Cables were laid from the reactor room to a junction box mounted on the deck at the bow and back to the transformer pod and the Tube itself. The computer station was booted up, and diagnostics run. They were wired and ready.
Quebat and Parviz mostly recovered from their seasickness and were managing to keep down crackers and weak tea. They ran through the protocols and pre-tests for the reactor. They were still a bit off and drowsy from the meds. And so, the pair checked and rechecked each other’s figures. Morris was asked to look over their settings and compare them to the handwritten directions in the notebooks the pair smuggled out of Iran with them. Once it all looked right, the nuke was powered up and brought online.
The generation four reactor was a little workhorse, and safe as houses. Its shielding allowed for zero increases in the surrounding background radiation and was safe for use in military naval vessels. Still, one did not mess with the vengeful gods at the heart of the atom. A truck-sized hole burnt through the keel of the Raj was not a risk worth taking for the sake of a missed calculation or meter reading.
The only other element needed for a trip to The Then was the Tesla Tower needed to create the EM field required for the Tauber Tube to punch a hole in the fabric of the universe. The nuke only served to jumpstart the tower. The tower then drew invisible electromagnetic energy from the air around it and directed it into the Tube chamber where it was focused and calibrated to create the field enclosed within the titanium rings that bridged the ages.
The Tesla Tower was the last piece of the process to be assembled. Dwayne had seen every piece of cargo brought aboard and had not seen anything like the steel parts needed to create the tower structure or the ball that sat atop it. He asked Morris about this a few times and only got a wry smile in reply. Let him have his mystery, Dwayne thought. He stopped asking. Morris was enjoying his priority knowledge way too much.
A half-dozen heavy wooden crates were hauled up out of the hold and set on the bow deck where the crew pried them apart. These contained the fabrications from Germany they’d waited a week for. Half of the crates contained loops of thick black cable. Others held steel pressure tanks marked with an “H.” The largest crate was eight feet to a side and held what looked like folds of a thick yet pliable black fabric.
“What we need is a highly conductive ball a minimum of ten feet in diameter to draw in the EM required to create the field.” Morris was speaking to Caroline and Dwayne on the bow deck.
The crewmen who helped take down the crates remained on deck to see the purpose of what they had unpacked. Others came from below to join them. The ones who understood English spoke low translations to the others in Amharic—as much of Morris Tauber’s dissertation as they could keep up with.
“It doesn’t have to be a tower, right?” Morris asked.
“Theoretically,” Caroline said.
“Of course, sis,” he said. “But there’s no reason this won’t work instead of a tower. And it has the advantage of affordability and portability.”
“But what is it?” Dwayne said. He gestured at the piles of black cable, pressure tanks and the cube of folded fabric.
“It’s a balloon,” Caroline said.
“Very good.” Morris smiled. “It’s a gas balloon. Actually, a non-conductive envelope covered in a shell fabricated from carbon nanotubes. They’re highly conductive with a high melting point. They’re also light enough to get airborne using a hydrogen-filled balloon of this circumference. The cables are carbon nano as well and will connect to the junction box we installed.”
The translators among the crew were lost after “balloon” and could only shrug and upturn their palms to their mates.
“This’ll work?” Dwayne said.
“Theoretically.” Morris beamed.
“Which means ‘maybe,’ right?” Dwayne said.
“Well, there’s a damned lot more certitude than ‘maybe,’” Morris said, stung. “I ran models that show we can duplicate the results from Nevada exactly. I’m only sorry I didn’t think of this sooner.”
“We’ll test it,” Dwayne said. It wasn’t a question.
“Of course,” Morris said in a small voice.
21
The Walk-in
Lou Lopez went to an early morning settlement way the hell out in Emmett instead of coming to the office first thing. Some days he thought about giving up on real estate and becoming a panhandler. The whole deal was a pain in the ass from day one. The couple buying had problems with financing, and the seller brought along a lawyer. There were a stack of liens against the property that had to be satisfied and Lou was there two hours longer than he anticipated, overseeing the signing and notarizing, and all over a piece-of-shit rancher that was overvalued by at least fifty percent.
He had time to grab a drive-through egg and bacon sandwich and rolled into the Boise office after ten with crumbs on his tie. He had nothing scheduled till the afternoon and was looking forward to an hour or so of working on fantasy football picks in his office.
“Your ten o’clock is here,” Cathy said from her station at the reception desk.
“I don’t have any appointments,” Lou said.
“He said you’d forget.”
Who said?
Lou entered his office to find the guest chairs empty and some guy seated behind his desk, tapping the keys on his Dell, a slim guy in a dark suit and no tie. And gloves. The guy was wearing thin leather gloves. Did he know it was hot out? The guy would be skinny but for broad shoulders that Lou could tell owed nothing to the suit. He wore his jet-black hair slicked back above a broad forehead. He didn’t look up when Lou walked in.
“Can I help you?” Lou said. Now he knew he didn’t have a ten o’clock.
The guy looked up at him
