BlackStar полностью

“You must be Eller. Everyone has heard about you by now. You’re here to keep an eye on us or the general. Which is it?”

“Damn, woman. Can’t we dance a little first?”

“Sorry. I’m fairly blunt. I usually don’t do well with the small talk,” she said, pulling her sand colored hair back and tying it in a ponytail.

She was almost six feet tall and had grey-blue eyes that seemed to radiate in the lighting in the bay.

“All right. I just wanted to ask you something if I may. How much Uup-115 are you using for fuel in this thing?” he said, touching the side of the craft.

“The U–1?”

“The you one what?”

“No. This craft is called the U–1. And to answer your question, we are currently working with approximately thirty-four pounds.”

“Why that amount?”

“The containment vessel is cone shaped. The fuel must fit in the containment area with the dome closed down over the top of it before the necessary energy is generated to force a distortion in the continuum,” she said.

“How did it get into the shape it is in now? Did it come that way?”

“Good heavens no. We should be so lucky. It came as disks. We first had to fuse them together under tremendous heat and pressure over a long period of time. Then the block, actually a cylinder, had to be milled to fit the cone. It took nearly two and a half years just to get it like it is today,” she explained.

“What about the remaining UuP?”

“Well, if you know anything about milling, it is a slow process where a small layer is taken off at a time by a machine. It took a special rig and new type of machine to mill it into the shape we needed. We spent a year just learning how to go about it the right way. The scraps were collected and stored for future use,” she said.

“Stored where?”

“I have no idea. All I wanted to do was get my hands on the core so we could see if we could figure out this amazing contraption.”

“Why can’t you produce more of this magic material?”

She walked over to a large whiteboard and started to write.

“We tried to make it or at least duplicate. In the first experiments, three nuclei of the 288Uup isotope were made and one of the 287Uup isotope. All the nuclei formed decayed in less than a second by emitting alpha particles. These decays resulted in isotopes of the Element-113. It has a mass number of 283 or 284, containing 113 protons and either 170 or 171 neutrons depending on several factors. These isotopes of Element-113 are also radioactive and underwent further decay. This decay processes to an isotope of Element-111 and so on down to at least Element-105 or Dubnium. Something like this, she said, picking up the marker and writing on the board again

“And so on,” she said, laying the marker down.

“Oh sure. Now why didn’t I think of that,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“Sorry, I’m not really trying to show off. You have to remember that almost everyone I work with already understands this stuff,” she said and smiled.

“So the next step is making it actually work,” he said.

That’s correct. And that is what I am here to do.”

“And have you?”

“Do you see it taking off? No, we haven’t got it quite right yet. We have made significant progress but we are having trouble controlling the reaction. The reactor that creates the antigravity flux field comes online but it is unstable and we can’t control the action. We have tried to reconfigure the controls and have had only limited success. The maximum power we have been able to produce is sixty-five percent. I think it is the way the core fits that is causing the trouble,” she said.

“Maybe it’s too tight. Maybe it needs more space. You know, to float instead of just fitting,” he said, having no idea what he was really taking about.

She looked at him in disbelief. She shook her head slightly, started to say something, then stopped.

“What? I said something stupid again didn’t I?” he asked.

“No. No. My God. You may be right. That could be why it is unstable. It touches the side at various points and causes it to become unstable. We have been trying to make the core fit tighter. That could be our whole problem,” she said and rushed forward and gave him a big hug.

“You’re blushing,” she said as she stepped back.

“I just wasn’t expecting such a treat,” Raymond stammered.

“This is so exciting. This could be the breakthrough we have been searching for. I swear, sometimes you get so close to a project that you can’t even see it. It takes someone to come along and move you back so you can see it from a fresh perspective,” she said. She was like a little kid opening a present.