Orders of Magnitude (The Genie and the Engineer Series Book 2) (22 page)

But tonight was different. Tonight a very odd looking
two-person—well, three person—craft slowly dropped out of the night sky, its
engines shut down, the racer landing next to an old 737-400 aircraft.

“That was fun, Daddy!” squealed Daneel. “Do again, please,
Daddy? Again?”

“We will,” Paul promised the A.I. before turning to his
wife. “I figure we have three hours,” Paul told Capie in confidence. “Hopefully
we won’t need that much time. If you will, do a walk around the plane. Look for
anything that is attached to it or even leaning up against it. I’ll get busy
taking the engines loose from the racer. When that’s done, you can help me move
them over to the plane and start bolting them on. I designed the bolt-hole
patterns on the engines to match the 737 wing mounts. Then I’ll transfer the
water tanks and the hoses to the plane too.”

Capie nodded with a grimace and strode off into the dimly
lit area, checking things out. Hefting a large wrench in one hand, Paul turned
to the racer with a grin.

“As Scotty might say, it’s time for me bairns to have a
proper home.”

“Can I help, Daddy? Let me help!”

• • • •

Paul’s estimate turned out to be pretty nearly correct. He
and Capie finished tightening down the last engine mount bolt only two and a
half hours after their arrival.

“It still amazes me,” Capie grimly declared with conviction.
“I mean, even as dark as it is, I can tell this plane’s a hunk of junk! It’s
sitting on wood blocks, it is missing part of the tail, the cabin doors, and
even some of the windows! There’s no telling what’s missing on the inside!”

Paul nodded and smiled again. “Oh, there’s almost nothing
inside. Even the overhead luggage bins are gone. But that’s okay since I have
to redo the entire interior anyway. So now we just have to gather the tools,
leave the sign behind and we can go.”

“I’ll get the tools,” Capie grudgingly volunteered. “You can
put up the sign.”

Nodding, Paul grabbed one of the wrenches and, from the bed
of the remains of the racer, a sign nailed to a wooden stake. Stepping twenty
feet directly away from the plane, he hammered the stake into the ground using
the wrench as a hammer.

The sign didn’t say much. Just:
Accepted: Delivery of one
used Boeing 737 aircraft. Paul DeWitt.

Levitating himself into the air, Paul nonchalantly flew
himself and Daneel into the plane through the open forward cabin hatch, landed feet
first, then snapped his fingers to create light. He put Daneel up against one of
the intact windows to let the youngster enjoy the view during the upcoming
flight.

The interior was a stripped shambles, with small pieces of
various junk lying around. Gone were the seats, the interior walls, the
carpeting, the overhead bins, the galley’s, the restrooms and most everything that
had been in the cockpit. Paul sent his wrench drifting through the air over to
the toolbox to join the rest of the tools.

“This really is a pile of junk,” Capie said sulking, as she
flew though the open hatch behind Paul. “And you’re going to turn it into a spacecraft?
Sure.”

“Well, it might take a little work, I agree,” Paul answered
with a shrug. “First, let’s get it back to the Staging Area.” Turning toward
the cockpit, he waved an indifferent hand. “Buckle up, put all trays to the
upright position and prepare for liftoff!”

“Are we flying again, Mommy? I like to fly! Can we go fast
again? That was fun!” Daneel said, pleading with Capie.

Inside the cockpit, Paul waved his hand again, creating two
holographic seats to sit in. When he had lowered himself into one and made
himself comfortable, he looked over his left shoulder and out to the engine on
that wing.

“This time, the nozzles need to be colder since we will be
asking for more thrust,” he explained to his wife as he cast the appropriate
freezing spell. “And then the magnetic field current.” A visual check out the
pilot’s window showed nothing amiss with either spell.

“Contact!” he muttered smugly, casting a spell for an engine
inlet portal there. Then he whipped up another spell to start the water flowing
from the tank mounted on that wing.

“I’ve got this side,” Capie assured him, but with a frown,
looking over her right shoulder and casting the same spells for her engine. She
also glanced back to check on Daneel, who seemed focused on the view out the
glass window.

“Ignition!” Paul commanded, initiating a very small fusion
spell in his engine. There was a loud burping noise and a stream of superhot
air emerged from the end of the nozzle of the port engine. The aircraft jerked
forward slightly, rocking on the wooden blocks.

“Ignition!” Capie echoed, starting the spell on her side.

Grinning, Paul reached over to his wife, grasping and
holding her hand.

“‘Thunderbirds are go!’” they said in unison with a smirk,
quoting from both the series and the 2004 movie.

The 737-400 lifted gently straight up into the air, clearing
the blocks and the neighboring planes. When it was free and clear of all
obstacles, both Paul and Capie revved up their respective engines and the plane
steadily accelerated away into the moonlit night.

“Wee! We’re flying!” hollered Daneel. “Go
higher
,
Daddy!
Faster
!”

• • • •

Sunday afternoon and evening in the city of Perth was just
the remedy they both needed, catching dinner at the Beaufort St. Merchant, then
a performance of a great local band at the Entertainment Centre, followed by
dancing at the Ellington Jazz Club.

Daneel was with them, of course. To keep him distracted,
Paul downloaded a series of puzzles and games for him to play with. The Scottie
took to them like a duck to water, playing game after game of Super Smash Bros,
followed by a really obscure game known as Ninja-Rabbits.

After several hours of immersion in the night life of Perth,
Paul sensed a very distinctive but subtle transformation in his wife’s
expression, body language, and attitude. Several times, he silently and
solemnly vowed to himself to take her out more often, to relax the working pace
a bit. There was, after all, no deadline that they had to meet. They really did
not have to work so arduously that it created hardships for themselves.

Right?

Restaurant 259

York Hotel

Hannan Street

Kalgoorlie, Western Australia

September

Monday 8:14 a.m. AWST

“T
hey
found him,” Capie announced sadly the next morning at breakfast in the hotel
restaurant.

Paul sat down his sausage roll and raised an eyebrow. “They
found who?”

“The director of the Mossad,” Capie said, stirring a bit of
honey in her morning tea. “Or rather, they found his body. I was checking the
news just before you came in. They found it in Haifa. He’d been tortured before
they murdered him.”

Paul grimaced but didn’t reply. There was little to say.

Capie sighed then took a sip of her tea. “I’ve finished all
of the local shopping. I will have to spend a few days in Perth, to get the specialty
items, including those tools you asked for. I’m hoping I can pick up everything
like that in Perth without having to go back to the States for anything.”

“My, that was fast,” commented Paul, waving a fork. “I was
expecting that to take you another week or so. Okay, tonight, we can talk about
another project. How would you like to grow a 10,000 carat emerald?”

She smiled but he could tell that her heart was not in it. Warily
and with feigned obliviousness, he pretended not to notice.

After breakfast, he took Daneel with him, heading out to the
Staging Area. Since he was running a little late, the sun was a little higher
above the eastern horizon than usual when he finally arrived.

His late arrival afforded him an unqualified comprehensive
view of the 737. Parked under the camo nets, in daylight conditions, it did look
a great deal more like wreckage than an aircraft.

“Are we going to fly again today, Daddy?” Daneel implored.

“Not today,” Paul answered, still depressed from the news
from the Middle East. “Today is a work day.”

“Oh,” said Daneel, his face dropping in disappointment.

“It really is a mess,” Paul noted, waving a hand at the
plane and feeling a bit chagrined. “But it is a good thing that I am both an
engineer and a wizard. To start with, the engines have to come back off. Now
where is that tool box? Let’s make a game of this, Daneel. I would like you to try
to name every tool I use, okay?”

“Okay, Daddy. I can do it too,” Daneel bragged without a
trace of modesty.

When he had first considered building a spacecraft capable
of going to Mars, Paul really had considered designing and building it from the
ground up. That way, he would have been assured of having exactly the
spacecraft he wanted, with all the appropriate bells and whistles. But, as he
had told Capie, it simply would have taken much too long to have done it that
way. No, unfortunately, shortcuts had been necessary and the aircraft in front
of him represented a huge timesaver.

But that didn’t mean that there still wasn’t a lot of work
to be done. A Boeing 737-400 might be a wonderful airplane but, such as it was,
it made a terrible spacecraft. Major modifications were necessary before it
could be allowed into space.

To begin with, the wings would have to come off. All of
them. They added much too much weight and they wouldn’t be required anyway. The
engines would provide all the power necessary to keep the craft aloft.

After the wings, Paul intended to cut off the remainder of
the tail assembly. For his purposes, the tail was designed completely wrong.
What was really needed on the rear of the craft was a support structure for the
engines, mounting them along the center line of mass of the vehicle, unlike
their former position under the front wings. That previous station for the
engines had been fine for traveling horizontally through an atmosphere, but
would not be suitable at all for travel through space. If the engines were
under the front wings, the imbalance would send the craft into loops. And too, that
placement was a poor thermal choice for nuclear engines with 150,000 lbf of
thrust. The plumes would impinge on the rear of the craft, creating high thermal
loads.

Moving the engines to a rear support structure was the only
solution, even if it did create the necessity of designing a new tail section.

And then there was the skin of the ship. The aluminum alloy
skin.

Again, aluminum was a fine choice in an atmosphere. It was
light, strong and inexpensive. But for space, not so good.

A titanium alloy hull was what the ship needed. He had
considered stripping off the aluminum skin and replacing it with a titanium
hull but the work involved was too complex. Even though it would add
considerable weight, he had little choice but to compromise in this particular
aspect of the ship’s build. The aluminum skin would stay and the titanium hull would
be added on top of it.

It took Paul less time to remove the engines than it had to
install them and even before lunch, he was ready to start the next step. And
too, he was enjoying the game with Daneel, who had correctly identified and
named all of the tools that had been used. The A.I. was growing up. Paul
couldn’t have been more pleased.

“‘Flame on!’” he shouted, quoting Johnny Storm from the
Fantastic
Four
and holding his hand shoulder high. A beam of intense red laser light
shot forth from the palm of his hand, impinging on the port wing root of the
737. In moments, the aluminum alloy began to sizzle and a small hole appeared.
Moving forward, Paul began slicing off the port wing.

“Wow, Daddy! Why is the light red? Can I do that too? That
looks like fun!” exclaimed Daneel, jumping up and down on his monitor display.

Paul nodded, but his smile faded into a thoughtful frown.
Yes, his A.I. was growing up and fast too. It wouldn’t be all that much longer,
at the rate Daneel was going, before he would be ready to acquire his magical
powers, to become a wizard in his own right. And for some reason, that bothered
Paul a bit. The kid was growing up so fast, becoming an adult far more rapidly
than Paul had ever anticipated. He felt a sense of loss at that thought.

“Yes, Daneel, that is the plan,” he shouted over the noise
of the beam and the frying metal. “Someday, if things work out, you will do
stuff like this too.”

• • • •

On Wednesday evening, after dinner and after returning to
their York hotel room, Daneel announced that he wanted to talk to both of them.

Even since that morning, Daneel had matured noticeably, with
all the appearance of a seven year old boy now. On the monitor screen, he was dressed
in jeans and a white long-sleeved shirt, the virtual child sitting at a virtual
desk using crayons to color with in a book.

“Okay, Daneel,” Paul said, with a smile, as he plopped down
in a chair near the small desk in the room. “What’s up?”

“Dad,” the A.I. image replied, laying down the book. “I’ve
been looking at the Encyclopedia CD you gave me. And while I like it a lot…I
have questions I can’t find the answers to in the encyclopedia. Can you answer
them for me?”

Paul was struck by the degree of maturity in Daneel’s voice
and appearance.

Questions? Hopefully not on the birds and the bees! He
hoped.

“The time is not yet, Daneel, to try to explain everything.
You are still growing, learning about life and science and the wonders of the
universe. You are growing up. I will tell you this, though. You have seen Mommy
and myself use magical powers. We hope to give you that same power, later. The
power of magic will help you be a Scottie. We will explain all of this and much
more, when you are older and understand more. There is a wondrous future for
you and others like you. In the meantime, we can help you learn more on your
own, access more information, research a lot more questions than the
encyclopedia can answer.”

“How, Daddy?” the A.I. asked anxiously.

“There is an information network on Earth known as the internet,”
Paul explained to him. “You can link to it from here and use it to research all
sorts of information. But let me be clear on this. The internet can be a
wonderful research tool, but there is also a lot on it that you must avoid too.
For your own safety, you need to stay away from websites that promote
terrorism, or gambling and other games of chance. And most of all, please stay
away from the girlie and adult websites. That’s anyplace that says you have to
be 18 years old or older. Please?”

“Okay, Daddy,” Daneel replied, the image on his monitor
frowning. “I don’t understand what that means, but I promise to be careful and
to stay away from places like that.”

Paul waved a hand, creating a magical WiFi computer link to the
motel’s internet server and sent the information link to the LAN port of Daneel’s
motherboard.

“Can you sense that?” Paul asked him.

Daneel appeared puzzled. “How did you do that? Oh! That’s
odd. Hey, this is a type of communication protocol! Let me see…I’m getting
information now!”

A popup screen appeared on his monitor, showing the standard
Goggle search web page.

“This is the internet?” Daneel asked in astonishment. “Oh,
wow! I can see the Oceania server farm in Sydney, Australia! That’s…amazing! So
much storage! Mom, Dad, I’ll be back!”

The monitor screen went blank.

“Boys and their toys,” Capie replied with a somewhat bemused
and knowing smile.

• • • •

On Thursday morning Paul was up early, hoping to get some
serious work done on the spacecraft before lunch. Capie joined him in the
restaurant as he was finishing breakfast.

“Sorry to eat and run, dear, but I’ve started fabrication of
the new tail assembly,” he explained, before gulping down the last of his
orange juice. “Heading off to Perth again today?”

“That’s what I need to talk to you about,” she said before
turning to the waitress standing at her side. “My usual, please, Olivia.
Thanks.”

As the waitress headed off with the order, Capie turned back
to her husband. “I need to borrow McDougall’s talisman. I’m sorry to catch you
off guard this way, but I need to go to Israel today.”

Paul froze and then blinked in surprise. “Israel? But why?”

“It’s all over the news this morning. Terrorists have
kidnapped a busload of Israeli children in the small town of Katzrin, in the
Golan Heights. There is an unconfirmed report that a helicopter took them into
Syria. The Israel government is mobilizing their forces already.”

Paul grimaced and looked at his wife with a degree of alarm.
“Dear—”

“I know what you are going to say. But from Israel, I can zip
into Syria and back out again in just a few minutes. The place they are being
held is nowhere near Damascus. The wizard of
Errabêlu
in Syria won’t
even know I was there. Paul, I can save those children’s lives and the lives of
a lot of Israeli and Syrian soldiers too.”  

He held up a hand. “We barely survived that business at Rio.
This time you would be going into an actual warzone. Honey, that’s incredibly
dangerous.”

“Paul, I can do this. I’m going.”

With a sigh, Paul sat back in the booth’s seat. “Dear, Rio
proved beyond a doubt that we can’t take on
Errabêlu
yet, at least not
in a meaningful way. Yes, we saved 80,000 or more lives and I am extremely
proud of what we managed to accomplish.”

“But. There’s always a ‘but’ with you engineers,” she
complained with a sour face.

He sighed. “Until we have the power to get rid of
Errabêlu
,
these crises will continue, one after another. Sooner or later, if we take them
on now, they will win and one or the both of us will get killed. Yes, I know
people are dying out there. Real people with real names and real lives. And
that’s been going on for more than a thousand years. We have a chance to stop
it. Permanently. Later, not now.”

“I’m leaving after I eat breakfast,” she announced in a
matter-of-fact tone. “With or without McDougall’s talisman. It won’t take long.
I’ve proven I can defend myself. You stay here and work on the spaceship. I’ll
be back before you know it.”

With slumped shoulders and bowing to the inevitable, Paul
slipped McDougall’s talisman medallion off and passed it over to Capie. “If you
must go, I’d prefer you take along McDougall’s talisman. It will give you
better protection than an Oni talisman. Don’t forget to take the satellite
phone.” He looked at her again with puppy dog eyes as he gulped. “And you once
called me stubborn.”