Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) (36 page)

By contrast, Paul hadn’t noticed the weather, so focused was
he on the tasks that he wanted to accomplish that day. He’d left Esperance
after sharing a very nice breakfast with Capie at the Dome Café Esperance, just
as the sun was rising. From there he went straight by way of portal to the Staging
Area. He was most anxious to continue the loading of the now completed
spacecraft. Despite his earlier attempt to move everything from Warehouse 13, there
were still some supplies remaining.

For the most part, he had finished loading all of their
personal items, minus what was still at the hotel, into Decks 2 and 3, which
were the living and sleeping quarters. Today, his plan was to finish transferring
all of the Warehouse 13 supplies—most especially the barrels of lithium
chlorate salts into the ship’s fuel tank—and then all the remaining items to
the storage room he had created in one wall of the open pit mine. In the next
couple of days, he would then finish loading all the food supplies, tools, gear,
furniture, sporting goods, and everything else they were taking with them as
well.

At that point, the one major task that would be left was to add
the water for the fuel tank. That would take a couple of hours to filter it
from the ocean water and portal it into the tank. Almost 3,000 gallons of
water. It was a lot to process and store on board, a tedious but not all that
difficult a task.

So, yes, there was lots of work to do. And with all the
terrorist and military attacks by Arab countries around Israel, both he and
Capie were feeling the urgency of their tasks. True, the chutzpah would be of
the most value in stopping what the whole world believed would be a full scale
war. But the
Sirius Effort
would be quite useful too, even if it wasn’t
armed.

In the past few days, he had noted the sudden appearance of
a large number of contrails in the upper atmosphere, due to increased activity
of the Australian Air Force. All across the globe, military forces were at a
heightened alert status. The last thing that Paul wanted at this stage was for
some sharp eagled-eyed Australian pilot to see something at the Staging Area
and report it. From now on, Paul would ask Merlin to keep a weather eye out for
trouble, just in case the WA authorities came nosing around.

• • • •

 “Are you sure that this is such a good idea?” asked
Firefighter Shaun Kirk as he studied the large commercial building in front of
him.

“No, I’m not,” replied Constable Lucas Colston, age 33, of
the Kalgoorlie District Police. “But then it wasn’t my idea, now was it, mate?
It was the Inspector that came up with this one, he did. The Neumanns up and
disappeared several days ago, no one knows where. That reporter, what’s his
name, filed assault charges. And the Inspector found those records for that
chemical—”

“Lithium chlorate,” said Shaun, with a grin.

“Yeah, that stuff. So, on that evidence, we are here to
perform an inspection, to see if there are dangerous chemicals stored here and
also to look for other proof.”

Lucas reached out to grasp a padlock and insert one of his
special keys.

“Proof of what?” asked Shaun, perplexed.

“How should I know, aye?” shot back Lucas. “Foul play?
Terrorism? A heist? The Inspector was less than clear on that, but you
know
how he is.”

The padlock snicked open and Lucas grinned smugly at his
cohort. “You find the lights. I’ll sweep for the proof the Inspector wants.”

Entering the building cautiously, Shaun quickly found the wall
switch and snapped on the lights. But it took mere moments to realize that
there was almost nothing in the building. Some power and hand tools on a work
bench against the back wall. Several brown 55 gallon drums with snap-on lids.
And quite a few empty boxes, all collapsed and piled up in the middle of the
floor.

Lucas was more than a little disappointed. He’d been half
expecting to find the Neumanns here—or at least their dead bodies.

Shaun pointed at the barrels. “There’s your lithium chlorate,
they are,” he said, dropping to one knee to examine the barrels closely along
with the hazardous labels. “They’re not leaking or damaged either. Still, the
Neumann’s don’t have a permit to store chemicals here.”

“Is the stuff dangerous?” Lucas asked, poking around on the
tool bench.

“Kind of a poor time to ask, hey mate?” Shaun responded with
a chuckle. “Not overly so. You need a chemical mask not to breathe it, and
gloves to work with it. Oh, and keep the fumes out of your eyes. And don’t
swallow any of it. What else? Oh, yeah, if it’s mixed with sulfur, reactive
metals, or some organics, it can become explosive. Other than that, it’s as
safe as being in your momma’s arms.”

“Laugh a minute, you are, mate,” muttered Lucas, turning
back toward Shaun. “So the Neumann’s might be terrorists, making a bomb…Hey,
what was that?!” he yelled.

Shaun too had noticed a bright flash of light reflecting off
the metal lip of the barrel in front of him. He spun around—

But there was only empty building behind him. Just floor
and—

“Wait a mo—wasn’t there another barrel over there?” he
asked, pointing to a now empty spot next to two other barrels. “I counted ten
barrels here when we walked in. Now there’s only nine.”

“I didn’t count them,” admitted Lucas reluctantly. “But if
you’re right, where’d it go? There’s been no one…oh…oh…!”

In front of both men, a portal opened up, a little larger
than the barrels. It swept forward, missing Shaun by two feet to engulf one of
the barrels. And just like that, both the portal and the barrel were gone.

“What the blazes was that?” shouted Shaun, backing away
rapidly, on a beeline for the door.

“Eight barrels of chem on the floor, eight barrels of chem…,”
Lucas hummed the old tune anxiously, the hair rising on the back of his neck. “Take
one off, pass it along…” He snapped the clip off of his sidearm and drew it.

Another portal snapped open, floating forth to snag another
barrel, and it too flashed out of existence.

“I don’t know…lookout! Behind you!” shouted Lucas.

Another portal, much larger than the others, opened into the
room. Through it stepped McDougall and two Oni.

Lucas and Shaun both folded up like little rag dolls, fast
asleep before they even hit the floor.

“Normies! Humph! Ignore them. Follow the portals and find
out where they lead!” shouted McDougall, as he put his hands on his hips.

Another portal popped into existence, gulping up another
barrel.

McDougall grinned. This was almost too easy.

Limpet Rock

East of Esperance, Western Australia

October

Saturday 11:14 a.m. AWST

“D
o
you see it there?” asked Capie, using a small spell to enlarge a particular
part of the display hanging in front of her and Daneel.

“NP. No problem, Mom. So you’re interweaving the iron atoms
with the oxygen in the komatiite using the 4-D Man spell that Dad told me
about.”

“It cuts down on the distance the neutrons need to move and
the energy transitional states too.”

“Fearsome, Mom. Can I try?”

“Go for it.”

On the LCD screen, Daneel closed his eyes, reaching a hand
forward. “Ah, like that, heh?”

In the display, magnified millions of times, clouds of
neutrons were making the short leap from the nucleus of the iron atoms and
impacting with the oxygen nuclei.

They were standing near the eastern edge of Limpet Island,
working on the last of the isotope conversions of the komatiite rock, changing
the isotopes of oxygen 16 atoms to oxygen 17. Capie had already finished
conversion of the silicon, iron, nickel, and magnesium atoms.

“Hmm, have you considered manipulating the quark structure
of the neutrons?” Daneel asked, opening his eyes.

Capie blinked at him. “The what? Son, that’s a Dad question
if ever I’ve heard one.”

Daneel looked thoughtful. “I wonder if it might be possible
to move the component quarks as quasiparticles inside the solid matrix.
Interesting thought, that. I’ll have to look into the math, to see if it’s even
theoretically possible.”

Staring at him in stunned disbelief, Capie felt a shiver run
up her spine. “Theoretical math? Since when have you been interested in complex
math?”

Daneel laughed. “Mom, I’m a computer, remember? I’ll have to
ask Dad about it. It might not speed up the process but it might make it more
energy efficient. Maybe.”

Capie could only shake her head and chuckle. So Daneel might
be good in mathematics? And maybe physics too? With a growing grin, she glanced
at the Scottie again. She could live with that.

• • • •

Paul pulled the drums of the lithium chlorate, one by one, through
portals onto Deck 8 of the ship, then used a portal filter set to that chemical
compound to funnel it into the fuel tank.

Like any other engineer that had ever worked for a large company
or the US Government, he had a schedule for the fueling and loading efforts, and
that called for launch operations in one more week, on the next Saturday.
Loading the lithium chlorate was only step one of the fueling process. Later,
around Friday, he would load the heavy water into the tank as well to formulate
the final fuel solution. His reason for loading the lithium compound now was to
finish emptying Warehouse 13 and there really was no better place to put it.

On Monday, he planned to take Capie to find a pallasite
meteor. He had an idea where to find one and without too much effort, despite
how rare that particular type of meteor was. By his calculations, she would be
finished with the final conversions of the meteor by the end of the week. She
really was doing a faster job at isotope conversions than he had ever thought
possible.

Tuesday through Thursday would be for final cargo loading
and all the food as well as all the other supplies. They would likely finish
ahead of schedule since Daneel was already working on that task. It really was
a wonderful thing, having a Scottie finished and fully operational. The
liberation of the Earth was now a huge step closer to reality. If there was
time later in the week, they might try duplicating Daneel and seeing how that
worked. Paul already had the hardware that was needed, including an upgraded
CPU.

By Saturday, they would have all the components for the
chutzpah and could do the ceremony, creating the first one. Ah, the power it
would give them! And with it, they could go to the Middle East and stop the
senseless war that seemed to be coming.

There were six more barrels of lithium chlorate to go when
Merlin snapped into existence directly in front of him, startling Paul.

The hologram hissed wildly, swinging both arms wide,
knocking the hat off his head. “Intruder Alert!
Intruder Alert
!
Three…no,
four
…nearby portals—”

Suddenly panic stricken, Paul snapped a quick holographic
display in midair to his left, looking around the outside of the ship. All he
could see was one Oni and that one holding forth a gemstone, but that was more
than enough. Somehow, he had been found!

Icy fingers ran up and down his spine. There were so many
critical items in the ship and also stored in the mine. He just
couldn’t
take many of them with him! Indeed, they might just be
safer
if he left
them
here
!

And then there was Capie and Daneel in Esperance. Were they
safe or were they also in danger? He didn’t dare portal straight to their
location to find out. That might just lead whatever wizard from
Errabêlu
that had found him
straight
to them.

Unless they already had them…

NO! He was wasting time! He forced himself to think clearly.

For their sake, he needed to lead the Oni away from
Australia, on as merry a chase as he could arrange. And as fast as possible.

He snapped his fingers, creating a horizontal portal beneath
his feet, dropping through it.

• • • •

McDougall stepped through the portal into the bright
sunlight and froze.

All around him was the typically dry desert of Western
Australia, with very little in the way of vegetation in sight.

However, directly in front of him, protruding nearly twenty
feet into the air from out of an open mine pit, was the nose and forward
section of what appeared to be a commercial airliner. Well, it somewhat
resembled one of those, but the skin of this craft was now a solid shiny grey
color with no windows or paint scheme of any kind. The only exceptions were the
words ‘
Sirius Effort
’ painted near the nose. And the vehicle was
positioned vertically, with the nose pointing straight up. Above the plane, a
very large camo net hung from tall poles arranged around the open mine pit,
obviously to hide the—whatever that thing was that was poking out of the ground—from
aerial view.

Aduir, with a gemstone extended in one hand, hissed in his
direction. As McDougall regained his equilibrium, he stepped forward to the
edge of the pit.

“One portal,” growled Aduir, pointing at the strange craft.
“Inside there, just now!”

McDougall nodded with an evil grin. “Track him! I want Paul
Armstead alive!”

• • • •

Emerging from his portal a hundred feet over the Great
Australian Bight, 300 miles east of Esperance, Paul took a moment to cast a
spell behind him, screwing with the energy signature of his portal,
misdirecting it to a refuse reclamation site—the Waste-Away SA center in
Adelaide—considerably farther to the east. Then he leveled out into the
superhero flying position and created a tapered magical transparent shield in
front of him, to act as a windbreaker. After which, he accelerated to a speed
of 500 miles per hour. Even with the shield, he found it difficult to go any
faster.

They would be after him, he knew. Hopefully they would be
misdirected by his false trail, but he shouldn’t depend on that. Best not to
follow a straight path here, lest his pursuers portal ahead and intercept him.

Veering first to the left and then off sharply to the right,
he began zigzagging randomly, to make it harder to track him.

He needed time to think. It was pointless to worry about how
they had found him. That would be for later, if he got out of this situation. Better
to figure out how to escape and how to get to Capie. As a precaution, he
erected a protective shield tightly around himself, just in case the Oni
started shooting at him.

And just in the nick of time too. A thin lance of plasma
shot past him on the right, close enough to frighten him and cause him to jink
more to the left. With a few twitches of his nose, a rear-view display popped
up in front of him, allowing him to see his pursuers.

There were three Oni back there: one to port, one to
starboard and the other directly behind him. And somehow, they were closing the
gap. How they were doing it, with talismans that were supposedly inferior to
the one he was wearing, Paul didn’t know. For whatever reason, his spell was
apparently less efficient. Someday, he would have to figure out why. But not
right now.

He needed to slow them down.

Zigging to port, he barely managed to avoid being hit by
another plasma bolt, but now the Oni were closer, perhaps half a mile back.

Dipping downward, Paul leveled out at wave-top level. Then,
focusing into the rear-view display, he tried to cast his fusion spell, below
and behind him.

However, the water was moving too fast and the process of
stripping the electrons from the hydrogen atoms took too long.

Another blast of plasma sent a jet of steam practically into
his face. If it were not for the screen in front of him, he would have been
scalded.

Reaching out with his powers, he created a magical net that
‘dragged’ through the top of the water, snagging heavy water molecules,
accumulating them into a small mass moving at his same speed, albeit a hundred
yards behind him. When he had the equivalent of a single drop of nearly pure
heavy water, he ran the fusion spell—

And a detonation the equivalent of a ton of TNT exploded
behind him.

More plasma blasts, one impacting with his screen, nearly
caused him to hit the water. Instead, he began weaving back and forth even more
wildly. Nearly frantic, he reached back and gathered more deuterium atoms, this
time for a blast worth 10 tons of TNT.

Detonating it.

The blast wave picked him out of the air and hurled him
tumbling forward, and he skipped like a stone across the wave-tops before
plunging hard and deep into the water.

For a few moments, he struggled to stay conscious. As he
hovered on the edge of blackness, the intense need to breathe threatened to
overwhelm him. Deep down, he knew that he could not give in or he would die
then and there.

He opened his eyes, the sting of the salt water burning them
at first. There was enough light that he could see the ocean surface perhaps
ten or so feet above him.

A noise to his left drew his attention, as something large
dropped into the water from above.

An Oni.

With a quick hand motion, Paul created a portal and swept it
over himself—

—dropping him onto the sandy beach of Yalata Land of South
Australia.

Gasping desperately, he took in deep breaths of air, as he
struggled to regain some measure of strength. There would only be moments
available to him, he knew, before the Oni tracked him here.

Reaching out, he gathered more deuterium from the surf in
front of him, concentrating it. Then, he reached out in the opposite direction,
up to the top of the nearest sand dune, opening a portal there.

The other end of which was straight up, 25,000 feet above
him.

Air and sand from all along the beach swirled in a sudden
cyclone effect, screaming through the portal and into the rarefied heights in
the atmosphere above him. With effort, he got to his feet, bracing himself
against the sucking wind, then launched himself up into the maelstrom. At the
last moment, he mentally reached back, triggering the deuterium behind him.

The blast wave of 20 tons of TNT left a huge gaping hole in
the beach and threw a mushroom cloud into the air nearly 3,500 feet up.
Moreover, it broke windows in the small town of Yalata more than twenty miles
to the east.

The best benefit of it all was that two of the Oni that had
been chasing Paul were almost instantly vaporized midway through their portals
onto the beach.

Paul was 25,000 feet above the Earth, high enough for him to
see the curve of the Earth’s surface. Below him, he could see a large swath of
beach, nearly 200 miles in each direction and he could also see nearly that far
into the interior of Australia.

According to what he had recently read on Wikipedia, 15,000
feet was as high as an unacclimated human could go without oxygen before
collapsing into unconsciousness. Which was why Paul immediately cast a spell to
reshuffle the air around him, pushing the nitrogen away and at least doubling
the oxygen content of the air he was breathing. Even then, he could barely
catch his breath.

He was falling now, rapidly reaching terminal velocity, the
wind pushing on his face and screaming in his ears.

Another spell, this one to protect his face and reduce the noise
of the wind considerably.

Was he free of the Oni yet? More important, was there a
wizard with them? And Capie and Daneel? Were they safe?

His first question was answered only five seconds later, as
another plasma blast shot past him, this one from above.

A glance upward revealed four Oni scattered above him, all
of them in free fall and all of them advancing on him.

Paul glanced around the horizon. He couldn’t force his way
through a portal back down to ground level due to the difference in air
pressure at his current altitude. At least, not directly, he couldn’t.

But there were other options.

With a snap of his fingers, a portal appeared below him,
directly in his flight path, and he sailed through—

—and now he was three hundred miles further east, high above
Port Augusta and also back up to 25,000 feet again, but still moving at
terminal velocity. Knowing that the Oni would quickly track him once more, Paul
reached below him and created another portal, this one taking him a thousand
miles further east, for a third time back up to 25,000 feet.