Olan Thorensen - Cast Under an Alien Sun

“No,” said Yozef. “As I told Brother Fitham, ether use wasn’t part of my education, but I know how to make it.”

“Tell us more about this ether,” prompted Diera.

“It’s a liquid. If I recall, it smells sweet. It’s easy to make in principle, but the exact details would have to be tested. The person to undergo surgery is allowed to breathe it. I think a bag holding some of the ether and held over the nose and mouth would work. For exactly how long, I don’t know, but only until the person is unconscious. The doses and how exactly it’s used I also don’t know, so we’ll have to carefully test this. There may be side effects—I don’t remember for sure. I do know it can be addictive and harmful if inhaled too much and too often, so it should be carefully controlled. Too much can kill, and that could happen without warning. Maybe it just puts the person into such a deep sleep, he stops breathing. It wasn’t my field of study. I remember that it’s extremely dangerous to work with. I mean, like, extremely flammable, so care has to be taken in making and using it. Oh, and I already said it’s highly flammable. Extreme precautions are needed to keep it away from any flame or embers. It can also break down into other compounds that are dangerous, that can explode. I think you need to keep it out of the sun also and probably in a cool place. And very volatile, so it has to be kept in a tightly sealed container, probably glass. It cannot be stored too long, so you would need to make new runs occasionally, even when there is some left from older batches.”

Yozef stopped talking, aware he was rattling on. Three different expressions faced him: Petros smiling, Diera hopeful, and Sistian skeptical.

“Yozef, excuse me for asking,” Sistian said, “but this is something we’ve never heard of. You’ve been recovering from whatever happened to you. It’s not unreasonable for us to wonder about what you’re saying.”

Yozef nodded. “I understand, Abbot. I hope you’ll not be offended if I say that your people aren’t always aware of what may be common knowledge elsewhere in the world. You and I have discussed this before. Different peoples have not just different customs but can also have different knowledge. I’ve got the impression that there are things here in Caedellium unknown to my people at home, and the reverse is also true, such as the ether.”

“Yozef is right,” Diera said to her husband. “When I studied medicine in Iraquinik those years ago, I learned many things that I brought back to Caedellium. Others had the same experience. It’s a problem that our peoples don’t share enough knowledge, because of either the distances or willingness. That this ether may be in common usage elsewhere in the world isn’t strange.”

While the abbot was obviously not convinced, he looked mollified. “What would you need to make some of this ether, Yozef?”

With that simple question, Yozef’s isolation from the world outside the abbey ended.

Whatever reservations the abbot had about Yozef’s claims of a miracle compound, he had no hesitation in providing Yozef with whatever was needed. By noon the next day, Yozef met with men called to the abbey by the abbot—an apothecary, a metal worker, a glass blower, and a brewer. Each of the four tradesmen owned a shop with workers, and none of the four knew exactly what Yozef expected of them, even after a summary by the abbot and a longer explanation by Yozef. They were there and willing to listen simply because the abbot asked them. Accompanying the brewer was a Preddi refugee who knew of crude batch distillation for a drink favored by the Narthani. He had worked in a shop in Preddi City before he and his family fled from Preddi Province to Eywell and then across the Eywellese border into Keelan.

They needed only two ingredients to produce diethyl ether: pure ethanol and a high enough concentration of sulfuric acid. The ethanol was easy. Though they could have started with wine, the brewer already had gallons of distillate with a higher ethanol content. It was simply a matter of making the brewer and Preddi refugee understand Yozef needed to further distill out alcohol with none of the flavorings or other components of the harsh whiskey they produced.

The acid was harder. Yozef didn’t know how concentrated the acid had to be, so they settled for what was available and hoped it would work. It took some time before the apothecary understood that Yozef’s sulfuric acid was their “vitriol,” a corrosive liquid with various uses and to which the metal worker had access.

In two days they gathered the ingredients, but the distillation equipment took longer. In principle, the apparatus was simple. A glass retort, or reaction vessel, would hold whatever liquid needed to be separated into one or more of its components. A narrow opening at the top of the vessel connected to a vertical glass column. The first try at the equipment they settled on was a column about 18 inches long. Just before the top of the column, a glass sidearm was fused to the column and ran diagonally down to a waiting collection flask.

The sidearm proved a difficult part for the glassblower, because not only did it have to be connected to the vertical column so vapors could enter the sidearm, the sidearm itself needed to be encased in a second tube through which water could be run to cool the vapors. On heating the reaction vessel and the enclosed liquid, the vapors rose in the vertical column to the level of the sidearm. When the vapors entered the sidearm, they were cooled by the water jacket, were condensed back into a liquid, and ran down the sidearm into a waiting receptacle.

They also needed thermometers placed at the top of the vertical column and inside the reaction vessel. To Yozef’s chagrin and initial dismay, there were no thermometers. It was a problem he would encounter again and again: each piece of knowledge or technology needing other pieces. It took Yozef several hours to explain to the glass blower that they needed a small reservoir of mercury leading to a fine capillary about a foot long, all sealed in glass. Fortunately, mercury was known and supplied by the metal worker.

How the glass blower managed to make the thermometers, Yozef never asked, but a sixday later the blower showed up with several versions. They were far thicker than thermometers Yozef had used on Earth, and the capillary wider than any he had ever seen. To his relief, when they warmed the bulbous end, the mercury rose in the capillary.

The next problem was the uniqueness of each crude thermometer—different in length and capillary diameter—and none had calibrations. Boiling water and ice—sourced from deep caves in the mountains of northeast Keelan—let them mark 0 cC and 100 oC on each thermometer. Since the target temperature was 140 oC, but not above 160 oC, where spontaneous ignition could occur, they needed calibrations higher than 100 oC. The only way was to boil liquids that had higher vaporization temperatures. The only available candidate Yozef could dredge out of his memory was olive oil at 300 oC. He knew that number only because his ex-girlfriend read somewhere that olive oil began smoking at about 240 oC, which was a sign of breakdown products that were supposed to be bad for your health. They had been cooking with olive oil then, and Julie wanted to stop. It took some library and Internet research and talking to convince her it was okay. The olive oil would give approximate thermometer calibrations at 240 oand 300 o, leaving a considerable gap from 100 o, but at least they’d have the target temperatures bracketed.

By the vagaries of chance, one of the trees transplanted from Earth was the olive, and a large black version was occasionally served or appeared in dishes. A check with the abbey dining hall confirmed the use of olive oil in cooking.