Lifter: Proton Field #2 Read online

  Vinn shook his head, “Nope. We’re at 50,000 feet, so the storm’s below us. We’re on our way up to 200,000 feet where there won’t be turbulence.”

  Ellen watched the other five people in the cabin of the spacecraft. Her stomach was cramping. At first, when she’d suddenly been able to move the team around the world in essentially no time, while providing the flyer vests to let them search from the sky, she’d had what she now realized was an unrealistically optimistic feeling about how things were going to go. She’d been thinking they’d find Mark in a day or so and the problem would be how to get him away from the terrorists.

  After standing in the doorway underneath MT-1 looking down with night vision goggles she’d begun to realize some of the limitations. She might be able to see warm bodies at quite a distance, but her field of vision through the goggles was limited to a narrow area. They weren’t going to be able to sweep wide swaths of the countryside with goggles very efficiently. She supposed that with four people suspended by flyers and running somewhat parallel routes they could cover a fairly large area, but as the ship had come down out of the sky, she’d begun to realize just how huge an area they’d have to search. And with every day that passed, the area of the circle the kidnappers could have reached got bigger!

  Then, when Brock’s dog had started following the trail left by the kidnappers and their victims, Ellen had shifted her optimism to Killer’s capabilities. Now that optimism was dashed by the rain. She didn’t know how badly the rain was going to mess up the trail, but from the look on Ardis’s face it was pretty bad news. Besides, now she remembered that the anti-kidnapping force had apparently had dogs they were using for the search, so presumably that tactic had already been tried. She knew from what she’d read about the Philippines after Mark had been captured that they were entering the rainy season, a period in which it could be expected to rain almost every day. So, even if they did find the trail again, it was probably going to get washed away again every afternoon.

  Ellen looked over at Brock. He was talking to Nina and Ardis. She felt a little pulse of hope when she heard him say, “The trail was pretty obvious, even to the human eye using night vision goggles in the dark. After all, it wasn’t just Abu Sayyaf and their captives that had traveled on the trail. The anti-kidnapping force had followed them and it must have been a pretty good-sized group itself. That many people tromping along a narrow animal path in the forest tends to tear up the vegetation pretty bad.”

  Ardis said, “Do you think you’ll be able to follow it even after the rain?”

  Brock had a gloomy look, “Maybe? But the anti-kidnapping people didn’t give a damn about the track they were making. They might not actually be very good at tracking; after all, they haven’t been very successful. I’m worried that, if they lose the trail of our people, Killer and I’ll wind up following the anti-kidnapping team’s much more obvious trail without even noticing that the people we’re really after have gone off some different direction.”

  Ellen noticed that Brock’s eyes kept returning to Nina. It wasn’t surprising. Ellen thought Ardis was handsome, but his sister was stunning. She liked Brock and normally would be wishing him luck, but now found herself worrying that his infatuation might distract him from the task of finding Mark.

  Ardis said, “We picked you up northeast of the original campsite. Nina says they were mostly going east though a little north of due east before. They were certainly pretty much east of Lopana where they were kidnapped. Do you think they changed direction?”

  “I guess.”

  “How does this sound?” Ardis said, “You and Killer try to get some shut eye. As soon as the storm clears, any of the rest of us who’re willing will get back out there with the flyers, searching for infrared signals further north. As soon as the light’s good, we’ll take you back to where we picked you up and you can see if you can follow the trail again.”

  Brock shrugged, “Okay, I’m pretty good at sleeping anywhere, anytime from all my years in the military.” He looked at his dog, “Killer’s a pretty good sleeper too; I just don’t know how he’ll do in the morning.”

  Brock looked wistfully at Nina as he got up. She lowered an eyebrow, “If you’re about to say something stupid about how you could sure use some help getting off to sleep, I’d be happy to kick you up the side of the head. You’ll just need to give me time to put on my boots.”

  Brock gave her a little grin, “Sweet as ever, I see.”

  Ardis looked up at the ceiling and gave a distressed moan, “Would you two please not flirt around me?”

  Ellen found herself involuntarily smiling at this little byplay. However, only a minute or so later, she again started wondering what she could be doing to find Mark and worrying about whether he was soaking wet down below her somewhere.

  Vinn said, “The storm’s clearing. I’m taking us back down to a spot about a day’s walk north and a little east of where we picked up Brock. Those of you who’re going to try to fly around searching with night vision goggles should gear up.”

  Ellen stood up and went over to where the flyer vests were stacked. Myr, Nina, and Ardis also got up. Once they were all in vests, Ellen started taking Nina through some instruction on how to fly with hers. Myr went over to talk to Vinn while Nina was getting up to speed.

  By the time Ellen had finished explaining the vest to Nina, Myr was back. Ardis gave everyone instructions on how to use the infrared night vision goggles, explaining the settings that should be best for this mission. “We’ll want to scan with them from pretty high so we can cover as big an area as we can. Whenever we find hotspots, we’ll have to fly down closer to get the resolution we’ll need to be able to determine whether they’re people, animals or something else. She turned and looked at Vinn, “aren’t we down yet?”

  “Been down for a bit. Just waitin’ for you guys to get movin’.”

  Myr rolled her eyes and led the way down the stairs to the door they usually exited through. Ellen said, “Did we need to land and go out the lower door? Since we’re flying, it seems like we could just step out one of the doors up here on the main floor.”

  Myr said, “I thought it’d be a kindness to Nina if we let her fly up off the ground, rather than tossing her out the door at 1000 feet and expecting her to figure out how to fly on her way down.”

  “Oh, good point.”

  Myr glanced back again, “Also, you guys need to be aware that I’m sending Vinn back to the states while we’re out here flying around.”

  Ardis said, “Why? I’d feel better if we had him around here for backup.”

  “He’s going to Oregon. That’s where FLIR Systems is based. They make a lot of the high-end thermal imaging gear. I’ve been talking to them and now I’ve got them hanging around to do a quick install of a couple of the big systems that they normally mount on helicopters. Those systems will let us get good imaging from a higher altitude so we’ll have a much larger field of view.”

  Ardis said, “Holy shit! Those things are expensive. Are you sure your boss is going to be willing to pay for them?”

  Myr shrugged, “They’re already paid for. Otherwise we couldn’t have gotten FLIR to hang around at closing time and do a fast install for us.” She opened the door and they stepped out into a steamy jungle clearing.

  Ellen decided that Myr had probably just paid for the thermal imagers herself. She hadn’t really had time to talk to Arlan Miller about it. Myr’s got a lot of money, but it’s still a really nice gesture I’ll need to thank her for. As Ellen watched Nina try lifting off with her vest, she heard Myr say, “AI, connect me to Vinn… Vinn, don’t forget that once they’ve mounted and tested the cameras on MT-1, they need to be dismounted before you fly back here. I doubt they’re space rated. Oh, and make sure you know how to remount them.”

  If Vinn answered, Ellen didn’t hear because it only went to Myr’s ear piece. A moment later, MT-1 started rising rapidly up into the sky. It didn’t get very high before she lost it in the darkn
ess.

  ******

  When Carol got home she was pleased to find her son in the kitchen, getting himself a drink. “Hey Connor, Nancy and Trevor are coming over in a little bit.”

  “Cool, I can give Trevor that lift vest Myr dropped off.”

  She said, “I’m sure Trevor’ll be pretty excited about that.” Reminded of the vests, Carol’s eyes rose as she wondered when they’d get rid of all the field generators Myr had installed on their ceilings. She wondered whether she could hire someone to take them down and repaint the ceiling so she wouldn’t have to hassle Myr about it.

  “Hey,” Connor said sounding a little excited, “once we’ve fitted Trevor with the vest, we should all go out to dinner. Teach them the ins and outs of getting through restaurant doorways.”

  “I don’t know, Trevor won’t have had any opportunity to practice with a lifter, you know. You’d already been living with them on the ceiling for a while when you first got your vest.”

  Connor shrugged, “Yeah, you might be right. But if he does good with it, we could invite them then.”

  “Um, you should be aware, one of the main reasons they’re coming over’s so Nancy can draw your blood and get a little biopsy.”

  “What?!” Connor said as if horrified, though Carol was pretty sure he was mostly putting on. “Why?”

  “She says they’ve had a major breakthrough in her lab. They’re applying for permission to do human trials. Before you could be entered in a trial they’ve got to do testing to see if you’d be a good candidate.” She tilted her head curiously, “Are you really worried about the blood draw and biopsy?”

  “Nah,” he said dismissively, “I’ve been needled and stabbed so many times I start to feel like there’s something wrong if I haven’t been shish-kebabed recently.” He turned to look at his mother curiously, “Though I’m not sure I want to be the very first person they try this new treatment on. It’d be different if I were on death’s doorstep or something.”

  Carol chewed her lip for a moment, then said, “It’s up to you, but I don’t think there’s any harm in finding out whether you’re a candidate. Getting the testing done wouldn’t mean that you’d have to be the first guinea pig if you didn’t want to be.”

  The door AI announced that the Levinsons were there.

  They’d barely gotten in the door before Connor was giving Trevor his new lift vest.

  When they powered down the proton field generator on Trevor’s chair, the red plastic ball they’d given him to keep people away from the field focus fell. Nancy caught the ball and as soon as they powered up the generator in Trevor’s vest, she tossed it back up to spiral into the new field.

  Because of the contracted deformities Trevor had, they had to spend some time adjusting the position of the hand controller they’d strapped to his wrist. Connor said, “Man, you’ve got it made. When I got my lifter vest, the hand controller was so hard to position that for a few days I wound up just having to tell my AI where I wanted to go and letting it drive.”

  Once they got it set correctly for Trevor’s deformity, to Carol’s astonishment, Trevor lifted smoothly up into the air and started flying around the apartment like he’d been doing it forever. Carol had been under the impression that Connor had learned to fly so well because he got lots of practice while she was at work. She suddenly realized what was going on when Connor turned to her and Nancy, saying, “And you guys thought playing vid games was good for nothing!” He turned back to Trevor, “Hey Trev’, we were talking about how we should all go out to dinner to celebrate, you up for it?”

  Trevor responded with an enthusiastic yes and he and Connor started discussing where they’d like to go. Meanwhile Carol was still bemusedly looking at the hand controller Trevor was flying with and realizing how similar it looked to the vid game controllers the boys used all the time. In fact, she suspected that, rather than building an entirely new controller, they’d just repurposed a small vid game controller’s joystick for the purpose.

  Then Carol felt Nancy’s hand on her arm and looked over at her. Nancy had a questioning look on her face and Carol realized what her friend was wondering. She cleared her throat, “Connor, don’t forget the best part of the evening. Nancy needs to collect a specimen or two.”

  Connor flew over to the two women while putting a falsely enthusiastic tone in his voice. “How could I possibly forget that! I’ve been looking forward to it for hours!”

  The blood draw was quick, though the biopsy took a little longer and was more unpleasant. However, soon enough, they were on their way out the door to dinner. Trevor said, “Hey, can Myr go with us? I’d like to thank her in person for the flyer, it’s awesome!”

  Carol was about to ask her AI to connect her with Myr when Connor said, “No can do buddy, she’s in the Philippines. You’ll just have to send her a message.”

  Carol blinked and turned to stare at Connor, She is?

  Trevor said, “I’ll just call her,” and started to address his AI.

  Connor said, “Hey man, don’t do that. They’re twelve hours out of sync with us so you might wake her up.”

  As Trevor left a message instead, Carol turned to Connor and asked brightly, though quietly, “What’s Myr doing in the Philippines?”

  “They’re trying to rescue somebody’s brother. He got captured by some of the terrorists over there.”

  A spike of fear shot through Carol, but then she reasoned that Connor wouldn’t be treating it so offhandedly if there was any danger… Would he? Why did Myr tell him, but not me?

  ******

  Arlan looked up when his admin-assistant said the people from the DIA had arrived. This time, they’d scheduled an appointment rather than just ambushing him like they had the first time. When they entered his office, he saw David Lopez, one of the two DIA agents who’d first shown up to question him about the events in Hawaii. There was a man in an Air Force uniform and an older man with them who carried a definite “I’m in charge” air about him.

  Arlan rose to shake their hands and the older gentleman introduced himself as Dustin York, the Assistant Deputy Director of the Directorate for Science and Technology. The Air Force man was Colonel John Adams. Arlan introduced them to John Arrington, his legal counsel; then he said, “How can we help you gentlemen? Do you have more questions about our test north of Hawaii?”

  “No,” York said, dismissing that question with a small wave of his hand. “We recognize that it must’ve been a test of your hydrogen fusion process. We do need any data you have supporting your claim that the fusion process couldn’t generate an explosion larger than the equivalent of a half-ton of TNT.”

  York hadn’t posed it as a request or even as a question which Arlan found irritating, but he saw no reason to anger the DIA over whether he’d provide data he thought they should have and was happy to give them. He looked at Arrington to see if there was any objection, then merely nodded at York, “Okay.”

  York said, “What we’re actually here for today is to examine your new spacecraft, to classify it as top-secret, to claim it on behalf of the United States for immediate use in launch to low Earth orbit, and to sequester any and all records you have of its invention, its design, its construction, and the technologies involved. We’ll be moving further development to classified locations and bringing out teams to evaluate your employees. Before they can continue to work on the device, we must determine whether they qualify for top-secret clearance.”

  Arlan stared at the man for a minute through narrowed eyes. Then he turned slowly to Arrington and raised an eyebrow. Arrington’s eyes were on York. He said, “You’re attempting to invoke the Invention Secrecy Act of 1951?”

  “Not attempting, we are invoking it.”

  “And,” Arrington said, looking like he was suppressing a grin, “since the secrecy act allows you to suppress patent applications, may I ask which application you’re declaring a secret?”

  “The one…” York paused uncertainly, “the one for the
spaceship.” He glanced at Lopez, then at Arlan, then back at Arrington, “Um, the one for the space drive.”

  “Oh, Mr. York,” Arrington said with a tone that was a mixture of disappointment and sympathy, “I’m afraid there isn’t any patent application for either a spaceship or a space drive.”

  “You’re going to tell me,” York said in a threatening tone, “that you haven’t built a spacecraft?”

  “Well, yes, we’ve built a spacecraft, but we haven’t patented either the craft itself, or the drive that motivates it. Rather, we already have existing patents on technology that turns out to be able to motivate the spacecraft.” Arrington shrugged, “Since those patents have already issued and are certainly not secret, I believe they’re beyond the purview of the Invention Secrecy Act. After all, the act gives the government the power to prohibit the granting of a patent application as well as the power to keep the application secret. Since the patent’s already granted and is no longer a secret, it seems that those powers are moot.” He tilted his head, “In addition, I should like to point out that the constitutionality of the act is highly questionable. It’s certainly a violation of the First Amendment’s protection of free speech to force the inventor to keep his invention secret. Also, since the government has rarely compensated inventors for suppressing their patents, it has generally been in violation of both the Act, which promises compensation, and the Fifth Amendment which bars the taking of private property for public use without compensation. Previously suppressed inventors may not have had the wherewithal to take their cases to the Supreme Court, but I assure you that Miller Technology does.”

  York rose to his feet, almost trembling with rage. “Where is the spacecraft? We’ll just impound it until all your little legal niceties can be worked out.”

  Arrington glanced over at Miller who said, “Unfortunately, it’s out of the country.” He shrugged, “And I suspect it’s going to stay there… ‘until those legal niceties can be worked out.’”