come to the meeting.” Felix nodded and closed the door.
“What do you think?'
“You will have to go. They will not let us be until they get what they want.'
“It is not just me going. You are going with me.'
“I am? Well just how are you going to convince me that I should come?” I had just slipped my hand between the folds on her robe when Move-over announced that he was hungry. He had to wait twenty minutes for his food.
There were three large dark SUVs in the convoy that drove us to Grand Forks. Felix was in the middle
SUV with us.
“How are you feeling?'
“I am fine.'
“Talkative aren't you.'
“Dan, stop teasing the poor man. He is just a peon. He doesn't know anything about what is going on.' “Thank you ma'am.'
“Now don't you call me ma'am. My name is Tabby.'
“Yes maa ... Tabby.'
“Now I packed just one dress. Do you know if I need to buy another for this thing we are going to?'
I let Felix suffer as Tabby pumped all the information she could out of him. I had seen her do it before. The lisp in her voice and her hearing aids made the person talk more the he should. This was followed by her sex appeal if she was talking to a man. Before we were an hour into the drive, we knew that the meeting would be with scientists, engineers, and the military. The press would be kept out as well as most of the politicians.
A hanger had been cleared out at the airbase. Riley greeted us at the door and introduced us to the 50 or so men in the conference and explained about the support personal and computer connections. Riley had just started explaining the basic problems when I interrupted.
“We haven't discussed my salary yet.'
“What?'
“I am not going to do this for free. And you will need to pay my wife as well.'
“Your wife?'
“My wife. She has helped me with most of the work I have done.'
I could see Riley hadn't stopped to think what my price would be to help. “How much do you want?'
“I want a spaceship.'
“What?'
“I want—a—space—ship. After I fix things up here, I want you to build a spaceship to my specifications. Before you go crazy, think about it. You are going to need to build a completely new line of spacecraft. My ship will be a perfect way to test new designs. It is a no lose situation for the government. My ship will be a perfect foil to hide your own spacecraft development.” I could see he was thinking.
“And you Mrs. Karpinen. What is it you want?'
“Call me Tabby. I want the ground and personal support required to take the spacecraft for a spin or two across the solar system and beyond.'
“Good going dear. I didn't think about the support.'
“I know. Should we set up while they are talking?” Riley had walked to the corner of the hanger with General Holcum and a few other men.
“Sure. Let's get our laptops on line. I'll have Felix bring in the boombox and our luggage.'
I was humming along with Fleetwood Mac when Riley came back with an agreement. A John Williams sound track was playing when I dived into the analysis of the remains of the alien spacecraft. Later, Johnny Horton was put on the box so I knew it was time for lunch. I saw Tabby in an animated discussion with an older fellow.
“Who is your friend?'
“Dear, this is Ole Swenson.'
“Of the Skunk Works.'
“How did you know?'
“Didn't you know dear? We own a good size chunk of Lockheed Martin.'
Ole seemed a little dazed. “How are you doing Ole?” I reached out my hand. We shook and I continued, “Let's eat.'
“Oh Felix...” I waited till he looked at me, “Would you tell Riley or whoever is in charge now that there will be a meeting of everyone after lunch.'
About twenty were at the meeting. I recognized Schmitt, Manning, Holcum, Scott, and a few others whose names I never learned. I got up while Tabby, using a workstation, put up on four large screens the computerized information I was working from.
“I looked over the forensic data from the alien ship. Now I can't tell you for sure what everything means but I do have a few guesses. First off, I think I know why they attacked.'
I waited until the mumbling stopped.
“Most of you have not been working with all of the data that I collected on possible interstellar travel. What seems to have been disseminated is the set of equations that I thought had the best chance of working. There are a number of other possible ways of constructing a wormhole or tear in the structure of the universe. One of them would include using the gravity and energy of a star to construct wormholes between stars. For this to work the spacecraft would need to get very close to the sun. I haven't worked out the possible numbers but my best guess would be less than 25 million kilometers from the sun. For carbon based creatures to live during the transfer between stars you would have to have a heavily armored and heat resistant spacecraft. I believe that these aliens use star hopping for travel between stars. And from the ion residue found by the analysis of the radio telescope data after the attack, an ion drive within a solar system.
“What I think the aliens wanted to do was control the artificial gravity theory that I developed. With the theory they would be able to travel without using ion drives or star hopping. For a time, I think, we can monitor space travel to our solar system by placing monitors in orbit around our sun.'
Dr. Manning interrupted. “But that can't be right. We know that we disabled the craft with our laser fire. With travel that close to the sun their ship should not have been affected by our lasers at that distance.'
“Do we know if we disabled the ship or just the observation and communication sensors? Both the
observation and communication arrays would have to be sensitive to the electromagnetic spectrum. After all, we know they were using the spectrum because the radio telescopes spotted the craft. You would not want to fly a craft for any distance without sensors. If they were destroyed by the lasers, the ship would be crippled until they were replaced. As for the star hopping, sensors could be stored behind armored doors during the phase of the hop where the ship was too close to the sun.
Holcum said, “Okay we think we know how they traveled here. But how would we stop a ship that heavily armored if we needed to?'
“The same way we did this time, kinetic weapons. We could even easily use nuclear weapons near the sun. The radiation would have a negligible affect on the rest of the solar system and the kinetic energy of the explosion should either destroy the ship or throw it into the sun.'
Holcum replied, “Good. Now we have a defense.'
“Hold it. This is a theory. What we need to do is to try to tear it apart. We need to find out if there are any other explanations of the facts.'
Schmitt took over the meeting. “Thank you Mr. Karpinen. We now have a new set of theories to work with. Manning, I want you to try to punch holes in Karpinen's theories. Scott, why don't you try to put preliminary plans for a detection sphere around the sun...'
I nodded to Tabby and we walked away. “Why don't we go for a walk before we start working on why the kantele space drive isn't working?” We hooked our arms together. “Felix?'
“Yes, Daniel.'
“We are going for a walk.'
I saw Felix talk to the military policeman at the door. Outside, I saw a spot of brown green grass in the distance. We walked to it. When we got there, a big four-engine plane was revving on the runway. We sat on the brown grass.
