Rocket! An Ell Donsaii story #4) (17 page)

“Oh. Well, we’re pretty well funded at present. Besides sending stuff to orbit isn’t all that expensive when you’re doing it with ports. You’re probably thinking about how expensive it is to launch a regular rocket?”

Slager was silent a moment, then mused, “Oh yeah, if you aren’t having to launch your fuel, it’s probably a lot less expensive isn’t it…”

Chapter Two

Clarkson knocked on his boss’s door. “Mr. Dennison?”

“Yeah, what do you have for me?”

Clarkson pointedly unjacked his AI so that Dennison would know that the conversation shouldn’t go ‘on the record.’”

Dennison unjacked his and raised his eyebrows.

“The Space Station rescue seems to be really hush hush at NASA. No one really seems to know what happened. However, there’s a rumor that a
private
company sent up a rocket using some kind of new technology.”

“What!!! Who?!!”

“No one seems to know. Our guy heard someone say ‘D5R’ but he’s not sure if they were talking about the company that did the rescue. A net search for ‘D5R’ turns up a camera model, a Sony brand AI, a research company in North Carolina, an art community, etc. etc. No space launch or rocket companies.” He shrugged.

“Push ‘our guy.’ We need info, he needs to earn his keep.”

“Yes sir. We’re working on it.”

***

It was 7:30 when Ell stepped out the door of D5R to head home. She thought to herself that she desperately needed a social life so she would have something to do
besides
D5R. She and Roger went out sometimes. “Dinner and a movie” dates mostly, but they were pleasant. Sometimes she thought Roger wanted more, but he could hardly invite her and her entourage of security people to move into his apartment. She didn’t feel right about asking someone who worked for her—even though their friendship pre-dated his employment—to move in with her at the farm. Gordon from her astronomy class had gone home for the summer. She didn’t even have a good girlfriend to hang out with!

Amy and she did things together sometimes but Amy wasn’t as fixated as she used to be on her boss’s social life. Amy had been spending a lot of time with Randy from Ell’s security detail. Usually when Ell and Amy went out to do something it was with Amy’s kids Mike and Janey. They’d been down to Jordan Lake for a day and up to Asheville for a weekend trip. Those trips had been great fun, but still there was a hole of some kind...

If anyone acted too friendly to her as “Ell” she started worrying that they knew about her money. Even though she felt like she’d been fairly successful playing up the “investors” for D5R and playing down her royalties from PGR Comm she would suspect that they’d figured it out. Roger probably suspected, but she trusted him because he’d been her friend even when she was broke and disguised as “fat Ellen with the big nose.”

She didn’t like going out as “Ell” because people recognized her and acted weird. She often thought about going out on the town as “Belle” and had even gotten some silicone padding and bigger pants in order to make herself a little less attractive if she did. Not as “fat” as Ellen had been but just something to decrease a little of the unwanted attention she frequently received. But she hadn’t done it yet. She couldn’t bring herself go out to a bar like “Top of the Hill” by herself, she’d feel too weird and desperate.

She’d been thinking about taking more than one class when the fall semester started up. Maybe she’d meet some more people her age on campus?

Suddenly she heard a car door open in the row in front of her. Memories of her kidnapping in Morehead City flashed. She began crashing into the zone! How had she let herself be so distracted while walking across an empty parking lot! A big guy stood up out of the car...

“Phil!” she shouted in delight. “What are you doing here?! Why didn’t you call before you came? How did you know where I’d be?”

He grinned. All six foot three inches of Norse God good looks grinned and held his arms open wide. She rushed into them, throwing her arms around his muscular back and squeezing.

Phil said quietly, “I
wanted
to surprise you like you did me back around Thanksgiving. Your Mom told me you were working at this place so I thought I’d surprise you when you got off.” He leaned back and raised his eyebrows, “I had no idea they’d be making you work
this
late or I would have thought better of this harebrained plan!”

“Oh no! How long have you been waiting?!”

“Since 4:30, when
reasonable
people get off work. What do they have you doing in there anyway?”

“Some research. I could have come out anytime if you just called me!”

He shrugged, “Then it wouldn’t have been a surprise, would it?”

Ell hugged him hard again then let go and leaned back. “How did you get past the gate guard?”

“Your Mom. She called someone named ‘Sheila’ who put me on the ‘list.’”

“Hmmm,” Ell lowered an eyebrow, “I’m going to have to talk to Sheila I guess. Let me take you out to dinner?”

“Nope.”

Ell frowned up at him.

Phil said, “I’m about to have a real paycheck. I’m taking
you
out to dinner!”

She quirked an eyebrow, “But I’ve already had a paycheck for a while. Shouldn’t you wait to start paying for stuff until you actually have some money in the bank?”

“Well… Now that you mention it…” he turned to his car. “Your chariot awaits, Madam.” He opened the door.

Ell delightedly got in. While Phil walked around to his door she had Allan tell her car to follow them and let her security know what was happening.

Once he was in he asked, “Do you have a recommendation for Italian?”

“Tarantinis. It’s a really great little place. Been around for quite a while.”

“Tarantinis it is.” he said, telling his car’s AI to take them there.

Ell said, “So are you on your break between the Academy and astronaut training?”

“Yep,” he grinned, “I report to the Johnson center in July and am enjoying a well deserved rest until then.”

“Cool!” She leaned back in her seat, “I never thought I’d be going out to dinner with Buzz Lightyear.”

At the restaurant Phil asked, “What kind of research do they have you doing at this D5R?”

She raised her eyebrows, “It’s mostly to do with my physics theory on quantum entanglement. So of course I really like it. I stay late a lot of nights, ‘cause my social life sucks. Or anyway it did until tonight when you came along!” She patted him on the arm.

Phil said, “Say, I heard that these new ‘PGR Com’ chips that are overthrowing the world of telecommunications are based on your theory?”

Ell shrugged and nodded.

“Are they the same kind of chips that you made for the military to replace satellite communications during the Taiwan thing?”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“Wow! They’re really great!” he said. “Look at this!” he pulled off his AI headband and pointed to the back of it. “No wire! My actual AI is sitting at home on my desk so I don’t have to carry around a beltpack anymore. All I had to do was plug a PGR chip into the head band and another one into the AI!”

Nonplussed to be having something that seemed “old hat” to Ell, described as the latest thing by Phil, it brought the realization home to her that most people were just
beginning
to see the potential of the PGR chips. To Phil she said, “Pretty cool!”

He narrowed his eyes at her, “Wait a minute. Let me see the back of your headband.”

Blushing a little, Ell turned her head.

“No wire! You already knew about this! And you’re just nodding and going along with ‘country bumpkin’ me so I won’t feel bad!”

Ell ducked her head, “Sorry?”

He gave her a hug, then a little shake, “Hey no problem. I should have known you’d be way ahead of the curve on something
you’d
invented. Say, do you get any royalties on this?”

“Yeah, I do get some.” Ell hoped he wouldn’t ask how much.

“Woohoo!’ He raised his glass to clink against hers. “I know an inventor!”

Ell felt a tap on her shoulder and turned to see a woman in her thirties there.

“Ms. Donsaii?”

Ell nodded.

“My daughter does gymnastics and just
idolizes
you. Would you be willing to sign an autograph for her?”

Ell saw a wide eyed girl of about 11 sitting at the neighboring table staring at her. She smiled, “I’d be happy to, Ma’am.” She got up and walked the few steps to that table then knelt and put her arm around the girl. “How about a picture?”

“Oh, thank you!”

Their dinner arrived and Ell and Phil fell to eating. Ell asked, “So how long is your astronaut training?”

He rolled his eyes, “Just the basic training alone is a couple of years. Once you finish basic you
hope
to get assigned to a mission and then have to train for that particular mission for a while before there’s even a chance you can go up.”

“So you aren’t going to be coming back to Earth and your legions of ‘googly eyed girls’ for quite a while yet?” Ell grinned at him.

“I thought you promised to be my googly eyed girl?”

“You bet! You let me know when you get a long weekend and I’ll even come visit you in Houston.”

“Really? That’d be cool.” Phil felt a surge of delight at the thought that she’d be willing to do that. He leaned forward, “What I’m really hoping is that things might loosen up in the astronaut business.”

Ell frowned and tilted her head, “How come?”

“Well I’m sure you heard about the trouble the Space Station was in?”

Ell nodded and bit her lip.

“I was down in Houston for a briefing/orientation last week and everyone was excited about some kind of ‘new technology’ that was used during the rescue of the Station. It’s all really top secret right now but the rumor is that it might make it easier to get into space!” Phil leaned back and raised his eyebrows.

Ell released her lip from between her teeth and said, “Oh! That would be really cool huh?”

“Yeah! Maybe I’ll get to go up sooner? Of course, astronauts wouldn’t be so rare then and I’d have to share my legion of googly eyed girls with all those other astronauts.”

Ell slapped his shoulder, “What about girl astronauts? Do they get googly eyed boys to chase them around?”

Phil’s eyes widened, “Oh no, no, no. Boys are
intimidated
by intrepid girl astronauts.”

Ell laughed, “I guess I won’t apply then.”

After their dinner Phil took her to downtown Chapel Hill and had his car drop them off at UNC’s “Old Well.” The evening was pleasant and he sat beside her on the bench in front of the landmark. After a moment he turned to her and said, “I thought we should return to the scene of my crime so I could apologize again for the way I acted that day we first met four or five years ago.”

Ell grinned at him, “Hey I forgave you for that
years
ago… I think… long before you forgave yourself.”

“Well that’d
certainly
be true, since I still haven’t forgiven myself.”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “I was hoping you’d brought me back here to have another try at getting that kiss?”

He grinned, “Well, I’d be a liar if I didn’t admit that had crossed my mind.”

She reached up and cupped the back of his neck, pulling him down to her…

***

Clarkson knocked on Dennison’s door again. Once inside he held out his AI’s jack to remind Dennison to unjack his. “One of our guys at NASA says he’s pretty sure the rocket was actually launched by that company in North Carolina, ‘D5Resarch.’ He’s the only one of our people at NASA who has
any
clue. Doesn’t seem possible because they don’t have any contracts to launch from Canaveral or any other launch facilities, but that’s what he claims. Rumor has it that they have some new tech that lets them launch small rockets to orbit! The theory is that they are small enough that they don’t show up much on space watching radar. Maybe they send them up to high altitude with balloons or something?” Clarkson shrugged.

Dennison looked like he had indigestion, “Get Phelps after them. Hire some of their people, buy the tech, buy the company, whatever. Just make sure
we
wind up in control. Whoever they are, they are
not
going to cut ILX out of its own business! Tell our people at NASA to do what they can to stonewall them for now.”

***

Ell looked around at her D5R group. “OK, who wants to go first?”

Braun put a hand up and said, “We’ve placed rush orders with GE for the construction of D3 type rocket motors with surrounding water shrouds. They’ve got experience working with the alloys we want for our nozzles though one of their engineers has repeatedly told me that the cooling shroud around the nozzle is a dumb idea. He’s patiently explained how I should run the
propellant
through the nozzle walls to cool them instead. I get the impression he thinks he’s working with a complete idiot, but I’ve just told him he
has
to build it my way.”

Ell grinned at him, “Seems like I remember someone talking to me that way when he first came to work here.”

Braun sheepishly mumbled, “Yeah, that guy
was
a complete idiot.”

“What about a fuselage?”

“I gave it a lot of thought and we’re going to order a used Lear Jet, assuming the budget’s up to it. We’ll remove the engines and install rockets. The nose has radar built in, a cockpit for our eventual astronauts, though we’ll need to brace the chairs, and a comm section that already meets FAA standards.”

Ell frowned, “Will it hold up to the vacuum out there in space?”

“Hah! Caught you thinking old school! If it leaks, we just pump more air into it through a port.”

It was Ell’s turn to look sheepish.

Braun shrugged, “But it should be
pretty
airtight, Lear jets are pressurized to fly at high altitude and so they have to be fairly airtight. Of course, they do leak some at altitude but they just pump in more air. I’m planning to do some leak testing and tighten it up before we send it up. But, if you think about it we actually do want it to leak some because replacing losses with fresh air simplifies our problems. That way we won’t have to scrub out the carbon dioxide and put in new oxygen etc.”