Disc (14 page)

Tiona got crinkles around her eyes and she bit her lip for a second. Vaz wasn’t sure what that meant, but then she said, “Okay. You want to go with me?”

Fighting the mild panic that welled up inside him, Vaz said, “Okay… Um, but I might not be the best person to help if something goes wrong…” he trailed off.

Tiona stepped over and gave him another little hug. He made uncomfortable little patting motions on her back. She pushed herself back out to arm’s length, “That’s okay Dad, I’ll get someone else.” She frowned in puzzlement at her hands where they gripped his upper arms, “Your arms…” She waved it away, then said, “Never mind, I’ll see you later.” She turned, picked up the flycycle, and headed up the stairs.

Lisanne looked up from her book when Tiona came out of the stairwell from the basement. Tiona had something that looked like a strange relative of a tricycle in her hand. It had handlebars like a trike and a big wheel in the front and two smaller wheels in the back, but the wheels were oriented horizontally rather than vertically. “What’cha got there?”

Tiona looked down at the thing in her hand, “It’s my new flycycle. These are lift discs and I should be able to fly it around up in the air. Nolan and I are going to go look for an empty field to try it out.”

Lisanne frowned, “Are you sure it’s safe?”

Tiona smiled, “Dad’s installed collision avoidance radar and done a bunch of programming to make it safe.” She waved at the black strap harness she had on, “Beyond that, he’s made me this safety harness that has a lift disc to act like a parachute!”

Lisanne felt her expression soften as she looked at the harness, “Your Dad has a hard time expressing his emotions, but those are pretty concrete indications of his love, aren’t they?”

“Yeah.” Tiona hesitated, then she said, “Dad’s… he’s… astonishingly strong.” She shrugged, “I guess you already knew that, huh?”

Lisanne gave a little laugh, “Yeah, though he covers it well. His body’s… astonishing.”

Tiona tilted her head questioningly, “What do you mean?”

“He’s
ripped!
Washboard abs. Chest and arms like you wouldn’t believe.” Lisanne realized she’d been sounding a bit dreamy and tried to make light of it with a little shrug.

Tiona frowned, “How come
I’m
not aware of this?”

Lisanne laughed again, “Believe it or not, he’s
embarrassed
by it. He thinks his body looks grotesque and I can’t convince him…” Lisanne had been about to say how sexy he looked, but decided that wasn’t the right thing to say to her daughter, “I can’t convince him it looks good. So he wears those big baggy shirts and loose pants to cover himself up.”

Tiona thought back to the time she’d seen her dad’s sweatshirt bounce up while he was hitting his heavy bag. She’d thought she’d seen rippled musculature, but had gradually convinced herself she must’ve imagined it. Then she thought about all the exercise he’d done that day. “So he exercises a lot?”

Lisanne nodded, “He says it helps him focus, mentally.” She snorted, “He thinks his musculature is an ‘undesirable side effect’ of the exercise he does to help himself think better.”

Tiona shook her head wonderingly, then started for the door, “Well, I’m off to meet Nolan and try out this flycycle.”

“Be careful!” Lisanne called after her.

***

Nolan said, “Over there! It looks like a big empty pasture.”

Tiona looked. There was a line of trees making it a little hard to see the pasture so she hadn’t really noticed it until Nolan pointed out. She told the car’s AI to slow down and stop. They both looked out the driver’s side window to the west. North and west of the pasture were more trees. On the south side a field of tall plants grew. Tiona thought they were corn. “Looks good to me,” she said, opening her door.

Nolan looked askance at the flycycle in the trunk of the car. “That’s all there is to it?”

Tiona looked at it too as if seeing it through new eyes. “Yep, three lifting discs…” She went on to describe the handlebars and point out the radar emitters as she carried it through the trees to the pasture.

“What’s the big lump down at the bottom?”

“Thirty kilowatt fusion plant. Gives it enough power to lift 380 pounds.”

Nolan blinked, “Why’s it down there at the bottom of the leg?”

“Makes the flycycle a little more stable. Especially when it’s just standing on its leg by itself. Having a substantial chunk of the weight right down on top of the foot makes it a little harder to knock over.” She shrugged, “And, even though it doesn’t emit many neutrons, having it a little farther away from you seems better.”

“I thought you said it didn’t emit any.”

She gave him a look, “Radiation’s never black or white. It emits very few neutrons so it’s well within the levels that are considered safe, but radiation falls off as the cube of distance, so I feel a little better without it being right under my crotch ” She’d set the flycycle down. Now she threw a leg over it and settled onto the seat.

Nolan snorted, “Well, if you put it that way…”

He watched her gently lift the handlebars. The flycycle and Tiona gently floated up into the air. He saw her twist forward on the grips and the flycycle tilted a little bit to the front like a helicopter does when it’s flying forward. Sure enough, she started moving ahead. Nolan walked along beside her for a moment, but then she twisted the grips harder and started moving faster. He trotted beside her a ways, but then she outpaced him. He saw her lift the handlebars and rise higher into the air. With about five feet of altitude she banked around in a big circle, then made a figure 8. He called after her, “Looks like fun!”

“Yeah!” She shouted, swinging around toward him again. The flycycle tilted back, slowed and came to a halt near him. “This is really cool!”

“Do I get a ride now?”

She settled the flycycle to the ground and got off of it. “Let me test the safety equipment first.” She spoke to her AI and a second later the disc on the back of her harness lifted up to horizontal with a rip of Velcro. The harness pulled up tight around her. To Nolan she said, “I’ve got the safety disc giving me 100 pounds of lift. I’m going to try jumping.” She lowered herself and then leapt up into the air, shooting about twenty feet high. “Whooeee!” she cheered delightedly as she floated back down to the ground and landed.

Nolan frowned, “It looked like you slowed down right before you got to the ground?”

Grinning like a fool, she said, “Yeah! Dad programmed the software for it. The sensors increase the lift to slow you right before you land.” She spoke to the AI and the disc flopped back down against her back, loosening the harness.

“Oh, that’s awesome! Too bad it doesn’t have enough power to lift you off.”

“It does,” she said unbuckling it, “I just don’t want to use up the fuel-cell in case you do something stupid and need it to save you.”

“‘Do something stupid?!” Nolan said, widening his eyes in sham dismay. “I’m aghast that you could even think such a thing!”

She laughed, “My dad was only thinking of the harness as a safety device. The fuel-cell’s enough to get you to the ground in one piece or slow you down if you’re about to hit something, but I’ll bet that with a small fusor, these things might be more popular than the flycycles.”

Picturing himself floating around from place to place suspended by the harness, Nolan could imagine it. Tiona helped him strap into the harness, adjusting it for his larger frame. She showed him the panic button on his chest and explained the panic words that would activate the harness through its AI. Finally, after he mounted up on the flycycle, she explained how to fly it.

In about ten minutes Nolan had worked up to swooping around the pasture at an altitude of 10 to 20 feet. He practically wanted to shout with the joy of it.

Then he noticed a young girl standing just inside the gate to the pasture. She held the bridle of a horse and stared at him. He slowed and dropped his altitude until he was just a foot or so off the ground. When he’d approached to within thirty feet, he settled to the ground and said, “Hello.”

Wide-eyed, she said, “Hello,” in return. He had the impression that she was pretty shy.

“Sorry about using your pasture, we were just looking for a quiet place to try out our flycycle. I hope you don’t mind.”

The girl had a finger in the corner of her mouth. She shook her head, saying nothing.

Nolan said, “Okay, we’ll be going then.” He lifted the handlebars and floated up into the air.

“Wait!” The girl said.

Nolan turned back toward her, “Yes?”

“Can I… ride it?”

Nolan glanced back at Tiona, “Probably, but it isn’t mine.” He indicated Tiona with a tilt of his head, “We need to ask her. You want to ride your horse over there and we’ll see what she says?”

“Okay!” the girl said, vaulting lightly into the saddle.

Nolan led the way on the flycycle and the girl trotted along beside him. When he explained the girl’s request, Tiona rolled her eyes. “We can’t put her on a piece of untested technology like this!”

Seeing the flash of disappointment in the girl’s eyes, Nolan persisted. “Have your AI lock it to an altitude of no more than two feet and a speed of no more than ten miles an hour. With those parameters, it would hardly be more dangerous than riding that horse.”

Suddenly the girl said, “Are you Tiona Gettnor? The one who rescued the astronauts?”

Tiona nodded. Nolan thought he saw her attitude softening.

“Can I get your autograph?!” the girl asked breathlessly.

Although Tiona agreed, no one had a writing implement. However, Tiona agreed to mail her an autograph and the girl did get a restricted ride on the flycycle. Nolan had his AI film it and sent the girl’s AI a copy of the video.

As they drove back to town, Nolan turned to Tiona, “Hey, I’ll bet a harness with thrust discs distributed around it could be pretty useful moving around in weightless environments.”

Tiona looked at him for a moment, “Great idea, you want to design something to fit over our skin suits?”

***

Kathy’s work AI spoke in her ear, “You have a call from a Rachel Hammersmith who says she represents Gettnor Space Industries.”

Kathy felt a little nervous, she’d first heard of Gettnor Space Industries when she’d gotten an email from Hammersmith. She’d been in her job long enough that she knew almost all the aerospace companies and, having never heard of GSI, she’d trashed the email. She sighed, “Pull up anything you can find on Ms. Hammersmith and Gettnor Space Industries. Tell her that I’m on another call and will be a minute.” Kathy represented the final filter before Gunny Pasha, Boeing’s Chief Technical Officer, and she didn’t want to let a call through from some unknown. However, it would be even worse if she blocked contact from someone that Pasha
wanted
to hear from.

Kathy’s screen flickered, then filled with what appeared to be recently put up and fairly scanty information about this “Gettnor Space Industries.” She asked her AI to put up a map of their website and saw to her astonishment that there were only about twenty pages, nothing like the enormous web-maps she saw at established aerospace companies. It made her think of someone’s personal website. One of the GSI pages was about this Rachel Hammersmith, who, Kathy was astonished to see, had worked for a venture capital firm until just a few weeks ago! On their website, GSI claimed to be developing the technology responsible for the rescue of the astronauts that had been all over the news not long ago.

Kathy decided that it just didn’t seem possible that some new fly-by-night company would have anything significant to offer Boeing. Speaking to her AI, she said, “Put her o
n
… Hello Ms. Hammersmith, this is Kathy Bigelow, Mr. Pasha’s assistant. How can I help you?” She used a cool and distant tone, trying to set the stage for putting Hammersmith off.

“Thank you for taking my call. We’d like to discuss the possibility of licensing GSI’s thruster technology for use within the Earth’s atmosphere. I’m assuming that as CTO, Mr. Pasha is the right person to contact. If not, I hope you’ll help me get in touch with the right people?”

These were the kind of decisions that gave Kathy ulcers. She said, “Mr. Pasha’s a very busy man. Perhaps you could send me an email with some details about your technology?”

In a pleasant tone that still managed to be cool enough to express Hammersmith’s irritation, the woman said, “Perhaps you would be kind enough to read one of the four emails I’ve already sent? GSI is an American company and would prefer to sell this commercial aircraft technology to Boeing. However, I’ve already begun reaching out to manufacturers of military aircraft like General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, McDonnell Douglas, and Northrop. They may want to go into the commercial aircraft business as Boeing’s competitors if they get the technological edge that thrusters will give them. If
those
American companies aren’t interested, I suppose I’ll have to contact Airbus. You know how to reach me.”

To her astonishment, Kathy’s AI told her that Hammersmith had disconnected the call! “Bring up any previous emails from Hammersmith,” she said.