New Title 1 Read online

  “Well, it’s just a fun movie,” Maria was saying, as she stepped into the bathroom and reached past Calvin for a deodorant bar. “And that Cary Grant… he’s so smooth!”

  “Smooth,” Calvin nodded. He just couldn’t see it. Cary Grant acted… as if he was always acting. What kind of an actor was that? And he hadn’t thought the movie was particularly funny, anyway… quite obviously made for the titillation factor of sexy girls in close quarters with randy sailors. Throw in a few women’s underwear jokes. Hilarious.

  “Oh, yes,” Maria was saying. She rubbed the bar on her underarm, then paused, and considered the bar for a moment. “Cary Grant always looks like the kind of man who never has to worry about sweating,” she said lightly.

  “Would that we were all like him,” Calvin commented, throwing Maria a wry glance, then staring back into the sink.

  “Oh!” Maria nudged him playfully. “Finish up, so I can get in here.”

  “Yup…”

  “And when you’re out there,” Maria continued, indicating with a nod that she meant the rest of the apartment, “find out from Erin if she wants some breakfast—”

  Maria abruptly stopped speaking when Calvin rushed by her, headed quickly for the bedroom door. He paused before he reached it, spun about, stepped into a pair of loafers, and snatched a shirt from his closet. He bolted out of the bedroom, past a startled Maria. “Cal! What are you—” But she stopped when Calvin passed Erin’s room, passed the entrance to the kitchen, and continued on to the front door. He was still pulling his shirt on as he flung the door open and bolted out towards the promenade.

  “Cal!” Maria yelled, but Calvin was already gone.

  A moment later, the door to Erin’s room opened. Their daughter peered out, looked in one direction at Maria, in the other direction at the open door, and back again to Maria. “Mom? What’s going on?”

  “I have no idea,” Maria told her daughter. “You want breakfast?”

  “Yeah, I guess,” Erin said as she glanced in confusion back at the front door. “Is Daddy all right?” Maria didn’t answer right away, so she took a step toward her parents’ bedroom. “Mom? Is Dad okay?”

  “Yes, dear,” Maria finally answered. “Just in a hurry, I suppose.”

  Erin came into the bedroom, and saw Maria standing by the bathroom door. She was staring at the forgotten towel on the floor, the sink Calvin hadn’t drained, and the globs of shaving foam bobbing on the top of the water.

  ~

  Valeria Epstein half-gasped, half-moaned as she leaned back and rocked her hips up and down on the man she was straddling. One arm was stretched back, planted firmly on his right pectoral for balance, as her weight was supported by her thighs and his hands on her hips, both working in concert to keep her bouncing forcefully down upon him. Her other arm was wrapped across her chest, holding her breasts down, as all that bouncing often left them sore, and teasing one nipple herself to maintain an electric intensity of sensation. She had already reached and passed her third orgasm, but she kept with it, knowing his fourth (possibly fifth, but she was often notoriously bad at keeping up with her partners’ progress) was just moments away. When it came, signaled by his chest-deep grunt and his hands digging into her hips, she jammed herself down and reveled in the sensation of his shivering manhood losing itself within her.

  When they were both done, she eased herself off and rolled herself tiredly onto her stomach, her loose black hair cascading over her shoulder blades like a fan. “Oh, my God,” she said, caught somewhere between laughing and gasping. “We need to have celebratory days off more often.”

  “Why wait for celebratory days?” Leon Parker, one of her colleagues, quickly rolled over so that his naked body partially draped over hers. He was still rock-hard, despite having just spent himself, and she smiled to herself as his penis rubbed against the back of her thigh. “Speaking for myself, I could do this every night.”

  “Sure, you could,” Valeria mock-complained. There was no one in the world randier than a math nerd after his incredibly complex abstract equations have just been proven in a real-world application… and that was just the way she liked them. “But I’ll need most of a day before I’ll be able to walk normally again!”

  “Well, if that’s your problem,” Leon leered, “maybe we should just get you a wheelchair and—”

  “Oh no you don’t!” Valeria yelped, rolling out of bed to avoid his grasping hands. “Mea Culpa! Besides, I need something to drink. Coffee?”

  “No, I’m awake.”

  “I noticed.” Valeria padded out of the bedroom and into the kitchen, fully aware of Leon’s eyes lingering over her naked derriere. Along the way, she passed a string of clothing on the floor, leading from the living room to the bedroom… hers and his… and she reached down and grabbed a shirt… his… to put on. “God, I needed a break after the last week of Jacqueline’s projects!” She started to set up a pot for coffee as she talked. “I was beginning to feel like my head was going to explode from all those coordinate-setting equations…”

  “I know what you mean.” Valeria looked up to see Leon coming around the corner. He had recovered his shorts from the floor, which was probably the only thing that prevented her from abandoning the coffeepot and wrapping herself around him again. As it was, the evidence of his manhood pressing against the fabric of his shorts almost melted her right there. “Crisp and Melvin are probably still arguing over those power equations she gave us! Melvin is positive the Phi factor is designed to be used for accuracy, but Crisp swears it’s a mass adjustment factor relayed to subsection twenty-eight! I thought they were going to throw down right there in the lab!”

  “Well, whatever it all means, I’m glad Jacqueline got what she wanted out of it. I just don’t see how it’s all going to be of any use for a freight tracking system, of all things… it’s much too involved to be practical.”

  “Who cares?” Leon said, embracing her from behind, then turning her about to face him when she put the coffeepot down. “If Jacqueline wants to reward us with days off every time we solve a theoretical equation for her, I’m all for it! Especially if I get to spend my days off with you—” He was cut off by Valeria’s mouth pressing against his, and the two of them seemed content to forego any further conversation… or coffee.

  Suddenly, they were both startled by an insistent pounding on Valeria’s front door, followed by a ring from the door chime, and an urgent voice Valeria couldn’t recognize. They exchanged glances, before Valeria went to the door, and opened it just enough to peer around its edge.

  The door abruptly pushed open enough for Calvin to thrust himself inside, prompting a surprised squeak out of Valeria. Calvin, reacting to Valeria’s surprised response, thudded to a stop in the entry, realizing at that moment that Leon was there, and the three of them looked at each other briefly—Valeria wearing nothing but Leon’s unbuttoned shirt, Leon wearing nothing but his noticeably-bulging shorts, and Calvin in a mis-buttoned shirt, pants, and loafers with no socks—before Calvin turned to Valeria and said, “I need your help.” His head swiveled around to Leon. “You work in the science sections?”

  “Uh… yeah,” Leon replied hesitantly.

  “Good! I need both of you!”

  ~

  “This really is the force field discussion again?” Leon leaned on the doorjamb in the threshold of Valeria’s smallish den. He, like Valeria, had taken a moment to get dressed as Calvin convinced her to go over some new ideas of his. Valeria was now at her flat’s workstation, and Calvin was hovering over her shoulder, which didn’t leave much space in the room for Leon. “Val said you guys got nowhere with it. And come to think of it… she wasn’t the only one.”

  “I know… I was there,” Calvin stated, submerging his irritation at being reminded of his earlier failures to convince his peers that his idea had merit. “This is something new. It came to me while I was shaving.”

  “C’mon, Cal, I’ve seen your beard,” Valeria protested lightly. “How c
ould you possibly be thinking of anything other than making sure you don’t slice your face off?”

  “Very funny,” Calvin smirked. But in fact, it was because of his beard that he’d had his moment of clarity. His course, heavy beard... and the thick, protective shaving cream he used, to avoid, as Valeria had so eloquently put it, “slicing his face off.”

  It had been the shaving cream that had done it: Specifically, the moment he had looked down at a glob of white foam as it bobbed on the surface of the water in the sink; and as he watched, an elegantly circular film of white had slowly spread out from the glob of foam, adhering to the surface of the water and covering an area much larger than the glob, obscuring the otherwise-transparent water below it...

  “Hey,” Leon asked, his eyes narrowing suspiciously, “how well do you know his beard?”

  “Let’s go over this again,” Valeria requested, pointedly ignoring Leon’s question.

  “Okay: First, we know we can create a force field, but not strong enough to deflect or destroy anything,” Calvin explained. “It requires too much energy to maintain it, so it’s effectively impossible.”

  “Right,” Leon said, perhaps a bit too eagerly.

  “Second,” Calvin continued, ignoring Leon’s disdain, “we know a particle beam of sufficient energy can vaporize a target. But a particle beam of sufficient energy is difficult to aim, making it almost impossible to track an object. Also, a particle beam can be deflected by many coatings, making even powerful particle beams less than deadly.”

  “Right again,” Valeria said. “So what are we left with?”

  “We’re left with both,” Calvin answered. “The key is to use them together.”

  “How are you supposed to do that?” Leon asked.

  “Like this,” Calvin said, pointing at Valeria’s controls. “Set up a mathematical model of a section of a force field,” he instructed, and Valeria’s hands worked over her controls. On her screen, a flat plane was projected. “Okay… now designate a spot where a projectile will pass through the force field.” As Valeria worked, a single white line projected itself at a right angle to the plane; it passed through the plane, and a small circular target inscribed itself at the point on the plane where the line bisected it.

  “Good,” Calvin nodded. “Now, at that point where the force field is interrupted, there’s a feedback… it will essentially sense the spot where the projectile penetrates it. Right?”

  “Yes,” Valeria replied. “But it’s still not powerful enough to be useful.”

  “Oh, yes, it is,” Calvin told her. “If the field can provide sensory feedback at the spot it was penetrated, it becomes a sensory net. Then that location can be fed into a beam targeting system. Within milliseconds, a particle beam can fire on that spot.”

  “But not a powerful one,” Valeria insisted.

  “And not accurately,” Leon added.

  “It doesn’t need to be as accurate, nor as powerful… here’s why.” Calvin pointed at the spot on the plane where the line bisected it, then rotated his finger as if encircling it. “You don’t use the beam to hit the object. The beam is tuned to match the frequency of the force field itself. Then, when the beam hits the force field, anywhere in this area, it will pour its energy into the force field at that general spot. That energy will radiate out through the field over a large area, depending on the power and frequency of the beam. So what you get is a large surge of power in a measurable space… you see?”

  “Hey,” Valeria muttered. “So you don’t actually have to aim it precisely. And it doesn’t have to last long…” She considered a moment longer, then her hands flew across her controls.

  Abruptly Leon stepped forward and leaned over the other side of the workstation. “You’re talking about making the field stronger… but just in a localized space!” His doubting frown was slowly being replaced with an understanding grin. But it began to fade, to be replaced with a look of intense concentration, when he examined Valeria’s equations a bit more closely. “Val, reset the amplitude at potential B, there,” he pointed. “If you tie it to the charge state of… yeah, that’s it. Yeah.”

  Calvin watched the two scientists work, and the virtual model morph as they adjusted the parameters. Then he indicated a variable in their equation. “Hold on: The field strength is already malleable, corresponding to interruptions in the field, right? So… suppose you polarized the field by reversing your balance factor B, there…”

  Valeria’s eyes widened. “Hey, I get it…” She worked on the controls, and Leon occasionally reached down and changed a setting or two in one area of her equations as she worked on another. Calvin, being in his element, did the same in a few other areas, and for a few minutes, the three of them were working simultaneously over the workstation, sharing the same clipped and cryptic mathematical language, massaging the equation in a seamless collaboration.

  The virtual model changed again, and Valeria’s eyes went wide. “Cal, look! The particle beam surge draws more power from the surrounding force field to the target spot… like an additional reinforcement!”

  “Look at those theoretical power levels!” Leon goggled. “Anything that passes through that much beam-amplified field potential will be fried!” He looked at Calvin with renewed respect. “That’s bloody brilliant.”

  “If it can be made to work,” Valeria added. She glanced over her shoulder at Calvin. “But yeah, that’s inspired, Cal.”

  “If it can be made to work,” Cal repeated. “But it’s a start. It might represent a reliable defense for Verdant, if we get into a shooting war, which is exactly what Lenz was looking for. Val, do me a favor and save all this, so I have something to take to CnC.” He glanced at Leon who, when he saw the equations they had worked together, had acquired a gleam in his eye which he directed, straight as a particle beam, at Valeria. “Then I’ll let you two get back to your… uh… day off.”

  15: Window of Opportunity

  “Mister Gordon?”

  The hand on Gordon’s arm awoke him as much as the voicing of his name. He jerked awake with a snort, and looked up at the RPI employee standing beside him, the only other person in the RPI lounge besides himself. “What is it?”

  “We’ve been given clearance from the GAA. The break in the ash cloud happened as predicted. We’ll be ready to take off within the hour.”

  “Within the half-hour,” Gordon ordered as he pushed himself off of the couch he had been sleeping on, and headed for the passenger terminal.

  ~

  Captain Toliver hovered about his freighter, the El Capitan, like a mother inspecting her son before he was about to leave on a prom date. Not that the El Cap ever looked that good… it was, after all, just a commercial freighter. But the maintenance crews had spent a lot of time with the hull polishers, working to clean the coating of ash and the pockmarks out of its surface… then Toliver, himself, had gone back in with a portable polisher to work over some individual areas that personally bothered him. He had especially concentrated on the areas around the primary sensors and ports, trying to make sure his ship wouldn’t go half-blind as it had when they had flown up to Verdant. Then he visually inspected the exhaust manifolds and thrust armatures to ensure against problems with atmospheric handling.

  The El Cap looked essentially ship-shape now, but Toliver continued to fuss over it, making sure he hadn’t missed anything. As he walked the length of the ship from the dorsal spine of the hull, he stopped and concentrated on a spot to the port side. Then he stepped over to the spot, stooped down, and wiped a smudge of ash that caked the hull just ahead of a sensory pod.

  “Hey, Toliver! You want I should find you a chamois?”

  Toliver looked up to the main deck, and saw Hunter Reilly and Goldie Maina passing his bay. Hunter leered at Toliver. “Or maybe we should tell the dockmaster to turn out the lights, so you two can have some privacy?”

  Toliver, refusing to be baited, turned back to his inspection. Goldie gave Hunter a withering look. “Man,
can’t you ever let up?”

  “Hey, I’m just trying to help,” Hunter said, pausing by the bay to look down at the El Cap. Goldie walked a few paces on, before she realized Hunter had stopped; she stopped, too, but instead of rejoining her wingman, she stood where she was, watching him and trying not to show her impatience.

  After a few moments, Hunter pointed casually at a point on the hull. “You missed a spot.” Toliver ignored him and continued on his inspection. Hunter nodded, as if he’d gotten the response he wanted, and started to walk off… then stopped, as if just remembering something. “Oh yeah, I wanted to tell you that we’ve seen the experimental freight projects they’re doing in the science department. We won’t be needing freighters like this much longer.”

  “Hunter,” Goldie warned. Hunter looked at her. “I’m not going to be late on account of you,” she said. Then she turned and continued on.

  Hunter started after her, and paused one last time to call out to Toliver: “I hope your resume’s updated.” Then he left, double-timing it to catch up to Goldie.

  When Hunter had regained Goldie’s side, she said, “You have no idea about the state of those experiments, and you know it.”

  “Yeah, I know it,” Hunter said, grinning and tossing his head to indicate Toliver. “But he doesn’t.” Goldie ran a hand through her hair, as if to smooth the weariness out of it, and continued on silently.

  Toliver had acted uncaring when Hunter had been nearby. Once the pilots were heading out of sight, he finally looked after them. He was pretty sure Hunter was just trying to mess with him… but suppose—

  The beep of Toliver’s com interrupted his thoughts, and he raised his wrist to his face. “Yeah?”

  “The weather report’s in,” came the voice on the other end of the circuit. “There’s a window opening up now over Central America, and an eighty-plus-percent expectation for it to remain open for the next seven hours.”

  “That’s our window, then,” Toliver nodded. “Start heating things up. We’re leaving as soon as our pilot gets here.” He re-keyed his com and spoke again. “Anise?”