The Lost World - Michael Crichton [28]
“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 under 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 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-hundred-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