> Carlos Perez

> Date: March 22nd, 2028

> Location: StarTran Research and Testing Center, Martin County, TX

“Charge initiated. 20%.”

“Power draw nominal. No blackouts this time.”

“Good, keep it that way.” Carlos studied the feeds. “You did unplug Greg's overclocked PlayStation this time, right, Arthur?”

“That thing doesn't qualify as a PlayStation anymore, but yep.” Arthur Isaacs grinned. “I even turned off the coffee maker.”

“Breaking the laws of physics does sometimes require drastic measures,” James drawled. He pointedly sipped from his cup of tea.

“It doesn't break the laws of physics,” Arthur protested. He was originally one of Carlos' students back before StarTran, now one of the world's newest PhDs in gravitational physics. “We're just getting it more right than we used to.”

“35% charged,” Hailey, one of the interns, broke in.

“Evacuation alarm,” Carlos ordered. On the screens, red flashing lights appeared. They couldn't hear the klaxons, since the actual test facility was half a mile away, but anyone foolish enough to be on site would be getting an earful at that moment.

Which was better than a faceful of x-rays, of course. The intense energy of the gravity sail got absorbed fast in Earth's atmosphere, but it still took a few dozen meters of air -- or the shielded walls of a dedicated testing facility -- to make it safe. Fortunately, since all the energy was projected outward in a band measured in fractions of a nanometer, the actual device was safe from its own radiation byproduct.

There was a knock at the door, and Stan stuck his head in. “Hey, Carlos --”

Carlos glared at him. “We're conducting a test, Stan. It can wait.”

“Yeah, I figured that meant you forgot your meeting.”

“I don't have a meeting, Stan. Not with any more of your favorite public figures, anyway. I told you to cancel them. I have deadlines and I'm not wasting time with rubbing elbows. That's what you're here for.”

“But you'll like this one. It's--”

“No, Stan. Not even if it's the ghosts of Archimedes, Newton, Einstein, and Roche here to give me a new equation for gravity. Though if it is them, I'd appreciate it if they wrote it down.”

“Fine, fine. You're busy. I get it.” Stan raised his hands in surrender. “But you have to admit that these meetings did get you more funding!”

“If they don't have a kugelblitz coil capable of projecting twin fields less than three Planck-lengths apart, or a laser aperture smaller than point-twelve nanometers, tell them to go away!”

“So that's a maybe? Thanks!” Stan ducked back out of the lab before Carlos could answer.

Carlos sighed. “Status?”

“40%. Getting some strain on the relays.”

“Okay. Good enough. Hold here and spin up the mast.”

“Mast initiated.” Arthur tapped an icon on his screen. “Kugelblitz effect forming. We have a low spin.”

“Nothing's blown up yet,” James observed.

“Don't jinx us, James,” Carlos muttered. “We don't have enough karma in the budget for that. What's the power drain?”

Hailey shook her head. “Dropped to 37%.”

“Blast.”

“Now who's jinxing whom?”

Carlos ignored James. “Sinusoidal rate?”

“TN-BL is four-point-three over twelve-six,” Arthur answered, sounding pleased.

“It's working!” Carlos grinned.

James gestured with his tea mug. “Blinky light, ten o'clock.”

“Power drain is accelerating,” Hailey confirmed.

Arthur typed in a sequence on his keyboard. “Field strength dropping!”

“Step it back, slowly! Hailey, increase the power, keep it level. Arthur, drop the rate to below three over fifteen!”

“Power surge in relay fourteen! Should I take it offline?”

“The breakers will hold. I'm more worried about the -- Arthur! I'm widening the field! Decrease spin by twenty . . . now!”

“Power drain stabilizing!”

Carlos watched the readings drop down to pre-test levels, then breathed a sigh of relief. “Okay, we didn't lose a coil this time. Any results?”

“I'm checking.” Hailey adjusted her glasses, then began importing data. “Looks like . . . wow. We got point-zero-three-eight mips on that one!”

“Really?” Carlos was at her terminal in two steps. “For how long?”

“Three-point-twelve milliseconds.”

Carlos' face fell. “Bother. I was really sure about that new design.”

James placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. “Come on, Carlos. You nearly got up to point-zero-four meters per second at ground level. That's three times what we had just a month ago!”

“I could get stronger g-forces by doing jumping jacks. How's this going to help get us into orbit?”

James held up one finger. “First, you just showed your theory of gravitational turbulence is on the right track.” A second finger went up. “You also did this with repurposed parts from previous experiments. You'll do even better with a purpose-built coil and emitters.” A third finger. “And nothing blew up.”

“No boom today,” Arthur chimed in.

“Boom tomorrow,” Hailey intoned. “There's always a boom tomorrow.”

“And fourth,” James added, lifting his mug in acknowledgment, “you're surrounded by people who have excellent taste in TV quotes.”

----------------------------------------

An hour later, after the control team had finished taking readings and the engineers at the test site had started taking the latest prototype apart to look for damage, Stan intercepted Carlos and James on their way to the staff lounge.

“Carlos! I trust you have time now?”

“No, Stan, I don't. What I have time for is some pizza, or whatever else is left in the fridge. And salsa. I need salsa.”

“Come on, Carlos. This is important.”

“You always say that. Is it a reporter wanting a fluff piece that will get the science wrong again?”

“Of course not.”

“Some military bigwig demanding I provide a gravity drive for some secret Space Force project?”

“To be fair, General Franklin wasn't demanding it, she just wanted to know how feasible --”

“Another politician looking to use me to get a bump in her poll numbers?”

“That one was useful to us. Senator Tulson really helped boost our public image and got new donations for us.”

“And now people think I'm going to endorse her once I get enough money! Funding is good, but the media is making me look mercenary!”

“No one thinks that.” Stan waved a hand. “And I've made it clear at every opportunity you're not endorsing anyone.”

James tapped Carlos on the shoulder, looking at something down the hall. “Ah, buddy . . .”

“Stan, I'm tired, I'm cranky, I'm feeling betrayed by physics, and my blood-salsa levels are dangerously low. We'd better have some chips left.”

“Would you settle for some sushi?”

“Sushi? In this part of Texas?” Carlos scoffed, then paused as his brain caught up to the fact that neither James nor Stan had asked that. Rather, it was a woman's voice. A light, charming, musical, and extraordinarily dangerous voice he, unlike many, never underestimated.

He turned to see a woman with hair so blonde it was almost white, dressed in casual but tailored clothing consisting of a pencil skirt, a blue silk button-downed blouse, and a light jacket that would seem unseasonable for this part of Texas in March if it she didn't make it look so good.

And sure enough, she was holding a paper plate with sushi, an orange sauce on top, and a dollop of wasabi on the side.

“I know how you forget to eat when you're working, Carlos.” The woman smiled. “So I picked up some lunch for you on my drive in. You did get my message, didn't you?”

“He hasn't been checking his email lately,” James told her. “Is this a . . . private lunch?”

“Don't worry, James.” She laughed. “I brought enough to go around. It's not straight from Kyoto, but there's a charming place on the way here, and I brought a cooler for it all. And I even got an extra tub of that spicy sauce you like so much, Carlos. I'm sure it's better than the frozen junk you were going to eat, wouldn't you agree?” She smiled, turned gracefully on her expensive red-soled heels, and walked back toward Carlos' office. “You coming?”

“Stan,” Carlos said slowly, as he watched the granddaughter of one of the richest men in the world walk down the hall, “why didn't you tell me Irina Novikov was here?”

“I tried.” Stan sounded far too smug for his own good. “But she wasn't the ghost of a dead scientist, so she had to wait.”

“She brought sushi, Carlos.” James grinned. “Sushi! I might have to ask her to marry me.”

“Way out of your league.”

“It just means no other rejection will hurt as much.”

“She also brought an entire case of Joe T. Garcia salsa.” Stan leaned forward conspiratorially. “The hot kind.”

James sighed loudly. “Never mind. I think she's proposing to Carlos.”

Carlos scowled. “No. She's really not.”

He followed Irina into his office and sat down. It was his real office, not the glorified conference room Stan used to cultivate the image of the genius space engineer. This one was sparsely furnished, with only two decent seats and a number of folding chairs leaning against the wall, a TV mounted overhead, and Carlos' one real luxury: a great surround-sound system, currently off. James and Stan, hurrying in after him, both took two of the folding chairs in order to leave the remaining good one for their guest.

Reading on Amazon or a pirate site? This novel is from Royal Road. Support the author by reading it there.

“Okay, Irina,” Carlos announced. “Short-notice visit, bearing gifts. What does your grandfather want, and why are you trying to butter me up for it?”

“Carlos.” Irina pouted. “Can't I just look in on an old friend?”

“Your brother's the old friend, and we barely talk as it is. I only see you when it's business. How did you even remember what sushi I liked?”

“Come now. A crawfish roll covered in chipotle mayo with Cajun spices is not traditional Japanese fare. It stands out.” Irina handed him the paper plate she was holding. It ought to have looked out of place in hands built for fine china, but she had a nearly otherworldly poise that made even dollar-store plates look elevated. “And yes, you're quite right.”

“About?”

“That my grandfather wants something from you.” Ignoring the good seat, she instead sat down on one of the folding chairs, crossed her legs, and delicately picked up a piece of sushi from her own paper plate using a pair of disposable chopsticks. “But you shouldn't worry. It's exactly what you want as well.”

“A decent Mexican restaurant within twenty miles?”

“Would that help?”

Carlos frowned again. “Why? Is your family going to build it?”

“Carlos, I will get you a personal chef if it will mean you invent a reliable, large-scale gravity sail.” Irina pointed her chopsticks at him. “Between government grants and private investment, you've got enough funding right now that your real bottleneck is human talent. And StarTran is the bottleneck for the entirety of Earth's defenses.”

“You sound like Senator Tulson,” James observed, having snagged his own plate of sushi and a pair of chopsticks.

Carlos' frown deepened into a full scowl. “Earth's defense does not depend on StarTran.”

“I disagree.” Irina looked serious, dropping the playful attitude. “And so does my grandfather. You saw that alien ship. High acceleration. Large hull. Who knows how many weapons. And it's surely not their only vessel.”

“I know that, Irina.” Carlos sighed. “But you can't bend physics by throwing money at the problem.”

“Not just money. Recruitment. Nova Solutions is calling in every favor Grandfather has collected over the years. Everyone he knows. Political, industrial, military, you name it. He's betting it all on you. If you need it, you only have to ask.”

Stan whistled in wonder at that, and Carlos couldn't blame him. Peter Novikov was a self-made billionaire -- self-made twice over, having accumulated a small fortune in the Soviet Union only to give it up by defecting to the United States. He and his family had made it to America with little more than the clothes on his back, but through some minor inventions and a lot of shrewd investment he'd made it all back and more. Much, much more. Everything Novikov had was considerable indeed.

“Grandfather isn't asking you to give anything up,” Irina assured him. “But you do need more people. And you need people to make parts for you. From what Stan told me, today's test was made using leftovers, yes? Regardless of direct funding, you have to wait on parts from specialty manufacturers in different parts of the world. Grandfather has already arranged for most of them to give you full priority. No strings. Not for you, anyway. We're taking care of it. The rest are just holding out because they sense they can milk this for more. You also need more people here. We can't choose most of them them for you, but we can provide you the best possible security money can buy. The strongest background checks, site protection, cyber security, you name it.”

“I'd say that's generous.” James gave her a level gaze, the kind Carlos had last seen directed at a car salesmen trying to bury the real price of a vehicle. “I'd say it, but there's no way this is generosity. Your family has a reputation for being . . .”

“Careful business experts?” Stan supplied.

“Cutthroat,” James finished, ignoring him. “You invested in StarTran because it'll revolutionize space industry. What you're talking about now will cut very far into your profits. Why?”

“Because being at the mercy of aliens is going to be much, much worse for business.” Irina dabbed some wasabi on another piece of sushi. “And because, thanks to all of this, we're going to get even more profit down the line. Aren't you hungry, Carlos?”

Carlos ignored the question. “Are you trying to take over my company?”

“Absolutely, one hundred percent, no.” Irina smiled, showing off her dimples. “Normally I'd say 'one hundred and ten percent,' but I know that irritates James.”

“And yet you said it anyway.” James sighed.

“Did I?” Irina's dimples deepened. “But don't worry, Carlos. You have my personal guarantee that we have absolutely no intention to buy any more shares of your company than we already own. I'll even put it in a contract if you want. Our profit will come from other sectors. Your invention is the key to that, for the same reason SpaceX and Blue Origin have also invested in StarTran, and why you have grants from multiple government agencies, including the Space Force. Nor will we use anything else we're offering to control you. So eat your sushi. I'm here to help, not spring traps.”

“Even if that's true, it doesn't change the fundamental facts.” Carlos finally picked up one of the pieces of sushi with his fingers, ignoring the chopsticks. He wasn't about to embarrass himself in front of Irina by trying to use those things. “You can't speed this up just by throwing money at it. There are very few people in the world who can work on what we're creating here. Recruiting is hard because so much has to be taught on the fly. I haven't even been able to submit anything for peer review in two years because it takes so long to find people who can go over it that we've already created new equations before the journal even goes to print.”

“If only you had guaranteed cycles on an AGI.” Irina arched one eyebrow. “Why, that would certainly speed things up.”

“And if wishes were tomatoes, I'd never run out of salsa.” Carlos paused as what she said sunk in. “Oh. Of course. Your grandfather would be an investor in Mnemosyne.”

“Oh, yes. One of the first. In fact, one of our subsidiaries manufactures the implants used for the project. Artificial general intelligence would be a massive boost for any company that gets in on the ground floor. Though simply being an investor and supplier isn't enough to guarantee time. This is one of the many favors Grandfather has collected over the years. And all it does is get you to the front of the line; you'll still have to submit your proposals like everyone else.”

“Mnemosyne isn't coming online for another year, though,” James pointed out.

Irina shook her head. “Mnemosyne-Alpha is coming online next month. It hasn't been announced yet, because of protesters and such, but the top investors have been informed. The human decision model's health is deteriorating, so they're compressing the final stages of the build. They've had nine years of data, and they planned for a contingency like this. They're moving to the testing stage, and pretty soon that's going to mean testing it on unusual data. StarTran is certainly unusual. You might have to apply like everyone else, but even without the aliens in the picture or Nova's help, you'd likely have wound up with priority regardless.”

Carlos realized he was still holding the piece of sushi and popped it in his mouth. He had to pause a moment to savor it; it had been a long time since he'd had Cajun-style sushi. Irina was really trying to get on his good side here.

“Okay,” he said finally, after he'd finished, “but that still assumes Mnemosyne can even work. Normal AI is pretty much useless for our purposes. AGI might be the same.”

“It also assumes the aliens don't return tomorrow and make all this preparation pointless. We're all in. Every resource Nova Solutions has is being oriented toward your gravity sail. And I mean everything. If canceling an existing contract will benefit StarTran, the contract is canceled. We're serious about this, Carlos. You have a blank check.”

Carlos studied her face for a few minutes, letting the silence hang. She waited, showing no signs of impatience. “You're not in this for profit, are you,” he finally stated. It wasn't a question.

“Of course we are.” Irina smiled again. “But we can't make a profit if we're on the receiving end of an orbital bombardment, can we? Sometimes the only rational choice is to start over. Grandfather always taught us to be ready to lose everything, just like he did getting his wife and my father out from behind the Iron Curtain. Even if we spend every last dime on you, we'll still be in a better situation than if we kept our fortune and Earth gets conquered.”

“They might not be hostile,” Stan pointed out. “And conquering a whole planet--”

“--is entirely doable.” Irina's smile faded, and she unconsciously fiddled with her necklace. “If they control our orbit, they control the planet. And we do not want to be under their control.”

Carlos and James shared a quick glance. For the normally calm and controlled young woman, that was practically a flashing neon sign.

“Okay. I believe you.” Carlos picked up another piece of sushi. “Lots of help, no strings attached. But my point still stands. Even if we do have a working AGI helping us, and even if money is no object, the actual engineering and design will take time. We're years away from being able to use a gravity sail to get to orbit like the aliens do, maybe decades.”

Irina was silent for another few moments, like she was trying to come to a decision about something. Finally, she took a deep breath and continued. “I . . . don't think they do.”

“I'm sorry?” Carlos felt both his eyebrows shoot up. “But we saw . . .”

“We saw the ship leaving Earth, and clearly using a gravity mast, yes. We also saw some shaky footage of their landing craft. We did not see them using a gravity mast on Earth's surface.”

“What else would they be using?”

A look of indecision seemed to flash across Irina's face, or possibly . . . worry? She pointed to the TV on the wall, which Carlos usually kept off. “May I?”

Carlos nodded. She fished out a USB dongle from her purse and plugged it into one of the ports on the TV, which turned on automatically when it detected the input. Irina returned to her seat, pulled out her phone, and started entering commands. A few moments later, the TV started showing pictures -- and Carlos' mouth dropped open.

“What the --” James broke off, probably not realizing he'd stood up.

“My grandfather has never talked much about what he did in the Soviet Union,” Irina began. “He gave permission for me to tell you the family secret, though. He wasn't a businessman. He was a bureaucrat with the Academy of Sciences. Specifically, he worked in a department tasked with . . . unusual investigations. Paranormal research. ESP. UFOs.”

On the screen, they were watching images scroll by of a large operation with at least a dozen military trucks, and men collecting metal fragments or using Geiger counters. In the center of a blasted-out clearing was a saucer-shaped object. It didn't quite look like classic flying saucer images, but . . .

“This was one of the few things Grandfather managed to smuggle out when he defected,” she continued, her voice soft. “He never turned it over to the US government. As far as we know, no one in the federal government even realizes what he used to do. He had his reasons, but it's why he's so heavily invested in aerospace technology. He's seen this with his own eyes. But talking about it in public gets you . . . labeled.”

She quickly thumbed forward several more images before resting on a close-up of part of the craft. “This is why he believes in your company, Carlos. He's not an engineer or a physicist, but when he first saw images of your concept, he knew you were on the right track.”

The image showed a piece of equipment sticking out of the center of the wrecked saucer. It was a thick, squat pole with a rounded end, superficially similar to the shape of a Tesla coil. A shape everyone in the room was familiar with.

A gravity mast.

“Was this Voronezh?” Stan looked excited as he glanced at his colleagues. Carlos and James looked blank. “You know, the Russian Roswell?” He paused; the other two didn't change expression. “What? So I watch UFO channels. Everyone does this month.”

“No, that was in 1989, just after Grandfather defected.” Irina shook her head. “He has no more idea about that one than anyone else. This one managed to get almost completely suppressed. It's not even in the documentation released after the USSR collapsed, unless you know exactly where to look and how to read between the lines. Grandfather thinks someone in power is still working at covering it up.”

“No one can cover up anything for long,” James protested. “That's why most UFO stories are ridiculous, even now that we know aliens exist. Congress can't keep a secret, and even after all those UFO hearings a few years ago we didn't see anything that matched a gravity sail.”

“There's a reason for that.” Irina thumbed through a few more pictures, showing the work at the site, and even shots of the interior. “These photos are pretty much all that was left.”

The screen now showed a blasted crater, the picture clearly taken from the air. There were some mangled remnants of what might have been Soviet trucks along the edge; nothing was left inside the crater itself.

“This image was two days after the crash. The reports my father saw indicated there was still power in some systems. The last word that went out was that the senior engineer on site thought those systems were related to propulsion, specifically to what appeared to be vents in the underside of the craft. Then the craft exploded. Almost everyone who was there died, most of them instantly. And there was no significant radiation left over.”

“Reaction thrust with no radiation . . .” Carlos frowned. “And I'm guessing no obvious fuel tanks, so not likely to be chemical. Especially with that hull shape. So . . . the aliens use antimatter thrusters?”

“That is what we think.” Irina nodded. “But, again, we're a business family, not engineers. Except for my brother, but as you know he went in a very different direction from you after graduation. He thinks it could be antimatter-spiked fusion, but personally I don't know the difference.”

“Kind of expensive fuel, though,” James commented. He'd regained his seat, but his eyes were still glued to the screen. “And if the power goes out . . . boom today, no tomorrow.”

“Not that expensive if they have orbital industry.” Carlos scratched at the stubble on his chin. “If you're already out in space and have a handy asteroid, you can build a giant collider just floating out there, parked close to a star for easy solar power generation, and just keep making more antimatter. After that, all you need is to keep it contained in a magnetic bottle. And if you have redundant backups, it would be pretty safe.”

“Until some clueless human starts trying to take it apart.” Stan nodded. “Maybe that's what happened at Roswell!”

“More importantly,” Carlos said slowly, “it means there's a fundamental problem with the gravity drive. It either can't work this deep in a gravity well, or it's less efficient than hauling around antimatter.”

“You're welcome to keep these images,” Irina told him. “Study them, see what you can figure out about the systems. I'm sorry we didn't share these earlier, but we had our reasons. Not the least of which being that this sort of thing would label us crackpots a month ago; but we also didn't want to prejudice your own development. All we have are the images. Grandfather said the Soviet Academy thought that mast was for communications.”

“Were there any survivors?” Stan leaned forward, excited.

Irina shook her head. “The Soviet military never found anyone alive on the ship.”

“But they found bodies, right?”

“Supposedly. Grandfather never had access to those photos. Just the engineering images. We don't even know if the bodies were removed before the ship was destroyed.”

James leaned forward, thoughtful. “I wonder where the rest of them were.”

Carlos looked at James. “What do you mean?”

“Back up to the wide view of the ship, will you?” James waited for Irina, then pointed at the saucer when it appeared. “That looks bigger than the triangle-shaped craft we saw last month, but not much bigger. Maybe two or three times the size. That's still much, much smaller than the mothership we saw on our satellite feed. So I don't think that flying saucer came here on its own.”

“You're right.” Carlos stared at the image. “So where are they? And . . . how long have they been here?”

“And that,” Irina said softly, “is why we want you to hurry.”