Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2)

by Glenn Michaels

  “That’s better,” Capie said, with a ghost of a smile. “I’m going to hold you to that.”

  Daneel was beaming happily. He pointed and said, “That’s a Racer! It goes fast! Can I race it, please?”

  • • • •

  “I’ve been looking forward to this for several months now, ever since I dreamed up this idea,” Paul gushed, as he pulled on a tight black leather jacket and zipped it up.

  Capie snapped the chin strap on her crash helmet and then glanced over at the racer before saying anything.

  “And it’s safe, right? It won’t blow up or fall out of the sky or plow us into a mountainside? Will Daneel be safe riding with us?”

  At the mention of his name, the A.I.’s face on the LCD monitor lit up. “Can I ride up front? Please? Can we go really fast?”

  Paul shrugged as he snapped on his gloves. “If the racer does anything like that, we’ll portal out of the way. Daneel too. And yes, Daneel, we will go fast.”

  “All right!” he squealed. “Fast!”

  “Speaking of portals, why don’t we just portal the engines to Alice instead of using them to take us there? For that matter, why don’t we portal over to Ayers Rock and use that to portal the 737 here to Kalgoorlie? That seems a lot safer thing to do than ride on that thing,” she said, nodding at the racer.

  Paul now had his helmet on as well. “You might be right. But consider this: Maybe there aren’t any wizards or Oni in Canberra. Or there might be, but they may not be on the lookout for anyone using magical spells here in the outback. But on the other hand, why risk it? And, this will be a good first test of the engines. If they won’t move the plane back here, then the engines certainly aren’t ready to take us to Mars.”

  “No, probably not,” she agreed glumly.

  Paul gave his wife another close look. “You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” he said. “I can do this and be back before noon tomorrow. And then we will paint the town of Perth red, like I promised.”

  But she was shaking her head. “No, no. I don’t get to spend enough time with you as it is. I’m just jittery, is all. I’m still not all that comfortable with all the things that magical powers let us do. Like designing rocket engines with advanced materials.” She glanced at the racer. “It should be fun, right?”

  “Right,” Paul agreed with an encouraging smile. “If you are ready?”

  At her silent nod, he levitated himself into the air directly over the engine, dropping down into one of the seats on the racer. Capie followed suit but at a slower pace. Paul moved Daneel to a position between and slightly behind them, securing the Scottie to a support post.

  “Ready, Daddy,” the A.I. said, beaming in happiness and expectation.

  “First thing, we chill the nozzles,” Paul asserted, snapping his fingers. A blanket of white mist sprang up around the white engine outlets and the air in the mining pit suddenly turned a bit nippy. “And another spell, to initiate the flow of current for the magnetic field. Very good. Next, the inlet portals.”

  With a wave of his hand, Paul created two portals, one each in front of the engines. Each portal would act as an intake to the engines, allowing air to feed into the pressure chambers. Then, with another wave, Paul opened the stopcock valve on the small water tanks located behind the seats. Water began flowing through the small Tygon tubing to both engines. A last spell levitated the racer up off the stands and two feet up into the air.

  “Tallyho!” yelled Paul, initiating the fusion spell inside the two engines.

  A sudden roar assaulted their ears as plasma heated air shot out the throats of the nozzles. With a sudden hard shove, the racer blasted out from under the camo nets and up into the open air, rapidly gaining speed and altitude.

  “Yeehaw!” shouted Paul, grinning like a kid with a new toy on Christmas morning.

  “Go faster, Daddy!” screamed Daneel. “Faster!”

  Paul glanced at Capie, seeing her scrunched down low, eyes screwed tightly shut and her hands knuckle white, clamped securely to the sides of her seat.

  Over the roar of the engines, Paul shouted, “It’s okay! You can look now!”

  She briefly flicked one eye open, looking downward at the ground rolling beneath them at an incredible clip. With a shake of her head, she squeezed her eye shut again.

  Laughing wildly, Paul banked the racer to the left, accelerating even more, now bound for Alice. Behind him, the sun was not far from the horizon. Up ahead was the approaching twilight.

  “Go lower, Daddy!” screamed Daneel. “Faster!”

  • • • •

  Midnights on Saturday nights at the Alice Springs Airport were pretty much like midnights on any other night of the week. Quiet, peaceful, and with nary a person or thing stirring in the illumination of the security lights scattered around the facility. On this particular night there was also an incredibly bright full moon almost directly overhead.

  The same state of affairs existed at the nearby aircraft boneyard, which had precious little movement even during daylight hours.

  But tonight was different. Tonight a very odd looking two-person—well, three person—craft slowly dropped out of the night sky, its engines shut down, the racer landing next to an old 737-400 aircraft.

  “That was fun, Daddy!” squealed Daneel. “Do again, please, Daddy? Again?”

  “We will,” Paul promised the A.I. before turning to his wife. “I figure we have three hours,” Paul told Capie in confidence. “Hopefully we won’t need that much time. If you will, do a walk around the plane. Look for anything that is attached to it or even leaning up against it. I’ll get busy taking the engines loose from the racer. When that’s done, you can help me move them over to the plane and start bolting them on. I designed the bolt-hole patterns on the engines to match the 737 wing mounts. Then I’ll transfer the water tanks and the hoses to the plane too.”

  Capie nodded with a grimace and strode off into the dimly lit area, checking things out. Hefting a large wrench in one hand, Paul turned to the racer with a grin.

  “As Scotty might say, it’s time for me bairns to have a proper home.”

  “Can I help, Daddy? Let me help!”

  • • • •

  Paul’s estimate turned out to be pretty nearly correct. He and Capie finished tightening down the last engine mount bolt only two and a half hours after their arrival.

  “It still amazes me,” Capie grimly declared with conviction. “I mean, even as dark as it is, I can tell this plane’s a hunk of junk! It’s sitting on wood blocks, it is missing part of the tail, the cabin doors, and even some of the windows! There’s no telling what’s missing on the inside!”

  Paul nodded and smiled again. “Oh, there’s almost nothing inside. Even the overhead luggage bins are gone. But that’s okay since I have to redo the entire interior anyway. So now we just have to gather the tools, leave the sign behind and we can go.”

  “I’ll get the tools,” Capie grudgingly volunteered. “You can put up the sign.”

  Nodding, Paul grabbed one of the wrenches and, from the bed of the remains of the racer, a sign nailed to a wooden stake. Stepping twenty feet directly away from the plane, he hammered the stake into the ground using the wrench as a hammer.

  The sign didn’t say much. Just: Accepted: Delivery of one used Boeing 737 aircraft. Paul DeWitt.

  Levitating himself into the air, Paul nonchalantly flew himself and Daneel into the plane through the open forward cabin hatch, landed feet first, then snapped his fingers to create light. He put Daneel up against one of the intact windows to let the youngster enjoy the view during the upcoming flight.

  The interior was a stripped shambles, with small pieces of various junk lying around. Gone were the seats, the interior walls, the carpeting, the overhead bins, the galley’s, the restrooms and most everything that had been in the cockpit. Paul sent his wrench drifting through the air over to the toolbox to join the rest of the tools.

  “This really is a pile of junk,
” Capie said sulking, as she flew though the open hatch behind Paul. “And you’re going to turn it into a spacecraft? Sure.”

  “Well, it might take a little work, I agree,” Paul answered with a shrug. “First, let’s get it back to the Staging Area.” Turning toward the cockpit, he waved an indifferent hand. “Buckle up, put all trays to the upright position and prepare for liftoff!”

  “Are we flying again, Mommy? I like to fly! Can we go fast again? That was fun!” Daneel said, pleading with Capie.

  Inside the cockpit, Paul waved his hand again, creating two holographic seats to sit in. When he had lowered himself into one and made himself comfortable, he looked over his left shoulder and out to the engine on that wing.

  “This time, the nozzles need to be colder since we will be asking for more thrust,” he explained to his wife as he cast the appropriate freezing spell. “And then the magnetic field current.” A visual check out the pilot’s window showed nothing amiss with either spell.

  “Contact!” he muttered smugly, casting a spell for an engine inlet portal there. Then he whipped up another spell to start the water flowing from the tank mounted on that wing.

  “I’ve got this side,” Capie assured him, but with a frown, looking over her right shoulder and casting the same spells for her engine. She also glanced back to check on Daneel, who seemed focused on the view out the glass window.

  “Ignition!” Paul commanded, initiating a very small fusion spell in his engine. There was a loud burping noise and a stream of superhot air emerged from the end of the nozzle of the port engine. The aircraft jerked forward slightly, rocking on the wooden blocks.

  “Ignition!” Capie echoed, starting the spell on her side.

  Grinning, Paul reached over to his wife, grasping and holding her hand.

  “‘Thunderbirds are go!’” they said in unison with a smirk, quoting from both the series and the 2004 movie.

  The 737-400 lifted gently straight up into the air, clearing the blocks and the neighboring planes. When it was free and clear of all obstacles, both Paul and Capie revved up their respective engines and the plane steadily accelerated away into the moonlit night.

  “Wee! We’re flying!” hollered Daneel. “Go higher, Daddy! Faster!”

  • • • •

  Sunday afternoon and evening in the city of Perth was just the remedy they both needed, catching dinner at the Beaufort St. Merchant, then a performance of a great local band at the Entertainment Centre, followed by dancing at the Ellington Jazz Club.

  Daneel was with them, of course. To keep him distracted, Paul downloaded a series of puzzles and games for him to play with. The Scottie took to them like a duck to water, playing game after game of Super Smash Bros, followed by a really obscure game known as Ninja-Rabbits.

  After several hours of immersion in the night life of Perth, Paul sensed a very distinctive but subtle transformation in his wife’s expression, body language, and attitude. Several times, he silently and solemnly vowed to himself to take her out more often, to relax the working pace a bit. There was, after all, no deadline that they had to meet. They really did not have to work so arduously that it created hardships for themselves.

  Right?

  EIGHTEEN

  Restaurant 259

  York Hotel

  Hannan Street

  Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

  September

  Monday 8:14 a.m. AWST

  “They found him,” Capie announced sadly the next morning at breakfast in the hotel restaurant.

  Paul sat down his sausage roll and raised an eyebrow. “They found who?”

  “The director of the Mossad,” Capie said, stirring a bit of honey in her morning tea. “Or rather, they found his body. I was checking the news just before you came in. They found it in Haifa. He’d been tortured before they murdered him.”

  Paul grimaced but didn’t reply. There was little to say.

  Capie sighed then took a sip of her tea. “I’ve finished all of the local shopping. I will have to spend a few days in Perth, to get the specialty items, including those tools you asked for. I’m hoping I can pick up everything like that in Perth without having to go back to the States for anything.”

  “My, that was fast,” commented Paul, waving a fork. “I was expecting that to take you another week or so. Okay, tonight, we can talk about another project. How would you like to grow a 10,000 carat emerald?”

  She smiled but he could tell that her heart was not in it. Warily and with feigned obliviousness, he pretended not to notice.

  After breakfast, he took Daneel with him, heading out to the Staging Area. Since he was running a little late, the sun was a little higher above the eastern horizon than usual when he finally arrived.

  His late arrival afforded him an unqualified comprehensive view of the 737. Parked under the camo nets, in daylight conditions, it did look a great deal more like wreckage than an aircraft.

  “Are we going to fly again today, Daddy?” Daneel implored.

  “Not today,” Paul answered, still depressed from the news from the Middle East. “Today is a work day.”

  “Oh,” said Daneel, his face dropping in disappointment.

  “It really is a mess,” Paul noted, waving a hand at the plane and feeling a bit chagrined. “But it is a good thing that I am both an engineer and a wizard. To start with, the engines have to come back off. Now where is that tool box? Let’s make a game of this, Daneel. I would like you to try to name every tool I use, okay?”

  “Okay, Daddy. I can do it too,” Daneel bragged without a trace of modesty.

  When he had first considered building a spacecraft capable of going to Mars, Paul really had considered designing and building it from the ground up. That way, he would have been assured of having exactly the spacecraft he wanted, with all the appropriate bells and whistles. But, as he had told Capie, it simply would have taken much too long to have done it that way. No, unfortunately, shortcuts had been necessary and the aircraft in front of him represented a huge timesaver.

  But that didn’t mean that there still wasn’t a lot of work to be done. A Boeing 737-400 might be a wonderful airplane but, such as it was, it made a terrible spacecraft. Major modifications were necessary before it could be allowed into space.

  To begin with, the wings would have to come off. All of them. They added much too much weight and they wouldn’t be required anyway. The engines would provide all the power necessary to keep the craft aloft.

  After the wings, Paul intended to cut off the remainder of the tail assembly. For his purposes, the tail was designed completely wrong. What was really needed on the rear of the craft was a support structure for the engines, mounting them along the center line of mass of the vehicle, unlike their former position under the front wings. That previous station for the engines had been fine for traveling horizontally through an atmosphere, but would not be suitable at all for travel through space. If the engines were under the front wings, the imbalance would send the craft into loops. And too, that placement was a poor thermal choice for nuclear engines with 150,000 lbf of thrust. The plumes would impinge on the rear of the craft, creating high thermal loads.

  Moving the engines to a rear support structure was the only solution, even if it did create the necessity of designing a new tail section.

  And then there was the skin of the ship. The aluminum alloy skin.

  Again, aluminum was a fine choice in an atmosphere. It was light, strong and inexpensive. But for space, not so good.

  A titanium alloy hull was what the ship needed. He had considered stripping off the aluminum skin and replacing it with a titanium hull but the work involved was too complex. Even though it would add considerable weight, he had little choice but to compromise in this particular aspect of the ship’s build. The aluminum skin would stay and the titanium hull would be added on top of it.

  It took Paul less time to remove the engines than it had to install them and even before lunch, he was ready to start the
next step. And too, he was enjoying the game with Daneel, who had correctly identified and named all of the tools that had been used. The A.I. was growing up. Paul couldn’t have been more pleased.

  “‘Flame on!’” he shouted, quoting Johnny Storm from the Fantastic Four and holding his hand shoulder high. A beam of intense red laser light shot forth from the palm of his hand, impinging on the port wing root of the 737. In moments, the aluminum alloy began to sizzle and a small hole appeared. Moving forward, Paul began slicing off the port wing.

  “Wow, Daddy! Why is the light red? Can I do that too? That looks like fun!” exclaimed Daneel, jumping up and down on his monitor display.

  Paul nodded, but his smile faded into a thoughtful frown. Yes, his A.I. was growing up and fast too. It wouldn’t be all that much longer, at the rate Daneel was going, before he would be ready to acquire his magical powers, to become a wizard in his own right. And for some reason, that bothered Paul a bit. The kid was growing up so fast, becoming an adult far more rapidly than Paul had ever anticipated. He felt a sense of loss at that thought.

  “Yes, Daneel, that is the plan,” he shouted over the noise of the beam and the frying metal. “Someday, if things work out, you will do stuff like this too.”

  • • • •

  On Wednesday evening, after dinner and after returning to their York hotel room, Daneel announced that he wanted to talk to both of them.

  Even since that morning, Daneel had matured noticeably, with all the appearance of a seven year old boy now. On the monitor screen, he was dressed in jeans and a white long-sleeved shirt, the virtual child sitting at a virtual desk using crayons to color with in a book.

  “Okay, Daneel,” Paul said, with a smile, as he plopped down in a chair near the small desk in the room. “What’s up?”

  “Dad,” the A.I. image replied, laying down the book. “I’ve been looking at the Encyclopedia CD you gave me. And while I like it a lot…I have questions I can’t find the answers to in the encyclopedia. Can you answer them for me?”