Defiant (an Ell Donsaii story #9) (29 page)

Gary was doing amazing things with carbon synthesis. He hadn’t replicated one of the sigma’s carbon allotrope printers but was working out ways to add coatings of lonsdaleite, graphene, graphend and diamond to conventionally manufactured structures. He envisioned casting Styrofoam wings and bodies for airplanes, coating them with graphend that was itself coated with lonsdaleite, then dissolving the Styrofoam out of them, or just leaving the Styrofoam in them.

Shan checked in to the lodge and found to his surprise that his dad had reserved the largest “Blackberry” suite for him. It had a separate sitting room, a fireplace and a hot tub. He frowned, this was far too large for him alone. Especially with his parents sharing the Gooseberry and Morgan and Lane sharing the Blueberry. Both were smaller rooms than the Blackberry suite. He decided to insist that his parents take the big suite, but he had to go to the bathroom first.

He stepped into the Blackberry’s bathroom. The light switch turned on a light across the big bathroom, leaving the near side dim, but even in the dim light he suddenly realized someone was reclining in the big hot tub.

Startled he said, “Oh! Sorry!” Stepping back across the threshold he started to turn away.

“Hi Shan,” a familiar voice said.

Heart suddenly pounding, Shan turned slowly back into the room and looked.

Reclined in the tub Ell smiled her crooked little smile at him. “The water’s nice. Want to get in?”

The End

Hope you liked the book!

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Try the next in the series, to be published someday soon.

Author’s Afterword

This is a comment on the “science” in this science fiction novel. I have always been partial to science fiction that posed a “what if” question. Not everything in the story has to be scientifically plausible, but you suspend your disbelief regarding one or two things that aren’t thought to be possible. Essentially you ask, “what if” something (such as faster than light travel) were possible, how might
that
change our world? Each of the Ell Donsaii stories asks at least one such question.

“Defiant” asks what kind of aircraft you might build if the engines that drove them could be housed somewhere else. The reduced weight and the lack of a need to carry fuel would significantly liberate the design characteristics.

Isn’t DNA a type of Von Neumann machine, with human DNA a very successful example?

How might terrorists use ports? How might they be stopped?

What might one do with single-ended ports? Could they represent a technology which should be suppressed?

It begins to ask what we might do with the products of graphene, lonsdaleite and diamond synthesis if we learned how to create them rapidly and in quantity.

Acknowledgements

I would like to acknowledge the editing and advice of Gail Gilman, Elene Trull, Nora Dahners, Kerry McIntyre, Allen Dietz and Kat Lind, each of whom significantly improved this story.