Duncan Long - Anti-Grav Unlimited

“company” if they thought we’d failed. The new power we could generate was going to make some major changes in society, and the fewer people who knew that ahead of time the better.

So my plan was a little hazy at that point. Basically, what I hoped to do was get a few working examples of the anti-gravity rods’ possibilities cobbled together to attract investors, and then get my team back together to refine the various generating systems we might market. In the meantime, I didn’t have the space or money to get the group going. And there was security. I knew that a lot of people would like to get rid of us if they ever knew what we were up to. We stood to make money, but a lot of someones were going to lose a lot. A whole lot. That doesn’t make for friendly feelings among the businesses we would be displacing.

Thus I figured my best bet was to convince the members that the project had finally failed but that they should keep in touch so we could restart our project when I finally got some money for continuing.

Before giving the van a test drive, I called all eight of my lab team members during the next hour (Linda was the hardest to get and I spent 45 minutes tracking her through her pager). I broke the “news” to them that the rods were a dismal failure but that we must be on the right track, we’d get back together soon, keep in touch, etc.

That done I raced back into the garage after a side stop to keep from having kidney failure.

The test of the rod-driven motor in the van was about to begin!

I got the bot into the corner, ordered him off, then jumped into the van like a kid on World Freedom Day.

Almost backing through the garage door, I remembered to use the scramble coder to open it and—barely containing myself—put the van into reverse and eased out.

It worked like a charm.

I tooled up to the interstate (consciously going the opposite direction from the rest stop that I’d dumped the two body bags in) and tried out the motor’s full power for a mile or so. (Luckily no hi-pees were about.)

I quit when the van hit 200 clicks. That’s just a little fast considering that the top speed for a brand new van is only 80. Besides becoming a bit worried about the van shaking itself apart on the bumps in the road, it was apt to draw someone’s attention. And I figured bureaucratic someones would probably like to get their hands on the van to create a new tax category if nothing else.

So I drove back to the garage at a sedate speed.

With one side trip.

I headed to a telebank where I deposited my pay chip and then hit my favorite Radio Dome electronics store where I spent every centime I’d deposited on equipment for the next project I had in mind. It was crazy, but it seemed to me that the next step for the van would not only demonstrate what the rods could do, but also help me realize one of my longest held dreams. To fly on my own.

Only this time, the sky would not be the limit if things worked out.

I won’t bore you with the details. My team always said I talked them to death and after a while I started to take the hint.

Here’s basically what I—and my able labbot assistant—did: First we got several of the complete rods and welded them to the frame of the van so that it had an apparent weight of only a few kilograms. That done, we cut about half the rods to manageable lengths (I used the outlets in the van to power the laser), welded the short lengths to the thousand and some military surplus step motors I’d purchased (the clerk must have thought I was trying to corner the market, though he didn’t say anything), anchored the motors all over the inside of the van, tried to locate the center of gravity for the van and place the gyroscope there, and wired the motors and the gyroscope so that they were controlled by one of the lab computers which was also securely anchored in the van between the driver and passenger seat. (Figuring how to place the rods was harder than wiring them up; they had to go where the combined forces of the anti-grav rods wouldn’t tear the van apart—that could be embarrassing.) Even with the labbot doing most of the work nonstop on autoprogram, the work took two days. The next day was spent trying to tell the computer how to control the array of step motors properly. It’s one thing to make a van float, it’s another to make it float where you want it to. And I also had to make the computer realize that pointing the rods the wrong way could crush the passenger and/or the computer itself (and I quickly learned that even the new sentient computer’s don’t have much sense when it comes to fear for their own well being).

Suddenly the computer and I both got the hang of it and there the van was, floating about two feet off the garage floor. It sort of hovered while several of the step motors moved back and forth to counterbalance the hole thing.

It took a moment to sink in: It worked!

Before dashing out, I was a little cautious and placed the other computer into the van. It would be my backup to control the step motors if computer one failed. (Number one assured me it wouldn’t, but who ever trusted a computer? So number two went in and number one whispered all its secrets into its little electronic ear.)

I loaded up more tools than I could ever possibly need in case I would had to make some repairs “on the road,” and then I hopped into the van. This time I fastened my seat belt very tightly.

I stayed close to the ground until I got the hang of it. Though the computers normally work with spoken commands, I was afraid that wouldn’t be fast enough so I had connected the regular controls into the system: the steering wheel controlled directions, the brakes and accelerator pedal regulated the speed, the turn signal became the upward/downward control. (And in case you’re wondering, the computer too the brake lights and turn signals off line when the flying mode was engaged.)

Later that night, a blue van-shaped UFO moved across the sky and barely set down to become a van again just before three World Military fighters came screaming through the area looking for the UFO that must have appeared on radar. They darted to and fro like angry dragonflies on their flex winds; they hovered a moment, searching in vein for their prey, then wheeled on a silent command and streaked out of sight.

I decided to drive home—or at least hover close to the road. Fighter planes can get mean and I didn’t want to see if I could outrun a missile with my name on it.

While I was out flitting around, playing with the van, someone blew up my house.

That’s right. When I got home, only a pile of burnt plastic and black ash marked the square of land where my dome sweat home had been. Bits of the building and my belongings had dented the domes around it; there was nothing left to claim.

If I had been crazy enough to try to claim anything. I wasn’t because it was obvious that a real pro had played demolition dynamite with my home. That was when I realized that in all likelihood the project hadn’t been canceled by mistake at all. The whole purpose had been to get my team out of sight—then out of existence.

I glanced at the rubble that had been my dome, and then got out of the area as fast as I could.

I don’t know why I knew that my dome had been destroyed by someone who was after me. Sixth sense, maybe. Maybe just some odds and ends in the back of my mind that hadn’t added up. At any rate I didn’t stick around the area.

Talk about mixed emotions…One minute I was gliding through the air with the world on a string and the next I felt as if I were a hunted animal.

I didn’t have a cell phone. And if I had, I wouldn’t have used it since that would most likely have resulted in someone homing in on me. Instead I stopped at the first Mastivisa vidphone booth and tried to call some of the team members, figuring they were in real danger, too. The machine told me my card had been canceled.