Chapter 15

Weeks went by and the factory campus continued to change.

As soon as buildings were accepted, crews prepped spaces for travel trailers to house the people who would live on site. This temporary arrangement would work until permanent dwellings could be built.

The construction people had finished their latest project, grading, leveling, and compacting an airstrip and adjacent parking area. They finished Friday afternoon and moved their heavy equipment to the next work site, the factory’s parking area.

Will landed a leased Piper Super-Cub on the new airstrip early the following Monday morning. After taxiing to the parking area, he and Frenchy deplaned and tied the plane down to the stakes that the construction crews had installed before moving to the parking area. The plant would eventually need extra hangars, larger ones, to house airplanes as they came off the assembly line, but for now the tiedown points would do. The two finished closing the plane’s doors and cargo hatch just as Morty drove up in the Gator. “Didn’t expect you fellows this early,” he said. “Something wrong?”

“Not exactly,” Will said. “Is Chuck available?”

“He’s probably asleep by now. They work nights in the hangar, but if you need him I’ll wake him up.”

“Why don’t we just head for the hangar?” Will suggested. “We can meet there, because this mostly concerns the two of you.”

“Okay, if you’re done with tying down that plane, hop in. It’s likely to be a little crowded, but we’re not going far.”

The Gator bumped its way along the dirt road to the hangar. Morty popped out, still spry despite his advancing years. Frenchy looked at him appraisingly. The old man had to be in his late seventies, maybe in his eighties, but you’d never know it considering how alert his mind was and the way he moved.

Morty punched in the gate combination, they went inside, and he locked the gate behind them as the others headed for the hangar door. This too had a lock, and Frenchy noticed that it required a different combination. Unlike the gate, this door locked automatically as soon as it was closed.

The lights in the hangar bay were on, but no one was working. “Maybe they’re in the break room, having breakfast. If not, I’ll wake up Chuck. We don’t need Lina or Mel for this.” Morty headed for the break room.

Frenchy and Will slowed and looked around as they crossed the hangar. The Bedstead and Bedstead II, the ‘King’, occupied the open space, the smaller Bedstead parked nearest to the rollup door. “They’ve been busy,” Frenchy said. “That big lifter looks almost ready to fly! Why don’t we take a look at it while Morty finds Chuck?”

Will nodded and the two walked over to the King, which now mounted four of the large aviation-model impellers, one at each corner. When they became available, eight would be installed, two to each corner, but four were sufficient for the first round of tests.

The impeller housings were similar in external appearance to the ones on the improved Bedstead. The mechanism and the gimbaled mount were inside sealed, opaque fiberglass globes, the only external difference being that the ones on the King were larger. A rolling metal table stood near the forward end and several tools lay about on the table’s surface. Cables snaked through holes in the deck, waiting to be connected to the pilot’s control panel.

“If that’s all they have left to do, this thing will be flying by the end of the week.” Frenchy pointed to the cables. “Those connect to the computers inside the chassis, located forward between the upper and lower decks. They’ve been in place for a couple of weeks now, waiting for the shop to deliver the impellers. The computer is linked through other cables to plugs at each impeller station. At a guess, they’ve been running checks to make sure nothing has been cross-connected. As soon as they mount the control panel, they’ll hook up the remaining cables, calibrate the computer system, and run a quick test. It looks like everything else is ready.”

Will glanced up as Morty joined the two. “They’ll be along in a minute,” he said. Will noticed that Morty looked tense, an expression he’d worn since he came from the break room. Glancing behind Morty, Will saw Chuck. His face was red and he looked somewhat disheveled. Well, maybe he’d been asleep. But why would that upset Morty?

Moments later, Lina approached from the break area. Her face was pink. Oh, ho, Will thought, I wonder if Frenchy noticed?

But a glance showed the same bland expression Frenchy usually wore. His poker face was intact. Will smothered a grin and turned to look at the King. Picking up one of the cables, he examined the plug carefully until he had his mirth under control. Their business, he thought.

Morty cleared his throat. “What did you want to talk about, Frenchy?”

Frenchy looked directly at Morty, never sparing a glance at the others. “We’re going to have to change directions slightly. I had hoped to be hiring a manufacturing crew by now, but we’re going to an automated production system instead. It will take a bit longer at first, but we’ll turn out more units faster when it’s running. We’ve got time, because I just got the notice that we wouldn’t be getting as many battery packs as we wanted.”

“Really?” asked Morty. “I didn’t have a problem.”

“That’s because you were only ordering them a few at a time, or so they said. We’ll eventually be ordering thousands of the larger units, and producing those is an order of magnitude more difficult. The battery cells are essentially the same, they’re just packaged differently, and voltages and current availability are different too because of the number of cells and how they’re connected to each other. But the models we’re ordering puts us in direct competition with people who want them for cars and home power systems.”

Morty nodded. “So what do we do now?”

“We continue with small scale manufacturing and work out any production bugs that crop up. The King, Bedstead II, will be ready for testing soon, and we can fly it with only two packs instead of the four it’s supposed to have. We’ve got enough battery packs for that, they’re identical to the ones on the Bedstead, so we can swap the packs around. I’ve also found an airplane for testing the aviation system. We’ll install the battery packs inside the cabin instead of in the wings, two to start with, more later on. The plane’s a used DeHavilland DHC-6 Twin Otter. Plenty of lift, in other words.

“It’s configured for passenger use at the moment, so we’ll need to pull the seats to make room for the batteries. Will wants to mount the impellers externally under the wings, probably inboard of the two turboprop engines. After we’re satisfied the impeller system is reliable, we can swap out the plane’s turboprops for turbo-generators.”

“That’s disappointing, Frenchy,” Morty complained. “Not the plane, that sounds fine and your plan sounds good, but I hoped we’d be farther along by now.”

“The battery problem is out of our hands,” Frenchy shrugged, “but I’ll keep pushing. We’ve still done a lot, Morty; you’re the one who told me quality comes first, and that takes time. Anyway, I consider this an opportunity, not a real setback, so while we transition to automated manufacturing, we’ll be building our own green power plant! I’ve been working on that, and most of the groundwork is done.”

“A power plant?” Morty looked dubious. “Can we afford it?”

“We need the power, you know that, and we can sell the excess to the grid. That will help our cash flow, and at the same time it’s a security measure. Speaking of security, I need to talk to the person in charge. The opposition will stop at nothing, and the guards need to know that.”

“I already talked to one of the shift leaders, Frenchy,” Chuck said. “She said she’d pass the information on. I didn’t authorize an increase in the number of guards, though; do you think we need to do that?”

“I thought about doing that after what Morty said back in Chicago, Chuck, but alerting them to the changed situation is probably good enough for now. Anyway, I was thinking that if the opposition manages to interrupt us getting commercial power delivered out here, we’d have to stay on generators for a lot longer than I intended. If they can control our power supply, it also gives them the ability to shut us down or at least put us back on our own generator system, which is less-reliable than commercial power. It would also push up expenses, and we can’t afford to spend more if we don’t have to. How much do you know about solar panels and wind turbines?”

“Well, as much as anyone, I suppose,” Morty admitted. Anyone who’s not in the business, I mean.”

“We’re about to be in the business, Morty! As a first step, I’ve filed an amended charter that changes the company’s name. Our original documents were filed in Delaware, so we’re staying with them, and as soon as they approve the change we’ll be Eastern New Mexico Green Energy. How does that sound?”