Trent Reedy - Stealing Air

Dad offered a short smile. “Storm knocked the power out for a bit in Iowa City last night, but our security system kicked over to batteries and kept running.” He chuckled. “I’d like to see anyone try to get their hands on the Plastisteel now.”

Brian was grateful when the phone rang. Mom answered and then handed it to Brian.

“Hello?” Brian said.

“Dude, where are you?” Alex said. “We’ve been waiting for you.”

“I’m almost done with supper. Then I’ll be right over.”

“Don’t bother going to the Nest now. Max and I about killed ourselves, but we have everything set up at the place we used the first time. Hurry and get down here.”

“I’ll do my best,” Brian said. He hung up the phone and went back to eating, speeding up a bit and hoping Mom wouldn’t notice.

“Can I go now?” he asked when he’d finished.

“Is your homework done?” Mom said.

“Yes.”

“What are you going to be doing?”

Brian sighed. “Skateboarding.” It was sort of true. There were skateboards on the flyer.

Mom took a drink of water. “Just with Max and this Alex boy?”

“Oh, let him go already, Diane,” Dad said. “Let him be with his friends. While he still can,” he added quietly.

Mom closed her eyes for a moment, then waved Brian away from the table. Part of him felt bad for ditching them, but another part didn’t want to stay around for the rest of a tense meal. He grabbed his backpack and headed out, dropping Spitfire to the pavement and kick-starting down the street. He was rolling close to the ground now, but soon he’d be flying.

“It’s about time,” Alex said when Brian reached the grain elevators. The enormous form of Mr. Piggly floated eight feet overhead, with two ropes staked in the ground holding it in place. Beneath the balloon, the flyer looked like it was ready for action.

“I said I was sorry,” Brian said. “What’s up?”

“Hopefully the flyer, in just a moment.” Max said with a laugh. Alex shook his head. “Yes, well… Here’s the plan.” Max took his toy Star Trek phaser out of his pocket and pointed the red laser dot at a metal ring on the flyer’s engine. “You see how the cable from Mr. Piggly attaches to the flyer at this ring. Brian, at the right moment, you must pull the pin, which will release the ring and cut the flyer loose from the balloon.” Max used the phaser to point out two more rings on the skateboards below Alex’s seat. “At the exact same moment, Alex, you must kick out both of these pins. Releasing all three metal rings at the same time is key to keeping the flyer balanced when you’re breaking away from Mr. Piggly.”

“So I start the engine when we’re how high?” Brian asked.

“I’d say when you’re over five thousand feet.”

Brian frowned. “How do we know when we’ve over five thousand feet?”

“Chill, dude.” Alex pulled a gadget about the size of his iPhone from his pocket. “I bought this altimeter online for about ten bucks. I figured we’d need it, since part of what we’re doing tonight involves dropping from the bottom of the balloon.”

“How do you order online?” Brian asked. “You have a credit card?”

Alex waved away the question. “Please. I know everything about money. I just buy Visa gift cards at the gas station.” He shook the altimeter. “Anyway, this baby will tell us how high up we are.”

“That’s… actually incredibly helpful, Alex. Thank you,” Max said.

Everything was set. Mr. Piggly smiled big above them. Brian put his hand to his stomach.

“How did you ever get enough hydrogen to fill this thing?” he asked. “And why not helium, anyway?”

“Ah, that’s another issue.” Max looked up at Mr. Piggly. “Helium is too expensive to buy in such large quantities. Hydrogen, on the other hand, floats even better, and can be produced through a process called electrolysis.”

“Electrolysis?” Brian said.

“He rigged up this device to capture the gas,” Alex said, “and then he ran an electric charge through water.”

“Which separated the water’s oxygen and hydrogen atoms,” Max explained. “Hydrogen is flammable, but that won’t be a problem. It’s not as if we’re exposing the balloon to any open flames.”

Brian climbed into the pilot’s seat. Alex sat down behind him. Brian went over the controls again, checking that it all worked.

“We’ve already checked the ailerons, rudder, and everything,” Alex said. “Systems are all go.”

Max stood at the front. “When the flyer is up to top speed, it should be pulling Mr. Piggly through the air like a ship dragging its anchor. That’s when you separate. Remember, right after you’re released, you should expect the flyer to fall a little bit. Keep her level and open the throttle. Once it gets up to speed, it should fly.”

Brian took a deep breath. “Okay, Max. Release Mr. Piggly.”

“Good luck, guys,” Max said. He tugged on the stakes anchoring the balloon to the ground, but he couldn’t get the ropes loose.

“Come on, Max!” Alex shouted. “You can do it! Be like Captain Kirk. He could pull those stakes up.”

Max bit his lip and yanked hard again. The ropes fell away from Mr. Piggly and the flyer began to rise straight up into the air.

“Woo-hoo!” Alex yelled. “We have liftoff!”

“Yeah!” Max said. “Warp speed!”

The engine was off, so all was silent, but they were rising steadily. Everything on the ground seemed to shrink away beneath them. Max became smaller and smaller, then they cleared the treetops and kept going. To their left, they could see all of Riverside, the Catholic church steeple lit up brightly as always.

“Dude, this rocks!” Alex said.

Brian laughed. “We’re really doing it! We’re flying. Well… we’re floating.”

“You know what we need?” Alex said. “We need a name for this machine. We can’t keep calling it ‘the flyer.’ You’re supposed to give boats and bikes and planes and things cool girls’ names, like Annabel or Suzie. Something like that. She needs a good name for good luck.”

They reached the top of the grain elevators. Brian was sure that nobody had looked down on the tops of the giant cement cylinders in many years. They weren’t quite as cool as the Space Needle back in Seattle, but still a good five or six stories high. The flyer floated above them now.

“What do you think?” Alex asked.

“It’s awesome up here,” Brian said.

“It is,” said Alex. “But I mean about the name for the flyer.”

“Oh. Well, you know how Ms. Gilbert was telling us about all the things named after Greek mythology? I was thinking about how the mission that took the astronauts to the moon was called Apollo . Maybe we could find a cool mythology name like that.”

“Like Apollo? But that’s already been taken.”

“I know, but you know how we’re going to do our project on this Icarus kid? Ms. Gilbert told me a little about him. He and his dad built these cool wings and then flew out of a maze.”

“Icarus?” Alex said.

“Yeah. I looked online a little bit tonight before supper, and I couldn’t find any spaceships or planes or anything named after Icarus.”

“I guess it sounds cool, but I still think a girl’s name would be better.”

“Naw,” Brian said. “Girls’ names are no good for flying. You never hear about girl pilots. Just that one woman, what was her name? Amelia Earhart.”

“Okay, Icarus it is.” Alex patted the wing. “Hear that, Icarus ? You’ve got a name now, so make us proud. Fly like you flew out of that maze.”

They were so high now that Riverside resembled a little island of lights in a dark ocean. Cars and trucks driving on the streets looked like toys. Brian looked up and saw Mr. Piggly carrying them up into the sky. He swallowed. How high was five thousand feet? He had seen videos on the Internet where cameras tied to balloons soared up practically to space. On one, the camera picked up the curvature of the earth.