reaction was super heated and could blow out any weak point in the sphere. A transducer was blown through the wall of the garage and into the side of one of the grad student's car fender. We decided to move the sphere to the metal shed, which was farther from the house.
The next thing to happen with the new sphere came straight out of a Road Runner and Coyote cartoon. Just afer the whistling of the exhaust vent started, things started to fly into the sphere as the gravity became great enough to pull small items that were lying higher than the sphere. The cartoon type attraction got me scared. I decided to stop experimenting until I could check out the possibility that we might create a singularity or mini black hole in the shed. A few weeks later, Argon laboratories verified that we couldn't mistakenly destroy the world so we got back to playing with different frequencies and combinations trying to calibrate the combinations of electromagnetic energy that could be converted to gravity.
We couldn't decide what to do next after the calibrations until we got a dozen baseball size spheres from the Jet Propulsion Labs. The people at JPL noticed that everything we had been using was already miniaturized for commercial use somewhere in the world. There were LED lasers for fiber optics and even color displays. Micro- transmitters of all kinds were built for everything from toys to watches. They decided to make small enough spheres that you could place them under the floor or bulkhead on the Space Station. You could have a room with a whole floor layered with artificial gravity devices. The first time I heard the dozen different notes from the exhaust ports on the miniature spheres I remembered how everything seemed to start after seeing those birds. And that got me thinking about flight.
Tabby refused to stay nights with me. She would come early in the morning leaving late in the evening. I wanted her with me all the time but she insisted on staying at her home for now. I could hear the grad students starting to arrive and knew she would be coming through the front door soon.
She blew in with a smile on her face. I could tell she had gone for a morning run. She always looked excited after running and the full natural musk of exercise filled the air around her. “Hi, Move-over. Been giving your master trouble?'
“Meerrroow.'
“Good boy.” Turning to me, “Have you been a good boy while I've been gone?'
“No. What are you going to do about it?'
She dived in close. Bit my ear. Grabbing my crotch, she whispered, “Good, I like bad little boys.'
“I love you.'
She stopped. Her face suddenly serious. “I know.” She smiled and was again her playful self. “But you are going to have to suffer a little more before I will let you do anything about it.'
The mood was broken. “I've got an idea about handling the venting of the air from the large sphere.'
“Great. What?'
“I am thinking about asking NASA for a movable control jet. If we attach the sphere to a plane we could pull the plane forward and use the movable jet to control the motion. Of course, nothing would work with just the large sphere. But if you put the small spheres in the wings and trigger them in sequence we could get airflow and lift.'
“Wait a sec ... Would an airframe hold up to the stress...'
We left the house an hour later with more instructions for the grad students. I felt eyes. Intelligent eyes. We looked to the edge of the woods. I didn't feel the uneasiness of danger so we went back to work.
The next morning Tabby found me in my workroom. I was sending email and talking on the phone. “Here you are. Do you think you could use a hand?” Tabby looked over the pile of post-it-notes and printouts.
“Bye now, I'll talk to you later.” I pressed the off switch on the headset. “Tabby, could you hang up the phone?'
“Sure. What's the rush?'
“I think I have found an answer to the stress problem on the airframe. I found a submarine.'
“What?'
“The U of M Limnology Department wanted a small submarine to study Lake Superior and a few other lakes in the state. They didn't have the money for purchasing one so the engineering school started to make one. They got the main structure built and the power plant installed when an alumnus donated a submarine to the school. The sub was never finished. I am just finishing arrangements to have it sent up.'
“Well a submarine would be strong enough for the gravitational forces but it sure will be ungainly looking. What are you thinking of using for the wings.' “I decided to call the Air Guard base in Duluth. For some reason, the Colonel in charge talked to me. Well, I found out a C130 Hercules caught fire and burned in Grand Forks a few months back. The elevators of the plane should work for our test so I got NASA to take possession of the elevators. They should be here about the same time as the submarine.'
“A submarine with left over cargo plane parts? It can't be safe.'
“We can start by checking the lift on the ground.'
I finished sending the last email and submarined under Tabby's shirt.
* * * *
Felix was frustrated. Zimmerman was pushing hard to get onsite surveillance but everything they tried failed. It was like the animals were helping Karpinen. When he tried to explain about the cat and the birds wrecking the bugs, Zimmerman said nonsense. Karpinen had to be feeding the animals near his house and that was why they destroyed the bugs. When Felix got back to his team, he overheard Sam telling Todd something about Yosei.
“What's Yosei?'
“You don't want to know.'
“Tell.'
“My grandmother would tell me bedtime stories. She had a few favorites about Yosei. Yosei are sort-a-like fairies but not. Birds can be Yosei. My grandmother would say that Yosei are protecting Karpinen and that we better respect them or we will be in trouble.'
“Well there are no Yosei. I am more worried about who talked to us the first night we were out. Harry finally let lose with some information. It turns out the Karpinen has an uncle. He served two tours in Nam. I saw some of his records. He specialized at point on recon teams. That must have been him out there. We need to watch out for him. He is one mean mother. He took out fifteen VC when his camp was over-run during something called the Quang Tri Offensive. The last five he used his knife on.'
* * * *
Ole Swenson started with Lockheed Martin ten years ago. His transfer to Palmdale and the Skunk Works had been a goal since his first model airplane, a SR-71. When he got to the Skunk Works, it was a disappointment. There were no secret projects or impossible deadlines. That was until a few weeks ago.
It all started with a phone call telling him to fly to Washington. When he arrived at NASA headquarters he was discretely taken out the backdoor and driven to an underground garage. A walk down a long hall followed by an elevator ride and he arrived at the office of Thomas Riley the Assistant National Security Advisor. Since then, Ole's life had become a living hell of impossible schedules coordinating the tasks of dozens of scientists and engineers while at the same time trying to placate the military and business bureaucrats who thought he was usurping their jobs. He loved it.
The intercom buzzed. “Sir. Your call to Dryden Flight Center is on line 3. The report from JPL just came in and when you have time you can check the letter I typed to Sanders. If you could finish it before 2 o'clock I can get it on the company shuttle to Nashua.'
“Thank you, Nancy.” The smile on Ole's face broadened. He could kiss Daniel Karpinen for making his aeronautic dreams come true.
“Hello Sam. Ole here. What did you find out about the airfoil design? Huh ... huh...'
Chapter 13
YS1
I could feel the crisp bite in the air of fall. The days and weeks of working with computers, grad students and power tools had taken their toll. I needed to go for a walk in the woods before the big event tomorrow. I grabbed
