He remembered how paranoid he had been about his antenna farm on the day of the first test. Now he’d be even more excited if he could just get a simple water pump working out in the desert.
One of the ranch hands squatted by the pile of wood, striking a flint and a piece of metal together. They still had some matches among their supplies, but the cowboys liked to show off their wilderness skills in front of Rita. Fine steel wool brought in from the microwave farm caught the spark and started smoking. Pieces of shaving, then larger pieces of mesquite began to burn, crackling and sending rich-smelling smoke into the air.
Rita stood back, shielding her face as one of the ranch hands tossed a handful of green pinon needles onto the growing fire. The smoke thickened and billowed. Rita said, “All we need now is a blanket to send smoke signals!”
“We don’t want to have a conversation with them,” Spencer said. “We just want them to turn on the juice.” He knew the radio man Juan Romero would be back at the microwave farm, waiting to see the smoke.
Spencer watched the water pump, not sure what to expect. Once Romero switched on the electricity from the farm, a motor would move a series of gears—what could be so tough about that? The substation would transform the oscillating voltage collected from the microwave antennas to power the pump. If this worked, it would be the first step to reestablishing a power-grid for the area, electricity that did not rely on petroleum or plastic components for distribution.
By erecting similar antenna farms, simple metal wires spread out on flat ground under the orbital path of the smallsats, and launching the remaining satellites in storage at JPL, Spencer could return electrical power to a broad band of the country—even the world. He liked crazy, optimistic plans, but, hey, it gave them something to work toward.
A high-pitched popping, sizzling noise jarred him out of his daydream. Acrid smoke spewed from the nearby utility pole. Spencer caught the sudden smell of creosote burning. “The substation’s going up!” he yelled.
The ranchers grabbed shovels and started throwing gypsum sand on the equipment to smother the fire. White sparks danced around the transformer units, accompanied by loud snaps and cracks. The signal fire continued to blaze, sending streamers of smoke into the windless air.
“Great!” Spencer ran to the bonfire. “Help me get this thing out!” He knew Romero would keep the juice flowing until the smoke signal stopped.
The dry mesquite burned hot and bright. He picked up a bucket of sand and threw it onto the blaze; the sand simmered on the coals. Smoke continued to boil into the air. Finally, a blanket thrown over the fire extinguished the flames.
Spencer stood back and waited as the smoke leaking from the blanket turned from black to gray-white. The substation continued to crackle like an electric heater dropped into a bathtub. As the smoke trailed away, the inferno at the substation subsided. Romero had shut down. The electrical equipment looked scorched.
A real no-brainer, Spencer had called the exercise. Right!
Rita wiped a hand over her sooty face. “So, we fix it up and try again?”
“Must be an engineering problem,” he said, scowling at the substation components.
Before the petroplague, the station had been a crossroads for power generated by the Public Service Company of New Mexico and the Rural Electric Network. Now, nothing remained but a smoldering pile of resistors, coiled windings, and insulators. At least the electric company wouldn’t come after him for damages.
“Let’s find out what went wrong,” he said. “That’s the only way we’ll learn anything. I want to get back to the microwave farm by sundown for the JPL contact.”
“You don’t seem too upset after just blowing the hell out of that substation,” Rita said.
“Job security,” Spencer said and faked a shocked expression to mask his disappointment. “You’ve been hanging around Nedermyer too much.”
Romero tugged on his drooping black mustache. “Caltech’s on the wireless, Spence. They’re ready for you.”
“Thanks.” Spencer took a seat. Now that the sun was down, their shortwave radio could eavesdrop on the world.
The blockhouse was illuminated by beeswax candles. They had a few battery-powered lights, but they tried not to use them much. Shadows cast by the flickering light danced on the trailer walls.
Static came from the radio speaker like ocean surf, distorting the voice that relayed news across the country for local dissemination. Romero repeated the news back to the emergency broadcast channel, verifying that he had correctly copied the contents.
Rita whispered, “You’re not going to tell them the test failed, are you? JPL might not send the satellites if they find out you can’t even get the power lines to work.”
“The experiment didn’t fail,” Spencer said. “It just pointed out some deficiencies in our assumptions.”
“Now who’s been talking to Nedermyer too much?” she snorted.
Romero handed him the makeshift microphone. “All set. You’ve got five minutes.”
Spencer fingered the button, clicking it twice. “Hello? This is Spencer Lockwood from White Sands.”
A moment passed. Nothing but static came over the speaker. He frowned and started to repeat himself when a voice broke through. “Dr. Lockwood?”
Spencer leaned forward. “Yes, that’s me.”
“Stand by, one. We’ve got someone here for you.”
The microphone rustled as it was handed over. “Spencer? Is this the same Doctor Lockwood I taught at Caltech?”
Spencer stopped. The voice sounded familiar, but it had been so many years… “Seth— Seth Mansfield? Is that you?”
Coughing. “Spencer, are you still playing with those smallsats? Dr. Soo at JPL tells me you’ve been pestering her to ship the remaining satellites cross-country to you. What’s this nonsense? Last time I checked, you were a physicist, not a rocket scientist. At least that’s what I wrote on your diploma.”
He rolled his eyes. It was nice to hear from his gruff mentor again. “Seth, what are you doing there? I thought you retired years ago.”
The Nobel laureate’s voice came back strong for a 74-year-old man. “Did you expect me to roll over and play dead? I returned here after the plague hit. The least I could do is wash bottles while the microbiologists try to figure this damn thing out.”
Romero leaned over and whispered, “You’ve only got four minutes, Spence.” Spencer waved him away.
“Seth, I’d love to talk, but I just don’t have the time.”
“Oh, all right! I hear you were going to transmit electricity today to power some damned water pump.”
“Well, Seth, it—”
“Good thinking, Spencer. You’ll need the infrastructure up and working before the smallsats can do any good. Doesn’t matter if you have all the microwave energy in the world if you don’t have any way to get it to people. How did you do? Did it work?”
Rita leaned over and scowled. Spencer saw his precious time slip away. The Caltech emergency network operators adhered to a ruthless reputation when it came to partitioning radio time. He sighed; it was a lost cause to argue with his old professor.
“Uh, it didn’t go exactly as planned, Seth. There are more problems than I suspected with the transformers. But it’s just an engineering problem.” Romero clapped a hand to his forehead and snickered; Spencer turned back to the radio. “We’ll fix it. I’ve already got a team working on design changes, using what we learned from the test.”