Anti-Grav Unlimited

by Duncan Long

  I fielded a few more trivial questions then Jake stepped up to the car that was serving as my stage and pointed to his fingernail watch. Time to go.

  “One final thing,” I said. ” If each of you will focus your cameras on this sheet of paper…”

  Everyone did. “This won’t make much sense to most viewers. It’s the formula for making the rods. The process isn’t quite as simple as the formula, but anyone with a little metallurgical know-how can pull it off with the data on this sheet. Anyone watching out there has my official authorization to use my formula to create as many rods as they wish. There will be no patent rights to this technology. It’s public domain. You can use the technique privately or sell rods for a profit. It’s up to you. This is our—the research team that helped me produce this as well as myself-

  -this is our gift to the world.”

  That will also take the heat off us, I added to myself; the genie was now out of the bottle as the formula was beamed at the speed of light around the global communications satellites to homes and offices around the world. The Net and 3Vs would make sure it could never be suppressed or hidden.

  Jake stepped up beside me, “Sorry folks but that’s all the time we have.”

  Amid some clapping and shouted questions that I did my best to ignore, Jake and I pushed our way through the crowd as each of our little band got into their assigned vehicles and our caravan of thirty-six cars and vans lifted off together.

  We nearly squashed one gung-ho reporter who decided to try to get a shot from below the vehicles and instead got flattened by the gravity wash in the process. He struggled back to his feet with a broken camera and a bloody nose, making a good object lesson for the folks back home as to how dangerous the rods could be.

  I knew things were going too well.

  Sure enough, no sooner were we in the air than a fighter dropped down from the clouds, screeching over us with a sonic boom that visibly rocked the cars and vans floating in the hot Texas air. There was no way of knowing if the plane was really out to get us or to impress the news people; one canister of napalm then and there would have done it, so I figured he must be aiming to spare the reporters and take out our space caravan. At any rate, the plane just went overhead on the first pass.

  “Get going,” I said into my radio to the other vehicles. “Get into your orbit as soon as possible. We’ll try to hold this guy off here if we can and catch up to you as soon as possible. If we don’t make it, the sealed envelopes we gave you will show how to program your computers to get to the base on the moon that we’re headed for.”

  The vehicles flashed skyward in the hot Texas air. Meanwhile the fighter was just slowing down enough to make a low-altitude turn and was headed back, the hot air distorting its distant image so it waved and flickered like a ghost on the horizon.

  As the fighter approached, a missile dropped off its wing and came flashing toward us.

  “Can you outmaneuver that?” I ask Nikki. “If we could divert it from going for any of the other vehicles—they won’t know how to avoid it.”

  My head suddenly was flung back into the seat as our van leaped into the path of the missile which Nikki was trying to get it locked onto us rather than another of our group. Once it was on our tail, she executed a series of heart-stopping turns that took us up and finally over the missile so that it was repelled downward to expend its energy and explode harmlessly in the earth below.

  “I’m tired of being the victim,” I said as we hovered in place, waiting for the plane to turn and head for us again. “Nikki, Take us down a bit—keep enough altitude so you can maneuver if you have to—then hold us real still. I need a shooting platform.” I’d half been expecting trouble and had made it a point to learn how to use a rail gun. Now I was getting real sick of seeing lousy fighter planes in action. I pulled the rifle from its straps next to me, and opened the side door of the van. “Turn the van so my side’s toward the plane.”

  I kicked the van door fully open, loosened my seat belt, and slid around in the seat so my feet dangled out the side as Nikki brought the van around. I pointed the gun out the open door and focused the scope on the oncoming plane.

  The fighter was gaining altitude in the distance, preparing to send a missile over us so we couldn’t deflect it downward. Below us, the crowd of reporters scattered all directions while a few brave souls stood their ground and took pictures of the battle unfolding above them.

  A rail gun sends out a small projectile of depleted uranium wrapped in a steel shell. It travels so fast that even a plane is standing still for all practical purposes; in theory the fighter was a relatively easy target. All I needed to do was center the plane in the cross hairs of the scope and fire. The speed of the shell gave it the kinetic energy of a much larger projectile. Provided the plane and shell connected, the fighter wouldn’t bother us again.

  In theory. The problem was that rail guns were notoriously inaccurate, which is why the plane wasn’t armed with them. If its inaccuracy weren’t bad enough, the wind was causing the van to sway ever so slightly. And my hands were shaking as well.

  Like all hand-held rail guns, it had only three barrels. I had to strike the plane with one of three tries or we were out of luck. So I lined the fighter up in the cross hairs the best I could and fired. The rail gun recoiled as the shell accelerated down its magnetic track.

  One miss.

  I aimed and fired again. Another miss.

  One shot left.

  As I watched, a small missile dropped from the plane and started toward us. Now or never because Nikki would have to maneuver to get out of the way. I aimed and fired.

  And missed.

  I hit the missile that was still close to the plane. The rocket exploded below the jet, shrapnel from its premature explosion riddled the fast-approaching plane. Apparently the fighter’s on-board computer was damaged; the plane suddenly tumbled end over end out of control without the micro-second adjustments needed to keep it stable.

  Nikki forced the van into a short dive and we flew under the tumbling inferno as it was carried through the air by the momentum of its flight. The fiery wreckage arched overhead and smashed into the dry earth with bits of molten plastic and burning fuel spewing across the ground.

  “The news people got a nice show,” I said as we stopped and hovered about ten meters off the ground. “OK. Let’s catch up with our group before we have another showdown.”

  I tossed the now useless rail gun out of the door and closed it. A small boy below ran over and picked it up as we pulled away; a souvenir he’d probably hang on his bedroom wall, I thought as he waved at us.

  Chapter 27

  When we reached the moon, we discovered that the bots had made a pile of anti-grav rods like I couldn’t believe. Part of it was because of a little trick Nikki had pulled.

  “I made a little change,” she explained as I tried not to roll my eyes. She’d been messing with the computers and a small experimental manufacturing assembly she’d brought back from the Erathosthenes base when we’d gone parts raiding. Basically, it was a meter-sized automated factory which had been part of an experiment to see if producing computer memory modules using the near vacuum the Moon offers was practical. “Coupled with the power the rod generators we’d set up to produce almost limitless electricity,” she continued, “I figured the little factory might just as well be producing memory chips while we were at it.”

  “So it’s been up here chugging out computer memories on the side like there was no tomorrow,” I said.

  “Looks like it. I programmed the bot overseeing the factory to plug them into the computer running the bots and the mining/rod making operation. The computer quickly became a super computer as more memory was plugged into it. It isn’t fast by modern computer standards; that’s impossible to achieve with modular units. But it’s smart. And I fed an Oracle program into it.”

  “Oracle program?”

  “It continuously analyzed what the bots were doing and made alterat
ions in their programs to speed things up. The bots have been turning out rods at maximum production rates.”

  “Faster than I’d ever thought possible,” I agreed, looking at the massive stack they’d created.

  “Wait a minute. There are more bots, too.”

  She chuckled. “Yeah, I was wondering when you’d notice. I’m guessing the Oracle computer took information from the mass information storage computer on the base and started a side assembly line which making new bots to add to the work force. That surprised me but probably made perfect sense to the computer. More bots would, after all, make the process of creating rods faster.”

  “I think you created a Frankenstein.”

  While the rest of our convoy was getting settled into their small rooms in the base, Nikki and I stood outside in the slow lunar sunset and watched the activity of the bots as they dragged rods out on sleds. The rods were piled in a huge arch-like arrangement that Oracle had come up with.

  “You know, there aren’t many of the original bots working,” I said after we watched the process for a while.

  “There aren’t any at all, near as I can tell,” Nikki said.

  “Hey, Jake, you listening in?” I asked.

  “I shouldn’t be, but I am. Sorry.”

  “No problem. You inside the mining area?”

  “Yeah,” he said. ” I know what you’re going to ask. The answer is that there is one of the original bots in here. What happened to the others? Worn out?”

  “Maybe,” Nikki said. “But I doubt it. It would always be easier to use the repair program rather than completely replace the bot. Especially since the mini-factory I set up is making the same standard memory units that Oracle and all the bots use.”

  “Can you check Oracle for what happened, Nikki?” I asked.

  “Sure. I’m curious, too. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  I watched her bound away then turned my attention to a pair of bots that pulled a load of rods from the plant toward the stack. Then I realized something rather strange was going on. Rather than pile the rods along the outside, the bots had been walking down the aisle formed by two stacks of the rods.

  I followed the bots, curious as to where they were headed. They made their way down the aisle, then made a left turn, right into what should have been a wall. “What the…?”

  They were gone for about five minutes while I tried to figure out what the bots were up to.

  “What’s going on?” Nikki asked bouncing up to where I stood.

  “I don’t know. See those bots coming out with the empty cart?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They just walked through a solid steel wall of those rods or—”

  “Or what?”

  “Or Hunter’s Principle.”

  “That theory your team has?”

  “Yeah. That the rods are warping space… Hey, Jake, shut down the bots in there for a minute.

  I don’t want any more rods brought out here to throw off the force field we’ve created.”

  “Will do,” Jake’s voice crackled over the radio. “What’s up?”

  “I’m not sure. I think Oracle may have managed to create a gravitational gate.”

  “A what?”

  “Remember, we were talking about the possibility of warping space. Looks like maybe it IS

  possible to do. I’m going to check it out.”

  “OK. I’ll be out in a minute.”

  “Just be sure no one moves the rod arrangement around. That could change the setting… No telling where we’d end up.”

  “I’ll come out and guard the rods so nothing’s disturbed.”

  “Great. I’m going to take a look now,” I said.

  “Me, too,” Nikki said.

  I started to say no, then looked at her through her bubble helmet. With that look on her face, I thought, it would be crazy to try to talk her out of exploring with me.

  We bounced toward the rods; we cast long shadows along the crater floor. “Did you find out what happened to the bots?” I asked.

  “Each one was lost.”

  “Lost? How would—”

  “Every time they added rods to the outside while bots were between the piles of rods—here in this valley or aisle,” she said as we walked in the area between rods, “they would disappear.

  Finally, Oracle quit adding rods to the outside and started storing them inside. Even though there shouldn’t have been room.”

  “Computer logic.” I chuckled. “As long as they could get the rods back and quit losing bots, there was no reason for the program to question how it worked.”

  “Exactly. And they quit losing bots after that.”

  “The rods added on the outside must have changed the coordinates.”

  “The coordinates of what?” Nikki asked.

  “Of the gate,” I said. “The bots that were lost must have gone… but that would mean that somewhere… there are other gates.”

  “Which means?”

  “Which means that someone—or something—is already building the gates. Sure you want to come? We might be meeting a bot-eating monster.” I said as we neared the blurred area ahead of us.

  “You can’t scare me, Phil.”

  “Jake,” I said. “We’re entering the field now. You might want to call my team so they can know what’s going on.”

  “Will do.”

  Nikki and I remained speechless as we stepped into the blurred area and headed down what should have been a wall of rods but looked like a long black tunnel ahead of us. The darkness seemed to shimmer and made my eyes hurt whenever I glanced at it. “Jake, can you read us?”

  Nothing. I stopped for a moment. “What do you think?” I said to Nikki. ” If we were smart, we’d probably go back.”

  “If we were smart is a little iffy, right.”

  “Yeah. Let’s go on and see what’s making that rainbow ball of light ahead of us.”

  The sphere of light was beautiful. The calculations said the rods warped space. Period. But they did more than that. They created one of the most beautiful displays of changing patterns of light ever seen by human eyes. The ball of light danced ahead of us as and then, as we neared it, it proved to be a hole which we stepped. Our bodies seemed to become part of the interplay of shapes and colors. Almost with regret, we stepped out of the gate and felt a heavy, Earth-weight gravity.

  “Look at that!” I said as we both stumbled to regain our footing under the heavier pull of the gravity. We certainly were no longer on the moon. Wooded areas were broken by long expanses of grass. The plants were growing wild and looked like an ancient, pristine Earth. Butterflies the size of footballs fluttered about while a strange whirring insect or small animal occasionally zipped by on an unknown task.

  At first I thought we really were back on Earth. But the small animals and greenish sky told me we weren’t. And everything had two shadows; I sneaked a peek at the sun, “Binary sun?” I said. “Where do you suppose we are?”

  “There’re the rods, anyway,” Nikki said and pointed to a huge stack of rods several meters away resting in a clump of trees. “And what do you suppose that is?”

  I looked where she pointed. In the distance, a blue, lacy crystal mountain which appeared to be floating in the air. Large bud-like areas seemed to grow out of the narrow tubes connecting everything. The size was deceptive; it had to be huge, judging from the hazy look it had which could only be caused by the distance it was from it.

  “That,” I finally said, ” Is what a city looks like when the culture building it has anti-grav rods.”

  “Do you suppose it’s inhabited?” Nikki asked.

  “If it is, they must be the most uncurious living beings in the universe. I can’t imagine having this gate with bots coming through it all the time. And not checking up on them.”

  “Abandoned?”

  “Maybe. We’ll have to see later on. For now, we’d better get back,” I said.

  “Yeah.”

  We turned towa
rd our entrance. Unlike its counterpart on the Moon, this one was created by two monoliths of blue stone, apparently designed just to be a gate. A “stargate,” since we were somewhere far, far from Earth. An alien control panel or—perhaps just an elaborate work of art—

  stood in front of it, glowing with a changing pattern of small lights.

  We walked toward the gate and stepped into the blurred area that marked the entrance and moved back into the shimmering darkness. We walked without talking.

  But we didn’t step out on our Moon. It was an airless, barren world. But not the Moon.

  “What’s going on?” Nikki ask.

  “I don’t know. But I think I know how the bots got lost. Let’s backtrack real quickly.”

  We started at a walk and ended in a run. We stepped back out on the planet with the blue crystal city in the distance.

  “We’d better sit tight for a while,” I said. “They’ll surely start sending bots through the stargate we created on the Moon. Then, we can follow one of the bots back.”

  We waited.

  Hours passed while we explored the area around us.

  We slowly ran out of air in the suits’ tanks.

  “Do you think it’s safe to breathe the atmosphere?” Nikki said.

  “There isn’t much alternative. I did notice that some of the plants… Look there, if that isn’t a dandelion… So maybe.”

  We cracked our helmets open and tried a quick breath. We didn’t die right away, so we removed our helmets to conserve the last of our oxygen in case we ever did find a way back to the Moon.

  Hours later, it still appeared that the air was safe. I hoped we hadn’t picked up some weird virus or fungus that would kill us later on. I decided to keep that worry to myself.

  “They’ll get to us before long,” I said, hoping my voice sounded more sure than I was. I put my arm around Nikki and we sat, watching first one sunset and then the other as the second sun sunk below the horizon and foreign stars dotted the purplish sky. We put our gloves back on as the air turned cool.