Tony was looking unusually debonair, with neatly pressed tan slacks and a brown golf shirt. He was clearly buoyed up by yesterday’s triumph. “We wowed them! You should have seen their faces when the Annette lifted off the table! I was wishing I could have had a camera there! The chief examiner said “Is that all it does?” and Dan said: “Well how much more do you want?” After that he gave in and that was the end of the meeting. The whole thing only lasted about 20 minutes.”
Steve and John pumped his hand vigorously saying “Well done, well done!” Judy proudly remarked: “I knew you could do it!” and gave him a little hug.
“How are things coming along for our space shot?” asked Tony, looking at John. John was looking discomfited at the sight of Judy and Tony embracing in the company conference room, and his face showed it for a split second. Then he recovered and assumed his professional poise: “We finally received the last of the lithium manganese dioxide batteries yesterday. We have torn out all the RC circuitry to save weight, and used the space to put in a radio pinger circuit. We have dangled a little antenna down underneath her to transmit the pings back to base. Now the whole thing has been wrapped in plastic to keep out moisture and dust on her journey. The inverter controls are jammed at permanent full power, so the moment it is turned on it will take off for the sky! The technicians are checking her out now in the warehouse – she is tied down for her own safety, and we have operated the inverters for just a few seconds at a time – obviously we don’t want to use up any more of the battery than we can help. This morning we are going to take the radio transmitter a mile away down by the shore, and check that we can measure the ping response time to get the distance.”
“That sounds great,” said Tony enthusiastically.
“I’ll drive you down to the beach!” offered Steve. “You never know, I might see some bikinis!” They all chuckled. “We can start loading your car right now,” said John, and they walked out together.
Steve drove a red Corvette, and today he had the top down. John piled the oscilloscope and radio transmitter all into the tiny back seat area, and the two of them set off on the one mile journey to the beach. It was a work day morning, and the schools had just gone back, so there were only a few mothers with infants playing there. The Pacific Ocean looked magnificent as usual, with huge breakers crashing down on the beach. They found a small beach parking area, and started unloading all the gear. John plugged a portable inverter into the cigarette lighter of the Corvette, and quickly connected the scope and the radio transmitter together. “OK, now we are in business!” he remarked to Steve, who was hopefully scanning the empty beach. A particularly thunderous line of surf crashed down. John pressed a button on the radio and the electronics went “beep”. He looked at the scope readout. There was nothing there. Then he pulled out his cell phone and called Electrolev. “Adrian? This is John. I’m not getting any response from Annette. He listened to the technician back at Electrolev for a moment. Well switch it on then!” John pushed the pinger button again and once again the apparatus beeped. He peered at the scope display. “I’ve got it!” he exclaimed – “1.1 miles just like it should be! OK, you can switch it off now.” And with that he shut off his cell phone. Looking at Steve, he said: “It looks like we’re in business! – let’s get back.” With that the two of them started packing the gear back into the Corvette and made their way back to the plant.
After lunch the technicians were carefully setting up the Annette on a table in the Electrolev yard. Everybody knew what was going on and was aware of the importance. Ian and Jim the physicists were talking quietly in the shade of the warehouse overhang. Fred Beller was moving around, directing everything that actually happened. Steve Harman was setting up his movie camera on the loading bay edge, as he did before when Barbara and Charlotte were tested for the first time. Julie the receptionist and several of the programmers were standing just outside the back door of the building, enjoying the sunshine. John, Tony, Judy and Fred gathered around the table upon which the modified Annette was standing, wrapped in plastic film. On another table just adjacent stood the radio transmitter/receiver and the oscilloscope, and the big TV antenna connected to the transmitter/receiver was now pointed up at the sky.
“I really do believe that this thing will go up 30 miles,” said John. “Maybe we shouldn’t waste a perfectly good unit in this way.”
Judy looked at him intensely. “We have already had this discussion. There is only one way to prove it will work in space and that is to let one go.”
Tony slowly shook his head in a worried fashion. “If it goes up thirty miles, then I worry about where it is going to come down,”
John fiddled with the radio controls. “Don’t worry, I think I’ve got that one covered! The wind is offshore at ten miles an hour today, and we are only about a mile from the Pacific. So if it is up there for more than six minutes it is going to be out over the Pacific and we’ll never see it again.”
“Is the radio pinger online?” asked Tony. John nodded. “Then let’s do it!” he exclaimed. John reached out and clicked a switch on the outside of Annette. It silently lifted up off the table, accelerating quickly to what looked like a highway speed, and then seemed to move more slowly as it went up towards the puffy low clouds. It became smaller and smaller in the sky, moving straight upwards. All the assembled people craned back their necks to watch it, some with binoculars. After about a minute it vanished into the wispy clouds and disappeared from sight. There were a few seconds of clapping and some of the group exchanged high fives.
“What’s the altitude?” questioned Judy.
John was poring over the radio transmitter/receiver. “Just over 1 mile.” The assembled group relaxed and took seats on boxes, some beach chairs and old packing crates which were in the yard. Some had expressions reflecting a sense of foreboding that if this space shot was not successful, the company would still be valuable but only to a fraction of the extent it would have been with success. Others looked firm and resolute and seemed to be confident that a successful result was inevitable, meaning that their new technology would displace most of the existing aerospace industry. After a while most of them drifted away leaving just Tony, Judy and John alone. They continued to watch the oscilloscope screen for what seemed like forever.
“Five miles,” reported John. They exchanged glances, and looked at each other exchanging nods and reassuring smiles. About ten minutes went by. The hot afternoon sun was baking but a cool sea breeze kicked in which was refreshing. Tony and Judy stood close together, casually watching John at the oscilloscope. They seemed almost as interested in each other as in the ongoing experiment. John briefly looked up from his instruments and snatched a glance at them. A momentary expression of anguish flickered across his face. He pressed a button on his instruments and a sharp “ping” noise came from the radio receiver. He peered at the display screen and called out: “Ten miles.” He studiously recorded the time and the distance.
Fred stuck his head out from the building. “Hey – you guys like some Pepsi to keep you awake?” The answers were strongly affirmative, although falling asleep was the last thing they feared. Tony and Judy sat down beside the instruments and the three sipped their Pepsi and chatted about the technicalities of the radio pings as another ten minutes dragged agonizingly past.
Steve came out from the building. “Where is it now?”
“20 miles,” replied John.
Tony looked at the others. “Are you convinced now?” They nodded.
“It’s real enough,” said John. “At 20 miles there is only one hundredth of an atmosphere – that little device has left the earth and is in near space now.”
Chapter 25
“A freaking elevator is going up south of LA! Captain Chu! – I need help over here!” exclaimed Jesus Rodriguez, a radar operator at Vandenberg air force base. Vandenberg air force base has the task of monitoring events in space above the western USA, above the 50,000 foot level which is controlled by civilian
air traffic control. So this covers satellites, missiles and military flights.
Chu the supervisor strode across the dimly lit room. “What is it?”
Jesus pointed his finger at the huge monitor display in front of him. “What do you make of this echo? At an altitude of twenty miles it is moving upwards steadily at 70 feet per second, about 50 miles per hour. It looks like an express elevator that came loose! I first noticed it ten minutes ago.”
Chu grimaced in disgust. “The system must be on the blink again. Mezinsky – use scanner B to look at the space over the coast 200 miles south of here!”
Another operator worked with his keyboard and mouse and after a few moments he reported: “I can see a small echo at an altitude of 21 miles rising at about 50 miles an hour. It’s about 180 miles south of here, just south of LA.”
Chu pulled out a cell phone like communicator and spoke into it: “Major Evans, we have an airspace intrusion south of LA - you ought to see it!”
Moments later Major Evans came into the room and converged on Rodriguez’s station like a heat seeking missile converging on a plane. He was a burly figure, bespectacled with a regulation military buzz cut. The three stared at the screen in astonishment tinged with disbelief. “Are we sure that the system is not malfunctioning?” said Evans.
“Yeah – system B is tracking it also,” responded Chu.
Evans furrowed his brow. “I have never seen anything like this in my life before, and I have been watching these screens for twenty years now!”
Chu nodded. “A balloon would be slowly drifting up at a fraction of that speed, and even the biggest ones don’t get to 21 miles. No aircraft can fly at an altitude of 21 miles, and in any case an aircraft cannot go straight upwards. If it was a rocket it would either be accelerating while the engines were burning or decelerating once the engine quit. Also, that is part of Orange County and nobody is authorized to launch from that part of the world. That thing is simply going up like an elevator!”
Evans repeated thoughtfully: “No balloon could go up at that rate. No aircraft could fly at that altitude. Any rocket would be either speeding up or slowing down, and for sure going far faster. This is something we have never seen before. This defies every law of physics that I have ever learned!”
Chu scratched his head pensively: “Do you remember a few months ago when there were reports of a UFO over Long Beach? – Well that is exactly where you are getting this echo from. We had better pass this up the chain of command – something strange is going on in Long Beach. Let’s contact the Los Angeles Air Force Base – maybe they know something about some new technology development.”
Unknown to the Electrolev staff, Colonel James Harper from the Los Angeles Air Force base had been quietly investigating Electrolev for the last few weeks ever since Judy had produced the UFO headlines in the Long Beach newspaper. James had the specialty of strategic technology studies – the responsibility to be able to identify what is or is not important and to tell the air force about the important things. One of his functions in life was to act as the eyes and ears of the Air Force in the technical community, and the UFO reports in Long Beach had piqued his curiosity. Using a private investigator, he had gradually put together information from the funding of the company, and gossip from the local population, and had come to the conclusion already that what was going on at Electrolev might be of interest and critical importance to the United States Air Force. That afternoon he was already on his way to knock on the door of Electrolev when he had got that phone call from Vandenberg telling him that a solid object was rising like an elevator into space from the south side of Long Beach.
Back at Electrolev, the staff was gathered round in a conference room gloating over the time and distance data recorded from their space shot. Judy was grinning from ear to ear and dancing lightly from foot to foot. “We’re gonna be rich!” she chanted to herself.
Then Julie the receptionist appeared in the doorway: “Urgent phone call for the President of Electrolev – he says it’s the United States Air Force!”
John, Tony, Steve and Judy immediately gathered around the speakerphone in John’s office.
A resonant, deep voice barked out over the phone: “This is Colonel James Harper of the United States Air Force Los Angeles Air Force base. I was on my way to visit your premises this afternoon when I got a message that a solid object had been observed slowly rising up from your location through the altitude of 20 miles. The least of your problems is that this is a danger to aviation and aerospace activities. I think we need to talk about things. How about ten minutes from now?” The four looked at each other with wincing, grimacing expressions.
“OK – We’ll see you in a few minutes,” said John with a voice cracked with emotion. He put the phone down and looked at the others, rolling his eyes. The four of them conferred briefly together. It felt like things were going out of control. They felt almost like they were on the wrong side of the law, which had never been their intention. There was no time to plan or decide what to say.
In a few minutes a black Lincoln pulled up outside the building, and a tall man dressed in crisp Air Force blue uniform came to the door, which was cracked open ready for him.
“Welcome to Electrolev, Colonel Harper,” said John, waiting by the door. They walked quickly into the Electrolev main conference room, followed by Tony, Judy and Steve. They all sat down. For a few seconds Harper looked at the four of them, taking in what he saw. They each introduced themselves and exchanged business cards.
Harper started talking, rather excitedly, in a way which contrasted with his stiff and starchy appearance. “We have radar equipment at Vandenberg Air Force base which can monitor everything moving in United States airspace. Anything which is not a balloon and which goes up twenty miles is pretty conspicuous, to put it mildly. Even Long Beach Airport reported it. Especially when it goes straight up relatively slowly and steadily much faster than a balloon but without anything like orbital speed, and just keeps on going up into space like an express elevator run amok! Is it right that you people originated this object today?” The four nodded in a guilty fashion, like children being lectured by the school principal.
Harper cleared his throat. “Let’s set the scene a little bit here. I have been keeping an eye on your activities ever since you set off all those newspaper headlines about UFOs around Long Beach. Put that together with what you have done today and the result is epoch changing! A technology that can propel an object slowly up into space like an elevator has civilization shattering implications! It would mean that most of the space vehicles that we use today are obsolete! Since it flew right through the atmosphere and out into space, then whatever it was you created can replace helicopters, airplanes, satellites and rockets – the whole United States aerospace complex has just become obsolete! An invention like this has potential to destabilize the world balance of power! Whatever country owns this technology will have the power for complete global domination! Anybody with the resources of Electrolev will be able to operate in space! From a military point of view this is a situation that is going to require careful management and control otherwise international mayhem could be let loose. If this situation is not managed, nations will be set against nations and the whole economic and military order of western civilization could be reset!”
The four sat there silent, barely comprehending the seriousness of Harper’s words. Outside the sky had become grey and the room was becoming darker.
“We just wanted to make a few bucks,” said Judy weakly.
Harper dropped his lecturing tone and became more conciliatory. “I want you to start off by telling me what is going on here. I represent the research and development function of the United States Air Force and very likely I could benefit your company a great deal. I have brought a confidentiality agreement with me which promises that the United States Air Force will respect the confidentiality of whatever you tell me. I suggest that you sign it and then start from the beginning, and tell me
the whole story.”
Three hours later, John, Judy, Steve and Tony were still sitting round in the Electrolev conference room with Colonel James Harper. “That’s quite a story!” he said. “Didn’t it ever strike you that this thing might have national security implications?”
Judy answered, slowly and uncomfortably. “We saw it as helicopter replacement, and our entire business plan hinged on this assumption. It was only recently we realized that these vehicles could be space going. And even then, as Tony pointed out, this was all theory. Today was the first time one of our vehicles left earth’s atmosphere. Up until now, it was dream.”
“Well I hope that it doesn’t turn into a nightmare!” rejoined James. “I am going to write up a report on all this and confer with my bosses in Washington. I’m going to see if we can’t get some help for you in this work, quickly. But that is going to take me a couple of weeks, which is lightning fast by Washington standards. Meanwhile I am worried about your safety and security here. Other people could put two and two together the same as I have and easily realize that there is something going on here which is disruptive on a world scale. What sort of security do you have in this place?”
Steve took a deep breath and proudly recited his recent enhancements: “We have got steel gates, an interlocked steel door at the front entrance with buzzer, steel bars at the windows, and eight TV cameras plus motion detectors scattered around the building so that a person at the front desk can watch everything. We keep a guard on the premises all night long.”
James nodded approvingly. “Well that should keep you safe for a couple of weeks. Meanwhile, until I come back, no more test flights, OK?” They all nodded. Only John spoke: “Yes SIR,” he replied, with a mocking emphasis on the SIR.
Harper smiled faintly. He stood up. “I will be back in two weeks!”
After James left, Steve said to the other three: “I will get in touch with Tim Hetherington of JCB and tell him what has happened today. We have got to keep them informed.”
A Disruptive Invention Page 12