“What a mess,” he said, after hearing parts of it over and comparing with Alan’s written version. Alan sat down at the computer.
“Dictate, and I’ll type.”
They went through the entire manuscript; start to finish, in four hours. By the end of it, two things were clear to Eric: a native Russian had not written the original document. The language was stiff and formal, without idiom, and English words had been substituted where Russian words existed. The second thing he noticed was more troubling. There was frequent mention of a mixing plenum in the context of power plant and startup, and reference to FL-7 on two occasions. But FL-7 should have been in the Flight Operations section, and that only went to FL-6, which was good up to Mach 6 and an altitude of a hundred thousand feet. The lab guys would be giddy about that, having pushed Sparrow only to Mach 1, but Eric was anything but happy. His gut was telling him that everything they were after was in FL-7, and it hadn’t been given to them, yet the pages in the original manual were consecutively numbered, and nothing seemed to be missing.
As he thought it, his mind suddenly went blank. Eric sighed, and closed his eyes.
“You okay, sir?” said Alan.
“Tired,” said Eric, and rubbed his eyes. It was not a physical fatigue that troubled him, but more like a hallucination. He saw an image of Sparrow’s control panel, and his hand working there, moving a sequence of toggle switches and then pressing an unmarked switch on the overhead panel. The vision went away, then came back seconds later to repeat itself.
Eric stood up. “We’re going back to Sparrow’s Bay.”
“Sir?”
“Get me in the cockpit of that thing.”
“I don’t know how, sir. I’ll call the others back.”
“No. Stay close. Write down everything I do.” Eric’s eyes opened wide as he watched something that was only in his mind.
They went back to Sparrow’s Bay. A lone guard checked them in as they entered, and recognized both of them. Eric climbed up on Sparrow’s stubby wing, shoved his hand into a slot in the fuselage, and squeezed.
There was a metallic pop, and a gull-wing panel unfolded as it swung out above their heads. Eric climbed into the cockpit without hesitation. Settled himself. Alan looked over his shoulder, clipboard at the ready.
“Draw a layout of these switches, and number the sequence I use.”
Eric waited a few seconds, and then began throwing switches, seven of them, in sequence. His hand moved to the eighth on the overhead panel.”
“Got it?” he asked.
“Got it, sir. Hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I don’t, but here goes,” said Eric, and punched the switch on the overhead.
There was a loud thump from the bowels of Pregnant Sparrow. Eric waited for something to happen, held up his hands. “Still here. No balls of fire, yet.”
Alan was looking aft along the fuselage. “Holy shit,” he said, and then Eric felt a faint vibration, stood up in the cockpit and looked back around Alan.
The entire tail section of Pregnant Sparrow was rising, rotating, as if hinged. Eric climbed out and followed Alan off the wing as the tail section quit moving with a dull thud. They looked inside the tail section, and saw an empty shell. The fuselage it had connected to was empty back three feet to a solid panel covered with nubbins the size of baseballs, and sharp, metal vanes only an inch in height ran back to it, parallel along the fuselage.
“They’ve been trying to get into this thing for a year,” said Alan. “We really needed that manual.”
“It wasn’t in the manual,” said Eric, and ran a hand over the edge of a vane. It felt vaguely warm to the touch, while the fuselage surface was cool.
“So how did you figure it out?”
“I don’t have a clue,” said Eric. “Must have been something I read in the controls section. I’ll check it again. These vanes are warm, and they’re getting warmer. Ah, what’s this?”
The vanes were uniformly separated by a couple of inches, but between two of them, halfway back, was a small depression in the fuselage. A black button switch there was engraved with a glyph that looked like an eye. Eric’s finger hovered over the switch. A part of his mind screamed out in warning, but a stronger part was urging him on.
“This will either be enlightening, or stupid,” said Eric, and pushed down on the switch. There was a click, then a faint buzzing sound resonating from the fuselage.
“Hear that?’ asked Eric.
“No.”
“Lean closer.” Eric leaned inside the open fuselage so Alan could get closer. The fuselage was cold on his hands, but his face was suddenly warm, and it felt like the hair on his head and hands was moving in a light breeze.
“Feels warm in here,” said Alan.
“And getting warmer,” said Eric. His face felt flushed, while hands remained cool on the metal surface.
“Enough,” he said, reached over and pressed the black button down hard. Another click, and the faint buzzing sound stopped instantly. Alan stepped back, but Eric remained where he was for another minute. The warm breeze he’d felt before was gone, and his face cooled quickly. “Did you feel a breeze in here?”
“No air movement, but my hand felt warm.”
“Gone, now. Let’s close it up and get some others to take a look at this.” Without thinking, Eric climbed back onto the wing, reached inside the cockpit and toggled a single switch on the overhead panel.
The tail section lowered again without sound, and locked into place with a thump.
Alan looked at him with a grin on his face. “I guess that was in the manual, too.”
“Must be,” said Eric. “Why don’t you go get the others back here while I try to figure out how I did this? I know it’s late, but you might catch them up.”
Alan left him there. Eric went through the manual several times, focusing on the controls section, but found absolutely nothing that even suggested how to gain access to the interior of the fuselage. The words ‘mixing plenum’ and ‘FL-7’ kept popping up, an unknown term and missing section that had to have something to do with it, at least providing a clue. So without a hint, a trigger for inspiration, how could he have seen what he’d seen, his own hand moving over the controls in the proper sequence? And how had he dared to press that black button in the interior of Sparrow’s belly? What had compelled him to do it? This was not Eric the analyst, the scientist. He would not do something like that without some knowledge of the possible consequences, and yet he’d done it without hesitation.
In what seemed like a moment, Alan was back with the others. They were all excited, and demanded Eric show what he’d done. Eric obliged them, returning to the cockpit, and without reference to Alan’s notes he toggled in the switch sequence to open the bowels of Sparrow to them. The men were all peering inside before he even got off the wing. “Don’t lean in too far. Might be a residual energy field there. It started to get warm inside when I pressed this switch.”
The men backed up a step. Eric leaned inside the open maw of Sparrow and pressed the button switch on the fuselage. Again there was a thump, and a buzz near the edge of their audible range. Eric intended to show them the growing warmth inside, but this time something more spectacular happened. Elton Steward had left his loose-leaf notepad in the fuselage interior before he stepped back. As Eric inserted his hand into the opening to check for the first indication of warmth, the notebook suddenly snapped open, the cover standing straight up, the pages riffling until they were spread into a fan shape, each page equally spaced from its neighbors. Eric flinched, but didn’t remove his hand, saw the hairs there waving as if in a breeze, felt the first warmth caress his skin.
“Here, you can feel the heat.”
“I don’t think so,” said Steward, and took another step back. “What the hell’s going on with that notebook?”
Eric ignored him. “Getting warmer,” he said. Not warmer, but now hot, and the hairs on his arm and head were beginning to move. He punched
the switch again, and kept his hand inside. The notebook pages collapsed, and the hairs on his hand and arm were instantly still. The heat he’d felt dissipated more slowly, but was gone in a few seconds.
He handed the notebook back to Steward, but the man hesitated before taking it. “There’s some kind of energy field inside this thing when you throw that switch,” said Eric. “It’s not microwave. I feel the heat first at skin surface.”
“And it would take a hell of a radiation pressure to move those pages like it did, and the way they ended up doesn’t make any sense if it’s a radiation effect,” said Steward.
Eric looked at the watch on his wrist. “Not magnetic, either. My watch is running fine. But there’s an energy field inside this thing, and it’s controllable. My bet is that switch I activated is just a system check. Any ideas?”
“Lots of tests we can make,” said Steward. “You sure there isn’t anything in that manual about this?”
“Not a word. There’s a reference to a section I think has been left out.”
“Still playing games with us,” said Steward.
“Maybe, but we’re inside, now. Let’s make the best of it.
“I meant you,” said Steward. “You haven’t told us how you figured out how to get into this thing so quick, and we’ve been playing with it for months.”
“Trial and error. I was just throwing switches, and it opened up,” said Eric, and knew they didn’t believe him.
“Right,” said Steward.
Eric felt a coldness creep over him. He took a deep breath, and fixed the man with a baleful stare. “Excuse me?”
“I can help carry some equipment if you like,” said Alan quickly, and stepped in front of Eric.
Steward’s face went ashen. “Uh—sure—I’ll show you where it is.” He turned quickly, and Alan followed him away. The other men seemed oblivious to the tension of the moment. When Eric sat down at the table and began leafing through the manual, they ignored him and talked quietly near Sparrow’s tail section.
A few minutes later, Steward returned with Alan. They brought with them a magnetometer, calorimeter and optical pyrometer. Eric remained confused after another quick pass through the manual, had found nothing that might have triggered his sudden, and now uncomfortable knowledge of how to open up Sparrow’s belly.
Eric did it again, climbing to the cockpit and toggling the switches without a word, then going back to his study of the manual. Steward and the others set up the instruments inside Sparrow and it was Steward who punched the switch there. Eric heard the buzz, some mumbles from the men, but was focused on the operational checklist for sub-sonic flight.
Suddenly, Steward was standing beside him. Eric looked up.
“Nothing,” said Steward. “No magnetic field, and nothing registered on the calorimeter. Optical T went up two degrees on the vanes and fuselage interior, and stayed there.”
Eric blinked. “So put a light rubber band around your notebook and put it inside. From what we saw, the band should stretch, and you can calibrate that. The field inside Sparrow isn’t electromagnetic.”
Steward frowned at him, and went away. Eric went back to his reading, but Steward was back again in a few minutes. “Whatever is there can produce a milli-newton force,” he said.
Something crept into Eric’s mind. “Makes you wonder what it can do if Sparrow is all closed up, and we really turn it on,” he said, and Steward just gave him a dark look.
“I’m sure you’ll figure that out for us, Doctor Price. Do you write the report on our little tests here?”
“You’re a chief scientist here. Think of me as a consultant,” said Eric.
“Okay, I’ll write it, and the rest of us would like to study that manual, if you don’t mind.”
“I’ll get three copies for you,” said Alan, always within listening distance, clipboard poised. “But they’re only for use in this bay, on shift. End of shift, I lock ’em up.”
“So do that, Sergeant. Now. Doctor Price seems to be busy with this copy.”
Alan looked at both of them, then, “I’ll be back in a minute, sir.” And he hurried away.
Enough of this shit. Eric stood up, stepped so close to Steward their noses were nearly touching, and said very softly, “Just what exactly is your fucking problem, mister?”
Steward didn’t flinch this time. “I wouldn’t want to say anything to Davis’ boy, would I? Johnson heads our group for months, and there’s no help or information. Johnson disappears, and now here you are and we suddenly have a manual with stuff missing that seems to be in your head. Tell Davis we’re sick of his stalling and his games. Either give us what we need or send us back to our civilian jobs where we can accomplish something.”
“You’re civilians?” said Eric. “I thought you were all government, or military.”
“Just the techs. The scientists and engineers are all on loan from industry.”
“Where?”
“I can’t tell you that, not for any of us.”
“Then private industry knows about Sparrow?”
“No. I mean, I don’t think so. I didn’t know until I got here. My company is making a lot of money for my services. Why should I tell you what you already know? More games?”
“No games. I didn’t know, and I’m not Davis’ man. I’m here to find out what’s hanging up this project, and Davis is not happy about my being here, if that tells you anything.”
“You CIA?”
“No. Private agency.”
“Yeah, sure.”
Eric smiled. “You wouldn’t expect the truth anyway.”
“I guess not. We’ve had nothing but cover-ups and lies around here. Are we ever going to know what happened to Johnson, or the guy before him?”
“Maybe, but I can’t tell you where he is, or if he’s alive.”
“We were told it was a heart attack. I don’t believe it.”
“Neither do I,” said Eric.
There was a long pause. Steward locked eyes with Eric and stared at him. Suddenly he blinked, let out a sigh. “Okay, suppose I assume you’re actually here to help. What can I do?”
“Your job, as best you can,” said Eric. “I can help with that, too. My scientific credentials are real, but I have no idea what that energy field inside Sparrow is, and throwing those switches in the right sequence today was just blind luck. Whatever information there is about it has been left out of this manual, and I intend to find out why. Have you ever seen or talked to the people who brought Sparrow to us?”
“Saw them once,” said Steward. “They were right here, with Johnson, two dark guys, Slavic accents. Russians, I think.”
“The manual’s in Russian.”
“So you said. I’m wondering if we’re dealing with Russian Mafia.”
“Maybe. Everything’s for sale over there. But if money has been agreed on and paid, I don’t see why material would be left out of the manual.”
“More money,” said Steward.
“I don’t think so. There’s something about Sparrow they don’t want us to know, and I think that energy field we just looked at has something to do with it. I heard Sparrow was supposed to have space flight capability.”
“Me, too. That was the big excitement in the project.”
“Well, what I’ve seen in the manual doesn’t take us over a hundred thousand feet. It’s all conventional JP-4 and boosters. But I found two references to a so-called ‘mixing plenum’ I bet were left in by mistake. I think we looked inside that ‘mixing plenum’ today, and it has something to do with powering this bird above the atmosphere. We need to quantify that energy field and identify it. And I need to get that missing material for the manual. Maybe Sergeant Nutt can help me with that.”
Alan had just entered the bay through the single personnel door, and was hurrying towards them, arms loaded with loose-leaf notebooks. He stacked the books on the table, and turned to Eric.
“Colonel Davis wants to see you right away.”
&nb
sp; “You told him what happened today?”
“Yes, sir. He wants to know what you think is missing from the manual. It was supposed to be complete this time.”
“This time?” said Steward, smirking.
Alan ignored him. “He’s waiting for you, sir,” he said to Eric.
“Shouldn’t take long. Maybe while I’m gone you can estimate how much energy was in that field we observed.”
“I can tell you right now it won’t be enough to lift a marble to a hundred thousand feet,” said Steward.
“It’s a starting point. Okay, Alan, lead on.”
Steward mumbled something as they walked away from him, and all Eric heard was the name ‘Davis’.
They went straight to Davis’ office. Alan knocked on the door jamb, and there was a sharp reply from inside, and Alan stepped aside for Eric to enter.
Davis stood up behind his desk, motioned Eric to a chair, and sat down close to it on the edge of his desk. His forehead glistened with sweat, and his eyes were red and glittering.
“How the hell did you get inside Sparrow?”
“Pure accident,” said Eric, and he sat down.
“Bullshit. You did it first try, no trial and error. Sergeant Nutt watched you do it. Who told you what to do?”
“Nobody. I’m not hiding anything. It just happened. I don’t know what the trigger was. I don’t see any clue in the manual. It was an impulsive thing, just seemed right. And I have no reason to lie to you. The manual we got is incomplete. There’s at least one section missing, something on FL-7, whatever that is. My bet is it’s to do with Sparrow’s space flight capability. There’s some kind of energy field inside that thing when you open it up. That ship has a power source we haven’t seen yet. Didn’t we pay our Russian friends enough money?”
Sedona Conspiracy Page 12