Chapter 9

Ed's ability to get us electricity was greeted with great joy. All of us could think of ways that electricity would improve our lives. We talked about that for a while, but Bill found the fly in the ointment. The solar panels had to be exposed to direct sunlight, and that meant that they would be easily visible from overhead. He asked, "What would keep the aliens from spotting them?"

Oh, damn, more problems! Right now, our home had nothing to make it stand out to anything but an infra-red scanner which would pick up the heat signature. However, putting solar panels on the roof would make us stand out as different. Tilly came up with a possible solution: put the solar panels well away from the house and run a transmission line from the panels to the houses. There were still some utility poles standing in our vicinity, and they still had wires on them.

Ed answered that. "The solar panels put out very low voltage DC (Direct Current). It would have to be converted to AC (Alternating Current) at the solar panels and have the voltage boosted before it could be transferred to here. That would not be a big problem if we had a small house or shed to house the electronics. They would not need constant attention, so it might work. The conversion to AC has to be done, anyway, to run our appliances."

Now, that sounded like a workable solution. We would have to continue as we were until spring and until Ed's ankle returned to normal. Ed could do the majority of the work, but he could call on us to help him as necessary. Our spirits all picked up with those thoughts, and we went to bed in a very happy mood.

Ed began work on the planning of his electrical work right after breakfast. Several times, he was heard to comment, "Dammit, I wish that this work was already done so that I could use a computer to lay out this stuff. It sure would be easier if I did have one."

Sam and I returned to hunting so that we could lay in a surplus of meat. We still had enough canned goods to get us through until spring when we expected to be able to pick up more canned vegetables and fruit. The inner liner on the cans had been pared to such a thin layer that we were not sure that a can of something like fruit or tomatoes would last beyond one more year. That was why we had to get a garden going as soon as possible.

Dammit, we had so many things to do in the few months of good weather, I began to wonder if we would not be better off moving farther south. I planned to bring that up for discussion pretty soon. A yes vote would force us to make some changes in our plans for the summer. For one thing, it would influence how much time we spent in finding more heating oil. I had my doubts about being able to generate enough electricity to keep is warm and to do all of the other things we wanted to do.

On top of all of that, I was sure that none of us wanted to cut back on the amount of effort we put in to annoying the aliens. We had come to the conclusion that the destruction of enough distilleries and our ability to keep destroying them would drive the aliens to a more lucrative play ground. Dammit, I wished that there were some galactic cops that we could appeal to for help. Ha! Even if there were such an organization, how the hell would we contact them soon enough to do us any good?

As far as I could tell, we were on our own with the aliens, and it looked like they were not planning to leave until Earth had no value to anybody. That included us who had no other place to live! One way or the other, we had to drive off the aliens before they completely ruined the planet.

I wondered if we could salvage those ultralights still at Hanscom Field and could the single-seaters be converted into two-seaters. Bill and Joe should have that information, and I needed to ask them about it at my first opportunity. At the moment, they were out searching for more distilleries while Sam and I hunted for food. I wondered how long it would be before the only distilleries to be found were out of convenient range.

Sam and I were able to bring in several deer and even more pigs over the next week, so we could go back to aggravating aliens. Bill and Joe had found six more distilleries within bombing range, so we now had 10 within reach, and we wanted to attack them as soon as possible. There were so many old factory buildings in New England that the aliens would probably never run out of places to put their stills, but it would cost them money to put in new facilities, and that was what we were working on.

Also, we hoped that they would eventually run out of replacement parts for their stills, and that would make things even more costly for the aliens. Interstellar freight hauling couldn't be cheap, and we wanted to build up their operating costs. I thought that if we could destroy enough stills, the aliens would find it a losing proposition to pay for more stills for us to bomb. Over all, I hoped to nickel and dime the aliens to death.

With that in mind, we decided to hit the distillery that was the most distant from us as our first target of the new campaign. We could try to hit one close by on our way home, and that should confuse the aliens. The more confusion that we could sow, the less likely was the chance that they could predict our next target and ambush us.

The first good weather day, we took off for a bombing run. As usual, Joe was the pilot for Sam as the bombardier. We pushed toward our first target as fast as we safely could, but we dropped to low and slow when we got close to it. Bill and I pushed ahead to look over the target to try to spot the chance of aliens being there waiting to ambush us.

We could not find any sign of aliens, so I radioed for Joe and Sam to begin their bombing run. They came in following their usual routine. Sam must have been a little rusty with his aim because the bomb bounced twice before it went through the hole in the delivery funnel. Nevertheless, everything operated well from then on, and the bomb produced a devastating explosion. We were sure that nothing of importance survived when the building collapsed.

Our confidence had returned with the bang of the explosion, and we headed home at a reasonable pace and altitude. Yes, we were aiming for that second target, and we managed to destroy it as well. As far as we were concerned, the HAF (Human Air Force) was back in operation!

What we really needed were more members of the HAF so that we could hit more distilleries during the same day. Surely, if we could do that, we would put a significant strain on the aliens' resources. The more we could do that, the less danger we would be in. Of course, that meant that we needed to recruit more people for our community so that we could have more plane crews. If the women learned to fly, we could have enough planes in the air to hit two targets at the same time, and that was what I wanted. I had to keep in mind that at least one woman had to stay behind to keep an eye on the children.

If we had the planes for it, I could see teams of Sarah and me, Sam and Tilly, Bill and Joe, and Ed and Helen. The problem was that all of the adults would be out flying, and there would be no one to look after the children. Therefore, we had to have at least one more woman to act as babysitter. Well, we had other things to do right now, so that had to be put on the back burner for the time being.

Anyway, the most recent raid had been so successful that we made plans to try the same thing tomorrow. Actually, we could keep up what we were doing until the aliens found a way to stop us. We hoped that would not happen for a long time, but we were realistic about our chances.

The next day, we had been successful enough that we were going to try the same thing, but different. This time, we would fly to the distillery as far north as we could manage and then fly due south to hit the other distillery as far south as we could manage before turning for home. That would leave us with six distilleries to clean up on before we went back to hunting for more targets.

Just in case the aliens had figured out what we were doing, we paused in our combat operations to take a look at the remaining planes at Hanscom Field. All four of us flew there the next day. We found the storage shed to be unchanged from when we left it months earlier. That was a good sign, and we spent the rest of the day thoroughly examining the remaining planes to see if they were all in flying condition or could be restored to that status.