Halloween is a scary day for many little people. But for most children, Halloween is a fun day to canvass the neighborhood for treats.

Jim Napoli was sixteen years old when he became a hero. He was sixteen when he became wealthy. Jim Napoli was sixteen years old when he got engaged to marry. His engagement, his heroism and his wealth were all associated with Halloween.

Jim’s parents, Jerry and Mary Napoli, had been students at UCLA. Jerry, John Grace and Abby Marshal majored in Engineering, and they formed their own study group. Mary was a fellow student majoring in Applied Mathematics. She told everyone that she was going to find a husband. A month after graduating, with their bachelor’s degrees, the four married in a double ceremony.

After graduation, Jerry went to work for General Atomics, where he worked developing heat shields for spacecraft. John Grace enrolled in the engineering graduate school at UCLA, where he earned his master’s degree in two years. Abby Grace worked for SpaceX on the Falcon 9 rocket, and paid the bills while John worked on his master’s degree.

Three years into his job at General Atomics Jerry had a disagreement with his boss and quit. Jerry believed that the company should make its own ablative material, but his boss didn’t want to make the capital investment in ovens and mixers. Jerry convinced John Grace to join him and form a company to compete with General Atomics. The initial focus of the company, which they named The Grace Napoli Heat Shield Company, was phenotypic based ablative material. Eventually their company built the entire heat shield, and as time passed, they worked with whatever heat shield material NASA seemed to like.

Abby and Mary found themselves both pregnant three years after graduation. The Grace family and the Napoli family purchased homes in the same neighborhood about half a mile apart. Sarah Grace and Jim Napoli were born within two months of each other.

Jerry and John’s business flourished and Abby and Mary were able to spend all their time with their children. Abby and Mary were determined that their children would be exceptional engineers. From the day they were born, the mothers would read to the child with the child in their lap. Abby’s theory was that Sarah would learn to follow the printed words as she read to the infant and learn to read. Abby became pregnant with Sally seven months after Sarah was born. When Sarah was two years old, Abby began teaching her the alphabet. At most meals, Abby used flash cards with a letter of the alphabet on each card. Abby would feed Sarah a spoonful and show her a letter. Sarah had the alphabet down including the sounds of each letter by the time she was thirty months old. Sarah was reading by the age of three. Mary was not quite as diligent as Abby with the flash cards, and Jim began reading at five years.

At age six, Jim and Sarah were enrolled in the first grade. But since their mothers had worked with them so early, Jim and Sarah could already do third grade work. They both became bored and disruptive and their parents realized that standard public school was not going to work. The only answer was a private school which could give them special attention.

As gifted as Jim and Sarah were, the surprise was Sally. She was reading at three years, the same as Sarah, even though Abby had spent less time reading to her and teaching the alphabet. Sally was enrolled in kindergarten at the same school and was moved to the first grade within a week. The three children flourished.

Becky Bowles entered the same school in the sixth grade. She was a year older than Jim and Sarah and about equal academically. Becky sought to become friends with Jim, Sarah and Sally and had lunch with them every day. Jim was interested in the girls as class mates, as intellectual equals, as people with whom he could explore science and math. In the seventh grade, Jim taught himself and the girls calculus.

The four friends were enrolled in the same high school. Freshman year Becky and Sarah were beginning to mature and notice boys. Becky had the looks of a junior and she was noticed by the junior and senior boys. She often had lunch separate from her three friends. By sophomore year, Jim had noticed girls and developed a crush on Becky, but every boy in the high school had a crush on Becky. And to complicate the social situation, Sarah and Sally both had crushes on Jim.

And Becky no longer had lunch with Jim or Sarah or Sally, she had her own social group. But the four were academically ahead of everyone else, and remained friends.

Jim sought a way to spend more time with Becky and found a science contest he could enter in the summer. For pleasure, Jim had been reading quantum mechanics college text books for years. For the contest, he would create graphs and displays. He would wow his audience with fanciful wormhole paths to other galaxies. And he would invite Becky to partner with him. Becky listened to Jim’s pitch, and she became certain that together they could win. She accepted the partnership even though it would hurt her social life, but the contest would be held during the summer break.

They won first prize, two thousand dollars. But the real prize was national recognition for their work with quantum mechanics. Their work was not ground breaking, but demonstrated a true mastery of quantum concepts by high school students.

They were both offered full scholarships by Caltech and Stanford.

Sarah and Sally Grace were not involved in Jim and Becky’s county science contest. Sarah was angry when Jim entered the county science contest and didn’t invite her to partner. When Jim began reading books on quantum mechanics, Sarah and Sally naturally did the same. Sally, Sarah and Jim often discussed the technical problems with theoretical wormholes and the realities of Hawking radiation. Sarah and Sally were both sweet on Jim, and so they both wanted to impress him. But Jim’s contest win spurred them to seek more that a cursory knowledge and so they immersed themselves in mastering quantum mechanics Sarah and Sally’s mother was Abby Grace. Abby gave up a promising career in material science with SpaceX, to become a stay at home mom. Abby knew immediately the reason her daughters had developed an interest in quantum mechanics. Abby felt the girls were too young to get seriously involved with Jim Napoli, but she was not going to discourage her daughters’ pursuit of scientific knowledge.

Abby did her own research, so that she could help them. She worked with the girls on the known energy states and the electron orbital parameters of various metallic elements. Their work led to questions about alloys. Could they use quantum mechanics to predict what properties various alloys might exhibit? Abby told the girls that the world’s engineers believed that the energy bands were too greatly dissimilar, and that they were approaching a dead end.

Sarah and Sally researched alloys for months. And they became convinced that quantum mechanics could be used to predict the properties of mixtures of the elements, that is properties of alloys. Alloys formed when electrons were shared by various elements. The common assumptions were that electrons would only be shared if their energy states were similar. But quantum mechanics predicted that not all orbits were spherical. Some looked like a figure eight. Others were equally odd. The result was that the orbits of lower and higher energy states interacted because the orbits intersected. The girls needed some high end computing power. They needed to study the interaction. What would they get, if they created very precise alloys? Before Sally and Sarah approached Jim and Becky, they did many graphs and calculations with the limited computing power they had. Jim and Becky became instantly excited and the four became partners. The partnership would attempt to create useful alloys with quantum mechanics. Abby thought success was unlikely, but if they were successful the rewards would be immense. The partners convinced their parents to contribute funds and they purchased forty thousand dollars worth of computer equipment. The four partners set to work to create alloys of iron, at least on paper.

Many factors are involved in creating useful alloys. Crystal defects in an alloy can be caused by impurities. An impurity atom can be so large it causes crystal deformation. But deformation can also be caused by mechanically stressing a metal. The partners chose to ignore such crystal deformation. They would work with impurities. If their research indicated that crystal deformation would lead to poor results, then their alloys would come with warnings.

The partners chose to concern themselves with all of the energy states of all of the constituents of the alloys, including likely impurities. The youngest partner, Sally Grace was a fifteen year old and like any fifteen year old, she was inclined to disregard conventional wisdom. She began including ever larger amounts of impurities, and then mixtures of impurities, in the computer simulations. The results created data bases one hundred thousand times larger than they had when they began. Theoretical alloy properties sometimes jumped off scale with tiny incremental changes in the amount of a particular impurity. The partners felt that they were on the track of something big.

The four went to Abby for advice, and showed her their work. Abby said she would help them if they could convince her that they knew the science behind their work. The four partners and Abby spent several hours a day for a week working through the theory the four partners had developed. At the end of a week, Abby was convinced.

Abby called her former coworkers at SpaceX and asked a favor. She asked for a kilogram size sample of each of twenty different elements with very high purities. When she specified the purity, the answer was no. Fortunately Abby knew Elon Musk. She promised him that SpaceX would get first option on anything that she invented. Fortunately she caught Elon in a good mood and she received one hundred thousand dollars worth of material in a week. The partners met at the Grace house for a dinner prepared by Sally and Sarah. Present were Jerry and Mary Napoli, John and Abby Grace. After dinner Becky made a presentation to Jim and Jerry. “We have developed some stainless steel alloys that will outperform any titanium alloy known. We would like for you to make some samples for us. We are going to have SpaceX test them.”

“For you four, we’ll do it. We can make your samples this week.”

Their first alloy was a stainless steel with properties that industry believed impossible to achieve. Their stainless steel alloy solved a critical rocket engine hot section specification that had been satisfied only with a very expensive titanium alloy.

Becky Bowles used one of the spare bedrooms in her home, as a study room. And eventually, Becky converted the study room into a work room for her partners. The work room had four desks. Each had its own computer. And a large monitor was mounted on one wall.

Nicholas Bowles and his wife Matilda walked into the study room with big smiles.

“The deal is done”, Nicholas said. “I have just deposited one million, fifty thousand dollars into your business account.” And nobody said anything. There was no celebration, no applause.

And Nicholas added, “Did anyone notice that the deposit was for fifty thousand more than the sales contract?”

Eventually Jim Napoli acknowledged Mr. Bowles. “Sir, I apologize for our lack of enthusiasm. But we believe that we have stumbled onto a life or death situation.”

Mr. Bowles ignored the ‘life or death’ comment. “Well, the fifty grand is an advance for more stainless steel design work. Your parents will be here in about an hour and then you can explain the Life or death situation you mentioned.”

And so, a meeting meant to celebrate good fortune became a meeting to plan for a deadly Halloween.

After gathering at the dining room table in the home of Nicholas and Matilda, Abby said, “Someone please tell us about the ‘life or death’ problem”.

“As you know, we four partners are actively working on various alloys. But we thought about our patent sale, and we believe that a million dollar sale has attracted attention. We are concerned about personal safety and about data security, and we have added security engineering to our business.”

After parental interruption was quelled, Jim continued. “Ordinarily, four high school students would find it difficult to get the hardware and the specialized software that we need. But Becky and I won national recognition, and that opened doors. And so we started with one drone and now we have twelve. We have software that reads license plates. We can record photos of vehicles and sometimes the occupants. We have database management software that handles the data. And Sally and Sarah have written software that sorts vehicles that do not belong to people who live within a mile of our neighborhood. We have identified some people that are not from our state. And from their behavior, we believe that they are threats.”

Jim Napoli showed photographs to all the parents.

“The man and child in the white Ford Econoline van stand out. The van was rented from an airport fifty miles away. Today the driver returned as a passenger with another man driving a different car. They went by the Grace home several times.”

Sally wondered if the little girl was a kidnap victim.

Jerry Napoli turned to his partner, “We put the patent for the stainless steel alloy in your name. It was worth over a million dollars to SpaceX. It may be worth much more to someone else.”

Becky Bowles remarked, “Halloween is two weeks away. A dark Halloween evening would present an ideal opportunity to kidnap someone.”

Two days later John Grace, Jim Napoli, Sarah Grace and Tony Donnelly met at John and Jerry’s office. Tony was John and Jerry’s long time security consultant. John’s receptionist announced two FBI agents. They were Agents Mike More and Greg Little.

The agents considered the situation to be serious.

The FBI took the drone pictures of the men, the little girl, the van, and the car and the license plates and promised to work to identify them. The agents were noticeably impressed with the four partners’ work. Before they left, they wanted to discuss purchasing the software.

The next day, the four partners worked at their office at Becky’s house. Becky worked on ideas to extend the range of the drones. In their present state, they could fly for three to six hours depending on the load they carried and their speed.

Sarah was shopping for night vision gear for the partners and for the drones.

Sally was working on the aluminum alloy the partners were developing for SpaceX. She had the computers working on solutions. Sally was a broad thinker. It occurred to her that aluminum might or might not be the best base for the alloy. And so Sally was also working to find solutions with titanium and with Iron as the principle metal. It was worth a look.

Jim was studying the surveillance recordings of the Econoline van. He noted that the little girl kept her face covered. Nicholas walked in, noticed that Jim was sitting back thinking while Sally, Sarah and Becky were actively working on their keyboards. Jim accepted Nicholas invitation to discuss finances. They went to the kitchen where Matilda offered Jim a coke.

“How much money have you spent on the drones?”

Jim was surprised at the question and choked on his drink. “To date we have spent forty five thousand dollars on drones and software, and the money came from our advance form SpaceX. The retail price would have been over one hundred k. And sir, that was our money.”

Matilda chimed in, “One million dollars is a lot of money but you can go through it. Purchasing toys with partnership money is irresponsible.”

Jim agonized over his response. It needed to be respectful but it needed to be firm. Nicholas and Matilda Bowles didn’t know anything about the insight it took to invent the stainless steel alloy which is worth over a million dollars. And they didn’t know that the FBI inquired about purchasing the software the team had developed. They only knew how to evaluate risk versus reward and make financials decisions.

“Boys generally like toys like drones. Was the drone purchase your idea?”

“Mr. and Mrs. Bowles, we purchased the drones for the same reason we purchased forty thousand dollars worth of computer equipment. They are tools to make money. Several months ago, you questioned the wisdom of making Sally Grace a full partner because she is fifteen years old. Sally has insight. She considered that we might be able to create very specific alloys using quantum mechanics. All the engineers in the world believed that Sally and eventually Sarah, Becky and me were looking at an impossible dead end. Sally and her sister met with Becky and me and convinced us to seriously consider her ideas. Her quantum mechanics ideas lead to the million dollars in our bank account. When Sally suggested that we purchase drones, and develop a drone system to surveil our surroundings, everyone listened. When she produced an outline of how the system would work, we endorsed her plan. The drones were never toys. The four of us have discretionary funds to purchase toys. The Idea to purchase and develop a drone fleet was Sarah’s. Sarah is a very special person, a very bright person. And our drone fleet has uncovered potentially dangerous men.”

Jim paused and took a drink and looked Matilda in the eyes. “Incidentally, the FBI agents believe in our drone software and want to discuss purchasing a copy.”

Matilda was stunned and looked at Jim and then at her husband, and then said, “Jim, I am sorry that I assumed the drones were toys.”

Matilda looked towards her husband and continued, “We shouldn’t have assumed the worse. You are sixteen years old, but you have the maturity of someone much older.” Matilda bowed her head and apologized. “Jim, you have earned our respect and our trust.”

Nicholas then added, “We hope that you date Becky. She often gets asked out by college men. We hope that you remain part of her life.”

Nicholas paused, took a drink, gathering courage to go on. “I want you to know that we have had no part of this discussion about dating, with Becky. You are on your own with her. And Jim, you are welcome here anytime. We trust you with Becky.”

The next day Jerry Napoli hosted a meeting at his office. Present were Agents Mike More and Greg Little, Jerry and Mary Napoli, John and Abby Grace, Nicholas and Matilda Bowles, Jim Napoli, Sarah and Sally Grace, Becky Bowles, and security consultant Tony Donnelly.

“We have identified one of the men in the drone footage. He is a Russian, wanted for murder in France. The intelligence community believes that Russia uses him for wet work, assassinations. We think that he is here to kidnap one of you. The last part comes from signals intelligence, and we cannot discuss that.” He paused to let the noise die down.

We want to put agents in each of your three homes. Our boss suggested that we use our drones for surveillance. Frankly, your children’s drones are very good, probably better than ours. We suggest that all of you leave the neighborhood on Halloween. And we need pictures of everyone. We are going to use makeup artists, so that our FBI agents can impersonate you.”

Tony Donnelly asked, “They could save a lot of effort if they stole what they want. Why have there been no break-ins?”

Agent Mike More answered, “You sold your patent rights for too little money. We checked on you and found that your alloy is magic in the rocket business. Every country, every rocket company wants it. And your patent didn’t disclose all the engineering. The Russians want all the details and they want the people who invented it. They want you to invent more alloys. You sold it to SpaceX and they won’t reveal anything about it. But John’s name is on the patent, and we believe that the Russians want to kidnap John’s entire family. They have picked Halloween to confuse things. Since you are partners they may want to take Jerry’s family. But your drone surveillance implies that they are looking only at John’s family.”

It was agreed that Sally and Sarah were going to operate the drones with an FBI agent present. Agents were going to meet the three families at their homes on Halloween and move them. The agents and Tony left the meeting.

“We may continue to be targets after Halloween.”

“And we sold the rights for too little money.”

“And we have three solutions for our aluminum contract.”

Nicholas asked John and Jerry, “Could we sell the secret sauce to SpaceX for a hundred million and get the Russians off of us?”

“We could sell the know how to SpaceX. But SpaceX would never disclose the secret sauce and we would still be targets. And if we were to disclose the secret sauce after we sell it to SpaceX, we would get sued and lose the lawsuit.”

“Someone eventually is going to look at Becky and me and wonder if we found something in quantum mechanics that led us to the alloy work.”

“Success has its good points. But in your case, it has a lot of bad points, and you have to live with them.”

Abby Grace asked her daughter Sally what she meant when she said we have three solutions for our aluminum contract.

“I found solutions to our SpaceX contract. We can make alloys out of either aluminum, iron, or titanium that satisfy the contract. The iron or aluminum would probably be the simplest to make.”

“Give them one solution. They are paying one million dollars for the alloy work. And wait until the end of the contracted time period. We want it to look like we did a lot of work.”

Nicholas asked, “Where should we go for Halloween?”

Jim answered, “We have to stay close, Sarah and Sally have to operate the drones.”

And Sarah added, “We have night vision equipment to pick up.”

Jim offered his thoughts, “We are a really good team. And we have to help the FBI guys. But people, the Russians are killers. They are very bad people and only trained killers can deal with them.”

Becky said to Jim, “You remember that part about ‘only trained killers can deal with them.’”

The four partners, six parents, and an FBI agent were gathered in a safe house ten miles from Abby and John Grace’s home. Three monitors displayed video from three drones.

Becky explained, “We have equipped all of our drones with night vision. Sally is controlling all of them via T-Mobile service. When a drone gets low on charge, it will land and recharge autonomously, and we will keep at least three in the air at all times.”

Sally added, “I have one drone doing surveillance on our home. It is looking for anyone sneaking around the house. Two are looking at a three mile by three mile area centered on our home. If the bad guys use the same van, we will spot that van immediately. Notice that the drones fly in no particular pattern.”