Charlie pointed to the mare and said, “Moonbeam. Moonbeam is her name.“
He held out his arm and helped Anastasia onto the horse. She squealed with delight. It was not clear as to whether or not she had ridden before, but there was a good likelihood that her family had owned horses and stables. She was not afraid, that much was certain. Nevertheless, Charlie guided her step by step, showing her how to mount the horse, how to dismount, and how to gingerly get Moonbeam to move along, slow down or come to a complete stop.
The rows and rows of trains were bugging Lucky. Where were those trains that he had seen while time traveling with Charlie? At the time he read a sign with that name, Lucky simply did not have enough time to explore it so he asked Mickey to do a search for a New York City train barn where old trains might have been retired or are currently being kept today. After a few minutes, Mickey motioned him over to his computer.
“Look,” Mickey said as he pointed to a book displayed on the monitor titled
Old New York
. Lucky picked up the phone and called a local bookstore in Alice Springs, which told him that even though the book was not in stock, they would happily order it for him. He thanked the man, told him that he might be calling him back, and hung up the phone. He then called the local library and asked if they had a book by that name. After a few brief moments on hold, the librarian returned to the phone and informed him that the book was indeed in stock and that she would hold it for him behind the counter.
It was right around eight thirty a.m. when Charlie walked out into the living area and told Lucky he was ready to drive him over to the library. True to her word, the librarian had the book stowed away behind the checkout desk. Lucky and Charlie found an empty desk toward the back, opened the book and began flipping through it. On page
one fifty-six, there it was. Lucky recognized it immediately. The picture looked like the abandoned train yard that Lucky had seen outside one of the portals. The photo was called
Train Shed
and the caption said it was built in 1871. The picture showed a great canopy of iron and glass, completely covering it, apparently in its original form. The book stated that the
Train Shed
became obsolete in 1906. The rails leading out of the shed had long since been completely dismantled and the only tracks remaining were the ones buried deep under New York City. Grand Central Station was built around it; a post office was built directly above it. Old trains must have been brought to the
Train Shed
to be stored there, the men reasoned. After all these years, what Lucky saw was those old trains, apparently still waiting for an engine to pull them out of their underground tomb.
“Glad to know the train portal’s location and her relevance in New York City history,” Lucky said. “Good job, Mickey.”
Next, the men did an internet search for the city of Rhyolite and found references to a ghost town in Nevada located about an hour from Las Vegas. Lucky must have visited this town at the height of its success. It seemed that silver and gold had put Rhyolite on the map and that one of its unique features was a bank built with stones containing gold ore. At one time, three major railroads passed through it, and at its height, it boasted between eight and ten thousand people. After the mines ran out, so did the townsfolk, sources said, until the area dissolved into nothing more than a ghost town and a quick stop for sightseeing tourists.
Chapter Twelve
The gang – Sam, Mickey, Charlie and Lucky – all awoke to the wonderful smell of freshly brewed coffee and the wafting, alluring aroma of fresh, oven baked bread. Lucky got up and quickly showered, opting to forego a shave. Here no cared or would notice. There was something about the ranch and the Outback. It had a ‘healthiness’ about it and it brought Lucky to a tranquil place; one of no pressure, no anxiety, no looking over your shoulder. Letting his beard grow brought a little freedom, too. One such freedom was obvious – no sense of urgency, no laboring with a razor and shaving cream each morning – but also maybe a little rebellion. He could be a nonconformist, a little freer or, in this case,
hide
himself entirely, literally . . . with a beard. Whatever the reason, his beard grew rather quickly and to his chagrin, it grew in with a few more gray hairs than he would have liked. Yes, Lucky thought, there was something to be said for small towns and country living, well in this case,
ranch
. . . living.
Lucky installed a small gym in a section of the new barn and as the professor busied himself with his flying machine, Lucky worked out. He needed to after all the monster-sized “brekkies” that awaited him each day. Without fail, Charlie cooked a few dozen eggs with enough bacon to feed an army. Throw in the toast with mounds of vegemite, purely an acquired taste, and it was hard to keep in shape.
On this day, after breakfast, Lucky carried his coffee out to the big wraparound porch. He grabbed an ashtray from the far corner and sat down into a wooden chair that had a small table next to it. Just as he was about to light his cigar, the professor, doing a slow sprint, came running around the house. Lucky looked up and the professor asked if he would be so kind as to follow him; there was something important he wanted Lucky to see. Lucky listened, proceeded to light his cigar, and stepped off the porch, leaving his coffee behind. Once inside the barn, the professor said, “Well, whatta you think?”
Lucky found himself staring at a large, saucer-shaped contraption, eerily reminiscent of a UFO; well, at least it looked like the pictures he’d seen of UFOs.
“Did you finish it? Is it ready to go?” Lucky asked as he stood facing the giant machine.
“It’s finished, and yes, it’s ready to go. Come on in and let me show you the finished product.”
The professor closed the barn doors and then proudly showed Lucky how he had cleverly modified a section from the upper part of the craft to include a fold-away ladder. When he pressed a remote, it activated a solenoid, or a coil formed into a helix shape that resembled an outstretched slinky, that in turned hydraulically opened and closed the steps. When it was completely closed, the bottom half of the ladder blended seamlessly into the body of the craft, completely unnoticeable. The professor walked around the spacecraft, showing off every inch of it, as he excitedly explained that while his original intentions were to build only a prototype, meaning a working model, as things slowly developed, he could not help himself; he just kept on adding and perfecting until he had constructed something capable of much more than flight. Lindstrom pointed to the aluminum shell surrounding the wooden underpinning.
“I arc welded the seams so that it’s air tight, capable of leaving our atmosphere. Since we are able to control the re-entry speed, we can avoid the spacecraft burn that most receive as a result of the extremely high temperatures caused by friction when they return to Earth.”
He proudly talked about how the ship was pressurized and the temperature was computer regulated to keep the interior at a constant, comfortable temperature of seventy-four degrees. The professor pointed out the running or rolling lights, completely encircling the craft, and the three landing gears that remained extended, supporting the craft at rest.
“The landing gears are retractable, fold inside the plane. I had plenty of room to work with so I figured why not put the space to good use and use it to hide them. I used regular old wooden sawhorses to hold the ship upright, while I toyed with various approaches of how the landing gears might work. I finally decided to use the
K.I.S.S.—Keep
I
t
S
imple
S
tupid method. So, I used a standard small craft set of hydraulic landing gears and they worked perfectly. Now here’s the best part,” he said as he patted the ship’s exterior. “Look at the skin covering the ship and tell me what you see.”
Lucky looked and couldn’t really notice anything at first, and then he moved closer and noticed that the craft was covered from top to bottom with a shiny, black, plastic type of material that looked like thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of little dots embedded into the black covering.
“Is this what you were talking about?” Lucky asked while running his hand over the surface.
“Yes,” Lindstrom answered. “What you’re looking at is aluminum, painted with black paint and covered with something special. Embedded in it are thousands of tiny video cameras that I had made, under special contract, exclusively, just for us – a series of television screens smaller than a pinhead, embedded into material thinner than a credit card. It can bend the same as a cloth, but with the end result being that of cloaking the ship, thereby making it invisible to the naked eye. Lucky, the final tab is quite hefty because of the strict design and the parameter requirements I placed on it, but as you kept giving me carte blanche to forge ahead, I did so, knowing that this baby right here is worth much more than what you spent. There is no price tag that you can place on this. It is beyond dollars. This is truly . . . revolutionary.”
Lucky’s brow raised a bit. Now the professor was going to lower the boom. He knew it. Lucky stood, ready to hear just how much this enormous UFO was going to break, or had already broken the bank. The professor ignored the look and just steamrolled over it with his tour and explanation.
“The material that covers the ship and allows television images to be taken and displayed, must withstand extreme temperature variations, ranging from the heat of re-entry to the freezing cold of outer space. As if that’s not enough with all of this groundbreaking technology, there was a need for more. The ship needs to be clean, no dirt clinging to it. I designed an electronic vibratory cleansing system and had it manufactured so dust and dirt would not stick to the outer layers of exterior of the ship. The ship has to remain clean so it doesn’t lose its ability to remain invisible. Let me demonstrate it for you.”
The professor climbed the ladder and disappeared into the interior of the spaceship.. In a few moments, he poked his head out and Lucky could see the top of his head.
“Now watch closely,” he said. And as he spoke, the ship disappeared right before Lucky’s eyes. It was amazing – a machine that size had completely disappeared. Then just as quickly, it reappeared and he reemerged from the ship and calmly stepped off the ladder.
Lucky was impressed.
“Wow. I’m speechless,” Lucky said. “That really is something else.”
Lindstrom smiled. He was pleased.
“Come over to the bench. I want to show you something else,” he said excitedly.
They walked over to a large workbench in the rear of the barn. There was material strung from a metal hanger, secured to a nail, hammered into a two by four stud that was part of the interior of the barn. The professor went on to explain.
“The ship can be rendered invisible because, unlike cloth, it does not bend and because of that provides me a stationary area to work from. The exterior is constantly taking television pictures of everything around it, above and below, but as I said before, it doesn’t bend. The cameras take the photos and the signals are sent to the computer, which in turn converts them into video images. The images are forwarded to miniature television screens that will then display the pictures. If you’re looking at the craft from below, you will see the image that the cameras on the top part of the ship have taken. In other words, from the ground looking up, you see sky or clouds, but not the ship. From above, you see the ground or the sea, or whatever is below at the time and not the ship. It’s very easy for our megacomputer to make instant calculations and adjustments for all of the billions of variables it receives so that the picture you are seeing is always constant. The invisibility suits I made have presented me with a difficult and different set of problems. Whenever there is movement of arms, legs, any movement at all, the material is constantly bending and moving and a computer cannot interpret and convert the billions of signals produced in a nanosecond fast enough to keep up with the constantly changing movements. We do not have a computer with that kind of intelligence, capable of interpreting the billions of messages it’s constantly receiving.”
Lucky asked, “So, in other words, our ship can be made invisible, but not us. We’re not invisible. Is that what you’re saying, professor?” Lucky was a bit disappointed.
“Not at all, Lucky,” Lindstrom added quickly.
Lucky was confused. “Professor, you’re not making any sense. Would you please clarify? You just said that we don’t have a computer with enough power for the suits to make us invisible. Correct?”
“Yes, you are. While I can definitely make you invisible if you are stationary and completely still, we do not at present have a computer powerful enough to make you invisible while you are moving but . . . our ship does.”
Lucky cocked his head to the side, bewildered a bit.
“To make you invisible,” the professor continued, “while you are in motion, I will have to remain in close proximity to you – let’s say within a two-block radius from wherever you are. From there, I’m able to transmit wireless signals to the circuitry in your suits and by doing this from a distance, the signal can be received by the circuitry in your suit and it will effectively make you invisible, as long as I am within the distance mentioned or closer. But a word of caution – while you are invisible, you’ll need to move slower than normal. My concern is that the computer might freeze if it becomes overloaded. I haven’t tested the system enough to learn its upper parameter weaknesses so we’ll need to take it slowly.”
Lucky’s face perked up a bit. That was fine. His time portal travels were an adventure and this was just another adventure in his life. How many people could travel in time to ancient lands and also be able to disappear before your eyes and ride a spaceship? He was true to his name – Lucky – and he knew it.
“Dear boy, you didn’t really think I would let you down now, did you?”