Chapter Three

Hare, You Must Go In Search Of The Optician

       “Ok, ok. We’ll just tool around the farm a bit. I just want you to see how it works, and the bell over there won’t fit us both,” Al said from under the hood. He had told Harry that he was hoping that Harry would spring for the moola to build a “proper space ship.” Harry wasn’t too sure, but he wasn’t totally in denial either. Al came out from under the hood, and gently slammed it shut. He had explained to Harry that the craft didn’t need to be airtight because the inertia dampening field that the device created was impervious to everything, including time. Charlie claimed that a person traveling within the field traveled outside of time. Travel was instantaneous to both the traveler and a person watching from the out side. It could also hover and move slowly by something Charlie called inertia bursting. Al didn’t really follow it all, but he had done a fair amount of experimenting using the bell. He’d even been to Mars and back. The whole thing was controlled by an onboard computer running Linux. Al figured that his brother knew better than to trust his very life to anything MicroSoft.

       “All aboard!” Al called.

       Sheesh, Harry thought. Am I really ready for this? He guessed he was, and opened the passenger door and climbed in. Al had the computer jury rigged in the back seat. He had also taken out the steering wheel and installed a Hearst shifter as a joy stick. There were numerous buttons and dials across the dashboard that Harry didn’t recognize at all.

       Al reached over and pressed a button. The car rose to floor level in the barn on the lift bed, which doubled as a floor when in the up position. “Ready?” Al asked.

       Harry checked his seat belt, gripped the dashboard, and nodded. Al chuckled, “You won’t need that seat belt, Harry. It's an inertia dampener. Remember?”

       “Just drive, Junior.”

       One second they were in the barn, and the next they were a hundred yards outside the barn. Harry turned white as the blood drained out of his face. “Holy Mary, Mother of God,” he whispered. He turned around and looked at the barn. There it was, just sitting there innocent as hell. Then he turned to Al. Al was about to throw up he was laughing so hard.

       Al said between fits, “I wish you could see yourself. Let go of the dash, Harry. You’ve already cracked it wide open.”

       Harry looked, and then forced his hands to relax and let go. Then he looked back at Al. “I think I shit my pants.”

       This sent Al into more laughing spasms. “Stop it, please,” Al begged in gasps, “I can’t breathe.”

       The blood came back into Harry’s face and he blushed hard. “I’m serious, Al,” he whispered.

       Al was crying by now and slapping the seat. “Ok,” he said when he finally gained a modicum of control. He gripped the joystick and twisted it slightly and gave a slight push forward. They were instantaneously parked in front of the house. Al was still snickering, but he was honestly trying to stop.

       Harry opened the door and slid out. He walked that funny way to the house and disappeared into the front doorway.

       Fifteen minutes later he was back in his seat. “If you EVER mention this …”

       Al held up his hands, “Don’t worry about it.” And then he stifled another snort.

       “Ok, let’s do it. I’m ready this time.”

       They really put Eleanor through her paces. They zipped ten miles down the road at the speed of thought. Then they hovered and slowly cruised back. They rose to an altitude of about ten thousand feet, but only for a second because Al didn’t want to become a UFO and have investigators of the federal OR the private type snooping around the farm. After about twenty minutes, Harry remarked, “The air is getting kind of stale in here, Junior.”

       “Damn! I about forgot in the rush and excitement of things. The air that we have in here is all that there is! The field is impervious.” Al twisted and worked the stick, and then they were in front of the house with fresh air flowing in the windows. “When I was using the bell, I had installed scuba tanks for my air supply. Well, that was enough to show you what’s what.”

       “Yeah, you showed me all right. Count me in! These are world shattering times happening here.” Harry felt like a sixteen year old about to get his first car.

       “Harry,” Al said in a low tone.

       Harry turned to him and saw the serious expression on his face. “Yeah, Kid?”

       “We can’t show this to anyone. Not yet. The Feds would confiscate it in a heartbeat and probably stop ours as an after thought.”

       A look of comprehension came over Harry’s face. “Oh yeah. I’m just too damn naïve. Hell, we’d prolly have the Men In Black Hats crawling all over us.”

       “How’s it coming, Harry,” Al asked, coming up behind Harry. They had decided to hide it in plain sight under a very large tent on Harry’s expansive estate.

       “The living quarters, galley, and gymnasium are nearly done. The hydroponics and video systems are operative, but we still need to run more checks. You already know that the computers, radar and FLIR are done.” He lowered his voice, “When all of this is done, we still have to have the fake weapons systems taken out, and the real things installed. Finding those called in just about all of the favors in high places owed to me. But it will really be something when it’s done.” Harry grinned from ear to ear. Since this project began, it was like Christmas every day for him.

       Al had spent the last two months going over every scrap of information that Charlie had left behind about the IDD. That’s what they had begun calling it: Inertia Dampening Drive. Al had a very well built and thoroughly tested model ready for installing. They had to call in a programmer to create a system that they felt was reliable enough to sling them through the stars.

       Her name was Crystal. And she was extremely brilliant and extremely inquisitive. Al had known her since college, but they had never dated. She was five foot tall, long jet black hair that she kept tied back, beautiful to a fault, and outgoing as hell. Never a dull moment when Crys was around. She was also very deadly. Trained as a Navy Seal, she spent three years in non-disclosed ‘middle eastern’ countries running black ops. She was fluid in her movements and feminine all the way to the ground. And she was also extremely anal. While Al freely admitted to his obsessive compulsive nature, Crys would deny it vehemently. She would deny any flaws of character, ability or body, which in itself, was a character defect in Al’s eyes. Of course, he would never deny that she was good. Really good. At everything. That’s why he had turned to her when it became apparent that they were going to need programming way beyond Al’s meager skills. And there was no way that she could get the job done properly unless she knew everything. Harry was recalcitrant at first, but Al convinced him with a minimum of effort. Especially after he got a look at her. He wasn’t immune to a beautiful woman’s allure. And she was competent and confident. That’s what sealed the deal.

       “Hi, Boys,” she said as she came walking up to the two explorers to be. In a lower conspiratorial voice, she said “I’ve been checking the harnessing and control seats of the weapons nodules. The wiring and pneumatics schematics are shit. I can get a better feel for what we need when we get the real weapons on board.” She was wearing tight black jeans and a thin, body hugging black sweater. She wore her jeans over her boots. And there was a large, long-haired Calico cat threading its way in between those boots.

       Al wondered how she could conceal ANY weapons wearing something like that. Maybe a knife in the boot. But on more than one occasion, a weapon of the hardware type would magically appear in her hand and then disappear just as quickly. Some people cracked their knuckles, she played with guns and other toys. “Hi, Woof. Hi, Crys.” He addressed the cat first as was proper. “How’s the program?” he asked. “Did you get the timing glitch tracked down?”

       Woof sat and looked up at Al. Crys shook her head. “Not yet. But I’m starting to think it’s just a copy and paste error somewhere toward the beginning of the coding. Copy an error and paste it early on, and it will bite you in the ass when you call it into action, and it’s wrong throughout the calculations. But I’m running a new debugging algorithm on it right now.”

       Harry grinned again and said, “I love it when you talk dirty.” He bent down and chuffed Woof under the chin. The cat ignored him as if insulted that he hadn’t even bother to say ‘Hi, good morning,’ or even ‘scat.’

       “Byte me, Hairy One,” Crys quipped. Al got it. Harry didn’t. “Hey, Al. I need to talk to you about some of the functions of the Ferra-Crystal in the Seranagator.” Al knew that there was no such thing as a Ferra-Crystal or a Seranagator, but Harry didn’t. Crys just wanted to talk to Al alone.

       “Coming, Dear,” Al said. “At least, I’m breathing hard.”

       “Hmph. Don’t you wish, Al-o-wish--us.” She smiled, spun on her heel and was off to the library in Harry’s strange but wonderful mansion. Woof remained behind, still looking reproachfully at Harry.

       After she had gone, Harry asked Al, “Say, Junior, are you and her, well … you know,” he just let it trail off.

       “Naw, but she’s some kind of sandwich, ain’t she?” he said, admiring the diminishing vision of her backside.

       Harry sighed. “So firm, so round, so fully packed.”

       “Yeah, packed with nitro!” Al shook his head. “At least, I wouldn’t want her pissed at me!”

       “Better go see what she wants then.”

       Al breathed. “Yeah, what she wants.” Then he laughed and Harry laughed with him. They had both agreed that there would be no romance between partners on this little mission. Woof’s tail just flicked, and then he went in search a small pool of sunshine in which to bathe.

       The library was huge, with mahogany walls and bookcases from floor to ceiling. And the ceiling was two stories high. Of course there were the ladders on wheels and tracks along the walls. The woodwork was fabulously intricate and delicate. Spared no expense indeed Al thought. Crys had built a fire in the oversized fireplace. The room was slightly chilly with the crisp November air. Harry hadn’t fired up his furnace yet. He much preferred a fireplace to hot air from a grill in the wall. Al and Crys both agreed. She was sitting in a large overstuffed chair close to the fire. There was another matching chair with a small, ornate table in between them. On the table were papers in scattered heaps. Crys had a glass of red wine in her hand, and she was staring into the fire. She didn’t look up as he entered, crossed the room and took the other chair.

       “Hey, Crys. What’s cookin’?”

       “Hey, Tiger. I just wanted to talk to you about this whole thing. I mean the ‘mission’ and all.”

       “Ok, shoot.” Al reached for the bottle of wine and extra glass that were on the floor next to Crys’ chair.

       “Well, Al, what makes you think that we can actually find your brother? I’ve read his notebooks, and I know that he left star charts, ‘driving directions’ and tons of information on that little orphan planet, but what makes you think that he’ll still be there?”

       “Where else would he be? Carter, his craft, prolly broke down and he’s stranded. That was the one planet that he was most interested in, and he even said that he was going back there.” Al took a sip of his wine. He had slowed way down on his drinking since the beginning of the project. “Where else would he be?”

       Crys turned and looked at Al, “He also said that he was going to try to find other habitable planets. Maybe he’s lost on one of those, and we don’t have the slightest idea where he might have found one or more.” She turned her gaze back to the fire.

       “We know that he was planning on confining his search to the general area of the rogue planet.”

       She sighed. “But that planet is practically out of the galaxy, with no other systems even close to it. You know I’m right, Al.”

       “Goddamnit! We’re going to that planet, and that is that!” He put the wine glass down, sloshing its contents onto the papers on the table. In a softer tone he said, “Sorry. It’s just that I have to find him, Crys. I know he’s in trouble.”

       “It’s ok, Al. I just had to know the depth of your commitment.”

       He got up and went to the desk for some tissues to clean up his mess. “I guess we’re all getting a bit antsy the closer it gets to lift off.” Then he grinned, “In a by-God flying saucer!”

       She grinned at that too and then helped him clean up the papers. She separated them and laid them side by side on the mantle to dry. He picked up the glass and the wine bottle and headed into the kitchen.