Cavalier frowned as he scribbled notes. He looked up. ‘But isn’t there a contradiction here? You’re all but killing yourself to develop what you believe is a huge untapped oil and gas resource. Then you want to create new technology that will do away with the need for oil and gas!’

‘No contradiction at all. I see it as a means to an end. It’s in the vision I had. I am on a mission from God. I can’t deviate from it. It is his will.’

‘Let me say something here, if I may,’ Donnelly said. ‘There is no contradiction and I am the living proof. I have invested in oil for decades. Now I’m ready to move on. Al’s work is the best bet for the generation of new energy after fossil fuels.’ Donnelly looked at Haut and said: ‘Should I tell him about the sulphur?’

‘Up to you,’ Haut said.

‘I am in the position I am because I sell jet fuel to my government and the Chinese. The fuel contains a dangerous toxin for the environment, sulphur. All users—planes—expel the sulphur into the atmosphere. Al’s invention will stop that, completely.’ He chuckled mirthlessly and added, ‘It will salve my guilty conscience over what my product does to the environment.’

‘What attracted you to cold fusion?’ Cavalier asked Haut. ‘Did Fleischmann and Pons inspire you?’

‘Not directly. I was working on a hydrogen car a long time before their work emerged in public.’

‘A car driven by hydrogen?’

‘I was working on that from 1972 to 1974.’

‘Hold on. You were just fourteen then.’

‘I put it together at home in the garage. I had funds from my high school, Taroona. The problem was that I was using more energy to get the car to work than the energy generated to run it. I told my headmaster, Mr Barnfield, that it was a fraud. That was nearly half a century ago. It still is a fraud. At its base it is simply using electricity, metal plates and water to produce two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen from a water molecule. In essence the current hydrogen developments still have the same problem. They waste more energy than they generate.’

‘Al’s invention is far and away superior to the current propaganda about hydrogen tech,’ Donnelly said. ‘No comparison at all.’

‘My plasmoid creation uses atomic energy at room temperature,’ Haut added. ‘That’s the key difference.’

‘How do you propose to create it?’

‘In a nutshell, I’m going to harness the energy of thunderstorms. Very hot air meets very cold air and creates lightning. I aim to capture that in my technology. The collision creates what I call “plasmoids”. They are tiny atomic results of that collision. The plasmoids, which in effect are collapsing bubbles in the water, will be harnessed to create energy. This will fuel all engines. There will be no need for fossil fuel energy.’