Lenny walked into what appeared to be a steel box with a window in it, and they could see through a square, obviously thick window as he placed the clown figurine onto a heavy iron block. He stepped back out into the room and closed the door of the box, which they could see looked a lot like the door on a major bank vault. Lenny spun the wheel on the outside of the door to secure it and then stepped over beside Noah and Sarah as they looked in the window. Jasmine and Wally stood right behind them.
Lenny reached over to pick up a small black box from the workbench and handed it to Noah, who looked it over. There was a small numerical keypad and a single-line display on the front, a red button that sat in a depression on the side, and an open round socket on the top. “That's the detonator remote,” he said. “Just push the red button whenever you're ready, but keep your eyes on the clown.”
Noah glanced at Sarah, who looked very nervous, then grinned at her. He turned his eyes back to the clown that he could see through the window and brought his thumb down on the button.
A muffled boom reverberated around the room, and Sarah grabbed onto Noah's arm to keep from falling as vibrations shook the solid concrete floor beneath her feet. Her eyes were wider than before and she looked at Noah as if in shock.
“Holy cow,” she said.
Noah's own eyebrows were pretty high, as he leaned close to the window to try to see inside. When the clown had exploded, the window had been filled with flames that were bright red and yellow, but that had lasted only a couple of seconds. He could see no visible residue, other than the obvious burn marks on the walls and on the block.
“That's pretty impressive,” he said. “And I can see a lot of uses for it.” He pointed at the printer. “How much does it weigh?”
“About sixty pounds,” Jasmine said, “but that's with all its tanks loaded. You can also carry extra material and inks. The compound is extremely stable, and can't explode without a detonator.”
“Does it take a separate detonator and remote for each piece you make?”
Lenny pointed at the remote that was still in Noah's hand. “You need a separate detonator for each one, but that remote will handle them all. All you have to do is insert a detonator into the hole on top and you'll see the numbers zero through nine appear on the display. One through nine are the channels available and you simply press the number of the channel you want that particular detonator to respond to. That programs it, then you just put it into the grip on the detonator placement arm. The computer will decide the best place to put it inside whatever you make. Then, when you want to set it off, you just press the channel button and then the red button. Or, if you choose zero, it goes into timer mode. You'll see a 1 and a 2. If you choose 1, it will let you put in a time based on a twenty-four-hour clock, and then it will ask for a date. That sets the detonator to go off at a particular time on a particular day. If you choose 2, on the other hand, it asks you for the number of minutes you wanted to wait before detonating, and you can go up to 525,600 minutes. That's the number of minutes in a year. It's that easy.”
“What frequency does it work on? What's the chance that a stray signal might set it off?”
“There's no chance, none at all. The signal is encrypted, a string of numbers so long that you couldn't fake it in a million years. You can have a thousand devices transmitting on the same frequency, and none of them could ever set these off.”
“So, if I want to detonate manually, I can have up to nine devices ready to go and set them off in whatever order I want, right?” Noah asked.
Lenny nodded. “Yes, or you can have more than one device on a single channel. As long as you're in range of all of them, they all go off at once. The detonator has a range of about three-quarters of a mile.”
Noah said. “How many of those clowns could it make on a single fill-up?”
“Probably about thirty,” Jasmine said. “Making figurines and such, you just make it hollow. The outside is about a quarter-inch thick, but that gives you plenty of explosive power, as you saw. If that explosion had been set off in an average house, it probably would have taken out about half of it. Walls, ceiling, roof, you name it.”
Noah looked at her for a moment, then asked, “So a smaller object that was solid, not hollow, would have just as much effect?”
“Or more. The compound tends to reverberate, actually build on its own shock wave. The denser the item you make, the more explosive pressure you get from its detonation. The clown was nine inches tall, but hollow. A three-inch clown that was solid, molded around a detonator, would deliver about half again as much power as the hollow one.”
“Okay, one more question. How do I get the things I want to make into the computer?”