Dad got him his first games. Dad always asked him about his new games, just like he asked about school. Sometimes Dad seemed more interested in the games than school. Dave saw why now. The games weren’t for play. They were training vids, just like the ones at school. Dave’s breath exploded from him. Hope someone did a better reality check on them than they did on some of the school vids. I guess I’m about to find out.
So the adult world had been playing games with the kids. Let’s see what happens when kids play back.
Dave looked up and his Dad went on. “What you do, son, is keep looking for the best overall compromise.”
Dave saw the connection. Boy, do I. “Right,” he told his father.
“And you’re the one who decides what it is. The ten-dollar word for it is iterative design, but you’ve been doing it for years. I’ll give you access to my system from your bedroom computer. Have fun, son.”
Dave headed for his room. Dad had a weird idea of fun. Then, all grownups seemed to have strange ideas. Dave wondered how they got that way, but he didn’t have time to waste on that. He had compromises to make.
Dave halted at his door. Compromises. Was it the compromises that made adults what they were? Touch a star. David, touch a star. Hold on to that. No compromise there.
But before Dave could compromise anything, he had to design the pieces he was fitting together. At the center of everything was the microwave radiometer. Dave found a copy of the thirty-year-old design on net. He stared at the huge thing for two long minutes, wondering how he’d ever fit it into his tiny payload. The sensors generated its own microwave signal, mixed it with the weak cosmic background, then boosted both to a level that could be measured. For a second, the original design grabbed him, held him like a drowning elephant and threatened to pull him under.
Then Dave broke free. “This’s just like the booster in my pocket phone. Different wavelength, but the same idea.” Dave leapt from his chair and danced around his desk. The signals from the com satellites 150 miles up were regenerated billions of times a day. “Hell, I can get a dozen of those chips at Radio Shack for a dollar.” The grown-ups who put this together weren’t so smart!
Dave quit his dance, remembering his trip to the science museum. They’d shown him a vacuum tube as big as his fist. Now, a square inch chip had billions of gates better than that tube. Those old folks didn’t have anything better to work with. Maybe there’s a reason why the people in the retirement park want a newspaper.
Ideas came at him, faster than he could sketch them down on his pad. With Dad’s gear, he’d build strips of receivers and boosters for several different wavelengths. Stretched across the rocket’s skin, the entire ship would be the antenna.
Wow!
Dave went to work, designing, compromising, and redesigning controls for the rocket’s flight, the microwave receiver and communications with the ground. There was no question in his mind which two took precedence. But he didn’t want the guys to think he was execing them. He wasn’t bossing an office; they were independent contractors, just like his Dad. The most important question he called the guys on.
“How interactive do we make this? Should I automate everything?”
Joe shrugged.
Terry shook his head, a grin spreading to his toes. “Your mom ever tell you to quit sitting around the house, do something. Go outside and play?”
“Yeah,” came from the two others.
“Well, this time we are going to go way outside and play. I say make the Hawk in-ter-act-tive all the way. We bring our goggles and gloves. We fly with that sucker.”
“Right way!” Joe shouted.
Dave wasn’t so excited; Terry had named the rocket without asking anyone. Who was execing who? But Joe seemed happy. Dave shrugged it off. Compromise, anything to touch a star.
But the choices he made to optimize the chip set almost got him in trouble when Dad checked his design before sending it for tooling.
“You’ve deoptimized most of your flight controls, son.”
The rocket wasn’t going to fly that much, just straight up, but Dave couldn’t tell Dad that. “Yeah, the software’s supposed to take care of most of that.”
Dad opened his mouth, closed it, and ran a hand over his chin. Finally he said. “You’re going to flight test this?”
“Yes.”
“We can afford to run a new chip after that.”
Joe’s dad took them out to a little-used drag strip for their test. While Joe and his dad fueled the Hawk, Dave and Terry set up the control center. Dave had designed all the software to interface with their VR gear, both glasses and gloves. They’d use the phone net to keep in touch with the Hawk. The net orbited at 150 miles and the Hawk would be just below 200 miles. The net faced downward, but their satellite should still be in range. Dave also liked to stay close to the net so he could get questions answered fast.
When the rocket was ready, Joe’s dad headed for his truck and a beer and Joe trotted to join his friends. “She’s loaded.”
“Let’s see what the Hawk can do.” Terry started the countdown dramatically at sixty, which left Dave a whole minute to waste.
He checked the air traffic picture at Portland International; no aircraft were near them. An eyeball sweep of the clear sky showed no birds; it would be lousy luck to lose their project to a dumb animal.
The Hawk fumed on the pad. It was delta shaped, like a real spaceship, even though she wasn’t much bigger than a fifty-five gallon drum. The bottom was three feet across to give the landing gear plenty of spread. The nose cone reached six feet from the ground. Strips of lead foil spread like a star burst from the nose to the bottom, standing in for Dave’s conformal receiver array. Today was just a test for the vehicle. Today, Dave would not touch a star, but he was getting close—close enough to feel their warmth on his face.
Terry reached ten. Dave did a quick check; everything in his glasses was green.
“Two, one, ignition.”
Fire spewed from the bottom of their creation. For a heartbreaking second, it stopped, then caught again. In the blink of an eye, the rocket was off and climbing. Instead of a slow haul up to two hundred feet, it was going like a skate board on black ice. Dave glanced at Terry; his glove hand was all the way back.
“Wow,” Joe had eyes only for his baby.
“Terry, we’ve got to land this thing. Slow down, you’ll wreck it.”
Terry ignored Dave.
Dave started to grab Terry’s control hand, then froze helplessly in place. What Terry was doing was bad, but the commands the Hawk would get if the two of them got into a shoving match were worse.
Finally, Terry’s hand bent forward. Dave watched on his glasses as the rate of climb slowed—and the engine hiccuped, sending a shock through the entire structure. Dave prayed the connectors on the com unit held together.
As Terry slowly brought the vehicle back down to where it belonged and went through the landing procedures, Dave’s instruments reported two more instances of fuel starvation. As soon as the Hawk touched down, Terry and Joe started celebrating, pounding each other on the back.
Dave didn’t have time; something was wrong with his ticket to the stars. Anger knotted his stomach. Dave wanted to smash Terry with something heavy, for risking the stars and for whatever Terry overlooked when he designed the fuel system. There wasn’t time for anger this afternoon. Dave locked it away in a box and went hunting for what was wrong.