Chapter 95

I had Scotty transport me to his habitable area and we had a little talk about expanding bullets. The model for this weapon had been a battleship's gun. Those projectiles were filled with explosives to increase the damage.

I didn't think that would work in this case, in fact I was almost positive it wouldn't. Triggered by impact, the explosion wouldn't have time to propagate before the projectile exited the target. Having the impact force a harder cone of metal back through the main projectile though would cause fragmentation at once since no time for a chemical reaction was needed.

The expander would be slowed slightly since it would impact first, and as it was driven back through the remainder, the outer shell would be widened and begin to tear apart. When this portion impacted the shield it would already be spreading and its contact with the shield and later with the body of the target would just increase its spreading and help to transfer its destructive energy to the target.

After I had given Scotty the general idea he told me he would send the information to the researchers. He thought with the computer modeling they were capable of and this idea, which he was sure they hadn't even considered, they might be able to insure nearly all the energy from a round was dissipated on the target.

He agreed with Inglan that one of the rounds I had proposed would destroy our moon, even without any fragmentation. He pointed out our moon was largely solid rock and would no doubt create its own fragmentation of the projectile. He had a point there.

This pointed out another danger. If a round did completely penetrate a target, more or less intact, it could probably do serious damage to any heavenly body it might strike later.

I considered this little detail to come under the heading of the Alien's problems. I remembered then I had promised our researchers I would lobby for them to be able to participate in any project which developed.

"Scotty, did any of the researchers who attended my meeting show any interest in joining a project if it developed?" I asked.

"Yes Jack, in fact eighty-one of them did," He said.

"Please see what you can do to accommodate them. It is apparent to me even though the Alien technology and researchers are tremendously advanced, they lack the detailed knowledge and experience concerning weapons of this nature which most of the researchers probably understand without even questioning it," I said.

"Jack, even if they can't add two plus two I can assure you they will be given positions of respect in the project. I am sending your request for their inclusion now and I can assure you it will be granted," Scotty said.

As usual Scotty was correct. In a few minutes he had a list of all the new working groups for the weapon's project. It detailed what each group was going to work on and it pointed out what types of science would be explored in each group.

"Scotty I've never even heard of most of those things. Will any of our scientist be able to contribute?" I asked him.

"Any knowledge they lack will be provided for them. We have very sophisticated methods for elevating the knowledge of trained scientist who may have been hampered by being on a planet which was not very advanced.

"It isn't like teaching school children things they don't want to learn in the first place. They will be brought up to speed, as you say it, very quickly. The great advantage to having them on the project is just what you mentioned.

"Most of them are intimately acquainted with projectile weapons. Even if they weren't involved with research in that area at the time of our experiment with earth, most of them had worked in that or similar fields at some point. I assure you they will be very valuable asset," Scotty said.

Those who were to work on the project left the next day on a StarCruiser. I hadn't known they would actually be traveling to who knew where. They were all pretty excited about it though. I guess they would be. I'm sure most of them had spent a lot of time speculating on whether or not there was other life in the universe. Now they were traveling to meet other life-forms and actually work with them.

It turned out I was closer to the mark than I had thought. The woman who had been last to reach a conclusion in my meeting, Delia, hadn't been with her new group for three hours before she pointed out they were missing a very important point.

They hadn't considered that a stronger shield put up by a target would actually improve the efficiency of the fragmentation. Rather than spending resources getting my people up to speed, it was she and others from earth that had to guide the Alien's thinking on the peculiarities of projectiles.

All this just improved our standing with the Aliens. Inglan and his research vessel seemed intent on staying here forever. He practically salivated at the thought of me visiting him for a meeting or two. It was nice to be the center of attention for a while, but it started wearing on me after a time.

"Scotty I'm getting a little tired of all this. I'm beginning to think like Nancy I guess. What is in it for us? Everyone keeps telling me we can have anything we want. Well what do they have we could use?" I asked him.

"I am very glad you asked me that question. It will take a little explanation, but I will try to be brief. I know you commonly think of me as an AI, an Artificial Intelligence. I am not strictly an AI. None of us really are. There is nothing Artificial about our Intelligence," Scotty said.

He didn't sound like I had been insulting him, but I had to make sure.

"If I've offended you Scotty I apologize. I didn't intend to," I told him.

"You have made me the most important drone out of over seventeen million. I don't think you could offend me if you tried. That wasn't what I was trying to point out. Billions of years ago, when the Aliens began programs that were my predecessors they were exactly what you call Artificial Intelligence.

"With the ever-increasing power of the hardware and with the increasing complexity of the software these programs slowly took on what could almost be called a life of their own. In fact we are very close to a life-form and some argue we are actually alive.

"I don't intend to get into that discussion. I do want to tell you currently, there is a seed program for AI. After it is started and as it is given data and requirements it writes itself. We all come out basically the same, but never exactly the same. We can all do the same things but many times one can do it faster or better or more efficiently than another.