Anti-Grav Unlimited

With one side trip.

I headed to a telebank where I deposited my pay chip and then hit my favorite Radio Dome electronics store where I spent every centime I’d deposited on equipment for the next project I had in mind. It was crazy, but it seemed to me that the next step for the van would not only demonstrate what the rods could do, but also help me realize one of my longest held dreams. To fly on my own.

Only this time, the sky would not be the limit if things worked out.

Chapter 5

I won’t bore you with the details. My team always said I talked them to death and after a while I started to take the hint.

Here’s basically what I—and my able labbot assistant—did: First we got several of the complete rods and welded them to the frame of the van so that it had an apparent weight of only a few kilograms. That done, we cut about half the rods to manageable lengths (I used the outlets in the van to power the laser), welded the short lengths to the thousand and some military surplus step motors I’d purchased (the clerk must have thought I was trying to corner the market, though he didn’t say anything), anchored the motors all over the inside of the van, tried to locate the center of gravity for the van and place the gyroscope there, and wired the motors and the gyroscope so that they were controlled by one of the lab computers which was also securely anchored in the van between the driver and passenger seat. (Figuring how to place the rods was harder than wiring them up; they had to go where the combined forces of the anti-grav rods wouldn’t tear the van apart—that could be embarrassing.) Even with the labbot doing most of the work nonstop on autoprogram, the work took two days. The next day was spent trying to tell the computer how to control the array of step motors properly. It’s one thing to make a van float, it’s another to make it float where you want it to. And I also had to make the computer realize that pointing the rods the wrong way could crush the passenger and/or the computer itself (and I quickly learned that even the new sentient computer’s don’t have much sense when it comes to fear for their own well being).

Suddenly the computer and I both got the hang of it and there the van was, floating about two feet off the garage floor. It sort of hovered while several of the step motors moved back and forth to counterbalance the hole thing.

It took a moment to sink in: It worked!

Before dashing out, I was a little cautious and placed the other computer into the van. It would be my backup to control the step motors if computer one failed. (Number one assured me it wouldn’t, but who ever trusted a computer? So number two went in and number one whispered all its secrets into its little electronic ear.)

I loaded up more tools than I could ever possibly need in case I would had to make some repairs “on the road,” and then I hopped into the van. This time I fastened my seat belt very tightly.

I stayed close to the ground until I got the hang of it. Though the computers normally work with spoken commands, I was afraid that wouldn’t be fast enough so I had connected the regular controls into the system: the steering wheel controlled directions, the brakes and accelerator pedal regulated the speed, the turn signal became the upward/downward control. (And in case you’re wondering, the computer too the brake lights and turn signals off line when the flying mode was engaged.)

Later that night, a blue van-shaped UFO moved across the sky and barely set down to become a van again just before three World Military fighters came screaming through the area looking for the UFO that must have appeared on radar. They darted to and fro like angry dragonflies on their flex winds; they hovered a moment, searching in vein for their prey, then wheeled on a silent command and streaked out of sight.

I decided to drive home—or at least hover close to the road. Fighter planes can get mean and I didn’t want to see if I could outrun a missile with my name on it.

While I was out flitting around, playing with the van, someone blew up my house.

That’s right. When I got home, only a pile of burnt plastic and black ash marked the square of land where my dome sweat home had been. Bits of the building and my belongings had dented the domes around it; there was nothing left to claim.

If I had been crazy enough to try to claim anything. I wasn’t because it was obvious that a real pro had played demolition dynamite with my home. That was when I realized that in all likelihood the project hadn’t been canceled by mistake at all. The whole purpose had been to get my team out of sight—then out of existence.

I glanced at the rubble that had been my dome, and then got out of the area as fast as I could.

I don’t know why I knew that my dome had been destroyed by someone who was after me. Sixth sense, maybe. Maybe just some odds and ends in the back of my mind that hadn’t added up. At any rate I didn’t stick around the area.

Talk about mixed emotions…One minute I was gliding through the air with the world on a string and the next I felt as if I were a hunted animal.

I didn’t have a cell phone. And if I had, I wouldn’t have used it since that would most likely have resulted in someone homing in on me. Instead I stopped at the first Mastivisa vidphone booth and tried to call some of the team members, figuring they were in real danger, too. The machine told me my card had been canceled.

I got out of that area as quickly as I could since I suspected that someone was probably coming to check me out who was using my card. At least, I was paranoid enough at this point to think so. Since I never carried money, I was now not only homeless but also centimeless.

I did have some tools, however, and soon an old fashioned coin phone had given up its change. Racing away, I stopped at a third phone to try calling again.

None of the members could be reached. All out? It was getting late and now I was beginning to sweat. What is going on?

I parked the van in a hedge on a back road and slept fitfully with my Beretta across my lap.

* * *

The next morning the last of my stolen money was spent for a news sheet.

The day’s plastic sheet carried my death notice along with those of my lab team. No details. I knew I was alive, but were they?

I hoped so but knew that it was just by the slimmest of chances that I hadn’t been at home in bed when my house had been ripped apart. I had a queasy feeling they had all been killed.

I had other worries, too. There aren’t that many vans on the road these days. I knew if anyone was looking for me, my blue van stuck out like the milk glands on a dinocow.

The first order of business was a trip to Nervous Eddy’s. Ed was where I did all my black market business. I hid the van behind his store and walked into the old concrete building he worked out of. I stood just inside for a moment so my eyes could adjust to the dark interior.

Nervous Ed sat on a tall stool behind the front counter. He looked just as apprehensive as his name suggested. I always wondered why he persisted in carrying on his illegal business—

camouflaged as a tool store—if it made him so jumpy.

“The walking dead,” he said with a twitch of his left eyelid.

“Yeah, I need some help.”

At this point his black sentinel bared its three rows of teeth and gave a growl that danced up and down my spine. Ed didn’t say a thing to the sentinel but gave a quick hand signal which made it leap over the counter and vanish out of sight. “What’d ya need and what’d ya got?” Ed chanted, a tic pulling his leathery face into a scowl.

I was glad I’d left the dome with a lot of extra tools. I slid two electric wrenches and a compucalc—that I hoped I wouldn’t need—across the scratched glass counter top toward him. Ed normally doesn’t betray any emotion but he raised one eyebrow at the wrenches. He’s a sucker for electric wrenches.

“I need some clean tag decals and instapaint. Red and white. And some swirl controls for the paint.”

“You can get most that stuff at a retail store. The decals are illegal; that’s harder,” he squinted at me trying to figure out what my angle was.

“If you have a card; mine’s been revoked,” I told him.

“You are in trouble.”