I pulled a copy of the U.S. Air Force's Electric Propulsion Study from my coat pocket and set it down on the table next to a tatty yellowing manila folder that had been clamped under his arm throughout.
Marckus and I were the only two people this side of the deep fryer. After serving us our plates of cod and chips, the cafe's proprietor left us on our own. Marckus seemed to start to relax. "Apart from the fact that the math and the physics are beyond me, the evidence says that this whole science, if you can call it that, is still in its infancy," I said. "One look at this report says they're still playing around with algebra. When I wrote what I wrote, I thought the story was bigger than that. I have to concede I was wrong." "What were you hoping for, if I may ask?" Marckus asked. I shrugged. "I thought maybe they'd have at least built some hardware by now. God knows they've had time. The U.S. aerospace industry first started talking about this stuff in the mid-1950s. You'd think by now there might just be something to show for it. But the Air Force is just staring at its navel and doing a few sums."
I tapped the Electric Propulsion report. "Modifications to Maxwell's equations and all that."
"As I recall," began Marckus, "in the 1970s, the Americans tripped over some research published by a Russian mathematician, Ufimtsev, who in turn had gained his inspiration from work done by Maxwell a hundred years earlier. The end result was stealth, the biggest breakthrough in military aircraft design since the jet engine. Not bad, for a mathematician. " "The difference is, they developed stealth," I told him. "How do you know they haven't developed antigravity?" I studied his face. How much did Marckus really know? He must have read my expression. "My information isn't any better than yours," he said, raising a hand in the air to signal his innocence. "The U.S. and the U.K. share a lot of sensitive data, as you know. But there's nothing come across my desk that says we're cooperating with the Americans on antigravity — or even that the Americans are doing it on their own. My point is, we don't know." He brought his hand down on the manila folder to reinforce the point.
I looked at the U.S. Air Force study again. It was hardly reassuring. If antigravity existed and people had known about it years ago, how come the Air Force — along with BAe and NASA — was only just starting to look for it in the mid-1990s?
Marckus stared into his cup. "Did they build the first atomic bomb with a few 'poxy' million bucks? Christ, no. It cost them billions of dollars, even in 1940s values. Secret dollars nobody outside the secret was supposed to even guess at." "So, has antigravity been developed in the black or not?" Marckus glanced up. His voice hardened. "I already told you. I don't know. None of us this side of the bloody Atlantic knows." Then he coughed, semi-apologetically. "But there are signs." "What signs?" Despite myself, I leaned forward. "Up until 1939, atomic energy was still a matter of conjecture, even among physicists in the field. But by the following year, some of the brighter sparks in the community realized that it was doable, that if you split a neutron into equal parts, you'd quite likely get an enormous release of energy. Things that appear impossible usually aren't, even when the physics say they are."
I knew enough to know that in the 1930s next to nothing was understood about nuclear physics, that by the outbreak of the Second World War all experiments resulting in nuclear reactions had required more energy than had been released.
As more and more physicists escaped the Nazis, however, and debate in America was stimulated further, the conjecture spilled into the U.S. press and writers began to speculate about what they had heard. A number of sensational articles appeared about the weapons implications of a nuclear reaction that could be compressed into the blink of an eye. The word was, it would result in a massive bomb.
By 1940, when it was understood that uranium bombarded with neutrons fissioned and produced more neutrons and that a multiplying chain reaction really might occur with huge explosive force, something remarkable happened. The nuclear physics community voluntarily stopped the publication of further articles on fission and related subjects and this, in turn, dampened the media's interest.
By the time America entered the war in December 1941, you couldn't find a mention of fission. It was as if no one had ever been discussing it.
The parallel with what I had read in the U.S. media in the mid-1950s, culminating in all those statements in 1956 that antigravity was doable with a Manhattan-style effort behind it, and then the crushing silence, was extraordinary.
By 1960, you talked about antigravity and people looked at you like you were mad.
I stared out the window, trying to find Watson-Watt's once-secret radar mast, but it was lost behind the trees. I knew Marckus lived somewhere nearby. I wondered where, exactly; what his house was like, whether he was married, if he had kids. "What's in this for you?" I asked him. "You have freedom of movement, I don't," he said. "You can go visit these people and ask questions, I can't." I still couldn't quite see where all this was headed. Marckus took a moment before adding: "I think it's 1939 all over again. I think we're poised on the brink of something. The physics is mind-boggling — Christ, I don't pretend to understand half of it myself — but what we're talking is huge." "Spell it out for me." "Bye-bye nuclear power. Bye-bye rocket motors. Bye-bye jet engines. If we can manipulate gravity, nothing will ever be the same. But expecting British Aerospace to develop this stuff is like asking someone who'd spent the first half of the 17th century building horse-drawn carts to come up with the outline for Stephenson's bloody Rocket. People don't really have a taste for it here, not at a senior level. They don't have the vision that the Americans do. Antigravity is too much mumbojumbo, not enough ROI." He rubbed his thumb and forefinger under his nose and pulled a face. "Return on investment — bean-counter talk."
"So, if you can prove that the Americans really are up to something," I said, "you raise the stakes and get something going here? You get a real program in this country with real money behind it?"
"Right — to a point," he said. "The difference is you're going to prove it." I stared at him, thinking I hadn't heard him right. "It's not such a bad arrangement," he said, reaching into the manila folder and pulling a bunch of papers from it. "You get a short course in physics, a few tips on who to talk to, and maybe a story out of it." He paused. "The story of the biggest breakthrough in transportation technology since the invention of the wheel." "You said there were signs …"I said cautiously. Marckus pushed the papers across the table. The cover sheet was a photocopy from some kind of index. The writing was small, but my eyes were drawn to a section of text that had been highlighted with a yellow marker pen.
I peered closer and words like "magnetic monopoles," "gravitational charge" and "linear equations" swam into my vision.
"This is taken from something called the 'Source Index,' " he said. "It's a list of doctorate papers published by universities around the world. The highlighted part shows you what is happening in one U.S. university, that's all. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of other facilities like these across America engaged in related research. All of them probing the sorts of areas you'd want to probe if you were pulling a field-dependent propulsion program together. Some of the entries go back decades." Field-Dependent Propulsion; yet another term for antigravity. "This thing is a multifaceted, multilayered puzzle and you won't solve it by picking away at the edges," Marckus said. "Begin with what you can see, then search for what you can't. What NASA's doing is in the open, so get over there and start looking and listening. Then go deeper. Some people say that the B-2 Stealth Bomber uses an antigravity drive system. It's like the bomb. The physics has been around for a long time. All it requires is some imagination, a shitload of money and some technical know-how and someone who wants to put the pieces together."