Disc (12 page)

Dante grinned like a shark, “Someday, when they figure out exactly what they passed over, they’ll have serious regrets. However, capitalization should be the least of your concerns. We can capitalize you if it’s needed.” He looked back and forth from Landon to Mark, “I think we should leave you two to it, then.” He and the senior Costa turned and walked away, talking about when the big saucer might be ready.

***

Cho looked up when Jong came in. In keeping with his weak English, Cho’s mannerisms weren’t very American. Jong had reminded him several times to look him in the eye, but he always slipped back into his Korean habit, keeping his eyes downcast. Jong sighed,
My country can’t have very many really well-trained American spies,
he thought,
too many of the ones who become really “Americanized” probably decide to stay here. I would if they didn’t have my family.
“Have you got any results from the laser transducers on the Gettnors’ house?”

“Hear man voice and woman voice. Man not speak much. Other voices only when someone come to house.”

“Can you tell for sure if the man is Gettnor?”

“No.”

At least he doesn’t beat around the bush,
Jong thought. “Has the saucer come back yet?”

“No.”

“And the daughter’s car is still parked out front?”

“Yes.”

Jong sighed again and headed towards his bedroom and its computer. His masters back home were
not
going to be happy.

***

Outside the vacuum chamber, Tiona sagged down into a chair next to Sophie, “Jeez! I had no idea that spacesuits were so clumsy! Is this really as good as they can do?”

Sophie glanced around, apparently checking to see if anyone was listening. “You might remember that when you first called about this I mentioned a retired astronaut who’s working on his own vacuum suit?”

“I think I remember something about that. Is his suit any good?”

“I don’t know, but it’s based on very different principles. Some people call them ‘skin suits.’ Instead of having an entire suit all filled with air which makes it stiff and hard to move, the only part that’s filled with air is your helmet.”

“Really?” Tiona gave her a puzzled look, not really following the concept.

“Yes, you wear spandex undies that actually cover your entire body, then over that you wear a suit made of electroactive polymers. When you run current through the polymers they relax into a very stretchy state so you can put the suit on. Once you turn the current off, the suit contracts so that it puts pressure on your body—high enough to simulate atmospheric pressure. A little bit of electricity can be used to make the joints easier to move, for instance by relaxing the polymers on the front of your knee and tightening them behind your knee, depending on whether your quadriceps or your hamstrings are activated. The biggest problem has been sealing the helmet to your head and neck so that air doesn’t leak out. I’m not sure whether he’s licked that one yet or not.”

Grinning, Tiona said, “How do we find out?”

Sophie lifted an eyebrow, “If you’re thinking you’d like to try out some unproven technology, I’ll try to find out.”

***

Bob Thompson’s AI said, “You have a call from Sophie Bautista.”

“I’ll take it,” he said, feeling a little dismay. It had seemed too good to be true that the people with the new spacecraft would be interested in his skin suits. They’d probably decided to give up on them without even having a look. “Problems?”

“No, we’re just wondering if we can come look at the skin suits now.”

Bob laughed, “Come anytime you want, but you know I’m up in Iowa, right? I’m not down there in Houston.”

“Yeah, we’ve got your address. We’ll be there in thirty minutes—we’ll see you when we get there.”

“Where are you?!” Bob asked, but Sophie’d already cut the connection.

About a half an hour later, Bob’s door AI announced Sophie Bautista. Bob told it to open the door as he approached, then finished pulling the door open himself. “Sophie! What were you doing in Iowa?”

She winked, “Visiting you.” Sophie turned and waved to the two people behind her, “Let me introduce Tiona Gettnor and Nolan Marlowe.”

Bob put his hand out to shake, still wondering why they’d been in Iowa, but then over their shoulders he saw the saucer that had been in the news. His eyes widened, “Is that…?”

“Yep,” Sophie said, a big grin on her face.

For a moment, Bob panicked. The saucer was sitting on his wife’s flower bed! Then he realized that he could see some of the late afternoon sun streaming in under the saucer—the damn thing was hovering! “Um, you could park it out back.”

Gettnor spoke, “Okay, can you point me to where?”

“Sure,” Bob said walking to the corner of the house and pointing to the big parking area out near the barn. The saucer slowly floated back that way, then settled gently to the ground. He wondered if he should go check on Debbie’s flowers. He knew that the official explanation was that the saucer used a dark matter jet as a thruster, and his conscious mind said that a dark matter jet shouldn’t affect the flowers, but his subconscious kept telling him that the flowers had to have been crushed and burned. Resolutely he turned his eyes away and led them into the house. “Did you guys really just fly here from Houston?”

Sophie nodded and lifted an eyebrow, “800 miles is a pretty short trip for a spaceship.”

“You didn’t do the whole distance in thirty minutes did you?”

Soon Bob had them out in his barn workshop explaining his take on a skin suit. “So, the electroactive polymers are in these panels on the inside and outside of each leg. Once the power is shut down, the polymers contract so that the material of the leg applies pressure. The polymers are also on the front and back of the knee with the contractile fibers there running vertically rather than around the leg. When these electrical sensors detect contraction of your quadriceps muscle as you try to straighten your knee, the suit actively relaxes the vertical fibers behind your knee so that it’s easy to straighten it. Vice versa for your hamstrings. There are similar panels on the sides of the torso, inside and outside of the arms and all around the fingers.”

Gettnor and Marlowe were studying the suit. Marlowe said, “Can you relax the fibers?”

“Sure,” Bob said, speaking to his AI to bring up the power and relax all the fibers. Suddenly they were holding a much baggier suit.

They both looked a little startled, but then Marlowe gave an awed whisper, “Cool!” After staring at it for another moment, he looked up at Bob, “So, I’m assuming these have to be custom fit for each astronaut?”

Bob shook his head, “They need to be kind of close, but the polymers can adjust a little bit. Sixteen sizes should fit almost anyone between five foot one and six foot five as long as they’re not markedly obese.”

“Why not just make the whole suit out of the polymer? Why the inactive panels?”

“The polymer tends to contract mostly in one direction, so different panels need to be oriented in different directions anyway. The panels on the side of the limbs have fibers oriented circumferentially to tighten around the limb. Conductive fibers run front and back of those panels to charge them. The panels in the front and the back of the joints need longitudinal fibers to help with motion and to adjust the lengths of the legs and arms a little.”

Gettnor looked up at him, “How long would it take you to make one for me?”

Bob eyed her for a moment, not wanting to drive off business, but wanting to be truthful. “It’d be expensive. A lot cheaper than one of NASA’s suits, but we’re still talking tens of thousands of dollars.”

She made a dismissive wave, “How long?”

“And I haven’t gotten to test this latest version in a vacuum chamber yet.”

She frowned, “Why not?”

Bob shrugged, “Access to vacuum chambers is… a little tight.”
Actually, really tight when NASA isn’t friendly anymore,
he thought.

She glanced up into the sky, “Want to test it at altitude instead?”

“Go up in the saucer?! Sure!”

Tiona headed into town in Bob’s car to get some burgers, fries, and milkshakes for their dinner.

A few minutes after she left, Bob was pulling on two layers of spandex under-suit. The first one was only a little bit snug, so it was relatively easy to get on. The second one was tighter but the two slippery spandex layers slid over one another. The second spandex layer had an even slipperier outer surface that kept the skin suit from pinching him when it tightened. He spent some time checking in the mirror to be sure the spandex was smooth. Once he was satisfied that there weren’t any wrinkles in the spandex, he turned to the actual skin suit and powered it up so that the electroactive polymers relaxed. With the skin suit loosened up he pulled it on.

He checked all surfaces that he could possibly see in the mirror one more time, then, because he was somewhat shy about the way he looked in the snug suit, he pulled a pair of shorts on over the suit. Walking out into his family room, he got the others to make sure the flap under the zipper on the back of the skin suit was laid out flat before they zipped it up.

Bob activated the controller for the skin suit. It actively adjusted the tension in each panel by modifying the voltage delivered to it so that they maintained an even pressure all over his body. It was also responsible for changing the tension in the panels around his joints according to his muscle activation. With it all activated, it felt pretty comfortable, but he did some stretching and twisting into various positions to make sure it didn’t bunch or pinch. The only thing he had to adjust was the tension in the part of the suit that went up onto his neck.

He put on a pair of boots with soft, nubbly-rubber soles, then settled the helmet over his head. As usual, getting the helmet to seal to the suit around his neck was the most difficult part.

They all trooped out to get into the saucer. To Bob, taking off felt pretty anticlimactic. Once they’d all settled into their chairs, Tiona spoke to her AI, saying, “Clear it with the FAA and take us up to 70,000 feet.” Bob felt a gentle push from his seat and saw the farmland falling away as they drifted faster and faster up into the sky. Tiona said, “Starting when you said you wanted to go up, I asked the AI to purge the saucer’s atmosphere, replacing it with pure oxygen, so it ought to be pretty pure already. However, you still need two and a half hours breathing the pure oxygen before you want to try to go out into low pressure, right?”

Bob nodded, but Sophie was the one that spoke. “I don’t think he should go ‘out’ into low pressure. He shouldn’t leave the airlock.”

Tiona frowned, “Why not? The air up here is less than one fifteenth of normal pressure. It’s not like it’s thick enough for the wind to blow him off. Besides, he can wear a safety strap to keep him from falling.”

Sophie lifted her chin, “And what happens if the pressure inside the helmet blows it off his head? Then hypoxia sets in and he can’t figure out how to get back into the airlock?” She took her eyes off Tiona and glanced at Nolan, “Since that’s our
only
suit, we don’t have anyone in here who can go out after him.”

Tiona looked a little pale, “I was thinking we could just descend.”

“We’ll be about eleven miles above thick enough atmosphere that it might bring him back around. I know the saucer’ll go really fast, but I don’t think we should fly it at hundreds of miles an hour while it’s dragging Bob down by a safety strap!”

Nolan said, “You’re right of course. We don’t want to do any real testing outside until we have more than one suit and we’ve done some good long tests
inside
the airlock.”

Bob grinned at all of them, “Yeah, much as I’d like to get out and do a few jumping jacks on the deck of the saucer while gazing out at the Earth far below me, I think we’d better take this one step at a time.” Looking at the sacks of fast food Tiona had brought, he said, “Let’s eat dinner.”

A couple of hours later Bob was in the airlock and Tiona slowly vented it, though she didn’t release the outer door. Since he wasn’t actually going to get out of the airlock, she’d lifted the saucer on up to 100 kilometers, the so-called edge of space. They had to bring the pressure in the lock back up once for a leak at the neck of the suit that proved to be from a fold in the rubber neck seal, but after that it held pressure fine. The CO2 scrubbers and water absorbers in his backpack also did their jobs. He stayed in the airlock at vacuum for forty-five minutes before they descended.

As he reentered the main part of the saucer, Bob pumped his fist and gave a little cheer.

Tiona said, “How long to make five of these?”

Sophie said, “How long to make ten? I’d feel a lot better if we had spares.”

Bob tilted his head, “I’ll have to get with some of my suppliers before I can really give you an estimate. Don’t forget, you also want some really tough coveralls for meteorite protection with an outer layer that’s highly reflective. In LEO you need to bounce away most of the sunlight or you’ll overheat.”