Tiona arched an eyebrow, “Aren’t they going to be excited about us flying around their airspace with an unlicensed aircraft?”
Vaz frowned “It’s not an aircraft, it’s a spacecraft.”
“Aircraft, spacecraft, whatever it is. They’re going to be excited about its passing through their airspace, aren’t they?”
Vaz got a mulish look on his face. “I did several searches. They don’t seem to have any rules that apply to us. No place to get it licensed, no place to apply for permission.” He paused, then continued while sounding quite irritated, “It’s like the government just hasn’t thought this far ahead.”
The voice of the saucer’s AI spoke, “RDU air traffic control is trying to contact us. They are asking what type of aircraft we are flying, and demanding a flight plan.”
It was hard to hear, because the sound from their passage through the air had been getting louder and louder. The ride had been getting rougher and now the saucer began to shake pretty hard. Tiona said, “AI, cease thrust!” The shaking stopped and her stomach flip-flopped as they began weightlessly coasting. Glancing anxiously at her dad, she said, “What’s happening?!”
He got the distant look he often wore when he was concentrating hard, “After sixty seconds at a half G acceleration we should be very close to the speed of sound. Trying to force the relatively flat shape of the saucer perpendicularly through the air at close to the sound barrier is probably causing aerodynamic instabilities which are likely responsible for the strong vibrations.”
Tiona turned to stare at him, “So we can’t go into space because we can’t cross the sound barrier?!”
“No, you just need to keep your speed down to about 600 miles per hour or less until we get beyond the atmosphere. The ‘edge of space’ is only sixty miles up so it will only take ten minutes to get there,” he said, as if he thought impatience with the duration of the trip was her complaint.
Tiona barked a laugh, “AI, resume climbing at 600 miles per hour.” She paused, thinking, “What’s our altitude?”
“29,000 feet. How should I respond to RDU traffic control queries?”
Tiona looked at Vaz, but he merely shrugged uncertainly. “AI, just ignore their queries for now.” She glanced at her father, “We should be too far for them to detect pretty soon.”
Vaz said, “AI, are we maintaining cabin pressure without adding air?”
Tiona understood that he was checking to see if the saucer was leaking.
The AI merely said, “Yes.”
“AI, initiate air regeneration and filtration.”
Tiona had a thought and turned to Vaz, “What are we doing with the hydrogen produced by the water electrolysis?”
“It vents to the outside. Setting up a Sabatier system to recycle hydrogen would be a lot of trouble for short trips like we’re making.”
Tiona reached into her backpack and pulled out the equipment she’d brought for testing Dr. Weitzel’s theory. It included a current generator and a fifteen centimeter disc taped to the weighing surface of a lab scale. She’d already tested the lab scale to make sure it functioned correctly when it was upside down as well as when it was right side up. That suggested that it would work in a weightless environment or if she held it sideways. Holding it sideways would let her measure the thrust from the disk even when the saucer was accelerating without worrying that fluctuations in the saucer’s acceleration might affect the measurements.
She’d spent some time back in the lab calibrating the scale with the disc attached to it. She’d recorded quite a bit of data on the thrust that the disc produced in response to various amounts of current from the generator.
Having anticipated the need to plug in various electronic equipment on long trips, Vaz had installed outlets that produced standard household currents including 110 and 220. Tiona plugged the current generator into one of the 110 outlets and flipped it on. She used the tare function to set the scale to zero, then sent current to the disc.
Over the next few minutes she recorded the pressure on the scale in several different positions. She frowned as she realized they varied a little bit according to position. Even more interesting, they varied a little bit with time which might mean they varied according to altitude. “AI, what is our altitude at present?”
“122 kilometers or seventy-six miles.”
“Dang, we’re already in space! AI, stop thrust.” After a couple of seconds to get over the sensation that she was falling, she started to make measurements in the weightless environment. Then she paused, “AI, did you have to modify power to the thrusters in order to maintain steady accelerations?”
The AI responded, “Yes,” but Tiona had already realized that the AI would have had to modify the power to the thrusters to compensate for diminished friction as they got higher in the atmosphere. They were weightless now, so Tiona went back to measuring the force produced by the fifteen centimeter disc. She continued to get small differences in the thrust produced as time went along, though the differences only amounted to a few percent.
As she thought about the results, she looked up and out the window. She noticed two things. First, the stars were very brilliant as seen out here in space. Second, the saucer was slowly tumbling as evidenced by the movement of the stars and the earth past the windows. She scrunched her eyes shut. Dammit! Maybe the differences I’m measuring are because the saucer is tumbling. But, if I have the AI stabilize our attitude using the thrusters, I may measure pressure differences on the scale due to forces applied to the saucer as a whole. After a moment’s additional thought she had another thought. Besides, if I’m interested in changes that could be due to the density of dark matter, having the dark matter stirred up by the big thrusters could result in changes all by itself!
“AI, stabilize the attitude of the saucer; then cease thrust.”
Tiona heard a few gentle thrums from the thrusters and the stars stopped wheeling past. The AI said, “Done.”
Tiona repeated her measurements a few more times, still finding minor variations. She wasn’t sure what to make of it. The variations were small enough that she feared they might be due to measurement error, even though she had measured repeatedly without differences of those sizes back on earth. She wondered what Dr. Weitzel would think of the results.
Tiona looked over at her dad. He still gripped his armrests firmly, but his eyes looked out the windows with an expression of awe. Tiona looked for herself; the saucer had tilted a little bit away from perfectly horizontal without the AI controlling it. Out the left side, she could see the earth in all its blue and white glory. For a few minutes she just sat with her father and stared at its beauty.
Then she realized that the noise she was hearing came from falling back through enough air to make some sound.
She told the AI to reapply some lift.
The air traffic controllers on duty at RDU turned away from the eastern window of the control tower to look at each other. The young one said, “What the hell was that? Just some kind of glitch in the system?”
The older one laughed, “Unless we posit that someone just launched a rocket the size of a small plane from the suburbs of North Raleigh and shot it into outer space using a rocket engine that we couldn’t see from ten miles away… then it must’ve been a glitch.”
“But… we saw it on radar and we got a transponder signal!”
“I know…” the older one sighed; turning and peering up and out of the window again. “But…” he held up a finger, “Nothing can fly straight up to those altitudes at those speeds except a rocket.” He held up a second finger, “No one could have launched a rocket capable of that kind of ascent from a suburban neighborhood without there being hell to pay.” He arched an eyebrow, “If they did, it’ll sure as shit is all over the news.” He held up a third finger, “A rocket that could do that would have made a glare we could see from a damn sight further away than this.”
The younger guy chewed his lip for a moment, then said, “Some kind o
f new tech?”
“Nothing new under the sun,” the older guy chuckled as he walked back over to the big display the tower’s AI provided. It showed them all the aircraft in the area. He looked it over for a few seconds and then said, “Whatever the hell it was, it’s gone now.” His eyes tracked to one of the icons on their display, “What do you suppose is going on with flight 693?”
The two men resumed their job. The AI generally managed air traffic pretty well, but still needed somebody keeping an eye on it.
Tiona tore her eyes away from the earth outside their windows. She said, “I’m not sure I’m ready for the world to know we have a spaceship.”
Her father looked at her for a moment, then seemed to realize she was waiting for him to make some kind of response. “Okay,” he said.
“Is there a way for us to get back down to the garage without activating our transponder and telling everyone we’re coming down?”
Vaz blinked slowly, “We could come down with our transponder inactive, but they’ll still see us on radar and… we might hit another aircraft though it’s not very likely.” He tilted his head curiously, “I suspect even now we’re visible on military and national defense radar systems. They keep track of stuff in space you know, just to make sure it doesn’t hit their satellites.”
“We should’ve given this more thought before we went up.”
Her father just looked at her for a while, then said slowly, “I gave it a lot of thought.”
“What should we do then?”
Vaz didn’t say anything for a moment, then, “We could just land. They’d see us, come to see who we were and we could tell them.” He shrugged, “We have to tell them some time.” He frowned, “Or, we could come down like we’re a meteor or a failed rocket, but aim so that we come down in the ocean or a lake. Just before we hit the ground, we’d decelerate, then fly back home at low altitudes, trying to stay beneath their radar. If they did look for us, they would spend a long time searching for wreckage or meteor fragments in the lake or ocean where they would assume we crashed.”
“Okaaay, AI, we’ve started to fall back to earth already, right?”
“Yes.”
“AI, are we falling to the west of Raleigh?”
“Yes.”
“Okaaay, we’re falling at an acceleration of one gravity so this would only take a few minutes if it weren’t for our need to slow down so we don’t burn up in the atmosphere. AI, start guiding us so that we are aimed to come down in Jordan Lake.” She paused for a second and then said, “AI, that’s the Jordan Lake near Raleigh, North Carolina.” She wasn’t sure whether there was another Jordan Lake somewhere else and didn’t want the AI to take them to the wrong place. “Slow us to less than the speed of sound before we get down to 100,000 feet of altitude.”
Tiona turned to her dad, “How many gravities of deceleration should we be able to do in this saucer?”
“Four, in addition to the one gravity from earth’s field… if we stay within our safety margins.”
“Let’s test that out. Recline your chair all the way so we can try some high accelerations.” As soon as they were flat, she said, “AI, take us up to four G’s of acceleration over five seconds then stop.”
The rumble of the thrusters appeared and slowly built to a thunder then stopped while pressure built on Tiona then vanished. “AI, any problems?” she asked. She turned to her dad and raised a questioning eyebrow, but he just shook his head.
The AI said, “No.”
“Okay, AI, let us fall, but use your thrusters to keep us just below the speed of sound and on a course to land in Jordan Lake. Use the full four gravities of deceleration to stop us 200 meters above the lake. Then find us a route between the lake and our house that stays as low as possible in any valleys. Make sure you stay above any power lines.”
The somewhat literal minded AI said, “There are no valleys in that area.”
Tiona patiently said, “Use a contour map to find the lowest path within two miles of a straight line trip. Be sure to keep us at least fifty feet above the ground and any trees, power lines, towers, buildings, or other obstructions.”
After a bit a keening whistle from falling through the thickening atmosphere became louder and shortly became a roar. Air resistance built the pressure underneath their backs. Suddenly, the rumble of the thrusters added to it until she felt the imaginary weight of four people on top of her. When that heavy weight suddenly vanished, for a second she thought she was weightless again. Then she realized that it was just that she was nearly at an Earth normal one gravity. Looking out the windows of the saucer she realized she might be at less than one gravity because the saucer was dropping more gently the rest of the way down to her prescribed fifty feet above the lake as it sped to the northeast.
It lifted up over some trees, then dropped to follow a road…
***
“Lieutenant! That trace, the one that looked like a launch from North Carolina! It looks like it’s coming back down!”
“What the hell! The thing that looked like it went trans-atmospheric?!”
“Yes Sir.”
“I thought you said something must have spoofed the electronics?!”
“Yes Sir… but… it’s coming back down!”
“Oh geez!” the LT sighed. “Call the Major, he’s gonna rip us a new one for not calling him when it went up!”
Studying the plot, Major Riker said disgustedly, “And where did it launch from?”
“Just north of Raleigh. Well, the north side, but it was within the city limits. It went up from somewhere in the suburbs.”
“And air traffic control from the local airport saw it on radar, but couldn’t see it with the mark one eyeball?”
“Yes Sir.”
“Then it fell back out of the sky, and best you can tell, it came down in a lake?”
“Yes Sir.”
Riker closed his eyes for a moment to think. Finally, he shook his head. “Let’s send this on up the chain of command. I suspect they’re going to want to get some choppers out there to see what the hell came down. Maybe even some sonar and divers to check the lake bottom.” His eyes narrowed, “Can you pin down the launch site any tighter?”
“Sir,” the lieutenant pointed to a display, “it looks like it might have launched from this golf course.”
“They’ll probably want to get a helicopter over there to see if there is a big burn on one of the fairways or something.” The major sighed and shook his head, “Who the hell would launch a space capable rocket from a golf course?!”
***
Tiona sat in the lab, trying to make sense of the different readings she’d gotten from the test disc last night. She had organized a couple of tables displaying the thrust depending on altitude and orientation, thinking that she should be able to understand the small variations in thrust that were present. She really wanted to have some way to logically explain the results before her meeting with Dr. Eisner that afternoon.
Nolan cleared his throat behind her, “Tiona?”
“Uh-huh?” she said without looking around.
“I’ve, uh, got this coupon for a big discount at that new sub shop on Franklin Street. Wanna go to lunch?”
Since she was facing the other way and Nolan couldn’t see her, Tiona frowned. Lunch two days in a row? Does he think we’re dating? “Um…” she said, Oh what the hell. He was fun to have lunch with yesterday and I’m sure as hell not dating anyone else! Besides, I need to invite him for a ride in the saucer. She turned to look at him, “That’d be fun. But, this time I’m buying.”
As they walked north towards Franklin Street and the sub shop, they had different thoughts. Nolan wondered how he could buy Tiona’s lunch without embarrassing her and distractedly wished that he was better at casual conversation.
Tiona, on the other hand, wondered how to invite him for a ride on the saucer. Maybe she should take Eisner up for a ride too? Finally she said, “You have any plans tonight? Say, 11 o’clock
?”
A sinking feeling came over Nolan as he decided she must have gotten back together with Ronnie Winters and was inviting him to go to a show, “Um, what did you have in mind?”
She looked at him and grinned, “It’s a secret. You have to meet me out at Finley golf course… I promise that it’s something you’ve always wanted to do,” she said enigmatically.
She knows how sexy I think she is! Is she offering…? Nolan’s heart stuttered, not at all sure what she had in mind. Meeting on a golf course seemed too weird to be believed, but he’d once had a friend who claimed to have had wild sex with a girl on a golf green under the stars. At that moment Nolan couldn’t imagine what else they might do there in the middle of the night—especially in view of the “something you’ve always wanted to do” promise. But it was January, too cold to make love on a golf green! “Um, s-sure,” he stuttered, hoping he didn’t sound like too much of an overeager idiot. Desperately, he tried to think of something else to talk about.
Tiona had her AI throw up an overhead view of the golf course and studied it on her HUD for a moment as they walked. “Tell you what, I’ll meet you at the soccer field that’s just west of the golf course.”
“Oh, okay, 11PM.”
Suddenly, a woman sitting on one of the benches looked at them and said, “Hey, ‘T,’ you snatch yourself a handsome college boy?” Nolan realized she was one of the homeless women!
Nolan felt embarrassed for Tiona to have been accosted on the street by a homeless woman. A woman who obviously knew her from the shelter. However, Tiona just laughed and said, “Hey Debbie, I thought you were applying for jobs?”
A big smile spread across Debbie’s face, “I got one honey. I got me a job. I start tomorrow. I talked to Shelley like you said. She got me some nice clothes to interview in. Once I got the job, she got me some more clothes to wear to work the first two weeks!”
Tiona laughed delightedly and stepped over to Debbie. The woman rose from the bench and they hugged each other for a moment, then Tiona said, “Good luck Debbie.” She pushed her back out to arm’s length, “I’ve got to go to lunch with my ‘college boy’ here, but I’m sure I’ll see you around.”
Tiona_a sequel to Vaz Page 19
