“Sure. Let's get our laptops on line. I'll have Felix bring in the boombox and our luggage."
I was humming along with Fleetwood Mac when Riley came back with an agreement. A John Williams sound track was playing when I dived into the analysis of the remains of the alien spacecraft. Later, Johnny Horton was put on the box so I knew it was time for lunch. I saw Tabby in an animated discussion with an older fellow.
“Who is your friend?"
“Dear, this is Ole Swenson."
“Of the Skunk Works."
“How did you know?"
“Didn't you know dear? We own a good size chunk of Lockheed Martin."
Ole seemed a little dazed. “How are you doing Ole?” I reached out my hand. We shook and I continued, “Let's eat."
“Oh Felix...” I waited till he looked at me, “Would you tell Riley or whoever is in charge now that there will be a meeting of everyone after lunch."
About twenty were at the meeting. I recognized Schmitt, Manning, Holcum, Scott, and a few others whose names I never learned. I got up while Tabby, using a workstation, put up on four large screens the computerized information I was working from.
“I looked over the forensic data from the alien ship. Now I can't tell you for sure what everything means but I do have a few guesses. First off, I think I know why they attacked."
I waited until the mumbling stopped.
“Most of you have not been working with all of the data that I collected on possible interstellar travel. What seems to have been disseminated is the set of equations that I thought had the best chance of working. There are a number of other possible ways of constructing a wormhole or tear in the structure of the universe. One of them would include using the gravity and energy of a star to construct wormholes between stars. For this to work the spacecraft would need to get very close to the sun. I haven't worked out the possible numbers but my best guess would be less than 25 million kilometers from the sun. For carbon based creatures to live during the transfer between stars you would have to have a heavily armored and heat resistant spacecraft. I believe that these aliens use star hopping for travel between stars. And from the ion residue found by the analysis of the radio telescope data after the attack, an ion drive within a solar system.
“What I think the aliens wanted to do was control the artificial gravity theory that I developed. With the theory they would be able to travel without using ion drives or star hopping. For a time, I think, we can monitor space travel to our solar system by placing monitors in orbit around our sun."
Dr. Manning interrupted. “But that can't be right. We know that we disabled the craft with our laser fire. With travel that close to the sun their ship should not have been affected by our lasers at that distance."
“Do we know if we disabled the ship or just the observation and communication sensors? Both the
observation and communication arrays would have to be sensitive to the electromagnetic spectrum. After all, we know they were using the spectrum because the radio telescopes spotted the craft. You would not want to fly a craft for any distance without sensors. If they were destroyed by the lasers, the ship would be crippled until they were replaced. As for the star hopping, sensors could be stored behind armored doors during the phase of the hop where the ship was too close to the sun.
Holcum said, “Okay we think we know how they traveled here. But how would we stop a ship that heavily armored if we needed to?"
“The same way we did this time, kinetic weapons. We could even easily use nuclear weapons near the sun. The radiation would have a negligible affect on the rest of the solar system and the kinetic energy of the explosion should either destroy the ship or throw it into the sun."
Holcum replied, “Good. Now we have a defense."
“Hold it. This is a theory. What we need to do is to try to tear it apart. We need to find out if there are any other explanations of the facts."
Schmitt took over the meeting. “Thank you Mr. Karpinen. We now have a new set of theories to work with. Manning, I want you to try to punch holes in Karpinen's theories. Scott, why don't you try to put preliminary plans for a detection sphere around the sun..."
I nodded to Tabby and we walked away. “Why don't we go for a walk before we start working on why the kantele space drive isn't working?” We hooked our arms together. “Felix?"
“Yes, Daniel."
“We are going for a walk."
I saw Felix talk to the military policeman at the door. Outside, I saw a spot of brown green grass in the distance. We walked to it. When we got there, a big four-engine plane was revving on the runway. We sat on the brown grass.
“Tabby, why did you help me with getting the spaceship?"
“I've noticed the same thing you have. Something doesn't feel complete yet. I have seen you watching the stars at night..."
“You know Ben talks about the responsibility of being at point. I somehow feel responsible. If I hadn't discovered that gravity could be made, I could let it go. But I somehow think it is my task to see this through. I've got to walk point again."
The airplane took off drowning out all talk. During the quiet after the takeoff, we sat next to each other, enjoying the feel ofjust being together, until the next plane started warming up its engines. Back at the hanger we got to work on what was happening with the kantele when they tried to form a wormhole. The remote test ships had torn themselves apart. Most of the pieces of one of the ships were in the hanger with a duplicate of the original construction. The ship was about two and a half meters long with a large spherical kantele in front. The cylindrical body of the craft housed a large computer and sensor package and in the tail was a small maneuvering rocket. The largest piece of the destroyed test ship was about 50 centimeters long and about 15 centimeters wide. Tabby looked over the pieces while I reviewed the data tapes from the test runs. After two Mozart CDs and one Bach, she came over to my workstation.
“I want to show you something."
“Good. I am getting nowhere with the data."
She brought me to the pieces of the kantele sphere first. She handed me a magnifying glass. “Look carefully at the edges. Now look at the edges of the pieces from the body cylinder.” I knew she had found something but I couldn't see it at first. I went back and forth between the two groups of pieces. Finally, I saw it. Most of the pieces on the broken sphere were bent inward while the metal from the cylinder was bent in every direction.
“Let's check the data record again.” I smiled at Tabby and pinched her bottom. From the corner of my eye I saw Felix smiling at us.
Back at the workstation we carefully followed the pressure and gravity readings off the kantele sphere. On paper they were all within the tolerances of the construction. But I noticed that there was a flutter in the numbers way down in the fifth decimal place. I highlighted the block of numbers with the cursor.
“Do you see what I see?"
“I sure do."
“Why don't we sleep on it?"
“Sounds good to me."
“Felix. We are ready to go to our hotel room."
“I'm sorry sir ... sorry Daniel. But I was told you would be staying on the base."
“I am not spending a night on an Air Force base, especially not on my honeymoon. We called and made reservations at the Best Western before we left home. All we need is a ride to the motel. And before you ask, I reserved a room across the hall for your men."
It was two days later when we had a solution to the star travel problem. This time the meeting had thirty people in it.
“Okay, I assume everyone has gone over the basic data.” I waited until most of the heads nodded. “The kantele sphere is not strong enough for the forces generated with using it as a star drive. The original specifications overlooked a problem with the production of the space drive. The gravity field that is generated has a slight vibration to it. Under most conditions it will not cause a problem until thousand hours or more of run time but under the extreme conditions the vibrations will weaken the sphere enough to permit the gravitational force to crush the sphere.