Chapter 5

Morty found Chuck at the dining table, eating a breakfast of raisin bran. “Sleep OK, Chuck?”

“I dropped off about 8:30 and didn’t wake up until 7:30 this morning. I put on coffee if you want some.”

“No, it would just keep me up. I’m going to have breakfast and then sleep for a while.”

“You didn’t sleep last night?” Chuck asked.

“No, I stayed up and worked. I often work through the night. I sleep when I’m tired.”

“This ends now, Morty! You get some sleep, and when you wake up we’ll start getting you on a regular sleep schedule.”

“It won’t work, Chuck,” Morty protested. “I lay there and toss and turn, and finally I just get up. I figure I might as well work if I have trouble falling asleep.”

“Not good enough, Morty! I just found you again, and I don’t want to lose you! Do you realize that we’re each other’s only close relative now, except for my aunt? And you never talk about her.”

“I don’t think I ever thought of it like that, and there’s a reason I don’t talk about your aunt! I just don’t want to get into it. Nothing anyone can do anyway.”

An estranged relative? Chuck decided to let the issue drop. “You get some sleep. I’m going to look around the property, and when you wake up we’ll have dinner and you can tell me how the impeller works. Or, at least, how you think it works.”

Morty nodded and fixed himself a bowl of cereal. Chuck drank another cup of coffee and watched his grandfather. Morty finished his cereal and went to bed. As soon as the old man started snoring, Chuck eased out of the house and headed for the workshop. He had a lot of thinking and planning to do, instruments he’d need, processors for each rotor axle to control RPM, a control system run by a computer, some sort of input device to tell the computer what to do. As soon as he got that working, he could decide what other software he’d need; the more he thought about it, getting the system under control was going to take a considerable amount of time and it was going to cost money.

Where was it to come from?

Chuck was at the dining table, working at his laptop, when Morty woke up. A loose-leaf notebook lay on the table by the computer and a mechanical pencil lay on the notebook.

“Afternoon, Chuck. I reckon I needed the sleep; any coffee left?”

“No, but I’ll make a new pot. I could use another cup too. I’ve been running some estimates of what we’ll need to automate the impellers. I’m thinking of using a simple processor with just enough ram to run a control program for the rotors. I think I can use a Raspberry Pi processor and mount the RPM sensors onto the same plywood base where you’re putting the transformer primary. I can probably use my laptop to control the main motor for now, the one that spins the primary axle, at least for this first test bed. I’ll also need to come up with an input system for steering, as well as figuring out a way to control the output power. Some sort of throttle, I’m thinking, but if we can dial the thrust up or down that’ll let us steer by using the impellers the same way boat captains do with twin propellers. We can start out with a steering wheel for surface craft, but later on we’ll have to come up with something better. I’m going to be writing a lot of code over the next few days, but I’ll take time to have meals with you, so plan on it. No more eating on the fly and sleeping when you fall down!”

“OK, Grandson. Reckon it won’t be so bad, long as I’ve got somebody to talk to.”

Chuck busied himself at the coffeepot and poured Morty a strong cup as soon as enough water had run through the grounds. “You were going to tell me how the impellers work.”

“Chuck, the important thing is that they do work, the strain gauge shows that. As soon as we get one we can run at full speed, we can calculate how efficient it is, and from that I can probably come up with a theory of how it works. I can do the efficiency calculation by comparing the current draw with the thrust output. That’s a starting point.

“As soon as we’ve got two usable impellers, we can have some fun. I’ve got a stack of 3/4 inch plywood sheets we can use to mount things on and I was thinking of a ‘boondock buggy’. Bicycle wheels for the running gear, two in the back that just roll, plus a pair in the front that are steerable. How long has it been since you went chasing jackrabbits?”

“You’re serious?” Chuck asked.

“Sure, why not? Lots of room out back, plenty of jackrabbits too. Plus it will give us a way to test the system before anybody else sees it. Gotta have a working prototype if we’re going to make people pay attention!”

“You said you intend to make all the components yourself this time?”

“Well, most of them,” Morty confessed. “No need to make that main drive motor, it’s cheaper to just buy one.”

“How much money do you have, Morty?”

“Not all that much. Maybe seven or eight thousand dollars in the bank is all, but I finished a couple of consulting jobs that I haven’t been paid for. I figure they’ll pay me when they get around to it.”

“I’ll need to look into that, then,” Chuck said decisively. “Tell you what, machining the rotors and their dynamic balance adjustments, plus winding the coils, that’s your job. We’ll need four sets of those, and if you’re going to make the coils for the motors to spin the rotors, wind those too. What I want is two complete impellers that are as nearly matched physically and electrically as possible. When you start shopping, buy matching main power motors too, and they should be single-phase. We’ll be using batteries at first, and a two-phase inverter is likely to be larger than we need and probably a lot more expensive. I’ll see about building a battery supply and hooking up an inverter to generate single-phase AC. I’ll also be designing the sensors and the automatic controls to keep everything balanced. I’ll match those up with your rotors as soon as you get them built. Meantime, I’ll also be contacting the people that owe you money. I’ll shake loose as much as I can. Letting them decide when to pay you is no way to run a business! I’ll need to know what bank you’re using and your account number.”

“I’ll get you a deposit slip, Chuck.”

“You plan on putting in no more than eight hours a day, Morty, and if you feel tired at any point you take a break. But eight hours is your limit, okay?”

“If you say so, Chuck.”

“Evenings are for you and me, grandpa. You’re going to explain how that impeller works and I’ve got a few ideas I intend to bounce off you to see what you think.”

Chuck spent most of his working time during the next two weeks contacting the firms that owed Morty money. Occasionally, he found it necessary to offer a small discount for immediate payment; most had paid up as soon as he telephoned. Morty’s bank account doubled, then doubled again.

Chuck finished working his way through the list, then printed out a balance sheet. Morty looked astonished at the numbers, then smiled. “I should have hired you a long time ago, Grandson!”

Three weeks later, the first components that Chuck had ordered began arriving. As soon as Morty finished an impeller, Chuck installed and tested the control. The two then mounted the completed device on what both now called the Boondocker. They finished the job late one afternoon, then wearily headed for the house. Chuck had put ingredients into a crock pot before starting work that morning. The two silently enjoyed bowls of green chile stew, then Chuck washed up while Morty went out to the patio and found a chair. The two were soon enjoying the cool West Texas evening. Chuck had slipped a dollop of brandy into Morty’s tea, hoping it might help him sleep.

“You know, I never liked walking in other people’s footsteps, Chuck. That’s why I went into consulting. If somebody in a big shop comes up with an idea, most of the other people working there won’t disagree. Even if they think it’s dumb, they don’t want to be noticed so they don’t say anything. That’s not for me. I like to examine an idea from all sides, look at it and see how well the parts fit together. I did the same thing with physics. I don’t think anyone yet has matched Newton, and for that matter I don’t think Maxwell gets the respect he deserves. It’s all Einstein nowadays.”

“Einstein’s reputation is well deserved, Morty,” Chuck protested. “You can’t ignore that he predicted gravity’s effect on light waves, or for that matter his insight into the relationship between heat and particle motion. As for gravity waves, well, I suspect that sooner or later someone will detect those too.”

“No question about what he did, Chuck, especially that part about heat, but I think he evaded the question when he claimed that gravity distorts space-time around a large mass. He did the same thing Newton did, he talked about what, but didn’t explain how it happened. He just said it did. Anyway, I began looking at Einstein’s ideas, and some of them didn’t quite ring true to me. It’s like that part about the dual nature of light, that it’s a particle and a wave at the same time? It just didn’t make sense to me.”

“I knew about that, Morty. But Einstein didn’t have anything to do with that model, and I don’t see...”

“It’s like the people who came up with that idea never looked at Einstein’s equation, the one about mass-energy conversion. Did you ever try to work that one out?”

“I can’t say I did,” Chuck admitted. “It came up in physics and the professor was damned near in ecstasy about it, but no one ever bothered to explain it. It was all about how beautiful it was, but I never could see that. It’s just an equation.”

“Well, I worked my way through it and it’s not all that difficult. In one sense, I think Einstein cut a couple of corners. Think about C-squared, for example; you’ve had basic math courses, and all you need is algebra to work that one out. You remember your algebra classes, don’t you?”

“I think so, Morty.”

“One of the basic concepts is that if you square something, you square everything that’s part of the concept. For example, if you square two meters, you get four square meters, not just four meters. That’s important; it’s not just the numbers that get squared, it’s everything, including units. It’s also worth noticing that whenever you do that, you change dimensions, in the case of ‘meters’ from linear to area. You’re changing from simple concepts to complex ones, from first order units to second order ones.”

“Okay, I can see that. But you’re referring to squaring the speed of light, aren’t you?”