He looked back at the kids and shook his head. "They just don't get it," he said. "That IUD is serious defense."
"IUD?"
"Internal Ursine Deterrent-that's what Levine calls it. It's his idea of a joke," Thorne said. "Actually, I developed this system a few years back for park rangers in Yellowstone, where bears break into trailers. Flip a switch, and you run ten thousand volts across the outer skin of the trailer. Wham-o! Takes the fight out of the biggest bear. But that kind of voltage'll blow these guys right off the trailer. And then what? I get a workmen's-compensation suit. For their stupidity." He shook his head. "So? Where's Levine?"
"We don't know," Arby said.
"What do you mean? Didn't he teach your class today?"
"No, he didn't come."
Thorne swore again. "Well, I need him today, to go over the final revisions, before we do our field testing. He was supposed to be back today."
"Back from where?" Kelly said.
"Oh, he went on one of his field trips," Thorne said. "Very excited about it, before he went. I outfitted him myself - loaned him my latest field pack. Everything he could ever want in just forty-seven pounds. He liked it. Left last Monday, four days ago."
"For where?"
"How should I know?" Thorne said. "He wouldn't tell me. And I gave up asking. You know they're all the same, now. Every scientist I deal with is secretive. But you can't blame them. They're all afraid of being ripped off, or sued. The modern world. Last year I built equipment for an expedition to the Amazon, we waterproofed it - which you'd want in the Amazon rain forest - soaking-wet electronics just don't work - and the principal scientist was charged with misappropriating funds. For waterproofing! Some university bureaucrat said it was an unnecessary expense. I'm telling you, it's insane. Just insane. Henry - did you hear anything I said to you? Put it crosswise!"
Thorne strode across the room, waving his arms. The kids followed behind him.
"But now, look at this," Thorne said. "For months we've been mod]fying his field vehicles, and finally we're ready. He wants them light, I build them light. He wants them strong, I build them strong-light and strong both, why not, it's just impossible, what he's asking for, but with enough titanium and honeycarbon composite, we're doing it anyway. He wants it off petroleum base, and off the grid, and we do that, too. So finally he's got what he wanted, an immensely strong portable laboratory to go where there's no gasoline and no electricity. And now that it's finished… I can't believe it. He really didn't show up for your class?"
"No," Kelly said.
"So he's disappeared," Thorne said. "Wonderful. Perfect. What about our field test? We were going to take these vehicles out for a week, and put them through their paces."
"I know," Kelly said. "We got Permission from our parents and everything, so we could go, too."
"And now he's not here," Thorne fumed. "I suppose I should have expected it. These rich kids, they do whatever they want. A guy like Levine gives spoiled a bad name."
From the ceiling, a large metal cage came crashing down, landing next to them on the floor. Thorne jumped aside. "Eddie! Damn! Will you watch it?"
"Sorry, Doc," said Eddie Carr, high up in the rafters. "But specs are it can't deform at twelve thousand psi. We had to test it."
"That's fine, Eddie. But don't test it when we're Linder it!" Thorne bent to examine the cage, which was circular, constructed of inch-thick titanium-alloy bars. It had survived the fall without harm. And it was light; Thorne lifted it upright with one hand. It was about six feet high and four feet in diameter. It looked like an oversized bird cage. It had a swinging door, fitted with a heavy lock.
What's that for?" Arby asked.
Actually," Thorne said, "it's part of that" He pointed I across the room, where a workman was putting together a stack of telescoping aluminum struts. "High observation platform, made to be assembled in the field. Scaffolding sets up into a rigid structure, about fifteen feet high. Fitted with a little shelter on top. Also collapsible."
"A platform to observe what?" Arby said. Thorne said, "He didn't tell you?"
"No," Kelly said.
"No," Arby said.
"Well, he didn't tell me, either," Thorne said, shaking his head. "All I know is he wants everything immensely strong. Light and strong, light and strong. Impossible." He sighed. "God save me from academics."
"I thought you were an academic," Kelly said.
"Former academic," Thorne said briskly. "Now I actually make things. I don't just talk."
Colleagues who knew Jack Thorne agreed that retirement marked the happiest period in his life. As a professor of applied engineering, and a specialist in exotic materials, he had always demonstrated a practical focus and a love of students. His most famous course at Stanford, Structural Engineering 101a, was known among the students as "Thorny Problems," because Thorne continually provoked his class to solve applied-engineering challenges he set for them. Some of these had long since entered into student folklore. There was, for example, the Toilet Paper Disaster: Thorne asked the students to drop a carton of eggs from Hoover Tower without injury. As padding, they could only use the cardboard tubes at the center of toilet paper rolls. There were spattered eggs all over the plaza below.
Then, another year, Thorne asked the students to build a chair to support a two-bundred-pound man, using only, paper Q-tips and thread. And another time, he hung the answer sheet for the final exam from the classroom ceiling, and invited his students to pull it down, using whatever they could make with a cardboard shoebox containing a pound of licorice, and some toothpicks.
When he was not in class, Thorne often served as an expert witness in legal cases involving materials engineering. He specialized in explosions, crashed airplanes, collapsed buildings, and other disasters. These forays into the real world sharpened his view that scientists needed the widest possible education. He used to say, "How can you design for people if you don't know history and psychology? You can't. Because your mathematical formulas may be perfect, but the people will screw it up. And if that happens, it means you screwed it up." He peppered his lectures with quotations from Plato, Chaka Zulu, Emerson, and Chang-tzu.
But as a professor who was popular with his students-and who advocated general education-Thorne found himself swimming against the tide. The academic world was marching toward ever more specialized knowledge, expressed in ever more dense jargon. In this climate, being liked by your students was a sign of shallowness; and interest in real-world problems was proof of intellectual poverty and a distressing indifference to theory. But in the end, it was his fondness for Chang-tzu that pushed him out the door. In a departmental meeting, one of his colleagues got up and announced that "Some mythical Chinese bullshitter means fuck-all for engineering."
Thorne took early retirement a month later, and soon after started his own company. He enjoyed his work thoroughly, but he missed contact with the students, which was why he liked Levine's two youthful assistants. These kids were smart, they were enthusiastic, and they were young enough so that the schools hadn't destroyed all their interest in learning. They could still actually use their brains, which in Thorne's view was a sure sign they hadn't yet completed a formal education.
"Jerry!" Thorne bellowed, to one of the welders on the RVS. "Balance the struts on both sides! Remember the crash tests!" Thorne pointed to a video monitor set on the floor, which showed a computer image of the RV crashing into a barrier. First it crashed end-on, then it crashed sideways, then it rolled and crashed again. Each time, the vehicle survived with very little damage. The computer program had been developed by the auto companies, and then discarded. Thorne acquired it, and modified it. "Of course the auto companies discarded it - it's a good idea. Don't want any good ideas coming out of a big company. Might lead to a good product!" He sighed. "Using this computer, we've crashed these vehicles ten thousand times: designing, crashing, modeling, crashing again. No theories, just actual testing. The way it ought to be."