Duncan Long - Anti-Grav Unlimited

All in all, we would be traveling on a wing and a prayer with epoxy, chewing gum, and paper clips holding everything together.

We’d be taking quite a party of people and equipment since more and more people had been coming in to join us. Not only did the original sixteen that we’d freed from the prison show up, but their families, pets, children, and colleagues as well. As might be expected with all the people involved, word leaked out and we soon had old spacers wandering in with their own worn suits and needed skills asking if it was true that we were mounting a space expedition. We converted their vehicles they came in, slowly assembling more and more “space craft” for our expedition to the Moon; we aimed to take everyone who really wanted to go.

In the evenings after we’d finished work for the day, old spacers told their tales while the newer members talked of harvesting the asteroids, colonizing the moons of Saturn and Jupiter, or even creating a starship with the rods. The possibilities seemed limitless as dreams were spun into the small hours of the day before we started work again after a few hours of sleep laced with dreams of space.

There was a rush to get things done. We all knew it would only be a matter of time until word got out about the group we were collecting to take to the Moon. And soon after that, basic rebels that we were, we had little doubt that some zealous bureaucrat might well order a fleet of fighters to do a napalm number on Jake’s store. So everyone was pushing toward getting everything wrapped up so we could escape to the Moon. Once there, we would have an edge since Earth had dismantled its space program. Once in space, and with a little luck, our expedition could drop out of sight of the World Government.

After what seemed like an eternity of the hard work, we were nearly ready to leave.

“How’s it going, Jake,” I said as I made the rounds with a cup of caffinex to keep me awake.

A shower of sparks marked another weld on the car Jake was working on then he flipped up the protective mask. “Real well. This is the last of the fleet and its nearly ready. It’s lucky that a lot of the folks coming to us are bringing in their own computers.”

“Yeah. We wouldn’t have been able to fly all the vehicles if that hadn’t happened,” I agreed.

We had run out of money the first day we’d started this latest project and would have had no money to buy computers. “Even so, I wish we could have back-up computers in each of the cars.”

“Would be nice. But I don’t think it’s too risky. According to Danny Hill, the sun isn’t spitting out much radiation right now so the computers should be pretty reliable. If things really got bad, folks could probably tag along with the group and fly by the seat of their pants. We’ll just cross our fingers for the flight.”

“That’s how I fly anyway,” I said. “Know where Nikki is?”

“She was around here a minute ago,” Jake said. ” I bet she went up to our ‘command center,’”

he smiled and winked at me, then dropped his welding mask over his face and went back to work on the car.

I walked off to our so-called command center; it consisted of three phones and an inventory computer that was our connection to the Net, all spread across Jake’s kitchen table. On the wall was a huge bulletin board and under it the ever-being-used caffinex machine. The room had become the heart of our planning sessions and Nikki, Jake, and I spent most of our free time there trying to coordinate our group’s efforts.

Nikki hung up the phone and brushed her dark hair from her eyes, “Well, that’s the last of them. I’ve contacted every major reporter we could think of. Our take-off tomorrow should have a lot of coverage.”

“I just hope it doesn’t have a fireworks display as well.”

“I don’t think anyone would be dumb enough to attack with the news people there. I think the general public is so fed up with high utility bills that they’ll riot if it looks like someone’s throwing a monkey wrench into things. Anyway, we’ve told everyone that we’ll be in downtown Houston. We’ll give a last minute call and Net announcement tomorrow morning to reroute the news crews here in time for the take off. It’d be hard for the Government to get rounded up in time to do much damage.”

“Provided they don’t get wind of what’s going on. I hope that Frank really knew how to rig the phones and Net connections to make impossible to trace our calls.”

“I’m sure he does. He’s the communications whiz, you know.”

I looked at Nikki’s beautiful dark eyes a moment. ” It all just bothers me. More and more, it seems like things are out of our hands and in the hands of the experts we seem to be attracting.”

“That’s the price you pay for launching the project that got all this going. It takes on a life of its own.”

“I just wish I’d had a choice. Everything snowballed. I certainly don’t mind loosing a lot of my responsibilities… It’s just that…”

“Security is gone when you start depending on so many other people.”

“Right.”

Nikki reached over the table and held my hand, “Phil Hunter, you are one big worry wart.”

“Compliments will get you nowhere.” I gave her hand a squeeze and then looked at my thumb-nail watch. “Oops. Late again. If anyone needs me, I’ll be with my team up in the loft. We have something we’re cooking up.”

“Sounds mysterious,” Nikki said.

“Unbelievably. It looks like we’ve made a mistake in our calculations. I think. But I can’t figure out where. And if we haven’t…”

“Something wrong with the rods?”

“No. Nothing to worry about. Just a side effect that occurs when you get a bunch of the rods together. We think.”

“OK. Be mysterious.”

“See you in a bit.”

She rolled her eyes, shook her head, then blew me a kiss as I left.

The air conditioner was pushing out waves of cold air as I climbed the ladder into the loft of the old barn. My five team members were arguing heatedly about something. They all stopped when my head got even with the loft.

“No need to stop for me. I like a good argument as long as it doesn’t end in fisticuffs.” I climbed over the top of the ladder onto the old wooden floor.

Fran Wescott adjusted the antique glasses that she insisted on wearing, and flipped back a lock of blond hair. “We went over it all again,” she said pointing to the projection screen tacked to the barn wall, “but it still comes out wrong.”

I looked at the screen. “We’ve all assumed that we made a mistake. Maybe we should look at it as if the measurements are correct.”

“But quantum mechanics…”

I raised a hand and everyone was quiet for a moment.

“Let’s just assume that it’s correct for now. We’ll be able to test out our theory or formula or—

whatever this mess is—shortly. The bots we left working on the Moon—if they haven’t screwed up… We should have enough rods to actually see the effect. If it’s not there, then our measurements are out of whack. If it is there then…”

“But it doesn’t seem possible that such a small gravity field could warp space that much!”

Fran protested. Everyone nodded.

“I agree. Yet, it doesn’t seem like the rods should work at all. Remember when we started out? The thing that held us back for weeks was that we didn’t think they could possibly work.

When we finally settled down and tried making some rods, they worked. And here we are today.

I’d suggest that there is a hole in physics and the rods are pointing this out to us, operating in the cracks as it were.”

“So what now?” Tom Barrel, a tall, thin black in his twenties asked.