SECTOR 64: Ambush (12 page)

The return of Victor was incredible news. Outside of the major that had interrogated him, Sandy was the only person Jake told about the loss of his wingman. So, she was the only one wondering what had happened to Vic that night. All Jake would say was that they'd stumbled into a highly classified program. A wall of secrecy had slammed down over the whole situation.

Also, the two disappeared each day. When she tried to call either of their phones it went straight to voicemail.

Sandy looked at her watch. It was six o'clock in the evening.
Where the hell are you, Jake?

From the Hummer's front passenger seat in the giant elevator, Jake watched the slow rise of the secret hangar's folding steel blast doors. As the horizontal field of view expanded vertically two recognizable sets of landing gear came into sight.

"Are those the shielded F-22s?"

Richard nodded.

The door continued to rise, revealing the sleek stealthy black fighters resting on the gear. The hangar beyond bustled with activity as personnel of various specialties scurried about. While Jake wasn't surprised by the two F-22 Raptors parked diagonally along the left wall, he was shocked to see the UFO he and Vic had encountered parked beyond the fighters, in the hangar's back left corner.

"What the hell?" he said, turning to look at Vic and Richard.

Vic's shocked face mirrored Jake's thoughts.

Grinning, Richard said, "No, it's not the one you two encountered. However, minus weapon systems, it's the same."

Dropping back into the driver's seat, Richard edged the Hummer into the hangar. Easing past the Raptors, he headed straight for the alien ship.

Peeling his eyes from the spaceship to look at the F-22s, Jake noticed a couple of unfamiliar antennas. Four oval depressions with short metal rods protruding from their centers adorned each fighter. Two left and two right, they looked like side-facing oblong aerodynamic satellite dishes.

Jake pointed at the devices. "Do those shield the fighters from the ship's gravity drive?"

Richard nodded. "They project a negative waveform that cancels out the gravity wave."

Jake considered the concept. "Like noise-canceling headphones dampen sound waves?"

"Exactly," he said. "Within the area where the two fields interface, the two sine waves, one hundred eighty degrees out of phase, nullify each other."

Nodding, Jake turned back to the strange ship as Richard pulled to a stop in front of it.

Stepping from the vehicle in reverent silence, they moved to stand side-by-side facing the ship. Its dark metallic curved surface was perfectly smooth. The skin had no angles or edges. It looked as if it had flowed into its present shape.

"It's like looking at a dark mirror made from black mercury," Vic said.

"Yeah," Jake said. "I can see the hummer's reflection, but barely." Bending at the waist, he squinted at the image. "The headlights look black. It's like the skin is absorbing the light."

"The way it absorbs the brighter light more than the dimmer makes it look like a photo negative," Vic said.

Richard nodded again. "The skin actively absorbs incoming energy, making it virtually undetectable in all but the visible spectrum."

"So, that's why I couldn't see it on my infrared scope," Jake said.

"And, why our threat radar never went off," Victor said. "But, it looks cool."

"Yes it does. I've worked with it for six months now, and I'm still fascinated every time I see it," Richard said.

Jake stood, silently taking it in. The ship was much taller than the fighters, and a little wider than they were long. Disc-shaped, it looked tall enough for at least two internal levels. The flattened conical top flowed seamlessly into the ship's vertical side about five feet above a central horizontal bulge. The semi-circular protuberance was about three feet wide.

Richard stepped up to a pedestal mounted to the floor between them and the ship. After entering a couple of commands into the computer mounted on its top, he returned to their side.

Jake felt, more than heard, a deep hum emanate from the ship as a horizontal multicolored pulsing ring of energy emerged from and began to rotate above the ship's equatorial bulge.

"That's the lights we saw," Vic said in an awed tone.

"The ship generates a rotating energy field the Argonians manipulate to maneuver the ship. The only energy we've been able to detect with our sensors, is in the visible light spectrum, in other words, just what we're looking at."

"Visible light only, no other radiation?" Jake asked.

"Well, none we can detect."

"Are you sure we're safe this close to it?" Victor asked with a nervous step back.

"Yes, the Argonian's promise it's completely safe."

Jake nodded, entranced by the ethereal lights floating only two feet overhead. "How does it work?"

"Basically, that central bulge contains a spinning magnetic ring with an oscillating quantum field. The column Victor saw in the ship's center is a powerful superconducting coil. The strength of the coil's field, coupled with the ring's incredibly high RPM creates a powerful and tunable anti-gravity force."

"How does a ring spinning in one plane create a bubble that surrounds a three-dimensional ship?" Jake asked.

"Varying the quantum oscillation transmutes the ring's polarity, changing the angle it cuts through the coil's horizontal field. RPM variations modulate its vertical component."

"Okay … that was all Greek to me," Victor said.

Jake tried to visualize how a ring rotating on a horizontal plane could have an effect in the vertical plane. In a flash of insight he said, "So, oscillating the quantum field adds a vertical component to the horizontally spinning ring's field."

Nodding, Richard added, "It creates a second, virtual ring that is omni-axial and omni-rotational."

"Huh?" Victor asked with a bewildered look.

Jake looked at him and turned back to Richard with mock exasperation. "Lieutenants!"

"Can't take 'em anywhere."

"Hey, I was a psych major, not physics like you two."

"Just kidding, buddy," Jake said. "To put it in layman's terms, if you had a pair of goggles that could see the force Richard is describing, you would see a cocoon of rings spinning around this ship."

"They'd be spinning and tumbling in every direction," Richard added.

Nodding, starting to catch on, he asked, "Where does the light come from?"

"I was going to ask that too, but the forces you're describing sound familiar. I read an article about a theory that works something like this," Jake said pointing at the ring of light. "If I'm right, those are called gravitophotons."

"I thought you might pick up on that," Richard said, shaking his head with an impressed grin.

"Gravit-a-what-ons?"

"Gravitophotons," Jake said. "The article I read was about some new work a group of theoretical physicists are doing with an old theory."

"Old?"

"Yep, as in nineteen fifties and sixties. It's called Heim Quantum Theory."

"You mean somebody on Earth figured this stuff out fifty years ago?" Vic asked. "Why haven't I heard about it?"

"The theory was created by an obscure self-taught German physicist named Burkhard Heim. This guy was a true genius. In an effort to get around the limitations of chemical rockets, he came up with a modified quantum theory. His equations could predict both the position and energy state of a quantum particle, a feat no one can duplicate, even today."

"It's something quantum physics tells us can't be done," Richard added.

"He claimed it successfully bridged the gap between quantum physics and Einstein's general relativity."

"Okay, so again, why doesn't the whole world know this guy's name?"

"Most physicists of the day dismissed him. His work, all in German, was very arcane. However, some of the Germans working on America's rocket program knew of him and greatly respected his work. It is rumored that Werner Von Braun even approached him in the early nineteen sixties asking if they should shelve their work on chemical rockets."

"Wait, how does a unifying theory nullify the need for chemical rockets?"

"His theory postulated that if you spin a large, extremely powerful magnet through a hugely powerful electric field you will generate gravity waves." Turning to Richard with a meaningful look he added, "He also postulated those waves would manifest a new, previously unknown particle: Gravitophotons."

Pointing both hands toward the ring of lights, Richard said, "Ta-da."

"If the ship is 'cocooned' in these rings, why don't we see lights all over the ship?"

Jake started to open his mouth. Reconsidering, he turned to Richard. "That's a good question."

"They're only generated where the virtual rings cross the physical ring."

Jake nodded. "The oscillating quantum field causes the color variances while its spin imparts the rotational aspect."

"Exactly," Richard said, obviously excited by the subject. "The antigravity field has another beneficial effect."

"What's that?"

"It decouples ninety-nine point nine percent the mass of everything within the field's influence from the space surrounding it, enabling the instantaneous course changes you saw, without crushing its occupants."

Jake shook his head. "How could it do that?"

"It decouples the ship from the Higgs Field."

"The God Particle?" Victor asked.

The final piece fell into place for Jake. "So, the anti-gravity wave creates a quantum bubble that shields everything in it from the Higgs Field."

"Almost all of it. They had to leave that tiny fraction of a percent. Otherwise, it would turn photonic and move at the speed of light until the universe ended. Anyway, because it disconnects the vast majority of your mass from the outside world, it's the perfect inertial dampener."

Victor shook his head. "Huh? Photonic?"

Jake turned to him. "The photonic thing ties to Einstein's theory of relativity. Basically, it says that anything with zero-mass, like a photon, will always travel at the speed of light." He gestured toward the vessel. "To the outside world, everything in the bubble, including the ship itself, has no apparent mass. You could accelerate it from zero to a hundred miles an hour in an instant." Jake flicked his finger. "As easily as thumping a party balloon, but inside you wouldn't even slosh your coffee."

Vic nodded, accepting Jake's description with mute amazement.

Another epiphany hit Jake. "So, they must generate a separate artificial gravity field so they can stand on the floor. Otherwise, the interior would be a bubble of weightlessness."

"Yep."

Tearing his eyes away from the lights, Jake studied the ship's bowl-shaped bottom. It flowed up into the horizontal central bulge about eight feet above the ground. In three places, its skin stretched down to support the ship. He pointed at the legs. "I don't remember seeing these on the one we encountered."

"They're retractable," Richard responded.

"That metal looks permanently stretched to me."

"Hang on," Richard said, stepping back to the computer terminal in front of the ship. After he had punched a few keys, the deep hum emanating from the ship changed frequency.

"What's that hum—" Vic started to ask but stopped as the ship began levitating a couple of feet above the floor.

Aside from the subsonic drone, the ship sat in total silence.

"That is awesome!" Vic said.

"It's weird to see something rise off the ground so quietly," Jake said.

In a half-second, the protrusions silently retracted, leaving smooth skin as the ship continued to hover.

"Okay, okay, quit showing off," Jake said to Richard after a few moments. "I'm dying to see the inside of this thing."

"All right," Richard said, feigning dejection.

Jake held up both hands and laughed. "I'm impressed."

"Me too," Vic added.

Richard smiled. "You're too easy." He typed more commands into the interface. "And, for my next trick…" The legs noiselessly re-extended, and the humming ceased as the ship gently touched down. Overhead, the ethereal gravitophoton generated lights evaporated.

Richard finished up at the keyboard and rejoined them. "Close your mouths, boys."

"Well, I was just thinking that was probably the smoothest landing I've ever seen you make. As I recall, the mechanics back in Afghanistan were always amazed your aircraft could still taxi after one of your typical landings."

"Screw you," Richard said through a grin.

Pointing at the ship, Jake asked, "What happened to the one that crashed in Roswell?"

"As far as I know, it was returned to them. The Argonians gave us this ship in the eighties as part of the integration program. We're allowed to learn from it and reverse engineer what we can. However, we're not allowed to take it apart."

"Can we get to the mechanism that generates the ring of lights without taking it apart?" Jake asked.

"Nope."

"In other words no access to the drive technology, at least not yet," Vic said.

"Exactly, they want to keep us in our little corner of the galaxy, for now," Richard said, and then clapped his hands. "So, are you two ready for more?"

"I thought you'd never ask," Jake said.

"Lieutenant Croft, do you remember where the exit was?"

"When they dropped me off, I think the door was right about … here," Vic said, stepping between two of the legs. As he did, an opening suddenly appeared in front of him.

Jake heard a whisper of static like a charged sock pulled from a clinging towel.

"See what I was talking about?" Vic said.

"Yep," Jake said. He stepped up for a closer inspection. From overhead, the opening stretched from a foot below the bulge and continued in front of them, ending where the flat bottom of the ship's belly formed a threshold.

They stepped into the airlock, and the door resealed with the same static sound. A moment later, just as Vic had described, an opening appeared in the opposite wall.

"This way ladies," Richard said, stepping through.