Falling Against Gravity Read online

  Nikola hollered over the roar of the giant spinning rings. “It is working ... I think.”

  Fort looked out a porthole, scanning the ground for Ripley, wondering where he could be. The roof should have started opening by now.

  “Fort!” Nikola yelled, “It’s becoming unstable!” There was a warble in the menacing sphere of spinning metal causing the engine room to shutter. The ship lurched upward, pulling hard on its moorings, causing Nikola and Fort to stumble and fall.

  “Sorry! That was me!” Zoya roared down from the bridge. “Won’t happen again!” The warble stopped even though the rate of the spinning rings increased. Nikola and Fort gave each other a worried look before they pounced back to their stations.

  Ripley floated over to the promenade and got a hold of the railing with both hands, his feet kicking and flailing about over his head. Abruptly, normal gravity unceremoniously returned and disappeared several times in a few seconds, as waves of power rippled out from the ship. Ripley fell in a heap, then clumsily rose again.

  Ripley grabbed the etherphone while hugging a railing. He pushed the button. “Fort! Fort! What’s happening in there?” The ship heaved a few more times.

  “Ripley! Good heavens man, where have you been? Are you alright? Stop.”

  “Yes, I’m fine now, I guess … but I was flying! I was aloft in the air!”

  “I can barely hear you. Get the roof open, Ripley! Now! I’m counting on you! Stop.”

  Ripley looked across the long room. The massive ship jumped slightly and shook the whole hangar. Ripley did not want to let go of the railing; but even more so, he did not want to let everyone down. He inched down the stairs with both hands desperately grasping the railing. When he got to the bottom, he looked across the vast distance to the roof’s control panel. It didn’t seem so far away before. He swallowed hard and took the etherphone lanyard from around his neck and tied it to his belt. He stared at the panel. He could do this. And even if he couldn’t, he was going to give it his best attempt. His friends needed him. He had no other choice. Finding his courage, Ripley took one step and then another. After a few nervous attempts, he began to run straight for the panel.

  Inside the ship, the electricity crackled around the Gyrocore. There was a small dense sphere of bluish energy around the element. It was so blindingly bright that no sane person would ever look at it directly. The smell of ozone was potent and almost overwhelming.

  “What’s happening?” Fort roared. Nikola was lost in thought, mesmerized by the Gyrocore. He stared at it behind his dark welding goggles, trying to decipher the different densities flowing over the glowing sphere. It was wild and beautiful, and he desperately wanted to understand it. The energy looked like translucent lava rolling over itself and it gave the mad tinkerer a fearful tingle.

  Fort grabbed Nikola by the shoulder and shook him. “Wake up, Nikola. You need to help me.”

  “I am studying it. The responses are very delayed with everything. It would seem I reduced the voltage too much! This is not good!”

  “Well, turn it up again!”

  “No Fort, you don’t understand. I already turned it up, it just hasn’t reacted yet. At least I think that’s what’s happening. Controls are funny.”

  Fort grabbed his hair. This was not going as he had hoped. Multiple shock waves radiated from the ship again, each wave increasingly erasing gravity in the immediate area around the ship. The Nimbus jumped slightly in its moorings, twisting and wrenching them, shaking everything in the hangar. A series of electrical strikes radiated out from the ship, hitting the iron girders of the building. The giant work lights flashed on and off in discord, with some of the lights exploding their gas-filled bulbs, adding to the pandemonium. Items around the hangar began floating slightly and in one unexpected bound, Ripley started flying fast through the air like a titan. Waves of energy surged and contracted over and over again, each wave more and more powerful than its predecessor. Ripley dropped to the ground but before he could stand, he was floating yet again, grabbing towards the floor with futility. Tools and metal bits of every variety drifted around him.

  Ripley started to panic. “Fooooort!” he wailed before catching himself. Distressed, he looked around, but he didn’t think anyone heard him in all the deafening chaos.

  The Nimbus continued to bounce and jump in its moorings, shaking both the ship and the building to the point where it felt like everything was about to crumble to the ground in a pulverized heap of rubble. Even the concrete was starting to crack and the metal joists made uncomfortable, anguished groans.

  Zoya was growing more and more concerned. “Mr. Fort! We need to release the moorings! Or you’re going to tear everything apart!” As if on cue, the ship heaved to one side, accentuating her point dramatically. “Whoooagirl! Calm down,” she cooed to the steering controls like she was trying to calm a wild beast that didn’t want to be tamed.

  Fort ran from the engine room up towards the bridge. “Can you release both the fore and aft moorings and hold the ship here? In place? In the hangar?” He knew it sounded ridiculous as he said it. ”We’re not ready in the engine room yet! And the roof is still closed!” Fort said with more than a note of distress.

  “We have to release them soon,” she said as the Nimbus jumped and dropped again. “Or find a way to shut it down now!” There was a loud crash somewhere below them.

  Fort looked back towards the engine room with concern. “Very well, I’m going to release the moorings, but keep it steady until the roof is open.”

  Zoya turned to him and raised her left eyebrow. “Alright,” she said confidently and then adjusted her position in the large pilot’s seat, “I’m ready.” Fort bolted across the bridge and cranked both double sets of handles on a console before a loud mechanical noise erupted across the cabin. Ka-chunk! Slowly the front end of the ship started lifting upwards. Fort skidded and stumbled back across the uneven deck and held onto the handrail on the stairs, lest he lose his balance.

  “Settle it down!” Fort barked.

  “You settle it down!” Zoya shot back. The front end of the Nimbus continued to creep upwards and Fort grabbed the railing tighter to brace himself. Zoya manipulated two of the six steering arms and the ship jumped and shuttered again. Fort started to panic as the nose of the ship glided dangerously close to the skylights.

  “Bring it down, Zoya. Please!” Fort pleaded as his feet slid out from under him.

  “The aft moorings didn’t let go! We’re still attached to the ground!” She heaved the steering arms forward, changing the pitch of the turbines on the hull. Immediately, the forward end of the ship slammed back down on the hangar floor.

  “Stop that!” Nikola growled from the engine compartment, but then shook his head and whispered almost immediately afterwards, “Or was that me?”

  As the rush of air from the turbine washed across the hangar, Ripley was spun into a lateral cartwheel away from his desired destination. Peppery stew curdled in his stomach. “Noooooo,” he cried in vain.

  Three more waves of energy radiated off the ship, each one more powerful. The metal on the hangar walls rippled.

  Back on the bridge of the ship, Zoya settled the ship down temporarily, even as it continued to pull at its moorings. Fort grabbed two handles and repeatedly tried to release the rear moorings of the ship, but to no avail. “I-I don’t know what else to do,” he muttered, trounced.

  Zoya was shocked and disappointed at his defeat. “Get the sledgehammer and go find where the housings are. One is by the base of the aft stairs and the other is–”

  “I know where they are!” blurted Fort, annoyed.

  Zoya smirked. He’s back to normal, she thought. “Just pull the cotter pins out and when the pressures off them–”

  “It’ll knock them out! Excellent plan,” Fort said with determination.

  “It will wreck the wooden finish around them on the outer hull,” Zoya pointed out.

  Fort’s face crumpled. “Aww. You’re right,�
�� he said disappointedly. “It looks so nice back there now. It’s finally finished and stained. Can we try the control handles again?”

  Another series of even more powerful shockwaves came from the ship’s mysterious element in its core. This time, Fort looked through the bridge windows and could see what the shockwaves were doing firsthand. There were wrinkles forming in the metal sheathing on the hangar’s exterior. Big items like chains, barrels, lights and jacks floated all around the hangar in slow motion, while smaller items like dust, dirt, washers and screws swirled throughout the space in little tornadoes, pelting the hull and scratching at the windows. Occasional nuts and bolts were bouncing off the walls like a multitude of little drumsticks in a wanton, chaotic fashion. The whole hangar seemed to heave with the latest wave.

  Zoya desperately looked at Fort.

  “Okay, okay, I’m going!” Fort raced down the stairs and into the engine compartment. “Ripley! Get the roof open, man!” he roared into the etherphone, before entering the noisy engine area. He ran through the space, skidding into an alcove and popping out with a heavy sledgehammer and a crowbar, barely missing a beat. Fort pushed past Nikola, whose electrified hair was chaotically escaping like dirty grey tentacles around the ridges of his dark welder’s goggles. He breathlessly watched the wild electrical arcs strike the spinning rings faster and faster, his eyes filled with childlike wonder. He was transfixed. No one on earth knew more about electricity than Nikola, and no one on this planet has ever seen electricity behave with such dense definition and unpredictable abandon. He was concurrently excited and terrified.

  “Nikola,” Fort shouted. “Snap out of it, man! We need you.”

  Nikola shook his head. “I’m not certain what it is doing. It’s not behaving rationally. Like it’s grounding out periodically.” He waited for a moment that felt like a millennia. “We should...” Nikola pondered loudly.

  The ship didn’t care what anybody thought. It lurched and shook and slowly the forward end started rising. Fort and Nikola were pounded by a wave of energy but caught themselves before falling headfirst down the stairs. Fort helped Nikola steady his feet.

  “The aft moorings are still attached!” Fort yelled over the sound of the Gyrocore.

  Nikola gave him a strange look and raised an eyebrow over his black goggles. “Well, maybe that is the problem! Let the moorings go!”

  “That’s where I’m going, they’re not releasing properly,” Fort curtly responded.

  “Well, hurry up! Stop standing here yammering,” Nikola yelled.

  Fort bit his lip and cursed to himself as he ran the length of the engine room and jumped down the first flight of stairs. When he got to the bottom deck, he tore through an interior wooden panel and found where the mooring was housed and connected it to the ship’s frame. Gently, he tapped the cotter pin out seconds before the ship viscously lunged forward and hit the ground. Fort grabbed the giant hammer and walloped the enormous bolt. It moved a little. He smashed at the bolt, pounding it over and over again, his veins pulsing on his forehead. His face turned purple and he felt like he was going to pass out.

  Outside the ship, Ripley held onto one of the massive copper plates on the side of the ship with one hand, while trying to talk into the etherphone with the other. “Fort! Fort! I’m stuck on the side of the ship.” Fort could hear Ripley’s voice coming from his own etherphone, but could not make out what his friend was saying.

  More energy waves emanated from the ship, this time more powerful than the previous ones. The glass from the roof panes shattered and slowly drifted as the entire roof shook, almost as if in pain. The light’s reflections on the small particles of broken glass made it appear like a million tiny snowflakes were falling from the sky.

  Back in the engine room Nikola was standing near a panel, loudly talking to himself. “I think it’s the Faraday shielding. That might be what is destabilizing the field. I think that it needs a higher background voltage to compensate.” Bracing himself, he trundled off to another panel.

  Nikola furiously turned a dial several times, the outcome of his action giving Ripley a nasty shock on the hull plating. “Yeeow!” Ripley screeched as he flew away from the ship. He slowly started to drift towards the ground as the tiny shards of glass scratched his arms and face. He covered his eyes to keep from being blinded, but quickly opened them again. The thought of not seeing what was happening was even more terrifying than permanent vision loss.

  Slowly, gravity returned inside the hangar walls. When Ripley touched down to the ground, he immediately scrambled on all fours towards the roof controls. As gravity returned full force, hundreds of pieces of glass pelted down all around him. Numerous tiny cuts and gashes bled in little rivulets down his hands and cheeks before gravity evaporated again, sending him flying towards the controls. He careened head first into the wall above the control panel and desperately grabbed for anything to hold on to, and then awkwardly climbed down, all the while cutting his soft hands as he brushed the glass away from his face.

  Finally, after a series of shudders onboard, Fort’s determined hammering paid off and he was able to knock the bolt free. Immediately, the ship tipped in the opposite direction and rested against the hangar’s upright support girders.

  Zoya was incredibly relieved she had tightened the seat harnesses when she had the chance. Fighting all natural instincts to quickly plunge into action, she sat still for a moment in the chaos and calmly tried to visualize what to do. Leaning sideways, she delicately moved one control arm one way and then the second one in a different direction. The front of the ship slid cock-eyed in the hangar, still leaning on the support beam. She quickly moved the levers in different configurations to try and right the ship. With one mooring still attached, the ship lumbered like a giant whale caught in a fishing rope.

  Ripley kept getting blasted from the backwash of the turbines as he tried to reorient himself while weightless against the wall. He briefly glanced towards the ship just as a barrel gently drifted around the space until getting caught into the stream of air coming out of the turbines. Within seconds, the barrel transformed from innocent flotsam into a gigantic projectile hurtling straight at him. His panic-stricken eyes looked around for escape. He noticed a nearby girder and leapt towards it like a tree frog caught in slow motion. When he reached the girder, he gracelessly glommed onto it and felt pretty lucky as he watched the barrel smash into the panel he jumped from.

  Fort cursed as he stumbled and tripped over loose equipment sliding underfoot. He fiercely threw things left and right as he fought to fully open a small closet door. Nikola looked out a porthole as Zoya gently took the ship off the wall and set it down. Glass was flying around in every direction like invisible razors. One piece cut through the tip of Ripley’s ear as he climbed down the girder to the floor.

  Nikola looked around the pandemonium. This was not how the vessel should behave, he thought. More electrical arcs continued to strike the frame of the hangar. Something didn’t make sense. He shook his mop of grey hair in exasperation and then looked up so quickly it kinked his neck. He had an epiphany. “It’s the building!” he shouted excitedly. “We must get it outside! It wants to be free!” He spun around, and desperately looked for Fort, who was tearing at the inside of a closet with a crowbar, two decks below. He couldn’t hear anything except the crunching of the wood as it split under the brunt force of the crowbar.

  Zoya’s voice crackled through the etherphone, still discernible even though it was awash in static. “Mr. Fort, whatever is happening back there, you should really hurry up!” She rushed to get her hands back on the control arm as the ship wavered. She didn’t have the luxury of waiting for a response as she tried to ensure the ship didn’t ram into the wall.

  Fort straightened up and took the etherphone out of his belt holster. He held the device close to his mouth and tersely replied, “If you don’t say ‘stop’, how can I know you’re done speaking?” He shook his head. “I’m trying to get at the port mooring bu
t there is very little room in here. Bear with me! Stop.” He snapped the etherphone back in its holster and continued pulling off the wood from inside the closet, throwing the broken pieces over his shoulders.

  Zoya pulled one of the control arms in and set the handbrake. She grabbed the etherphone and told him, “Well, I just wanted you to know that the hangar seems to be … crinkling or something. It’s abnormal. And it could jam the roof.”

  Fort’s face froze in dread for a moment before fumbling at the etherphone.

  “...Stop.” Zoya finished.

  “Hold fast! Stop.” he replied.

  “Okay … Stop,” she responded with resignation, grabbing the steering control again. The Nimbus started to settle down when three more waves radiated out of its center with tremendous force, bouncing it on the floor as Zoya tried to anticipate its reactions.

  Keeping his legs wrapped on the girder, Ripley tightly tied a clean, white handkerchief around his bleeding hand. His etherphone hung busted from his belt. His bloody hands began to shake. What if they’re waiting for me? I don’t know what to do! Terrified, but even more worried about failing his friends, Ripley looked back at the roof controls. He was so close. He repositioned himself without letting go of the girder. Metal tools and objects were drifting and adhering to the solid girders with clangs and clunks. Even worse, they were picking up force.

  They need me … I can do this. Ripley swallowed hard and waggled a bit before he shoved off the girder towards the panel. Flailing, he collided with the panel and held on for dear life. Looking like a spider on a massive web, he reached for the key and turned it. The wind from the turbines pelted glass shards over his entire body and he yelped as he covered his face. He was sure he would have no skin left intact by the end of this night. Climbing like he was on a high cliff wall with a blizzard thrashing him, he found a way to push the clutch in while holding on for dear life. Reaching up, he grabbed at the hand gears and pulled them so hard they flung him out into the air when they released.