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  “Didn’t want to talk to her,” Vaz said, sounding sullen.

  “Why not?”

  “Afraid she’d want me to…” he trailed off.

  “Want you to do what?”

  “I don’t know. Something... something I didn’t want to do.”

  Tiona stifled the urge to laugh, “Still, she’s the President. You should’ve at least talked to her. She wanted to invite you to the White House for a celebration of the invention of the thrusters and our spacecraft’s mission to rescue the astronauts.”

  “I knew she’d want me to do something I didn’t want to do. You’re a lot better at telling people “no” without making them mad than I am.”

  Tiona sighed, “You’re sure? Visiting the White House is quite the honor.”

  “Not interested,” Vaz said, sounding bored with the topic. He picked up a thermos sized device with a spray of cables coming out of one end, “I finished the thirty kilowatt fusion generator for your personal flyer.” He held it out to her, looking uncomfortable, “I’ll have my AI send yours the specs, what the labels on the cables indicate, and how the control circuits work.”

  “This is great!” Tiona said hefting the cylinder. “It’s a lot smaller than I thought it would be.” She studied her dad for a moment. Unusually, he was continuing to look in her general direction rather than immediately going back to his previous task. It looked like he really wanted to say something. “Is there anything else?”

  “Um, yeah. I’ve been thinking a lot about…” he slowed and stopped.

  “About what?”

  “Well, uh, a personal flyer could be pretty dangerous…” As if in a rush, he suddenly continued, “I’ve worked out some programming blocks in my head that I think could keep you safer while you’re riding it. You, uh, probably already worked that out for yourself, but if you’d like some help when you get to that part…?”

  Tiona stepped around and gave him a hug. He woodenly held still for it. She said, “Of course Dad. I’d love to have your help with anything that keeps me safe. I know you’re really good at programming.”

  “Okay,” he said. Looking discombobulated he turned back to his 300 kW fusor.

  Grinning at his discomfort, Tiona turned to the side of the lab where she’d been accumulating parts for her “flycycle” as she thought of it. She’d made up a pair of nine inch discs that she planned to mount side by side. The rider would sit on a bicycle seat with the side-by-side discs just behind her. A little ways in front would be a twelve inch disc and some handlebars to hang on to. With thirty kilowatts of power, the three discs should lift 380 pounds. Carrying no more than Tiona’s weight, the flycycle should be pretty nimble.

  Tiona went back to her dad’s screens to work on the design for the flycycle frame. Thinking about designs, she turned to Vaz, “Dad, when we were precipitating membranes in the big saucer out at Costa and Sons, Pete Costa, one of the “sons” talked to me about his ideas for radiation shielding. He’s thinking ahead to when the saucers might spend a long time out there, mining big asteroids or exploring various planets.”

  Vaz had turned to look at Tiona expressionlessly. He didn’t make any comments or pose any questions, so Tiona continued, “In deep space you’re mostly shielding against positively charged particles like protons from the solar wind and high-energy heavy nuclei in the form of cosmic rays. Materials containing a lot of hydrogen like water or hydrocarbons make for pretty good shields. He wants to put a layer of water around the living quarters because it could be used for drinking or broken down for oxygen to breathe if you needed it. You could even fill the airlock with it between uses to improve the shielding in that region.” Tiona paused to see what her dad thought.

  Vaz blinked a couple of times, then said, “I was thinking active shielding since the fusion reactors give us a lot more power than we need.” He paused and spoke to his AI for a second, then looked up at a screen which had just displayed a new set of diagrams. “This is the design I’ve come up with so far. It uses coils that’ll superconduct once they get out into the low temperatures of space as long as they’re shaded and mounted on radiators. The coils will generate a magnetic field, which, combined with an electrostatic shield, should deflect solar protons and high-energy cosmic ray particles.” His eyes flicked to Tiona for a second, then returned to his diagrams, “I designed it as an add-on instead of building it into the saucer because it’s all based on theoretical work. We don’t actually know if it’ll work. Redesigning and reworking it is going to be a lot easier if we can work on it without having to dismantle the big saucer.”

  “Oh, that looks a lot smaller and lighter than the passive water shield I was talking about.”

  “Yeah, but it may not work. You shouldn’t throw away the passive design.”

  ***

  Nolan’s car pulled up and parked on the street in front of the Gettnors’ house in Raleigh. He found himself feeling nervous. He hadn’t seen Tiona for days now, though they’d called back and forth. He’d had plenty of time, but he knew she was really busy.

  But now, they were going to spend some time together, and it was mostly because of his desire to play astronaut. The fact that she was willing to take time to do it made him feel loved, but he wondered if she might be about to change her mind. He found himself thinking that surely she wouldn’t stick with him.

  He laughed at himself a little as he got his suitcase out of the back; in days gone by he would have thought that his prospects for significant royalties on the multilayered graphene might have made him a prize catch for women. However, if there was anyone in the world who wouldn’t care about his impending riches, it would be Tiona.

  With some trepidation he approached the door. The house AI said, “Come in Mr. Marlowe, Tiona is expecting…”

  The AI cut off as the door slammed open, Tiona took two flying steps across the porch and launched herself into his arms. Hugging him hard, she sniffed and whispered in his ear, “Some kind of boyfriend you are, I haven’t seen you for days!” She leaned back to look at him with gleaming, flashing eyes, “I was expecting more attention from you after that mushy talk in the saucer last week!” She leaned forward for a kiss.

  The kiss went on for a long time before she pulled back to break it. She grinned, “You can put me down now. I’d hate for you to hold me so long you got tired, thus implying through your trembling arms that I was heavy.”

  He grinned back, “Never! Never, though I held you ‘til the end of time, would my arms dare tremble ‘neath your dainty self.”

  ***

  Sophie’s AI chimed, “You have a call from Tiona.”

  Sophie checked her time display, Nine o’clock at night, that’s a weird time to be calling. “I’ll take it… Tiona! What’s up?”

  “Nolan and I are on our way to Houston for our spacesuit fitting and training tomorrow. We thought maybe we could take you out for a beer?”

  “Tomorrow?” Sophie said, thinking it would be weird to go out for beer in the middle of their training day, but she owed Tiona too much to object. “What time?”

  “We’ll be there in 25 to 30 minutes.”

  “Oh! It’ll, uh, take me about forty minutes to get to the airport. Actually, I guess that would be about perfect, I can pick you up out at the curb.”

  Tiona gave a little laugh, “We’re not coming to the airport. We’re in the saucer. What’s your address? We’ll pick you up and take you to your favorite bar in style.”

  Sophie’s heart skipped a beat in excitement, “Really?!” She gave Tiona her address, “Where are you now?”

  “Lifting pretty much straight up over Raleigh. Let’s see, we just hit fifty miles altitude.”

  “No shit?! And you’re going to be here in twenty-five minutes?”

  “Yeah, it’s only about 1000 miles. Once we’re above the atmosphere it only takes about fifteen minutes to go that far, even staying right around one G of acceleration.”

  “Cool. Hey, there’s a bar named the Retror
ocket that a lot of the astronauts go to. Would you be okay if we went there and I called some of my friends so they could meet you and look at the saucer?”

  “No problem, I’m thinking it would be good if we met some of those guys. We’d like to have some friends inside NASA.”

  Bemused, Sophie stood out in the parking lot behind her apartment complex and watched the saucer drift down out of the sky. She glanced around, there didn’t seem to be anyone out there to witness it. Once it was down, Tiona tilted it and Nolan stepped out onto the back deck to give her a hand up.

  It felt weird to be silently drifting at treetop level over Houston. Tiona admitted she thought it probably was illegal to travel like that. On General Cooper’s recommendation, the FAA had given her permission to lift straight up to and down from 70,000 feet as long as she cleared it with the traffic controllers at the local airports. Essentially, she and her saucer were the only things flying above 70,000 feet until you got up into low Earth orbit so there wasn’t much danger of running into anything up there as long as she stayed away from the very few places that launched rockets to space. However, it seemed crazy to lift to 70,000 feet before traveling a couple of miles across Houston to the Retrorocket. They couldn’t see directly beneath them because of the deck of the saucer, but watching the screens that displayed the video feeds from under the saucer Sophie saw a few people glance up at the saucer in amazement.

  When they cleared a couple of buildings and slid in over the parking lot at the Retrorocket, a large crowd of people were standing outside the back door. It looked like Sophie’s text to her friends had been successful in bringing a bunch of them out to the Retrorocket, even on a weeknight. They’d cleared a spot on the parking lot big enough for the saucer and it drifted down to light in front of the cheering patrons.

  It wasn’t long before someone brought a short step ladder out of the bar and set it up by the back deck of the saucer. The crowd of people took turns climbing up and having Tiona show them around inside. Sophie was amazed at how patiently she answered the same questions over and over again.

  When the crowd had settled down, Tiona had the saucer lift to about twenty feet to keep people from meddling with it and they went into the bar to talk. Sophie said, “So, why did you come down here in the saucer rather than flying commercial like the rest of us peons?”

  Tiona laughed, “Well, we’ve got it, why not use it? It lets us come and go as we please.” She gave Sophie a serious look, “More importantly, it reminds NASA that they want to be our friends.”

  Sophie gave her a nod, “I’d like to tell you that they don’t need a reminder. Most of them don’t, actually, but there are a few…”

  Tiona winked, “Some who think they should be in control, not some wet behind the ears grad student?”

  Sophie grinned, “You’ve got that right!”

  Nolan said, “So, when we arrive for our appointment tomorrow at 10 o’clock, we should come in the saucer, don’t you think?”

  Sophie nodded slowly, then tilted her head, “Another thing I think you should worry about… I have a feeling they might try to stick you with…” she trailed off.

  “Who, what?” Tiona asked with narrowed eyes.

  “You know how you wanted a couple of astronauts to go with you? I think they might try to saddle you with some real stick-in-the-muds.”

  “Huh,” Tiona said, leaning back, “and they’ll be senior to you, so you won’t be able to unstick us?”

  “Oh, I’ve been told in no uncertain terms that I’m not going. Not if I want to remain in the astronaut program. I think they’re lining up three stick-in-the-muds for you.”

  Tiona leaned back, then forward as her eyebrows bounced once, “How would you like to tell them to take a hike, ‘cause you have a job at GSI?”

  “GSI?”

  “Gettnor Space Industries. We’re going to license thrusters to other companies for aircraft, flying cars, industrial transport, suborbital flights etc., but we’re planning to do space ourselves.”

  Nolan and Sophie both stared, “You are?!”

  “Yeah,” Tiona said, keeping her eyes on Sophie, “know any other astronauts who’d like to join us?”

  ***

  Jong disconnected the call with his handler in North Korea. The man was understandably nervous, the supreme leader was breathing down his neck. Jong had needed to explain all of his preparations so that the handler could explain them to the supreme leader if he were asked.

  On the one hand, he was asked why he hadn’t captured the Gettnors yet. On the other, they wanted to know why he was spending so much money. They seemed to have no idea how fast money could slip through your fingers here in the United States.

  Having rented three apartments and a motel room in various complexes near the Gettnors’ home, plus four cars and two panel vans, it added up quickly. Reserving an air ambulance had proven to be extraordinarily expensive. Buying a used ground ambulance cost a lot too. Equipping the panel van with stretchers and medical equipment to support the Gettnors in an unconscious state not only required expensive equipment, but a number of bribes to unsavory characters.

  Fortunately, any time they’d needed something of a questionable nature, Stillman Davis had proven to have the connections who could provide it. Jong intensely disliked the man, however he’d been invaluable. Nonetheless, Jong looked forward to stiffing Davis on the money he’d been promised for assisting in the Gettnors’ kidnapping.

  Jong got up and went in to the living room of this, their largest apartment. Cho looked up questioningly. “Anything new?” Jong asked.

  Cho grunted, “No. Saucer no return. Man no leave house. You sure he still live there?”

  Irritated, Jong said, “Of course he still lives there!” However, a stab of doubt shot through him. That would be a disaster, he thought. After a moment, he said, “Gettnor and his wife are both supposed to live there. Order some laser acoustic transducers to bounce off their windows. Let’s make sure we can hear a man’s voice.”

  ***

  Landon and Dante walked from the parking lot toward Costa and Sons’ big construction hanger. “So they’re building a saucer for you here? A second one?”

  Sounding distracted, Dante said, “Yeah, a much bigger one.”

  “How much bigger?”

  “The first one was eight meters, that’s about twenty-six feet in diameter. This one’s fifty meters or about 164 feet.”

  Landon’s eyes defocused for a moment as he considered, “Why so big?”

  “The thrust that the dark matter thrusters can generate depends on the area and shape, preferably circular, of the thruster. Well, and also on how much power you put into it. A saucer this big will be able to generate 4 million pounds of thrust long-term, like what you might want to do pushing asteroids around. Eight million pounds short-term, what you could think of as ‘emergency power.’”

  They stepped through a door and looked out at the enormous saucer inside the hangar. “Holy shit!” Landon breathed. Though he’d been thinking in terms of the saucer being as big as half a football field, those thoughts hadn’t really prepared him for something covering that much area and almost four meters or thirteen feet thick. Dante was leading Landon up some stairs to an overlooking balcony and offices. Looking down from up there it looked even more massive.

  “So, how much could it lift to orbit?”

  “Well, it weighs about a million pounds itself, but we figure it would be okay to run it quite a ways above its long-term thrust of 4 million pounds since it won’t take long to get to orbit. We’re expecting that we can run it at a little over 6 million pounds, lifting 5 million pounds or 2200 metric tons to orbit. Of course, we won’t be sure it can do it until we’ve run it through some trials.” He shrugged, “But if it delivers, that’s 20 times the Saturn V payload and Saturn V was the biggest rocket ever launched.” He turned and grinned at Landon, “Of course, if that’s not enough, we can build an even bigger one.”

  Dante knocke
d on a door and it opened. He said, “Hello Ms. Costa, Pete, Mark, this is Landon Archer, one of the guys who’s helping me set up GSI.”

  Costa turned intense eyes on Landon, “Welcome Mr. Archer. We here at Costa and Sons are very interested in GSI. We’d very much like to become a major provider if not the provider of your space hardware.” She glanced out the window at the big saucer, saying, “For instance, we’re very proud of the fact that we expect to come in ahead of schedule on the fifty meter lifter out there. It should be ready for trials pretty soon.”

  Landon glanced at Dante, “Trials? What kind of trials?”

  Dante shrugged, “I don’t know all of them. My dad and sister wrote most of the specs. I can list a few, like pressure testing the living areas to ten atmospheres to make sure there aren’t any leaks. Thruster ramp-up to make sure the frame of the saucer can take the stresses without buckling—the loading on the frame is pretty damn high. Making sure the loading arms can stand up to full thrust…”

  “Loading arms?”

  “Those big things sticking out of the top of the saucer. They’re what the saucer is supposed to be able to handle things with when it’s out in space. If one of them collapsed under acceleration and it smashed into the saucer…” he shook his head, “it wouldn’t be pretty. Especially if it crushed the living quarters.”

  Ms. Costa spoke up, “As you know, Dr. Gettnor engineered the saucer’s structure. He requested we review the engineering which we did, as well as having an outside aerospace engineer go over it. No one has been able to find any errors in your father’s calculations.” She made a self-deprecating laugh, “Actually, both teams found a few errors, but every error discovered eventually proved to be their own. Dr. Gettnor’s attention to detail is quite legendary around here. I’d truly love to talk to him sometime.”

  Landon looked back and forth from Dante to Costa, “You’re building a multimillion dollar project for him and you’ve never talked to him?!”