METEOR STORM Page 26

  “Then we better start stringing power lines,” I said, “and see what we have in the way of transformers.”

  “Yep,” Hank said, “transformers are going to be your limiting component. Here’s the name of a guy who just might know where some of those transformers can be found.”

  I took the name and thanked him for his help.

  * * *

  Hank was good to his word. Sixteen days later, reactor number one went subcritical as the control rods were slowly raised out of the reactor core. In an hour, steam was flowing and the massive generators began to rotate. Palo Verde Number One was back online, the country’s first nuclear reactor to be recovered. Electricity was the life-blood of industrial operations. Metals could be refined, cast, molded, forged and machined; wood could be cut, planed and processed; looms could be built and operated; cloth and thread could be made.

  I brought John up to date over the radio.

  “How are you doing for water in the Phoenix area?” John asked.

  “That’s the one thing that is taking the greatest amount of our time and resources,” I said. “We’re following the same procedure we used in Denver. We have the same basic situation: no blueprints, so we don’t know where all the shutoff valves are located. We have some guys who worked for the DPW Water Department and they have turned off everything they can remember. The rest we’ll just have to try and see what we can find.”

  “Okay,” John said. “How soon will you be starting?”

  “Wires are already run,” I replied. “Tia’s out at the water plant now supervising initial startup.”

  “The other concern is food production,” John said. “I’ve received reports that farmers are having trouble plowing their fields. There is little if any fuel for tractors and only a couple hundred horses survived the meteor storm. Farmers are plowing their fields with twenty to thirty people pulling the plows by hand. This is insane. We need better answers.”

  “I know we do,” I replied, “but the lack of reliable transportation is crippling everything. Even if we manage to grow the food, how do we get it to where the people are?”

  “The railroads are our first answer,” John said. “But right now we have only three trains and thirty five thousand miles of damaged track. People are going to starve this winter unless we can come up with a better answer.”

  “I’ll talk with Ralph,” I said. “I know he’s been working on something. I’ll see if it will help.”

  The sheer number of problems was staggering. I began to realize that the 650,000,000 people that died in the meteor storm 63,000 years ago were not only the direct result of the storm, but of the disease and starvation that followed. We had survived the storm. The only question now was how do we manage to grow enough food and get it to where the people are so we don’t end up at a thousand survivors again?

  * * *

  Ralph showed his private project to me. A large stake truck had survived the meteor storm. Without diesel fuel it was essentially useless, but Ralph had pulled the engine and was replacing it with a magnetic generator. All that was missing was an electric motor.

  “We found several industrial motors that survived the fires and the meteorites,” Ralph said. “But they’re the wrong voltage to be used directly. I have a guy rewinding the first motor now. Tomorrow we try it all out and see if it works.”

  “Good,” I said. “John told me Albuquerque is in desperate need of water and they have no electricity. Can you help them?”

  “We’re casting the parts for our first megawatt generator now,” Ralph replied, “it should be ready to go within the week. Albuquerque works for me. There’re 20 thousand pounds of neodymium over there. We can deliver the generator and pick up the neodymium for the return trip.”

  “Excellent,” I said. “I’ll let John know. He’ll have your neodymium all packaged up and ready to go. By the way, can you come up with a generator and motor combination that we can retrofit to a tractor?”

  “You mean like a farm tractor?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “Right now people are pulling plows by hand, trying to grow enough food to get us through the winter. Tractors would make a huge difference.”

  “Huh,” Ralph said. “Let me see what I can find.”

  * * *

  On the first test of the stake truck, the connection between the motor and the transmission broke after an hour of use. Ralph beefed up the connection and two days later we had our first delivery truck ready to go. It was a little comical watching the driver start the generator. The crank extended through the front of the grill work and reminded me of the old movies with people starting the Model T’s Henry Ford used to make.

  The next day we loaded the country’s first megawatt magnetic generator onto the back of the truck and covered it with a tarp. By noon, it was on its way to Albuquerque.

  “I took a look at some tractors,” Ralph said. “There’re quite a few that survived. They run on a hydrostatic drive, which makes the transition to a magnetic generator system relatively simple. My engineer thinks we can come up with a retrofit package that can be installed into a tractor in less than a day.”

  “How many do you think you can build?” I asked.

  “If I can build some more kilns, we can make a dozen a week,” he said.

  “In addition to what you are making now?”

  “The parts spend 36 hours in the kiln,” Ralph replied. “That’s the current bottleneck. The rest of the operations are relatively short, by comparison.”

  “And what’s holding up new kilns?” I asked.

  “Fire bricks,” Ralph replied. “Right now we are scavenging damaged houses with fireplaces for the fire bricks.”

  “Can we make more?” I asked.

  “The problem is getting the right clay for the bricks,” Ralph said. “In the past all of the Alumina Clay for fire bricks came from South America. We don’t have any reserves except for old fireplaces.”

  “So our only long-term solution is international trade,” I replied. “That is going to take a lot of time to accomplish, since it depends on shipping things on the oceans.”

  It dawned on me that the Navy just might have freighters that could be put to use, if they even acknowledge the ships exist. I located Lieutenant Saltzman and pulled him aside for a private conversation.

  “Some of the materials that are critical for us to rebuild our civilization come from other countries,” I said. “Can the Navy help get things started by moving materials from one country to another over the oceans? I assume the Navy has freighters to move cargo.”

  Saltzman smiled. “As I said,” he replied, “I have no authority to promise anything or to negotiate anything. I am just here to observe.”

  “And I know that most of the Navy ships run on diesel oil, which will run out very shortly,” I replied. “Even the nuclear powered ships require new fuel rods from time to time, and all of your people need to eat. We are going to be in a position to supply what you need, but it’s not going to be a one way street. We can all survive by working together, helping one another.”

  “Like I said,” he replied, “I can’t promise anything.”

  I could sense the thoughts in his head and his feelings. He still felt a little arrogant about his perceived position of power over us. I decided to shake him up a little.

  “Consider the idea that there are fewer secrets than you think there are,” I said.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, changing his posture to a more aggressive stance.

  At least I had his complete attention now. “It means the answer resides in cooperation rather than competition,” I said. “Think about it. We’re not a threat to you, but we can be a valuable resource to you under the right conditions.”

  I left him to ponder the situation alone, knowing he would pass the information up his chain of command.

  CHAPTER 30

  “I’ve got a new project for you,” John said as our daily radio update started. “I’ve
got a guy in Seattle who thinks he can make an aircraft turbofan engine run on electricity.”

  “An electric jet engine?” I asked. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “And you probably hadn’t ever heard of a Magnetic Effect Generator before we got the designs for them, either,” John replied.

  “Point well taken,” I said. “So what does he need?”

  “He needs help matching what he has to a magnetic generator. He’s got some interesting ideas that I’d like you to evaluate,” John said. “I’ve got enough jet fuel to make this one last trip, so the plane will be staying in Seattle with you. If you can help make this work, we’re back in business; otherwise we’re down to ground transportation only.”

  “Okay,” I said, “I’m game, Tia and Ed, too?”

  “Yeah,” John replied, “and Lieutenant Saltzman. He’s probably going to want to be in on this one, too. Invite him along and see what he says.”

  “Okay,” I said, “when do we leave?”

  “You have the plane down there,” John said, “Wheels up ASAP. You’ll have to stop in Denver for fuel.”

  That evening I talked with Tia and Ed. They weren’t exactly pleased to have Saltzman along, but they were more than ready to get out of the heat.

  “We’re being sent to Seattle,” I told Saltzman. “John’s invited you to come along if you’re interested, or we could drop you off in Denver with him. Your choice.”

  “So what’s in Seattle?” Saltzman asked.

  “A guy who believes he can make an electric jet engine,” I said.

  “That’s actually an oxymoron,” Saltzman replied. “Electric and jet are two incompatible concepts.”

  I smiled. Saltzman knew his stuff.

  “Okay,” I said, “the guy believes he can make an electric turbofan engine capable of propelling an aircraft in flight.”

  “Supersonic flight?” Saltzman asked.

  “Remains to be seen,” I replied, “but theoretically, yes.”

  Saltzman leaned back in his seat and examined me for a short time. I could feel the gears turning in his mind.

  “I’m in,” he said. “When do we leave?”

  “Ten tomorrow morning.”

  * * *

  We got up, had breakfast and took the bicycle-built-for-two limo service back out to the airport. We boarded and took our seats. Ralph loaded a medium-sized magnetic generator into the plane after us. Before we were belted in, the pilot closed the door and ducked into the cockpit. We started rolling immediately and within two minutes were airborne. We stopped in Denver for the remaining jet fuel and took off again for Seattle. The flight took just over two hours as we descended down through the clouds, something we hadn’t seen in a month. The air in Seattle was cool and damp; it felt soggy, compared to Phoenix.

  Bernard Hockstetler, who preferred to be called just Bernie, met us at the hangar where John’s Learjet 45 would remain. The hangar had a number of holes in the roof and a few in the walls. Several puddles remained on the concrete floor. Since there was nothing to burn inside the hanger during the meteor storm, it remained structurally sound. The only problem was, when it rained, which it did a lot in Seattle, everything inside the hangar got wet.

  “My shop is in back of the hangar,” he explained. Bernie told me in general terms what he was doing and what needed to be done. My understanding of how an electric motor works left me visualizing a motor four to five times the size of a jet engine with only a fraction of the power. With the weight of the motors and the electrical power required, I didn’t see how an electric airplane could get off the ground.

  Bernie kept talking about how all the rules changed with resonance, and what he had found with his experiments. We arrived at his shop exhausted, but Bernie insisted on showing us one of his motors. He showed us a common quarter-horse-power appliance motor, small and compact and how he had rewired the motor with much larger wire. The motor was connected to a clutch assembly and from there to a six-foot diameter fan bolted to the floor. On the work bench next to the clutch assembly were some capacitors wired in with the motor.

  “Ordinarily,” Bernie explained, “this motor will not drive a fan this large, and if it does, it will turn slowly, creating only a small breeze. But by making the motor a resonant circuit, many times the electric current will flow inside the motor, giving it many times the torque needed to drive the fan.”

  “Yes,” I said, “but the power consumed by the motor still has to come from the outside. It doesn’t actually generate power within itself.”

  “I know they taught you that in engineering school,” Bernie said. “They taught me that too. But they were wrong. They didn’t pursue it because they were taught it couldn’t work. Watch what happens.”

  Bernie pointed to a watt meter connected to the wires between the motor and the capacitors and a second watt meter connected to the wires that led down to a car alternator mounted on a bicycle next to the work bench.

  Bernie started pedaling, just as so many other people were doing down in Phoenix, to create electrical energy. The large fan started to rotate gently as expected.

  “The whole thing is frequency sensitive,” Bernie said as he changed gears on the bicycle and began pumping harder. The large fan began rotating faster, developing more of a breeze. I checked the power meters. The energy produced by the alternator on the bicycle was the same as that being consumed by the motor. Then the fan increased dramatically in speed and power.

  “Check the power levels now,” Bernie shouted over the noise of the fan.

  I looked again at the meters. The power coming into the motor had gone up a little, but the power inside the motor circuit was ten times what was being fed into it. I was stunned. The fan increased to a roar and small objects around the shop were being blown around by the violent wind now being produced. I finally realized why the fan was bolted to the concrete floor.

  “Check it again!” Bernie shouted.

  I checked the input power from the bicycle alternator. It had actually gone down by half! The power in the motor circuit was now almost fifty times the input power from the bicycle alternator. Bernie stopped pedaling and let the system coast. The fan maintained its power and speed for over a minute, before it, too, started to slow down. When everything stopped Bernie got off the bicycle and motioned us to the back section of the shop.

  “How in the hell did you do that?” I asked.

  “It’s been there all along,” Bernie said. “We were all programmed to believe it couldn’t be done with the Law of the Conservation of Energy. But there are different laws that apply, laws we were never taught.”

  “You mean laws that hadn’t been discovered before?” I asked.

  Bernie looked at me. “No,” he said, “laws of electromagnetism that have been purposely suppressed. Many of these laws have been known for over a hundred years, since the days of Nicola Tesla, and have been deliberately hidden by our university professors. The oil cartel has been buying up new energy inventions for decades and hiding them from the public. Anyone knowledgeable of these laws who won’t cooperate with the oil cartel is murdered. I lost two very good friends that way.”

  I thought about the first time we powered up the magnetic generator down in Phoenix and the anti-gravitational field that it developed when it lifted up off the work bench and pinned itself to the inside of the roof. They never taught us anything like that in engineering school, either. What else was going on that we didn’t recognize because we thought it was impossible? The four different types of Vimana, or ancient flying craft in the cave in Tibet immediately came to mind.

  “So how did you find these hidden laws?” I asked.

  “I began studying the work of Nicola Tesla, Maxwell and Gabriel Kron. Radio transmitters work on a resonant circuit,” Bernie explained. “In that circuit the input power exactly equals the output power, less internal losses. Resonant motor circuits were assumed to work on the same principle, but they don’t. When an electric motor rotates
it forms an electromagnetic vortex which draws more power in from the surrounding electromagnetic field. The electromagnetic vortex increases the available electrical power in the same way a tornado increases the power of a storm by drawing in more air. Your magnetic generator works on the same principle, just with a magnetic field in place of an electric field. It’s all laid out here in my calculations.”

  Bernie showed me his notebook. The math looked like something I’d never seen before.

  “What kind of math is that?” I asked.

  “It’s Tensor Calculus,” Bernie replied. “You know, used to analyze torsion vectors.”

  “Oh, right,” I replied, wondering what the hell he was talking about. “So what else did you want to show us?”

  Bernie led us out the back door of the shop to a canvas enclosure and opened the side flap.

  “This is what I needed the generator for,” he said.

  It was a complete turbofan engine with the center jet combustion section removed and one of Bernie’s electric motors mounted in its place. The electric motor was designed so that the outside rotated and the center section remained stationary. The outer section had the turbine blades attached to it, surrounded by the mounting frame and the cowling we have come to recognize so easily from all the commercial jets that we flew on in the past. This was actually a small-to-medium-sized turbofan, measuring six feet in diameter. I’d seen some as large as fourteen feet in diameter. The turbofan was mounted on a set of stanchions securely fastened to a concrete slab with a built-in thrust sensor.

  “It’s a triple fan, high-bypass engine,” Bernie said.

  “Would that be suitable for military use?” Saltzman asked.

  “Military engines are low bypass and derive a greater portion of their thrust from the jet exhaust and afterburners,” Bernie replied. “Since there is no jet engine portion to the engine you are going to get a lot less thrust. But, again, that will depend on the engine size, won’t it?”