The tube fed tiny pellets of deuterium and tritium into the sphere, and the laser beams bombarded the pellets. The deuterium and tritium elements in the gaseous cloud that formed in the center of the sphere released energy particles but were then trapped, focused, and squeezed by the laser beams until the heat built up to a point where the elements no longer repelled one another but were fused together. When they fused, they created a massive release of heat and energy. Further squeezed by the magnetrons, the fused particles suddenly snapped apart, creating a cloud of free electrons and positively charged particles called ions—a plasma field. The magnetrons then focused the field and sent it to the laser generator, where the plasma energy stripped high-energy particles from neodymium, creating laser light.

Despite its size and complexity, it was a perfect example of simplicity and functionality. It weighed less than thirty thousand pounds, less than half the weight of the chemical laser it was replacing. The inertial confinement chamber was a simple reengineering of the plasma-yield warhead Jon Masters had invented years earlier—instead of simply releasing the plasma energy created inside, the chamber was designed to channel it to the laser generator. It used virtually no power—just enough to light up the diode lasers inside the confinement chamber and to keep the magnetrons firing.

Unfortunately, that was the problem—and Kelsey’s current headache. “How’s it looking, Kelsey?” Jon asked, ignoring Cheryl’s concerned expression—better get a status update fast before Cheryl decided to escort her daughter out of here.

“Horrible,” Kelsey said. “I still haven’t been able to control the heat buildup and keep it away from the magnetrons.”

“That’s a problem I never had to contend with,” Jon admitted. “With the plasma-yield warhead, I wanted to let the heat build up—we got a bigger plasma field and we could do more damage. Here, we want to control it.”

It took an incredible amount of heat to create a plasma field—a hundred million degrees Fahrenheit, ten times hotter than the sun. The heat only lasted for a tiny fraction of a second, but it was still devastating to ordinary manmade materials. Further, cooling the sphere or magnetrons was not an option—the only way to do away with the heat was to build the heat up enough to create a plasma field, at which instant it would cool to safe limits and the plasma field would disappear. Even if the creation of the plasma fields were pulsed, excess heat eventually built up to the point where even the strongest materials would begin to corrode and weaken.

“What’s the pulse interval looking like?”

“The optimum safe range is between ten and twenty-five milliseconds,” Kelsey replied, “but I only get a yield of point four one megawatts—almost half the level of the chemical laser we’re replacing. Not good.” Kelsey had been experimenting with trying to vary the spacing between plasma pulses. Spacing the pulses out farther resulted in manageable levels of heat but decreased the power available to the laser generators. “If I can go to five to ten milliseconds I can get to one megawatt of power. I’m shooting for one millisecond—then I can beat TRW’s chemical laser output by twenty-five percent. But at that power level, I can get maybe ten ten-second shots off before the magnetrons let go.”