1
It was April 20, 2005, on a tiny beach hidden deep amongst the boulders, located about half way out along the point of Granite Bay. Adam stood face to face with a handsome young man he thought he would never ever see again. The young man spoke first. The tone of his voice was soft and affectionate.
‘Hi, dad.’
Adam’s heart filled with emotion and his vision blurred as a tear streamed down his left cheek. He barely composed himself enough to utter the question,
‘Ben, is that you?’
2
The sixty-foot diameter, polished-silver space ship hovered silently about two feet above the broken waves rolling into the beach. On the beach side, a panel was open on the underside of the ship. A thin, sloping ramp almost, but not quite, touched the sand.
There were barefoot footprints running from the ramp to Adam, who was standing there, frozen like a statue.
‘It’s me, dad. You don’t know how long I’ve dreamed of this moment. I’ve missed you so.’ Ben moved forward and embraced his father with a bear hug. ‘I love you so much, dad.’
Adam’s emotions overwhelmed him and he began to cry.
‘Don’t cry, dad,’ whispered Ben, kissing the side of his father’s cheek, ‘the days of us being apart are over.’
‘Over?’ Adam whimpered.
‘Yes, over!’
‘And mum?’
‘Mum too. She’s waiting for us at home.’
‘Home?’
‘Oh dad, there’s so much I’ve got to tell you, and to show you.’
‘For the moment, Benny … just don’t stop hugging me.’
‘OK, dad, that’s easy. Mum told me to tell you that she loves you very much and that she can’t wait to see you.’
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After a couple more minutes, giving his father time to compose himself, Ben released Adam from his bear hug and stepped back to look at him. He made an instant observation.
‘You’re looking in pretty good nick, dad.’
‘You don’t look like you’re struggling either, son.’
After a brief period of catch-up conversation, Ben felt it important to reveal to his father the truth about his old friend, Zeke, who his father thought got killed in a gravity-flight experiment.
‘Dad …’
‘Yes?’
‘There’s something I’ve got to tell you about Zeke.’
‘Zeke? I was there when he shot through the roof of his shed. I suppose that you found him floating somewhere between here and God knows where in space, frozen like a block of ice.’
Ben chuckled at the image Adam created, then revealed,
‘He’s not dead. He’s alive.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, mum and I, we picked him up that night. Actually, it was the night after.’
‘Zeke is alive?’
‘As strong as a bull. He’s been living with us on Rama.’
‘Where?’
‘Rama, dad. It’s our other home.’
‘Home?’
‘Yeah, dad. It’s our planet … in the Andromeda Galaxy.’
‘The Andromeda Galaxy?’
‘Oh dad, there’s so much … but listen, let’s not hang around here too much longer, unless you want to. What’s say we go back to your house.’
‘I drove the Kombi.’
‘Come with me. Let me take us home. We can get the van later.’
Adam looked up at the space ship that was hovering silently next to them.
‘What, in that?’
‘Yeah. I’ve got room for two, even your board.’
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Adam instantly lost his melancholy and suddenly lit up with the excitement of a new adventure. He said,
‘Ooooh, Benny, this has got to be fun.’
Ben walked up the ramp into the ship followed by Adam carrying his board and water bottle.
The inside of the ship was all lit up in a warm, easy on the eyes, light, although there were no light sources visible. The light was just there, in the air. The space inside was circular. There were no partitions. In the centre of the ship were two, very comfortable-looking, semi-supine, tan-coloured, bucket seats. They did not appear unlike sports seats out of an expensive car, except that they extended all the way out to support the feet, like a dental chair. On closer inspection, Adam noticed later that the seats were covered in a material made of intricately-woven, fine strands of what looked like leather. He could see no stitching however. Later still, Ben explained to Adam that the seat material was synthetic and was carbon based.
Ben pointed Adam to a few duffel bags and a surfboard, which was strapped to the inner hull in the port side of the ship.
‘You can strap your board above mine over there, dad.’
Adam placed his surfboard into a specialised rack above Ben’s and strapped it down with what held like Velcro straps, although Adam could not see any Velcro on them. As he turned to face Ben, he noticed the ramp silently rise up and seal the ship.
‘Come, dad, come sit in your chair.’
Adam sat next to Ben in the passenger seat. Ben smiled as he watched Adam take in the detail of the inside of the ship. He noticed that on the opposite side of the surfboards, the starboard side, were two bench seats with a small table cantilevered out of the wall between them. Next to them, in a separately defined area, was what looked like a small galley. There were also some shelves with a variety of containers of various things, Adam figured food, and there were some enclosures of various dimensions within which Adam imagined might be things like a garbage receptacle and maybe a head. As he scanned the ship’s interior, Adam asked,
‘How do you control this thing? I don’t see any controls.’
‘That’s because there are no controls, dad. I control it with mind control.’
‘Mind control?’
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‘Yes, but it doesn’t involve thinking. You do it too, dad, every time you move some part of your body. It’s kind of the same. This is really, really ancient technology. To me the ship feels like an extension of my body. I just will it without even thinking.’
‘Wow, Ben, that is amazing, but how can you see where you are going?’
‘Aha, check this out.’
In an instant, the two men became surrounded by, what appeared to be, a translucent, spherical, television screen. Suddenly, Adam could see everything outside the ship in whichever direction he looked. He could also partially see the inside of the ship through the screen.
‘Ohh, you’ve got to be kidding me, Ben, this is the most insane thing I’ve ever seen.’
‘I’ll just dim the inside light, dad.’
As the ambient light of the interior of the ship dimmed to darkness, the screen lost its translucency. It appeared to Adam like there was now no ship surrounding them anymore. There was just the exterior, which was perfectly rendered on the most amazing spherical TV screen he’d ever seen, and them lounging on the comfortable chairs in the centre of it. It was as if they were levitating in their chairs. Adam got a brief flash of a feeling like he just needed to look at something and will himself towards it.
‘It’s called a spherical hologram display, dad. It’s supported by the air in the ship.
There are cameras in the hull and there is, what would be called on Earth, a central data processor for the image. The whole deal is mind controlled. This is pretty ancient stuff as well, dad.’
‘So, when you fly places, you can see everything?’
‘Yeah, in perfect colour and definition. Also, we could see in X-ray, infra-red, or ultra-violet if we wanted to, all in full colour.’
‘This is seriously a trip, Ben.’
‘Are you ready to go?’
‘Ready as I’ll ever be.’
‘Would you like to take a bit of a detour on the way home, dad?’
‘A detour? Where to?’
‘What’s say we do a quick fly-past of the Moon.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No, dad, for real.’
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Adam hammed it up, ‘Oh yes, the Moon sounds fine I think, Ben. Mars is such a bore this time of year.’
‘Funny, dad. OK, here we go.’
‘How long will it take?’
‘How long would you like it to take?’
‘Are there any limits?’
‘None.’
‘All right, how about five minutes.’
Ben smiled. ‘I wasn’t thinking about crawling to the Moon, dad, but OK, five minutes, give or take.’
‘Will we feel anything?’
‘Just one thing. We will feel massless. Neutralization of the mass of the ship and its contents is part of gravity flight. So, we will feel ourselves become weightless and massless.’
‘Yes, I can feel it now, Ben. What a strange feeling.’
They did not see the inside of the ship because it was completely dark. They only saw the outside view, perfectly rendered on the spherical, holographic display all around them. Adam saw how they rose silently and rapidly, reaching the edge of the atmosphere in less than thirty seconds. He saw how the screen rotated, or the image on the screen, he wasn’t sure, so that now they were facing directly at the Moon. He suddenly realised that he couldn’t feel any of the motion. There was no inertia or momentum. There was no feeling of acceleration. It felt like it wasn’t real, like it was all happening on a very fancy TV inside a darkened room.
‘I can’t feel a thing,’ he said to Ben.
‘That’s right, dad. This is massless flight. No sensation of acceleration or deceleration. That’s why we don’t have to wear seat belts and stuff doesn’t fly around the inside of the ship.’
Adam watched the Moon increase in size at a rapid rate. ‘Are we in outer space?’ he asked.
‘Semi-outer. Technically we are in Earth-Moon space. That is the space within the orbit-sphere of the Moon. It’s like a cell, kind of. True outer space, or extracellular space, is what you would understand as intergalactic space.’
‘Ohhh, Ben, what is happening to me?’
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‘You’re fine, dad. I’m here to take care of you and I’ll never leave you again. And that’s a promise.’
Within a few minutes they were fifty-thousand feet above the Moon’s surface. Adam surmised,
‘I suppose that we don’t have to worry about going into any kind of orbit?’
‘Correct, dad. In gravity flight, things like orbital dynamics don’t exist. You just go where you want.’
Adam marvelled at the desolation of the Moon. ‘It’s so dead,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ Ben agreed.
Adam turned his head, ‘And look at the Earth, wow, it looks bigger than I thought it would. And the stars, wow Ben, look at all the stars.’
Ben nodded, delighted at his father’s obvious pleasure. ‘Yeah, the cosmos is a most beautiful place.’
‘Yeah.’ Adam sighed, then he remembered, ‘Hey, Ben …’
‘Yeah, dad?’
‘Can we go see Apollo 11?’
Ben looked at Adam. He paused for a moment before replying. Adam asked again,
‘Well, can we?’
‘Ahm, we could, dad … if it was there … but it isn’t.’
‘What happened to it?’
‘Er, how shall I put this nicely, er, the whole Apollo program was a huge, er, military misdirection.’
‘What?’
‘Yeah, it’s one of our favourite study subjects back on Rama. The Moon landings never happened. They never went out of Earth orbit.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No, I’m not. To try to do it the way they pretended to do it was, and is, an impossibility. What they really did was put nukes into orbit after they found out about their electromagnetic-pulse properties, EMP for short, and as a cover for the covert, military missions, they made up the Moon landings. It was the only way they could justify sending up the huge, Saturn-5 rocket so many times, which they needed to place the heavy, multiple-nuke payloads into Earth orbit with. It also padded out NASA’s budget very nicely and bought a lot of silence. After Apollo 17, they figured that they had enough
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nukes up there so they stopped the program. Not long after that, panic started to set in because they realised that they would have to bring those nukes back down some day.
That’s why they designed the shuttle. I don’t think they can ever reveal the truth about the cover story because of the huge amount of embarrassment that would go with it. They still, to this day, justify the lie by classifying it as a military, ultra-top secret.’
‘Are you sure about this, Ben?’
‘Do you want to fly down to the Sea of Tranquillity and check it out?’
‘Absolutely.’
Adam noticed two lines, that looked like they were made of light, appear on the surface of the Moon. He could see that they intersected somewhere over the horizon. Ben flew the ship towards the area where the lines intersected. When they were directly above the cross, he flew down to the surface. Adam noticed two, co-ordinate numbers appear next to the cross. They were 0.8N and 23.5E. Above the numbers were the words Eagle Landing. They hovered about one-hundred feet above the exact spot where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were supposed to have walked on the Moon. The crossed lines, numbers and words gradually faded away.
‘This is the exact spot, dad. See … nothing.’
Adam shook his head, bewildered by this shocking revelation.
‘You know, Ben, I can still remember where I was when they landed here. I remember I was in first-year uni and I skipped a physics lecture to watch the landing on TV. It changed my whole life.’
‘Do you want to go home now, dad?’
‘Yeah,’ Adam replied sounding somewhat confused and distant. He shook his head from side to side, then said, ‘Yeah, let’s do that, Benny.’ After a short pause he commented,
‘Wow, I can’t believe what an exciting life you lead.’
‘As will you, dad, as will you. Now watch this, and this is just a tiny fraction of the potential performance of this ship.’
Adam watched in awe as they returned to the top of the Earth’s atmosphere in one second flat.
‘Whoooooah, Ben, I … am … speechless. I am totally without speech.’
‘Ha ha ha,’ Ben laughed, ‘that line’s out of Seinfeld. You won’t believe it, but it’s one of our favourite shows on Rama. We love it. It’s so funny. We even have Seinfeld get-togethers and laugh ourselves stupid.’
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Adam was trying his best to assimilate the new reality and stay calm at the same time. He thought, ‘There’s absolutely no difference between all of this and the Nitrous trips I used to do, except that you got to come out of a gas trip.’
Ben heard his father’s thought as if he had spoken it to him.
‘Mum told me about your involvement with Nitrous Oxide.’
‘What? Did you read my thoughts?’
‘I am a full telepath, dad.’
The ship descended through the atmosphere at many times free-fall speed.
‘I never told your mother about the gas.’
‘Well, she knows all about it. She told me that it’s what really got her interested in you. She said that you, a non-telepath, found a way into the mind plane and that she helped you along while you were in there. She said that she actually fell in love with you from two-million light years away. She said that she came to Earth to marry you and have me. She said that I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for your adventurous spirit.’
Noosa was shrouded in total darkness by now. Ben brought the ship down vertically above Adam’s house, slowing down as he approached closer. The exterior of the ship was almost invisible as it was the colour of pitch black. This was due to the chameleon-effect function of the hull. The ship could mimic whatever environment it happened to be in and perfectly blend with the background, like a chameleon or octopus. This function was controlled by non-thought mind control as well, exactly like a chameleon or octopus does it.
3
Adam’s house was located in Noosa Waters. It was said by many that Noosa Waters was the best waterfront development in the southern hemisphere. One of the reasons was that the expansive canal network was non-tidal. This was facilitated by a brilliantly-designed lock system through which one had to pass in order to enter or exit Noosa Waters in a boat.
The house was an architectural tour de force. The two-storey structure was custom designed for its location, the design taking into account sun angles in all seasons, prevailing winds and breezes, and seasonal variations in temperature. As a result, the house could be kept open all year round without there ever being a need for heating or cooling. Also, because of the council’s mosquito control program, the house had no insect screens.
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The house was one of three structures on the property. The other two were a two-car garage, incorporating a workshop area in the rear, and a two-bedroom, self-contained granny flat. The whole property was surrounded on three sides by a high wall.
The back of the house faced the water. There was a large, L-shaped jetty there, as well as a beautifully-engineered slipway for Adam’s boat.
‘Someone might see us, Ben. I’m not sure how I would explain to my neighbours that I just arrived home in a UFO.’
Ben laughed, ‘You crack me up, dad. Mum was right, you are a funny guy. OK, firstly, we’re in camo mode …’
‘Camo?’
‘Camouflage. The outside of the ship is matt-black. Actually, it’s darker than the blackest black. It absorbs every photon that hits it, so it’s pretty much invisible. Secondly, I’m telepathically tuned into every human that could possibly see us. I’m making sure that no one is watching. See, you’ve got nothing to worry about, dad, and if someone did happen to get a glimpse of something, well, I’d just expunge the memory from their poor little brains.’ Ben smiled as he said that.
‘Jees, Ben, how am I supposed to handle all this?’
‘Well, dad, mum told me that you handled some pretty wild stuff in the past, and she told me not to worry about you and to give it to you straight-up, completely undiluted.
She reckoned you’d be up to it, no problem.’
‘Well, that was easy for her to say. I’m not as smart as you guys think, I don’t think.’
‘God love you, dad. I’ll never let anything happen to you, ever, and you are plenty smart enough, don’t you worry about that.’
The ship settled just above the water, snugly fitting within the confines of the L
shape of the jetty. Adam commented,
‘It fits inside the jetty perfect.’
‘Yeah, we made sure of that when the jetty was being built.’
‘What, you got into the architect’s head?’
‘Well, yeah, naturally.’
‘Hey, I’m starting to feel heavy.’
‘That’s right, dad, we’re getting our mass back.’
‘Let me take a shot at this and then tell me how I went.’
‘OK.’
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‘We are experiencing the effect of mass in our bodies because we are coming back under the influence of the ubiquitous, graviton field all around us. Zeke taught me that.
I’ll never forget it.’
‘That’s pretty good, dad.’
Adam noticed, through the spherical holographic display, that the interior of the ship gradually illuminated with a soft light. Sitting in their seats, they faced the house. The display faded away and only the interior of the ship was now visible. A panel opened directly in front of them. It appeared to Adam that it was a section of the upper surface of the hull. The panel flipped up through nearly 180 degrees and fixed itself into position nearly, but not quite, touching the paving of Adam’s terrace.
‘Ta daaa,’ exclaimed Ben cheerfully, ‘after you, dad.’
‘Oh no, Benny, you are my guest. After you.’
‘Thanks, dad.’
Adam walked out of the ship behind Ben and then led him into the house. He switched on some lights and his iPod player. Boz Scaggs began to sing Harbor Lights at a low volume.
‘The first thing I want to do is get out of my board shorts and have a shower. Why don’t you look around and make yourself comfortable while I do that.’
‘OK, dad. I might bring your surfboard in while I wait for you.’
4
After Adam showered and dressed, he poured them a cold drink and sat down with Ben on the outside veranda overlooking the water. He began the conversation.
‘That was one of the most amazing things I’ve ever done, Ben.’
‘Yeah, I never get tired of flying the ship either.’
‘You know, I was thinking about something while I was having my shower. Those nukes you mentioned, the ones you reckon they put into orbit, what’s all that about?’
‘You know, dad, the most bizarre thing about that is that we Rama know more about the orbiting nukes that you poor Earthlings do.’ Ben chuckled, ‘It all started back in the mid-forties, but the test that really woke them up was a high-altitude test called Starfish Prime. In July 1962, they set off a 1.44-megaton, nuclear device in space, 250 miles above the mid-Pacific Ocean. The resulting electromagnetic pulse knocked out a whole bunch of electronic equipment in Hawaii, nearly 900 miles away.
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‘Starfish Prime was the first definitive test in a series of US, high-altitude, nuclear tests in 1962, known as Operation Fishbowl. Further tests gathered more data, which was definitive enough to enable the maniacs to accurately identify the physical mechanisms that were producing the EMPs.
‘That same year, 1962, the Soviets also performed a series of EMP tests, in space over Kazakhstan, and found out, to their shock and surprise, about the space bomb’s incredible destructive power to all electronic systems.
‘If a bomb was set off in orbit above the US, say, the resulting EMP would fry all the electronics right across the whole continent. There would be no physical damage, no one would be hurt, but all communications, all energy supplies, and thus all food distribution, would cease. A horror scenario would unfold where the population, unable to access fuel, food or water, would begin to die off in the most hellish way. An EMP attack is the worst-case scenario for any nation. It means the death of the population but not the destruction of the non-electronic infrastructure. A couple of months after the EMP, the attacking army would just roll in and take over without resistance. They would repair the electronic networks and continue to thrive in the new land.’
‘Jees, Ben!’
‘Back in the sixties, there was a pretty frightening cold war going on between the Americans and the Soviets. There was a total lack of trust. They made each other believe that they could be blown up by nukes at any second. Remember the duck and cover routine they taught the kids in school? In the middle of this extreme distrust they both discovered the EMP. As it turned out, it was the Americans that took the big, bold step of putting nukes into orbit. This gave them a tactical advantage. A nuke flew over the USSR
roughly every hour and a half. All it took was the push of a button and it would have been bye bye Russkies. It was serious stuff. That’s why they needed a convincing deception.
The American people would have never accepted the truth about the space bombs, so they fed them a lie, the kind of lie they would never ever want to let go of, even if all evidence against it stared them right in their collective faces.’
‘God, Ben, what a frightening story. So, are there nukes up there now?’
‘Yeah. It’s like a Mexican standoff up there. Don’t let all the lovey-dovey behaviour in the space station fool you. In truth, the idiots have got their guns pointed at each other’s heads, with the triggers cocked. The main thing that you need to know, dad, is that this planet has been taken over by certifiably mad people.’
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‘So, the first thing most people will know about this is when their power goes out and their phones don’t work? Jees, Ben, their refrigerators will go off.’
‘Nothing will work. The cars won’t start, petrol stations won’t pump, supermarkets won’t open and water won’t come out of the taps. People will die of thirst and starve. After about a month, ninety-plus percent of the population will be dead. It could be as high as ninety-nine-point-nine.’
There was a pause while both men contemplated the horrendous scenario. Then Ben remembered, ‘I brought you a gift. It’s something Zeke and I made for you.’
Adam’s eyes lit up,
‘A gift? For me? You and Zeke?’
‘Yes. Let me go and get it.’
Ben zipped out of the house and returned a minute later carrying an oddly-shaped, drawstring bag about the size of a small suitcase. He placed it on Adam’s dining-room table and proceeded to extricate the contents.
‘What is it?’ Adam queried all excited.
‘Nobody, dad, I mean absolutely nobody on Earth has one of these.’
Ben pulled the contraption out of the bag. The whole thing was coloured a deep, matt-black.
‘It looks like something you put on your back,’ observed Adam.
‘This, oh father of mine,’ said Ben proudly as he held up the strange object, ‘is a lev-pack. Lev is short for levitation.’
Adam’s eyes popped clear out of their sockets, his jaw hit the floor and his eyebrows hit the ceiling as he excitedly asked,
‘For me?’
‘Absolutely. It was all Zeke’s idea. He’s been working on it for years. First, he made one for himself, then he made this one. It’s especially designed for non-telepathic people.’
Ben passed the lev-pack to Adam who proceeded to closely examine its design.
‘It’s pretty neat for a Zeke design. He was usually a bit untidy with his constructions.’
‘Zeke has come a long way since you last saw him. You won’t believe how much he has progressed, although fundamentally he’s still the same Zeke.’
‘So how does this thing work?’ Adam pointed at two multi-triangular metal frames that were attached to what appeared like an anatomically-shaped back plate from which
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hung six belts and two control cables. On the end of the cables were handgrips with brake-type levers.
‘OK, dad, it goes on your back just like the jetpack I made for you. These triangular frames are gravity sails. The reason they have no apparent effect now is because they are neutralizing each other. You see, each sail has a natural component of gravity lift of, I believe Zeke said, 412 kilograms. If both triangles are pointed at the ground, in parallel, they will generate 824 kilograms of lift. The reason they aren’t doing anything right now is because they are in a neutralizing position, 180 degrees relative to each other, pointed out, pushing against each other, horizontal to the ground when the lev-pack is being worn. Am I confusing you, dad? It’s pretty simple really.’
‘I can’t believe it, but I got it. God, Ben, I am getting pretty excited here. So, I assume that the hand control adjusts the angle of the triangle sails away from the neutral position, towards the ground. And the more towards the ground the sails point, the greater the lift, with a maximum lift component of, what was it again?’
‘824 kilograms. You’re pretty smart, dad.’
‘Not really, Ben, I’ve just already been through this trip with Zeke, all those years ago, with the gravity sail you left behind. This is amazing. And you reckon that I can fly this thing?’
‘Oh yeah, dad. This pack is yours … and nobody else’s. Flying it will be a piece of cake. There’s a suit I brought that goes with it. It’s in the bag.’
Ben rummaged in the bag and retrieved a garment, which looked like it was made of a material similar to Neoprene. It was a deep, matt-black colour. He gave it to Adam who held it up in front of himself.
‘Wow, Ben, but isn’t it a bit small?’
‘It stretches, and there’s a balaclava, a pair of booties, gloves and a pair of special goggles to go with it. It’s designed to provide 100 percent body cover with no leaks. We couldn’t give you chameleon effect, but the suit does have a thermo-control function.
Basically, if you’re too cold, it will warm you, and if you’re too hot, it will cool you. It’s the cold that is usually the problem.’
‘Ben, you don’t know how bizarre all this is to me.’
‘Yeah, I figured that it might be, but mum assured me that you would adjust without any adverse effects. Get used to it, dad, this is the new reality and we’re never going back to the old one again.’
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‘So, my guess is that the suit is matt-black in order to make it difficult to see in the dark.’
‘That is correct, dad. I think that you will prefer to fly it at night in order to keep it a secret. The suit will keep you comfortable no matter how cold it gets outside, and the goggles will enhance your night vision.’
Zeke spent three years designing and building the lev-pack. Ben assisted, but only when asked to.
The lev-pack design was brilliant in its simplicity. It was worn on the back and held in place by a six-point harness. Two straps passed over the shoulders, two around the waist and two, wider, more anatomically shaped and padded ones, between the legs. It was extremely light, weighing in at just two and a half kilos. When worn, the two, eight-inch-per-side, matt-black, metallic, multi-triangular frames located themselves at shoulder height and in neutral position pointed outwards, 180 degrees relative to each other. Thus their 412 kilograms of lift was being directed horizontally, parallel to the ground. And because they pointed in exactly the opposite direction to one another, they cancelled each other out, thus producing zero final component of lift.
There were two control cables, one for each hand. The right one controlled the amount of lift while the left one adjusted the vector angle of that lift.
The right-hand control was like a lightly spring-loaded brake lever with a loop that passed around the fingers. This allowed the user to actively engage and disengage the lever. At the base of each handgrip was a wrist-strap. This ensured that the handgrip stayed in the user’s hand if it was let go of. As the user squeezed the lever, he rotated the triangular gravity sails downward, via a cable, away from their 180-degree neutral position. The further downward the sails pointed, the greater the vertical vector of lift.
Zeke designed a special restrictor zone at a point where the sails were angled roughly eight degrees downward. At that angle the lev-pack generated exactly 73.25 kilos of lift.
Zeke figured that that was pretty close to Adam’s weight. This angle of the sails was called the ‘hover angle’. He also designed a fine adjustment for this as well. He wanted Adam to be able to fine-tune the lev-pack’s hover setting to precisely match his weight on any given flight. This would allow him to carry small loads if he needed to.
So, the way it worked was like this. The user, called the levitator, strapped the lev-pack on his back. Initially there was no effect because the sails were at the neutralising angle. As the levitator squeezed the right lever, pulling on the cable and rotating the sails
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downward, he felt the pack begin to apply upward force on his body through the belts. As he continued to squeeze, the levitator felt the lever fall into a ‘hole’ where it would stay without any pressure. This was the hover position of the control lever. In this position the levitator would hover at whatever altitude he set the lev-pack into ‘hover mode’. So if, for example, the levitator had his lev-pack set in hover while standing on the ground and he jumped, say, one foot into the air, he would remain hovering one foot in the air over the same spot for as long as the lev-pack remained in hover mode. He could let go of both hand controls and still remain hovering as this was one of the set positions that Zeke designed into the control. If the levitator wanted to go straight up from there, he just squeezed the right lever. If he let go of the lever at any altitude, he reverted back to hover mode at that altitude.
If he wanted to go forward, the levitator squeezed the left lever. This angled the gravity sails outwards from his back introducing a forward, horizontal vector of lift. Zeke designed three set positions into that lever. They were forward, hover and reverse. The reverse angling of the sails was facilitated by pushing the left lever forward of ‘hover set position’. The forward and reverse set positions could be adjusted out with a tensioning knob if the levitator wished. If the tensioning knob was set to loose, the forward and reverse components of lift increased and decreased in a smoothly-progressive motion, like a car accelerator. Zeke put an adjustable stop on the right-hand cable. It limited how far down the sails could be angled. He set it so that Adam’s maximum climb rate would be no more than 2000 feet per minute. This also limited his maximum horizontal speed to about 210 miles per hour.
Turning and general body position was totally facilitated by air drag. The faster the levitator flew, the more horizontal his body position became because of the high, shoulder placement of the gravity sails. His legs simply got blown back as he flew through the air. To turn, he stuck out either his left or right arm, or foot, using the air drag to change the direction of flight. Zeke designed the flying to feel very intuitive and birdlike.
Landing the lev-pack required the most skill. The levitator had to push the right lever forward from the hover position. This allowed him to descend. He had to be very careful, though, because he could easily land too hard and hurt himself. The best technique, while learning, was to come into a hover about a foot off the ground then push the right lever all the way forward and drop onto both feet.
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5
‘You know, Ben, that I am absolutely starving. I haven’t had anything to eat since breakfast.’
‘Oh, sorry, dad, we should eat something. What do you suggest?’
‘I’ll make us some toasted sandwiches.’
‘Great. And afterwards, we can fly and pick up your van.’
‘Fly?’
‘Yeah. I’ve got my levitation suit with me, and you’ve got your pack. You just need to practice a few landings first, but that shouldn’t be a problem for you because mum told me what a gun hang-glider pilot you were.’
‘I’m not so sure that I would use the word gun, Ben.’
They enjoyed their sandwiches lost in catch-up conversation. Adam asked a million questions and Ben answered them as best he could. He also suggested,
‘We need to permanently sort out your affairs. Where you are going you won’t need any of your stuff.’
Ben informed his father that his young friend in the water, Slater, and his nana, Lucy, had been selected for future relocation. He told him that a Rama girl, named Thebe, would come to manage their case. He suggested that all of Adam’s assets could go to Slater and Lucy, and that they might want to get cracking with the transfer so that they could leave Earth as soon as practicable. Adam shrugged his shoulders and said,
‘I’m guessing that you know best, Ben. I can call Andrew, my accountant, tomorrow and make an appointment. He is very efficient and I’m sure that he can organise everything very quickly. I just don’t know what he’ll think about the whole thing.’
‘Leave that to me, dad. He’ll think that everything is perfectly normal. I could come with you when you go and see him.’
‘You know, I can still remember how your mum could mess with people’s minds.
And Zeke told me about how one time you made some kid wet his pants up in Helensburgh. You telepaths could really wreak havoc if you wanted to.’
‘You don’t know the half of it, dad.’
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After dinner, Ben suggested that Adam try on his flight suit.
‘You don’t wear any clothes underneath.’
‘What, not even my briefs?’
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‘You can wear them. The suit reacts to the temperature differential between your body and the outside environment. You want it to be as efficient as possible.’
Adam went upstairs to his room to put on the suit while Ben slipped out to his ship to retrieve and put on his levitation suit.
Adam was dressed first. He returned to the kitchen and waited for Ben there. In total amazement, he observed Ben float into the house through the back door.
‘Bloody hell, Ben.’
‘Cool eh, dad.’
Ben touched down as light as a feather right in front of his father.
‘I suppose it’s got gravity sails in it.’
‘Correct, dad, and it’s mind controlled. You couldn’t fly it because you’re not telepathic. That’s why Zeke made you the lev-pack. Why don’t you put it on.’
Adam strapped on his lev-pack and commented,
‘It’s so light that it almost feels like wearing nothing.’
Adam strapped the hand controls to his wrists. Ben began his instruction.
‘Now, dad, first I want you to try hover.’
‘What, here in the kitchen?’
‘Sure, hover’s OK in here. Now, leave the left control alone. That is for forward and reverse motion. Slowly squeeze the right handgrip until you get to the hover position.
You’ll feel it settle in that position. You can even let go of the lever and it will stay there.’
Adam did as he was told. As he squeezed the hand control, he felt a lifting force on his body through the straps.
‘This is just like hang gliding, Ben. It feels the same as when a hang glider lifts you in your harness.’
‘That’s very interesting because I’ve never flown a hang glider,’ replied Ben.
Adam felt the hand lever slip into hover position. He could feel now how all his weight was being taken up by the lev-pack. Ben quickly instructed his father,
‘Don’t try to kangaroo hop, dad, because you won’t come back down. You’ll just float at whatever height you jumped to. If you adjust down the hover setting with the little round knob on your control, then you’ll be able to do moon walks.’
Adam rotated the knob slightly. He suddenly rose to the ceiling and got tangled up in the ceiling fan. Ben laughed out loud,
‘I think you should have turned the knob the other way, dad.’
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Adam carefully turned the hover adjustment knob the opposite way and gently floated back to the floor. He then turned it down a fraction more and felt how his lev-pack was now supporting about 95 percent of his weight. He carefully, with just the spring of his toes, hopped about two feet into the air, then gently floated back to the floor.
‘Oh, Ben, I love this … this is the best gift … this is just …’
Adam was lost for words.
‘Zeke and I figured you’d like it. And dad, it will work forever because it’s a gravity sail. No fuel, no engine.’
Adam began moon hopping around his house. He laughed continuously as he did it.
Up to this stage, Adam was wearing the matt-black, body-hugging suit, the booties, gloves and balaclava. He still needed to put on the goggles to be fully dressed for flight.
‘Dad, put on your goggles and let’s venture outside.’
Adam did as he was told. He exclaimed,
‘Wow, I can see in the dark.’
There were ten steps from the back door of the house down to the terrace adjacent to the canal. Adam jumped them all in one, slow-motion, floating bound.
‘I’ve dreamt of things like this, Ben.’
He then focused on the roof of the house, which was two storeys up, and with a measured, two-legged spring, jumped up and gently landed on the roof. He laughed some more then hopped off the roof and softly landed back on the terrace, some thirty feet below.
‘A person could get addicted to this, Ben.’
‘Tell me about it, dad. And this is nothing. Wait till you …’ Ben paused and regathered his thoughts. ‘OK, listen dad, I think that it’s a good idea at this stage to leave your hover setting at around where you’ve got it, about 95 percent I reckon. Here’s the deal. When you squeeze the right handgrip further, you will generate more lift, heaps more if you’re not careful. If that happens, just let go of the control and it will revert back to 95 percent hover and basically bring you back into control. It doesn’t matter how high you are when you do that, you will float down to the ground like a feather every time. 95
percent is a good setting for landings when you are a novice. Later, when you are an expert, you’ll be doing some really wild stuff. Wait till you see what Zeke gets up to, you won’t believe it. Now dad, the left lever is for going forward and back. Once you are in the air, squeeze the left lever a touch and you will feel the forward motion. You will need
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a touch more than hover on the right lever when you want to go forward. To slow down, stop, or go backwards, you push the left lever forward.’
‘How do I turn?’
‘To turn you need forward motion. You simply stick out your right or left arm or leg and the air drag will turn you. It helps if you launch facing in the direction you want to go.
Why don’t we try to fly across the water to the vacant block on the other side?’
‘OK. So, I face where I want to go, squeeze the right control, hop in the air, gently squeeze the left control and see you later, Ben.’
Adam hopped in the air and when he was about ten feet above the terrace began to drift across the canal, which was about 100 feet wide. Ben flew beside him mind-controlling his own levitation suit.
‘That’s it, dad, that’s it. Now take it easy, don’t speed up too much, that’s it, OK, we’re over the landing zone, let go of the left control and go to hover with your right. Now push the left till you stop going forward.’
Adam did as he was told. His forward motion stopped and he floated down to the ground as lightly as a feather.
‘Well done, dad. That was perfect.’
Adam pushed the right control all the way forward and neutralised the lev-pack. As they stood there together, in pitch darkness, he came over to his son and hugged him.
‘Thank you, Benny, thank you for this gift, and thank you for coming back.’
‘I love you, dad, and mum loves you, more than you can even imagine. And Zeke too, dad, he loves you too and just you wait, you might think that you know what adventure means, but you don’t, not even in your wildest fantasies.’ Ben stepped back from his dad, looked at him proudly and declared, ‘I think that you are ready to fly to the National Park car park and pick up your van.’
They rose together to about one hundred feet then set off in a north-easterly direction towards the National Park. Adam’s many years of hang-gliding experience made him feel totally at home in the air and he adapted to the lev-pack at lightning speed. As they were both the colour of pitch black, they were almost totally invisible. They flew silently above the streetlights and traffic and glided into the car park from the ocean side.
The Kombi was the only vehicle still parked there. Adam retrieved the keys from their hiding place and unlocked the van. He removed the lev-pack from his shoulders, placed it
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in the back of the van and sat in the driver’s seat. Ben sat next to him and made a comment.
‘This is a pretty cool van, dad.’
‘Thanks, Ben, I spent years restoring it. I just love it. It’s kind of like my space ship.’
The last thing Ben did that day was remotely fly his ship about a mile out into Laguna Bay and park it a couple of hundred feet underwater on the sandy bottom. It would remain hidden there until next required.
…….
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