Backyard Starship Read online

  I stared a moment longer, then shrugged. What the hell. If I was going insane, at least I was doing it in a rather interesting, even pretty cool way. I might as well enjoy the ride.

  I stepped through the hatch, into the compartment. As soon as I did, the door slid smoothly and quietly closed behind me. Soft lighting came up, and a door on the other side of the compartment opened.

  A new voice suddenly spoke.

  “Welcome aboard, Peacemaker. Do you want to power up the ship to pre-flight status?”

  4

  I blinked at Perry. “Now who the hell is that?”

  “That would be the Dragonet. Your grandfather called her Netty, but if you’d like to name her something else, that’d be up to you,” Perry replied.

  “Netty. So the ship is intelligent, too.”

  “From your perspective, yes,” Netty replied.

  I waved in mild disbelief. “Sure, why the hell not? Is the coffeemaker equipped with an AI, too? That’s an actual application I could get behind—”

  “No, that would be ridiculous. Why would you want an intelligent coffeemaker?” Netty asked.

  That brought me up short, so I answered as plainly as possible. “I take coffee seriously. And an AI would be… useful in that regard.”

  “You can brew your own beans, Van,” Perry said. “Netty’s got more important things to do, like, you know, keep an antimatter reactor running without blowing up most of Iowa, or calculate thrust and trajectories and all that navigation stuff to get your butt from point A to point B.”

  I stared at the bird. There was an undertone of anger that felt too real to be mere code. Perry had emotions, and I was seeing them in real time.

  “Perry,” I began, then paused to phrase my thoughts more accurately. “This may surprise you, but I’m a touch stunned to find an actual spaceship in my grandfather’s barn. You get that?”

  “Yes, I get it,” Perry replied. “Look, let’s go to the cockpit. You can let Netty take you up for a spin, and maybe that’ll at least seal the deal on all of this being real.”

  “Nice rhyming, Perry. I always thought you had the soul of a poet,” Netty put in.

  “Thank you, my dear. I’m… always, um, here.”

  “Now you’re just trying too hard.”

  “Eh, I’ll work on it. Anyway, Van, right this way,” Perry said, turning and hopping along a corridor toward what I assumed was the nose of the ship.

  I glanced back at the door that had sealed behind me. “And what if I don’t want to, and I just want to get off this thing?”

  The door slid aside, opening my way back into the barn.

  “Okay, close it again.”

  It did.

  “Open it again.”

  Again, it slid open.

  Well, that made me feel a little better. I apparently had some control over this hallucination or vision or fever dream, though the reality of the ship was crowding in on any chance that I was in the middle of some high-tech fever dream.

  I blew out a resigned sigh. “Alrighty, then. Onward,” I said and followed after Perry.

  The corridor led past several other compartments, all closed. I started to ask Perry about them, but he just kept hopping forward, calling back over his shoulder.

  “We’ll give you the grand tour later. Right now, I think the most important thing for you is to see the Dragonet in action.”

  I shook my head. “Sure, why not?”

  Perry led the way into a small compartment that was mostly enclosed in—nothing, was my first thought. It was all surrounded in an empty latticework, open to the outside air. But closer inspection showed faint gleams of reflection, barely noticeable unless you were looking at just the right angle. I touched one of the apparent void spaces, and my finger stopped against something smooth, cool, and barely even visible. When I pulled my finger away, it didn’t leave a print.

  “Van, if you want to get settled into the place of honor, we’ll get this show on the road,” Perry said.

  I turned to find him perched on the back of a sumptuous, padded chair facing a rectangular screen, featureless and black. Two smaller similar screens were angled toward it, left and right. I moved to the seat, hesitated and looked at Perry, then sat down.

  As soon as I did, the three screens came to life. I’d expected them to be computer monitors, but these were insanely high resolution. The various instruments and displays that appeared looked absolutely real, textured and 3D. Touching one, though, confirmed it was just a 2D image on a screen.

  “Okay, so I’ve never flown a spaceship before. What do I do? Do I have to put in a coin somewhere?”

  “Netty’s going to fly. She’ll take us up, do an orbit, and bring us back,” Perry replied.

  “An orbit.”

  “One should be enough.”

  “Of Earth.”

  “Unless you’d prefer to go somewhere else. Netty, what’s the closest planet to Earth right now?”

  “That would be Mars. It’s only a few days away from closest approach. Flight time would be eleven hours, seventeen minutes.”

  I stared at Perry, or tried to, since he still perched on the back of the chair, looming above and behind me. “We can be at Mars—Mars—in under twelve hours?”

  “Netty’s the expert. It’s what she does. Most of the time, you won’t have to fly the ship at all, just tell her your destination. She can even fly the ship in battle if necessary, but that’s where the Peacemaker usually starts giving command inputs.”

  “Battle is still a pretty hands-on affair,” Netty agreed.

  “Battle. Wait. Battle? Are you telling me this ship is armed?”

  “Twin mass drivers, and a petawatt laser.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “She used to be more heavily armed, but your grandfather offered liens on some of her weapon systems, so the mass drivers and the laser are all that’s left.”

  “I’m sure that means something.”

  “It does. For now, though, let’s focus on getting you convinced this is all really happening.”

  “By orbiting the Earth.”

  “That’s right.”

  I glanced up. “Okay, well, we have a problem then. The barn roof’s in the way.” I glanced back. “Unless, of course, it opens up—”

  The brilliant white light vanished, and the barn roof began to slide apart, revealing ragged, patchy clouds framing bits and pieces of clear, starry sky.

  “And it opens up, because of course it does,” I said, sinking back in the chair. Which, I noted, was actually pretty damned comfortable. No matter how I arranged myself in it, it seemed to instantly conform and accommodate me.

  “Van, the preflight checklist is complete. All of the Dragonet’s systems are green. Are you ready?” Netty asked.

  I spread my arms at the sky. “I hesitate to say this, but… take us up.”

  A faint hum, underlain by a thin, rising whine rose from somewhere behind me. Some of the life-like instrument displays began to change.

  And the Dragonet began to rise, slowly lifting from the barn’s floor. I couldn’t even feel the motion.

  As I gaped—not watched, not stared, but gaped, wide-eyed—the barn fell away below, revealing the farmhouse, its kitchen windows still lit. Then it dropped away, and more lights appeared. Other farms, nearby towns, a smear of light that must have been Des Moines. That, in turn, all receded steadily away beneath us, more lights crawling into view as we gained altitude and our visible horizon fell further and further away.

  Okay, as hallucinations went, this was amazing. I needed to find a way to record it and sell tickets. I couldn’t actually believe we were flying—

  Everything abruptly vanished, the view turning to a uniform deep, charcoal grey.

  “What’s this?” I asked. “Some sort of hyperdrive? Another dimension?”

  “No, it’s a cloud,” Netty replied.

  The Dragonet shuddered slightly, in a way I recognized from many flights. Turbulence. But she kept rising, punching out of the clouds, and smoothly ascending until what looked like all of Iowa, and most of the states surrounding it, came into view.

  And still we ascended. At the same time, the view began to scroll, things creeping over the horizon ahead and passing beneath. Towns and villages were just points of light. Cities were larger haphazard patches of glow. And now something new slid into view—jagged darkness, like irregular sawteeth. It took me a moment to realize they were mountains.

  The Rocky Mountains. The nearest of them had to be at least a thousand klicks west of the farm, but here they were, slipping beneath us. And still we gained altitude.

  The next minutes, I admit, were a blur. We passed over the California coast high enough to see LA off to the left, and San Francisco to the right. The blank, black expanse of the Pacific yawned ahead of us, but now I could see the Earth’s curvature clearly. I caught a glimpse of Hawaii. Later, Australia and the multitude of islands sprawling north of it. We passed over the coast of Asia, swept past Japan and Korea and over China, and finally caught up to the sun over Eastern Europe. An explosion of light and glory lit up the Alps with gleaming snow, then laid bare the urban sprawl of Western Europe.

  Something occurred to me. I reached into my pocket, where I’d stuck my phone, and pulled it out, then started tapping at it. I had no reception, of course, but I used it to take pictures instead. I snapped images of river bends, the margins of forests, the spidery traces of highways, distinctive sections of coastline.

  “If you want imagery, Van, Netty can provide you with much better quality than that thing can,” Perry said.

  “That’s okay,” I replied, framing and taking a picture of an island just off the French coast. “I’m happy to collect my own.”

  The southern UK r
olled by, then Netty announced we were starting our descent. We made a long, slow fall across the Atlantic and raced over the eastern seaboard of the States just as dawn was breaking over New York, turning the office towers to pillars of brilliant gold. We carried on across Pennsylvania, dropping steadily back toward the Great Plains and the Heartland ahead. As we did, something caught my eye. I pointed ahead and to our right.

  “Uh, guys? Is that an airplane?”

  Perry looked at where I’d pointed, at a big passenger plane, beacon lights pulsing, heading roughly in the same direction we were but on a slowly converging course.

  “It is. A United Airlines Airbus A-320, in fact,” Perry said.

  “Um, aren’t we worried about hitting it? Or hitting another plane? You said they can’t see us—”

  “Leave it to Netty. Considering some of the flying she’s done, avoiding some civilian air traffic is something she could do in her sleep.”

  “If I slept, that is,” Netty said.

  We passed the Airbus and kept up our steady fall. I could make out Prairie du Chien, where the Wisconsin River met the Mississippi, then we were soaring over sprawling fields of wheat, sorghum, soybeans, and corn, most of it already harvested and fallow for the upcoming winter. Just a few hundred meters up, I saw the farm swim into view out of some mist. The barn roof opened as we approached, the Dragonet neatly spun and settled back into its confines, and the roof closed over top of us again.

  We’d done a complete orbit of the Earth and were home, and the eastern sky was just starting to pale toward dawn.

  Well, that had been one hell of a night, hadn’t it?

  I watched as Miryam’s car turned out of the driveway and accelerated away, trailed by a cloud of dust. The wet night had given way to a surprisingly warm, dry day. Not surprising, considering we were in that weird October period when we could have snow one day and blistering heat the next. It was as though summer and winter were duking it out, even though the outcome was inevitable.

  And speaking of inevitable outcomes, I thought, turning and looking at my phone and laptop, which were sitting on the kitchen table. There was one right there. At least, the conclusion seemed like the inevitable outcome of my spur-of-the-moment photo session from orbit the night before.

  I’d taken twenty-one pictures, all of really specific river bends, headlands, forested hills, stretches of coastline, and islands, mostly across western Europe. A few, though, caught bits of the Eastern Seaboard of the States. I’m pretty good with my geography, but there was no way I could memorize every wiggle of coastline or turn in a river’s course. And yet, I had been able to match every single feature I’d recorded to its corresponding place on the map. Twenty-one pictures, twenty-one exactly corresponding places on Google Earth. When I switched to satellite photo view, the concurrences were even more clear.

  I walked to the computer, opened a window, and stared at the image. It depicted an island in the English Channel, taken from at least a couple of hundred kilometers up. But that wasn’t the satellite photo. That was a picture currently residing on my phone.

  Which meant I had taken it.

  And that had led to a stunning line of thinking.

  I hadn’t been hallucinating, or tripping balls, or dreaming, or any other such thing. The only other conclusion seemed insanely unlikely to be true. And yet, there it was. It made me think of Sherlock Holmes’s pronouncement regarding this very thing.

  Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.

  In other words, I had actually orbited the Earth in a spaceship last night, in the company of two sentient artificial intelligences.

  And now, here I was, staring at a picture of an island in the English Channel, Jersey, apparently, that I’d taken last night from orbit.

  I closed everything up and headed outside. I mucked across ground still wet from the previous night’s rain, passing goldenrod and dandelions sprouting among the yellowing grass. It had become a fine, warm day, and I was sweating by the time I stepped into the cool gloom of the barn.

  I opened my mouth. Closed it again. This felt stupid. Of course there’d be no answer. I couldn’t have orbited the Earth last night.

  Once you eliminate the impossible…

  “Perry?”

  Silence. I started to think, ah, there, see, it really was all some sort of dream or imagining. That lasted right up to the moment Perry descended with a softly metallic flutter of wings from somewhere in the rafters and landed to perch on the edge of an empty horse-stall.

  “You rang?”

  I stuck my hands in my pockets. “Okay, then. You are real.”

  “Last time I checked I was.”

  “Right.” I sniffed and shook my head. “This is—it’s unbelievable.”

  “And yet, here we are.”

  “So now I decide if I want to do this, take over from my grandfather as a—what did you call them? Peacekeepers?”

  “Peacemaker. There’s a difference. Peacekeeper assumes there’s a peace to keep. Your job would be to make that peace in the first place.”

  “So, what, I fly around Earth, troubleshooting all the nations’ conflicts and troubles?”

  Perry gave me a steady, golden stare. “No, not at all.”

  “What then?”

  “You fly around the galaxy, troubleshooting conflicts and troubles among the stars.”

  5

  I stared back. “The galaxy.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Even at the speed of light, it takes four years to get to the closest star to Earth. Sounds like I’d be doing a whole lot more traveling than peacemaking.”

  “Why would you travel at the speed of light?”

  “Because it’s as fast as anything can go?” I held up a hand. “No. Wait. You’re going to tell me you have some sort of warp drive or something, aren’t you?”

  “Well, technically, it’s a twist drive, in that it twists space to bring two distant points momentarily together. The Dragonet just kind of nudges itself from one point to the other. But Netty takes care of all of that. You just have to tell her where you want her to go.”

  “A twist drive. I—”

  I stopped. I wasn’t sure why this, of all things, was something to get caught on. Backyard spaceships and late-night Earth orbits, yes, but dodging around the cosmic speed limit set by light in a vacuum, I was having trouble with.

  I finally shook my head. “Do you have any idea how much money that would be worth?”

  “Vast amounts, I’d imagine. Same with the Dragonet’s weapons, and her antimatter drive, and inertia limiters, life support systems, scanners—”

  “Yeah. I mean, holy shit. And yet, you and Gramps were able to keep this under wraps here, in Iowa, for—how long, anyway?”

  “About twenty-five years.”

  I shook my head. “Twenty-five years—”

  I stopped, as though I’d just slammed headfirst into a concrete wall.

  “Wait? Twenty-five years?”

  “Almost. Twenty-four years, ten months, eight days—”

  “I don’t care exactly how long,” I said with some heat, raising a hand as the full realization of what Perry had just said slammed into me like a speeding truck. “That means you were here, in this barn, the whole time I was out here, in this barn, working on my electronics stuff, weren’t you?”

  “It does indeed. Both Netty and I are actually quite familiar with you and have been for some time.”

  My mind raced back over the years. Apparently, I’d walked through this barn, walked right through the Dragonet, being displaced, or shifted, or whatever the ship’s stealth system supposedly did, without even realizing it. I’d buried myself in electronic projects, tinkered with old motors and gas engines, built things out of wood and even metal, all within arm’s reach of a freakin’ spaceship. And I’d never known it.

  I rubbed at my face, thinking of something beyond awkward. “You saw me hide—”

  “Your adult magazines, pilfered from various older relatives? Naturally, and may I say you have excellent taste. Since some of the older issues are worth quite a bit of money, I’ve been careful not to damage their hiding place, over there behind the feed bin.”