lieutenant Allway and Lady Jane about that, and see if her program could help you.”

“I’ll get to work on it, see you.” And with a casual wave, Karl was gone.

“So much for rank around this place,” Scott grouched, smiling slightly. But considering the hell he and the rest of the “immortals” had been through to get here, rank as such didn’t mean as much as it once did. He wasn’t about to enforce any saluting rules just to stroke his ego.

He put a call through to Devon Hawking, and asked him to go talk to Karl without specifying about what. He was still leery about the spies, and was loath to give him or her any more information than necessary. He could imagine the uproar he’d caused by grabbing the professor and his wife, not to mention the transport rings from the amusement park. Someone would be very interested in what Karl’s team found, and probably even now was thinking of ways to get their sweaty little hands on the information.

Scott’s team had purchased these, all legal and aboveboard from the carney owner—who was a little reluctant to part with them, but saying the novelty of them had just about worn off, he grudgingly agreed to sell, probably for three times what he paid. Whoever stole them from the Ellises in the first place must know by now that Scott now had them in his possession. There wasn’t much any of the corporations could do about it now, short of coming here and trying to grab them. Taking Scott to court would mean they had to fess up where they got them from in the first place, even if they dared take the case to a Sharia court in the first place, considering the penalty for theft. That would open up a can of worms for them, if Scott produced the Ellises in court to say they were stolen.

And yet … someone had done some R&D on making weapons, and was now willing to use them. Even so, there wasn’t much chance of them putting together a worthwhile assault team and coming here to try to grab them. Scott smiled slightly at the thought of a bunch of untrained civilians trying to fight their way through three hundred combat-proven marines, not to mention the dedicated new recruits.

Caution still seemed called for. He sent an electronic memo to Brock, telling him to put everyone on alert that his people might be facing offensive weaponry from now on. Another memo went to the prime minister and the President of the World Council, informing them of the same thing.

Feeling he’d done all he could do, at least for now, to protect Alpha base and their mission, his thoughts turned toward home. Kat wasn’t talking to him, because she couldn’t fly after Doc Chase had read her the riot act after the last time. Or rather, because Scott declined her demand to overrule the doctor, precipitating a stormy argument and her leaving in a huff.

In that oddly syncopated way those in love possess, Kat’s thoughts were on Scott just then too. She lay on her bed in her quarters, listening to soft music and the baby’s heartbeat at the same time. Lady Jane, Kat’s AI, had arranged that with a pickup sensor on her stomach, and a quick search of the available library tapes to match the heartbeat and Kat’s brainwave rhythm. Kat sighed with contentment, lying back against the pillows while Lady Jane went onto the worldwide net and searched all literature on the biological condition known as childbirth.