“I wish I could do something to help, Iggy.”
said Lizzy, pushing strands of dark hair from her glasses with a forefinger.
Watching the appraisers crawl all over the
property made Iggy want to scream. The creditors wanted everything, and then
some. Besides the agents of banks, FBI agents scanned and poked through every
part of the spaceport as well. The feds refused to explain to him exactly what
they wanted. Iggy knew it couldn’t be anything listed in the warrant. There
were no illegal weapons or drugs on the site.
“There isn’t anything you can do. Had I
known just how much we were in hock, I would have quit Caltech months ago. I
guess that’s why my dad didn’t tell me.”
His father had somehow held the creditors
at bay with a mix of minimum payments and promises of future profits, but with
his death they flocked like vultures. Iggy knew his school days were behind him.
He expected to lose Lizzy, too, however much she said otherwise. She would
return to classes and he would be in Utah
“You should have let me know right away
what was going on,” she chided, “instead of just disappearing from campus and texting
me three days later. I’d have flown here with you.”
“I needed to face the funeral few days
alone. I can’t really explain why, but I had to. I do appreciate you being here
now.”
Iggy ran his hand over the heat-resistant
skin of Pogo, the spacecraft designed
and largely built by his father. Black
Sky Adventures was painted in cursive on the fuselage. Pogo was in small print. “I hate losing Pogo the most,” he said. “My dad put so much of himself into it. He
said it would make us rich.”
“At least you got to fly it. That’s
something,” said Lizzy.
“I flew in it. I sat in the co-pilot’s seat
on one flight when it still was named Sky
Biscuit and never really took the controls.”
“It’s still more than most people ever will
do. Any idea when tour flights will be allowed again?”
“No. The big outfits are still flying
paying passengers, of course – even Meteor
Spacelines, and it was their damn
ship that broke up on re-entry last year. The big companies just moved their
launch sites outside FAA jurisdiction. We couldn’t afford to do that. No
flights, no money. It’s why we’re broke. The creditors agents already flew out The Forklift yesterday. That’s the conventional jet that carries Pogo
up to 15 kilometers altitude. Pogo
then cuts loose and goes the rest of the way to space by itself.”
“Why Pogo?”
she asked. “You said the name used to be SkyBiscuit.”
“One of my dad’s little jokes. All our
flights over 100k, the boundary of space as conventionally defined, have been
purely ballistic arcs. We don’t go into orbit. But the big money is taking
passengers all the way around the world. That is much more problematic. You
need more thrust and then you need better heat shielding because of the higher
re-entry velocity. Building a passenger ship capable of orbit was outside our
budget. My dad thought there was another way.”
“What way?”
“The plan was a business secret, but I
guess it doesn’t matter now. There is an alternative to standard orbit that was
proposed way back in the 1940s by Eugen Sanger. He suggested that a spaceplane could
skip atop the atmosphere like a rock across the surface of a pond. The speed
would be lower and so the heat shielding requirements for the return would be
lower, too. We still needed boost up our thrust, but not by as much.”
“So the ship is Pogo because it will bounce on the atmosphere like a pogo stick,”
she said.
“Precisely. Well, not precisely because now
it will never get the chance.”
“That explains the ship, but why did he
name you Igor? Because you’re the lab assistant to his Frankenstein?”
Iggy forced a mile. “No that was my mom’s
idea. It was my grandfather’s name.”
“One more question, though you don’t have
to answer.”
“What?”
“Why does the FBI think there are weapons
and drugs here?” Lizzy asked. “Is it because of the lab explosion that killed
your dad?”
“I don’t think so. They just needed an
excuse for a warrant, so they made up that nonsense. Why wouldn’t I answer you?
Do you think we’re drug smugglers?”
“Hey, don’t get defensive,” she said. “I’m
just asking. So, why do you think the Feds are here?” she asked.
“You wouldn’t believe me.”
“Try me.”
“Ok. My dad had funny ideas toward the end about
cold fusion, and he talked about them openly. Maybe he was just getting
desperate and was grasping at straws. He had a lot of funny ideas about a lot
of things. Some of them even worked. He’d drop the ones that didn’t after a
while, so I learned not to argue with him, but to let him work things out for
himself. So, I figured this was just his latest quirk, and he’d drop it
eventually.”
“Cold fusion is nonsense – a 20th
century pipe dream,” said Lizzy. “Surely the FBI can’t think your dad succeeded
at it.”
“I’m not sure at all. Oh, I don’t believe
in cold fusion either. Initiating thermonuclear hydrogen fusion requires
temperatures of 100,000,000 degrees. You can’t do it with a room-temperature bottle
of water and a household electric current. None of 20th century claims of
results ever could be substantiated or replicated. But I think the Feds are
checking anyway.”
“Crazy. Can you show me the space ship?”
she asked, changing the subject. “I’ve never been inside one.”
“Yeah, sure. Until all the paperwork is
processed, it’s still mine. Have you ever flown in one?”
“No. I can’t afford the ticket prices.”
“Do you want me to roll the stairway here?”
he asked.
“Not unless you need it.”
Iggy hoisted himself through the open hatch
into Pogo. He took Lizzy’s hand, and
helped pull her inside. Out of long habit, he closed and secured the hatch
behind them. The ceiling height was too low enough for either them us to stand
upright. The spacecraft wobbled under their feet.
“It feels kind of flimsy. No offense,” she
said.
“None taken, but it is not flimsy. It is
lightweight. Not the same thing.”
“Only eight passenger seats?”
“Even eight passengers are a lot of weight
to get into space.”
They entered the cockpit. Iggy sat in the co-pilot
seat and let Lizzy sit in the pilot chair.
“I expected the panel to be more complex,”
she said.
“It doesn’t need to be. The computer
handles the whole flight unless we override it. Any data we need shows up on
the LED display.”
Iggy turned on the interior power. The LED
and panel lights lit up.
“Cool. Did you check for radiation?” she
asked.
“What? Where? In here?”
“No, in the lab debris. If you dad really
was playing with cold fusion, maybe he got his hands on deuterium-tritium.”
“Heavy hydrogen?”
“Yes. It would explain the FBI’s concerns.
And D-T can burn explosively if ignited, so it might even explain the accident.
There would be radioactive traces from the tritium.
“Interesting thought. No, I didn’t check
for radioactivity.”
“Is what we’re doing dangerous?” she asked.
“This ship isn’t fueled, is it?”
“Yes, it is fueled, but it’s not especially
dangerous. In fact, I’m not even sure the engine will work. My dad rebuilt the
whole engine while I was away. I looked back there and it’s screwy as hell.”
“What’s screwy about it?”
“Well, it’s always been a hybrid engine,
with a solid fuel and a liquid oxidizer. It still sort-of looks like one, but
the liquid oxygen tank has been replaces by a smaller pressurized tank of
gaseous O2. I don’t see how it can hold enough to
keep the fuel burning all the way to 100 klicks. In the space created by the
smaller tank he added something that doesn’t seem to do anything but emit a
range of sound waves, mostly very low frequency.”
“What frequencies?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had a chance to
test it. I only know as much as I do from some very incomplete notes left by my
dad, but they are more about how to assemble the device than about what it
does.”
“Why would a sound be part of the engine??”
“Beats me. My dad thought outside the box.”
“She pointed at the LED display where a
virtual button was marked “sonics.”
“Would this tell us?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Lizzy touched the LED screen.
Iggy and Lizzie slammed back into their
seats as flame roared out the back of Pogo.
Iggy grappled at the control stick and lifted the nose before Pogo reached the end of the tarmac. He
turned control to the computer as he felt himself losing consciousness, even
though he was unsure what it would do. For both Lizzy and Iggy, the world went
away. When they regained consciousness they were in black sky. The engine no
longer was firing.
Iggy quickly called up the ship’s stats.
Lizzy coughed and wheezed. “Do you ever get
any repeat customers?” she croaked.
“It’s not supposed to do that.”
“No shit.”
“No fertilizer of any kind. We don’t take
off from the ground. We airdrop.”
“What’s our altitude?”
“Nearing 900 kilometers.”
“I’d say your dad got the thrust he
wanted.”
“I wish he had told me.”
“Not as much as I do. The button said
‘sonics,’ not ‘shoot your ass into space.’ Your ship has lousy labels. We’re
not stuck up here are we?” Lizzy asked.
“The computer chose a ballistic parabola,
because that’s what it always has done. I guess my dad didn’t get around to
upgrading the software for the atmospheric skipping. We should reach apogee at
about 2400 klicks and then drop back toward the atmosphere.”
“Good.”
“Not really. We’re too high. We’ll
accelerate too much on the way down. We’ll burn up on re-entry.”
“What if we try that atmospheric skipping?”
“No good. Our trajectory is all wrong. We
have a thrust in the maneuvering jets, but enough to matter,” said Iggy. “We
need the main engine to do that.”
“Do we have fuel left?” she asked.
“The readings say so. The computer shut the
engine down. We didn’t run out of fuel.”
“So fire the main engine.”
“Nothing. The computer won’t give up
control.”
“Hit that sonics button again.”
He did. “Nothing.”
“So we’re going to die?”
“Unless you come up with a great idea in
about 15 minutes.”
She closed her eyes and frowned. “Didn’t
some of the cold fusion nuts claim to collapse bubbles of D-T in acetone by
using sound waves?” she asked.
“None of those experiments ever were
repeatable.”
“But maybe they weren’t repeatable because
they overlooked some minor detail the second time. What if the researchers
really weren’t frauds or self-delusional? What if, every now and then, one of
the experiments did work? Maybe your dad figured out what was different about
the ones that worked from the ones that didn’t. Suppose he modified the fuel so
that D-T bubbles collapse in it from sound waves. The D-T fuses – not enough to
blow us to bits but enough to thrust us into space.”
“It sounds pretty unlikely.”
“Here we are,” she answered.
“Point taken. But we’re still going to die.
We’re descending by the way.”
“Your father must have figured a way to get
back down safely.”
They both went silent and stared out the
window at the spectacular view. The earth loomed ever larger.
“I have an idea,” said Iggy. “but it will
work only if everything you said is right.”
“Then I want half the intellectual property
rights when we reverse engineer everything.”
“You’re negotiating with me? Now?”
“Yes.”
“Fine, fine.”
“What’s you plan?”
“Nothing,” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing. You’re right: my dad would not
have planned a one way trip. Let the computer do its thing.”
“But the autopilot didn’t do that skip
thing you talked about.”
“My dad probably didn’t want to test
everything at once. The first step would be just an engine test. Maybe it will
fire the engine at the right moment.
“What if it doesn’t?”
“Then it’s been a pleasure knowing you.”
They remained silent as Pogo accelerated downward. Readings
“Is that a good sign?” Lizzy asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe. Or maybe the computer
is just following standard procedure in past flights without taking account of
our higher speed this time.”
“You’re so reassuring.”
Pogo rattled
and shook with increasing violence. Iggy watched the temperature continue to
rise. The cabin was growing warm, too.
“Are we supposed to spark?” she asked.
“We’re ablating,” he said.
“I know what we’re doing. Are we supposed
to be doing it?”
“We’ll find out in a couple minutes. That’s
how long we have until the skin peels away if nothing else changes,” he said.
Pogo’s
nose turned up. The engine fired in a series of short teeth-rattling bursts.
“The oxidizer tank is dumping its contents.
I think the idea is just to provide a dense enough medium in the combustion
chamber for the sound waves,” he said.
“Explain it to my dentist. Your spaceship
sucks!”
“Isn’t it our spaceship?”
“No, just the intellectual rights are ours.
The ship is yours.”
The cabin temperature rose from toasty to
sweltering.
“We’re almost out of fuel,” said Iggy.
“Is that good or bad?”
“The good news is that we’re down to Mach
3. The bad news is that we’re still going Mach 3.”
The burn of the last dregs of fuel lasted
only seconds but it cut velocity to Mach 2.
With its wings firmly biting air, Pogo
executed a series of wide sweeping arcs.
“What are we doing?” she asked.
“We’re bleeding off speed. Oh crap!”
“Now what?”
“The autopilot shut off.”
“It failed?”
“I don’t think so. I think my dad intended
to fly by hand the rest of the way down.”
“So do it!”
“But down where? We’re over the Pacific.
We’re gliding without power, and if I turn I don’t think I can get back to the
mainland.”
“Why would the computer aim at the Pacific?
I don’t know. I didn’t program it! But the
Forklift could retrieve Pogo from anywhere with a runway, so… Damn, we’re
going to overshoot Hawaii
“Where then?”
“Maybe Midway Islands .
The runways there should be empty.”
“I don’t suppose this thing floats in case
you miss,” she said.
“Never tried it. I don’t want to try it.”
Pogo 1 continued
to descend. An atoll appeared ahead.
“I think that’s it. I’ll try the runway on
the smaller island up ahead.”
He tapped a command to the computer to
lower landing gear.
“Are the gear down?” she asked.
“I hope so.”
Iggy’s stomach lurched as he increased his
angle of descent.
“The water is awfully close, Iggy”
“We need every inch of that runway.”
The island slipped beneath them. The tires
screeched on pavement.
“I guess the gear came down,” he said.
“Brakes!”
“I am braking.”
“The runway is too short!”
As they reached the edge of the runway Iggy
released the brakes and pulled back on the stick. Pogo went momentarily airborne,
but then stalled, bellied into the surf, and settled into sand in a meter of
water just off the beach
of Eastern Island
“I guess I should have used the runway on
the bigger island.”
“We’re alive” Lizzy said. “Why isn’t anyone
rushing to the crash?” she asked.
“Midway used to be a military base, but now
the islands are a wildlife preserve.”
“You mean we’re here alone?”
“There might be an ornithologist or two
visiting Sand Island Hawaii
“I want an air conditioned hotel room on Waikiki .”
“I’m broke.”
“I’m not. Besides, we can afford it. Do you
know what this tech is worth? By this time next year we can buy the hotel.”
Iggy decided not to question the “we.”
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