“What?” He looked up, saw her, and tipped his hat. “Good evening, ma’am.  I am Professor Bartholemew Martin, the astronomer.  We read about this airship, whatever it is, so I came down with a respectable telescope to photograph it. Mind you, the Prescott newspaper had a fine drawing – the Journal-Miner must have an excellent artist—but photographs bring out different details than the human eye catches.  Also, once I finish aligning it, I have a much better telescope.”

“You drove down by yourself?” she asked.  There was a nominally paved road, but here from Flagstaff was still adventurous.

“I sent my two assistants into town to find dinner, and bring me back something.  They helped with the heavy unpacking, but the last bit is a trifle fiddly.”

“I’m Melanie Hayes, the Journal-Miner artist,” she said. “I’d be interested in looking through your telescope, when you have it set up, if you would let me. That thing, whatever it is, is full of angles and lines, very hard to capture just right with pencil, not to mention the survey telescope wasn’t set up for an artist.”

“You did beautiful work,” Martin said.  “And I seem to be finished, so a few moments with the pointing telescope…done.  Here, take a look.  Yes, you have it right.  That’s the focusing screw.”

“Amazing.  All those rectangles.  And something on top seems to be rotating.”

Martin looked through the eyepiece.  “I’m going to need a respectable exposure time.  That thing on top.  It’s going to be blurred.”

“When do we get to see your pictures?” Melanie asked.

“Journal-Miner has a darkroom, said if I took pictures this evening they’d help me develop them.  In fact, I’m expecting their photographer to show up, soon enough.  They get the newspaper rights.  Observatory gets a bit of income if anyone wants to use them.  I gather they got a pretty penny nationally for your drawing.”

“Yes,” Melanie said, “and I got my cut fair and square.”

* * * * *

Cornelius Polk glared at his Curtis Oriole. Yesterday he’d helped the Sky Harbor mechanic do a full maintenance job, following which he’d taken it out for a long test flight.  Four days ago, two geologists with a train of mules had ridden into the Blasted Heath, planning to ride to the center, recover the strange minerals visible there, and return.  They should have been back yesterday, but were not.  Now the Governor wanted him to look for them, meaning he had to fly over the Heath, perhaps all the way to the center.  He’d take one passenger, and as much water as two men could readily carry.  If he was forced down, he was ready to walk out.  The heavy cloth masks he packed would hopefully protect him from whatever poison apparently lurked in the air.

Tara smiled. “Our security has detained a young man claiming to be one Pierre Descamps.  He claims to be a member of your embassy staff, but is carrying no identification. Also, he appears to have been carrying a substantial amount of spy equipment, contrary to our current treaty, for unclear purposes.  I would hope that the Senior Legate can clear the matter up. Otherwise, since he was carrying spy equipment, and admitted being a foreign national, he is likely to be tried and put up in front of a firing squad as a spy.  Put up, rather soon now. He seems to be a nice young man, with a rather thick little black book of girlfriends, so I would prefer to think he does not need to be shot. However, modern Union judicial proceedings are extremely efficient, so if the matter cannot be resolved reasonably promptly, in a few weeks he will probably be quite dead.  Now, misbehavior of diplomatic personnel is solely under the Senior Legate’s remit, so it is to him I must speak.”

“I see,” the embassy staffer said. “It may take me a few minutes to reach the Senior Legate. Please have him call you back as soon as possible? There is a person of this name on the staff. I happen to know him. The spy issue I have to pass up to the Senior Legate.”

“I’m here all afternoon, Northern California time, but please do get the Legate to call me back soon.  Have a good day.” She broke the connection.  Her next call was to the office of the Secretary for Foreign Relations, but that conversation was quite short.

Soon enough, the chime on her communicator rang. She opened the connection. Bronkowski’s not-smiling face appeared on the vid screen.

“Why are you detaining a member of the Stellar Republic’s diplomatic staff?” He shouted.

“Actually, I was attempting to determine if he is a member of your staff,” Tara answered, her voice is smooth as warm milk. “Whoever this person is, he forgot to carry his passport or any other identification with him.  He was found in the presence of a substantial amount of illegal technical equipment, illegal under our treaty with you, not under Union law.  He denies that the equipment is his.  Of course, he would be neither the first nor probably the last very junior member of some embassy’s staff who is subject to the misimpression that he is a latter-day Jane Note, and has gotten himself involved in water is far deeper than his extremely shallow depth.”

“I can confirm,” Bronkowski said, “that the person you are holding detained in your parking lot is indeed a member of my staff.”

Tara wondered how Bronkowski could possibly know where his staffer was standing. Either he was wired for sound, or there was someone watching from a distance.

“In that case,” Tara announced, “if someone from your embassy will show up with valid identification in an Embassy vehicle, we will be happy to turn the miscreant over to you. I imagine our Foreign Relations Office may have other words to say.. We are a private company, and don’t deal with that sort of issue.   Meanwhile, as he is probably on your clock cycle, I’ll see that he’s fed a good dinner.”

“That’s most kind of you,” Bronkowski said. “Would a pickup in two hours be workable?”

“Of course. Have a good day.”  She broke the connection and tapped in another number.

“Mr. Sykes, it seems that he probably is what he says he is. On one hand, I promised that we would feed him a good dinner at our expense, which I will cover in the interests of comity, and on the other hand in two hours you can turn him over to an Embassy vehicle so soon as they present you with his passport or duplicate. Oh yes, either he is wired for sound, one of those gadgets on the ground is active, or someplace out there someone is watching with telescope and probably a parabolic mike.”

“How interesting. We were about to have lunch delivered from the Travelers’ Residences, so we will add one more for his benefit. Fish and chips even has an espionage component.”

Reporters, Winston found, pretended to be suspicious souls.  They believed nothing that he said.  They were as bad as the examiners at his Doctoral defense.  How did he know the airship had anything to do with the Blasted Heath?  He  emphasized the location, right above the Heath’s dead center, and the timing, the Star not having been noticed before the Heath was formed.  Having said that, he called for Federal help – “We’re a sheriff’s department, not  the Army Flying Corps,” he stressed.

“Army Air Service,” one of the reporters corrected.

“Yes, the Army,” Winston continued.  “Except the object is well above the altitude ever reached by any airplane or balloon.”

“Why here?”  another reporter asked. Winston decided that there were too many reporters for him to keep track of.

“I have no idea,” Winston answered.  “But, but, there are large parts of the world not in regular contact with civilization.  Antarctica.  Arabia.  Central Greenland. Western Tibet. We might not have the only blasted heath.  Someone should go and look.”

“Thank you, Doctor Cooper.” 

That, Winston thought, was the New York Times reporter. He’d been told how his event would end. It had. He offered a silent prayer to its ending.

* * * * *

Late that evening, Melanie Hayes noticed a stranger by the far end of her corral.  He was well-dressed, standing by his truck, fiddling with something, looking to be a long tube on a tripod.  The shape was wrong for a machine gun, but what was it? She strolled across the corral, pausing to scratch behind a horse’s ears, checked that her revolver was loose in its holster, and vaulted the fence. “Hello, stranger,” she said as she approached.   Whoever he was, he had long-cut dark hair under simple cap, a bushy moustache, and the trousers and long-sleeved white shirt she associated with someone respectably well-to-do.

Tara turned to Descamps.  “You’re a diplomat?”

“Absolutely.  And I demand that my personal possessions be returned!”  Descamps did not quite raise his voice.

“If he’s a diplomat,” Sykes said, “ he is forbidden to possess eavesdropping devices, remote digital communications probes…that’s in our treaty with the Stellites.”

“Good point,” Tara said.  “Assuming he is a diplomat.  Of course if he’s not, Bulger is a defense installation, so he’s a spy, meaning he gets to be tried for espionage.  Do we have a location for the firing squad wall yet?”

“I am a diplomat!” Descamps answered.  “And I was not carrying any spy equipment.  These people put it on the ground, to make me look guilty of something!”

Tara noted that he had just switched claims a hundred eighty degrees without blinking an eye.  

“You’re with the New Washington embassy?” she asked.

“Yes, ma’am.  Please tell them to release me,”  Descamps asked.

Tara looked skyward. The sky was covered with  puffs of white cloud, the space in between being a brilliant blue.  She listened for a moment to the call of seagulls.  

“I’ll have to confirm that,” she announced. “I’ll call Legate Bronkowski, and see what he has to say about the situation.  Naturally, as the equipment is not yours, you say, Mr. Descamps, we will keep it. Guys, hold him here, politely.”  She returned to her office.

&&&&&

Ir was remarkable, she thought, how many times Bronkowski had called her, without her ever calling back.  No matter.  That record was about to come to an end.  Her card file did have the required telephone number for the Stellar Republic embassy.

After some delay, a face appeared on the vision screen, someone she did not know.

“Hello, I’m Tara Broadbent, Senior Counsel to Bulger Spaceways.  I need to speak to Senior Legate Bronkowski.”

“I’m sorry,” the nameless face said, “but the Senior Legate is extremely busy. Surely this matter is something someone else on our staff can deal with.”

“And you’re  Spencer’s older son, aren’t you?” Radnor asked.

“Yes, Sir,” Travis answered. “I’m Travis.  We did the surveying.  That funny star is one end of a flying machine.  We could see it through my theodolite.  Winston got a good sketch of it.”

“The young lady, Melanie Hayes, did a much better one,” Winston said.  “She may show up here with it.”

“So how far up is it?” Radnor asked.  “I can ask that airplane fellow to fly up, get a good look at it from up close.”

Travis bit his lips.  “I double-checked everything.  It’s not low.  It’s seventy thousand feet off the ground.”

“Seventy thousand feet?” a disbelieving Radnor said.  “That’s like half-way to the Moon, isn’t it?”

“Moon is two hundred thousand miles,” Winston interjected.  “This is only fourteen.”

“Still way too high for an airplane,” Travis said.  “World record is only seven miles up, plane or balloon.  That’s too high to breathe, air’s too thin.”

“Winston, you’re the smart one?” Radnor said.  “How do I persuade the Army, or the Navy, they’ve got good airplanes, to investigate?

“Had time to think about it,” Winston said. “We hold a ‘press conference’.  That’s a new Eastern idea.  I stand up on the front porch, reporters all face me, ask questions, and take photos.  We kill two birds with one stone, get the Journal-Miner reporter off our backs, and get Spencer Surveying some free publicity.”

“Fine idea,” Radnor said.  “You do it.  And if something goes wrong, I can say ‘My grandson is a really smart fellow, but he grew up back east and went to some Eastern college. What can you expect?’ That should do it.”

The next morning, the Journal-Miner put out its Extra edition.  “Mystery Airship!” the big headline read.  “Fourteen miles high.  It’s dead center above the Heath.”  The article went on at some length, emphasizing the precision surveying of Spencer and Sons, the careful work of Travis Spencer, and the good sense of Sheriff Radnor, letting his grandson Winston Cooper run with his investigation.  They printed a sharp copy of Melanie Hayes’ drawing, ‘the mystery airship revealed’, but did not mention how much they had paid her for her sketch.

At high noon, Winston found himself pressed into giving a genuine press conference, just the way President Harding did it.  There were a good dozen reporters there, with more arriving soon from the East Coast.   Gramps had dressed him in full sheriff’s regalia, complete with vest, shiny silver badge, and two six-guns.  Winston told himself he really needed to spend a little time on a firing range.  He knew how to pull the trigger, but he found that hitting a target was still something of a mystery.

Of course, we do have the ability to build starships, Chelan answered.  The detail simply has been overlooked.

We do Where?

Beta drives historically optimized for efficiency not FTL speed.  They are still not that efficient. Why bother when you can build alpha cores.  And beta cores will not take you through warp points.  However, beta drive will give you a moderate FTL capacity, likely improvable with design studies, and with moderate FTL, say 10c, you can reach a few of the nearer stars in a tolerable period of time, though you would want large crew quarters not barracks.

 The Spy Who Was Caught Cold

The communicator on Tara Broadhurt’s desk gave the quadruple chime indicating an incoming call of the highest urgency.  Bulger Space Yard’s Senior Legal Officer glowered at the telephone, noticed that it was stubbornly refusing to slag down, and picked up the receiver. 

“Bulger Space Yard, Broadbent here,” she said, trying to be cheery to whoever was calling.

“Miss Broadbent,  this is Platoon Leader William Sykes.  We have a situation.”  Sykes paused.  “We detained someone who hopped the fence.  He claims he is a Stellar Republic diplomat, is immune to arrest, but has no identification papers. Also, he was carrying all sorts of electronic spy gear.”

“I see, William,” Tara answered.  “I’ll be out there in a bit.”

“Thank you,” William said.  “We’re next to the Guard House.  Please wait for your security detail.  The Seldon Legion never sleeps, but we’re perpetually undermanned.”

A short time later, Tara marched across the parking lot, her escort spaced out to each side.  It was a brisk day, the bright sun low on the horizon doing little to warm the air, but her long wool coat kept her warm.  A gaggle of Legionaires,  some facing out to watch the perimeter fence, stood in a circle surrounding a young man.

“What’s all this?” she asked as she approached. 

“Ma’am, he jumped the fence,” Sykes explained.  “When we tried to detain him, he tried to run, so we used a stunner on him, searched him carefully, returned personal property – wallet, keys, change purse, little black book of girlfriends, pocket chronometer, and segregated all his spy equipment.”

“I am Pierre Descamps.  I am being illegally detained,” the young man in the center announced.  “As a member of the Stellar Republic’s diplomatic staff, I’m not subject to arrest. ”

“What does his passport say?” Tara asked.

“He’s carrying no ID, ma’am,” Sykes answered.  “He says he forgot to bring it. He is not carrying a personal communicator. He arrived by walking down from Observation Point Park. There’s no vehicle there, nor any sign of how he got there. And he was carrying all sorts of electronic spy equipment.”

* * * * *

Later in the afternoon, Travis appeared at the Sheriff’s office.

“Winston,” Travis said, “I did the calculations, and Elaine checked them. She’s smarter than me, and more careful.  I also brought a map.  We need it back.”

Winston pointed at a large table and helped weight down the map’s corners.

“The penciled crosses,” Travis explained, “are points where someone accurately measured the edge of the heath.  The small hole,” he pointed at the map’s center, “is where we had a map pin, when we had this up on our wall.  It’s the center of a circle through all those crosses.  It’s also directly under the star, as accurately as we could measure it.”

“Need the Army Air Corps,” Winston said, “fly up to the star, invite the people to land and explain themselves.  That’s ‘invite’ with fifty-caliber machine guns.”

“Bit of a challenge here.”  Travis shook his head.  “World airplane altitude record is not quite 35,000 feet.  Balloons do no better. That whatever-it-is is hovering at 70,000 feet.”

“That’s…there’s almost no air up there.” Winston said dubiously.  “What holds it up? How are the people up there propelling themselves, holding in place against the wind?  For that matter, how are they breathing?  I think there’s wind at seventy thousand feet.”

“No idea.” Travis shrugged.

“This is a job for the Army, not the local sheriff,” Winston said.  “I’ll have to tell Gramps when he gets back.”

Soon enough Radnor Cooper returned.  He was not in a good temper.

“Damfool Governor”, Radnor said to the entire station house, “says there’s a panic in Phoenix, people packing and leaving town.  He says the Heath is perfectly safe, horses just got into a patch of locoweed, one those troopers and their sergeant didn’t notice.  And that got the men?  Crazy! Not to mention there are no plants anywhere on the Heath.  So, being an idiot, Governor’s going to march out into the Heath, take some state troopers along for company, set up camp, and spend three days there.  Legislature is in session.  He has to wait a few weeks for that to be over.  He’s going to come back in perfect health, he says, and that’ll put paid to the crazy rumors.”

“Panic?” Winston asked.  “People here are calm.  A bunch had friends who died, well, we think they died, on the Heath.  They want to string up the guilty parties, when they catch them.  I’m piling up a list of names, people who’re missing.”

“Indeed,” Elaine said, “we delayed the flight of the Mighty Hauler 2 in case you had any final questions about its patent issues.”

“Caution is always wise.”  Tzoltzin nodded.  “However, my final inspection, last visit, is legally binding, so your ship is free to fly.   If the weather improves before then, I would be pleased to watch it ascend.  It is so rare that I see anything new and different in starship design, not that your ship is, with only beta drives, a true starship.”

“Beta drives are faster-than-light,” Elaine said, “an action my recent ancestors thought was impossible, so on paper the Mighty Hauler 2 could travel to another nearby star. Eventually.  I would strongly discourage trying it; it’s not designed to spend a year in space without ground maintenance.  However, its sole mission it to fly from here to Proserpine, a distance of 100 light hours, load with iron-nickel, and fly back.”

“My intruments claim that your drive, “ Tzoltzin pointed, “is a match of the root design.  Now we test it under power – levitation to a few foot-lengths off the ground is adequate.”

“Elaine pointed at the technicians and gave a thumb’s-up.  “Bring the drive to test height,” she called.  There followed  a quarter-hour of one component after the next being powered up, until the entire assembly was filled with pale white light, following which the drive obediently climbed and hovered.

“The root drive is very definitely not what you would want on a warship that might scramble in an emergency,” Elaine said.

“Scramble – mix?  No scramble, run fast.”  Tzoltzin nodded. “No, you would not want that, not unless you are not bothered that the occasional takeoff includes an unscheduled disassembleation event. I would find this undesireable, also, though some species would disagree with us.  Now we get to wait again.”

“I hope that you may advise Legate Bronkowski that we’re doing nothing improper,” Elaine observed.

“The Legate…Oh, you must not have heard,” Tzoltzin said.  “The Legate has been recalled to Mogado.  According to one of your newspapers, he had certain secret objectives for the betterment of the Republic, did not attain them, so he is being sent someplace more suited to his doubtless redoubtable talents.”

“I certainly had not heard that,” Elaine said.  She took another sip of her tea.  “Did they also leak, err, politely reveal, what his objectives had been?  After all, as a space shipping company,we and in particular the  boss, view positive and amicable relations with the Stellar Republic as a positive outcome.”

“They didn’t,” Tzoltzin said.  “They instead circulated the malicious rumor that he had been charged with sabotaging the Anglic Union, so that you would be obliged to adhere to the Republic, an outcome that I believe neither you nor Doctor Chelan would find desirable.”

“Whoever told him to do that,” Elaine said, “not that I believe that such a rumor could be true, must have had an extremely optimistic view of the ambassador’s ability to determine the course of events on our planet.”

“Indeed.”

“You’re sketching something through that telescope,” she answered.  “Looks like no airplane I’ve ever seen.”

“Yes, and it’s a poor sketch,” Winston confessed.

“May I?”  She put on a  warm smile.  “My job is hurry up and wait, so during waits I make drawings…folks on the East Coast pay money for them.  Not a lot, but my brother sells them in his gallery.”

“Travis, do we have time?” Winston asked. 

Travis nodded.  “Ma’am, please do  not bump anything, but there’s a focusing screw.”

Winston and Travis watched while Melanie drew. 

“I’ll need a straight-edge,” she finally announced, “to bring out the lines better, because that thing is a bunch of boxes, not round like a blimp. I expect the local paper will pay for a copy.”

“For sure,” Travis said.  “Dad has breakfast most days with the editor, who is mightily displeased the Phoenix papers scooped his reporting on the Heath.”

“And I’d appreciate a copy also,” Winston announced.  “Grandpa — Radnor Cooper, he’s the Sheriff — put me in charge of investigating all the people who died, and catching the guilty parties who killed them.”

“Thank you for letting me make a sketch,” Melanie said. “Back to work for me.”

“Looks like what I saw,” Travis said,  “but a much better drawing than I could’ve done.  Now the fun part.”  He spent some time fiddling with the pointing screws, then wrote down a pair of numbers.  Winston wrote down the same pair.

“Off to the other edge of town,” Travis finally  announced.  “Then I get to do some spherical trig.  Wait, you said what your Harvard degree was.  You can check my work…if I write it out clearly.”

“Sounds good to me,” Winston agreed.  “Except, we get the car back, it’s close to one, so I propose lunch at the Trinity House Cafe, that being where gramps, ummh, Sheriff Winston, covers my meals.  That’s good, because I’m not actually paid.  I’m working off a loan he made to me.”

“I need to stop at the office, return the theodolite and car keys, and tell my kid sister to come along,” Travis said. “She always arrives first, gets to leave last for lunch, never complains.”

“Indeed, you have.  Time for my instruments to run my tests,” Tzoltzin nodded appreciatively.  “You are attesting that this is the root drive on the alpha drive patent tree?”

“We so attest.  We hope it is the true first drive,” Elaine answered, “and requested an inspection to confirm that it matches the unpatentable root design. We recognize the possibility that we have misinterpreted some aspect of the specifications, however clear they seem to be.”

“Our treaty allows rebuilds to come into compliance with the specifications. My instruments will take a while to do check.  Perhaps for the nonce we should sit, let them do their work, and drink more of your excellent tea.”  Tzoltzin waddled back to the tea table.

“I’ve made a fresh pot,” Mabel Brixton said.

“Excellent.  This will take a while,” Tzoltzin said.  “The root drive is extremely large and complex, though in a sense it is simplicity itself.  Each part has only one function.  I do have a  note to myself, to remind you that there is a shape patent on changing the drive field shape.”

“You are referring to the surviving First Empire patent on these?” Elaine asked innocently.

“Precisely,” Tzoltzin agreed.  “The First Empire let the inventors gain a patent that covers ‘any design change that leads to the same effect’, in particular any design change that changes the volume englobed by the drive field from the useless pancake to the sensible cigar. And, indeed, there is such a shape patent, in the hands of – it’s in the files.”

“That’s all right,” Elaine said.  “Our interest is in validating that we actually built the root design.”

“A highly interesting choice,” Tzoltzin said.  “Perhaps someday I will learn why you find this choice interesting.”

“Indeed,” Elaine said. 

“On the other hand,” Tzoltzin said, “I am reminded of visiting here once and again, watching you build your new heavily over-built test bed, observed your delight that it flew using beta drives – a completely unsurprising event, since the quality of your precision construction is perfectly sound – and being entirely baffled that you then incorporated it into a freighter hauler of unconventional oblate discoidal form, a hauler soon to fly.”