module. When she had finished she fitted the inspection panel
back into place.
She looked at her watch and
considered all the work she still had to do. With less than eight hours to go,
she would have to act fast. She left the survival module and headed for a room
adjoining the boat-hangar. From there she wheeled out several vast cylinders of
compressed air, which she connected to the survival module’s automatic
atmo-press regulation pump. She turned the valves on each of the cylinders to
start the filling process.
Then she went over to a
workbench by the boat-hangar entrance and started rummaging about in a toolbox.
The toolbox contained pneumohammers, laser cutters, six-inch nails, assorted
screws, optical tape measures, ultrasonic drills, wire-strippers, wallpaper
strippers and several broken pencils. She searched a second time but still
couldn’t find what she was after. She looked up, wondering where to look next.
Then she remembered LEP.
“LEP?” she said.
“At your service, ma’am,”
came the near-instant reply.
“Where can I find a
screwdriver?”
“Er, there’s one in the
cupboard on the far wall behind you,” said LEP. “The blue one marked ‘DANGER –
TOXIC FUMES. DO NOT OPEN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES’.”
“Thanks,” said anaX absently,
turning and walking over to the blue cupboard. It did indeed have a sign
saying: ‘DANGER – TOXIC FUMES. DO NOT OPEN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES’. She put a
hand on the cupboard’s handle. Then, taking a deep breath, she opened the
right-hand door, found the screwdriver and quickly closed the door again. She
took several paces away from the cupboard before breathing in again. A cloud of
green-brown fumes, released by the opening of the door, swirled around and
started its slow diffusion into the air of the boat-hangar.
With the screwdriver in hand,
anaX went to the front of her chosen survival module and unscrewed the four
screws securing the module’s front number-plate. She unclipped it and tossed it
onto the floor underneath the craft. Then she went round to the back of the
vehicle and repeated the operation on the rear number-plate.
Anyone watching her would,
yet again, have puzzled over the strangeness of her actions. After all, she
hadn’t so much as raised an eyebrow or batted an eyelid at finding the
screwdriver exactly where LEP had said it would be.
Chapter 9
The
neutrino bomb’s second-stage timer clicked into action and continued the inexorable countdown
towards the bomb’s detonation and to the monumental devastation this would
cause.
The timer consisted of a
precision-engineered, thermister-looped, roto-motor that slowly lowered a
wedge-shaped chip of glass through one arm of a Michelson interferometer. As
the optical path of that arm lengthened, due to the light’s passage through
progressively thicker and thicker segments of glass, so the successive maxima
and minima of the fringe pattern were counted by a phototriode. At the end of
twenty counts a safety-catch was jettisoned and the acousto-responsive timing
mechanism triggered.
The safety catch activated
another of the bomb’s highly subtle anti-tampering devices: the ‘H.T. resistive
bomb protector’. This worked by passing a potentially lethal 100 amp current
through the bomb’s outer casing. Both the current, and the fact that it caused
the bomb’s casing to glow red-hot, were intended to deter any casual
interference with, or handling of, the device.
So, with the countdown progressing
and the bomb approaching red-hot, everything now looked to be on schedule.
But it wasn’t.
Again there was something
amiss. For, the acousto-responsive timing mechanism that had just been
triggered by the second-stage timer was, in fact, the bomb’s fourth -stage
timer. Somehow, the bomb’s third-stage timer had been completely by-passed.
Once again, the moment of the bomb’s detonation had been brought markedly
nearer; this time, by about an hour!
*
jixX, sylX and fluX
back into place.
She looked at her watch and
considered all the work she still had to do. With less than eight hours to go,
she would have to act fast. She left the survival module and headed for a room
adjoining the boat-hangar. From there she wheeled out several vast cylinders of
compressed air, which she connected to the survival module’s automatic
atmo-press regulation pump. She turned the valves on each of the cylinders to
start the filling process.
Then she went over to a
workbench by the boat-hangar entrance and started rummaging about in a toolbox.
The toolbox contained pneumohammers, laser cutters, six-inch nails, assorted
screws, optical tape measures, ultrasonic drills, wire-strippers, wallpaper
strippers and several broken pencils. She searched a second time but still
couldn’t find what she was after. She looked up, wondering where to look next.
Then she remembered LEP.
“LEP?” she said.
“At your service, ma’am,”
came the near-instant reply.
“Where can I find a
screwdriver?”
“Er, there’s one in the
cupboard on the far wall behind you,” said LEP. “The blue one marked ‘DANGER –
TOXIC FUMES. DO NOT OPEN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES’.”
“Thanks,” said anaX absently,
turning and walking over to the blue cupboard. It did indeed have a sign
saying: ‘DANGER – TOXIC FUMES. DO NOT OPEN UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES’. She put a
hand on the cupboard’s handle. Then, taking a deep breath, she opened the
right-hand door, found the screwdriver and quickly closed the door again. She
took several paces away from the cupboard before breathing in again. A cloud of
green-brown fumes, released by the opening of the door, swirled around and
started its slow diffusion into the air of the boat-hangar.
With the screwdriver in hand,
anaX went to the front of her chosen survival module and unscrewed the four
screws securing the module’s front number-plate. She unclipped it and tossed it
onto the floor underneath the craft. Then she went round to the back of the
vehicle and repeated the operation on the rear number-plate.
Anyone watching her would,
yet again, have puzzled over the strangeness of her actions. After all, she
hadn’t so much as raised an eyebrow or batted an eyelid at finding the
screwdriver exactly where LEP had said it would be.
Chapter 9
The
neutrino bomb’s second-stage timer clicked into action and continued the inexorable countdown
towards the bomb’s detonation and to the monumental devastation this would
cause.
The timer consisted of a
precision-engineered, thermister-looped, roto-motor that slowly lowered a
wedge-shaped chip of glass through one arm of a Michelson interferometer. As
the optical path of that arm lengthened, due to the light’s passage through
progressively thicker and thicker segments of glass, so the successive maxima
and minima of the fringe pattern were counted by a phototriode. At the end of
twenty counts a safety-catch was jettisoned and the acousto-responsive timing
mechanism triggered.
The safety catch activated
another of the bomb’s highly subtle anti-tampering devices: the ‘H.T. resistive
bomb protector’. This worked by passing a potentially lethal 100 amp current
through the bomb’s outer casing. Both the current, and the fact that it caused
the bomb’s casing to glow red-hot, were intended to deter any casual
interference with, or handling of, the device.
So, with the countdown progressing
and the bomb approaching red-hot, everything now looked to be on schedule.
But it wasn’t.
Again there was something
amiss. For, the acousto-responsive timing mechanism that had just been
triggered by the second-stage timer was, in fact, the bomb’s fourth -stage
timer. Somehow, the bomb’s third-stage timer had been completely by-passed.
Once again, the moment of the bomb’s detonation had been brought markedly
nearer; this time, by about an hour!
*
jixX, sylX and fluX
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