Chapter 2: Testing and being tested.

The test facility was eye opening. They got him a room in a BOQ across the street, they took him to a place they called the uniform sales store and got him a variety of uniforms: full dress, fatigue and what they called ship suits, which were one piece fitted coveralls with a zipper up the front. Multiple sets of undershorts and T-shirts, wool socks and black dress socks, black dress shoes, leather boots and two pairs of over the ankle boots that went with the ship suit.

He ended up with about ten pairs of Ensign pins and several little gold comet pins that said he was a fleet officer. He got to sign for it all.

Then there was the paperwork, which took hours, photos and eye scans, hand scans and face scans ... even whole body scans in his ship suit; along with pages of who your relatives were, alive or dead, where they lived and questions about what you thought, what you had done and where you had been.

It was mid-afternoon before he got back to the test lab where there was more of the same. When that was done, he got a few minutes of introductions before the lab shut down and everyone went home. Ty went and got dinner with a LTJG Pace, who was escorting him around and then went to his room. For some reason he was tired, so went to bed early, which turned out to be wise as horns blew and bugle calls sounded starting at 5:30 in the morning. It turned out that the officers went and worked out for an hour, then went and cleaned up, put the day’s uniform on and went to breakfast before showing up at work at eight in the morning. Ty managed that on his own, resulting in a surprised LTJG looking for him.

The guys who built and tested sensor equipment were quite intrigued with his homemade set up. They tested it and established that it could indeed see about 1,000 miles [about 1,613 Kilometers] despite atmosphere, terrain and the earth’s curvature. Al, the team lead, allowed that it was very good performance for something made in a garage with only common hardware. They were really excited about its small size and the air pressure bearings. They couldn’t believe how well they worked. They measured input and exhaust air temperatures as well as bearing temperatures and shook their heads. They were using liquid coolants that required special fluids because of the wide variation in possible use locations and the liquid cooling system was a regular pain in the fifth point of contact (Many jobs on ships and machinery required you always have three points of contact at all times for your safety, either two hands or two feet and your butt).

Over the next week and a half Ty helped them make an air-cooled bearing for their system and assisted in their building a copy of his detector using the high quality parts and material they had. They adjusted the numbers of turns, or wraps of wire they used on his armature [turbine rotor]. With a bit of work, Ty and the machinists made a bearing that was two and a half times larger than his original and then ran their larger rotor with it with success. Ty’s product improved detector system was actually hard to evaluate on the ground, so they fixed it up in a shuttle and got clearance to launch to the edge of the atmosphere to test it. They had to get up to adequate velocity to become a satellite so they could turn off their Benko-Chang turbines and see what the device could see. The result was stunning The closer ships had to be avoided as they blotted out the detector’s ability to see, but when away from those ships they could see things at phenomenal distances. As Ty explained, the tiny little rotor was very sensitive; and they proved that it could detect large ships moving at distances approaching a light year using just standard 220 volt, 1 /2 amp current. Just a bit over 100 watts to run the whole thing! They saved their recording, shut down the detector and cleared their landing with control. Then Al all but ran into see the captain to tell them what they had seen. The result, despite being a hasty test, was passed up the line quickly, as this fit a need that the sensor lab had been struggling with for more than six months.

Ty continued to work with the lab, but somethings had changed. A lieutenant commander from Admiral Fletcher’s office was now checking on progress regularly in person. Several other officers involved with designing ships and some intelligence sorts visited, taking measurements of various sorts and quantifying the outputs they were getting as they now performed a full formal test on Ty’s basic version as product improved, at the Sensor Lab. Ty was told that the captain of the ship that would test his system in space, FFS* Sylph, was due to be there later. He shrugged, assuming a senior officer and went on doing his part.

He had just sat down with a cup of coffee to write up his suggestions for installation when a lieutenant came in. She was instantly noticed by everyone who could see her, as she filled her ship suit beautifully. Not overly endowed in any one feature, but the ship suit was not at all baggy on her, she had womanly hips, a noticeable but not overwhelming bust and a lovely face surrounded by soft black hair. Ty guessed she was about 5’ 10” tall and she looked all business, beautiful indeed, but he sensed not to be trifled with. Al went over and greeted her, Ty couldn’t hear what was said, but he, among other things, was pointed out. He sat down and concentrated on not staring at the young woman and tried to get his mind on how to best set up the sensor heads to get the best feedback. A shadow darkened his desk slightly and as he looked up a pleasant voice said “So you are the young man who created this simplified device?” He was looking at the young lieutenant ... He stood quickly and came to a loose position of attention “Yes Ma’am”.

* FFS- Federation Fleet Ship

“Relax Ensign, I am intrigued as to how your system vastly outperforms their most recent effort and is a quarter the size and uses much less power as well. What made you build this?”

“Well Ma’am, I was required to build a science project in school, and thought a device to allow small airports to know what ships were near for safety reasons, was something that was needed, so I thought about it looked up a lot of things, bought the material and built it, solving some issues along the way. When I brought it into school and showed my science teacher, he got all weird, called Captain Heartz and it snowballed really quickly. I ended up having it classified and I was enlis ... uh commissioned and put to work making it better here.”

Her face had taken on a an odd, confused look “You built this as a school project? when?”

“Uh ... about ... uh four weeks ago was the due date for the project and I had been working on it for well over two months in my spare time.”

“You were in school? Which college”

“Uh no ma’am ... I was ... I was not in college, I was a junior at San Pedro High School, ma’am”.

The Lieutenant looked stunned “How old are you?”

“I’m 17 ma’am, I’ll be 18 in July”.

“Sweet Jesus!” was all she said.

Stunned no longer covered how she looked, she looked gob smacked with a big gob!

She looked around, pulled a chair out and sat heavily “My head hurts ... You are seventeen, built this in your spare time in a couple of months using commercially available parts, solved a bearing problem better than anyone here has and your little system out does there by a huge amount. Did I get that mostly right Ensign ... uh I didn’t get your name ... sit down, please.”

“Yes Ma’am, Ensign Ty Colla ma’am.” and he sat down.