Chapter 6

I explained my idea to the others, and I received an enthusiastic response, except for Bill, who obviously regretted to see all of that fine quality alcohol lost to the person who could really appreciate it. Nevertheless, Bill did help to open valves and find enough paper to get the conflagration started. We wound up waiting nearly an hour for there to be enough alcohol spilled in various places to do what we wanted. I couldn't help wondering why the aliens failed to discover what we were up to. Was it a case of arrogance winning out over good sense?

Even Bill had fun when it came time to start the fire. The trick was to wad the paper so that it would act as a wick. If the burning section of the paper was doused in the sea of alcohol, it would just go out. Therefore, there was more skill to this arson job than there at first seemed. We got a good fire going before we made our exit to the outside. We were afraid to hang around to watch the fire, so we headed back to the place where we had hidden the planes.

The street was clear enough to function as an adequate runway, and we were in the air in short order. I asked Bill why he was so confident that we could fly around without being attacked by the aliens. "Hell, Jack, we are flying so low that we are below the effective sight of the radar. Ground clutter makes it damned near impossible for them to see us, even if they knew where to look. Not only that, we are flying so slow that birds are passing us. We just don't look like we are moving fast enough to remain airborne. Don't worry about it, Joe and I have it covered." Okay, if the two experts were satisfied, I figured that there was no reason for us to worry.

We were about a mile away when we heard a tremendous blast of sound come from the plant's location. The whole system must have blown up, and we were in some danger from the air wave front headed our way. Not only that, all kinds of debris was raining down around us. We were just lucky that nothing as large as a brick hit us, and we saw several of them fall from the sky. Bill and Joe increased our speed, and we moved out of that area as fast as possible. We didn't know what the aliens thought of this bit of mischief on our part, but we sure as hell were delighted!

Our plan now was to head home and bask in the glory of what we had done, but we were going hunting for more alcohol manufacturing plants over the next few days, or weeks if necessary. We were so happy and cocksure that we would probably have attacked a UFO if we had seen one. Luckily, we didn't.

The women made over all of us when we told what we had discovered and had done. Were it not for the baby, they both would probably have wanted to go with us on our next trip to hunt for chip carriers. One thing for sure, we had hardly made a dent in the aliens' alcohol supply. It was going to take at least a hundred factories like the one we had destroyed to fill the alien ship, and there must be dozens of those ships in orbit around the Earth.

That brought up another thought: why couldn't the rest of us learn to fly an ultralight? Watching Bill and Joe in action seemed to indicate that the planes pretty much flew themselves, and all the pilot did was point the plane in the desired direction. Oh, sure, there was more to it than that, but it couldn't be too tough to learn how to fly. With that heady thought in mind, I broached the subject to Bill.

"Sure, you could learn to fly, but are you willing to invest several months in learning how to do it with reasonable safety? Joe and I have been flying this type of plane for nearly 15 years, and we still get into trouble sometimes. At least, you would not have to worry about the government rules or the other planes in the air, but it is not as simple as driving a car. For one thing, you have a lot farther to fall if something goes wrong. So, do you still want to learn?"

"Yes, I do. And I'll bet that the others will feel the same way. For one thing, if we are going to fight the aliens, we have to be able to get around to places that we can't find or reach with our ATVs, and the planes could get us places faster than the ATVs. When it comes to hunting, we will still depend on the ATVs, but there are plenty of uses for the planes. When can we start?"

"Well, we could start right now. You need to learn something of the theory of flight in order to get the most from your plane. A textbook would be of great help, but we can do without one for now."

We held a quick meeting of the four of us who could not fly, and all four wanted to start learning the art. Therefore, Bill started to lecture us that evening for about an hour. He steered clear of the bullshit and launched into an explanation of how a plane could even get off the ground. I had a little trouble with that, and the women had even more than me, so Bill demonstrated how a wing worked with just a piece of paper and his breath. That took up the first hour, and we were ready for bed by then. Bill and Joe promised more for the remaining nights.

Of course, as soon as possible, the women were going to be given demonstration flights. Neither one of them had ever flown in an ultralight, and Tilly had never been in any sort of airplane. Those two had more trouble getting to sleep that night than either Sam or I did because of their excitement over the new adventure. Eventually, we all slept well, and Sam, Jr. was the alarm clock that got us up the next morning. He yelled for a fresh diaper and some breakfast about 7:00 AM, and the rest of us got up when Tilly did.

This day was to be dedicated to finding another chip carrier and following it back to its factory. We assumed that we would have to go pretty far afield to find one that was feeding an undamaged factory. To do that, we needed to get an early start. With two men aboard, our plans could manage 35-40 MPH, and that would set the limit of our search. The first step was to find another place where trees were being harvested. Only then could we expect to find a chip carrier in operation. We had no idea of any specific places to search; therefore we had to search in a regular pattern to find a working harvesting operation.

We used an old highway map we had found of the area to map out the places that the aliens were working. We knew of three, but there had to be many more to support what we imagined their operation to be. Arbitrarily, we decided to head north this time to see what we could find. I was flying with Joe this time, and we were the lead plane. Joe was the pilot, and I was the spotter. It was my job to find an area being worked, and Sam in the second plane was to sketch it on his map while Bill did the flying. Sam and I were the ones who were supposed to do any shooting if it came to that.

We found that the nearly empty country near the border with New Hampshire was where a lot of harvesting had been done, and it almost made me cry to see the devastation the aliens had wrought. Square mile upon square mile was cut to bare ground, and not a single tree could be found. Somehow, the machines could operate over that very rough country without missing a tree, and, frankly, I could not see how that was possible, yet the aliens had done it.

Finally, as we continued north about as far as we wanted to go on our first trip, we spotted a harvesting operation going full blast. We followed the path of the scalped area and found where the chip carrier picked up its load. We orbited the area for about 20 minutes before a chip carrier showed up. It was another 20-30 minutes while the carrier was being loaded, but it took off at last. We had to use full power to keep up with it, but we managed.

This time, the carrier took us into New Hampshire to a town I could not identify without a map. That was not important in any case. What we were interested in was that there was a very large building that was the place where the carrier unloaded its chips. New England is still filled with these old buildings that had once been fabric or shoe manufacturing plants, so they were readily available for the aliens to use for their stills.