Allotropes (an Ell Donsaii story #8) by Laurence Dahners Page A

speed claimed on that video, you would have entered a track meet a long time ago. He says that the fact you haven’t done so proves that you can’t, and that if you were a decent person you would just come out and admit it.”
    Ell grinned crookedly, “Well, you’re right … he is kind of a jerk.”
    Emma looked at her musingly for a moment, “ Can you run that fast?”
    Ell just shrugged. “Who knows? Never tried.”
     
    ***
     
    Emma watched in growing excitement as Querlak landed in front of a large building. Finally an end to the interminable fields of crops! Her AI said, “Shan is contacting you. He’s ready to take over for his shift with Sigwald.”
    “Connect me to him … Shan! Querlak’s taking us to a building! We’re just about to enter. I’m turning over control to you, but I’m going to stay to watch a few minutes. I’ve been bored senseless and I’m not leaving just as something finally happens.”
    “OK…” Shan said. “Looks like the building is made out of the same stuff as the road. Do you think they make everything out of carbon? Is it all graphene?”
    “No, graphene’s too flexible to hold up a wall. It’s incredible in tension but in compression it’d just fold. It’d be like trying to build a house out of nylon cloth.”
    Querlak looked a little tentative as she entered the building. She looked around a moment, then waved Sigwald forward almost furtively. Emma had the feeling they were doing something illicit.
    To Shan and Emma’s astonishment the huge building, though filled with equipment, had not a single sigma, other than Querlak, in it. Querlak led them into the building, at first looking about as if she were curious herself. Then another of those transformations rolled over her, changing her from a somewhat confused and dull appearance, to sharp and confident.
    Emma wondered why she had that feeling of a change in Querlak. There wasn’t any way she could truly be comprehending Querlak’s body language.
    Querlak stopped in front of a large machine and began pointing out its features in the pidgin English-sigma that they had been speaking. She opened the front of it like she worked with it all the time. From the look of the seals at the opening it appeared as if the inside was pressure tight. Inside were nozzles of varying sizes hanging on arms over a long bed.
    When Shan tried to ask how it worked. Querlak closed the door and turned , looking about. She led Sigwald across to a different, much smaller machine. She worked with it a bit, evidently powering it up. She closed the door which proved to be transparent. Sigwald’s sensors registered the machine heating, then the bed at the bottom took on a red glow. They could see motion through the door. A broad nozzle passed back and forth laying down a spray of hazy material. After a couple of passes a bright beam began playing over much of the surface. Sigwald’s cameras registered it as coherent light, probably from a laser. The pattern rapidly changed and a different color beam began tracing a finer pattern on the surface. Excitedly Shan realized that the machine seemed to be working something like a 3D printer. He turned Sigwald toward Querlak, intending to draw some molecules in the dust again. However, there wasn’t much dust. Then he realized that they were in dim enough light to project a picture with Sigwald’s laser. He drew Querlak’s attention to the dark side of the machine and, signaling an interrogative, Shan had Allan use Sigwald’s laser to project graphene’s chickenwire hexagons with sixes at the nodes to indicate carbon.
    For a moment Querlak seemed startled by the projection, then giving an impression as if she’d shrugged, she walked off, looking around as if trying to find something. She came back with a disk that had one side lit up. She inserted a small flat square in the side of it and scrolled through pictures until she came to one diagramming a layer something like the one the machine