Invaders (a sequel to Vaz, Tiona and Disc) (4 page)

His eyes still on the board, Mr. Gettnor spoke in a near monotone, “Radar button sensors. They report the current altitude to the disc’s AI and watch the ground ahead for obstructions and changes in elevation. A simple algorithm lets the disc avoid obstructions and maintain a 15 centimeter altitude.”

Reven stared at him a moment, surprised that he would know so much about how the disc actually worked. Her eyes turned back down to her board, “Wow, the discs you have sound almost perfect. With one under the front of the board and another under the back of the board, I should be able to control it by balancing on my feet just like I do this board with wheels. It seems like leaning forward would tilt it so that it would tend to slide forward and leaning back would slow it just like my board. How much can a disc lift?”

Mr. Gettnor still hadn’t looked up. He said, “It depends how much power you give them, but in their most efficient range, they can lift up to 110 pounds each.” He paused for a second, then continued, “But they’d need to be modified. If you just tried to use them like they’re programmed now, when you leaned forward the front disc would increase its power and the back disc would decrease its lift. The board would stay flat and you wouldn’t go anywhere.” He cocked his head, “They’d have to be reprogrammed so they
allowed
some tilt. If you wanted to be able to go very fast, you’d probably have to have a base altitude higher than 15 centimeters so that you could tilt the board more from front to back…” he trailed off as if still thinking.

“Whoa, that’d be awesome! It’d be perfect if you could set your altitude to whatever you wanted, two feet, six feet, twenty feet, a hundred feet! Are they easy to program?”

He glanced up at her momentarily, then back down at the board. “If you went above two feet or went very fast, you’d have to have a safety harness in case you fell off.”

“I’d be
careful
!” She repeated her question, “Are the discs hard to program?”

He lifted his shoulders slightly in what she thought might be a shrug, “No, programming’s easy.” His eyes shifted around as if he was looking at anything but her. Chidingly, he said, “Careful wouldn’t be good enough. You’d have to have a harness for protection.”

Reven didn’t know what he meant by a safety harness, but decided to just ignore that statement. She’d just fly low and slow. But there
was
an issue that might make it impossible, “How much do they cost?” she asked.

Mr. Gettnor gave another tiny shrug, “I don’t know. So far I don’t think they’re
selling
any in the size range you need.” He paused, Reven thought looking uncomfortable, then said, “I’ve got quite a few though. Would you like me to help you build a…” he glanced a little higher, though not up to her eyes, “fly-board? Or do you have another name for it?”

Stunned, Reven shot him a look as she once again wondered if he was serious. “Um, you’d help me? How… much would that cost?”

“Oh… I just think it’d be interesting to build one. I wouldn’t want any money.”

“Uh, sure. Uh, how would I order the parts? When could we do it?”

“We could design it right now…” He paused for a moment looking uncomfortable, then finished in a rush, “Or, you could come back some other time if that would be better for you.”

Reven glanced at the sky and decided there’d still be plenty of time to find Bessie before dark. “Now would be great. What do we have to do to… design a fly-board?” In her mind, she pictured sitting down at the kitchen table in their house and making some rough pictures on sheets of paper.

“We need to go down to my lab where we can use the design station,” he said turning and walking away from her into the barn. Apparently he expected her to follow him even though he hadn’t really invited her in.

Thinking
stranger-danger!
Reven froze in the doorway. Abductions were much less common now with people wearing AIs that were constantly broadcasting their location and uploading audio-video records of what they were doing. Any creeps that
did
abduct someone essentially had to do it
knowing
they were going to be caught. It did still happen with real psychos though, and even though this guy was her neighbor, Reven was realizing she knew very little about him. And he was odd!
Was that disc she’d followed just some kind of lure—like perverts used to use candy?
She realized she’d already be on her way home if she wasn’t so entranced by the very thought of a fly-board.
Still, going into the barn with him has to be… just crazy, doesn’t it?
She leaned in the door of the barn to call after him.
I’ll tell him I’d better go find Bessie. I can say I’ll come back and design the fly-board with him some other time.

When Reven leaned in the door, she expected to see Mr. Gettnor just a few feet away, turned and wondering why she hadn’t come in behind him. Instead, she couldn’t see him at first, but then turned toward the sound of clumping footsteps and realized he was a goodly part of the way across the interior of the big building
. Which is not a barn at all anymore,
she suddenly realized. It might look like the same old barn on the outside, but the interior was brightly lit, had finished interior walls, and, somehow the most surprising of all, a squeaky clean concrete floor. A good deal of the interior was empty, though large pieces of equipment were positioned here and there and Reven had the impression they were
precisely
positioned because they looked so well organized.

Then Reven’s eyes fell on the large round object sitting next to the barn door.
That looks just like the freaking saucer that went out and rescued the people on that asteroid!
She blinked a couple of times,
That
is
the freaking saucer!
She glanced at Mr. Gettnor’s retreating back.
My god!
He’s
the Gettnor that built the saucer in his garage in Raleigh. Now he’s our neighbor?! Holy crap!
How
did I not know this?

Reven picked up her board, stepped into the barn, closed the door behind her, and ran as quietly as she could to catch up with Mr. Gettnor. Speaking quietly to her AI, she said, “Connect me to Mom… Mom, I’m over visiting Mr. Gettnor in his barn. He’s going to help me modify my board. I’ll get Bessie and be back in time for the milking, don’t worry.”

Her mother’s voice came in Reven’s ear, “You’ve met Mr. Gettnor? How?”

“Tell you later, I don’t want to be rude.” Reven told her AI to disconnect and hoped her mother wouldn’t call her right back. Then she stopped. Mr. Gettnor had started down some stairs. Her first thought was,
This barn has a basement?!
Then her heart skipped a beat,
What if my AI can’t get a signal down here?

Reven quietly told her AI to put up a graph displaying the quality of the wireless signal so she’d know if she was about to get cut off, then she started down the stairs behind Mr. Gettnor. She’d had an okay signal upstairs, but the farther she went down the stairs the higher the bar rose, suggesting that there must be a signal repeater in the basement. She told the AI to let her know if anything happened to the signal, then looked around as she entered the basement.

Holy crap!
Reven stared out across a ginormous room. The ceilings had to be at least 15 feet! She looked around
, This room must be
way
bigger than the barn above it! In fact,
her brow furrowed,
this room must be why that immense lawn in front of the barn’s so flat. The lawn’s on top of this basement and there’s probably only a foot or two of dirt over a nice flat roof.
Everywhere she looked, Reven saw equipment. Not the kind of farm equipment she was used to. The stuff looked like it belonged in some kind of research facility. It was all neatly arranged and spotlessly clean, giving her a subtle feeling that nobody ever actually used it. In the corner near her was a cot, a small refrigerator, a microwave, a couple of punching bags and a door that looked like it might hide a closet or a bathroom.

Reven looked around for Mr. Gettnor and found him sitting on a rolling chair in an area of the basement almost completely surrounded by very large screens. He was speaking rapidly to an AI and, surprisingly, making occasional keystrokes on a keyboard, something she’d never seen anyone use. He glanced toward her and said, “Can you bring your board over here?” He pulled open a drawer and lifted out a tape measure which he held out to her. “It would help if you measured your board and gave me its dimensions. Would you like the fly-board to be bigger, smaller, or shaped differently?”

Setting her board down on the floor, Reven knelt next to it with the tape measure. She looked at it, thinking. “I think… the same size, without the wheels at either end.”

“Okay, give me those measurements. I assume it doesn’t have to be exact? If it was a few centimeters bigger or smaller in any dimension that wouldn’t be a problem?”

“Oh, no, that’d be fine.” She applied the tape measure and started reading dimensions off to him. When she glanced up again, the biggest screen was displaying a long flat board with rounded ends and no wheels. She thought it looked graceful.

Without looking away from the screen, he said, “Would it be a problem if the front and back were a little wider than the main part of the board?” As he said that the two ends developed circular areas that looked a little wider than the deck. Since her board was about seven inches wide and she thought his discs were about 10 inches around, she had the impression that he’d applied 10 inch discs to either end of her board. “Or,” he continued, “would you prefer that it had a bigger bulge right here in the middle?” As he said that, a new board appeared right below the first one. This time, Reven had the impression that it was a seven inch wide board with a 12 inch disc in the center of it.

Reven stared at the two boards he’d diagrammed, then said, “I think the one with a bulge at each end looks cooler than the one with the big bulge in the middle. But whichever one
works
the best…” As she ran down, Reven realized she really did prefer the cool looking one and hoped that it would work okay. As she watched the lower one with a single big bulge vanished.
I guess he thinks the one I like will work fine
, she thought.

“Would it be okay if there was a thick spot in the board? Like this?” A new diagram appeared below the first one. Again it had wider discs at both ends, then as Reven watched, one of the discs tripled in thickness. “Or,” Mr. Gettnor said, “if both ends were a little thicker?” A third board appeared, this time both of the wider areas were about twice as thick as the central portion of the board.

“Um, I think I like the third one with the two ends both a little bit thicker. Why do they need to be thicker?”

He still didn’t look around at her. “They don’t
have
to be, but if we use the thin design, it’ll have to run on batteries. The thicker version has room for a little fusor and for some acceleration-deceleration discs and side thrusters.” As he spoke the top two designs disappeared and the version with two double thickness discs at each end moved into the center of the screen.

“Fusor?” Reven said, sure she must’ve misunderstood him.

“Hydrogen-boron fusion plant for power. So you don’t have to recharge the batteries all the time.”

Reven blinked, “I know they’re making them small enough for cars now, but not small enough to go in a board like this… are they?”

“They make them. They just don’t sell them yet.”

“What do you mean by acceleration-deceleration discs? And, side thrusters?”

He’d been looking down at her wheeled board. Now he glanced back up at the diagram on the screen and spoke to his AI for a few seconds. The board he’d diagrammed became semi-transparent and she could see various components within it. She saw green discs in the 10 inch circles at each end and there were a couple of smaller discs of about six inches each in the middle of the board. In blue, there were some knobs on top of the green discs at each end with blue tubes running the length of the board. Reven knew enough about fusor design to think that the knobs were probably where the fusion occurred and the long tubes were the coils that collected energy from the alpha particles the fusors generated. A row of smaller, vertically oriented green discs rimmed the periphery of the big discs at each end. He pointed at the ones pointing more front to back, saying, “These discs can accelerate or decelerate the board so you don’t have to do all of it by tilting, and,” he pointed at the discs oriented more side to side, “these discs can push the whole board from side to side to steady it under you if you start to fall off. They can also push to the right in front and to the left in the back to help you turn.”

Reven’s eyes narrowed, “I want to be able to fly it by tilting my feet.”

Mr. Gettnor didn’t say anything for a minute, then said, “You still could. Think of it as a safety parameter. If you fly beyond the envelope, these would let the AI catch you.” Still without turning around, he said, “Could you wear boots that were attached to the board? Or shoes that clipped onto it?”

“I’d rather not. Why would you want to do that?”

“Maybe not you, but for other people. Being attached to the board would improve your safety quite a bit. If you fell off, but were still attached to the board, the thrusters could reverse and still hold you up. You’d just be hanging underneath it.” He tilted his head curiously, “Maybe I shouldn’t worry about it, the safety harness would protect you, but redundant safety measures are always good.”