by Bob Blanton
“Why would I do that?” Catie asked.
“Because it’s funny,” Liz said. “Anyway, the son, Elroy, was always jetting around with a jetpack on his back.”
“Just a second, I’ve got a call,” Catie said. “Hello, Sophia, what’s up?”
“I know you’re doing some secret experiments with my parents up in one of those Oryxes,” Sophia said. “I hope I’m not disturbing anything.”
“Not really, just doing some paperwork,” Catie lied.
“Anyway, that boy Frankie, from the party last week, asked David for your contact info. David wanted me to ask you if it was alright to give it to him.”
“He couldn’t ask me himself?” Catie asked.
“He knows better,” Sophia said. “Now, what do you say? I told you he likes you.”
“I don’t know,” Catie said. “I think he just wants a ride in a Lynx.”
“Sure, keep lying to yourself. Should I have David give him your contact info?”
“Sure,” Catie replied.
“Okay, and you have to tell me everything that happens,” Sophia said.
“Happens when?”
“On your date with Frankie!”
“It’s not a date!”
“Yeah, yeah, just tell me what happens.”
“Okay,” Catie said. “I have to run; they want me to help with one of the experiments. Bye, Sophia.”
“Bye, Catie.”
“What was that about?” Liz asked.
“One of the new boys at school is a pilot, and he wants a ride in a Lynx. He’s never flown a jet before,” Catie answered. “I guess I said I’d take him up.”
“There’s that new one that’s going through certification now,” Liz said. “We could grab its final test flight.”
“Good idea,” Catie said. “I’ll do that.”
“It’s done, Cer Catie,” ADI informed her.
“Thanks, ADI.”
“This one looks fine,” Liz said. “Let’s go look at the next one.”
“Which direction?” Catie asked.
“Clockwise!” the twins hollered as they were already jetting toward the next clockwise extrusion.
◆ ◆ ◆
“Hello, Dr. Zelbar,” Catie said as she and Liz entered the lab they were examining.
“Hello, Catie,” Nikola answered for herself and Dr. Zelbar, who was engrossed in a discussion about how he wanted the lab set up with the crew foreman.
“How are you liking microgravity?” Catie asked.
“It’s fine,” Nikola said. “We haven’t been in the spin section yet.”
“Where’s Natalia?” Catie asked.
“She’s with the Michaelses, they wanted to go into the spin section. We said we would wait for you,” Nikola answered.
“Make sure you call me,” Catie said. “The transition into the spin section can be a bit tricky, especially since we’re spinning it so fast now.”
“Don’t worry,” Nikola said. “We should only be another twenty minutes.”
“Okay, I’ll go corral the twins and meet you back here,” Catie said.
The twins were in the top section of the hub, in an unfinished area that didn’t have any construction going on. They were playing tag, bouncing off the walls while only using their bounce and their hands to control their direction. Apparently, it was too easy to catch someone using thrusters. Catie discovered that after being ignored for the third time, when she used her thruster to capture one of the twins.
“Okay, settle down,” Catie said. “Do you guys always have to play?”
“We’re not playing, we’re training,” the twins said. “We think you should leave this area like it is, so everyone can train here.”
“Train for what?” Catie asked.
“To work in space, maybe even fight,” the twins said. “Try to catch me, no thrusters,” one of the twins said as she pushed off the wall.
Catie figured she shouldn’t have any trouble catching the twin since she was bigger and could push off harder, so she would have more velocity. Ten minutes later, she was disabused of that notion. The twin could push off at impossible angles, and her ability to modify her flight with her hands was impressive. She could judge Catie’s angle of flight and pick the one angle that would be the hardest for her to switch to when she hit the wall. Catie would go flying by her, and she’d be unable to bounce off the wall at the correct angle, causing her to lose far more distance than her stronger legs could make up.
“Okay,” Catie gasped. “I’ll talk to Liz and my dad and see if we can keep your training area.”
“Yay!”
“Now let’s go get the Zelbars and go into the spin section,” Catie said.
“They wore you out,” Liz said as she caught up with Catie. As her bodyguards, Liz or Natalia was always within reach of Catie. Of course, that meant she always had an audience whenever she did anything outside of her condo.
“Yes, but if we’re going to live up here, we should probably try to emulate them and learn how to maneuver,” Catie said.
“I’m not sure anyone over fifteen stands a chance,” Liz said. “You might be able to catch up with them.”
“I’m not sure,” Catie said. “I think there’s some natural talent involved, not just the youth factor.”
“That’d be nice,” Liz said. “I wouldn’t have to feel so embarrassed then.”
They gathered the Zelbars and made their way to one of the entry ports for the spin section. When they exited the port, they were floating above the floor of the spin section; it was ten meters below them and moving fast.
“Oh, this doesn’t look good,” Nikola said.
“It’s not as bad as it looks,” Catie said. “The floor is moving at about thirty miles per hour, or twenty-one meters per second. You wouldn’t want to just hit it. But if you grab one of these straps and pull on it, it hooks onto the spin section by a spring and brings you up to speed slowly. Then it pulls you down to the floor, so you land like you just hopped off of a two-foot-tall step.”
“You’re sure about that?” Nikola asked.
“Of course,” Catie said. “There are no walls in this area, so you won’t hit anything. Let me have the twins demonstrate.”
Catie turned to the twins, but they had just launched themselves toward the floor. They did a small flip in the air and bounced off of the surface, then landed a few feet later. They both turned and waved at Catie.
“Like I said, natural talent,” Catie said to Liz.
“Or natural stupidity,” Liz replied. “Here, I’ll demonstrate.” Liz grabbed one of the straps, she gave it a tug, and it engaged and pulled her off the ceiling. She had already rotated herself, so her feet were pointing down. She touched down on the surface about fifty meters from where she started, but she continued to move away from them as the surface kept rotating.
“That didn’t look too hard,” Dr. Zelbar said as he grabbed a strap. He landed about one hundred meters short of Liz.
“Oh, we’d better hurry,” Nikola said as she grabbed a strap, and Catie grabbed one right behind her. By the time they landed, Liz had made up about half the distance to Dr. Zelbar, and they were slowly making their way back to them. The twins were doing a hop-run thing and were making up the distance very fast.
“Boy, you two are moving fast,” Catie said to them when they caught up with everyone.
“Yeah, it only works going this direction, if you do it the other direction, it slows you down,” they said.
“Hmm,” Dr. Zelbar mused.
“Let’s see where we are,” Catie said as she checked her HUD to see where they were relative to the place where Natalia had told her to meet up. “Oh, it’s not too far, just follow me,” Catie said. “We’ll go through here, so we don’t have anyone landing on our heads.”
They entered the built-up part of the spin section and followed the corridor for seventy meters before they came to the lounge where the Michaelses and Natalia were sitting.
&nb
sp; “Any coffee for the rest of us?” Catie asked.
“Sure,” Natalia said. “Who wants what?”
Both the Zelbars opted for coffee, and with everybody’s order, Natalia and the twins went to the bar to get the drinks.
“It feels nice,” Nikola said. “A bit awkward to walk, but I guess we’re not used to weighing so little.”
“Yes, this is a little more gravity than they have on the moon,” Catie said.
“At least things stay where you put them,” Admiral Michaels said. “And you can drink out of a regular cup.”
“That is definitely nice,” Nikola said.
“I thought you said you couldn’t have people living here?” Dr. Zelbar said in a demanding tone.
“I said we weren’t really set up for guests,” Catie said with a sigh; she’d just had this conversation with the admiral.
“I don’t see the problem,” Dr. Zelbar said.
“We’re not set up to recycle water and waste,” Natalia said. “I’m here to put that system in. Plus, it’s only one-fifth G, it’s not good to be in that low a gravity for too long. We rotate the crew every two weeks.”
“When will you be ready?” Dr. Zelbar demanded.
“Four weeks,” Liz replied. “Catie is just as impatient as you are. And even then, you’re only going to get one-half-G of gravity. We’re over two months away from having a one-G environment.”
“We would do fine at half a G for a couple of months,” Dr. Zelbar said. “It would be nice on my old bones to be a bit lighter.”
“We’ll figure out how to make that work,” Liz said, knowing from past experience that there was no dissuading Dr. Zelbar once he had his mind made up.
“Good,” Dr. Zelbar said. He picked his cup of coffee up and moved over next to Catie.
“Hi, Dr. Zelbar,” Catie said as he sat down.
“Hi, yourself,” Dr. Zelbar whispered. “Now tell me, where do you have your asteroids?”
“What asteroids?” Catie asked as she tried to keep the shock from showing on her face.
“Don’t worry, nobody slipped up,” Dr. Zelbar said. “But you can’t be building those last two rings that fast unless you have a couple of asteroids close by.”
Catie just shook her head, “We’ve got three,” she said. “They’re about two degrees ahead of Earth in the same orbit.”
“Oh, you didn’t want a bunch of astronomers crying the sky is falling?”
“Right.”
“I assume the third one is ice.”
“Yes, for water, hydrogen, and oxygen,” Catie said.
“You know, the more you tell me, the more I can help,” Dr. Zelbar whispered. “Now do you think they’ve finished moving our stuff to the lab?”
“They should be close,” Catie said. “I assume you want to check everything out before we head back.”
“That would be correct,” Dr. Zelbar said. “Come on Niki, let’s see if they’ve done it right.”
◆ ◆ ◆
Three hours later, they were finally on the ground saying goodbye to each other. Liz and Catie took the twins home with them. Their mother would pick them up when she got off work. Catie was wondering how her father was going to take it when she explained how much Dr. Zelbar knew.
Chapter 16
Know-it-All
“You ready for this?” Liz asked Catie. Catie was taking Frankie up in the Lynx; Liz was going to be her copilot, wingmate, and bodyguard.
“It’s just a test flight,” Catie said.
“Keep telling yourself that,” Liz said. “And where is that guy? For someone anxious to get a ride in a Lynx, he’s not very punctual.”
“He’s only fifteen minutes late,” Catie said.
“He should have been early,” Liz countered.
“There he is,” Catie said as Frankie turned the corner into the hangar.
“About time,” Liz said.
“Hi, Frankie,” Catie called out as she waved.
Frankie waved back as he sauntered over. “Hi,” he said as he eyed Liz.
“This is Liz, my copilot,” Catie said. “She’s also a good friend.”
“Hi,” Frankie said, looking a bit disappointed at the thought of a copilot.
“Once we’re airborne and complete the test,” Catie said, “you and Liz can swap for a while.”
“Cool,” Frankie said.
“Well, let’s get this show on the road,” Liz said as she turned and headed into the Lynx.
Frankie and Catie followed her. “You can strap in here,” Catie said. “It’ll take about forty-five minutes to finish the test. Do you have something to read?”
“Sure,” Frankie said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. “Hey, can you get me some specs?” he asked. He only had one of their modified phones, without the specs and earwig, since they were in short supply and allocated to critical personnel and a few close associates.
“We don’t have very many available,” Catie said, “manufacturing issues. But I’ll check. We should be solving the manufacturing problem soon, then everyone will get them.”
“Thanks,” Frankie said, clearly assuming Catie would get him a set.
Catie made her way into the cockpit as Frankie strapped in. They were in the air in minutes. “Is he okay back there?” Liz asked.
“I think so,” Catie said. “Apparently, he thought he’d be the copilot.”
“He seems to think a lot of himself,” Liz said as she looked at the display showing the main cabin. “It looks like he’s playing some kind of game on his phone,” she scoffed, clearly thinking that there were better uses of his time.
“Well, he has some time to burn,” Catie said. She agreed with Liz about better uses of time but felt she needed to defend Frankie.
“Would you switch with Frankie?” Catie asked after they had finished fifty minutes of tests.
“Sure,” Liz said as she unstrapped. She headed back to the main cabin.
“Hey,” Frankie said as he slid into the copilot’s seat.
“Hey, yourself,” Catie said. “Sorry, it took so long. We had a long list of tests to do.”
“No problem,” Frankie said. “Can I fly it?”
“Let me show you the various controls,” Catie said.
Catie walked him through the controls; she could tell that he was only half paying attention, but she persisted. Once she’d finished the list, she nodded to Frankie to indicate that he should take hold of the yoke. “You have control,” she said after she set her controls to be able to override anything that Frankie did.
Frankie just started to steer the plane, not bothering to acknowledge that he had taken control. Catie could tell he’d flown before; he had a pretty good touch with the yoke, keeping the Lynx level and smoothly executing some turns. “How fast are we going?”
“The airspeed indicator is right there,” Catie said, pointing out where it was just like she had two minutes before.
“Oh,” Frankie said. “I see, we’re at Mach 0.7, can we go faster?”
“Yes, just push the throttle forward,” Catie said.
Frankie pushed the throttle forward a little faster than Catie would have preferred. The Lynx gained speed, passing Mach one in almost no time. Frankie kept accelerating and climbing until they reached Mach four. Catie was watching the radar and the skies, a little worried that Frankie didn’t seem to be watching anything but what was in front of him.
“You need to be careful,” Catie said. “When you’re going this fast, you can come upon another plane broadside, and we’re not under tower control in this airspace.”
“I’ve got it,” Frankie said, a little annoyed at being cautioned.
“Okay, let’s turn around and head back,” Catie said. “As we approach Delphi City, you’ll need to slow back down to below Mach one.”
“Already,” Frankie whined.
“Yes,” Catie said. “Liz and I still have a lot of paperwork to do, and the ground crew has to inspect the plane.”
Frankie made a wide arcing turn and headed back to Delphi City. Catie was almost going to override his throttle when he finally started dialing back on the speed. “You’ll need to switch with Liz for the landing,” Catie said.
“Why? I can land this thing,” Frankie argued.
“We’re still on a test flight; the landing has to be observed by Liz, and I have to do it so we can fill out the reports,” Catie said. She wasn’t about to let Frankie land the Lynx. “If you want to become one of the Lynx pilots, you can sign up for simulator time and get certified,” Catie said.
“Sure,” Frankie said.
“I have control,” Catie said as she took the yoke. Frankie just let go of the yoke and sat back in his seat with his arms crossed. “Liz,” Catie called over the intercom, “we’re about to land, so you need to come back.”
Liz immediately knocked on the cockpit door and entered. Frankie very slowly unstrapped and crawled out of the copilot’s seat, making the point that he didn’t think he should have to swap out.
“That boy doesn’t seem happy,” Liz said once Frankie had exited the cockpit and the door was closed.
“He thought he should be able to land it,” Catie said.
“You’re not serious?” Liz gasped. “He sure has an abundance of confidence.”
“Yes, he does,” Catie said. “He was pretty smooth on the yoke, though.”
“Let’s set this baby down,” Liz said. “I have a date tonight.”
“With Logan?” Catie squealed.
“Yes, the man is persistent,” Liz said. Logan was the British spy that was trying to gather intel on MacKenzie Discoveries by dating Liz. Liz was enjoying the attention, but not providing much intel of value.
“Maybe he just likes you,” Catie said.
“Like Ying Yue just likes Blake,” Liz countered.
“She might like him,” Catie said. “Just because she’s a Chinese spy doesn’t mean she can’t like him.”
“And Natasha just loves Kal.”
“Her name is Sasha,” Catie said.
“Sure, but I like Natasha, it’s a better name for a Russian spy.”
“Why?”
“Boris and Natasha,” Liz said. “Haven’t you ever watched a Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon?”
“Never heard of them.”
