James Lemoyne made a point of being as inconspicuous as he could as he took his tray and looked for a table in the cafeteria in the Engineering building at Eletto Technical Institute. His area of focus was pure mathematics, and there was a somewhat less than friendly rivalry between the newly created pure science disciplines in the newest addition to the graduate school at the Institute, and the older, more established departments of applied science, particularly Engineering—the engineers accusing the mathematicians of being so theoretically oriented that they were no practical good, and the mathematicians accusing the engineers of being so pragmatic that they were practically no use. On the whole, Lemoyne thought both accusations were ridiculous, but that made no difference; if he were caught, he could expect to suffer some razzing that he didn’t care to face.
His presence at the Eletto Technical Institute had come as something of a surprise to him. The invitation to apply to the newly created Pure Sciences graduate department at Eletto Technical Institute had come earlier in the summer, and given the offer of significant scholarship funds, he had decided to submit an application; the thought of being able to be in on the ground floor appealed almost as much as the potential scholarship. The form had been filled out, duly sent in and forgotten. He and his parents, his father being a physics professor at Chambana University, had come back from a prolonged vacation with the Briggs family, people who were neighbors and good friends; Jack Lemoyne and Charlie Briggs were also colleagues at the university, both teaching physics. In the mountain of mail that had collected in their absence, there had been the invitation to enter the masters program in mathematics at Eletto Technical Institute; the date for reporting to campus had only been a few days in the future, and forced the Lemoyne family into a frenzy of preparation. Jim had not even had time to share the good news with his childhood friend, Dean Briggs. All there had been time for was a hasty goodbye. Once he had arrived at the Institute, James Lemoyne had been swept up into the graduate work he had to accomplish, never quite finding time to keep the promise he’d made Dean about keeping in contact. That, Lemoyne knew, had been a major error, and his foray into the engineering library that morning had been a glaring example of why he should have kept in touch. There had been something about the intensely practical, engineering-oriented mind Dean Briggs had matured into that seemed to stimulate Lemoyne’s theoretical modeling.
Letting the chain of thoughts run through his mind took less time than it took him to find an inconspicuous table with a chair that let him face a wall. The mathematics graduate student put his tray down, staring at it more than at the wall, his compuclipboard to his right. The morning’s efforts had produced scant results, but what little he had, he studied intensely, hoping to find the sort of inspiration that Dean had once provided. The static displays of graphs and tables and copied text just couldn’t replace the dynamic banter the two had shared.
From behind himself, he heard a voice declaring that his greatest fear had been realized; someone was coming behind, talking to him.
"Man, so much for the property values. Didn’t anyone tell you that we’re totally down to Earth around here, and don’t have the time for air-headed theory?"
Lemoyne took a deep breath, debating his alternatives. There was no question that whoever had spoken wasn’t going to be satisfied with being ignored; the only options were aggressively responding or rolling over and playing dead. Given the number of others in the cafeteria, he decided he’d rather play dead than be dead. "That’s what I figured, man. There isn’t anything a whole lot more practical than filling an empty stomach. Well, I don’t think so. Not a lot about air-headed theory that fills the belly. Go somewhere practical if you’re hungry, right?"
"Whaddya know? A mathematician that has a seriously practical side! Who would have thought it? This I gotta see."
The voice moved to where he and Lemoyne could see each other. Lemoyne looked up. "Tinker!"
"I wondered how long it’d take you to recognize me, you old slowcoach. It’s not like you wear a badge declaring your major, you know; I’m surprised that you didn’t guess it was me when I knew what you were studying." Dean Briggs planted himself in front of his friend. "So this is where you disappeared off to, eh Thinker?"
Smiling, Lemoyne poked himself a couple of times. "Yup, looks like I’m here. Maybe not all here, but hey, since when was I ever all here anyway? What’re you doing here, Tinker?"
"Same as you are; grabbing some lunch." He emphasized his remark by stuffing a forkful of salad into his mouth, then gesturing with his fork as he continued, talking around a mouth crammed full of lettuce. "I’d applied to the engineering grad school here earlier in the summer; been planning to be here for years. I’m willing to bet a slice of chocolate cake that you’ve spent the morning scrounging in the Engineering library, looking for inspiration on some theoretical problem or other. How’m I doing?"
"Too well, man, too well. I’m not touching that bet with a pole. I’ve been looking for the kind of mental trigger that you’ve always provided. Believe me, I’m totally glad to see your mug, man."
"No kidding. I’m glad to see your puss, too, Jim. So, how many three-cent stamps in a dozen?"
Lemoyne chuckled; that had been one of Briggs’ favorite trick questions. "A dozen stamps or a dozen cents, you old reprobate? Twelve or four, depending. And don’t try tying the tracking device to my shoelaces again."
"You have to admit, it did work, at least until your shoe came untied. It fulfilled the criteria for the challenge you set, anyway."
"Ah, that’s what I get for not being specific with you, you bum." Lemoyne bit off a piece of sandwich. "Look, since you’re here, how about letting me in on what the graduate thesis you’ve been assigned might be?"
"They’ve stuck me with field generator technologies, Thinker. They want me to—"
"Tinker with it, right?"
Briggs rolled his eyes. "Two points on your score card, stinker. You’re right on the money; they seem to be hoping that I can simplify the complicated mess for them. What’s yours, and why’s it got you here, of all places?"
"They’ve stuck me with building a bottom-up integrated mathematical model of exotic states of matter, Dean. My profs seem to be of the idea that what Engineering has been using so successfully for lo, these many decades is a huge kluge of excessively practical, but not altogether adequate, algebraic patches." Lemoyne shrugged. "Like I’m going to argue that the fact that it works well enough to let us build warp drives suggests pretty strongly that it’s pretty thoroughly adequate. Anyway, I was looking for some raw data on one of those exotic states, and found pretty nearly nothing."
Serious now, Briggs nodded, chewing meditatively. "Jimmy boy, don’t air this around, but your professors are perfectly right. We’re scraping hulls to get the heat dissipation low enough to do Warp five without cooking everyone in the starship. As it stands, we’re busting our chops trying to pump heat out the hull; you don’t even want to know how much energy that’s costing us. We need some major help on energy transformation." Another forkful of food disappeared into Briggs’ mouth. "Anyway, just don’t tell anyone I said the theory boys were right, okay?"
"Cross my heart and both my eyes, buddy." Lemoyne purposefully looked at his own nose, his eyes crossing. "Can I assume that you’re in this with me?"
"Just like old days, Thinker. Now what about some refined details? Don’t know if I can find what you need, but without some details, I’m never going to do you any good."
The compuclipboard suddenly moved between the two men. "Pretty simple, at first. Consider the simple occurrence of a high-energy gamma photon hitting something, say a neutrino or a muon or whatever, and splitting into a particle-antiparticle pair. There’s a brief instant, maybe a few yoctoseconds or so long, where the electromagnetic energy isn’t really a photon, but hasn’t yet become matter. It’s something, but no one knows what. I was trying to get some data on the reverse reaction—matter and antimatter into energy—to see if I could get a handle on what that looked like, but I couldn’t find a thing."
"So who cares, Thinker? I mean, other than theory boys like you and the other boffins in math or physics? Not that I’m not going to pitch in, mind you, but I’d love to have a good, practical point to doing it."
"Let me put it this way. What would happen if we could come up with a mathematical model that allowed you to tweak things so that the matter-antimatter reaction produced Basis Field energy directly, rather than electromagnetic energy that you had to absorb and convert to Basis Field? What would that do to the efficiency of your drives?"
Briggs’ eyes almost bugged out. "You can’t do that, can you?"
"I don’t know. Can I? I haven’t the vaguest idea; the data I was scrounging for might have answered that. Either way, if I could…"
"I guess if anyone could, you’d be the one that did, Thinker. Even the best of our systems have a thirty-five percent energy loss going from the hard gamma we get from mutual annihilation to Basis Field then to warp field. That’s why the heat dissipation’s such an obnoxious problem; most of what we lose turns into heat. Go straight to Basis Field energy, and that’d take the loss to, oh, maybe a third or less of what it is now." The engineering graduate student shook his head. "The possibilities boggle my mind, all four neurons worth. Consider me sold on your project."
"Thanks, Dean. I figured you’d understand when I made the potential clear. So, any idea where I need to go to find the data I need?"
For a moment, the Tinker looked around the cafeteria. A smile crossed his face. "You need to stay put, man." He put his thumb and middle finger into his mouth, whistling shrilly. "Hey, Taggerty! You got your compuclip with you?"
"Yeah, of course I do. Didn’t anyone tell you I sleep with it?"
"Whatever. Grab your grub, grab the compuclip, and grab yourself a chair over here. I think I just found you the mother lode for moving ahead on your little project." Briggs watched as his fellow engineering student complied with the request. "Pete, this is Jim Lemoyne, an old buddy of mine. Soul of an engineer, despite being in pure math. He can massage your data on his compuclipboard and tell you where the lumps are faster than you’re gonna manage using the full computational resources of Engineering. It’s instinct, I think. Just don’t squeal on us, eh? Don’t want anyone knowing we hobnob with the theory thumpers, y’know?"
Taggerty put his tray and compuclipboard on the table, pulling up a chair. "I didn’t know you math whizzbangs lowered yourself to visiting over here in the applied areas."
"Keep it down, will you?" Lemoyne looked around pretending to be afraid someone would hear. "You’re going to ruin my good name, and that’s a fact." He winked conspiratorially. "Now let me see your compuclipboard full of data. Any buddy of Briggs’ is a buddy of mine."
"Forget just looking, man. Let me transfer a copy. File’s a matrix, about a hundred by a hundred. You’ll go cross-eyed trying to look at it." Taggerty aligned his compuclipboard’s transmission bead with Lemoyne’s. "Let’s just do it compuclip to compuclip and ignore the wireless; no pranks that way. Here it comes."
There was a short pause while the data transferred, then a longer one as Lemoyne studied the data. Lemoyne nodded to himself, then began tapping rapidly on the control area. He paused, then tapped a little more, repeating the cycle a few more times, stuffing food in his face during the waits. Finally, he looked up, somewhat annoyed. "This is as good as I can do off the cuff, Pete. It’s not very good, I’m afraid, but I’d need a major math crunching computer to do any better in less than a couple of days."
"Drat." The engineering student was clearly disappointed. "Well, what have you found?"
For reasons neither of the others could understand, Briggs was having a hard time controlling his amusement.
"It turns out that the best approximation is a five dimensional needle rotating through a limited number of discrete positions." Lemoyne looked at his compuclipboard again. "I’ve only got it down to half a percent error, though, and I’m not happy about that. We’re not talking major precision, here."
Taggerty’s eyes threatened to bug out of his face. "Whoa, like a whole half a percent? I can truly live with that. Could you ship me your little model and the math that runs it?"
"No problem. Just a sec." He fiddled with the controls. "Let me ship the program back, compuclip to compuclip. Align yours with mine, will you?"
Taggerty obeyed. Transmitting the model took all of ten seconds. The engineer’s eyes widened even more. "That’s it?"
"Yup. I mean, it’s not exactly high precision, for space’s sake." The mathematics student shook his head. "Really, it’s terribly…"
Clutching his compuclipboard gleefully, like a child clutching a treasured new toy, Taggerty headed out of the cafeteria, clearly forgetting his tray, dessert and all. "Briggs, you and your buddy just got yourselves invited to the bash at my apartment Friday night."
"Sorry, Pete; can’t make it. Got caught being out of line by a professor, and I’m doing the military version of penance for a couple of Fridays." The attempted appearance of contrition Briggs tried to assume was hardly successful.
"I owe you both. Maybe we could do dinner, say in about two or three weeks? I’ll connect on the commnet. Jim, don’t forget that magical compuclip of yours!" Almost chortling with glee, Taggerty waltzed out the cafeteria.
Lemoyne watched him go, clearly puzzled. He turned to his childhood chum. "What’s with him? You’d have thought I’d handed him a starship of his own or something."
The chuckle Briggs had been suppressing finally bubbled over. "Thinker, you owe me one big slice of cheesecake. Look, here in Engineering, we’re just thrilled out of our gourd to get within five percent, and we usually are lucky to get within ten percent. The models we use to get there are often programs half a gigabyte long or longer, and it takes four of us to kluge ‘em together, over about a month. So, you get him ten, maybe twenty times closer than he thinks he’ll ever get, you do it all by yourself in five minutes, and the whole file is what, three megabytes?"
"Um, just less than half a meg, actually."
"You make me cringe. Read my lips: you gave him fist-sized diamonds in gold settings as far as he is concerned." Briggs grabbed the dessert off Taggerty’s tray, digging his fork into it. "He’ll never come back for the chocolate cake; we better not let it go to waste."
"I was going to get you that fat slice of cheesecake, Tinker. Am I suddenly off the hook?"
"Nah." Briggs shoveled another load of chocolate cake into his mouth. "You can deliver it Friday, man. If you’ll give me your BellComm address, I’ll call you. I really do have to do military penance, and I’ll probably need the cheesecake to keep me from going crazy."
Something about Briggs getting in trouble with a professor failed to surprise Lemoyne. "So, what’d you do? Put an electronic whoopee cushion in his desk or something?"
"Wish I had; it’d have been worth it with ol’ man Stratton. Runs the most absolutely boring engineering lab in the whole Institute, I swear he does. So does everyone else—including ol’ man Stratton."
"That completely fails to tell me what you did, Tinker."
"That’s just it—nothing, really. I just realized that my test bench was calibrated poorly, so I ripped the cover off the stupid thing, trying to get it to at least one percent precision."
"Aren’t you the guy that just said ten percent was acceptable, and five percent was wonderful?"
"I know, I know, but that’s for engineering models, not my test bench. I want my measurements precise. Let me get back to the story, okay? Stratton caught me, and took umbrage. Seems the old man had tuned the test bench circuits himself, and thought they were just grand. Grand my left great toe—eight percent error reeks to holy high heaven, if you ask me. Stratton pitched a fit, and allowed as how if I thought I was such a hotshot little engineering snot, I could spend my Friday nights bringing all fifty of the test benches in the lab to one percent precision. I bet him a hundred credits I could do it in a month—so you better believe I’m going to get it done as fast as I can."
"No kidding." The Thinker nodded, thinking. "Look, can you kluge together a gadget that will let my compuclipboard tell it to twist your setscrews and check the outputs? Twist them all at once, if I want, mind you."
"Shouldn’t be too hard. Hmmm… I could use piezoelectric driver to a gear that drives a shaft… Hey, how tight do you want to control this, anyway?"
"Either direction, to a precision of a tenth of a degree or less. Doable?"
"Yeah, I just have to do some reduction gearing for the fool things. I can do it, yeah. Tell you what, I’ll call you on where and when you can deliver my slice of cheesecake." Briggs grinned. "If I’m guessing what you’re thinking, Thinker, and it works, I’m gonna owe you a whole cheesecake. And a chocolate cake, to boot." He looked down at the compuclipboard. "Rats—gotta run. Class in five minutes." He snatched his compuclipboard and tray up, running for the door. "I’ll be in touch!"
Lemoyne shook his head, a lopsided grin on his face. Being in graduate school hadn’t changed Dean Briggs an iota, and he was glad, at least mostly so.
Friday at twenty hundred hours found Jim Lemoyne moving toward the engineering labs, two containers, each containing a generous slice of cheesecake, in the sack in one hand, and his compuclipboard under his arm. There was no question as to where he needed to head, though his friend had been explicit in his instructions about how to find the lab in question: only one set of windows showed light. Quietly but swiftly, he descended on the room in question, finding Briggs hunched over an open test station. Briggs looked up. "Man, am I glad to see you, Thinker. This is harder than I thought. I tweak one setscrew, it affects everything else. No wonder old man Stratton thought I’d never finish the project. These things are total junk."
"I’ve got the cheesecake, blueberry topping and all, just like you always liked it, old friend. Do you have the little gadget?" Lemoyne delivered the containers as he spoke.
The engineer unveiled an incredible object, sprouting gears and wires in an eye-straining combination of directions. "Here it is, Thinker! Briggs’ electronic screwdriver set, ready for your little compuclipboard to rescue me."
"Super. Just let me have that gamma connector, will you?" The cord was passed, and Lemoyne slid it into place on the side of his compuclipboard. "Now, if you’ll put it in place on your little gadget there?"
With some fussing and fuming, Briggs got every screwdriver bit placed to his satisfaction. When Briggs signaled that he was ready to go, Lemoyne nodded and tapped a control on his compuclipboard. He reached into the sack. "Here you go, Tinker. Eat hearty." He pulled out the containers, giving one to his friend and taking the other himself. "Might as well; it’ll be a little while before there’s anything else to do." As Lemoyne spoke, the gears on Briggs’ contraption started moving, stopping for a few moments, then moving again.
"What’s going on?"
The mathematics graduate student tilted his head to the side. "My compuclipboard is doing successive approximations of the ideal settings for that particular test bench, using a derivative free non-linear least squares best fit iteration scheme to estimate the adjustments needed; I’ve set the thing up to use the position of the screws as the parameters that we’re fitting. It’s simple, really. I tossed in a memory function to get an idea of the shape of the k-dimensional surface that represents the outputs as a function of the setscrew settings. Nothing fancy."
"If I didn’t know you better, Thinker, I’d accuse you of talking dirty." Briggs scooped up some cheesecake, being careful to keep the ample dollop of blueberry topping from dripping on his clothes. "As it is, I know you’re convinced you’re talking sense, no matter how much it sounds like gibberish to me."
Lemoyne winced. "Okay, maybe I over-explained that. Let’s put it this way: I’m making highly scientific, wild-eyed guesses at what the right answer really is, resetting the screws, and seeing how close I’ve got it. Based on the results of the first guess, I use the math to make a second scientific wild-eyed guess. Using the outputs of those two guess, I get a guess at what the third batch of settings needs to look like. After a dozen iterations or so, I should be pretty close. It’s sort of similar to Newton’s Bisection Method for estimating a square root, except that we’re working with a vector, and following the vector to a minimum of the summed squared deviation."
The gears continued their turn-and-stop behavior, Briggs’ eyes temporarily rolling in agony; the gears’ turns progressively became smaller and smaller over about fifteen or twenty minutes’ time. Finally, they stopped, and the compuclipboard chimed.
"Okay, let me see how close to perfect this little rascal is." Dean moved to the test bench, triggering a self test. He jotted a handful of outputs down on his own compuclipboard, then repeated the test a second and a third time, jotting down what he found each time. He looked up. "Not bad, man, not bad. Down to point one percent. I love it. Pity it takes so long; there’re forty nine more to do; toss in the time for setup and it’s going to be a half hour each—that’s nearly twenty five more hours."
"Wrong answer. This little subroutine is self-teaching. It’ll take maybe ten minutes on the next couple, maybe five minutes on the fourth and fifth, and only a couple or three minutes on each one after that. Well, that’s my estimate, anyway. It’s one of those little math tricks that we’ll probably find a use for again, some time. Either way, set the next one up, Tinker. I’ll clap the top on this one and run the screws in for you." He grabbed a screwdriver and moved to do as he threatened. "I may be a theory thug, but I can handle a screwdriver, you know. Save a little time. And if we start popping the tops of the next ones while the current one is going, we can save even more time."
"I don’t believe this." The engineer in training picked his contraption up, moving to the next test bench. "You realize this should be impossible. There’s nine screws that control the impedance of critical sections of the circuitry, and they produce severely interdependent results. What kind of magic are you doing with your little compuclip?"
For a few moments, Lemoyne focused on getting the covering on the test bench, meditating his answer. "Okay, here it is, cookies on the bottom shelf. Rather than just tweak one thing at a time, the program tweaks them all at once. That speeds things up a whole lot. I’m oversimplifying, you realize, but that’s pretty close. And by remembering what worked on the prior calibration sequences, it’s able to get to the target considerably more quickly."
The second test bench was set up for tuning by the time Lemoyne had the cover back on. As predicted, it took considerably less time—barely over eight minutes. The third one took just less than seven and a half; the fifth one took longer to set up to tune than it did to do the tuning. By the time the last test bench circuitry was being retuned, only about three and a half hours had passed. Briggs was grinning from ear to ear. "Stratton is going to absolutely choke. Thinker, can you save the learned part on this and ship me the compiled control code?"
"Not a sweat. Frankly, the way I figure it, what we want to do is clean up at Stratton’s expense. You can patent that little gimcrack of yours, and I’ll copyright my code. Well, maybe you’ll want to pretty up the gimcrack, too. Anyway, if we can get it out where it’s visible, we might turn a pocket full of coins with it. We might even be able to get out to eat a little more often, off campus."
"While I’m at it, I can probably reduce the size of the gizmo, too. Look, lab with Stratton is Monday morning; I’m willing to bet that he’s going to want to have some proof that you exist. What say you stand ready to be tapped about lunch hour?"
"Monday’s my easy day, Tinker; no problem. Jingle me on the BellComm if you need me." Lemoyne winked. "I’m looking forward to Stratton’s reaction."
Monday arrived, finding Briggs in the lab, making sure that the test bench electronics had remained in good calibration. It appeared that they had. Pleased, the engineering grad student settled himself in the chair at his assigned test bench. Only a moment or two passed before Doctor Stratton arrived.
"Up bright and early, eh? Have you come to beg mercy?"
"No sir." He stood. "I got started on Bench One and got as far as I could, Friday night. I was hoping that you’d check to see if I was up to grade on the ones that I had tuned. Sir."
"Really. Knowing what utter trash these test stations are, I’ll be amazed if you got below three percent precision." The professor produced an object from his pocket that he slid into the connector on the test station. "My own little toy; put it together myself, to give me continuous feedback as I try to tune these fool test stations. It’ll check this thing out to the nearest nitpick of notwhat." He had barely finished talking when it flashed. "Not bad, hotdog. Precision, 0.09% on the first bench. Let’s see how far you got." Disconnecting his test device, Stratton headed to the last bench where he slid it in place. It quickly moved to a reading. "0.078% precision. That’s not possible by hand, boy."
"It sticks in my craw, sir, that in your first lecture, you made it clear that an engineer should consider his tools and his engineering efforts an extension of himself." Briggs knew he was skating on thin ice, but it was better than trying to pass off an outright lie. "I built a gadget to twiddle the set-screws, sir."
"That might explain how you did all of the test stations in one evening. Let me guess: you got someone to help, right?"
"An old childhood chum that I ran into over lunch Tuesday of last week, sir." Stratton’s attitude was beginning to worry the engineering student. "It was in the same lecture that you said a good lead engineer should consider his team an extension of himself, sir. I took that seriously, and felt that I was within the limits of our little wager."
"Oh, that." Stratton took two fifty credit notes out of his wallet. "One fifty for you, one for your buddy, do you hear me? It’s worth twice that to have this junk actually tuned to useable levels. Took me nearly a week to get ‘em less than ten percent." The professor smiled, his face becoming animated for the first time in Briggs’ memory. "Let me guess—your childhood chum must have been from over in the math department; the iterative approximation routine you’d have to have used would have needed five engineers two months to get written, but a good math freak might have been able to do it in a handful of days if he was clever enough. I want both of you at my office at noon; we need to talk about this contraption of yours." He looked around, his face slipping back into its usual bland shape. "Now get to your test station. I need to try to bore the idiots out of Engineering, and get the clever ones like you tricked into getting into trouble, so I can challenge them."
Briggs eyes widened with comprehension of Stratton’s mode of teaching. Silently, he returned to his test bench, looking forward to the reaction of the other students when they saw their test bench results.
*
Noon found Lemoyne and Briggs in Stratton’s office, the professor looking at them across the desk, an uncomfortable silence stretching as he did. He finally broke the silence. "Briggs I know, young man. Just who would you be?"
"James Lemoyne, sir."
"And what would your field be, James Lemoyne?"
"Graduate level mathematics, sir."
Stratton nodded. "I figured that. Look, boys, that contraption of yours is patentable. Were you aware of that?"
Briggs took the lead. "The thought had crossed our minds, sir. And the software system might well be copyrightable, too. We had discussed looking into that, and perhaps seeing if we could turn a credit or two marketing it."
"Don’t know about that, one way or another, until I cast my eye on it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was." He looked at them both. "I hope you both realize that the units you were tuning were barely better than trash." The two nodded. "Good. You brought them to a precision my top flight station barely rivals. I have a proposition for you two, if you’re interested. I propose to give you two the resources you need for refining the design of your little toy, in return for you two using it to tune up a few test benches for me. You two get to grab all the credit you want, and whatever you earn; I just want to get my test bench as tuned as it can get, and the benches of a couple of colleagues. If I can find a place that’s interested, I’ll even negotiate the sale of the thing for you, if you want. The Institute hasn’t quite figured out that it needs to have rules for that sort of thing with cadets, and I’m thrilled to get a chance to annoy administration. That, and I’d expect a couple of the production models, when they come out. Game?"
Lemoyne looked at his companion, who nodded almost imperceptibly. "I think so, sir. Except for one little thing—I’d like access to some data your department might have, strictly on the hush, if possible."
"Of course on the hush, you young fool; can’t have it getting around that I’m collaborating with you theorists, now can I?" Stratton winked. "Wouldn’t want it getting around and ruining your reputation, either. Now, where’s that device of yours?"
"It’s hidden in the lab, actually, Doctor Stratton." Briggs stood. "Shall I go fetch it?"
"Yes, yes, young man, pretend you’re named Rover and go fetch." He grinned at Briggs, then turned on Lemoyne. "While your alter ego is getting the gimcrack, I’m willing to bet that your little compuclip there has the control programming on it. I’d like to look at what you’ve got."
It was a Thursday, about two and a half weeks after their meeting in the engineering cafeteria, and Pete Taggerty had insisted that Dean Briggs come to an engineering dormitory’s common area, bringing Jim Lemoyne with him; both men were instructed to bring their compuclipboards with them, which was no surprise. The only surprise was that they were meeting somewhere other than the apartment Taggerty shared with Rusty Pulaski. Lemoyne guessed that the visit was payback for the model he had created for Taggerty. Although the pizza was no surprise when they arrived, the half dozen other engineering grad students were.
Taggerty had the decency to look slightly sheepish. "Hi, guys. Hope you don’t mind that I brought a couple of others here to join us. When I started making the sort of progress that model of yours made possible, a couple of buddies got curious and offered to chip in on food and drink. They’d love to pick your mutual brains, that is if you don’t mind too awfully."
Briggs stared at the ceiling. "All things in due order, folks. If you think either of us are able to concentrate with empty bellies, you’re stark, staring mad, especially with this room absolutely reeking of mouth-watering pizza. Let’s bust into the grub; once the appetite is starting to settle down, then we make sense." He emphasized his remark by opening a bag of chips and plunging his hand into it. "For a change, I mean. Don’t always make sense, you know."
"At least we know why the compuclipboards were part of our evening apparel, Tinker." Lemoyne helped himself to a steaming slice. "Look, Pete, as long as no one minds my keeping the data to get some insights I need, I’m easy, but you’re going to need some sort of display we can all see. The way I figure it, you’ve probably got something up your little engineering sleeve."
"Already arranged, man." The voice was unfamiliar, from one wall. "Well, it will be when I get it plugged in, anyway. There’s gotta be a power source somewhere around here that I can tap, for pity’s sake." Even as the voice was grumbling, its owner apparently found what he sought. A large display on one end of the room lit up, temporarily blank. "That’s got it. If you bums have scarfed all the pepperoni pizza, you’re all in dire trouble." A red head poked up from behind it. "Rusty Pulaski, Engineer Extraordinaire, at your service." He snapped off a mock salute.
"Pepperoni’s over there, Rusty." Briggs pointed with a half-eaten slice. "So who’s on first?"
"I’m going to be a quickie, so I get the first slot." It was Taggerty. "I’ve just got a little bit more data for you to massage; I’ve compared it to the model you already constructed, and I’m thinking that with a little more tweak, I’m going to be so good, I’ll almost glow in the dark. You still have the stuff I beamed you the other day?"
"Sure do; it’s been the source of useful insights for my own little project in theoretical stuff. Beam me the rest, let’s see what we can do." Lemoyne moved his compuclipboard into position. "Hey, Rusty—how do I get output to your little screen?"
"Local wireless connect’s the easiest way. You got one on your little compuclip?"
"It’s supposed to, but it’s been augmented a good deal, so I’m not promising it’s still there. I’ll check after Pete’s done beaming his data over." There was a brief pause. "Looks like it. Gimme a sec, let me play with the new data." After a few moments, the screen came alive with numbers. "This is the actual data in red, and the model’s prediction in blue. The stuff in green at the bottom is the model used to approximate it. Input?"
Briggs broke the silence. "You’re just using integers for the settings, right?"
"Well, of course; this is all down on the quantum realm, man. We have to stay with integers, right?"
Briggs rolled his eyes. "Gimme a sec." He fiddled with his compuclipboard for a minute. "Integers for multipliers, Thinker, but we can multiply anything we want by it. What about using an integer times some constant?"
"Never thought of that." Lemoyne fiddled a little with his compuclipboard. The display precision improved a little, then by several steps, even more. "Good thinking, Tinker. That number in yellow at the bottom of the screen is what I’m using as a constant that I’m multiplying by the integers."
From the back of the room, another voice made itself known. "Hey, I think I recognize that. Hold yourselves in patience for a sec." A number in black appeared below the yellow one, matching it almost perfectly, but extending several digits further. "See what you get with that; if it works, then I show you how I got it."
Obligingly, Lemoyne inserted it into his model; the deviation between the model and the data all but disappeared. "Hey, not bad at all, man. Where did that number of yours come from?"
"From here." A formula, all in black, involving pi and several other familiar constants popped onto the screen. "I’ve been fiddling with projections of multidimensional fields onto three space, and the formulas kept coming up with this ugly mess. When your guess was close to it, I figured, hey, maybe it was the way to go. Looks like I was right."
Taggerty stood up, slapping the man on the back. "You’re absolutely on the money. Jim, if you’ll beam the model and Charlie’s constant to my compuclipboard, we can tackle Charlie’s data next."
"Good thinking, Pete." Briggs cleared the display unit. "Let’s take that as a mode of operation; if you’ve got data, and you’ve made a contribution that makes whatever is on the display work a whale of a lot better, you’re next in line for the group analysis. That work for you guys?" There was a chorus of approval. "Good. Because as far as I can see, it’d be hard to find something more motivating to pay attention to the task at hand and put your whole wit to making things work wonderfully. Charlie, strut your stuff!"
"Here comes." Equations, graphs and data started filling the screen. "You already know that I’m working in the projection of multidimensional fields onto three space, so I don’t need to do a whole lot of explaining. Most of the equations are just kluged from lower dimensional stuff." A batch of relationships were suddenly highlighted in red. "These puppies are the ones that I did from sheer theory; you might recognize a constant here, Taggerty."
"Sure do, Ngorongo. Where’s your problem?" Taggerty walked to the large display, as if getting closer to the display would give him inspiration.
"His theory and his data don’t match, Pete." Briggs walked up to the screen, pointing. "Here’s why, Charlie. You have a minus here; you ought to have a plus, I think."
The sign obligingly changed; the fit between the data suddenly improved dramatically. Charlie Ngorongo’s jaw dropped almost to the floor. "It works, all right, but it’s got to be a minus sign, based on the derivation I did."
"I don’t mean to be rude, but the data totally disagrees with you, Charlie." Lemoyne pointed out. "Tinker, clear the screen would you? And if you would, Charlie, throw your derivation up there so I can stare at it."
While that was going on, the mathematics graduate student grabbed himself a couple of slices of pizza, quietly munching as he studied the derivation. It took until halfway through the second slice for him to see the point. "Here. You’ve got the square root of a rather messy relationship—and you take the positive root. Someone else check me, but the way I read this, if you don’t take the negative root, this particular part shifts out into the imaginary plane."
The redhead that had gotten the display running entered the discussion. "He’s right—unless you use the negative root, your sum on the energy in this section raises higher than what you start with. Use the negative root, and it’s equal. That’ll propagate all through, and should make things work fine."
"Good eye, guys! I missed that. Okay, Pulaski, your data next." Ngorongo cleared the screen.
Pulaski’s work replaced Ngorongo’s. "I’m working on trying to feed into a gamma ray laser with a matter-antimatter reaction, and I’m going spastic trying to get a fit on the data. Look at that mess, will you?"
"Beam it to me, Rusty." Lemoyne aimed his compuclipboard at Pulaski. "I’d love to fiddle a little, here." Enthused at the opportunity, he shipped the data. The mathematics grad student worked with it, becoming increasingly frustrated. "Hey, Tinker, get yourself over here and put your face where you can see this. I need some input."
Briggs wandered over, beverage in hand, staring over Lemoyne’s shoulder. "Yeah, this stinks. Throw it on the display anyway; it’s a whole lot better than nothing." Lemoyne complied, filling the lower part of the screen. "Okay, gang, look at that ugly mess down there. Thinker’s not even within twenty percent, and that model he’s using is more complicated than talking your way out of getting caught red handed, and it’s totally unacceptable, at least to me. Let’s hear some chatter about the problem."
Of chatter, there was suddenly plenty, groups of two or three debating the issues at hand. Finally, one voice raised itself over the others. "Y’know, we’re wondering what you did in terms of electromagnetic shielding on this one, and maybe control on the field permeability of the environment."
"Did the whole thing in a lab that’s a giant Faraday cage, guys; EM fields are essentially zilch, other than what the equipment made, and that’s going to be totally stable, within about one percent or less. Not an issue. Field permeability of the environment, though, that might vary. Let me check the days I did the stuff, here."
"The days you did it?" Lemoyne was puzzled, and it showed. "What’s that got to do with anything?"
"The weather, man, the weather." Ngorongo looked up from where he sat. "The field permeability of the air changes a little with the weather, especially with fog, rain, thunderstorms and the like. That might make a lot of difference on the results."
"Does it ever!" It was Pulaski again. "The most anomalous results were on a couple of days when we were having fog thick enough to use to butter bread; the most civilized ones were on nice, sunny days when I wished I could be outside, at least as far as I can tell." He sighed. "Okay, it’s back to the drawing board, I guess. I’m going to have to repeat some of this stuff with careful measurements of the local field permeability. Drat."
"No, not drat." Briggs took a gulp from his beverage. "Three cheers, man. That hints that you might be able to influence the reaction and its output by fiddling around with the field permeability in the reaction environment. Think of the possibilities if you could control the reaction’s output a little bit, eh?"
"Sure, Dean, sure. Don’t hold your breath on that." Pulaski’s data disappeared. "Any chance we can meet again, when I’ve got more data on my data?"
"I’d love it. Particularly, I’d love the data you plan to collect, man. I could use some further insights. Pete’s stuff gave me a leg up on my project; yours probably will, too. I hope." The eagerness Lemoyne felt was hard to miss.
"Tinker, where on Earth did you find this Human anomaly? A math theorist that likes data is sort of like a contradiction, know what I mean? Sort of like a red hot ice cube." Pulaski turned to Lemoyne. "No offense intended, and hopefully none taken."
"None taken, Rusty. What you have to realize is that, at least from the historical perspective, you’re way wrong. Gauss was one of the premier mathematicians of all time, advancing the probability theory and number theory, and I forget what all else; he was also magnificent enough as a physicist to end up with a measure of magnetic field strength named after him. Isaac Newton, who founded modern optics and defined the basics of gravitation, developed calculus. I have to admit that his notation was so barbarically difficult that it was rejected for Leibnitz’ notation for calculus, which Liebnitz developed independently of Newton, but that doesn’t diminish Newton’s practical and theoretical skills. We’re just walking the same path Gauss did, only as a gang, not as an individual."
"That’s us, then, the Gaussian Gang." Briggs’ voice had a loud overtone of finality to it. "I vote that we meet every Thursday night; we can all chip in for next week’s goodies, and let someone get them for us. What say, ladies and gentlemen?"
There was a chorus of agreement, ending with one lady’s comment, "As long as you guys don’t expect me to cook it. I draw the line there!"
Ngorongo looked over, the whites of his widely opened eyes making a stark contrast against the chocolate color of his skin. "I’d draw the line there, too, Paula. I’ve heard rumors about your cooking."
A pillow flew in Ngorongo’s general direction, hitting no one.
"We’re not talking anyone cooking anyway, you two." Briggs shook his head in mock disgust. "I’m thinking picking up portable grub—sandwiches, pizza, egg rolls, other sorts of finger food. I figure, we get twice as much as we think we’ll need, and there might be enough, right?"
"Sounds good enough." Taggerty produced a Starfleet midshipman’s cap. "Chip in what you can; what we get next week depends on this week’s generosity. Now, let’s get back to our mutual interests—other than food. Paula, what’d you bring?"
The evening quickly lapsed into studying one problem after another. Many of them one or more of the individuals present were able to resolve with modest effort; on that score, Lemoyne and Briggs turned out to be major players. Others defied all present; most of the time, constructive suggestions about necessary data to push the effort forward were provided. All received some benefit from the scrutiny. It was almost eleven when the group broke up, needing to get back before Institute curfew, everyone glad they’d come, and Lemoyne carrying a treasure trove of useful data to draw on for insights.
The Gaussian Gang began regular meetings; attendance was variable, of course, but Taggerty, Briggs and Lemoyne were invariably there. Between the wit of the three regulars and that of the others present, few problems were beyond someone’s insight. Taggerty and Pulaski, particularly, began to fire the interest of the others. It was the sixth or seventh time they’d gotten together, and Rusty Pulaski was displaying his data again.
"You wouldn’t believe this, gang. Look at the difference the field permeability undergoes, will you?" Pulaski pointed excitedly. "It makes you wonder, doesn’t it?"
"Wonder, schmonder, Pulaski. It gives me some real hope." Briggs started tapping furiously on his compuclipboard. "Just you guys give me a second, here. Thinker, you stinker, get yourself over here. I need a hand."
Lemoyne moved to comply, pretending to pout. "Hey, I showered today; I don’t stink." He looked over Briggs’ shoulder. "Outta my way, man, for a couple of seconds. I see what you’re up to." The Thinker tapped on the compuclipboard for a moment or two. "That look the part to you?"
"That’s the ticket. Okay, people, here it comes. What do you think of this?"
There was an almost pregnant silence as people stared at the display. Suddenly Paula Watanabe jumped up. "Straight to Basis Field energy from annihilation, you sly dog. Yes!" She started dancing wildly as she sang. "No more losses trying to capture the hard gamma, no more losses converting gamma to something we can use, no more losses converting that to Basis Field energy to set up warp fields. Whoopee!"
The significance of their achievement began to dawn on the rest of the gang gathered, and just short of mayhem broke out. Ultimately, Taggerty shouted over them all. "You knuckleheads want to get us busted for disturbing the peace, for Space’s sake? Quiet down, or the cops are gonna hang us for sure!"
With some difficulty, the crew controlled their enthusiasm. Briggs took what little control was possible. "Just because I’m able to set up a description doesn’t mean we can build it. We’re going to have to do some fancy dancing to get the stuff."
"Ah, that shouldn’t be too hard." Ngorongo was almost buried in his compuclipboard. "The only trouble is going to be getting thirty or forty grams of iridium lithiumide to work with so we can make a reaction chamber to charge up and test. Anyone got any ideas on getting that?" The silence was overwhelming. "I was afraid of that. We may have to go to one of our faculty advisors with this, to test it out."
"C’mon, Charlie, you know we’re going to have to do that to get the antimatter, anyway." Briggs shrugged. "It boils down to figuring out who’s the best one to tap, that’s all. We need to do a little scrounging on that, right?" There was a chorus of agreement. "Okay, then let’s table this until next week and go on to the next issue. Who’s got something?"
"For a change, I do, Tinker." All eyes were turned on Lemoyne, clearly figuring that he was trying to be funny. "No, really, I do. I need some practical eyes on what I’ve been working on, and, well, we all know where I come from, eh?"
There was a chorus of polite, but sincere laughter. "Okay, like we’re going to be any help, but lay it on us, man." Taggerty mimed putting on heavy glasses, pretending to be a superannuated member of the Institute faculty. "We will see what you have for us, young man. It had better be good, or we shall assign you to study the mathematics of latrines."
It was several minutes before the guffaws and snorts died down, during which Lemoyne covered the display in relationships, equations and functions. When things died down to where he could be heard, the man started with his explanation. "I’m supposed to be doing a pure theory approach to exotic states of matter, actually, but as you probably would guess, that also involves a description of the standard states, too. You guys and your data have really been a big help—don’t squeal on me, now, I’m not supposed to say things like that!—but I’ve hit a point where I’m starting to have some angst about what I’ve produced. So, here it is. Look at it for me, and let me know if anything jumps out and grabs you as being out in warp space, will you?"
From the back of the room, an unfamiliar voice chimed in. "I say, old boy, one thing does rather catch my attention. Quite odd, altogether. May I highlight it?"
Lemoyne nodded. "Please feel free. Don’t recognize you—what’s your name and field?"
"Oh, of course, I haven’t introduced myself. Most improper, do please accept my apology. I’m Brody Anthony, working on my Ph.D. over in Physics, focused on applied nuclear physics. This is my first visit to your illustrious group, after all, so you’ve hardly had a chance to get to know me." A section of the screen was highlighted. "This section here is phenomenally interesting. Do you realize the significance of your work, here?"
"I think I do; it’s the part that’s been giving me heartburn for days. I’d be interested in your take on it."
"Most kind of you." Brody Anthony’s light English accent hardly impaired understanding him. "Might I use the lower portion of your screen for a moment? I should like to do a few computations while I’m talking, and display the results."
"Help yourself, man." Lemoyne sounded hopeful. "I need all the help I can get on this section. It seems to predict utter nonsense."
"Oh, nothing of the sort, nothing of the sort, my good man." Brody looked up at the screen. "All that it predicts is the possibility that a nucleus could form, under the proper circumstances, and do so in two or more independent subsections. Not nonsense, sir, not at all; merely a thought that no one had ever contemplated. Most major discoveries do look like arrant nonsense on the first flush, at least to the casual, thoughtless observer." A set of spectral lines appeared on the bottom of the screen. "Ah, excellent. I say, would there be a materials engineering individual among our troupe tonight?"
"There sure would." Paula Watanabe’s voice came in from one side of the room. "And I happen to be working on the spectrum you’ve displayed, trying to figure out why dilithium produces a perverse broadening like you’ve got there. It’s weird stuff, dilithium; masses like carbon sixteen, has the proton and neutron count of carbon sixteen, but absorbs free baryons like two atoms of lithium eight and despite lithium eight having a half life of eight hundred something milliseconds and carbon sixteen having a half life of just under three quarters of a second, the stuff is stable as the rock of Gibraltar. What’re you doing with its spectrum, Brody?"
"I wasn’t completely sure that I had its spectrum, good lady." A hint of excitement entered the physics graduate student’s voice. "You wouldn’t happen to have the actual spectrum of dilithium about you, would you, Madam? So we could compare the two, I mean."
"You bet your eyes I do. Just a sec." The woman quickly displayed it below the theoretical spectrum on the screen. "There you go."
"Hot plasma on a barbecue grill!" Everyone turned to Charlie Ngorongo. "If that’s not within 1% or less, I’ll eat my shirt. Can you do the same with trititanium? I’d say use the titanium 51 isotope; it’s even shorter lived than lithium eight."
"Most happy to oblige, kind sir. Titanium’s a little larger, and Dysprosium 153 is large, too, and it’s got a bit longer half life, a tad short of six and a half hours." Anthony tapped rapidly on his compuclipboard. "Well, it will take a few minutes, don’t you know; three subnuclei, large mass and all that, it’s just going to take a little longer. I’m willing to wager that you might have the spectrum of trititanium on tap, eh, what?"
"Sure do, Brody, and despite the short half life of what it ought to look like, and what it’s presumed three components have, trititanium is rock stable, too. I’ll toss it on the screen." Charlie was almost drooling with excitement. The spectrum, widened lines and all, hit the screen. "See how you match that!"
Somewhat more slowly than the dilithium spectrum appeared, a spectrum appeared below it, very closely matching it, but not perfectly so. "It’s not nearly the match we had for dilithium." The nuclear physics major was clearly somewhat crestfallen.
"Glad to hear it. Try throwing in a bit of it with three titanium 55 nuclei, maybe, um, about twenty-two percent or so." Ngorongo was starting to smile, his bright white teeth forming a sharp contrast to his deep brown face. "That’s not going to be perfect, either, because I think there may be some trititanium at mass 168, too, but it should improve things a bit."
"I shall just put in a tad with three titanium 56 nuclei, just for the sake of completeness." There was more tapping. "I shall have to make the proportions adjustable, I think; I shall strive for the best fit I can get." Below the measured spectrum, the computed spectrum shifted, to be followed by several updated computed spectra, each being a little closer to the measured than the last one. Finally, apparently satisfied, Brody Anthony looked up. "Seventy-nine percent of the trititanium 153; nineteen of the 165 and two of the 168, I should say. Are you satisfied?"
"I’m totally ecstatic, and no mistake about it." Ngorongo’s grin widened to the point where it threatened to engulf his ears. "If you were looking for experimental confirmation of your theoretical structure, Jimmy boy, you just got it. It just doesn’t get any better than this!"
"Oh, yes it does." The voice was Briggs’. "Anthony, Lemoyne, Watanabe, Ngorongo, the four of you need to take this to your assorted faculty advisors, and propose that you jointly produce a paper with the preliminary findings, with the lot of you as authors, and the rest of us as collaborators. You all make dead sure you leave your calling cards, you hear?" There were nods all through the room. "Then, once you guys get the approval, we ask for a lump of iridium lithiumide to confirm some of our predictions, say fifty grams. Are we all on the same page?"
"We sing off the same sheet of music, Briggs!" It was Pulaski’s voice. "Then we cast what we need to test my little finding, and we’re all on Warp Street to a great future."
"I’m not singing with anybody! With my voice, they’d shoot first and ask questions later." Briggs chuckled. "They might not even ask questions, for that matter; they wouldn’t need to, anyway."
Lemoyne nodded. "Rusty, when you get your iridium lithiumide reaction chamber, I want to be working hand in glove with you and your team. There are a couple of things I’d like to check, and if what you’ve produced is any indication of what’s possible, I may be able to fine tune some of my theoretical work very nicely."
"Yeah, and maybe I can use your tuning to help with a point or two in the field generation stuff I’ve been working on." Dean Briggs turned to the team. "Any of you folks have something else to bring up?"
"I say, I’ve one little thing I’d like to offer you kind souls." It was Brody Anthony’s voice. "I mean, it’s all well and good to have a theory that recognizes what everyone already knows, but it’s quite another to predict what no one has found, and have it be discovered. With that in mind, does anyone recognize this spectrum?" As Anthony spoke, a new spectral display showed up.
"Looks a little like a candy cane I once ate." Pulaski tried to look serious.
"Typical, Rusty; you’re always thinking of food." Briggs chuckled. "I, for one, have never seen anything with absorption bands that bizarrely wide. Anyone else?"
The chorus of variations on "no" was almost deafening.
"Excellent, most definitely thoroughly excellent. Would you all kindly see if any of you can find a record of such an absorption band? If you can’t, perhaps using chemical extraction on a trititanium lode rather than the usual thermal extraction methods might yield a sample that would leave us with a bit of this material." The physics graduate student was clearly pleased.
"I can handle that." Bogdan Tsarski waved. "I’m a chemistry major, and I’m working on the chemistry of trititanium, anyway."
"Good. Brody, you’ve certainly earned the right to be the last problem of the evening. Have you something that you want to set before us?"
"As it happens, kind sir, I have; it is the whole point to my having visited your coterie, here. It is a project focused on warp physics. Not exactly what an applied nuclear physics major would be expected to do, under the circumstances, but one takes what one is given, and the department was desperate to get someone to take the problem, so I got volunteered."
"That’s fine. Throw your stuff on the screen." At a tap on a compuclipboard, Pulaski cleared the display.
"Oh, my, I’ve nothing to throw on your display, nothing at all." The physics major almost seemed apologetic. "Actually, I was rather hoping that you might offer me a suggestion or two as to how to collect data to process. If I might describe the problem I’m working on?"
"Fire away." Pulaski planted himself in a nearby chair.
"I’m sure you’re all aware that as a starship moves through warp space, it follows a pseudo-trajectory of small, but finite dimension, are you not?"
Watanabe nodded her head, answering Anthony for the others. "Yeah—it’s approximated as a simple parabola, because that’s acceptably close and computationally tractable, but the approximation isn’t as nice as we’d like."
"Quite so, my good lady, quite so. My task, as it has been assigned me, is to attempt to improve that approximation, if not develop a precise structure." The physics graduate student shook his head. "I find myself quite at a loss to know where to begin. Would any of you fine folks have an idea?"
Silence reigned as all in the room thought about it. It was Lemoyne that broke the silence. "Tinker, let me bounce something off you. Is there a way you can roughly measure the distance traveled in warp space?"
"That would be a definite maybe. The best thing to do would be to take a bubble of real space that contained a batch of some particles with a half life near to the estimated transit time and run it through into the warp field. Set up a detector where you anticipate the stuff arriving, then measure the proportion of the particle to its daughter particles; that gives you an estimation of the transit time. If you can guess the speed they’d be going, you can estimate the path length and you already know the chord across the curve. Get that across enough different settings, and I’ll bet you can guesstimate the shape of the curve."
"A most delightful thought, kind sir. I shall act on it." Even as he spoke, Anthony was making rapid notes on his compuclipboard. "I shall bring the data back to a future meeting, if I may."
"Wonderful. Then it’s time to celebrate, folks!" Briggs hoisted his glass of water. "To our first, and I hope not our last, innovation!"
Talking a faculty advisor into allocating the iridium lithiumide for the proposed reaction chamber turned out to be considerably easier than getting a supply of antimatter. In the end, it was Anthony that sweet-talked both out of the Physics department at the Institute—as stellar a physicist as he was, clearly he was even more remarkable as a salesman—and the Physics department was even convinced to insist that they shape the iridium lithiumide reaction chamber. Pulaski, with Briggs as his right hand assistant, had rapidly assembled the mechanics and electronics needed to run the preliminary test. Getting the apparatus ready to roll had consumed the talents and free time of essentially the entire Gaussian Gang for the whole month it had taken to complete the task. As the team assembled around the carefully shielded, shoe-box sized chamber that held the small iridium lithiumide reaction flask and its assorted sensors and shields, each at a bay of controls or readouts, the excitement and tension began to rise. Sharp at nine, as scheduled, the supply of neutrons and anti-neutrons in their field containment flasks arrived. With slow and cautious hand, Briggs linked them into the field guides. He straightened up. "We’re ready to roll when you are, Rusty."
Pulaski nodded. He looked around the room. "Paula, are your controls on the matter/antimatter supply lines reading correctly?"
"Couldn’t ask for better, Rusty."
"Jim, are you ready for analysis of the readouts?"
Lemoyne nodded. "My compuclipboard and I are ready and raring to go. Feed me data!"
Pulaski turned to Briggs. "How about you, Dean? Ready to generate the fields at whatever level needed?"
"You bet I am. I just wish this jury-rigged field generator was easier to control."
"Into every life, Tinker, a little rain must fall. This is your thunderstorm. Get an umbrella and be ready to roll." Pulaski’s grin gave the lie to his almost harsh sounding response. Briggs responded with a raspberry, which Pulaski ignored.
"You ready to drain out the iridium lithiumide crystal and measure the energy delivered, Charlie?"
Ngorongo nodded and grunted, obviously absorbed in his display. The team leader just rolled his eyes.
"Brody, how about you?"
"I am more than ready to keep track of the gamma generated, Rusty." The physicist nodded. "Quite ready for this noble effort."
Pulaski looked around the room one last time, trying to reassure himself that all was as he wanted it to be. Satisfied, he nodded to himself. "Paula, let’s interact about a thousand neutron/anti-neutron pairs."
"A thousand pairs coming; fifteen seconds on my mark…. Mark!"
Short though the delay was, it seemed to stretch endlessly. Finally, Anthony announced he had a gamma burst. Data flowed onto the display. Pulaski turned to Lemoyne. "How’s she look?"
"On the mark for the correct gamma output." Lemoyne looked up. "I’m itching to try this with the iridium lithiumide reaction chamber with the field charge we need to get nothing but Basis Field energy."
"Relax, Jim, relax. Let’s take this a step at a time. Dean, how about giving us twenty percent intensity on the field Lemoyne said would work?"
Briggs fiddled with a handful of controls, mumbling under his breath as if they could hear him speak and do as he bid them. Finally, he looked up. "Should be twenty percent intensity, ready to go. I hope."
"Paula, let’s run another thousand pairs."
"Okay." Watanabe tapped a control. "Fifteen seconds, on my mark. Mark!"
"Brody?"
"Much less gamma, Rusty. Absolutely capital." Anthony looked up. "I think we can say things are going along as we’d hoped, old man."
"Thanks for the ‘old.’ Charlie, if you’d quit staring at Paula’s legs under the table, maybe you could dump the Basis Field energy as visible light?"
"Aw, I can’t help it if she’s cute." Ngorongo worked his control area. "Okay, there you are. That’s got it."
"Lemoyne?" Pulaski turned to the mathematician.
"A couple percent stronger than I’d have expected." The mathematics graduate student looked over at his childhood friend. "Any chance that field could be running a little hotter than the display indicates, Tinker?"
"Any chance there’s a vacuum in space?" Briggs snorted. "This may be the best field generation setup possible with current technology, but as far as I’m concerned, it’s in deep, dire need of improvement—which I’m expecting this experiment will let me manage."
"Okay, okay, Briggs, but that can wait for tomorrow. Run me up to fifty percent maximum field strength. Paula, when he gives me the nod that he’s there, let’s run a couple thousand pairs through."
"On your signal, Dean." Watanabe waited patiently as Briggs fiddled and fussed. He looked up, nodding. She smiled. "Two thousand pairs in fifteen seconds on my mark. Mark!"
Readings flowed onto the screen. Pulaski looked at Lemoyne, without saying anything.
"Given Dean’s griping about the imprecision of his control over the fields in question, we’re as close as I could ask for. I say let’s go for broke and give it full force. Game, Rusty?"
Ngorongo sniffed. "He’s closer to gamey, if you ask me, but I’m with you, Jim. Go for broke, Rusty!"
A chorus of agreement rose from around the table. Pulaski nodded. "Take her to full power, then, Briggs. And Paula, pump in five thousand pairs when Dean gives you the high sign. If we’re going to go for broke, let’s really go for broke."
Around the apparatus, the team waited as Briggs tuned the field to his satisfaction. On his signal, Paula Watanabe sent a burst of neutrons and anti-neutrons to meet and annihilate. Anthony stared at his display. "Absolutely no gamma energy detected, Rusty, none at all. Less than one thousandth of a percent of the energy of annihilation is being turned into electromagnetic radiation. The most we’re getting is a few extra tau neutrinos. Mister Pulaski, I think you have results suitable for your thesis. Congratulations!"
"Thanks, Brody. Charlie, let’s dump that charge and see if it fits expectation."
"Already on it, Rusty. Jim?"
"On the button. Rusty, you’ve got a winner here. Just the reduction in shielding necessary for the reaction to happen is going to be a major improvement in starship design, to say nothing of the reduction in heat generation. The engineers in starship engineering are going to go berserk." Lemoyne looked over at Watanabe. "Paula, any antimatter left?"
"Plenty, Jim. Why?"
"Rusty, are you satisfied with your data?"
"Sure am, Jim. This will get me where I want to be, and then some."
"Would you mind if I have Dean set up another field in the reaction chamber and test a few other thoughts I need some input on?"
Pulaski shook his head. "Not in the least. I owe you at least that. Team, are you in with us?" There was general agreement. "Okay, Lemoyne. You have control."
"Thank you. It will only take a little longer." There was short delay as Lemoyne tapped on his compuclipboard. "Dean, if you could set this up?"
Briggs’ eyebrows rose. "Whoa, Thinker, you don’t want much, do you? I’ll try."
"If he can do it, Paula, would you run in a slow stream of neutrons and anti-neutrons? I’ll give you a rate in a moment."
"Anything within reason. I don’t have a ton of antimatter left, you know."
"Okay, Jim, I think I’ve got it."
"Thanks, Dean. We won’t need much, Paula. Here’s the rate. Let her rip!" Lemoyne smiled. Watanabe tapped a few controls and nodded. An instant later, the image of a brightly glowing light bulb formed above the reaction chamber.
As expected, Rusty Pulaski’s approach to the matter-antimatter reaction chamber produced a major stir in several departments at the Institute, and, quite unexpectedly, triggered the formation of numerous other interdisciplinary grad student groups similar in concept to the Gaussian Gang, an event that at least the faculty hailed as being almost as great an improvement as Pulaski’s reaction chamber. Before long, however, things dropped back to as close to normal for the Gaussian Gang as circumstances permitted. The gatherings continued, of course, and remained well attended; mostly, the focus returned to trying to maintain a degree of mutual assistance on solving issues with graduate student projects. There was another brief flurry of excitement after Bogden Tsarski isolated the tritium-6 Anthony had predicted would exist in trititanium ore, but it lasted only a comparatively short time.
Pete Taggerty made his way into the modest apartment that he and Rusty Pulaski called home. To his surprise, the BellComm showed that there was a message waiting for him; normally, those only started flowing in on Wednesday and Thursday, to see if they were planning to have a get together at their apartment. Gatherings tended to be there; the pair had managed to snag a three bedroom apartment with an unusually large living room area, and no one else had nearly as much room to party as they did. Being off campus, because of a temporary shortage of rooms, they could enjoy themselves with a little less worry about the campus’ enforcers descending on them. He thumbed the contact.
"Pete, Jim Lemoyne here. I’ve got a rather odd request, so if you’d call me back? You already know my BellComm."
Curiosity overcoming the insistence of his empty stomach, Taggerty tapped out Lemoyne’s BellComm address, waiting patiently for it to connect.
"Lemoyne here. What’s up?"
"Hey, Jim, it’s Pete. You left a message hinting that you needed something."
"Well, yeah. When we first met, you said Dean and I were invited to your next bash, and we had to take a rain check. I was wondering if you had a gathering planned at your apartment, and if you did, if you’d mind if we came."
"After you and Tinker rocketed me to finishing my research in record time, Jimmy boy, you have a standing invitation to any shindig I throw, forever. Planning a gathering Friday; just bring something to share with the crowd in terms of food and beverage—enough for four or five folks, if you can manage it. Festivities start at around nineteen hundred hours. I’ll look forward to seeing you."
"Um, just one thing. Mind if we bring our compuclipboards and a gadget to screw into your light socket? You’ll be able to put your bulb into it. And we’ll take it back with us, too. Nothing permanent."
To have Lemoyne and Briggs want to come to a party was weird enough—the two were so wrapped up in their work that they were essentially socially non-existent. To have them want to screw some sort of gadget into his light socket was outrageously bizarre. "I can’t imagine either of you guys without your compuclips, so I’m not going to carp at that, but screwing something into my light socket? I gotta know what you two loonies are up to."
"You aren’t going to believe this, but it’s for my research project. I want to get some data on how particles interact—small numbers of particles, with unknown, varying interactions. I figure it this way—people moving around in a party are an excellent macroscopic model for that. The gizmo going into your light socket is a device the Tinker pasted together to help monitor how people are moving. It’s small enough that the resolution won’t allow us to identify individuals, just track ‘em and tell if they’re male or female." Lemoyne chuckled. "And let’s not kid ourselves, people interacting at parties and why they do what they do is totally unknown to me, right? The total, complete mystery, in fact."
"Okay, I have to hand that to you. Y’know, you’re the only people I’ve ever met that could turn a social gathering into a research project. Or who, for that matter, would want to. Friday, seven in the evening, Jim, here at our place." Taggerty disconnected the BellComm. Somehow, he had a funny feeling about it all; he just wasn’t sure why.
It was only a little after eighteen hundred hours on Friday when Lemoyne and Briggs arrived at the apartment, each carrying a significant sized bag. Rusty Pulaski opened the door, welcoming them in but eyeing the bags.
"I hope that those bags aren’t what you’re planning to stash in the lighting fixture, gentlemen, because if it is, you’re totally out of luck; it isn’t that big."
"Don’t worry, Rusty." Briggs reached into his bag, pulling out a large baking pan. "Most of this is chocolate cheesecake; a lot of the rest is forks and plates and stuff like that."
Pulaski sniffed, suspiciously at first then eagerly. "Man, that stuff smells magnificent. Where on Earth did you get it?"
Even as Pulaski was enthusing over the cheesecake, Lemoyne had pulled up a chair under the light and was removing the light emitter from its socket. "Do we tell him, Tinker?"
"I guess." Briggs shrugged. "You gotta promise not to laugh, Rusty."
"Word of honor."
"Baked them ourselves." Pulaski made choking noises as Lemoyne went on. "Oh, now it’s not as bad as all that. Doc Reardon over at Saint Martin’s in the Culinary Sciences department got a bee in his bonnet about trying to figure a way to get a single oven to emulate numerous kinds of ovens—ranging from a medieval baker’s oven to an open air fire with a Dutch oven sitting in it or hanging over it, to a gas or electric oven to a—oh, you get the picture. Just our luck, Reardon connected with Doctor Stratton over in Engineering. Guess who got tapped to do the design. Well, what with one thing and another, it sort of became necessary for the two of us to learn a little about baking to test out the oven designs, you see, and the programming—sort of see if what we did really worked as expected. Closest thing we had to a test bench for the thing, if that makes any sense to you."
"That, and old man Reardon figured that if a math geek and a gear head could mix up the ingredients and get the recipe to work, any idiot could do it." Briggs looked over at Lemoyne. "Of course, Reardon didn’t realize that most cooking is math and engineering anyway—proportions that scale in a not always linear fashion, and combining parts to make a coordinated whole. Baking a cheesecake is a whole lot easier than baking a ceramic, believe me."
"Gee—you weren’t saying that when we were trying to get that oven to emulate the pit cooking method used in Hawaii to cook hogs for a luau." Lemoyne got off the chair. "I seem to remember some comments about tuning an impulse drive blindfolded being an easier task."
"Go ahead, Thinker; rub it in. You had a few less than generous comments about it yourself." Briggs winked and turned back to Pulaski. "Anyway, we built three of the programmable ovens, and kept one to ourselves. Reardon, he has this whole bunch of things he wants to try out and see if folks will eat, and we let him talk us into helping him out on that." He looked at the ceiling as if to feign innocence. "He supplies the ingredients, the pans and all that stuff, gives us the recipe, and we make it using the fancy programmable oven. What with his being an adjunct prof at the Institute, and being faculty over at one of the civilian private universities, he’s got a lot more freedom of motion—to say nothing of fancy funding—than the professors at the Institute do, but he still can tap the folk here. Sweet deal, for all involved. Stratton gets kudos for what we do, Reardon gets some fancy engineering with prototypes, and Jim and I get to whip up the recipes."
"What Tinker is trying to say is that we’ve conned him into providing a modest amount of free eats." LeMoyne started putting the cheesecakes out on the table, setting plates and utensils out. "Hey, I didn’t bring a spatula; you guys got one?"
Taggerty was coming out of the kitchen area. "I’m bringing one, but I feel like an executioner, bringing a tool to serve food prepared by a couple of geeks."
"Hey, Pete, maybe we ought to, you know, be guinea pigs and test it out, make sure it’s edible. Think?" Pulaski was obviously not worried about the issue, using it as an excuse more than anything else.
"Oh, go ahead, tuck in." Briggs rolled his eyes. "It’s not as if we hadn’t done a little quality control on our end, anyway. What kind of knuckleheads do you take us for?"
"Tell you what, Tinker, maybe we should join them—you know, make sure the batch is up to par."
"Any excuse, eh?"
Pulaski and Taggerty were already serving themselves; Briggs and Lemoyne joined them. Taggerty looked up. "This stuff is wonderful, guys. If you can keep bringing grub like this, you have a standing invitation to any get together we have."
"Good." Briggs looked up from his rapidly emptying plate. "Reardon wants us to test the stuff out, sort of measure its popularity against the comparative known popularity of the other snacks folks bring. He has some sort of formula to figure out its real appeal based on how much faster this stuff goes than, say, the potato chips or the corn chips and salsa. He’s hoping we’ll get to a good number of these things to test out lots of his little concoctions." He shoved another forkful of cheesecake into his mouth, mumbling around it. "I figure it this way; we get data on a couple handfuls of these, maybe we can con him into throwing something a bit bigger bash, catering it at the Institute’s expense. Might even be able to talk him into doing more than just a fancy dessert or two, know what I mean?"
"Got you." Pulaski shook his head. "I should have figured that the pair of you would be the guys that could turn a party into a couple of research projects."
Taggerty shrugged. "That’s the only way you could get this pair to a party anyway—turn it into some sort of mathematical or engineering challenge."
"Or both." Briggs gestured with his temporarily empty fork. "That’s what we’ve done here. Look, Thinker and I have to double check the connection between our compuclipboards and the gadget in the light. I don’t mean to be more antisocial than I usually am, but business is business, eh?"
"Understood." Pulaski looked over at his apartment mate. "I get this strong feeling that this pair would be totally appreciative if we kept track of what went where, too. I mean, to keep Reardon happy. The happier we keep him, the more likely our next get together is going to show some totally glorious grub. Like this." The last forkful of his chunk of cheesecake disappeared, emphasizing his comment. "What’re you guys going to do, just sit around and soak up the ambience?"
"That, and munch on some grub and maybe swill some coffee or something." LeMoyne looked over at his friend. "We do need to do a little eyeball observation to correlate with the data in the compuclips, after all. We’ll make it look like we’re up to something boring, so no one notices us much. We’ve got a cover all worked out, and may even pester a couple of the engineering or math students for a hand. Don’t worry—we’re trying hard not to pollute the data by just sitting around trying to be ornamental."
"You two, ornamental? Rusty, I think that man has totally lost it." Taggerty winked. "Only ornamental at a monster’s meeting, that’s how I figure it."
Briggs and Lemoyne ignored them both, focusing on the task before them. Before long, folks began arriving, and the gathering was in full swing. The astonishment of Lemoyne and Briggs being present only lasted a short period of time, disappearing in the wave of socialization that inevitably dominates such events. It was closing in on curfew when the last of the visitors left. Briggs nodded. "Some good data, here Thinker."
"No kidding. It’ll take some time to process it all, even with my over-eager compuclip." He stood, stretching his legs a little. "That cheesecake sure didn’t last long, did it?"
"I can’t believe how fast it went." Taggerty was clearing the remaining food, of which there was but little, off the table. "That cheesecake ran out before anything else."
"Wonder if that has anything to do with the fact you had three pretty good sized pieces, Pete?" Pulaski shook his head in mock distress. "You’re either going to have to put in a ton of extra hours in the gym, or buy bigger clothes."
"Either that, or he’s going to have to skip breakfast for a month, Rusty." Lemoyne chuckled. "Tell you what, let us get that widget out of the light fixture and head home. What do you want us to try to talk Reardon into testing out next week? He’s hot to try some sort of main dish, really. Think that would be okay? I mean, if we rig up some sort of chafing dish to keep it at serving temperature?"
"Just be sure you bring enough, Thinker. Half the folk missed the cheesecake, you know. Biases the sample badly, right?" Pulaski grinned. "Reardon wouldn’t want that, now would he?"
"We get the picture, already, Rusty, we get the picture." Briggs got off the chair, his monitoring device in one hand. "When’s the next soiree?"
"Two weeks, gentlemen." Taggerty yawned. "I suppose that you’ll be early, like you were this time?"
"I figure we will, yes." Briggs threw his coat on, tossing Lemoyne’s coat to him. "Let’s head out, Thinker. This is ‘way past my bedtime, and pushing the daylights out of curfew. Time to hustle."
The next gathering, Briggs and Lemoyne brought a meatball concoction that only went over moderately well; with the subsequent one, it was what looked like a dish full of candy bars made out of compressed jellies covered in chocolate, which disappeared with amazing speed. With every gathering, Briggs and Lemoyne gathered data on movement of the people at the party, and on how well Reardon’s latest test dish went in comparison to other offerings brought. Slowly, the two men were gathering data to use as a springboard for Lemoyne’s theoretical work, looking for whatever predictable patterns that might emerge. Lemoyne finally looked up from the data. "Tinker, I need to double check a point with you on that sensor gimmick of yours."
"Fire away, Jim."
"Any chance that it might create reflected images in itself? You know, sort of making it think you and I were on both sides of the room at once?"
"No way, Thinker. It’s just not happening. It might lose track of objects that didn’t move much, but not a chance that it’d create false images. What’s up?"
"Maybe a glitch you didn’t anticipate, Tinker. Look at this." The mathematician threw a set of displays, one after another, on the compuclipboard display. "I rigged it to find anything that was almost motionless for the entire evening. Every time, almost exactly across from where we sit pretending to play clip games, there are two individuals as motionless and minimally interactive as we are. I was thinking it was just a glitch."
"Buddy, you need to get out more, that’s all I can say." Briggs rolled his eyes in agony. "Since you obviously failed to notice the fact, those wallflowers are females. Girls. You know, feminine woman type persons of the opposite sex and the skirt and dress wearing persuasion."
"Oh." Lemoyne was clearly nonplussed by the oversight. "Okay, so I’m blind, dense and dumb as a brick. Either way, I was trying to tune you and I out, and things like furniture. They’re data, and I don’t want to tune them out. What do you think?"
"I tinker, man, I tinker; you’re the thinker, not me."
"Smart aleck." The mathematics graduate student leaned back, sipping coffee briefly. "Okay, this means we have to come to grips with what’s happening here. I mean, what on Earth would move a couple of ladies to keep coming to parties if they’re pretty nearly totally ignored the whole time?"
"Hello, tune in to reality, man. In case you had missed this point—and I thought it was patently obvious—I happen to be a male." He slapped his forehead. "It’s not like I understand women, for pity’s sake. I’m much better with warp drives and such. Trust me on this, will you?"
"Good point; I asked a dumb question. What say one of us asks them what they’re up to? Rusty and Pete are throwing another shindig tonight, so maybe we can ask. Sound good, Tinker?"
"Only if neither Pete nor Rusty have any insights." Briggs consulted his watch. "Look, we’d better get our act together here. We need to whip up Reardon’s latest recipe, and it’s going to have to spend a while in the oven."
"What is it this time? Another main course?"
"Yep. Some sort of rice, chicken and gravy thing, and it takes a while to bake, like I said. We better get to throwing the ingredients together, Tinker."
*
It was only a few hours later that Lemoyne and Briggs arrived at Pulaski and Taggerty’s place, chafing dish and food in tow. While Briggs set up the chafing dish, Lemoyne installed the monitoring device again. As he climbed off the chair, he turned to the masters of ceremony. "Pete, Rusty, got a question for you. You ever notice a couple of ladies that come to the party, and pretty much keep to themselves?"
Taggerty and Pulaski looked at each other for a moment, eyes rolling. Taggerty answered for both. "Yeah, that’d be the Icicle Twins, I guess. Pair of identical twins, which they emphasize by dressing alike. Don’t know which section of the Institute they’re in, but it isn’t math or science or engineering. They come, usually a while after everyone else is here, then they leave a bit before the rest start to disappear. Neither of them say much, though they bring decent enough stuff with them; they don’t eat much, either, but I guess that’s their way of maintaining their feminine figures or something. Why?"
Briggs placed the chicken mixture in the chafing dish next to the one with the rice in it. "They just turned up in the data; Thinker here was wondering if they were some sort of reflection of us, just sitting and watching. ‘Course, I knew it wasn’t—we don’t wear skirts, man."
"So, what’re they doing here, Pete?"
"Taking up space, and soaking up a non-alcoholic beverage or two, as near as I can make it—though they tucked into the beef and noodles thing you guys did last month."
"That was a stroganoff, if you don’t mind, Taggerty." Lemoyne pretended to be offended. "Beef stroganoff, to be precise, and it is a gourmet treat." He chuckled. "Either of you guys have any idea why they keep coming?"
"Dunno. Maybe it’s to have a chance to rebuff anyone that acts interested, think?" Pulaski did a bad job of pretending to be serious over the remark.
"It sounds like you’re as clueless as we are, Rusty." The mathematics student turned to his friend. "I’ll flip you to see which of us asks ‘em what they’re up to, Tinker."
"Heads I do it; tails you do." Briggs fished a coin out of his pocket, expertly flipping it. He caught it and displayed the results. "Tails, Thinker. Better think fast—you’re going to have to do the talking."
"Right. There isn’t enough time left for me to think fast enough for this one, Tinker." Lemoyne looked like he was going to his execution.
"Oh, relax, will you? Just treat them like a cross between another one of the guys and your mother, and you’ll be fine." Pulaski rolled his eyes. "As long as you don’t call them something stupid, like ‘Mom’ or do anything equally dumb. You’re bright enough; I’m sure you’ll think of something. Not like it matters; they didn’t get nicknamed the Icicle Twins because they were so open to socializing, you know."
"Thanks for the encouragement." Lemoyne sighed deeply. "Is the sensor communicating properly with the compuclips, Dean?"
"Sure is." Briggs grinned happily. "I’ll make sure you know when they’re here and reasonably well settled in. Let’s make ourselves comfortable and wait."
Silently, Lemoyne took his chair, Briggs grabbing one next to him, starting up the compuclip game they used as cover. People began to filter in, and the party started rolling. Perhaps as a compassionate gesture, like a last meal to a condemned man, Briggs made sure that Lemoyne’s glass of punch stayed fairly full. It wasn’t long before Briggs elbowed Lemoyne. "They’re here, Thinker. Go turn on your romantic charm and see what you can learn."
Favoring Briggs with a look that almost could kill, Lemoyne moved across the room, not at all reassured by what he remembered of Pulaski’s advice. Somehow, there just hadn’t been time to get interested in members of the other gender, which left him feeling quite adrift. What made his assignment even more difficult was the clear fact that at least one of the ladies was clearly watching his approach. Rather than take his friend’s advice exactly as given, he decided to model his approach on how he had seen his father interact with his mother. Trying to appear uncowed by the fact that he had been watched closely as he crossed the room, he took his position in front of one of the two Icicle Twins, bowing slightly. "Good evening, ladies. May I offer you a glass of punch, or perhaps something sweet from the table of food?"
The lady, who had watched him cross the room, looked up at him. "I’ll construe your question as an offer. Punch for two would be nice, for three if you’re thirsty, and some of those chocolate chip cookies if there are any left."
Obligingly, Lemoyne brought the punch and cookies. Since there was nowhere to sit near the twins, he placed the cookies and two of the three cups of punch on the small table in front of the ladies. There was no doubt as to why they were called twins; they were almost perfectly identical copies of each other, with rich chestnut hair flowing down to their shoulders, and quick, deep blue eyes that seemed to catch each and every movement in the room. On each of their laps, they had a small compuclipboard on which there were extensive notes. The mathematics student smiled. It was clear, from what he could read, that they were doing very nearly the same thing at the party that he and Briggs were doing. Deciding to feign ignorance, he waited until the first twin put her cup of punch down. "I was wondering what you and what I presume to be your twin sister might be doing here. My friend Dean and I have been watching the ebb and flow of people at several parties lately, and have noticed that you two are almost always here, and almost never interacting with anyone else. The curiosity is, frankly, killing us."
The one twin looked at the other. "Well, we know one of their names, now: Dean."
"Wonder if this one is clever enough to give us his own name. Think so?"
"I’m not taking bets on it at one of Pulaski’s parties. May be clever enough, but probably not willing enough."
"I can take a hint, ladies. The name is Jim Lemoyne, nicknamed the Thinker by my childhood chum and fellow student at the Institute, Dean Briggs." He tilted his head to the side. "Perhaps you would be kind enough to return the favor of the names?"
"I’m Karyl Culp." She extended her hand. "Nice to meet you, Jim." She shook hands with Lemoyne briefly, then let go.
"Karyn Culp, and the younger of the two of us." As had her sister, she shook hands briefly. "By all of half an hour, but believe me I make the most of it."
"Well, Karyl and Karyn Culp, I’m most pleased to know you as something other than the Icicle Twins. I’m still curious about what you’re doing." He made a point of looking at their compuclipboards, this time. "Seems to me you might be gathering data."
"We’ve been busted, sister." Karyn pretended to look aghast at the idea. She looked back up at Lemoyne. "Now, don’t you squeal on us, please. You’ll bias the data something awfully."
"I wouldn’t dream of it. Sounds like you’re more or less up to tricks like what Dean and I are." Lemoyne furrowed his forehead. "If so, perhaps we should discuss the issue later, where there aren’t ears in every direction, know what I mean?"
"I suspect that I do. Where and when?"
"Depends on where’s convenient. Which department of the Institute are you in?"
Karyl began to look rather embarrassed. "Oh, we’re not. We’re getting our degrees from Saint Martin’s College, down the road a bit. Daddy is in the administrative staff at the Institute, and he heard about the parties here, so he arranged that we were made welcome when it was clear that we needed the data it represented. We can explain it all later, okay?"
Lemoyne nodded. "How about meeting tomorrow, then, for breakfast? Stromboli’s should work—it’s about half way between the Institute and Saint Martin’s. Game?"
"No agreement until you define the time." Karyn winked. "We have to be sure we get our beauty sleep, you know."
"Well, maybe it’d better be a late breakfast then; you two look like you get lots of beauty sleep. How about nine thirty?"
"Flatterer." Karyl smiled, which lit her face up magnificently. "Nine thirty should do fine."
"Good enough. I’ll make sure Tinker washes behind his ears, and we’ll both bring our compuclips, so we can make an effort at pooling our data." Lemoyne nodded. "Come hungry. Breakfast is on us, okay?"
"How totally gallant of you." Karyn smiled, too, her face lighting up just as her sister’s had. "I just hope your companion is ready for that. But for now, we both are gathering data, it seems. Back to work for us all."
"It’s been a pleasure ladies." The mathematics graduate student bowed slightly and made his way back to his chair, sitting down without comment.
Driven by curiosity, Briggs finally elbowed his comrade. "Enough with the smug look, already. What did you learn?"
"Their names, and the fact that they’re from Saint Martins, down the road." Lemoyne shrugged. "Not much else, really, other than that they’re collecting data for some project or other that they’re involved with, and it’s data they need to be at a party to gather."
"Fat lot of help that is." The engineering grad student turned back to his compuclip. "You could have at least managed to find out what they needed the data for, and whether or not it was worth melding with what we’re collecting, you know."
"I left that for tomorrow. We meet at Stromboli’s at nine thirty sharp, and I promised that you’d wash behind your ears." Lemoyne donned a mock stern face. "Don’t make a liar out of me, mister."
All the color drained from Briggs’ face. "I don’t believe I heard you. You’ve managed to hitch us up with the Icicle Twins for a breakfast date tomorrow? What am I supposed to do and say?"
Lemoyne chuckled. "It’s a breakfast meeting, and you’re supposed to bring your compuclipboard, swill coffee and maybe munch on some pastries, and talk about the data and our mutual projects. Trust me, this isn’t a case of romance."
"Well, that’s a relief, anyway." Briggs’ face returned to a more normal color. "A bit of mutual data wrangling, I think I can handle. Romance? No."
Stromboli’s was one of those places that looked unassuming from the outside; it was little more than a store front, with a large window and a door. Behind it, there were tables in the middle of the open area with booths along the sides and back wall, the only exception to that being the small area near the door where patrons paid as they left or stood as they waited to be seated, and the area where the table servers transitioned to and from the kitchen. Food there was excellent, at least if you liked Italian cuisine, and the coffee bordered on legendary, perhaps because the beans were roasted on site and freshly ground before brewing. The ambience wasn’t much to talk about, but no one seemed to mind; most of the individuals meeting at Stromboli’s were either intent on discussing a project or busy gazing into each other’s eyes. By far the commonest was working on a project, which was reflected in the fact that establishment was equipped high speed wireless communication for the use of the patrons.
Briggs and Lemoyne, as was their habit, arrived a little earlier than the planned time, settling into a booth and ordering coffee, looking over their data from the night before, leaving Briggs able to watch for the incoming ladies. Promptly at the assigned moment, they arrived, more easily recognizable by their being essentially identical than by their looking like they had the night before. Their once loose hair was pulled tightly back into pony tails, and their dress had gone from chic to functional, and both of them were carrying compuclipboards. They looked considerably more serious, and ready for in depth analysis. The engineer stood, waving to catch their attention; they slid into the booth, both of them facing the two men.
"Before we get down to serious business, how about some coffee?" Lemoyne caught the table server’s eye as he spoke. "And if you’re interested, some breakfast?"
Both ladies smiled. "Definitely coffee, straight up and strong," Karyl said. "As for breakfast, we’ve not eaten; have you?"
"Not really; just a tide-me-over. Why don’t we all get breakfast ordered and get down to business while it’s coming." The math student accepted menus from the server, passing them out. "It’s on me, today, so eat hearty."
"He’s trying to fatten us up for the kill, older sister." Karyn tried to look worried. "Be careful."
"It’ll take more than one meal to do that, worry wart." Karyl rolled her eyes. "I’ll have Centaurian coffee, strong and black, and an apple danish, thank you." She returned the menu.
"I’ll do the same on the coffee, but I’ll do a blueberry muffin, cream cheese on the side."
Briggs nodded, taking his turn. "Couple of English muffins and a couple sausage links. Centaurian, strong and black for me, too."
"I guess I’ll make that four on the coffee." Lemoyne studied the menu for a moment. "The apple Danish actually sounds good. Is wireless communications up?"
The server nodded, retrieving the last of the menus. "Yeah; they actually never shut down. Boss says it’s too much trouble to turn it off and on, considering how little power it takes. Coffee’ll be up in a couple of minutes." He whisked off to the back.
"Curiosity is eating me up, ladies. What are the projects you’re working on?" Briggs’ interest was clearly real.
"Different ones for each of us." Karyl had taken the lead. "I’m actually in the College of Literature at Saint Martin’s, majoring in romantic literature." Briggs and Stratton looked at each other, feigning panic. "Oh, don’t get in a sweat. It’s not at all as simplistic as you two goons obviously think. Look, have you ever done any reading of fiction, or do you two read nothing but textbooks?"
"We read handbooks and operations manuals, too, you know." Karyl favored the math student with a look that should have maimed him, if not killed him outright. "Just having a little fun, there. Of course we’ve read fiction for pleasure; still do when we have time. I’m into science fiction; ol’ Tinker here is into classic fantasy—Lord of the Rings, that sort of thing. Go on."
Karyl nodded. "I wasn’t sure, what with the rumors I hear about you Institute types—all business, no play."
"Well, not completely no play, old woman. I understand there’s one area they get very playful, in fact altogether too playful for our preferences; we’ve no time for that." Karyn winked. "That’s why they’re so good for your study."
"That’s totally not what I meant, picky woman, and you know it." It was clear that the banter between Karyl and Karyn was sharp but friendly. Karyl nodded. "She’s right, though, but it’ll take some getting back to. If you’ve never noticed this, there’s a lot that fiction leaves out: the really realistic, good stuff leaves a lot of reality out—and does it in a way that you don’t really notice."
"Dead right, it’s not noticeable; I’d never noticed that the stuff got left out." Briggs forehead furrowed. "But now that you mention it, unless it’s a tool used to advance the dialogue, or it’s essential to the plot or character development or something like that, you never see some things. Meals, for instance." He emphasized his point by taking a swig of his coffee. "Or dressing, or going to the john, or little annoyances like a rock in the shoe—every day things that we take for granted, deal with, and get on with life. Is that what you’re talking about?"
"For not being a lit major, you’re remarkably astute. That’s exactly what I’m talking about—the little things we all know about, but that only rarely get mentioned." Karyl tapped the table with a finger, emphasizing the point she was making. "If you threw all that junk in, and threw in all the intermediate days that exist, but don’t have anything to do with the plot line, you’d end up with a monumentally long, totally boring story. No one in their right mind would read it unless they had to."
"As a case in point," Karyn interjected, "Karyl loaned me a book a couple of hundred pages long that just talked about the protagonist getting up and going to the kitchen for breakfast one morning; I think it was called Awakening or something like that. I don’t think the time covered was upwards of an hour out of the man’s life. If it hadn’t been for some flashbacks the fellow had, remembering times that he’d experienced and found very significant, the book would have been totally unreadable."
"The point exactly, sister mine." Karyl picked up the thread again. "What I’m doing is watching the interactions at Rusty and Pete’s parties, trying to get a handle on the stuff the romantic writers don’t include in their stories, and how the events in the stories really compare to how real people function."
"Somehow, I miss the point here. I mean, there’s gotta be more to this than counting meteors as they fall." Briggs scratched his chin, thinking hard. "I can’t quite see it, but I know it’s there. If that makes any sense, that is."
"Perfect sense." Karyl powered up her compuclipboard. "What you haven’t thought through is the fact that for any sentient species with a fictional literature, the same forces are going to apply—certain things are just not going to make it to the story, others will. The things that aren’t going to make it are also exactly the same sorts of things that you’d probably never think to ask another species about, and that they’d never think to mention to you. Now, if I can get a hard handle on the special case of Human literature, and how it relates to reality, and if an Andorian does the same for Andorian literature, and a Tellarite for Tellarite literature…"
Lemoyne started nodding vigorously. "I get it; do it for Humans, Andorians, Vulcans, Tellarites and whomever else that we know pretty well, and you can start to extract invariants, and maybe even extract some species specific things that you can back-correlate to unique aspects of the species involved. Given the relationships developed, you can take the literature of a species we hardly know at all and use it to garner insights into their culture, their unthought habits, the little things that they do without thinking that we could trip over. Brilliant."
Karyl flushed slightly. "Thank you. You’ve caught the point exactly. I’m focusing on romantic literature at the moment, but once I’ve got my masters, I’m hoping to go to the broader context for my Ph.D. May I share my data with you?"
To his surprise, Lemoyne found that he was both pleased and slightly embarrassed by Karyl’s response. "I’d like that; we probably could pool our data, and make life easier for each other. Tinker and I have been making anonymous recordings of how people cluster and un-cluster at the same parties, mostly to give me some raw data to use for a project modeling exotic and standard states of matter from a purely theoretical level; you might find the data useful, and if you identified specific individuals out of the records, maybe it’d help me make sense of things."
"Swapping data. I like that. I’ll beam you mine; you beam me yours, okay? Compuclip to compuclip, so we can avoid the wireless delay."
Feeling that action was easier than words, Lemoyne put his compuclipboard where the data transfer bead was aligned with Karyl’s. Data began transmitting both ways.
Karyn looked over at Briggs. "Since that pair are getting data shot to and fro, you might as well tell me what you’re up to at the parties. Other, I mean, than keeping your buddy out of trouble, helping him collect his data, and bringing some pretty good eats."
"You’re not going to believe this."
"Don’t take bets on it. Remember, I’m the one that has a sister who managed to find a master’s thesis that let her read slushy romance novels by the ton and get credit for it." Karyn rolled her eyes, clearly less impressed by her sister’s thesis than Lemoyne had been. "If I can believe a professor fell for that, I can believe almost anything."
"This may strain you, even at that." Briggs pretended to become conspiratorial. "I’m using the data we collect to measure how well the grub we bring goes over." He paused for a moment, letting that sink in. "Even more bizarre, we’re cooking the stuff up ourselves. Doc Reardon wants to know how his latest recipes stack up, especially when they’re prepared by inept cooks like Jim and me."
"You win. I don’t believe it."
"Honest."