The Big Lifters

by Dean Ing

  “That’s what big impellers are for.” Tom’s gaze held perfect confidence.

  “Man, oh man, oh man,” said the pilot once more, turning back to the silent leviathan taking shape within ten miles of the Port of Oakland. “Well, you must have the gondola someplace.”

  “It’s actually an airship’s bridge,” Wes explained. “Come on.”

  They spent the next half hour in a smaller fabric-covered room near one end of the hangar, a bubble within a bubble, where two meticulous white-smocked women went about the business of testing the wiring bundles that would become the central nervous system of Delta One. Schultheis noted that, even while studying the control layout and without exchanging a word, Glenn Rogan managed to captivate the younger of the two women. Schultheis was not surprised; it might have been the same if they’d sought one of the ex-NASA astronauts instead.

  He forced himself away from this line of thinking. For one thing, astronauts were a cautious lot who probably would never strap into the tiny beast that Exotic Salvage was assembling, piece by surreptitious piece, in the Mojave desert. For another, Highjump would handle more like an interceptor than anything else. That meant it would land like a concrete Frisbee. If it landed. That question depended a lot on a mind-bending propulsion system that no one had ever tried outside of a laboratory.

  FIVE

  Glenn Rogan fell in love with the spacious Delta One cabin and its ample seating. He studied the layout meticulously, now and then with a suggestion for better grouping of controls. Frankly pleased with a modem control stick instead of traditional helm wheels, he was leaning back in the pilot’s seat when a courier stuck her head into the cabin looking for Wes Peel.

  “They always find me,” Wes grumbled, and appropriated an electric scooter for the trip back to his office, pausing as he left. “When you’ve soaked up as much of this as you like, drop by the office.”

  “Can do,” said Rogan absently, studying a seat adjustment as Wes left the cabin.

  Clearly, the pilot was more interested in the big lifter’s hardware than in friendly chitchat. “You’d think he already had the job,” Schultheis muttered as he stood near the opposite end of Delta One’s cabin.

  Kaplan shrugged. “Doesn’t he?”

  The head shake was quick and definite. “Not over your objection. I told you when we first decided to try Highjump, Dave. You and I have to do a Lewis & Clark routine: equal authority, since we’ll stand or fall together.”

  Kaplan gnawed his underlip, watching the distant pilot as he replied. “Maybe it’s just that he’s such a special breed of animal. Give me a little time with him alone, okay? I’ve got no reservations about him as a test pilot, but ... I just need to know what makes the man tick.”

  “Risk, money, women and fast vehicles,” said Schultheis. “But we don’t have to love the bastard to depend on him.” Kaplan, squinting: “Tom, if you don’t like the man . . .” “Dead right, but I can’t afford to let it matter.” Schultheis turned and called down the length of the cabin. “I’ve got to look over some engine mount vibration work. Dave can show you around. ’ ’

  Rogan looked up, nodded once, and swung from his seat to kneel on the cabin floor, studying the attachments. As Schultheis left, Kaplan moved forward, struck once more by Rogan’s physical grace whether walking or squatting on his heels. “If I can pry you out of here,” he suggested, “you might want to see our maglev unit. It’s out behind the hangar. ’ ’

  “I’ve heard rumors of that thing,” Rogan replied, coming erect, looking around him. “Peel sure likes to do things different,” he said.

  “That’s why he hires people like me and Tom - and you,” said Kaplan, taking two strides to Rogan’s three as they headed for a tear hangar door.

  After a thoughtful silence, Rogan asked, “Something Peel said: Was it really Tom Schultheis who set this interview up?” Kaplan, alerted by a note of caution in the man’s voice: “Yes. Wes Peel thinks of himself as the great cargo innovator of the coming century. As far as he takes it, he’s right.” He chose the next words very carefully. “That means developing some really far-out vehicles. Tom Schultheis claims we’ll need a test pilot with a feel for LTA craft and soon, uh, vehicles that may be much faster.”

  Rogan’s head snapped around. His grin was sudden, aggressive. “Much?”

  In answer, Dave ushered the pilot outside. As they stood waiting for their eyes to adjust to afternoon glare, he pointed to the long vehicle, its international orange paint gleaming brilliantly, that sat unattended over the rails of a hundred-yard railway. Though twelve feet wide and fourteen high, its great length gave it a lean, rakish look. Its windows were flush-mounted, with a sloping nose and tapered rump featuring a strut-mounted airfoil. Because the canard fins were not yet installed near its nose, it resembled locomotives which already hauled passengers across Europe and Japan at speeds near two hundred miles an hour. Those canards would be a dead giveaway to a man like Rogan. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you how much faster,” said the stress man, gazing at the sleek maglev.

  For a long moment, Glenn Rogan scanned the shape that squatted like an eighty-foot lancehead gleaming in the sun. “This isn’t exactly my dish, Dr. Kaplan. It goes on rails, and it doesn't fly.”

  “If we’re going to be sweating over test programs together, you’ll have to learn to call me Dave. And damn’ right, it flies!

  I can’t tell you all the details yet, but, as you know, a maglev doesn’t actually touch the rails. Its magnets repel the rails and other magnets accelerate the whole train. And stop it, of course. ’ ’ Rogan began to walk the length of the vehicle, leaning down to peer beneath it. “Peel mentioned this thing. Talked like he owned the whole system.” Rubbing his skinned forearm reflectively, the pilot muttered, “The guy’s not your everyday three-piece suiter. One hell of a competitor.”

  “You’ve got that right. He competed like crazy for the prime maglev contract, but LockLever and Santa Fe had the inside track. There’s nearly three hundred miles of maglev rail winding up from L. A. through the Mojave, near old high-tension power lines all the way to Vegas. Two-thirds of the track is already in place. Wes got us the contract for the maintenance unit.” He slapped the stiff polymer hide of the vehicle and beamed. “We’re a month ahead of schedule with levitation tests.”

  Rogan vented a low whistle between his teeth. “Sweet shit. This is a maintenance unit?”

  “I know; looks more like a speed-record vehicle,” Dave chuckled. “When a maglev is hauling a thousand spoiled high rollers from L.A. to Vegas in an hour, they don’t want their martinis spilled. Santa Fe has sensors to report small shifts in the rail spacing. Whenever there’s a minor quake or a crustal shift, they need a maintenance rig at the site fast. This is it.” “How fast?”

  Dave folded his arms, grinned, and winked. “Fast.”

  “It’ll need more clearance off the rails, then,” Rogan said, squinting at retractable jacks which held the craft clear of the rail sections.

  “You’re too damned sharp,” Dave murmured.

  ‘ ‘They didn’t let jocks sleep through all our classes, ’ ’ Rogan said wryly. “So, you’ll need more power, and maybe some freedom of movement over the rails, and you’ve gotta know how much freedom at maximum speed,” Rogan hazarded.

  “I’m not going to say another word,” Dave said, laughing.

  Rogan started to move toward the insulated rail, then stopped. “This thing isn’t energized?”

  “No. When it is, it’d fry an elephant into thirty pounds of bacon in no time flat. Nobody will mind if you have ideas about safety. Wes Peel is a nut on the subject.”

  “Other people’s safety, maybe. Not his. Man is fuckin’ crazy,” Rogan added as if to himself.

  “It’s my private view that all racing drivers bear watching from a safe distance,” Kaplan smiled, and earned a look that could have been agreement.

  Rogan passed the back of his hand a hairbreadth above the rail before gripping it wi
th one hand to vault over between the elevated tracks. Kaplan suddenly realized that, if the rail had been energized despite all precautions, Glenn Rogan might have lost little more than the hairs on the back of his hand. It was a trick David Kaplan had never considered before. As Rogan peered up at the underside of the vehicle’s rear, his gravelly voice echoed slightly. “This job is gonna have more fun rides than Disneyland. I can’t see why Schultheis picked me, of all people.”

  “Why not you?”

  Rogan duck-walked from the maglev’s shadowed underhull, stood up. “Personal,” he said, dismissing the subject.

  Kaplan had a flash of intuition about this man who seemed to value the hands-on, physical approach to his woric. Perhaps Rogan would relax more among other jocks. Without taking a run at the rail, Kaplan simply leaped sideways, scissoring his legs past the high rail to stand beside Rogan.

  “Like a pro,” Rogan smiled.

  ‘ ‘Jumped my height in high school. Did seven-one and three-eighths at Cal Berkeley. That’s what paid my way through the bachelor’s.”

  “I was never much at the high jump,” said Rogan, and did not understand why Kaplan laughed aloud.

  “You will be,” Kaplan said, savoring his private joke. Then, more soberly, “Wes worries when his companies get too big to run personally. I don’t mean he pries into our lives, but the way Wes does things, we have to go a lot on personal trust. Tom Schultheis knows that. If he didn’t trust you for this work, you wouldn’t be here.”

  Rogan’s laugh carried no discernible humor. “You know the Schultheis family?”

  A nod. “We see his sister, Alma, at Wes’s parties. I know their father - there’s a character for you. Old Wolf Schultheis was an apprentice at Zeppelinwerke, sixty years ago. Worked with Lippisch, Bachem - those names familiar?”

  “Not the last ones.”

  The Lippisch series of flying wings, and the rocketing ascent of the Bachem Natter interceptor, were now subjects only for archivists of Nazi secret weapons. But the brain of Wolf Schultheis was already an archive when the Americans spirited him to a huge research center in a place called Tullahoma, after the war. Dave Kaplan was one of the few people who knew how much of those archives the old man funneled into Peel Transit by way of his only son. ‘ ‘Well, let’s just say we’re close enough. My wife, Lillian, is pretty thick with Ellie - Tom’s wife. Lil baby-sits for her sometimes.” Finger snap of recognition: “You may have met Ellie when Tom worked for Cyclone.”

  Something flickered in the glass-green eyes. “I’ve seen her,” Rogan said, and added quickly, “Schultheis lives his way and I live mine. He’s conservative. I’m . . .’’He waved a hand, let it drop.

  “A hell-raiser,” Kaplan supplied, and leaned back against the maglev hull, arms crossed, smiling. “Wait ’til you meet Boff Allington; nice guy, but he will have his jokes. And

  Wes - well, he’s a hellion himself. To send a rhino head-to-head against Wes is cruelty to animals. I’ve got no problem with any of it as long as you’re all business at the controls. But you might tell me why you chose to raise hell in the private sector.”

  “Wasn’t my choice. It’s in my file,” Rogan growled.

  “I’m not very good at the fine print. I know you tested a supersonic-combustion ramjet booster while you were in the Marines. What happened?”

  “The scramjet test vehicle augured. Not with me,” Rogan said, “with another aviator who should’a punched out and didn’t. That was one jittery, hot son of a bitch; it sure held your attention at Mach five and eighty thousand feet.”

  “No blot on your record, then. And after that?”

  “Back to combat instructor. Shit, I know what you’re after,” Rogan burst out in exasperation. “Look, I like to find out exactly what my equipment can do. I’ve never lost a test vehicle, but I greased a few in that were pretty much used up. You remember the old Marine Harriers?”

  “Vertical hover, and five hundred knots? Sure,” said Kaplan. “Was it the hover feature that gave you a feel for LTA’s?” “A taste for it, anyhow, but it’s not really the same. Anyway, I used to push the envelope with those things. I didn’t invite anybody else to try it, but two Marine aviators bought plots tryin’ to prove they could push a little farther than I could. Both instructors. I took a shit storm over it.”

  “They dropped you for that?”

  A slow grin spread across the tanned face, and Dave sensed the good-old-boy camaraderie that began to surface in Glenn Rogan. “Naw, not exactly. I was on my best creased-britches behavior until the ’eighty-seven war games. Our side was losin’ until I did a sortie alone on the third day. I loitered up a river just over the water, sneakin’ under radar coverage. Spent ten minutes and a lot of fuel hidin’ out, with my ear glued to a

  Blue frequency, then popped up and zapped the Blue Force command post while the Blue Commander was landing his chopper. Green won right then and there.”

  “Don’t tell me you were Blue, too.”

  “Hell, no! But some fuckin’ observer had seen me. I had that ol’ Harrier nudged up under a highway bridge and over white water rapids, hovering between the girders, for maybe ten minutes where its downwash and the water noise didn’t give me away.”

  “Good - God,” Dave breathed, chuckling. “Had anybody ever tried that before?”

  “Guess not, and they decided nobody’d ever try it again. The actual charge was willful destruction of government property.”

  “You crashed the Harrier?”

  “Busted the little runnin’ light off the vertical fin where it grazed the underside of the bridge. About ten bucks’ worth of damage, all told,” Rogan added. “They said I was permanently off flight status. I said bullshit, flyin’ was the only thing that kept me in the Corps.” The candid green eyes glinted at the taller man. “Sometimes I regret it. Sometimes not. I fly a Rutan, do a little base jumping when somebody finds a likely perch for a damn’ fool with a steerable chute. In between, flying a Cyclone Crane can be fun when you get a crosswind up a ravine with a load of raw timber halfway to the river. Cyclone’s good about hazard pay. I expect Peel to be better.”

  “Maybe a little,” Dave hedged, liking this little heller in spite of himself, feeling that Rogan deserved whatever he could negotiate. He scissored over the rail again, no hands, and jerked a thumb toward the distant low-slung buildings. “As far as I’m concerned, you can ask Wes about it today. He’s a God-fearing sort, not a cardboard Christian, and he’ll treat you straight. Just don’t ever forget what I said about the rhino.” Dave watched with real concern as the smaller man eyed the rail, took three running steps, and scissored over a barrier that was as high as his breastbone, no hands.

  Rogan made it with a half-inch to spare. “Shavin’ it close to your balls is what it’s all about,” he said as they began walking.

  “It’s the same with stress analysis,” said Dave, strolling beside him.

  A sharp look from Rogan, and a laconic, “Yeah, but it’s my balls, and you got the razor. Sure hope you’re good.”

  “You could ask around, but we are. Ah - you ever fly the hot stuff anymore?”

  “Now and then. A Mitsui Mach Two executive jet that belongs to Cyclone, so my license is current. Not much sensation of speed except during takeoff and landing. Little fucker lands like a washtub full of hot rocks. That’s the fun part,” he grinned. “Let’s see: and I got tutoring in math and physics at Oklahoma State because I had the hots for a degree in aero engineering and Okie State didn’t want to lose their best wrestler, so numbers are like big Kansas cheerleaders, I don’t like ’em a lot but they don’t half scare me. And if I can get John Wesley Peel to sponsor me in an off-road racer, by God, don’t think I won’t. Any other burning questions from your end?”

  “I guess not. You’ve answered the only really important question.”

  “Which was?”

  “You’re a high jumper after all,” Dave said, wondering whether Glenn Rogan would ever remember the exchange - and wh
ether, remembering, he would enjoy the double entendre.

  * * * *

  By sundown, Wes had several commitments from Glenn Rogan, including a few choice comments about experienced copilots. Wes shoved a list of applicants toward the pilot. “Any special feeling about those names?”

  Rogan nodded. “Hewett. He’s a Brit who’s flown for years in that European blimp of Goodyear’s.” He unwittingly damned the man by adding, “He’s all spit and polish, goes by the book and he’ll want a twenty-page job description. And Jim Christopher; they say Chris saved a few skins when that big lifter of Piasecki’s went down a few years back. Prob’ly won’t come cheap, but he has good eyes and steady hands.”

  Wes, with his quick grin: “Is that the right stuff?”

  “Aw, man,” Rogan groaned. “Who knows what that is? Let’s just say Chris wouldn’t make me nervous.”

  Later, Wes decided that Rogan’s only nervousness came when he learned that he would report directly to Tom Schultheis - but perhaps wariness was a better word.

  Two weeks later, Wes showed Glenn Rogan his office, one of two hastily erected in the big hangar. The adjoining room, Wes told him, was reserved for Jim Christopher. Wes soon learned that Rogan had an insatiable appetite for Delta One’s engineering drawings, and an unnerving habit of climbing high into her guts to study her flexible skeleton. Rogan’s penchant for heights worried Wes like a hangnail, to be forgotten only when his real problems surfaced, rushing at him from three different directions.

  SIX

  In a way, Wes Peel escaped the deadly zeal of Farda as long as he did because of foul Mexican weather. Director Hal Kroner, on secret location in Mexico while filming Sacajawea, was delayed for weeks by ferocious canyon winds in Chihuahua’s Barranca de Cobre. And until Kroner returned to civilization, Nurbashi’s assassins could not find him, much less kill him. Meanwhile, by the end of April, Professor Winthorp no longer entertained the slightest doubt that John Wesley Peel must be eliminated. Still he steadfastly refused to divulge that name until Kroner was in a box; or perhaps more accurately, in several bags. By day, Winthorp lectured in public and researched other crucial Americans in private; by night he watched videotapes of harem epics and thought about his approaching summer vacation.