23 Aug 2010

TSJ #36, Chapter 10: Construction

Posted by joncooper

THE FOLLOWING MORNING Bud Barclay found Tom Swift Jr. in his laboratory at Swift Enterprises. He was surprised to find the room filled with wooden crates. The young inventor was busily packing up his equipment.

“What’s going on, genius boy? Have you decided to leave this joint and move the company to New Mexico or something?”

Tom grinned. “Do you really think I’d leave home and move us to the desert? No, I’m just packing up my equipment so I can resume work on my claytronic stones. The stones are too dangerous to develop on Earth so I’m temporarily moving my lab to the Challenger. That way I can do all of my experimenting in space, far away from civilization.”

Bud looked puzzled. “But I thought your spaceship already had a lab! Didn’t we just spend weeks in it developing those very same stones?”

“It does, but it’s not as fully equipped as this one. That’s one reason why it took us weeks to accomplish what we did. With the equipment I’ve got in this room I should be able to progress much faster.”

“Makes sense,” Bud nodded. “So what’s the plan? Do you have a way to keep the stones from destroying the planet?”

“I think so,” Tom said, as he finished packing up his workbench. The young inventor nailed the crate shut, labeled it, and then placed it on top of the others. “There are really two problems. First, I need to find a way to get a signal through the time barrier. There’s got to be a way to do it – after all, we were able to send electrical signals through without any problems! I have a hunch that there’s some sort of flaw in the time dilator that’s throwing up interference. Once I get that fixed I should be able to control the nanites or stop them altogether.”

“But wasn’t the bigger problem the way that the nanites replicated themselves endlessly?”

Tom nodded. “Yes, it was, but in a way they were doing exactly what I told them to do. You see, I commanded the stones to replicate until they covered an area of so many square feet. The problem is that each individual nanite cluster tried to carry out that order! They didn’t understand that the order was for the group as a whole, and not for each individual unit. I need to add some way for them to communicate with each other so they can better understand what has already been done.”

“Sounds good to me,” Bud said approvingly. “And if anything goes wrong you can just send a kill signal. I like it! So how soon can we begin?”

Tom shook his head. “I’m afraid there’s no we this time, Bud. The experiment is just too dangerous! I don’t want my stones to put anyone else’s life in danger. This is something I need to do alone.”

“Which is exactly why you need your trusted friend and companion!” Bud countered. “This experiment is too dangerous to do by yourself. You need someone to keep you out of trouble! Besides, if you were up on the Challenger all alone you’d forget to eat and wouldn’t last a week. Trust me, skipper – you need a partner.”

“I guess you’re right,” Tom said at last. “I appreciate it, Bud. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“Hey, that’s what I’m here for,” his friend replied, grinning. “Oh, I almost forgot! Phyl wants to talk to you – I think she wants to go out on a date. You’ve got to admit you’ve been neglecting her recently.”

Tom nodded ruefully. “I guess it’s been a while since we’ve been out, hasn’t it? I’ve just been so busy lately! First there was the Challenger, and now this. I just haven’t had the time!”

“There’s always this afternoon,” Bud pointed out.

Tom shook his head. “I’d like to, but I really need to get my stones finished as soon as possible. Ned is going to deliver the Behemoth soon and I promised Ed I’d have the stones ready by the time the colonists leave. Can you talk to her and get a rain check for me? I promise the four of us will all go out together as soon as we’re back.”

“Don’t worry about a thing, Tom – I’ll take care of it,” Bud promised.

* * * * *

 

By the end of the day the two teenagers had packed up the entire laboratory, transported the crates to the airstrip, and flown them to Fearing Island. The next day they loaded the equipment onto the Challenger.

“I wish I’d had time to repair the kronolator before we left,” Tom remarked, as Bud piloted the spaceship off the island and into Earth orbit. “I know we won’t need it on this jaunt but it’d still be a nice thing to have.”

“We can always do that when we get back to Earth,” Bud pointed out. “I’ll call Ned this afternoon and ask him to build us one. They take a long time to build, but once they’re built they don’t take long to install. If Ned can have it ready by the time we return home I can install it while you’re off giving the stones to BG Industries.”

“You could install the kronolator without me?” Tom asked incredulously.

“I helped you install the first one,” Bud pointed out. “Besides, I’m sure I could borrow a team from Ned. He’s been building these units commercially, you know. They’re huge sellers.”

Tom nodded. “You have a good point. Come to think of it, though, don’t ask Ned to build a kronolator. I’ve got another idea.”

“Oh? What is it?”

“Wait and see,” Tom said mysteriously.

For the next two weeks Tom labored day and night in his orbital laboratory. Getting the stones to communicate with each other proved to be fairly simple, but finding a way to make the time barrier transparent to radiation was not. It took him a week before he realized the problem was minute impurities in the time induction matrix.

“The flaw is in our manufacturing process,” Tom explained to his friend. “The way we’re fabricating these matrices is just too crude. I had to make 34 of them before I got one that passed the quality tests! There must be a better way to create these but I just don’t see it.”

“Maybe Ned Newton could help with that,” Bud suggested. “After all, manufacturing is his specialty! One of his men may have an idea that could clear the whole problem up.”

“You’re probably right. I’ll talk to him after we wrap up our work here. I’ve still got one more big piece to do, though!”

Bud frowned thoughtfully. “Hmmm. You can communicate with the stones and you can keep them from replicating endlessly. What else am I missing?”

Tom grinned. “Oh, just the ability to have the stones form other shapes. I suspect that’s a feature BG Industries might be interested in.”

“Of course!” Bud exclaimed. “Man, that sounds tricky.”

“It’s really not,” Tom replied. “I can already use the Transmittaton to create objects directly from energy streams. We can feed it a pattern and produce almost anything we want. All I have to do is adapt that technology to these stones. Essentially, the stones will be producing the patterns using themselves as building blocks.”

“So why not just use the Transmittaton?” Bud asked. “It sounds like it’d be a lot easier!”

Tom grinned. “It takes a whole lot of energy to produce mass, flyboy! There’s no way we could just beam an entire city into existence – or even a house, for that matter! The key advantage to these stones is that they’re able to use their surroundings as raw materials. That enables them to reproduce themselves to the point where we can build pretty much anything, of any size. It’s a giant leap over what the Transmittaton is capable of doing.”

“It sounds like you’ve thought of everything,” Bud said approvingly.

“I certainly hope so,” Tom replied.

* * * * *

 

Three days later Tom announced that they were ready for the big test. The two teenagers had already performed a number of small-scale tests to make sure that the changes Tom had made were working. Now, though, Tom was ready to test everything.

“My goal is to feed the stones a blueprint and watch them make it,” Tom explained, as Bud piloted the ship to an unnamed near-Earth asteroid. “If they can do that without creating a chain reaction then I’ll be satisfied.”

When the ship reached the asteroid Tom had selected Bud looked at it, puzzled. The rock was only about two hundred feet long. “That looks kind of small to me, skipper! I don’t think we can land there.”

Tom laughed. “No, definitely not! We don’t need to land, though – we’ll just use one of our repelatron donkeys to transport a single stone down there. The asteroid should have more than enough material to replicate what I want. Besides, if something does goes wrong we won’t have destroyed a large piece of real-estate.”

“Good thinking,” Bud said approvingly. “So what are we going to be manufacturing?”

“Why, a kronolator, of course!”

Bud snapped his fingers. “Wow! Why didn’t I think of that?”

Tom grinned and deployed the repelatron donkey. Using remote control he maneuvered the donkey to the asteroid and deposited the stone onto its surface. The stone was solid green block, measuring two feet on each side. After securing the translucent stone to the asteroid’s surface, Tom then moved the donkey some distance away into space.

Tom then looked at his friend. “Are you ready for this?”

“You bet!” Bud replied enthusiastically. “This is going to work, Tom. I can feel it!”

Tom gingerly pressed a button on the Challenger‘s control panel. The stones immediately started to change color! As they turned dark green and became opaque a distortion pattern appeared around them, looking almost like a heat wave. The stones remained visible, however. After a short delay they began absorbing material from the asteroid and replicated rapidly.

“It’s working!” Tom cried enthusiastically. “I can still see them! If I’m right, this should only take a few minutes.”

Tom was proven correct! The boys watched, fascinated, as the stones took shape. After producing a giant mass of nanites the tiny micromachines began forming a kronolator. It took only a few minutes for the machine to become recognizable. Within twenty minutes the entire process was complete. An entire kronolator was now sitting on the surface of the asteroid!

The two teenagers cheered. “You did it, Tom!”

Tom was immensely pleased. “That will work, Bud. It’s even better than I’d hoped. Now let’s go get that kronolator and head home. I have an appointment with BG Industries!”

* * * * *

 

That evening Tom found himself standing in the private office of Ed Gamino. Ed was immensely pleased. “This is fantastic, Tom – truly fantastic!” he said, as he browsed through the technical blueprints that Tom had given him.

“It’s all there, and it works,” Tom replied proudly. “I haven’t tried it on anything as large as a city, but as long as we’re careful and build the colony in smaller sections we should be all right. When the Behemoth makes it to Epsilon Eridani I’ll come out and handle the city’s construction.”

Ed beamed. “I appreciate it, Tom. I really do. This is everything I had hoped for! You won’t regret this.”

Tom nodded. “It is a marvel. All I ask is that you don’t try building the stones yourself. The time matrices are extremely difficult to manufacture, and the tiniest flaw can lead to a runaway chain reaction. I’m giving you the blueprints so you can see what I’ve done but I want you to promise me that you will never, ever use them. I will personally bring the stones for your colony.”

“You have my word,” Ed promised. “I’ll file these away and leave them alone. And now it’s time for me to fulfill my part of the bargain!”

Ed got out of his chair, walked over to a secure filing cabinet, and unlocked the top drawer. He rifled through it for a moment and then pulled out a blue folder labeled “Time Trigger”. Ed handed Tom the entire folder.

“Here you are, just as I promised! This is everything I got from Tom IV’s laboratory – my only copy. It is all yours, my boy. I only hope that you are able to get it to work. I couldn’t understand a word of it, myself!”

Tom glanced through the folder. His pulse quickened as he realized that the documents were genuine! As he glanced over the hand-written equations his mind began to race. This is it! Tom thought excitedly. This is exactly what I needed! I can’t believe it. I’m finally holding the missing key to time travel!

“Now those aren’t actual blueprints,” Ed warned. “I think those are the research notes that Tom IV used to design his own time trigger. As far as I could tell Tom IV didn’t keep any blueprints. That’s all I was able to find.”

“This is all I need,” Tom replied. “This will work fine.”

“Wonderful! Wonderful. Remember, be sure to bring Irene here after you rescue her! I want to meet her.”

“I’ll do that,” Tom promised. “And thanks.”

“No, thank you. This is a day that will change the course of history forever! Mankind will never forget what you’ve done, Tom – never.”

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