Chapter 16

The celebration didn't end until most of us simply collapsed into bed about 4:00 AM. If the aliens had been smart, this was when they would have attacked us again. Most of us were so sleepy that we did not wake up until sometime that afternoon. I was ready to kick myself for letting this happen, but then I considered how much it did for our morale, and I just gave thanks that we were not regretting it. Hell, we just took the rest of the day off, except for necessary chores.

The next day put us back on a war footing. I had Bill and Joe organize a search of the remains of the UFOs to see if there was anything that we could salvage. Yes, there was. A number of the oversize ray guns mounted on the front of the UFOs had survived the fall, and we were able to examine them. Ed made a close study of the power needs of the large ray guns and insisted that they were no more powerful than the hand-held units that we used. The big difference was the special electrical gadget that was used to spread the beam even wider than that of the pistols.

The UFOs had only the one weapon, the wide angle X-ray laser. The power supply and the wires leading to it told Ed that the devices could only consume about four amps. He was certain that our ray guns consumed about the same power. Damn! That meant that our quad-mounts were more powerful than what the UFOs had, and that explained several things. They had to get close to do the kind of damage that we expected from a UFO, and our quad-mounts significantly out-ranged them.

Now that we knew what we did, we could simplify our defenses. Several quad-mounts placed on the roof of our building should provide all of the defense that we needed against anything less than swarms of UFOs. We could supplement our fixed installations with the armed flying boxes as necessary, but a minimum of defensive gun crews should serve to be adequate protection.

The upshot was that we were no longer deathly afraid of the UFOs, though we were not contemptuous of them. The people who normally stayed at home were surely able to handle the defenses in most cases, and we could stop worrying about having to keep the flying boxes close to home to protect our base.

Now the question came up as to whether or not we could build our own version of a UFO. We had enough bits and pieces lying around to give it a try. I charged Joe and Bill to see what they could come up with. Of course, the first thing they had to do was to identify which of the parts they found had been what drove the UFO through the air. That was not going to be easy, and I did not give them a deadline. I knew that they were conscientious enough to keep at it until they found the answer. They would work faster if I did not micro-manage.

It was about four months later that they found the answer. There was a grid of wires in the floor of the UFO that was connected to some electronic gadget that they did not pretend to understand. However, when they sent electricity into the electronics, the whole mass tried to rise from the floor. That was enough to know where they should look further, and they tore into the problem. Of course, Jeff and Chuck were there to help and encourage them in their efforts.

It took another month, but they managed to jury-rig a platform that would lift off the floor and move around under their control. As a kind of joke, they fitted an old automobile body to the platform and made themselves a flying car. They replaced the steering wheel with a joystick and flew around scaring everybody while they learned to control their new toy. A week of this was enough to tell them what they needed to know.

They fitted the power supply from a downed UFO into their airmobile and were able to go much faster. The small power supply that they had originally used did not have the power capability to push them around very fast while also keeping them airborne. The new power supply was able to take them to an estimated 15,000 feet in altitude, but the noticeable drop in oxygen brought them back down rather quickly. It was just too damned cold and too hard to breathe at that altitude.

A high wattage variable resister (rheostat) was sufficient to adjust their speed and another one did the same thing for adjusting the amount of lift. Those two rheostats fitted as foot peddles and the joy stick gave them complete control of their flying conditions.

The use of a car body as the outer shell of their airmobile turned out to be a good idea, so they stuck with it. The 27 VDC worked well with the car's accessories, so they had the convenience of power windows and windshield wipers without having to do any additional work. The headlights and taillights were LEDs (Light Emitting Diodes) with their own voltage regulators, so they also were no problem.

To add to the fun, they painted on the side of their new flier, "HAFX-1A." Guess what the "A" stood for. For simplicity, everybody just called it the X-1. For more fun, they added an American flag on a staff to the top of the X-1. The demand was so great that everybody was given a ride in the X-1 over the next week. A quad-mount was added to the front, and the pilots practiced making runs with it against some harvesting machines in western New York.

Strangely, little damage had been done to Albany, so it was hoped that we could find some more humans alive in the city and surrounding countryside. We printed up thousands of handbills on some paper we had learned to make from the residue of the aliens' stills. That seemed appropriate. Ann delivered these to Albany on her first long distance solo run in the X-1. She just dumped them out as she flew over, and she had to come back for a second batch to cover the entire city. The handbills contained an invitation to join our community in Worcester. All the people of Albany had to do was to assemble at a specified location at a specified time and they would be picked up.

On a wild guess, I sent over three of our flying boxes, and that was barely enough to pick up the people who wanted to join us. We picked up 27 recruits from Albany, and we were happy at the addition to our community. Those people were not exactly starving, but they were very happy to benefit from the bounty and variety that we offered. Also, the safety of a large group of people was something that the newbies really appreciated.

They had been bothered by a gang of toughs who were offering "protection" at a pretty steep cost. One of the things they wanted were young women to be their slaves. There were about 20 men and older boys in the gang, and there had already been one battle with them. The gang had found some light machine guns and had used them in the battle which they won. As tribute, they took six teenage girls with them—all that had survived the aliens.

Well, we knew what had happened to the girls after they were taken, and we vowed to try to get them back and to eliminate the gang. That kind of activity had been expected, but we had no intention of tolerating it. We now had enough of the air guns to equip a fire team of 12 who had experience at shooting aliens. We knew that was not the same as shooting at humans with machine guns, but we felt confident enough to give it a try.

One of the people from Albany knew where to find the gang, and she came along to act as our guide. Yes, of course I was going along. The woman, Janet Olsen, had been a member of the Albany police force, and she knew how to handle a pistol, so she was issued one for her own protection. We did ask her not to use it except in an emergency. Her answer was a yes, but her sour look at the time spoke of her disappointment.

Janet and I rode in the X-1 piloted by Ann, and we were followed by two flying boxes, HAF-4 and HAF-6. They carried the assault team to Albany and were scheduled to return them and any girls we rescued back to Worcester. We flew to Albany at an estimated 250 MPH (Miles per Hour) and arrived long before anybody could get bored.

The gang was ensconced in the fanciest hotel in Albany, and they were already trashing it beyond anything the UFOs could have done, short of knocking the building down. The assault group was armed with the air rifle with plenty of extra magazines, plus a ray gun for emergency use. We didn't want to use the ray guns if we did not have to because we did not want to chance bringing the building down on our own heads. The captured women were our priority, and we had no idea, beyond guesses, as to where they might be kept. Without the concern for the captured women, we would have just hit the building with our ray guns and to hell with the gang inside.