"Cut the quips!" Morrow growled mockingly. "I think the idea will work.
We'll just have to design the ship so it looks weird enough to excite
the imagination. It may have some aerodynamic faults, but it's worth
the trouble."
"We can't make it _too_ fancy," Smitty warned. "It's still gotta fly!"
"We don't want it too fancy--just so it _looks_ like a spaceship!
First thing we'll have to do, though, is check the costs of plastic
construction materials for aircraft." Morrow gulped the last of his
meal down with a swallow of coffee, stacked his cup, plate, and
utensils, and set them aside. "We don't want to go too deep into our
capital to build this ship," he said wryly. "The lease on this property
has already soaked us two thousand."
"What'll the shop machinery come to?" Smitty asked pensively.
"Around a thousand, I think."
"Then I think we can build the ship for around--well, anywhere from one
to three thousand dollars. At the most, that'll be just over half our
capital down the drain." He frowned. "What'll the rest of it be for?
Operating expenses?"
"Mostly that. There are a few other ideas I'd like to try out,
though--experiments with these mechanisms. But remember that we're
dedicated to this thing until the world situation changes and we can
turn it loose without any risk. That may not come for years!"
"I've thought about it," Smitty retorted, grinning. "There's a deer run
over near our Kawich mountain hide-out, and other game is plentiful.
Our meat supply for the next hundred years costs no more than the price
of a couple of hunting rifles."
Morrow shook his head. "That might be fine, Smitty. Maybe we could
plant a vegetable garden, too, and live off the land. But I don't think
we should subject ourselves to the life of a hermit. We've got to keep
our perspective with this thing, and not get anti-social about it."
"A hermit's life would get kinda boring, anyway," Smitty conceded. "But
I can always go back to crop-dusting and make a few dollars now and
then. What'll you do, though? Can you get a job?"
"I know electronics!" Morrow smiled grimly. "I suppose I could open up
a little radio repair shop somewhere."
"You? A radio repair shop? The first real genius this country's had
for--" Smitty broke off, staring at him.
Morrow stared back, scowling. "Genius?" he echoed. "What in hell ever
gave you _that_ idea?"
Smitty grinned faintly as he lighted a cigarette. "Guess I'm just
carried away by your two heads," he said, spewing smoke.
* * * * *
It was a full month's work just to purchase the shop machinery, the
building materials to patch up the old sawmill, the materials for
the ship's construction, and to truck it out and install it in the
building. They worked from daylight 'till dark, then retired to their
shack and spent most of the night going over the blue-prints for the
ship. Gradually, it took shape and form on paper.
Masses of cloud were banked against the surrounding mountains, covering
the sky with a solid, gray mass that shook loose a thin drizzle of
rain, just enough to dampen the ground, the morning they conducted the
first weight-test.
They used the gravity-control mechanism--they called it a _gravitor_
by then--which Morrow had built in Westerton. The test was conducted
outside, with a sling suspended under the gravitor to support a pile of
sandbags, with a rope hanging from its bottom to a small hand-winch on
the ground.
The gravitor rose up into the drizzle with its load, lifting three
hundred and sixty-nine pounds to a height of forty feet. It floated
there, the rope dangling loosely from it. There was an odd three-foot
S-curve in the rope just below the sandbagged sling.
Smitty stared up at it, squinting against the misty rain. "It just
floats there!" he exclaimed huskily. "On four flashlight batteries--"
"The wind's drifting it toward the trees," Morrow said in a tight
voice. "Better take up the slack."
Smitty stooped and wound up the little hand-winch. Then he straightened
and stared upward again. "On four batteries," he repeated in his husky
murmur. "Look at that snake-twist in the rope!"
"That part of it's inside the gravitor's field," Morrow explained
quietly. "As for the batteries, I think it's because the mechanism is
shielded from the gravity and magnetic influence of the earth. It works
entirely within its own magnetic field. Its electronic conductivity is
more efficient, so we're getting far more power from those flashlight
batteries."
"But _is_ there that much power in a flashlight battery?"
"Don't forget those batteries are also inside the gravitor field,"
Morrow reminded him. "Anyway, I'm not even sure that's the answer.
The scientific implications of this extend to such matters as the
dimensions and volume of the Universe, and the speed of light. Maybe
the Universe isn't expanding and maybe light 'particles' or 'congealed
energy' or whatever they are don't slow down. Maybe they curve through
a kaliedoscope of gravitational forces generated by star-clusters, and
the 'expansion' is a matter of refraction in our particular sector of
space--"
"Do you have these attacks often?"
Morrow looked down to find Smitty watching him with a mocking leer.
"C'mon, professor," Smitty chided him. "Let's crank this thing down and
get in out of the rain."
"Ummm? Oh--all right!"
* * * * *
Crude wooden jigs were sawed out and nailed together. Plastic tubing
was heated and curled into the jigs and, when cooled, was taken out
in the precise shapes of formers, spars, and bulk-head frames. These
were welded onto thick plastic rods and the rough outline of the ship
began to appear. More rods were added, strengthening the framework, and
the ship began to assume its final shape in a spidery basket-work of
glistening, transparent plastic.
The covering was torn off a large roll of celatex film, and long strips
of it were spread through the inside of the framework and cut to size.
The strips were dipped in a softening bath, then stretched across the
inside of the framework, pressed against it and, drying, molding to
it to form a tough, rigid inner skin. Fistfuls of plastic insulating
material was dipped and sponged into the openings in the framework,
molding to it and to the inner skin. Then more strips of celatex were
cut to size over the outside of the framework, dipped, and stretched
over it to form a strong outer skin. The result was a large, sleek
hull, with a shimmering basket-weave framework and frosty-white, fuzzy
insulation showing through its transparent skin.
Gravitors for the lift units and the propulsion unit were built,
tested, and installed. A cargo deck was built into the belly of
the ship, accessable through large side doors. Power circuits and
control systems were installed. The forward, control pit, and aft
compartment decks and bulk-heads were welded into place. Then they
let their imaginations run riot on the interior decoration, fittings,
and furnishings which were easily constructed of plastic framework
with celatex stretched and pressed firmly over it to form the desired
curves, bulges, and flowing lines. Then they went over it with
sand-paper, paint-brushes, and dark blue and mirror-chrome plastic
lacquer.
The interior was, to put it mildly, luxurious and ultra-modern. Smooth,
flowing instrument panels and storage lockers molded into the walls,
foam-rubber chairs growing out of the decks, bunk-seats sunk into the
bulk-heads, and transparent-topped tables sprouting their chrome frames
from the fore and aft lounge decks. They finished it up with a small
lavatory and an electric hot-plate in the bulk-head cubicles just off
the forward lounge.
Finally, transparent plexiglass was fitted into the long port-hole
slots along the hull, and a large plexiglass dome was mounted over
the control pit above the smoothly tapered nose. Then they papered
the plexiglass and manned a spray-gun, giving the entire outer skin a
thorough coat of shimmering black lacquer.
The complete construction took all of six weeks working from dawn to
well after sunset. When it was finished, Smitty took the truck and went
into Stockton to purchase the three automobile batteries which would be
used to power the ship.
That night, Morrow sat at his drafting table scrawling rough diagrams
and pencilling in mathematical notations around them and on the back of
the papers. His table lamp threw a bright pool of light in the corner
of the dark, shadowy workshop. The night was completely silent, save
for the distant sighing of the wind through the pines outside, the
faint scratching sound of his pencil, and the clicking and whispering
of the slide-rule in his hands when he paused to compute some factor in
the diagrams.
Building and weight-testing the gravitors that went into the ship
had led to speculation of other possible uses of the mechanisms. The
possibilities were many, and Morrow spent his spare-time working them
out. His ability, however, was limited.
First, there was the electronic efficiency of the gravitors, the
increased power gained from battery storage-cells, the decreased
loss of power within the circuits and mechanism. If electrons
worked more efficiently in a gravitor's field, then mechanical and
chemical power might work just as well. It appeared, on paper, that
a small, one-horsepower gasoline engine might deliver the equivalent
of a hundred horsepower or more in electrical energy, if it were
incorporated into a gravitor field. Morrow worked this "gravitor
engine" out the best he could, cursing his lack of knowledge in
mechanical engineering. It might work, but he didn't have the knowledge
to tell exactly how it could be made. It wasn't his line.
Then, there was the possibility of using the increased gravitor-field
efficiency in radio communications. This was right up his alley,
but the implications went so far and so deep that only a thoroughly
experienced and trained scientist could trace all of them. He hadn't
been an engineer long enough to have acquired that much training and
experience; he wasn't a renowned scientist in the field. He couldn't
always be sure where he was right or wrong in his computations. This
was pure research; no book had ever been written for it. He couldn't
look up all the answers.
But it appeared that a small radio set would have the power to reach
anywhere in the Solar System, not to mention the extensive refinements
of any television and/or radar set-up.
The possible refinements of chemical catalysts and electro-chemical
processes were extensive, too. Staring at his diagrammatical results,
Morrow wondered if mechanisms couldn't be perfected to measure
the taste of foodstuffs as the taste-buds in the human mouth did,
to measure the smell of odors as the human nose did, to convert
carbon-dioxide into oxygen as plants did--even mechanisms which would
react selectively to the electrical impulses generated by the cells of
the human brain!
But he wasn't a chemist. He could only guess at the possibilities.
Finally, there was the possibility of applying the gravitors directly
to the problem of transporting the human body by air. Part of this,
he could answer: a gravitor strapped to a man's back would more than
replace the conventional parachute for emergency bail-outs. The
gravitor could be hooked into alternate power-circuits with alternate
field-transmission coils, so if it failed to work on one setting the
wearer could switch it to another, the equivalent of wearing a second
parachute in case the first failed to open. And unlike a parachute,
the wearer would have complete control over his rate of fall: he could
descend gently to the ground or, if he wished, he could stop and hover
in the air or even reverse his descent and rise upward.
That was part of it. Morrow had discussed it with Smitty and they'd
decided to incorporate it into their project. In addition to having
the ship look like something from outer space, there was also the
problem of having to make a forced-landing somewhere. They might be
seen on the ground, repairing their ship. The gravitors could be built
into a tank carried on their backs, and fastened to a special harness
costume complete with transparent helmet fitting over their heads. The
helmets would protect their faces from the wind in a bail-out. Also,
their appearance would be altered just enough to make them seem to
be visitors from another planet, beings who did not breathe Earth's
atmosphere.
But that still didn't give the human body a means of transportation
by air. A small, portable propulsion unit was needed for that, and
Morrow wasn't at all sure he could design such a unit. He was not a jet
engineer.
He wasn't too sure about the large propulsion unit in the tail of the
ship, either. Basically, it was a ram-jet unit. It ought to work, but
it might not work too well....
* * * * *
Morrow tossed down his pencil and slide-rule, sighing, then pressed his
hands over his aching eyes and rose from the table. _It's too much for
one man!_ he thought bitterly, and dropped his hands to his sides.
He stood gazing into the deep gloom of the workshop, at the huge,
black hull gleaming softly in the darkness. Fifty-five feet long and
fifteen feet high, the ship rested patiently on the narrow runners
that supported its sleek belly. Twenty-five hundred dollars and
six weeks of cautious, painstaking work rolled into one beautiful,
fantastic-looking black monster with curved fins around the cluster of
"rocket" tubes in its tail and streamlined, submarine-type diving vanes
near its nose. Those vanes had been Smitty's contribution, operating
on a cross-control system to bank the ship and lift it around a turn
as the aileron-elevators did on flying wing aircraft. No other control
surfaces were installed; the long, sleek rudder fin was immovable.
The night wind soughed through the forest on some nearby mountain
slope. The ship stood black and silent, gleaming softly in the deep
gloom of the workshop. It was a weirdly beautiful thing, like some
creature of the Unknown.
_Straight out of the science-fiction magazines!_ Morrow mused,
grinning. _If Gwyn could only see it--_
A vision of her rose into his thoughts: Gwyn, lying on her stomach,
the tight roll of her swimming trunks about her thighs, the smooth,
tanned skin of her slender body, the firm swell of a breast beneath
her armpit, the sunlight glints on her brown hair and the cool, calm
wariness in her eyes....
Morrow grimaced wryly. Gwyn again! He'd been thinking entirely too
often of her, and too much, since he'd left Westerton. He kept telling
himself she was just another of the sacrifices he'd been forced to
make, another part of his life he'd had to deny himself--
Still, when he slept he dreamed.
He was just too damned young, he told himself harshly. The demands of
his body were strongest at his age; it wouldn't let him alone. His
instinct to mate, to reproduce his kind, demanded satisfaction. There
was danger in that. If he fought it, denied it, kept it bottled up
inside him, it could spread and infest his whole being until it became
a perverse fixation on sex. He had to have some outlet for it. Time
off from his work, time to relax and enjoy female companionship, the
nearness of a woman. An older man, in whom the mating lust had had time
to diminish until it wasn't quite so strong and insistent--an older man
could retire and live in an ivory tower of science. He couldn't. He
must make allowance for it.
Find himself a girl in town. A date, a little moonlight and soft talk.
Forget about a girl three thousand miles away. Forget Gwyn....
But he wished she were here. He wished she could see the ship.
Dawn was etching its rose-colored light in the East when Smitty drove
in the yard.
* * * * *
They installed the batteries and climbed out through the simulated
air-lock entrance to the ship, peeling off their gloves and shoving
them into their hip pockets. Smitty turned, wiping his hands on his
coveralls, and looked up at the ship.
"We can ground-test her without taking her outside," he said
plaintively.
Morrow picked up his mackinaw and slung it over his shoulder, grinning.
"Can't you wait 'til tonight?"
Smitty scowled at him. "Suppose she doesn't check out? Then we'll spend
the rest of the night overhauling her! We oughta give her a ground-test
right in here, Bill."
"Fair enough--if she doesn't go through the roof! But let's wait 'till
after breakfast, anyway." He walked over to the stove, checked its
fire, and shoved a couple more sticks onto it to keep it burning until
they got back. "C'mon," he prompted, heading for the door. "I'm hungry
if you aren't!"
They left the workshop and crunched through the brittle ground-frost
to their shack. Morrow took his turn as cook, whipped up a batch of
sausage, eggs, and pancakes, and boiled the coffee to the strength he
preferred--which Smitty diluted liberally with canned milk. They gulped
down their breakfast, cleaned the dishes, and strode deliberately back
to the workshop. The chill November air bit into their clothes, but
neither hastened his pace.
As they entered the warmth and shadow of the workshop and pulled off
their coats, Morrow felt a fluttery sensation in his stomach which he
carefully neglected to mention. It was probably indigestion, anyway.
Smitty, too, was silent. He tossed his coat on the workbench, strode
straight to the open air-lock door, and clambored up into the ship. A
tight grin creased Morrow's face as he followed with what casualness he
could muster.
They moved through the luxurious forward lounge and climbed the metal
steps into the control pit. Smitty slipped into the pilot's seat behind
the controls and flight panel, up forward. Morrow took the flight
engineer's seat behind the instrument console, on the left side of the
transparent blister dome. The console sloped gently, like a desk-top,
its surface glittering with a dozen instrument dials, twenty-four
switches, forty-eight signal lights, two knobs and master switches, and
a jet-blast temperature gauge.
"Flight station checks," Smitty reported quietly.
"Roger." Morrow swept his hands across the console, flipping on the
twenty-four switches. "Stand by for gravitor check," he added, then
clicked on the two knobs.
The ship shifted slightly beneath them. The faint, sighing sound of
wind came from the tail.
On the console, twenty-one signal lights flashed blue. Three flashed
red. Morrow scowled at them.
"Report gravitor check!" Smitty prompted impatiently.
"Three gravitors out," Morrow growled. "One auxiliary lifter, one
auxiliary and one main drive gravitor. Must be a short in 'em
somewhere."
"We don't need the drives for a ground-test," Smith reminded him. "Cut
to main lift units and let's try her out!"
"Wilco." He switched off the drive knob and the twelve auxiliary lifter
switches. "Stand by to rise!"
The sighing wind was gone from the tail. He gripped the lifter knob in
his fingertips and, turning his head, stared out at the dark floor of
the workshop below.
He turned the knob, cautiously.
The ship rocked gently, then lifted. The floor dropped away beneath
them.
"Watch it!" Smitty warned tersely.
The ship paused, then seemed to settle.
They floated serenely, twenty feet above the workshop floor. The heavy
rafters of the roof loomed close over the transparent blister.
Smitty cleared his throat, nervously. "I think that's high enough!" he
exclaimed.
Morrow permitted himself a fleeting grin, then began to inch the knob
back toward its stop. "Stand by for descent!" he warned.
The ship settled slowly. The floor rose up with majestic
deliberation--then paused again.
"How high are we?" Morrow asked.
"A little over four feet on the altimeter," Smitty replied. "Want to
hold her here a while?"
"I want you to climb out and see how much it alters her lift," Morrow
explained. "One less passenger shouldn't affect it at all, but let's
make sure."
"Wilco." Smitty rose from his seat and came back toward the steps.
"Jump around a little," Morrow said. "See if it rocks her any."
Grinning, Smitty banged noisily down the steps and clattered back
through the ship. She rode perfectly still, unmoving. Smiling his
satisfaction, Morrow waited.
Then Smitty walked around the bulge of the nose, on the floor below,
and waved to him. Morrow waved back and, rising, moved up to the front
seat. The altimeter still registered slightly over four feet. He
returned to the console, sat down--and snapped off the lift knob.
The ship settled immediately to the floor, struck lightly, and rocked
to a standstill. Morrow clambored down the steps and felt his way back
through the dark interior to the air-lock.
Smitty was waiting for him as he dropped to the floor. "She checks,
doesn't she?"
"She checks," Morrow affirmed. "Now let's get to work on those shorted
gravitors!"
* * * * *
The first night's tests were preliminary. They lifted the ship a few
feet off the ground and flew it across the sawmill yard and back. They
switched the gravitors from main to auxiliary systems. They loaded the
cargo deck amidships with sandbags and flew a weight-test. They took
the ship up to fifty feet and held it there until the wind, blowing
them toward the trees, forced them to come down.
The ship checked out in every test. They decided to make the first
trial flight the next night.
Morrow sat up in the co-pilot's seat beside Smitty as they drove
steadily through the darkness. Above, the stars twinkled coldly in
the black heavens and the white sickle of a quarter-moon threw its
milky glow into the control pit. Below, rolling gray stretches of
meadow spread out between dark, timber-clad shoulders and humps of the
Sierras. To the East, the timber gave way to rocky, cloud-wreathed
peaks. They were headed toward them, and climbing.
"Five thousand on the altimeter," Smitty remarked flatly. "That's ten
thousand, five hundred above sea-level. She isn't levelling out yet."
His face was grim in the green glow of the instrument dials.
Behind them, the black, glinting hull was crammed with sandbags. They
were lifting a full load.
Morrow kept his gaze fixed on the air-speed indicator. A deep, whooming
sound came from the tail-jets. The needle on the indicator dial
flickered restlessly, back and forth, over a single point.
They were doing forty miles an hour, indicated air-speed. They hadn't
been able to increase that speed. A brisk twenty-five-mile-an-hour wind
was blowing them steadily southward off their course.