***
Living up to his word, Sid spent all morningon the phone with Fort Benning arranging more time here. He wasable to get it, however he would have to go back for the weekend inorder to make sure that their replacements would have all of theirtraining information. The rest of the week went by without any newbreakthroughs; we just got a bit better at the things we alreadyknew.
When it was time for him to leave for hisflight, he let us know that he would be back in three or four days.He was planning on driving back here from Atlanta, so Sara gave hima big list of things that she wanted him to bring for her. I couldtell that Sara wanted to go with her hubby, but didn’t want tochance missing out on the possibility of getting our abilityherself.
She made me take her on a flight every singleday, and probably would have spent from dawn until dusk in the airif she had her choice. Every day, Carl had a new get-rich-quickscheme that he tried to sell us. They ranged from clever toludicrous, and we vetoed them all. Finally, late Monday night, Sidpulled up in the driveway.
We all went to welcome him back, Sara givinghim several long and deep kisses. Wrapping an arm around her, heturned to the rest of us and said “Ok slackers, tomorrow we can getsome REAL testing done.” He didn’t explain his comment, but aglance into the back of his truck sent a shiver down my spine.
DANGER: High Explosives.
Chapter 12
Mark: Dangerous Practice
The radar gun beeped. “That was a good one;seventy eight MPH,” Carl said as Linda went flying by.
Sid had borrowed a radar gun and brought itfor our experiments, along with a pile of supplies from hismilitary base. Guns, tear gas, explosives … I didn’t want to knowhow he was able to get all that stuff. While we waited for Linda tohead back out for another speed run, I amused myself by thinking ofhow the airport TSA people would flip out if Sid had tried flyingback with this kind of luggage.
“Y’all ready for the next run?” Lindaasked me.
I looked up and sure enough, Linda was overby the dead tree that we used as a starting point for the flight.“Anytime,” I sent back to her. I warned Carl that we wereabout to start again.
“Eighty even!” Carl exclaimed. “She’s gettingpretty damn good at this.”
“Yeah, there’s no way I can keep up with hernow.” I needed to give it everything I had just to break sixty.“Come on back hon. You hit eighty and I think it’s time for abreak.”
“About time,” she agreed. “It’skind of fun, but it does wear on a person after a while.”
She settled to the ground next to me, gave mea quick hug, and went over to sit down next to Sara. Sid packed upthe radar gun and opened up a box of steel ball bearings. Walkingout a dozen paces away, he dumped them on the ground and spreadthem out with his foot. Returning, he nodded for me to start.
Acknowledging his nod, I grabbed a handfuland lifted them up to eye height. After I spread them out into aline, I turned my concentration onto the first one. With a slightwhistle of air, they started flying away one by one. It only took amoment before they were all embedded into the log that was mytarget.
I brought the log to us and pried out thebearings. One of the little buggers was really stuck in there.After Carl and Sid were done looking it over, I sent it wingingover to the far end of the yard and got ready for my next round ofshots. I sent those flying off and brought the log back a secondtime. It looked about the same to me.
Carl was taking measurements of the depth ofthe holes and Sid was rambling on about an estimate of comparablefeet per second muzzle velocities. Sid didn’t know much science,but he sure knew his guns. While they were busy with that, I set upa pile of firewood in the yard to use as a backstop for our nextround of tests. That task complete, I turned my focus toward makinga strong shield in front of it.
Ready to proceed, I sent to Linda “I’m allset. Aim for the middle of the woodpile and see if you can getthrough my shield.”
“Brace yourself. Your puny little shieldis no match for me!” she sent back teasingly.
She didn’t even bother getting out of herchair; she just started whipping the ball bearings toward the pile.The first one caught me by surprise and blasted through my shieldeasily. Bearing down, I concentrated harder and fed it more power.I finally gave it enough and managed to block the last threeshots.
It seemed that I could do it, but barely. AsLinda warmed up to the task, I knew that she would only fire themharder and faster, and they would get through. There had to be abetter way. I decided to try something different and change thetexture of my shield. First, I built them outward and made themmore resilient so they could flex with the force of impact. Done, Iadded a third shield at the middle of where the first two met. Thisone I made as hard as I could and tied it into the others so itwould ‘float’.
It worked flawlessly. This time Linda wassweating, trying to put more force into her shots, but the newcombination shield stopped them all easily.
“Now that’s more like it,” Sid said,satisfied.
Reaching down to his supply crate he pulledout a handgun, hammered in a clip, and fired a shot at our target.I jumped at the report from the gun, but was pleased to see that myshield held.
With a big grin on his face he said, “I’m notsure on how powerful of a gun your thing
