Chapter 6

I guess that it was obvious that I was going to be the pilot, Karen would be the copilot sitting beside me, and Jane would be the gunner sitting in the rear seat. We ordered the plane with the changes to the seats and duplicate piloting controls for both seats up front. While we were about it, we picked up an L-gun and had it equipped with a shoulder stock tailored to fit Jane as perfectly as possible.

We would have the plane ready to fly in about four days, and we were all excited by the prospect. Of course, this plane could also be used as a trainer for Jane. Eventually, we planned to have three planes, one for each of us. At that point, I wanted to have the planes rigged with a forward-firing machine gun adapted from an L-gun. The details of that would have to be worked out as we gained experience with the pterodactyls. By the way, I also ordered rear-view mirrors for the pilots.

The catch was where to stow the plane when we were not using it. AI ordered a hanger dug for us with a taxi-way for entrance and exit. The hanger was going to be large enough for four planes, so we had the beginnings of our own air force.

It was at this time that AI proudly announced that he and the local AI were now fully integrated with a common accessible memory. That compounded the scale of the AI available to us and made communication a lot easier. Of course, each of the planes would have suitable radios installed.

We kind of marked time while we waited for the first plane to be ready. The unanimously selected name for the first plane was “Air Force One,” otherwise known as AF1. It was a lot of fun to have that name painted on the sides and wings of the plane. The first flight for AF1 was scheduled for right after breakfast as soon as it was ready to go. At this point, we decided not to go with parachutes because we would be sitting ducks for the pterodactyls as we floated to the ground.

We loaded into the plane, and I taxied it out to the road we were going to use as the runway. I was used to a nose wheel, so this plane was configured that way, though it did add some weight to the plane. At this point we were good for a cruising speed of up to about 200 MPH. We figured that was fast enough to outrun any pterodactyls, but it was slow enough to let us see what was below us from an altitude of 10,000 feet or so. That was another detail we would worry about later.

We took off and arbitrarily headed north so that we would be less bothered by the sun. We were concerned enough about pterodactyls that we wanted to be able to see any that tried to attack us from any direction. AI had insisted that the plane be equipped with radar so that we could be warned of an approaching pterodactyl in case we did not see it. We also had several cameras mounted on the plane so that we could have a visual record of our flight.

The trip north became a bit boring after a while because there was nothing to see but the perpetual grassland. Ah, at last, we came to a river, and it was a monster! It was a good two miles wide along here. We assumed that it was not very deep, judging from the way the surrounding land was so flat. We decided to call this river the Mississippi River because it was so damned big.

At last, we had something to look at besides grass. I dropped down to about 3,000 feet altitude so that we could see better, and we immediately spotted a lot of animals near to the river. That was when we discovered just how well the animals were camouflaged. We realized that we probably had been flying over other animals on our way to the river, but just had not seen them because we had been too high and they had been so well camouflaged. We were going to fly lower and slower on our way home.

Karen had been acting as a navigator and making a sketch map on which she noted the Mississippi River. Our cameras would allow AI to provide us with a detailed map the next time we came this way. We noticed several places where the river banks seemed to be crawling with crocodiles.

At this point, AI pointed out that we were about 250 miles from Miami, and it was time for us to turn around. Since this was our first flight, we needed to leave plenty of energy in the battery to take care of unexpected situations. If we only needed to use energy at our current rate, a fully charged battery would take us a total distance away from Miani of around 1,000 miles. We figured that it would be quite a while before we needed to venture farther than that.

I turned us on a course a little east of due south and held our altitude of 3,000 feet. Dammit, it was only about 15 minutes after we turned around that we received a radar warning of something chasing us. I had throttled back to about 75 MPH to conserve energy, so whatever was on our tail was catching up fast.

Jane looked in the direction the radar told us, and she saw a monster flying in our direction. She had no frame of reference, but she estimated a 60-foot wingspan with flapping wings. Oh, God, that had to be a huge pterodactyl or the equivalent. We didn’t know if it planned to eat us or was just chasing us out of its territory, but it sure as hell was big enough to do either one!

Naturally, I sped up, but the creature chasing us did too. I had us doing about 120 MPH when it got close enough for Jane to take a shot at it. The creature was not making any sort of evasive moves, but was coming straight on at us. Jane had a telescopic sight so that she could see the aiming dot, so she was dead on at 500 yards, but the creature was not that close yet. Well, she lined up the crosshairs and pulled the trigger.

She must have scored a hit because the creature suddenly seemed to lose the use of its right wing, and it tumbled toward the ground. It was probably a foolish maneuver, but I swung AF1 around so that we could all see the creature fall. There was no way to know how fast it was traveling when it hit the ground, but it raised quite a puff of dust. I circled a few times, but the creature never moved. As far as I was concerned, Jane had a confirmed kill.

That was the only fight we had in the air that day, but it was exciting enough for all of us. Even AI seemed excited. He said that the memory banks had no record of a kill that large in the 9,000 year history of Miami. Karen and I cheered for Jane, and I said that we would have a silhouette painted on the side of the plane to honor her defense of us in our first fight. She was embarrassed, but couldn’t help grinning in pride.

I slowed back to 70 MPH at 3,000 feet altitude for the rest of our flight. We saw plenty of animals at this speed and altitude, and some of the animals were quite large. We figured from that that we would not have any trouble getting enough meat to feed us indefinitely. Our problem would be in getting the other things that we would need for a balanced diet.

That afternoon after lunch, we went through a list of plants that grew naturally in our region. The previous residents ate almost exclusively meat, but they were compulsive record keepers, so there was quite a list of available plants. We did come across a few plants that might keep us from scurvy and other deficiency diseases, but it looked like we were going to need a lot of help.

Fortunately, the previous residents of Miami had been excellent chemists and chemical engineers, so it looked like AI could synthesize the vitamins that the local plants could not provide. We were going to spend the rest of our lives taking a vitamin pill every day, but that at least was possible, and it was sure as hell better than the alternative.

AI was going to bully the medical computer into joining the other computers in a complete linkage so that the sharing of knowledge would not be so clunky. The former local AI didn’t think that would be too difficult now that they could demonstrate one successful merging. AI promised to get onto that job immediately and to keep us posted, so we humans let the matter drop from our consciousness.

Another job we handed over to the AI was the adaptation of the L-gun into a longer range weapon. What we came up with was a sketch of an L-gun with a display that would show on the display where the aiming point was in relation to the target. In other words, it would not depend on reflecting the light back to the human eye, but back to a detector with the equivalent visual range of a couple of miles. This detector would plot the aiming point on the display relative to the view of the target. When appropriate, the target image would be scaled up to make aiming easier.