Holcum said, “Okay we think we know how they traveled here. But how would we stop a ship that heavily armored if we needed to?"
“The same way we did this time, kinetic weapons. We could even easily use nuclear weapons near the sun. The radiation would have a negligible affect on the rest of the solar system and the kinetic energy of the explosion should either destroy the ship or throw it into the sun."
Holcum replied, “Good. Now we have a defense."
“Hold it. This is a theory. What we need to do is to try to tear it apart. We need to find out if there are any other explanations of the facts."
Schmitt took over the meeting. “Thank you Mr. Karpinen. We now have a new set of theories to work with. Manning, I want you to try to punch holes in Karpinen's theories. Scott, why don't you try to put preliminary plans for a detection sphere around the sun..."
I nodded to Tabby and we walked away. “Why don't we go for a walk before we start working on why the kantele space drive isn't working?” We hooked our arms together. “Felix?"
“Yes, Daniel."
“We are going for a walk."
I saw Felix talk to the military policeman at the door. Outside, I saw a spot of brown green grass in the distance. We walked to it. When we got there, a big four-engine plane was revving on the runway. We sat on the brown grass.
“Tabby, why did you help me with getting the spaceship?"
“I've noticed the same thing you have. Something doesn't feel complete yet. I have seen you watching the stars at night..."
“You know Ben talks about the responsibility of being at point. I somehow feel responsible. If I hadn't discovered that gravity could be made, I could let it go. But I somehow think it is my task to see this through. I've got to walk point again."
The airplane took off drowning out all talk. During the quiet after the takeoff, we sat next to each other, enjoying the feel ofjust being together, until the next plane started warming up its engines. Back at the hanger we got to work on what was happening with the kantele when they tried to form a wormhole. The remote test ships had torn themselves apart. Most of the pieces of one of the ships were in the hanger with a duplicate of the original construction. The ship was about two and a half meters long with a large spherical kantele in front. The cylindrical body of the craft housed a large computer and sensor package and in the tail was a small maneuvering rocket. The largest piece of the destroyed test ship was about 50 centimeters long and about 15 centimeters wide. Tabby looked over the pieces while I reviewed the data tapes from the test runs. After two Mozart CDs and one Bach, she came over to my workstation.
“I want to show you something."
“Good. I am getting nowhere with the data."
She brought me to the pieces of the kantele sphere first. She handed me a magnifying glass. “Look carefully at the edges. Now look at the edges of the pieces from the body cylinder.” I knew she had found something but I couldn't see it at first. I went back and forth between the two groups of pieces. Finally, I saw it. Most of the pieces on the broken sphere were bent inward while the metal from the cylinder was bent in every direction.
“Let's check the data record again.” I smiled at Tabby and pinched her bottom. From the corner of my eye I saw Felix smiling at us.
Back at the workstation we carefully followed the pressure and gravity readings off the kantele sphere. On paper they were all within the tolerances of the construction. But I noticed that there was a flutter in the numbers way down in the fifth decimal place. I highlighted the block of numbers with the cursor.
“Do you see what I see?"
“I sure do."
“Why don't we sleep on it?"
“Sounds good to me."
“Felix. We are ready to go to our hotel room."
“I'm sorry sir ... sorry Daniel. But I was told you would be staying on the base."
“I am not spending a night on an Air Force base, especially not on my honeymoon. We called and made reservations at the Best Western before we left home. All we need is a ride to the motel. And before you ask, I reserved a room across the hall for your men."
It was two days later when we had a solution to the star travel problem. This time the meeting had thirty people in it.
“Okay, I assume everyone has gone over the basic data.” I waited until most of the heads nodded. “The kantele sphere is not strong enough for the forces generated with using it as a star drive. The original specifications overlooked a problem with the production of the space drive. The gravity field that is generated has a slight vibration to it. Under most conditions it will not cause a problem until thousand hours or more of run time but under the extreme conditions the vibrations will weaken the sphere enough to permit the gravitational force to crush the sphere.
“The solution is to go back to the original design. Remember the sphere was used to eliminate the contamination of the gravitational field with molecules found in the air and on the nearby surfaces. In space we will not have those problems. We have the added benefit of being able to adjust the parabolic reflector to project the field farther away from the dish so the structural strain will be less.
“As for injecting the field generation with air or some other gas, that might not be necessary with the open design. Once the gravity field is started with an initial push of gas the increased strength of the field generation will pull the scattered molecules in space into the field. If it is not enough we can work on some type of gas injection in a following test.
'The next problem will be the actual generation of the wormhole or tear. There is a chance that at a sufficient velocity the tear will be generated spontaneously. I am hoping that this will work. But we do have the backup with the suspected way the aliens traveled. We can try to inject a plasma flow into the
gravitational field.
“Tabby and I have made copies of our notes and working theories. We will be heading home now. I request that data from the next tests be sent to our lab at the farm and that we start working in adjunct with the rest of the groups on the project."
Tabby and I cuddled for the whole trip home much to the discomfort of Felix and the other man in the SUV with us. I was surprised when we got to the cabin. It felt like home.
I woke to the sun peeking through the windows. Tabby was curled up against my side. From the great room, the sound of trickling water drifted over the balcony. I was warm. I traced the curve on Tabby's back and counted her vertebrae.
“What are you doing? I am still tired. If you want sex, you need to do more than tickle my back."
“I'm thinking. And I just wanted to touch you."
“Wacha thinking about?"
“A few years ago I worked in an office and avoided my boss. I didn't stand up to anyone. I even would run away before confronting someone. How the hell was I able to talk back to those people? How in the world do I have the guts to tell all those PhDs they were wrong? Why did I drive the sub into the flying alien? How was I able to help those wounded FBI men? A few years ago I would have driven past an accident and called an ambulance. How could I have changed so much?"
“I remember reading a story. I can't remember the exact words but it said, ‘The difference between a man down the street and a hero is what has happened to him?’ You never know what you will do until you face it. But after facing it, you change.
“Do you remember those old re-run western movies and the bit about seeing the elephant?"
“Yup. You never could tell what a man would do until he saw the elephant."
“You now know what happens after seeing that elephant."
I stroked her back softly until she went back to sleep. I watched the sun finish rising through half closed eyes listening to the tinkling water and the soft breaths coming from Tabby.
Chapter 20
Construction Begins
There were a million and one things to do. We never had the chance to finish the two weeks we had scheduled for our honeymoon. The day after we got back Ole
called with a problem with the new design. We were forced to open up the U of M lab by the county road and start working on the space drive problems. Tabby was best with the engineering questions while I worked on the theory and ideas.
Four months later the first new kantele star drive was tested. They moved in a new satellite optical telescope just to watch the test. The government had started work on the telescope last year with the idea of using it as a guidance system for their new space weapons. The test cylinder moved like the proverbial bat-out-of-hell. The tracking system on the new telescope nearly didn't follow the probe. As the speed of the cylinder approached 200,000,000 meters per second, the optical telescope lost the image of the cylinder and just tracked a distortion line. The internal clock on the cylinder was timed for one second of travel after the onboard computer sensors decided that the probe had entered a wormhole. After the test, they found the cylinder out past the orbit of Jupiter. The onboard computer had
already started the probe's deceleration and its return to earth using its standard gravity drive.
It took another six months before all the details about the test were fully analyzed. Manning, at JPL, proved that the kantele drive was not producing a wormhole but a tear in the fabric of the universe. The distortion line left by the test was because the tear was incomplete leaving the test probe partially in our four-dimensional universe as well as out of it. This was an enormous help with the guidance and measurements of the test probes’ flights. Plus there was a good chance that enough of the 4-D universe would get through to the probe that it could be used for inboard guidance of a craft while in the tear.
Tabby took the time after the successful test flight to go over the data that had been compiled by NASA over the years on designing long distance spacecraft. The habitat problem was her greatest concern.
Even with a useable star drive, we are still talking of possibly years in space. Food, air, water, and most of all a livable environment had to be constructed. There had to be room for exercise and methods to relax between tasks. Early on, Tabby decided that there would have to be animals on board for both company and a distraction. This added a whole second line of problems with the feeding and maintenance of the animals. She cornered me with questions after a three-hour conference call between Manning, Schmitt, and me on guidance problems. I was happy for the break.
“I need to talk to you about the spaceship."
“Okay, let's get out of here and go for a walk.” The trailer that I had lived in now housed a small security team for the lab and the farm. I saw a couple of men leave the trailer and sit in lawn chairs watching us head into the woods.
I waited until I got into the movement of the forest. A deep breath and I was calm. “What did you want to talk about?” My hand crept around her back and found a resting-place riding on her swaying hips.
“On the spaceship we need to recycle air, water, food which means green plants, dirt, insects, bacteria—a small ecosystem. Plus I felt we needed some animals for companionship if for nothing else.
“Am I right and do we have the room?"
“You are right. We will need at least one cat. In the past, sailing ships had some of the same problems. A cat or even a dog was common on those ships. They even had goats and other farm animals for milk and fresh meat. We will just have to make the room.
“You know we are going to have more room than you might think."
“Why?"
“We can use all of the walls as ground. If we had a ten-meter diameter cylinder that is twenty meters long, we would have over 1,500 square meters of ground. Or ... about a third of an acre."
“I want it large enough to take a walk through the trees."
“Let's plant some apple, plum, and cherry trees."
“Nice. Food plus visual enjoyment."
We walked to the cabin and decided to call it a day. After making love next to the trickling pool, we decided to add that to the plans.
Three weeks later while walking from the cabin to the lab, I notice the animals looking both at me and a specific spot ahead. I felt Tabitha tense. She slipped behind and to the side while I stopped to move some fallen branches off the access road. My puukko was in my hand. Tabby was easing around a tree with her throwing knife out and ready. Two men came out from behind some trees. One had a microphone and the other had a video camera.
“Mr. Karpinen. I am Tony James from News First. We have been trying for weeks to get a comment from you about all the deaths that have occurred worldwide using your artificial gravity machine."
“Camera and sound off."
“Don't you want your response known to the public?"
“Camera and sound off.” The TV face on the man changed and he nodded to the cameraman to stop taping. Before either knew what was happening, Tabby came up behind them and double-checked that the equipment was turned off.
“Two questions before you get to ask anything. What deaths are you talking about? And what is this bull about trying to contact me?"
“Ever since you released the information on your artificial gravity devices people have been making them. Over the last two years there have been 35,000 deaths and 80,000 injuries world wide from people using your devices. They range from the spectacular crash of a homebuilt gravity plane into the Chrysler building in New York to the decapitation of an experimenter in New Deli when he turned the power up too high on the gravity device he had built in his garage and a sickle was pulled off the wall. Do you think the courts should hold you libel for these events?"
“Answer my other question. What is this bull about trying to contact me?"
“We called your corporate lawyer about the possible filing of a suit by the builder of the plane that ran into the Chrysler building."
“Really, what is this possible suit all about?"
“The pilot of the plane is claiming that there should have been a disclaimer that you had to be a trained pilot before using your gravity device to power a plane."
“So you are here asking for comments on a suit that hasn't been filed. I bet you were contacted by the lawyer of this pilot. Weren't you?"
“What are your comments about all the deaths and injuries caused by your device?"
“Come with me."
I walked them out of the woods. Felix and his men pulled the reporter and his cameraman aside. While they kept the reporter busy, I called the sheriff’s office and asked for Tom. I explained how I had found a reporter and cameraman trespassing on the farm. Tom showed up in twenty minutes.
The FBI men had the two men surrounded. Tom nodded to them and said, “Are these the ones caught trespassing?"
“Yes."
Tom gave me a wink. “I'll take care of it.” He got out cuffs and put the men in the back of the car and their equipment in the trunk. “What do you want me to do with them?"
“Just make sure if they want a comment they come to the lab and ask. I don't want them hanging around inside the property line. It might pay to remind them that people died here less than two years ago.
“How's Oggie? It has just been so crazy out here I haven't had much of a chance to keep up with local events."
“Oggie's fine. She and the other gals are making money. I hear them talking on the phone between the soaps about it. They are talking about throwing a big picnic at the State Park. How about coming?"
“Give me a call with a time and date. Tabby and I will show up."
“What was that? Did you just volunteer me for something?” asked Tabby.
“Just a picnic meal with the Coffee Klutch gals."
“Mom was telling me about that."
“Well bye Tom. I appreciate it."
“No trouble."
* * * *
No one knew how old the Cell was. Records were never kept. But Mikhail Bakunin's 'the passion for destruction is also a creative urge' and Enrico Malatesta's 'propaganda ofthe deed' were both quoted during the indoctrination of a new member using both the original Russian and Italian lang
uages. The rumor was that at least one of those men was personally involved with the forming of the Cell.
The current leader of the Cell used the name Santa. He looked like Saint Nick but he was a true terrorist. That jolly bearded face had watched the pieces of a hundred bodies picked up after the bombs that he had made exploded. All members of the Cell used noms de plume during all meetings and communications. The history of the Cell was peppered with incongruous statements such as Olive Oil drowned the ambassador or Peter Piper blew up the building.
“We need to find a new target. Our actions have been marginalized by the news media over the last few months. The bombing at the economic summit only made the national news for two days. And we were unable to stop the ecumenical peace conference after Juliet was caught poisoning the food."
Hamlet said, “I still think that we should supply equipment and intelligence to eco-groups. With the building evidence of manmade global disaster, everything they do will be reported."
Santa replied, “The Cell has survived because we have chosen to do only one act of terrorism every six months and have done everything ourselves. If we do more, we will become a target of the establishment and every person who knows about us outside the group adds for the chance of betrayal."
Snow White said, “Why don't we do an assassination? We have been concentrating on the big conferences and meetings because of all the media news organizations covering the events. But a well chosen murder will bring the media to us."
Romeo said, “Why not? We have stuck too long with the same events. We need some variety to bring back our creative urge."
Santa cleared his throat. “Okay. Does anyone have an idea for next passion?” And looked to Snow White.
“I think the best way is to strike at the current darling of industry, government, and science. We need to
Eyes of an Eagle a Novel of Gravity Controlled Page 14