A Cut Above the Rest Read online

  He too had to admit that Ellis had a point – was it the apparatus, the experimental design, or were they hoping to do something that was theoretically impossible? And yet his gut feeling led him to the contention that what was happening was due to a simple mistake or misunderstanding, and there was nothing fundamentally wrong in the approach.

  ‘Look, Nathaniel, take a break, leave it alone for a while and have a think. I’ve always found that breaking away from the problem for a time instead of being overwhelmed by its proximity can often lead to a solution – we should give it a rest and come back refreshed. Why don’t you go home and we’ll meet again tomorrow. Let’s face it; we have the rest of the week to unstitch the quandary we’re facing here. Let’s not assume it’s intractable.’

  Ellis nodded his agreement. ‘Okay, I’ll get home early and ponder on things - I’ll see you tomorrow. I trust you’ll take your own advice and make an early departure.’

  He raised a concurring hand, ‘I’ll just tidy up, power everything down and lock up. Regarding your remark about Griffith and Lockspeiser and their glass filament experiments, we don’t want to trail in all their footsteps do we? Remember, despairing of their experimental results they left early one day and left a gas torch burning in their workshop at RAE Farnborough and everything burnt down. I’d rather we didn’t do the same. I’ll see you here tomorrow; take care driving back, weather’s still atrocious.’

  ‘I will, bye.’

  He watched as Ellis departed and after completing the equipment shut down was just about to douse the lights when he took another look at the experimental apparatus inside the large, glass domed, vacuum chamber. Looking was futile, he thought; looking didn’t shout out solutions unless…’

  It was thinking about A.A. Griffith again that made him take the next step.

  He lifted the domed vacuum chamber cover and extracted the final ceramic tube. He split the two halves and laid them on the sample stage table of a high powered microscope. He looked down through the eyepiece and adjusted the course and fine focus. Inside each half he saw the same thing – a linear layer of a metallic filament extending along the concave inner surface of the ceramic.

  He drew back from the eyepiece, suddenly realising what he had seen. To prove it he needed an electron microscope, but even without an electron micrograph the tell tale sign of a long chain of alloy atoms was there. Of course, now he realised what the problem had been – the quantity of mercury amalgam injected into the ceramic tube had been too small. When the mercury had boiled off it had left behind only a minuscule amount of the alloying metals; too small to visually detect.

  With a sudden upsurge of hope he rushed off to see Mike Halsford, the man in charge of the centre’s electron microscope, and the man who could likely change everything.

  4

  By ten a.m. the next morning Halsford had sent down a manila envelope full of ten by eight electron micrographs.

  The photos were a revelation. Now, without any doubt, he could see the linear alignment of alloy crystals – dendritic alignment it was called - and each dendrite was stacked in line to the one before and the one after. It showed them equally positioned both in line and transversely. The transverse stack was only twenty deep so that the filament length and breadth was too small to be visible with the naked eye. Without any doubt, the problem they had faced was due to there being too little of the metal particles being carried into the ceramic tube. The mercury had boiled off leaving only a trace of cobalt, chromium and nickel to form the Stellite – but Stellite, or something very akin to it, had indeed formed.

  As he scrutinised the photos the lab door opened and Nathaniel Ellis entered the lab’ carrying a cup of coffee.

  ‘Golly Michael, you look as though you’ve won the lottery.’

  He gave Ellis a broad smile – as triumphant a smile as he could muster.

  ‘Much better than the lottery – have a look at these.’

  Ellis put his coffee cup on a side bench and took the photos. For a few seconds he examined each one and as he did so his face took on an expression of delight.

  ‘Christ – there was, there is, something there – these are linear structures – what did you do?’

  ‘Nothing – those are the inside of the ceramic tubes we thought had nothing to show. But I was a touch suspicious last night after you left so I let Mike Halsford our electron microscopist have a look – those are the results. It means we had too little of the metals, or too much mercury in the amalgam, to leave anything visible behind in the ceramic tube. To get much more alloy production we simply have to find the critical amalgam levels that do leave behind enough metal after boiling off the mercury to make a substantial Stellite alloy. But that’s just trial and error at the moment, not science. But look, if we get the amalgam right and the size of the ceramic mould, that is as we want it, we can produce any configuration, any geometry or any shape of Stellite we want. Feed enough through at the appropriate rate and we can produce rods, wire, and filaments. You name it; this technique promises what you like. There’s no limit.’

  Ellis looked astounded, ‘So that’s it – we’ve done it.’

  He gave Ellis a cautious smile, ‘Not entirely – we have to demonstrate all the things I’ve just pointed out - but we have four more days to do it and like the man said, it’s not rocket science.’ Come on, put your lab coat on and let’s get to it - the sooner the better.’

  It was Thursday before the morning had passed and Ellis had failed to materialise.

  By then they had each worked hard to solve most of the amalgam concentration problems. They had made larger ceramic moulds, refined the incandescent heating controls and had made some small but very complex Stellite geometries, including plain bearing bushes and drill heads.

  Since Ellis was absent he had carried on using the apparatus on a continuous production run for rods and shaped bars. It was as he had started the same approach in an attempt to produce filaments and wire that the telephone rang.

  ‘Hello, Michael Caplin.’

  ‘Yeah, hello Michael, this is Nick Gordon. Have you seen your temporary factotum Ellis this morning, is he with you?’

  ‘Actually no, I have no idea where he is – is there a problem?’

  Gordon hesitated, ‘Not a problem as such, it’s just that I had something to tell him and some forms for him to sign, but his office is empty and no one knows if he’s in the lab’ in the centre or, come to that, anywhere else in the complex.’

  ‘Well, I’m sorry Nick, I can’t help, he’s not made contact with me this morning and, as far as I’m concerned he’s technically AWOL.’

  Gordon sucked in breath, ‘Well, he may be unwell, we’ll leave it for now, if there is no sign of him by tomorrow perhaps you could find out why he’s gone missing. It’s probably the fact that you are working him too hard. Okay, let me know if anything turns up.’

  He ignored the slightly offensive remark, ‘Okay, I’ll be in touch if he’s failed to turn up by tomorrow morning. If necessary, and I’m assuming there is a need, I may visit his current address just in case he’s ill and hasn’t been able to contact anyone. I’ll check with personnel and get his home number. Leave it with me.’

  Gordon gave a quick ‘Okay’ and the line went dead.

  So, Ellis was not going to be around to finalise the experimental work Caplin mused. Therefore it was down to oneself to complete things. Nothing new about that and, if anything, he relished the opportunity to see how far the work could go. Most of the samples had been fabricated and he had only to carry out the physical properties tests to establish that they had actually made ultra-hard alloys - Stellite probably, but given the unique production method the samples could be better or worse than the typical alloy. He was about to find out.

  He found the initial results almost unbelievable, on some of the samples the Rockwell hardness tests went beyond the available limits, the diamond cone, attempting to penetrate the sample surface at a huge pressure, making no impression
whatsoever. He tried a number of times and could only conclude that their samples were far harder than diamond.

  It was as he started to test the tensile strength of a short wire sample that he realised that there was a problem. He had to use a narrow wavelength UV source to visualise the position of the wire. Every time he locked the almost imperceptibly thin end of the wire into the locking pulley on the tensile testing machine, it seemed to pull out. He’d already noticed that the end of his forefinger and his thumb had been stripped of skin as he carefully handled the wire ends and it had forced him to wear chain mail gloves. Even so, the wire seemed to penetrate some of the chain mail where he was handling the wire and it was as he examined the damage to his gloves, and then the pulley on the tensile testing machine, that he saw something that astonished him. Both jaws on the pulleys had been cleaved in two – the wire had cut through the hardened steel of the pulleys as though they were soft Plasticine.

  It was impossible – and yet it had happened.

  He inspected the cut sections of the pulley jaws and it was as though they had been perfectly separated and polished – the cut faces reflected like mirrors. He shook his head in disbelief - what he was seeing was beyond explanation unless…!

  He rigged two of the Stellite alloy spools made previously and carefully wrapped the wire ends around each of them. He then used flexible Bowden cable to bind the spools around the remains of the pulley jaws and started to increase the tension from the machine. This time the wire made no impression on the alloy blocks but the tension reached an incredible level before the Bowden cable holding the blocks gave way. There was no indication that the alloy wire was going to part. Once more he was scratching his head in amazement.

  He ran the test again, this time with thicker Bowden cable. He started the automatic tensioning and watched the output screen showing the force versus extension graph. It was unbelievable, the tensile force increased to thirty tons and yet there was no indication of any extension. The wire withstood the force without any stretching at all. The machine kept increasing the tension and it was only when it had crept up to 33 metric tons that there was a horrendous crack and the wire parted. He looked at the screen once more – no elastic extension, no plastic deformation, only a sudden sharply rising peak as the wire had parted.

  He went over to see the almost invisible pieces of wire hanging from the alloy spools. It was incredible, a piece of wire less than an eighth of a millimetre in diameter and hardly visible to the eye had sustained 33 metric tons. Given the wire’s dimensions, it had an ultimate tensile strength far greater than the highest known to science, that of carbon nanotubes. He wondered what the electrical properties might be like –were they like carbon nanotubes? He applied a micro-ohm meter to two ends of one section of the ruptured wire.

  He stepped down the scale and had to keep doing so, it was astounding. It was much less than one micro-ohm. It indicated once again a near perfect atomic structure in the material, allowing virtually unimpeded electron transport.

  He stood studying the two sections of the tensile testing machine. To his utter bewilderment he began to realise that he was staring at an experimental outcome that might entitle him to a Nobel Prize. It was amazing, a material, which as Griffith had made clear, had no flaws, cracks, dislocations or disrupted atomic bonds; a material that was perfect in its atomic structure; an ideal lattice of three metallic atoms, homogenous and without any imperfections.

  He had no idea what to do next but the scientist in him would not allow a celebration - he had to do it again to prove it wasn’t a fluke. He decided to make some more wire; and this time a much extended length. He made up another much larger quantity of critically proportioned amalgam, returned to the vacuum chamber, filled a higher volume powered syringe, and switched on the two incandescent heaters to a low level. It was going to take at least forty minutes, so as he raised the heater coils to red and white heat he waited for the soft tip of the new wire to emerge from the end of the first ceramic mould. It wasn’t a full Stellite yet, it had to wait for full sintering.

  He waited until he could magnify it enough to view, and with fine-ended forceps, feed the end on to a slowly rotating motorised Stellite spool. It wasn’t under any noteworthy tension so he dropped a bead of superglue onto the spool and using the magnifying lens and tweezers quickly laid the section of the wire one inch from the end onto the cyanoacrylic bead. He breathed on it and the wire instantly held fast as the adhesive rapidly cured. Once the spool had turned enough, to carry at least two coils of wire, he was satisfied it would grip permanently.

  He stepped back from the vacuum chamber base and fitted the glass dome. The vacuum pump started and a vacuum began to build up; after five minutes he had a hard vacuum and as the filament began to build up on the rotating spool he activated the power supply to the two final heating coils and watched them become blindingly incandescent at 3500C. In time he would have a significant length of wire.

  As the mechanism inexorably proceeded, he decided it was time for a coffee.

  Hell, he deserved one didn’t he?

  5

  As he completed the delivery of a coffee from the vending machine he decided to see if Nathaniel Ellis had re-appeared.

  His office was in a shorter side corridor, formed by a sharp right angle past the vending machine and situated at the end of the main corridor. He didn’t actually expect to see Ellis, though he was under the impression that Ellis was as enthusiastic about the experimental programme as he was, and that had his erstwhile assistant made it in to the laboratories that morning he would waste no time in finding out how matters had progressed.

  He walked up the ten yards of corridor and soon knocked on Ellis’ office door; but, as expected, there was no response. He pressed down on the door handle and found the door unlocked.

  The office was one of the smaller staff offices usually allocated to employees without any seniority or immediate responsibility. Ellis, being a newcomer without a scientific track record and not too distant from completing his PhD, fitted the category perfectly.

  He made his way in and found the office poorly lit due to the half shaded window. Everything was in shadow and gloom and he twice caught his feet on piles of books left on the floor as he tried to get to the window to let some daylight flood in. He finally pulled up the blind and uncovered the window, and as the lighting vastly improved he could see that whatever Ellis intended to do in organising his office he had, so far at least, neglected it entirely.

  Books were strewn across the floor and piled in untidy heaps upon the desk. The desk itself had been pushed against the wall to the left of the window and, apart from the plethora of books across its surface, space was taken by a large VDU screen. He circled around the centre of the floor having created some space by shoving textbooks aside. As far as he could see all that had happened since Ellis and he had started work was that Ellis’ library, copies of past research papers and personal notes and files, had been dumped in the office without any attempt to organise things. It was disconcerting – he never imagined Ellis as someone so lazy or indifferent as to ignore getting his library catalogued and shelved. There was something wrong in what he saw – it was troubling, and after seeing the state of the office, Ellis’ absence troubled him more.

  He reached over to pick up the phone currently on the floor near the desk. He knew the personnel section’s number by heart and dialled 221, getting a ringing tone almost immediately.

  ‘Two two one – personnel’

  ‘Good morning, Dr. Caplin here, could you let me have the current home address of Dr. Nathaniel Ellis. He’s just joined us but I’m concerned he may be ill, I haven’t seen him for a while and we are supposed to be working together.’

  The female voice gave a ‘moment please’ and the line lapsed into silence.

  Then came the rustle of movement on the receiver.

  ‘Hello Dr. Caplin - we have 11 Park Avenue, the Trethorlan Guest House as a temporary address. We’re tol
d he intends to find a more permanent address in due course. We have a telephone number if it will help.’

  ‘No – I think I need to visit his digs to make sure everything is okay. If needs be I will be in touch. Many thanks.’

  He dropped the receiver into the telephone cradle and stood thinking for a moment. Ellis it appeared hadn’t been near his office for a while, even during the time he was in the laboratory working on the amalgams. It didn’t make sense.

  He looked around again and decided on one last line of action. He bent down and switched on the computer hiding under the desk. As soon as the desktop screen lit up he identified the email symbol and punched ‘enter’. He half expected to get nowhere, not knowing any ID or security codes, but to his relief the email listing came up instantly.

  He scanned the last two months of emails, but could see nothing exceptional or of any real note - except for one very recent mailing.

  It was entitled ‘Nathaniel’ and simply said ‘We expect you to keep to your commitment – failure will put you at extreme risk.’

  He looked to see who was making what constituted a definite threat to Ellis, but the entire sender’s address was limited to [email protected].

  It was meaningless as it stood and he learnt nothing by delving into Ellis’ private mail other than the likelihood that Ellis was under some kind of pressure.

  There was nothing for it; the only way he was going to get to the bottom of Ellis’ circumstances was to find him, and that he intended to do as soon as possible. He closed Ellis’ office door behind him and made his way to the laboratory where his topcoat and car keys were. He was on his way to the Trethorlan Guest House – and there, he hoped, he would bring an end to the mystery surrounding Nathaniel Ellis.

  It was getting on for twenty-seven miles from Metlab to St Ives and Park Avenue, but the late morning traffic conditions were light and he made it in just under forty minutes.