After Wong left, Tony raised a hand and gestured toward the cave laboratory. "That place still needs cleaning up. I used to run tests there, but I barely went back after upgrading the equipment here. By now, the dust is probably thicker than your beard."
He turned to Vanko. "I'll get some workers to clean it tomorrow. The equipment needs recalibrating too. The high-temperature furnace, the CNC station, the vacuum chamber-none of those things work just because you plug them in. Stay here for the next few days, in the guest room Lynn used before. The bedding is all new. Sound good?"
Ivan Vanko stood nearby, the white parrot on his shoulder tilting its head to preen the feathers beneath its wing with its beak. He looked at Tony and gave a slight nod, neither thanking him nor declining. Arrangements on this scale fell just within what he could accept. There was no charity, only a temporary transition, offered in a businesslike tone without any unnecessary sympathy. He picked up the old canvas bag beside him and followed Tony inside.
The guest room was at the end of the second-floor hallway, the same one Lynn had stayed in. The sheets had been changed just a few days earlier, and the curtains were half drawn. A hazy patch of moonlight on the Pacific Ocean was visible outside the window. Vanko set his canvas bag at the foot of the bed and looked around, making no comment on the room's size or decor. He simply found a suitable spot on the nightstand and set the bird down. The parrot took two steps across the nightstand, then flew back onto his shoulder and rubbed its head against his earlobe.
Down in the basement laboratory, Tony had already turned the holographic projection table back on. The Mark VI schematics rotated slowly in the center of the display. A cross-section of the thruster nozzle had been enlarged to life-size, and the data column beside it listed over a dozen parameters awaiting optimization. Lynn leaned against the glass railing on the second floor, watching the two men below. Tony stood before the holographic display, his fingers adjusting the layout of a set of energy transfer lines; Vanko stood diagonally behind him, pulling a notebook with curled edges from his canvas bag and opening it beside the workbench. Its pages were densely covered in calculations for an arc generator.
"As for the energy transfer efficiency of that thruster nozzle, if you keep using gold-titanium alloy for the main lines, the momentary overload from the arc pulses will burn cracks into the inner walls." Vanko flipped to a page in the middle of the notebook and tapped a set of figures. "I've tested it with a copper-silver alloy. The conductivity is slightly lower, but its resistance to momentary overload is forty percent better than gold-titanium alloy."
Tony did not even turn around. "Conductivity drops by three percent, and thrust response lags by point two seconds. In a close-range dogfight above the speed of sound, that's enough time for the enemy to land two shots." He rotated the thruster nozzle cross-section ninety degrees and drew a new curve across the line layout. "But you're right. Gold-titanium alloy really doesn't handle overload well enough. Switch to a layered composite structure. Copper-silver alloy on the inside, gold-titanium alloy on the outside, with a nanoceramic coating sandwiched between them. No loss in conductivity, double the overload resistance."
Vanko leaned closer to inspect the curve he had drawn. After a moment of silence, he wrote two new lines of calculations in his notebook and turned it toward Tony. Tony glanced at it, raised an eyebrow, and picked up a stylus to add another variable beside them. Vanko's lips moved as he muttered something in Russian, then he picked up another stylus and drew a line directly onto Tony's schematic. Tony looked down at the line, his expression shifting from displeasure to scrutiny, from scrutiny to thoughtfulness, then from thoughtfulness to a reluctance to concede despite being unable to refute it. Their arguing rose and fell again.
Lynn turned a page of his magazine by the railing. After hearing the third barrage of Russian and English insults mixed with technical jargon from below, he headed back upstairs and took his phone from his pocket.
Coulson's number was still in his contacts. Leaning against the railing, he pressed the call button. The call connected after only a few rings. Coulson's voice came through the earpiece, with wind, the roar of a truck engine, and someone shouting, "Try again, slowly, lower it slowly," in the background, as though they were operating some kind of heavy machinery.
"Mr. Lynn. Is there something I can help you with?"
Coulson spoke just a little faster than usual. Lynn caught the subtext behind that offer of help: I'm busy right now. If it isn't urgent, let's talk later.
"Nothing much. Just catching up."
Coulson paused. Someone in the background shouted, "No good, it slipped again," followed by the dull clang of metal striking the ground. He lowered his voice and told someone beside him, "Switch to plan B. Try securing the base with steel cables," then returned to the phone, his voice regaining its usual warmth. "If it's just catching up, I'm very sorry, but I'm afraid I'll have to talk with you another day. I'm in New Mexico right now, dealing with a hammer that fell out of the sky."
Lynn fell silent for a while.
On the other end, Coulson waited two seconds before asking tentatively, "Mr. Lynn? Are you still there? If there's nothing else, I'll have to-"
"Coulson," Lynn said. His tone had changed. Gone was his usual casual air, replaced by a calm solemnity.
"We've only met a few times. But you should be able to tell that I mean no harm to you people, or to this... world. Right?"
Coulson was silent for a while. The shouting continued in the background, but he did not answer immediately.
When he spoke, his voice was somewhat calmer. "Based on my observations so far, and our limited contact, that is my provisional assessment."
"As long as you trust me for now." Lynn switched the phone to his other hand and leaned against the railing, looking past the floor-to-ceiling windows toward the distant, moonlit sea. "I'll come see you tomorrow. There are some things I'd like to discuss with you."
There was another brief silence on the other end. Coulson did not ask why it had to be tomorrow. He had probably gathered from Lynn's tone that this call had not been a spur-of-the-moment decision.
"All right. I'll send you the coordinates." He paused. "Mr. Lynn... are you all right?"
"I'm fine. See you tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow's conversation won't hit you too hard."
"All right. See you tomorrow, then." Coulson hung up.
Lynn lowered the phone from his ear. The moment he turned, he saw Tony and Vanko leaning against opposite sides of the stair railing in identical poses-arms crossed, shoulders angled slightly, faces tilted a little toward Lynn, their expressions hovering subtly between "we've been caught" and "we weren't trying to hide it anyway." Neither showed any embarrassment at being discovered, and both straightened openly.
"Something else fun happening?" Tony asked, in exactly the same tone he had used earlier to ask, "What's he going to roast now?" There was a hint of that instinctive appetite for gossip that came after eating and drinking one's fill.
Lynn leaned against the table and shook his head helplessly. Toying with his phone, he looked at the two men, each with a more professional "eavesdropping pose" than the other, and finally sighed. "A hammer fell out of the sky in New Mexico, and nobody can pick it up. Even a crane can't budge it. Any thoughts?"
Tony uncrossed his arms and curled his lip. "I'll get back to upgrading my armor. How boring."
Ivan Vanko nodded beside him. It was a very slight nod, as though expressing complete agreement with a technical assessment. Compared with an unknown hammer far away in New Mexico, the layout of that energy transfer line on the holographic display downstairs was indeed more worth his time.
The two returned to the laboratory downstairs and resumed trading insults within seconds.
Lynn returned to the railing where he had been standing and watched them, spinning his phone once between his fingers. He curled his lip and muttered, "Are all high-IQ scientists this neurotic?"
Seeing no telling how long the two would keep arguing, Lynn called to Tony, "Tony! If you don't hand over my house soon, I'll sell Yinsen and use the money from selling him to buy one."
Tony instantly froze, then slowly turned his head toward Lynn.
"Can't you come up with a different threat? Every single time... Don't worry, the house has been ready for ages. It's just been under renovation. You know how much I've had going on lately. Too much. I haven't had time to ask about the progress. I'll ask Pepper tomorrow."
Lynn nodded in satisfaction. "Then you two 'great' scientists can take your time discussing things. I'll head back to bed."
Seeing that neither had any intention of answering him, he curled his lip, opened a portal, and returned to his room in the Sanctum.