The senator lowered his voice, as if conspiratorially, and said, “So, our great state of Kansas could become the new hub of space industry?”
“Um, yes sir. This technology will be pretty disruptive to the current rocket industry.”
“Ah, so by helping you I’d be sticking it to my frenemy the senator from Florida?”
Arlan laughed, “Yes sir, I suppose that’d be true, though I think you should have mercy on the people of Florida.”
“Okay, but at least I can make him sweat.” The senator paused, evidently to think, then resumed, “So, what I think we need is some serious publicity so that the government and the general public can’t ignore us. Then I’ll talk to my buddy the President. Can you land that thing on the National Mall?”
Wondering whether Senator Lake was serious, Arlan didn’t say anything for a moment. Finally, he ventured hesitantly, “We could land it there, but the FAA and the DOD would probably have cows. I’d be a little concerned we might get shot down.”
“Hmmm, let me talk to some people and we’ll see what we can do about that.”
Epilogue
Arlan sat bolt upright in bed. Normally he’d have worried that he might have awakened his wife, but the idea he’d had as he was drifting off to sleep had his thoughts ping-ponging around in his brain. Why didn’t I think of this before! If the gammas in a fusion plant are breaking water we’re using for radiation shielding down into hydrogen, oxygen, ozone, and peroxides, at least two of those fragments won’t be affected by a proton field! The hydrogen, being light, is going to start rising which will provide some separation from oxygen molecules. Then if we put mildly geometric focal points all through the water shielding, they’ll pull in the hydrogen and ignore the oxygen and ozone. At first they’ll also tend to pull in peroxide, but it’ll get squeezed out even before the water. Then, all we have to do is pull out the proton field focus and harvest the hydrogen it’s captured!
He sat for a moment trying to think of a flaw in his plan, but wasn’t able to come up with one. Eventually, he picked up the notebook he kept on his nightstand for such occasions and made a few scribbles to make sure he’d still remember the idea in the morning. He’d had enough great ideas in the middle of the night that he couldn’t remember in the morning that now he tried to write all of them down.
As he lay back down, he couldn’t help but wonder whether it would actually work…
******
Eric tugged at his dad’s sleeve. “Come on Dad!” Even though his dad claimed to be interested in space, it’d been hard to talk him into taking the day off to come watch the spaceship land on the National Mall. Eric had begged him to leave early but he’d refused. When the subways had been packed, Eric’s concern had begun to rise. He’d hoped he’d be close enough to really see, but people all around him were streaming in the same direction. Worse, between the people he could glimpse a huge crowd gathering further out on the mall. His dad was walking quickly, but Eric couldn’t get him to jog. “Dad!” Eric wanted to scream. He wanted to let go and run ahead, but even his overwhelming desire couldn’t prevail over his fear of getting lost in a crowd this size.
Then Eric started to see people pointing up into the sky. He looked up and saw a silvery glint high over the Washington Monument. Isn’t it going to land in front of the Air and Space Museum like they said? he wondered. “Dad!” He pointed up at the silvery glint, but then saw his dad was already looking that way. “Should we go that way? It doesn’t look like it’s going to land over here!”
Around him the moving crowd shifted direction to begin heading west toward the monument. Eric’s dad said, “I think we should keep going. There won’t be a cleared off space for them to land over there, so I’m pretty sure they’re going to land where they planned.”
Despite an almost overwhelming fear that they were going the wrong way, Eric kept heading toward the Museum with his dad. He kept glancing back toward the monument and saw what now appeared to be a thick metallic disc. It kept coming down, all the while looking bigger and bigger as it approached the monument and Eric had something to estimate its size by. Eric couldn’t see any jets or anything to hold it up and wondered how it flew. Right before he would have sworn it was going to touch down on the top of the monument, it started moving east. As it sailed in a stately fashion down the mall toward the Museum, it continued to lower itself until it was only about thirty feet over the heads of the crowd. Eric got a good look at it as it passed overhead, but when it lowered further, presumably into a landing area cleared for it, Eric couldn’t see it because of all the people in front of him.
Eric was only dismayed for a moment; his dad picked him up and put him on his shoulders. Suddenly the tallest person in the crowd, Eric could see the huge flattened disc sitting on a pedestal.
It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen…
******
Connor’s nerves were jittery, but he wasn’t sure whether it was anxiety or excitement. He’d been feeling pretty good since Myr had put the disc on his chest to supplement his heart. With his heart pumping better, his breathing had improved and he’d stopped retaining so much fluid. His mother had wanted him to get clearance from his doctor for this trip up into space, but Connor’d realized such permission would never come, so he’d finally insisted. He told his mother he’d rather die trying to go up to space than lie at home slowly dying and wistfully wondering what space would be like.
His mother had also wanted him to wait and see whether he’d be one of the ones approved for Dr. Levinson’s new treatment. Back when he’d been healthy, he’d been reluctant to be a guinea pig, but now it seemed like he was one of the ones who should risk what little life they had remaining in a try for a cure. He’d considered it for a while, but then decided that, if the treatment misfired and killed him, he’d be really pissed that he’d never gotten up to space.
So now Myr was strapping him into MT-1, the first spacecraft Miller Tech had ever built. After doing some testing, she’d mounted brackets to hold his stretcher fairly high up. That way when the proton fields in the ceiling lifted the ship into the air, they’d tend to lift him almost as much and keep him from feeling much in the way of G-forces.
Myr said, “Okay monkey boy, you ready?”
Trying for bravado, Connor said, “Of course I’m ready. Just waiting for you to stop dicking around with those straps and get us on the road.”
Myr shook her head, “That’s our old box of barbed wire.”
Over Myr’s shoulder, Carol said, “Barbed wire?”
Myr snorted, “I’ve been trying to tell the monkey boy he needs to tone down his abrasiveness and be more lovable, like me.”
Connor and Carol both laughed at that one.
Myr hopped down off of the desktop she’d been standing on to strap Connor in. “Okay. Last chance to back out?”
“No way!” Out of the corner of his eye, Connor watched his mother and his sister get in the acceleration couches. Even though lift off in MT-1 never generated enough force to actually justify using the couches, protocol dictated strapping into them in case of unexpected turbulence.
Lift off was completely anticlimactic.
Myr took them up at the stately pace of sixty mph so it took an entire hour to reach the sixty-two mile high Kármán line where space started. There Myr could officially proclaim Connor a spaceman. It would take quite a bit longer to boost up to a speed that’d place them in orbit, but before Myr invested that much time she slowly shut down the lift so they’d start to fall and could find out what really being weightless felt like. “Mom, Connor, you guys feeling okay?” Myr asked.
“Yeah! This’s awesome!” Connor said. When his mother hadn’t said anything, he turned a little bit and looked at her, “Mom? You okay?”
Carol gave him a weak smile and said, “Just a little queasy. I think it’ll pass.”
Connor wanted to say, “Told you so.” He’d spent quite a bit of time trying to talk his mother out of coming
up on this trip. She’d insisted on being there in case he needed some care only a nurse could provide. However, in view of Myr’s barbed wire comments, he toned it down, “Sorry you’re not feeling well. Do you need us to take you back down?”
His mother put on a brave smile and shook her head. Myr let MT-1 fall for several more minutes so Carol could decide whether she was really getting better or not. At the end of that time she looked a little happier, so they went ahead and boosted for orbit.
When they reached orbit and Myr finally turned off the boost, the change wasn’t huge. Connor hadn’t been feeling very much weight during lift off or during the boost because of his position up near the lifter fields. But there’d always been the knowledge in the back of his mind that if he fell off the bunk he’d fall—life-threateningly hard. Now, having even that little bit of weight completely gone felt like a miraculous emancipation. Unstrapped, he manipulated the joystick controlling the little proton field generators Myr’d attached to his harness and started moving around the cabin of MT-1… free at last.
Connor giggled. When his mother and sister looked at him, he said, “To quote John Magee, ‘I’ve slipped the surly bonds…’”
The End
Hope you liked the book!
Author’s Afterword
This is a comment on the “science” in this science fiction novel. I’ve always been partial to science fiction that posed a “what if” question. Not everything in the story has to be scientifically plausible, but you suspend your disbelief regarding one or two things that aren’t thought to be possible. Then you ask, what if something (such as faster than light travel) were possible, how might that change our world?
And, try not to “hand wave” anything else…
This story’s “what if” is the same as in Proton Field #1, what kinds of things could you do if you had a field that warped space for protons?
Not the least of those things might be a space drive. Both the Vaz series and this one have proposed imaginary methods by which we might be able to move through space without using a reaction drive. This because of my despair over the sheer unlikeliness that we might be able to significantly explore even our own solar system if we have to move ourselves by means of exploding propellant out the back end of our spaceship. The very physics of rocketry means that, no matter how efficient your engine is, you have to squirt much the greater part of your launched vehicle out the back end of your ship in order to get to your destination. These inescapable physical facts mean that you’ll arrive at a planetary journey's end with a very small payload. A payload so small, in fact, that your ship won’t have enough reaction mass to return home unless it can mine reaction mass at the destination.
Amidst all the scientific breakthroughs of today, I keep hoping for some kind of reactionless drive. The EmDrive that recently made the news is such drive. The excitement is that tests suggested that it actually did produce some force without expelling reaction mass. Unfortunately, the amount of force the EmDrive generates (if it really does generate any) is so small that such tests may be subject to error.
But one can hope.
In addition, of course, proton fields also would hold promise to let us fly and undertake all kinds of medical interventions and this story explores some of those.
I had a great time writing this story and I hope you’ve enjoyed reading it.
Acknowledgements
I would like to acknowledge the editing and advice of Nora Dahners, Gail Gilman, Elene Trull, Paul Carroll, H. Jeff Durham, Philip Lawrence, Kat Lind, and Abiola Streete, each of whom significantly improved this story.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Epilogue
The End
Author’s Afterword
Acknowledgements
Lifter: Proton Field #2 Page 27
