Chapter 6: Lighting Up Futura

~~ August - Week 30 & 31 ~~

Sean was making progress.

After his ‘paid work’, he came to his Lab and worked on the crystals. The wire glue made it easy to connect wires to the crystals. He found by accident if the crystals shards encountered a thinner strip of copper they would act like a battery.

They allowed current to flow even though he hadn’t ensured a positive and negative leg. The crystals simply released their charge into the copper strip if a load was applied to its ends. When he inspected them closer, he found the crystal had actually eaten out a thin strip, to create their own legs and had adhered to the two ends of the strip.

They didn’t behave like any crystal he knew off. Using a transformer, a load and watt meters he was able to work out charge and discharge times and how much power the crystals stored. Sean was amazed by their capacity and abilities to recharge and discharge quickly.

It didn’t seem to matter what domestic voltages he used or if it was AC or DC as the current draw was determined by the size of the crystal. He wasn’t game to increase the voltages above 400V on the small crystals but had a feeling that large clusters could handle higher voltages.

Sean decided he needed to know more about the crystals. He got Gavin to have a look at them. Gavin told him their formation was not the usual one for rocks. Their formation looked to him to be more like coral. But even then, it was very uniform as they built the old pod directly on top of the new one.

So, Sean asked Professor Hue Hague being a microbiologist and entomology to have a look at the crystals for him. He’d had two minds about using Hue due to his association with Essco. However, he decided Hue was the best man for the job.

Sean approached Hue and asked him if he had a problem working on a delicate issue for him, which had to be kept hush. Hue had been intrigued and informed Sean that he was perfectly capable of keeping secrets, even from Essco. Sean had grinned at the man. So, he showed the crystals to Hue.

Sean asked Gavin and Hue not to spread the location of the caves to others. He felt it that the location of the crystals was best kept to a select few. Hue and Gavin readily agreed. He told them he didn’t think he needed a lot to get started and could collect them himself, but regular mining could be on the cards for later.

When Hue saw the crystals, he was tempted to tell William. During one of his rants, he had said, ‘That bastard Nash can find his own fucking energy crystals’. As soon as he had said it, he shut up. Hue guessed that these where the very crystals, William was looking for.

Over the last couple of weeks, Hue’s memories of the first three months aboard the ship had come back. As much as he would like to make his old friend happy, he hated Sir John Nash with a passion. Nash was a part-owner for the GB & JK Company who had funded the original mission.

Hue didn’t like the influence Nash had on William. He was one of William’s father’s cronies, and both men were bigots and generally just bastards. He had met William at university, and they had become friends. He was a hot guy back then before he let himself go.

He’d wanted William bad. However, he had soon understood that William sprouted the same shit that his father, had taught him so hadn’t pursued him. Not until the night, he got to screw him at a Frat-do. They had both been out of it, and when he had seen William lying across a coffee table naked, he couldn’t help himself and had to touch.

He had half-expected William to explode when he shoved his cock up his arse, but the guy had fucked him back just as hard. As much as he had enjoyed it, he was ashamed at what he had done to his friend. He had left before William realised who had screwed him.

William had become even more belligerent about gays after the incident and Hue could only blame himself. As much as he would have liked to, he never approached William in a sexual manner again. He was also careful to keep his male relationships very quiet from him. He had learnt at college that he was bi-sexual. So, it was no hardship to have an obvious girlfriend.

The weeks on the ship had been torture for him. You couldn’t fuck anyone, without everyone knowing. So, he had stayed celibate, which made him very cranky. Sometimes he wondered if his friendship with William was worth the effort.

Sean took Hue and Gavin to the caves so Hue could see the crystals in their natural state. Hue was ecstatic at finding the unique microscopic bugs to study. He found that as long as there was only weak light, the bugs that produced the crystals were fine. If they were exposed to powerful light with high UV, it seems to kill them, yet they liked high temperatures.

Also, if the crystals were charged to maximum capacity, the microbes couldn’t live on the crystals. Hue concluded that if they wanted the crystals to continue to grow, they had to be careful how much light was emitted into the caves. Hue also found the bugs were less active in the top cavern where there was less output from the vents. This Indicated the vents were no longer as active as in the past, considering the large growths in there.

He told Sean, he believed that the bugs used the moisture, the gasses and minerals being released into the air from the volcanic vents, to create the crystals. They use their excretions to build the egg casings. After the eggs hatch, the bugs built new casings beside or on top of the old ones. For all intent, the crystals were their by-products or to put it bluntly, ‘shit’.

Sean laughed and said, “It was the most useful damn shit, I’ve ever come across.”

The three men spent several days in the caves mapping the accessible tunnels. In the topmost levels, they hadn’t worried about respirators. Gavin did suggest that if they went any lower, they wear their suits. Sean decided this was prudent. Gavin had even supplied some gas monitors. So, they could determine just what gases they had to contend with.

They collected air samples from the tunnels and tagged them with the crystal growths. They noticed the crystals in some of the tunnels had different clarities. Sean wondered aloud how this affected their energy-storing abilities, and Hue took great delight in informing him that he was happy to find out.

He said it was interesting that the bugs laid down a different layer of material on the rocks before they built the crystals. He indicated it provided an insulation layer before the egg casings were laid on the rock. He said he would give the air samples to Rai Jindal the other atmospheric physicist they had on board ship.

Hue had recently developed a bit of a thing for Rai, so finding an excuse to spend time with her was no hardship. Plus, she tended to stay on the ship, while William preferred the surface. Hue determined it would also be safer to do any research for Sean’s project on the ship as well.

Hue mentioned this to Sean, who also thought it was a good idea. Hue said he wanted to set up experiments to test Sean’s theory. There were plenty of empty labs on the ship, they could safely use. The ones on level four, also had pressure-locked doors to keep people out.

Gavin’s main interest was how active the volcanic system was on the lower levels. Sean asked Gavin if the activity of the area was a concern. Gavin wasn’t particularly worried. He said these vents acted like relief valves as long as they were venting, he couldn’t see a real problem.

He suspected this planet like Earth had active continental plates and knew that this was a good thing. He had only detected some minor fault lines, and they were mostly along the continual ridge on the seaside of the valley. He felt that the Valley was safe.

All three men were amazed at the number of tunnels and enormous caverns that had crystals in them. They had followed one that led to an opening on the seaside. Sean decided not to block the opening. It would be difficult to use as an entrance with a ten-metre high cliff under it. The fumes, which were being emitted, wouldn’t encourage anyone to want to enter by accident.

They bolted a lockable prefab hut over the main cave entrance, where Lee and Kyle had flattened a path into it. Then put up signs, warning of toxic gases, and to, not enter.

Sean left Hue and Gavin working out how to manage the crystal mine and to study the crystals.

Back in the lab the next day, he was still working out how to package the crystals, to make them useful when Lee came in.

“Why the big frown?” she asked, kissing him. Sean wrapped an arm around her waist and happily kissed her back before gently rubbing her still flat stomach, then kissing it too. Lee hugged him.

“Packaging,” he explained. “We can’t just stick them in a plastic case if we want them to recharge using sunlight unless it is clear and not use some other generation source. I also need to work out how to incorporate them into the power network we have.”

Lee spied a small solar panel off of a linger. She removed the Oznglass protective cover then grabbed the wire glue and a dish of small crystal pieces. She dabbed two sections of the 5mm wide copper active rail with glue. Then, using the plastic tweezers, she placed three of the 5mm cubed crystals on the glue and across the copper strip.

Lee then covered the crystals on the bench with the heavy cloth Sean had and turned a lamp that she aimed at the panel. The crystals started to lighten in colour and then glowed. After a couple of minutes, Sean pointed out, the gems had eaten through the middle of the track and turned themselves into batteries. Lee put the cover back on the panel and turned the light back off.

Lee said to Sean, “How about this solution. The solar panel can act as a larger collector for the smaller crystals so they can charge faster and you already know they will output at whatever voltage you want so the panels’ electronics will also become your voltage regulator.”

“What was the storage rating of the crystals I put on the panel?”

Sean looked at her and then the panel she had chosen. It was about 30cm square and able to deliver about 250W/hrs. Lee had effectively just pumped it up over 3kW/hrs with the three crystals she had added. “At 3kW capacity, we are going to have to increase the connection cable sizes,” Sean mussed.