Tom Ligon - Amateurs

Illustration by Vincent Di Fate

This is a work of fiction.

More of it is real than you think!

Jake Knoll stared in the general direction of the fire, his eyes focused at a point in the darkness a hundred meters beyond the charred timbers, which were still spouting tendrils of flame.

“Shame about your boat,” Fire Marshal Fredricks offered, indicating the blackened outline of a sleek, finned hull amidst the embers. “Would’a liked to see it go.”

Jake continued to stare blankly for a few seconds, before the words sank in. “Boat… oh, yeah. Thanks,” he replied dispiritedly, shrugging against the evening chill, and shifting his focus to the ruins of his project.

“Um, you covered by insurance?” the fire marshal asked.

Jake let out a long sigh. “Let it lapse a couple of months ago. Stupid, I know. Needed the money to finish the hull.”

The fire marshal looked strangely relieved. “There’s a sunny side to that, if you care to hear it.”

“You mean because it’s arson?” Jake asked.

Fredricks raised an eyebrow. “How’d you know?”

Jake shrugged. “Strong smell of kerosene. Pattern of blackened puddles around the barn. Spread fast. Building was engulfed before my alarm went off. Doesn’t take a rocket scientist.” He managed a thin smile at his little joke.

Fredricks nodded. “Do me a favor, stick to building boats. You make my job look too easy. But, I’m glad to say, at least this puts you way down on the list of suspects. Any idea who’d want to do something like this?”

“Yeah,” Knoll replied, shifting his gaze to the left, toward a shallow lake at one corner of his property. “Told Johannson I’d be conductin’ tests on the lake, and it would be too dangerous for him to water his cattle there for a few months. He said somethin’ nasty. Guess I warn’t exactly cordial neither. I told him he’d be trespassing if he let his critters on my land again, and I’d have him slapped with papers. He stomped off swearin’ revenge.”

The fire marshal gave him a quizzical glance. “You couldn’t let him water his cattle while you were testing your boat?”

Jake shook his head. “It ain’t… warn’t… some fishing skiff, you know. I needed to test the engine. The tests would’a been a little dangerous, and even if they wasn’t, the noise would’a terrified his cows.”

Fredricks nodded understandingly. “Sure would’a liked to see it go.”

Back at the house, Knoll slumped into the recliner, aware for the first time that his clothes reeked of wood smoke and burned plastic. He was working up the will to get up and take a shower when the phone rang.

“Jake, it’s Baker Bret,” said the voice on the other end. “Just got your call. What happened?”

“We’re ruined,” Jake answered. “Wiped out. Finished. Barn is burned to the ground, workshop’s a total loss, nothing left of the lab but a concrete pad. Got my computers, my library, my notes, my drawings, everything.”

“The ship?”

“Nothing left but a big, crispy shell.”

“Jeezus.”

“Exactly.”

“Guess we just have to start over.”

Jake sighed deeply. “Listen careful, Bret, I said we’re finished. Out of business. Broke. No capital. Nothing to start over with. We re out of the rocket business. Kaput. Capish?”

“Oh.”

“I gotta get this stink off of me,” Jake said impatiently. “If you don’t mind, we can argue about pointless foolishness later, after I’ve had a good night’s sleep.”

Jake didn’t sleep though, and the following morning he began rebuilding his project. He pulled a venerable Commodore 64 home computer from the closet, and simply started over. By the end of the week, he had funds committed to an escrow account by a customer who needed a cheaper alternative for lofting small payloads to Low Earth Orbit, and had a new consulting job to generate a little ready cash.

I get to tell this story from my perspective because Jake can’t spell worth spit, and he flits from one idea to another so fast no reader can follow him. I was there, and I saw it happen, but I was really only a minor player. Jake and his Loyal Techs should get all the blame, and the accompanying glory.

I first met Dr. Jacob Knoll about a year after the fire. He had sent a letter commenting on a story I had written, and we had struck up a long correspondence. In the interim, I had started my own consulting service (consumer product safety and industrial troubleshooting, with space technology and nuclear research on the side). I’d offered to help Jake any way I could, realizing there was no money in it.

Through our correspondence, I’d learned, in detail, how Jake intended to build a single-stage-to-orbit, or SSTO, rocket in his barn, on a shoestring budget. It would take off and land on a runway like a plane, and was intended to be so cheap to build and operate it made the Delta Clipper look like a Golden Fleece. It sounded like a nutty idea at first, but he gradually won me over.

Nephew David, and David’s wife Patti, moved in after the fire to help with the rebuilding. David was a physicist, and Patti was a chemist, both victims of federal rifs. Four additional Loyal Techs, including “Baker Bret,” “Barefoot Jim,” and “Star Spangled Sam,” worked on various technical problems via the Internet. Loyal tech Dr. Gore was lined up to pilot the prototype, and was doing a little fusion research on the side. Nobody was getting paid a dime. The project was being funded by an assortment of consulting jobs and invention royalties, with a government subsidy for not growing crops helping to pay the taxes on the land, a generations-old working farm Jake had inherited.

I could describe the prototype spacecraft to you in detail, but perhaps you would do better to visit the Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum. There is a pretty close approximation of it hanging from the ceiling near the Apollo/Soyuz display. Once you’ve seen one high velocity lifting body you pretty much get the idea. The sleek, tapered fuselage was wider than high and provided the aerodynamic lift. A pair of winglets produced a modicum of steering while landing. Jake named the original prototype Dervish. That’s Whirling Dervish, as in orbiting, sensible when you understand how Jake names things. The prototype lost in the fire was a little larger than the one at the Smithsonian. Had to be. Dervish was a four-seater.

Built of a foam core coated with high-performance composites and ceramics, Dervish’s aeroshell was feather-light, yet incredibly strong. I’ve worked with several rocket outfits, and seen plenty of designs, and it was unlike any spacecraft design I had ever seen. The usual designs involve complex aluminum frameworks, with stainless steel, inconel, and titanium used abundantly, a little graphite composite, and a tremendous amount of labor and money. The designers are quite proud of how light their birds are, but they are like lead bricks compared to Knoll’s ship. Dervish ’s construction was, in fact, closer to some experimental home-built aircraft designs.

Jake had always been very mysterious about the engines, for which he had some pretty fantastic expectations. Since my visit was to assist in a series of test burns, I was itching to get the chance to eyeball them firsthand.

I managed to piggy-back my first visit onto a business trip to Seattle. The money-making part of my trip over, I rented a Cessna 182 and headed east through the Cascades to visit Jake. Hauling my modest equipment was well within the capabilities of the tatty old workhorse. The town had a decent airport, not too much grass growing through the cracks in the runway, and plenty long enough to suit my rental bird. I pulled up to the FBO shack, and climbed out as a tall, gangly, gray-haired scarecrow of a man approached the plane.