The Orphan in Near-Space (The Space Orphan Book 2)

by Laer Carroll

  Lastly they went over the bumpier and grassier areas of the Arroyo in both straight line and then curving paths. All they while their several instruments were recording data.

  It was nearing lunch time when they finished their thousand-item checklist and retired to the test bed's parking spot in their building. At that point they went to lunch.

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  "Hey, what's with the uniforms today, ladies? Playing soldier again?"

  The people who joined them at their usual tables in their cafeteria sometimes included a jackass. George Kelly was one such, a telemetry engineer. Jane didn't think he was deliberately provocative, just one of the rare real examples of the socially awkward nerd so beloved of TV comedy shows.

  Nicole was less gracious.

  "We ARE soldiers, idiot. The captain has even seen combat."

  "Oh?"

  "She was embedded with the Marines a few years back. They called her The Terminator after her squad--"

  "Nicole. We don't talk about that," said Jane.

  Nicole scowled. "I'm just saying, if she looks at you wrong and picks up a knife, run."

  "You guys are for real? You're not making fun of me?"

  "Perish the thought, old friend, old friend," said Riku, putting an arm around the man's back and giving him a little-too-manly friendly shake.

  "Changing the subject," said James Wang, a mathematician who did orbital planning for space probes, "what was with that circus wagon you guys were driving around this morning? Was it really floating? Not on hidden wheels?"

  The test bed had early been considered ugly by all of Jane's staff and spiffed up a bit by going with a mostly bright blue color scheme. The exceptions were its grey seats and its transparent floor board and the gold-colored instrument housing at its front.

  "It really was," said Klaus, busily negotiating spaghetti with meat balls and buttered bread. "We're doing a study to pave the way for putting floater undercarriages on close-air support vehicles and helicopter rescue vehicles."

  "Both would be welcome," said Arthur Molino, an older fan of Jane just at the border of what Riku called pervdom. "At least by dirt eaters like me. Once overseas we were pinned down by some ass hats and needed both."

  "Hey, can I get a ride on it?" said Kelly. Others chimed in.

  And thus it was that several days in the next week Jane and Kate were accompanied by three backseat drivers while the test-bed checks were repeated with various modifications of the floater undercarriage.

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  When done the results were released by the Space Force with credit given for "assistance by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory." The title was Studies of Telemagnetic Induction Travel over Rough Terrain, with Particular Application to Short Takeoff and Landing Aircraft.

  The Studies were read by only a few--in the US. In China and elsewhere they were paid more attention, as clues to the radical new technology.

  But it did lead to the next job that Jane and her staff was offered.

  Chapter 3 - Traveling

  The long Thanksgiving weekend was a busy happy one. The Kuznetsov's two older biological children visited only by Scope video. They had families of their own and were having their own celebrations. They would come visiting over the Christmas holidays.

  Their youngest, Michael, did come. He brought his girlfriend, Hilda. They got along with Jane and her staff, all of whom were congenial people. Riku brought a girl friend, Mairu ("call me Mary"), whom he'd met only a couple of weeks before. She was Japanese-American like himself, of an equally long-established family and of restaurateurs like his family.

  Jane spent the day after Thanksgiving with "Aunt" Natalie. Her new family was still doing well, though the younger of two sons had just the day before fallen from a small tree and broken a collar bone. He was proud of his injury and insisted on showing his immobilizer bandage to his "Aunt Jane" with much dramatic description of his accident and his braveness during the ordeal.

  Natalie's step-daughter Suzie had decided she liked Jane more than she disliked her. Clayton, the older son, still was interested in being an astronaut, especially now that Aunt Jane was actually working for NASA, albeit on loan from the Space Force.

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  The crew returned to work to finish the fitting of space suits, a long process done best at Edwards Air Force Base some 60 miles north on the other side of the long east-west chain of mountains separating LA from the Mojave Desert region.

  They continued with their private pilot lessons except for Klaus. He had already graduated from Laughlin with a basic jet fighter license after graduating from the Academy.

  The crew continued working on induced-magnetism floater demos and accompanying research to provide vertical takeoff and landing to conventional aircraft.

  Then an offer came in for Jane to help Sikorsky put floater tech on the bottom of one of their helicopters. Jane accepted.

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  On the second day of the New Year Jane took possession of a bizjet on loan from Boeing at the El Monte Airport just a few miles to the east of JPL. She and her crew on-loaded some specialized equipment and files into it. They took off shortly thereafter, Klaus in the co-pilot's seat doing the takeoff.

  The trip to the southeast coast of Florida would normally have taken a little over five hours, but it was delayed halfway there. This was to attend a lunch in a Fort Worth, Texas, division of Sikorsky for a meet-and-greet lunch with a top Sikorsky honcho and a small coterie of his underlings.

  Kate suggested that this was an attempt to get an early lock on Jane when she left the Space Force or more favorable treatment of Sikorsky while she was still in the military. Jane, taking a suggestion from Riku, had planned for the meeting by having all of them wearing camouflage working rather than dress uniforms. This would suggest that they were just dumb working stiffs easily taken advantage of by corporate sophisticates.

  So Jane and the others smiled and nodded and listened with great interest to everything the honcho and his mouthpieces said about Sikorsky and its great plans for the future but said little.

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  They arrived at the private airfield of the Sikorsky research and develop facility just as the sun was setting. They came into their final approach from the west, so the sun was at their rear and casting a long shadow ahead of them. The runway was 7000 feet long, which she knew from her pre-flight planning, and the 3100 feet their bizjet needed made it an easy set down. She let Klaus do it under her watchful eyes.

  Though it was late, as Klaus parked the jet Jane saw out of a side window a small group of what looked like execs and engineers. So it proved to be.

  "Welcome to Florida, Captain Kuznetsov," said the eldest of the group, a slender woman who was dressed in business casual. "And to all your crew. Come on, let's get you inside and get past a short meeting."

  "We do have some equipment and files aboard, but we can get those tomorrow when we get to work."

  Jane and her staff followed the woman, carrying duffle bags or trailing pull-along suitcases with personal stuff they'd need for their first few days in Florida. They ended up in a small conference room in one of the two main buildings of the small complex of about a dozen buildings.

  "We've put you up in the Wyndham Grand directly east of here in the downtown area of Jupiter. It's only a half hour drive and we'll transport you or--"

  "We'll rent a van," said Kate. "Thanks, but we may have irregular hours. And weekends we may want to go down to Ft. Lauderdale or Miami."

  "Good. We want you to be happy here. Speaking of which, we've set aside a small area for your office space. Tomorrow we can help you move in what you brought with you and set it up. Then we can have a meeting to work out just what you're doing here and how we can help expedite that."

  That settled the executive called the meeting to an end. A Sikorsky driver ferried them in a van to their hotel in a small but upscale downtown area of Jupiter.

  After settling in to their rooms they met in the hotel dining room for a late d
inner.

  "My God," said Riku, looking up from his menu. "This place is huge. Did you see that swimming pool?"

  "And great views," said Nicole. "I've got a balcony and can see the yachts in the harbor."

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  The next morning a Sikorsky driver picked them up in a van. They met with the facilities manager at the site and she showed them to their offices. They were typical cubicles each supplied with a high-performance computer work station. They consulted with her about access to 3D printers. Not surprisingly, the R&D group had the very latest plus a machine shop for what could not be easily and economically printed.

  With some help they brought in from the bizjet the equipment and the secure computer with all the files they had thought they'd need.

  The help they got was an aerospace engineer named Sadie Wang who'd oversee the Shadow Hawk helicopter upgrade group. With her was an experienced engineer and test pilot, Joshua Barnes.

  The meeting began at 10:00 in a nice conference room with the usual long oval table and a large wall screen connected to a small computer at the head of the table.

  The leader of the meeting was the same executive who'd met them last night, Dawn Renfrew.

  "Did you like your new home away from home?"

  "Did we ever," said Riku.

  "Yes, thank you," said Jane.

  "Good. Let us know when you rent your van. Otherwise we'll keep giving you transport to and from work.

  "Now, for those here who don't know why you're here--" There were about a dozen Sikorsky women and men at the table in addition to their boss. "--we'd like to get your help adding a floater landing and take off ability to the Shadow Hawk.

  "It was originally an upgrade to the Black Hawk which made it stealthy. This included upgrades to its geometry, radar-absorbing paint, quieter blades, other changes. And they worked, very well. Up to the last three hundred feet or so. There's no way we can completely silence the helicopter blades. They still make their distinctive chopping sound even at slow rotation speeds."

  "So," said Sadie, "your Studies paper in the Space Force monthly proceedings greatly interested us. Joshua jumped on the idea first and brought it to me. I'm still a little dubious but will be happy to be persuaded it will do the job we need."

  "As you should be," Jane said. "We can slap floater tech on the bottom of a vehicle in just a few days but it will take a lot of work to make it practical.

  "For those who've not been following floater tech let me give you a quick look at what's involved. Dr. Renfrew, what's the ID info for the wi-fi net for this building and this room's display computer?"

  The woman told her.

  Jane took her folded tablet from her belt and unfolded it. Then she spoke to it.

  "Janet, connect me to Sikorsky six-eleven and Conference Room two-fourteen."

  "Done. Ready."

  "Show the slides from this weekend's Sikorsky briefing."

  The room's conference wall screen at the end of the table brightened, displaying a screen of text labeled Sikorsky Briefing.

  "Janet, Page Two."

  The second page showed a large photograph.

  "This is what Segway calls a 'personal transporter' and kids are calling a 'hoverboard.' We made it a real hoverboard by replacing its wheels with those two devices which look like very fat two-ended skis. We made them bright blue for no good reason.

  "Inside each ski are several electromagnets which make the bottoms magnetic. The polarity is positive. This is an arbitrary choice. It could just as easily been negative.

  "Janet, show Page Three."

  The image displayed showed the bottom of the hoverboard.

  "Those four yellow doughnut shapes--again, the color is arbitrary--pivot so their bottom faces down, forward, or backward. They focus a telemagnetic inducer field down, forward, or backward. Remember the handles on top of the 'broomstick' sticking up from the footplate?

  "Janet, show Page Four."

  This photo was of Jane in her camouflage working uniform standing atop the hoverboard foot plate. Her hands were on the handles positioned at chest level atop a long stick.

  "At the cross point is a switch you can barely see. Flip it on and the magnets and the inducer energize. The ground at the focus points are the same polarity as the magnets. Ground and magnets repel each other, the hoverboard rises. It can go up to two feet but one foot or a half-foot uses less juice so it's best to stay as low as the terrain allows."

  Sadie Wang lifted a hand to head level. Jane nodded at her.

  "You mentioned juice. Is that to the inducer or the magnets?"

  "Mostly to the magnets. The heavier the load, the higher you want to lift the load, the stronger the magnets need to be.

  "The inducer uses only a little energy. Increase the power and you increase the distance between the inducer and its focus. Up to a certain limit. Then more power produces no more distance. It just goes to waste.

  "Let's not get into more details now. I just want to give everyone an overview. We WILL go into them. That's why we're here.

  "Now the handles. They control the orientation of the doughnuts. Push them forward or backward moves the inducer focus point forward or backward. Twist left or right pivots the doughnuts left or right.

  "So those are the components of the floater tech: skis, doughnuts, power from a battery or generator, and electrical controls. Put those on anything and it floats.

  "Janet, show Page Five." That showed a sit-down "mobility scooter with" three wheels removed and replaced with skis.

  Page Six showed a golf cart with floater skis instead of wheels.

  Page Seven showed a Shadow Hawk with skis in addition to wheels. The skis would never touch the earth. Their bottoms were a couple of feet higher than the wheels.

  "This last is just a quick guess at what you'd need for a practical helicopter supplementary floater gear setup. Making that practical is something your engineers will have to do. We can get you started but you'll have to finish it. We don't have the practical, detailed knowledge of your helo to do so."

  "That will be quite enough to get us a good start, I'm sure, Captain Kuznetsov," said Renfrew. "Now let's break for an early lunch. My treat."

  Joshua Barnes said, "The Farmhouse Café is about fifteen minutes away. It's a favorite of us here. It even has veggie fare for those who like that."

  "Yes, pretty please," said Suzie. "Our cafeteria is OK, but the Café is really good."

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  Only half the Sikorsky people went with Jane and her crew to the Café. They (Suzie said) were the ones who'd be on the floater upgrade project. The rest had been interested people such as the facilities manager and the head mechanical engineer for all mechanical work on the site, including utility automobiles.

  After lunch Suzie, Joshua, and four other engineers met in the hangar for the several helicopters in for upgrades or maintenance. Joshua led the way to one particular Shadow Hawk. He stepped near and laid hands on the vehicle, being (as Jane noted) one of the pilots she'd met who treated their vehicles like living creatures.

  "This is Betsy. She's long in the tooth so she was designated as a disposable experimental body."

  Jane asked if "she" was still fully operational.

  "Yes. We don't keep anything here that isn't safe to immediately take up."

  "Speaking of which, I need to do that. NOW if we can manage it."

  "You're licensed to fly Shadow Hawks?"

  "Yes," said Suzie. "She's certified for combat missions."

  "Really?" said Barnes, raising an eyebrow. "Well, if you say so, Suze. And Captain--"

  "Jane among us all, unless we've got some bigwigs or public looking over our shoulders."

  "When I'm MAJOR Barnes. Otherwise I'm Joshua or Josh. 'Now' is just fine. You've got your helmet and overalls with you?"

  "In the bizjet," said Kate. "She was pilot of record on the flight here, though Klaus actually flew her."

  Jane said, "He'll be pilot of record on the trip back to
LA. He's a fighter jock but needs wider experience. Especially since he's going to be an astronaut pilot when we can manage that."

  "Well, la di da," said Barnes, grinning. "Do we have some high flyers with us today. Now excuse me. I'm going to go suit up."

  When Jane returned from the bizjet Barnes was ready. They climbed in, he in the pilot's seat, she in the co-pilot's seat. As soon as she sat down SHE became Jane+Robot+Betsy. Even as SHE buckled in SHE was feeling out how well HER new body had been treated. It was very well indeed, though SHE felt a few items that needed to be re-done. SHE would call them to everyone's attention when they returned from HER check flight.

  "Since you're going to be pilot of record today, Captain, you do all the preflight checks."

  "Roger that, Major Barnes. Proceeding."

  JANE did the preflight, flipping the buttons, twisting the knobs, and command-touching the visual displays for show. In reality SHE was doing the preflight check as an act of will, being fully in command of HER new body now.

  Soon SHE rolled herself out of the hangar and onto the tarmac just outside it.

  SHE radioed the local air traffic control, identified HER plane, HERself, and (unnecessarily by official rules) HER co-pilot. If the local ATC people were as aware of their frequent fliers as SHE knew they usually were they'd be reassured by the information.

  SHE rolled to the usual take off point, went light on HER wheels, notified ATC of HER take off, and lifted easily into the air.

  At 1000 feet SHE leveled off and went a few miles west into the middle of the forested Wildlife Management Area. SHE noticed a lot of trails throughout the forest made by animals and hikers and routinely avoided them. Then SHE put the 'copter through its paces.

  It did well. Then SHE said, "OK if I go belly up for a few seconds?"

  "That's damned dangerous, Captain. But if you insist, go for it. I'll haunt you for all eternity, you know, if you kill us."