Duncan Long - Anti-Grav Unlimited

The morning sun woke me. In the distance, sea gulls were squawking while the waves added a low hissing rise and fall to the din of the birds.

I sat up and inspected the bright, white sand that stretched into the deep blue green of the ocean, sprinkled with splotches of turquoise that were the shallows. Waves formed in the deep water and chased themselves to the shore where they sputtered their energy in a roll of hissing, white foam, only to be dragged back from the sand and swallowed up by the next incoming wave.

Directly in front of me Nikki abruptly rose up out of the water like some ancient goddess, rivulets of water streaming down her firm, dark arms and thighs as she wadded ashore. A pink T-shirt clung tightly to her body in a way that might have been obscene on almost any woman but Nikki. Somehow, her demeanor always made her seem innocent—even though her speech and dress often argued otherwise. I pulled my tongue back into my mouth.

After she had dried off and wrapped a towel around her curves, my next task was pushing my eyes back into their sockets. Then we had a picnic lunch in the shade of the palm trees around our van.

After a polite amount of small talk, Nikki eased into telling me what she and my computers had been discussing the night before, “Phil” she said around a huge bit of reconstituted dinosteak,

“did you ever want to travel into space? Maybe even explore space?”

“Sure. And be a cowboy, and a fireman, and a policeman. Instead, I got a nice calm job where everyone’s trying to kill me.”

“No really.”

“Sure, I’ve always wanted to travel into space. Yeah. I even tried to save up money to buy a trip once. And I enjoyed last night’s ride—except for not being able to breathe. Why?”

Silence. Nikki seemed to be studying her sandwich.

If I had had any sense, I would have gotten up and run away right there. And maybe drowned myself for good measure. But Nikki is like a flame to a moth. Rather than fleeing, I fluttered closer and proceeded to get singed.

“I was thinking,” she munched,” that we could take that van into space if we—”

“Woe, there. You must be kidding.”

“No, really.”

“Nikki, there’s no way that—”

“Now listen. You’ve got the power from the flywheel generator to run all kinds of life-support equipment. The van can accelerate with a constant speed… It doesn’t need fuel… And the computers can be programmed—in fact are…I took the liberty last night—for Earth orbit. All we need is a couple of suits and some gear. We could—”

“That’s crazy. Too dangerous,” I popped open a can of pop and toyed with the idea of hiding inside it.

“Phil, things aren’t exactly safe here on the ground for us.”

“Right. But what would we gain in space?”

“That’s just it. They’d never think of looking for you on… Oh, say the moon.”

She said that a bit too casually. I felt a cold chill dance up and down my spine. “The moon?” I asked, knowing I didn’t want to hear what was coming.

“I did a little figuring and…” She launched into her sales pitch.

I fought a losing battle from there on.

Of course I had always wanted to go into space. What boy who became a man didn’t. Never mind the deaths that resulted with the collapse of the space elevator, or the fact that no more glamorous sci-fi shows ever graced the 3V broadcasts any more. Most kids of the male persuasion dream of going into space.

It’s just that I had never expected to really do it. And especially not in an old van. But the more Nikki talked, the more enthused I got, perhaps proving that insanity is contagious. But the truth be told, I had toyed with the idea of a space ship propelled by the rods when they’d first been perfected; I just hadn’t expected to be using a van to travel into space rather than a nice sleek conventional space ship.

Nikki explained to me that the time was perfect, too. The world government had, without fanfare, closed the few moon bases that had been put on the moon, and liquidated the surplus gear left over from the space program almost faster than consumers could buy it. In fact all the rocket jocks she’d known had been buying all sorts of hardware and toys, while bemoaning the fact that the space program was all but officially dead. So, Nikki reasoned, we could probably outfit our expedition for just centimes on the dollar.

Slowly she wove her spell the way a spider weaves a web. Before I knew it, I was trapped and we were off in the van to buy some used space suits.

After crashing through the scrub brush for a while, and making low flights that—I hoped—

were off the radar, we finally located a road that led to a highway. I parked the van at the first electro-charge station (hoping the attendant wouldn’t become too curious as to why the van didn’t need to be charged) and found out we were on Galveston Island. Using an Internet map we bought from the attendant, along with a phone book disc, we finally found the name of a nearby surplus dealer which—we hoped—might lead us to a source of the gear we’d be needing.

Several hours later, and despite the errors on the map, we finally located the surplus store at Hitchcock, west of Galveston.

As we neared it, it became apparent that the store was once a huge old barn. Crates and old freight trucks littered the area around it. A chain-link fence enclosed the cemetery-like area around the barn where—it appeared—all vehicles in the area crawled to when it came time for them to die. With a bit of originality, the owner had painted, in huge amateur-looking letters,

“Space and Military Surplus” over the chipped, red paint of the wooden structure.

We brought the van to a stop in front of the huge eyesore. No other working vehicles were in the customer parking lot. The hot, Texas wind pummeled sand against the side of the van.

“Are you sure we want to go in?” I asked.

“Yes!”

“Assuming we find anything of use, what are we going to pay for things with? I chucked my card outside New Denver.”

“I’ve got some jewelry.”

“That’s not cash”

“These guys like to barter. Anything else we could trade?”

“I hate to drag a needle gun in—might give the owner a heart attack. How about your laser?

Industrial lasers get good prices.”

“Sounds good. I have no attachment to it.”

“It still ought to get us a lot. If we work our trading right. Let’s leave the laser in the van ’til we see if there’s anything here.” I had my doubts.

We got out of the van and sauntered toward the gate. I squinted at Nikki in the bright sunlight. She looked so different with her blond hair and the synthaface.

“What are you smiling at?” Nikki asked. “You look like you know something I should know about.”

“You don’t look like Nikki any more. I was just thinking I liked the way you looked better before you changed your face.”

“Well, I like you better the way you are now. ” She laughed and gave me a shove, then raced ahead of me toward the store.

I chased her to the barn door; both of us were giggling like teenagers as we pulled it open and stepped into the cool darkness of the interior of the building. Once in, we grew quiet.

It was like a museum.

I couldn’t believe what all was there. Spotlights, hung in the ceiling, cut through the gloom with beams that caught the dust particles in the air and bathed equipment on the floor in pools of light. Other piles of machinery sat hidden in the dark and under dust tarps looking like large animals waiting for their prey. The contrast between the highly lit areas and those in darkness made it necessary to study what you were looking at before your mind could make any sense of the jumble.