Rocket! An Ell Donsaii story #4) (6 page)

Cheers and applause followed this announcement and the spotlight fell on the next person.

Once the announcements were done Grandmother Emmerit turned to Ell and narrowed her eyes. “You and Roger work at the same company?” she asked suspiciously.

“Yes Ma’am.”

“Don’t they have rules against dating your boss?”

Ell glanced at Roger, seeing he was appalled again and winked at him. “Why no. They don’t have such a rule, but it’s a
very
new company.” She frowned with concern, “Perhaps they should?”

Mrs. Emmerit said, “Well I for one think it’s bad karma to mix romance and work. But if you and Roger continue to hit it off, perhaps you could find another job?”

Roger finally couldn’t take it anymore, “Gramma!” He rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Ell
runs
the company. She doesn’t work for me,
I
work for her. And if someone had to ‘get another job’ it would be
me
, not her!”

Mrs. Emmerit turned to stare at Roger in disbelief, then turned to look at all the others around her who were smothering their mirth. After a moment she threw her head back and laughed out loud. She turned back to Ell. “Well! I guess I’ve done stuck my foot in my mouth! I apologize. I guess you can tell from the way my own family’s laughing at me that this isn’t the first time I’ve done it?”

Eyes twinkling, Ell said, “Oh no Ma’am! I am absolutely astonished that anyone might think that!”

To her amazement Grandmother Emmerit grinned, then turned and stuck her tongue out at her nearby family members.

After the dinner was over a couple of the younger family members did ask Ell if she’d sign autographs for them. By the time she’d signed the entire family was bundling up to go out and sing carols for the neighbors. Ell went along and at first just mouthed the words, afraid of singing badly and spoil the harmony. A few minutes into the first carol she realized that several of the Emmerits sang horribly but joyfully so she joined in. Caroling turned out to be a funny, sweet, inspiring and joyful endeavor from which she returned home quite late.

***

Cape Canaveral—NASA and ILX today announced that they will attempt to launch another Vulcan 5 rocket with supplies to the International Space Station within the next two weeks. ILX hopes that some recent modifications they’ve made to the Vulcan 5 rocket motors will be successful. Although the supply situation at the Station is not desperate as yet, there is no doubt that a successful mission to the station is becoming a very high priority…

The D5R researchers had gathered around one of the big stainless steel tables in the middle of the big industrial room at the research facility for their morning meeting. Ell looked around the group, “Happy New Year to you all. Since we’re all so new, some even newer than others, I’d like to introduce and reintroduce the members of our little research group to each other. I’m Ell Donsaii. Since I wrote the original paper that our research is based on our investors have put me in charge of ‘directing’ D5R’s research program.” Ell waved to her right, “Roger Emmerit here has just completed his PhD in Physics at NCSU and is very interested in all aspects of our investigations but doesn’t have a particular specialization as yet. Next is Ben Stavos,” Ell indicated a slender thirty year old man with a shock of wild blond hair.” Ben comes to us from Hewlett Packard where he was a maven of microconstruction. He’s going to lead the team attempting to construct port rings by moving entangled molecules into place with high-speed micro assemblers. Fred Marsden,” Ell indicated a tall redheaded man, “comes to us from SUNY where he just completed a post doc with Edgar Venter working to quantum entangle macro molecules with some new techniques they’ve developed. He’ll lead our team that will see if they can successfully entangle carbon nanotube tori so that we don’t
have
to assemble ports two molecules at a time. Next is Brian Short,” Ell nodded at a grizzled man, “Brian is a lifelong machinist who can actually run all the equipment in our machine shop and claims he can make
anything
we need.”

Brian, waved his hands in protest, laughing, “
Almost
anything.”

Ell grinned at him, “I’m counting on ‘anything’ we need.” She pointed, “Vivian Varka there,” she indicated a heavyset woman, “is an electrical engineer who’s going to help me build circuits to generate the specialized fields we need. Hopefully, between the two of us we’ll be able to energize any ports the assembly teams are able to build.” Ell went on around the table, introducing assistants and minor players in each of the groups that she’d already introduced the heads of.

Ell looked around, “I know that none of you know each other very well yet but I hope that we gel into a real team. Although D5R has backstopped each of you with a relatively generous minimum salary, remember that
if
we’re successful in making the ports work on a larger scale, we have a profit sharing system.”

As the meeting broke up Ben Stavos rubbed his chin and wondered what he’d gotten himself into. He’d interviewed and taken this job over the net from Texas. Yes his minimum guaranteed salary was significantly better than HP had been paying him. But when interviewing over the net he’d thought that Donsaii just “looked” young. He also hadn’t realized that she was running the place; he’d thought she was just doing the hiring. When he’d arrived and found out that this girl child was in
charge
he’d been completely flummoxed. Then he’d done the research that he should have done before giving up his job at HP. She was
just
as young as she looked. Not even twenty yet! Yes, she
had
had a moment of brilliance that had set the physics world on its ear when she’d worked out the math for this 5th dimension and explained entanglement. However, even though Ben didn’t understand that math himself, he got the distinct impression that it was really just a bit of luck that had let her stumble across it. If this harebrained entangled port idea didn’t work quickly, he suspected that whoever was financing D5R would drop it like a hot potato—then what?

He admired her as she walked with Roger and Vivian over to the electronics table. She was wearing faded jeans, running shoes and an old t-shirt. No makeup. She should have looked plain but instead he could feel her drawing every eye in the room. In a simple clean cut wholesome way she was
beautiful
yet seemed completely unaware of it! If she
was
aware of it, surely she’d take the easy way out and work as a model, wouldn’t she? Oh well, maybe he’d just stick with this job until the investors gave up on it, then move on. Enjoy the moment. He turned back to the micro assembler setup, “OK, John,” he said to his assistant, “let’s see if we can persuade this monster to line up individual molecules in circles.”

***

Steve and Mary got out of their car and slung their backpacks. He watched a moment to be sure the car had begun to drive itself away to the parking lot. Then he turned and looked for Ell who had been dropped off by her car a few minutes earlier. She was about a hundred yards away, walking one of the campus’ brick paths on her way to her Astronomy class. The platinum blond wig she’d chosen to disguise herself with for her stint as UNC student Belle Donovan made her easy to pick out, even this far away. He and Mary began walking along the same path, Steve’s eyes darting around as he checked for threats. Once they reached the building Mary stayed in the lobby on a bench there. Steve entered the classroom and sat up near the back. He looked over the class. “Belle” was sitting down near the front and had started talking to the young man next to her.

Gordon looked up as someone sat in the seat next to his. Hmm, a pretty blond. Too much makeup for his taste. It looked like she was trying to hide a bad complexion. However, she was cute in a pale sort of way. He turned to her, “Hi, haven’t seen you around. You new?”

Ell grinned at him. He had freckles and curly reddish hair. “Yup. Just taking this one class ‘cause I’m interested in ET’s.” She raised her eyebrows at him.

Gordon gave her a look that combined a grimace and a query, “This is a pretty tough class to be taking just because you’re curious! You can read about ET’s on the net.”

She tilted her head. “Maybe so, but I’d like to get a deeper understanding than that.”

“Why not just audit the class over the net then?”

“’cause then I wouldn’t get to have scintillating conversations with fascinating people like you. My name’s Belle. What’s yours?”

He put out his hand, “I’m Gordon. A real Southern Belle ‘eh? I never thought I’d actually meet one.”

“Hah, ha. Didn’t yo momma nevah tell you not to make jokes about a person’s name? I’m sure I’ve already heard all the ‘Belle’ jokes you can possibly think of!”

“Oh ho! Did you just ring the starting ‘bell’ on a challenge?”

Ell rolled her eyes but was saved from having to respond by the arrival of Professor Norris. The Professor introduced himself and outlined the class on planetary systems before starting his first lecture. His speaking style kind of droned on but Ell found the topic fascinating. He was assigning some reading to be done for the next class as the bell rang.

Gordon looked wide eyed at Ell, “There’s the ‘bell!’”

She grinned and lightly punched his shoulder, saying, “I can see I’ll have to watch who I sit next to from now on.”

As she left the building she had her AI contact her car and send it to pick her up. She saw Mary getting up from a bench in the lobby to leave when she did.

Chapter Four

Cape Canaveral—NASA and ILX Corporation today announced that the latest Vulcan 5 rocket, carrying supplies for the International Space Station, has also failed to launch successfully. Once again, one of the new, super efficient motors trumpeted by ILX apparently exploded, driving the rocket off course and requiring it to be destroyed by internal charges. More and more concern is being expressed about the supply situation at the Station…

Roger and Ell walked into West 87 together and started toward the booth where the physics grads customarily hung out. Emma looked up. “Hey you two!” She bounced up out of the booth to give Ell a hug. “Am I ever gonna see one of you without the other again?” She was amused to see they both looked a little embarrassed.

Ell said, “Well, you know we work together now, so if we’re gonna go slumming at West 87 with our degenerate friends, it only makes sense to ride together.”

“Besides,” Roger said, “I’m buying her dinner in a transparent attempt to influence my new boss and the only restaurants I know anything about are here in Raleigh.” He shrugged, “If we’re gonna be in Raleigh on a Friday night, of course we’ve gotta drop by West 87 and visit you guys.”

They sat down and caught up with their old friends from NCSU. They were introduced to a couple of new grad students.

Cody, one of the new students wound up sitting next to Ell. He felt like there was something familiar about her but in the flurry of introductions he hadn’t really caught her name. She was hot! He wondered if she and this ‘Roger’ guy were in a committed relationship. He asked her, “When did Roger graduate?”

“Last December.”

“And you two work for the same company?”

Ell grinned at him. The grin lit up her face and he found her even more attractive, “Yep.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“Well,” she considered, “we’re very good friends.” She tilted her head, “and I’m pretty sure he’s a boy…”

Cody, happy to hear that she didn’t sound committed to Roger, glanced around the table. The others were all lost in their own little conversations. He turned back to Ell, “You seem familiar to me. Do we know each other from somewhere?”

She smiled enigmatically, “I don’t believe we’ve met.”

He tilted his head, considering. She looked about eighteen to twenty, younger than he was by a couple of years. “Are you sure? Where did you go to high school?”

“Morehead City.”

He grinned, “My parents have a vacation home on Emerald Isle and my dad
loves
to go fishing on Jim Slip’s charter boat out of Morehead. I’ll bet we’ve run into each other somewhere down there one summer.”

Ell tilted her head, considering. “Maybe we did.”

“Did you go to college?”

She grinned again, “A couple of years.”

Cody was a little disappointed, thinking she’d gone to a community college somewhere.
But who cares how far she went in school when she looks this good?
He glanced at Roger. Roger was deep in a conversation with Jerry. “Do you mind if our AIs exchange contact info? I’d love to see you again sometime.”

Ell shrugged, “No problem.”

Emma, sitting on Cody’s left, dug an elbow into his side.

He turned to her and saw her grinning at him. He raised an eyebrow in question.

“Have you figured out who you’re putting the moves on yet, ‘Casanova’?”

Cody glanced up at his HUD. It said, “Contact—Ell Donsaii.” He closed his eyes and felt his cheeks flush. He opened them to see Ell grinning at him. “I guess now I know why you seem familiar?”

She quirked her lip, “Maybe?” She tilted her head in consideration, then frowned a little, “But we might have met in Morehead too.”

A little later Roger and Ell got up to leave for their dinner at the Mellow Mushroom. James said, “You’re not taking her someplace fancy now that you have a job? My God man, you’re not gonna impress the girl that way!”

Ell patted James lightly on the shoulder. “Turns out ‘the girl’ likes pizza better than she does those fancy restaurants.”

***

Ell stared up at her HUD, watching the results of a computation she had Allan, her AI, running to calculate the orbits of the planets of Epsilon Eridani. It held interest for her because E. Eridani was only 10.5 light years away and had a planet in the “habitable zone.” However, it also had a large planet with a highly elliptical orbit that likely made the habitable zone planet’s orbit unstable. Ell was trying to calculate from the known orbits and masses of the various E. Eridani planets just how long the planet had likely been in the habitable zone.