Still stupefied, Brad didn’t respond for long enough that—apparently doubting their connection—Seba said, “Dr. Medness?”
“Sorry,” Brad said. “I just didn’t expect you to have heard of Hora’s work, much less to figure out from my drawings that I was trying to follow up on his studies.”
“Oh, you are?!” Seba said, sounding as delighted as a kid on Christmas. “That’s awesome. Can I offer suggestions?”
“Um,” Brad said, still feeling bewildered. “Sure. What’re you thinking?” He couldn’t get over thinking it was ridiculous to expect the kid to have ideas on anything except the way Stade formed.
“Great! I assume you’re thinking to eventually have a device that pulses a target every second or so. I’d suggest a tube in the Stade like you have in your design. Then, instead of a mechanism to put a new Stade tube containing a fresh target in position after each pulse…” he hesitated, “That’s what I assume all those little half-millimeter nubs we can’t form in Stade were for?”
“Yes,” Brad said reluctantly.
“Great. So, instead of that, you put a slot in the side of the tube that you can feed a hydrogen-boron rod in through, and—”
Brad cut in, “You understand that, if we achieve fusion, we’ll get an explosion, right? As if we’d set off a small chunk of TNT?”
“Um, yeah. It won’t damage the Stade… if that’s what you’re worried about.”
Blinking in surprise, Brad didn’t say anything. He’d been so used to thinking that everything in the vicinity of the fusion event would be destroyed—and would have to be replaced—he hadn’t even considered the possibility a mechanism could survive. But I should’ve, he thought.
Apparently taking Brad’s silence as permission to continue, Seba said, “The feeder magazine slides down the cylinder a little bit like the bolt on a rife. That way both the slot in the cylinder and the slot in the magazine are covered with solid Stade. It locks into place. The chirped laser pulses, accelerating the hydrogen nuclei into the boron nuclei. Fusion of X billions of nuclei results in a fission explosion that releases 3X billions of alpha particles. You study the exhaust channel extending from that explosion so you can design a system to harvest the energy of the alpha particles and directly convert it to electricity. I think, before you design and position the harvesting system, you’ve got to know how far from the explosion you have to be for your system to tolerate the heat and physical shock.” He paused, then said, “Oh, and since the hydrogen-boron fusion reaction does produce an occasional free neutron and a few x-ray emissions, it would be great to design the channel so it harmlessly diverts or absorbs them.”
“Design the channel?”
“Well, obviously you’re aware that Stade reflects all radiation so you can bounce a beam containing all that stuff to wherever you want it. You’re going to be absorbing the energy of the alpha particles with your field but you might also use the field to deflect the positively charged particles away from the neutrons and x-rays. It seems to me that Salzberg’s new work on diffraction grating deflection of neutrons and x-rays could send the neutrons into an absorber and the x-rays into a photoelectric foil system that’d harvest the energy from them. Of course,” there was a brief pause during which Brad could envision Seba shrugging, “you’d know more about those possibilities than I would.”
Brad felt a headache coming on. “You’ve, um, given me a lot to think about. Sorry to have forgotten about the limitation on feature size. Let me give your points a few days’ thought and then I’ll get back to you with another design.”
“Awesome,” Seba said enthusiastically. “Oh, hey, you know. You could design your target like a revolver. After each shot of the laser, you’d rotate the cylinder containing the chambers to put a new target in the beam path.”
After disconnecting the call, Brad pulled open his drawer and looked for his Tylenol. He thought, There’s no way the kid’s that smart! Who’s feeding him these ideas?
***
Joe drove the old car past Staze on manual. Marona had several such cars that could be driven manually. That way there wouldn’t be any record of where they’d been. Richter rode in the right-side passenger seat. “That’s it?!” Richter asked, astonished as he stared at the unprepossessing metal building. It was just a big square box. Not something you would think might be home to a hot tech company! It didn’t even have a sign out front.
Richter had Joe drive around the block. This time they pulled into the lot and parked. He got out, leaving Joe in the car and walking up to the door. He knocked. Nothing happened. After a while, he knocked again. This time a young guy opened the door. “Hi, I’m Ryan. How can I help you?”
“Um, is this Staze?”
“Yes. Sorry I didn’t hear you knock. Pretty much everyone that comes to visit us has made an appointment before they arrive. That way we’re expecting them. Did you call? I don’t have anyone on the books for this morning.”
Richter had been looking past the man as he spoke but couldn’t see much. It appeared the door just opened into some kind of anteroom with one desk in it. He asked, “Can I make an appointment?”
“For what? With whom?”
