Eyes of an Eagle a Novel of Gravity Controlled

by S. A. Gorden Неизвестный Автор

  “Let's see ... divide by 5,280 feet in a mile. My calculator tells me that is about 143 miles. Is that right?" “Yes, 143 is what I make it."

  “Call him up and tell him to head back down."

  “YS1. YS1. This is base calling. Time to turn around and come home."

  “Base. This is YS1. Roger. Heading home."

  I headed back to my lawn chair and the Lonesome Gods. Behind me, I could hear the general stuttering to Dr. Scott. “He just went back to his book. They made it into space and all he does is reads a western. My God doesn't he know what this means..."

  * * * *

  Thomas Riley called the meeting to order. There were fifeen experts ranging from psychologists to physicists. Chairing the group was Dr. Schmitt form Argon National Labs and co-chairing was Dr. Manning from JPL.

  “I have read over your summary. It tells me that Daniel Karpinen is a fairly intelligent individual with slightly above average skills in physics and mathematics. He is a stable personality with a very strong individualistic streak. But this doesn't tell me why an alien creature would try to contact him or how he is able to continually make new discoveries."

  Schmitt felt it was his place to answer. “After looking over Karpinen's work, we found that his ideas were not beyond the possibilities of any reasonably skilled scientist or engineer except for his first discovery of EM conversion to gravity. That first discovery was a unique step that took an unusual intellect to find."

  He looked to Dr. Jorge, the lead psychologist, and received a nod of agreement before continuing. “Science and engineering are as much an art as painting, music, or prose. You can have people very skilled in the technical aspects of science who can never develop a unique thought. But another individual, with limited training, can see a pattern in equations the same way a musician can see a pattern in notes. Karpinen's work as a proofreader has brought him the details of most of the different branches of science. He has been able to see, using his knack for patterns, how the sciences relate. Our best explanation is that he is an artist in science and he is such a unique artist that even beings outside of our solar system have recognized his talent."

  “Okay. I guess I will have to accept that. No one else has given me a better idea. But how about bringing him in to work directly with us?"

  Dr. Jorge took over. “We have done as much testing and analysis that we can without actually working with the subject but we are in agreement. Even if you were able to convince Karpinen to work for the government, the simple fact that he was hired in a government job would stifle his creativity. We have even gone a step further and analyzed how his works affect on the scientific community as a whole. Using the super computers at JPL, we ran a chaotic system analysis of the scientific community's work since Karpinen's first announcement. Working independent of the formal scientific community's environment, Karpinen has exponentially accelerated the advancements of the community as a whole.

  “In layman's terms, he does more for everyone as long as he stays doing what he is doing now."

  “Damn. Is there any way your data could be wrong?"

  “Nothing is one hundred percent certain but I am willing to bet my doctorate that we need to give Karpinen as much independence as possible."

  Riley didn't enjoy the arguments with the other bureaucrats but he would ask for an increase in funding to protect and keep supporting Karpinen's work. Bureaucrats were the same everywhere. They wanted control. Riley had to convince everyone that as little control as possible was the only course that they could take.

  Chapter 14

  Revenge

  Ship Captain Ree and Mission Commander Zblot planned.

  “The Regional Command has limited our response to just your ship but this mission worries me. I want as much equipment and personnel that I can get."

  “With the remotes that you want to bring, I can only supply one landing vessel and one high cover protector. We have the standard crew of six for the main ship and the four needed on the landing and protector vessels that leaves room for only nine more individuals. With a five man assault team, science specialist, xenobiologist, and yourself, you are left with just one more individual."

  “I know. I know. More equipment or another specialist..."

  Assault leader Ed hated the two infiltrators in his squad. He was always queasy working with individuals who would disappear in the infirmary for a day or two and comeback looking completely different. The infiltrators new four-limb arrangement of this planet was unusual but not overly. Most creatures had pairs of appendages. Four was the basic starting pair of limbs. But what was strange was the use of only two for movement and two for manipulation. The limbs just made Ed queasy. Maybe it was his love of his own six multi-use limb arrangement or maybe it was the knowledge that the legendary Chameleon had been killed on this planet, but Ed was worried and drove his team endlessly through assault exercises and technical details of the planet they were to land on.

  Grup, the heavy weapons specialist was easily the most intelligent member of the team. Ed could tell he was worried about the assignment as well. Grup spent all of his wake cycles reading up on the planet or cleaning the weapons that would be taken planet side. The sound of Grup's six strong limbs taking apart and putting together the team's blasters and needlers gave the quarters the only familiar sound. Commander Zblot had started playing during all wake cycles video and sound recordings from the strange planet they were heading for. The team had been on enough planetary landings to know that recordings seldom had anything to do with the reality they would find but the videos seemed to have an inordinately large number of killing and maiming between members of the dominate species. This did not bode well for the success of the mission.

  Trreee, the team clown, came in complaining about the lack of information about wind conditions on the planet. Trreee's wings would normally be in continual motion but they now barely fluttered. If he was nervous, the team was in trouble. Maybe if Ed talked to Commander Zblot, they could replace the planet videos with Fleetec Lives or the finals of the inter-quadrant disk ball matches.

  Uubee was glad that Commander Zblot had included a second science specialist to the team. From the Chameleon's last communiqué, they knew that the inhabitants of planet H14-D102, or earthlings, had discovered a way to control gravity. Currently star travel was accomplished by using the gravity and energy fields near stars to form small tears in the fabric of space. This meant that space travel required heavily armored and expensive ships traveling from a near obit of one star to a near orbit of another. A solar system could easily be blocked from access just by surrounding their star with a few weapons platforms. The Users needed this new technology. Unfortunately for them, all they had from the Chameleon was the formula that the earthlings had discovered, the fact that earth used a base ten numbering system, and the cultural recordings needed for the next infiltrator to use to blend in with the locals.

  The number problem was fairly easy. Being a scientist, required the ability to translate numbers from any known base to the ideal base eighteen, six limbs three fingers per limb. But the equations were a different matter. They were filled with symbols that were not numbers. It was easy to discover that ‘=’ meant that the information matched and that ‘+','-', ‘x', and (division) were simple operations on the numbers but what in The Hell ofthe Lost of Debon were (Greek alpha), (Greek beta), (Greek delta), (Greek pi), (Greek sigma) ... And were letters sometimes used for what appeared to be variable names and at other times used for something else?

  No physical artifacts from H14-D102 made it back. And the recordings showed little of the internal workings of the technology and science on the planet. The video used to transmit information around the planet was not compatible with the standard recorders so the Chameleon just recorded the transmitted pictures. If only, the Chameleon had taken apart a few devices and recorded what was inside. They had sorted through recording after recording trying to find enough matches between the local science and real s
cience. Debon! The earthling science didn't even use a consistent grouping like the ideal three.

  The klaxon sounded. Time to seal up for the dimensional jump to the next star. Only three more shifts to planet H14-D102. Maybe, he could talk Commander Zblot into staying hidden on the near by planetary satellite until they were able to fully translate the equations. But Zblot had made it clear early on that she would only permit data collection during the time it took to eliminate any evidence of the Chameleon's stay and to serve revenge on those who killed the famed infiltrator. The Users code for self-preservation required revenge for killing one of their own. The code was important. The Users had outlasted hundreds of other interstellar civilizations by following it.

  It was just possible that Zblot would finish the cycle change between female and male before the mission started. Civilized people were always more agreeable after the standard seven year gender change. If Uubee timed the next request for observation to just before the last planet jump, maybe Commander Zblot might be finished with the sex transformation and put science before revenge. Uubee hoped so, because until they got a key to translating the equations he suspected that artificial gravity would stay with the inhabitants of H14-D102.

  * * * *

  We had told everyone that they would be on their own for the day so it was no surprise when the dark full-size SUV followed us from the farm. Since I didn't see a canoe on the vehicle, I assumed they would try to follow with an inflatable. Pulling into the landing, I pulled the stern of the canoe out of the pickup box and Tabby grabbed the prow when it came to the end of the tailgate.

  “Listen carefully. Since they didn't come to the landing, they are going to have to go through the woods to the river. Everything near by but this campground is scrub second growth woods. It will be a bitch just walking through let alone carry anything."

  Tabby swung the prow into the water. “They must be getting better. I can't hear anything.” Just then a small flock of ducks took off from the river one bend upstream.

  I dropped the stern in and tied a line from the gunnel to a near by tree. “I guess they made it to the river's edge.” We finished loading the canoe, untied and paddled downstream. We could hear an occasional splash of water coming from behind. When we got to the woodpecker tree, I was not surprised to see Ben in his old canoe floating in a backwater eddy. We drifted down behind him and followed him to the

  inlet of his small floating bog. I don't know how he did it but the mouth of the stream that Ben's cabin was on was now hidden with a small island of floating marsh grass. We slipped behind the island and waited.

  The same three-man team we had seen before appeared on the river in a dark green inflatable raft. They were not paddling but were using a small electric motor. Ten minutes after they passed, we paddled up stream to Ben's cabin and unloaded his supplies.

  Tabby's first comment about the cabin was, “How cozy."

  Fighting back laughter, “It is, isn't it.” I couldn't tell what was cooking in the pot because Ben had it covered. But whatever it was it smelled great. This time Tabby got the coffee cup while Ben and I drank ours out of soup cans.

  Ben announced, “Lunch is ready. We can have more coffee when we finish eating."

  I don't know where Ben pulled the carved wooden bowls from but before we had a chance to speak he pulled something from the pot and gave a bowl full to each of us. It looked like a stew of some kind.

  Dark white, green, and brown lumps were sitting in a thick gravy.

  “Do you have spoons?"

  “Just use your knives to poke the chunks out and you can drink the broth from the bowl. Bon appetite."

  I started laughing so hard my sides hurt. I stabbed a chunk of meat with my puukko and plopped it in my mouth. It melted with savory richness. There were at least three different kinds of meat in the stew and four vegetables. The only items in the stew I think I recognized were a mushroom and a cattail root. All three of us ended the meal by slurping up the remaining dredges of the stew from the side of our bowls.

  It was time to head back. We had let the surveillance team spend about three hours looking for us on the river. I got up and on cue we all went back to the canoes. Laughing Tabby said, “Great meal Uncle Ben.

  I will make the next one.” She then planted a big wet kiss on Ben and climbed into the canoe.

  We paddled back to the hidden stream mouth with Ben following in his canoe. We waited behind the floating island for an hour, until we heard splashing from down stream. The rubber raft soon appeared with the three men awkwardly trying to paddle it against the current.

  After waiting for ten minutes, we said goodbye to Ben and paddled up stream ourselves. We soon caught up to the raft.

  I had to rub it in. “Nice day? Isn't it great being out on the water on a beautiful fall day like today?"

  “Oh ... Hi. Ya. It is a nice day."

  “Been fishing?"

  “No, just ... ah ... checking out the river ... ah ... for ... ah ... hunting?"

  “Okay, see you."

  We soon got to the landing and pulled the canoe from the water. We had no trouble turning our backs on the men because we knew Ben would be watching. The raft just made it to the landing by the time we were finished.

  * * * *

  Felix confronted Zimmerman. “Harry, it isn't working. Karpinen knows we are watching. He is playing with us."

  “Orders are to observe from a distance and not to contact. You have to do better."

  “How? His uncle is helping him. You've read his file. He is just about the best there is in the woods. We can't get close without them knowing."

  “Orders. Just follow orders."

  Felix left for his team. Todd and Sam were waiting. “Harry wouldn't budge."

  “Damn. Well at least we get a lot of fresh air,” said Sam.

  “The fresh air I don't mind. It is when it comes with rain that I have a problem,” replied Todd.

  Felix broke in, “Why did you have to remind me that the forecast for tomorrow is for rain?"

  Wet and miserable the day of watching the house came to a close as the grad students piled into their cars and left. Felix stood, brushing the branch he had been sitting under. Water spilled off the remaining leaves and dribbled between his neck and collar. As the cold water sent wet chills down his back, Felix repeated, “Damn, damn, damn, damn."

  Stamping his cold numb feet, Felix said, “That's it.” He headed across the open field to the house. Todd and Sam followed only in a slightly better mood. When he got to the front door of the house, he knocked. The door opened.

  “Finally decided to introduce yourselves."

  “Look, Mr. Karpinen. You know we are here and we know you know. Can't we work something out?" “Want to come in?"

  “Can't. I ‘m already disobeying orders by talking to you. If I come inside and my boss finds out, I will be gone."

  “Okay. How about you spread a tarp and set up a small camp just inside of the tree line? That will make things a little more comfortable."

  “Thanks. That will help."

  After the men left, I snuggled into the living room couch with Tabby. “I think it is time I called someone about those men watching us. Do you have any ideas on who to contact?"

  “Ben was pretty sure they were FBI. Why don't you just call them? But can't you do that tomorrow?” Tabby slipped her hand between the buttons on my shit. Little chills went up and down my body.

  “Tomorrow will be soon enough."

  * * * *

  Riley got the transcribed phone conversation that the FBI director had with Karpinen the next day. He reviewed the analysis of Karpinen from the select committee and decided that it was time to make limited contact. He buzzed his secretary. “Get me Daniel Karpinen on the phone."

  “Hello. Mr. Karpinen."

  “This is Thomas Riley from the National Security Council. We have been observing you for the last few months because we have information that assets outside of the United States mi
ght have an interest in you and your work.

  “I am sorry if this has inconvenienced you and I hope you will cooperate with our continued observation. We will be as discrete as possible."

  “Look Mr. Riley, I can't stop you from watching but before you get cooperation you will have to give me more information."

  “I am sorry Daniel but I can not give you any more information."

  “It is Mr. Karpinen until or if you are straight enough with me to prove I can trust you Thomas."

  “Mind if I get back to you a little later?"

  “Take your time. Maybe you should come out here so we can meet face to face."

  “I will think about it. Goodbye Mr. Karpinen."

  “Goodbye Mr. Riley."

  “Tabby. That was a Mr. Riley from the National Security Council. I think it is time to take a break from our gravity work and take a look at what is going on around us."

  “Makes sense. Why don't I go to the shed and use the workstation there to start poking around and you use your computer to find out about this Riley? We can meet back here for supper. I will send the grad students home for the next few days."

  “Good idea. We are nearly done with the YS1 testing. We can give them a week off. Tell them we are exploring a new subject for the next project."

  After Tabby left, I decided I needed some concentration music. I placed in the CD player Mozart's Symphony 29 followed by Handel's Water Music and Bach. To pull me out from the computer I decided to go with some female hard rock, Scandal, Pat Benatar, and Joan Jett.

  By the end of Mozart, I knew that Thomas Riley was the real National Security Advisor to the President. By the time Bach finished, I knew about something major happening with NASA, the Air Force, and the Lockheed Martin Skunk Works. Tabby was rubbing my back and Joan Jett was singing about hating herself when something clicked.

  “Tabby, I got an idea.” I pushed my chair to my work computer and started searching through old files. I heard Tabby put a new batch of CDs in the player before I got lost in the words scrolling down the screen. Then I found it, an article by Dr. Jorge on the dynamics of change in a social system.