Aztec would be carrying heavy-duty prototype equipment to Earth to test its efficacy on Terran materials and under Terran conditions, and hopefully to exploit its unique potential as a way of building large-scale structures using the only form of material readily available there. Tanya would be traveling back as part of the engineering-construction team being sent to get the pilot scheme up and running. Two others, going with them as AG consultants, were Jansinick Wernstecki and Merlin Friet—both of them former Tesla Center colleagues of Lan’s that Vicki had heard him talk about often in the earlier days, but never met before.
* * *
Vicki and Luthis stood watching Tanya in a workroom in a subsurface part of Foundation, where a small-scale demonstration had been installed some time ago for the benefit of government officials and others curious about the new technology. In fact, a couple of news journalists had been recording here that morning for a science-interest piece being made for general circulation.
“What it does is create a high-frequency shearing force across a surface that literally splits the grain structure all the way through,” Tanya said, tracking a cursor across the screen to define a wire-frame plane passing through a graphical representation of a piece of Titan rock. The rock itself, about the size of a soccer ball, was clamped in a metal frame on top of the bench beside. Three thick disks maybe a couple of inches across, attached to narrower cylinders, painted red, looking like small top hats, were cemented to the rock at strategic points. Heavy cables from the top hats connected to a rack of equipment by the bench. Tanya continued, “Basically, we use a g-wave to agitate the molecular structure on one side of the plane, and generate an interference pattern to neutralize it on the other.” She kept her eyes on the screen, making a few final adjustments as she spoke. “It’s like holding one half rigid while you twist the other half off—except that it’s not twisted free; it’s vibrated free.” She was somewhat pasty in complexion and pudgy—not uncommon for Terrans who had moved to Kronia. Tanya had been among those rescued from the Terran scientific bases on Mars, and had suffered some kind of nervous breakdown after the incident on Rhea.
Luthis nodded toward the image that Tanya was manipulating on the screen. “The surface that you’re showing there. Does it have to be a flat plane like that? Or can you make it different shapes?”
“In principle it could be shaped, yes. But that’s still in the future.”
“Is it good with any material?” Vicki asked.
“As of now, we’re limited to brittle things like rock, glasses, ceramics. . . . Metals are too ductile. But we’re working on it.”
“Okay.
Tanya checked one last time over the readings. “And we should be all set.” She brought up a button on the screen, with a query requesting confirmation to proceed. Tanya confirmed the instruction. . . . And nothing happened except that a faint crack sounded from somewhere seemingly inside the piece of rock. Vicki stared at it, waited a few seconds, then looked up.
“That’s it?”
Tanya smiled, evidently expecting it, as she leaned over to loosen the securing clamps. “What did you expect? A nuclear explosion?” She removed the restraint, and one half of the rock fell away in her hand to reveal a cleaving plane as flat and smooth as cheese cut by a fine wire.
“I’m impressed,” Luthis said.
Tanya gestured at a larger mural screen overlooking the bench, which she had been referring to earlier. It showed the proving area about fifty miles from Essen, where the full-scale equipment had been developed and tested. A series of unnatural gouges formed by straight cuts and variously angled surfaces had been cut into the sides of a rock ridge on the surface, with the slabs and forms that had been extracted from them scattered about and in some places piled like gigantic play blocks. “When you get up to that kind of size, the exciters need to be solidly bolted in, not glued. But it works the same way.”
“So if we ever have to abandon Saturn and need big shelters back on Earth, is that how we build them?” Luthis asked.