“You okay, sir?” said Alan.
“Tired,” said Eric, and rubbed his eyes. It was not a physical fatigue that troubled him, but more like a hallucination. He saw an image of Sparrow’s control panel, and his hand working there, moving a sequence of toggle switches and then pressing an unmarked switch on the overhead panel. The vision went away, then came back seconds later to repeat itself.
Eric stood up. “We’re going back to Sparrow’s Bay.”
“Sir?”
“Get me in the cockpit of that thing.”
“I don’t know how, sir. I’ll call the others back.”
“No. Stay close. Write down everything I do.” Eric’s eyes opened wide as he watched something that was only in his mind.
They went back to Sparrow’s Bay. A lone guard checked them in as they entered, and recognized both of them. Eric climbed up on Sparrow’s stubby wing, shoved his hand into a slot in the fuselage, and squeezed.
There was a metallic pop, and a gull-wing panel unfolded as it swung out above their heads. Eric climbed into the cockpit without hesitation. Settled himself. Alan looked over his shoulder, clipboard at the ready.
“Draw a layout of these switches, and number the sequence I use.”
Eric waited a few seconds, and then began throwing switches, seven of them, in sequence. His hand moved to the eighth on the overhead panel.”
“Got it?” he asked.
“Got it, sir. Hope you know what you’re doing.”
“I don’t, but here goes,” said Eric, and punched the switch on the overhead.
There was a loud thump from the bowels of Pregnant Sparrow. Eric waited for something to happen, held up his hands. “Still here. No balls of fire, yet.”
Alan was looking aft along the fuselage. “Holy shit,” he said, and then Eric felt a faint vibration, stood up in the cockpit and looked back around Alan.
The entire tail section of Pregnant Sparrow was rising, rotating, as if hinged. Eric climbed out and followed Alan off the wing as the tail section quit moving with a dull thud. They looked inside the tail section, and saw an empty shell. The fuselage it had connected to was empty back three feet to a solid panel covered with nubbins the size of baseballs, and sharp, metal vanes only an inch in height ran back to it, parallel along the fuselage.
“They’ve been trying to get into this thing for a year,” said Alan. “We really needed that manual.”
“It wasn’t in the manual,” said Eric, and ran a hand over the edge of a vane. It felt vaguely warm to the touch, while the fuselage surface was cool.
“So how did you figure it out?”
“I don’t have a clue,” said Eric. “Must have been something I read in the controls section. I’ll check it again. These vanes are warm, and they’re getting warmer. Ah, what’s this?”
The vanes were uniformly separated by a couple of inches, but between two of them, halfway back, was a small depression in the fuselage. A black button switch there was engraved with a glyph that looked like an eye. Eric’s finger hovered over the switch. A part of his mind screamed out in warning, but a stronger part was urging him on.
“This will either be enlightening, or stupid,” said Eric, and pushed down on the switch. There was a click, then a faint buzzing sound resonating from the fuselage.
“Hear that?’ asked Eric.
“No.”
“Lean closer.” Eric leaned inside the open fuselage so Alan could get closer. The fuselage was cold on his hands, but his face was suddenly warm, and it felt like the hair on his head and hands was moving in a light breeze.
“Feels warm in here,” said Alan.
“And getting warmer,” said Eric. His face felt flushed, while hands remained cool on the metal surface.
“Enough,” he said, reached over and pressed the black button down hard. Another click, and the faint buzzing sound stopped instantly. Alan stepped back, but Eric remained where he was for another minute. The warm breeze he’d felt before was gone, and his face cooled quickly. “Did you feel a breeze in here?”
“No air movement, but my hand felt warm.”
“Gone, now. Let’s close it up and get some others to take a look at this.” Without thinking, Eric climbed back onto the wing, reached inside the cockpit and toggled a single switch on the overhead panel.
The tail section lowered again without sound, and locked into place with a thump.
Alan looked at him with a grin on his face. “I guess that was in the manual, too.”
“Must be,” said Eric. “Why don’t you go get the others back here while I try to figure out how I did this? I know it’s late, but you might catch them up.”
Alan left him there. Eric went through the manual several times, focusing on the controls section, but found absolutely nothing that even suggested how to gain access to the interior of the fuselage. The words ‘mixing plenum’ and ‘FL-7’ kept popping up, an unknown term and missing section that had to have something to do with it, at least providing a clue. So without a hint, a trigger for inspiration, how could he have seen what he’d seen, his own hand moving over the controls in the proper sequence? And how had he dared to press that black button in the interior of Sparrow’s belly? What had compelled him to do it? This was not Eric the analyst, the scientist. He would not do something like that without some knowledge of the possible consequences, and yet he’d done it without hesitation.
In what seemed like a moment, Alan was back with the others. They were all excited, and demanded Eric show what he’d done. Eric obliged them, returning to the cockpit, and without reference to Alan’s notes he toggled in the switch sequence to open the bowels of Sparrow to them. The men were all peering inside before he even got off the wing. “Don’t lean in too far. Might be a residual energy field there. It started to get warm inside when I pressed this switch.”
The men backed up a step. Eric leaned inside the open maw of Sparrow and pressed the button switch on the fuselage. Again there was a thump, and a buzz near the edge of their audible range. Eric intended to show them the growing warmth inside, but this time something more spectacular happened. Elton Steward had left his loose-leaf notepad in the fuselage interior before he stepped back. As Eric inserted his hand into the opening to check for the first indication of warmth, the notebook suddenly snapped open, the cover standing straight up, the pages riffling until they were spread into a fan shape, each page equally spaced from its neighbors. Eric flinched, but didn’t remove his hand, saw the hairs there waving as if in a breeze, felt the first warmth caress his skin.
“Here, you can feel the heat.”
“I don’t think so,” said Steward, and took another step back. “What the hell’s going on with that notebook?”
Eric ignored him. “Getting warmer,” he said. Not warmer, but now hot, and the hairs on his arm and head were beginning to move. He punched the switch again, and kept his hand inside. The notebook pages collapsed, and the hairs on his hand and arm were instantly still. The heat he’d felt dissipated more slowly, but was gone in a few seconds.
He handed the notebook back to Steward, but the man hesitated before taking it. “There’s some kind of energy field inside this thing when you throw that switch,” said Eric. “It’s not microwave. I feel the heat first at skin surface.”
“And it would take a hell of a radiation pressure to move those pages like it did, and the way they ended up doesn’t make any sense if it’s a radiation effect,” said Steward.
Eric looked at the watch on his wrist. “Not magnetic, either. My watch is running fine. But there’s an energy field inside this thing, and it’s controllable. My bet is that switch I activated is just a system check. Any ideas?”
“Lots of tests we can make,” said Steward. “You sure there isn’t anything in that manual about this?”