Chapter 9: Mystery Ship

The last days of August were busy for both of us. Mike had ‘voluntary conditioning’ twice a day. Not practice. No footballs, no helmets or cleats until the IHSAA told them they could. Coaches couldn’t attend them and a student had to coordinate and lead them. Mike was the man this year. So no pads and no contact, just lots of running, push ups, sit ups, and that weird one football players do where they drop down into the dirt than hop back up on their feet, then run in place holding their hands out making ‘hup hup’ noises.

Today, I hoped to have an answer to a few questions. Nat would be in Riverport to help me with my flying saucer mystery. I had asked Mike if he any problem with me showing her the Gadgeteer HQ, and of course he didn’t, reminding me that we had decided she was grandfathered in. He joked about me remembering to put a sock on the door handle so he would know not to come in while we were there.

Riverport was a small town, even for Iowa, so our high school was also small. There was no Senior prom, Just the homecoming dance around Thanksgiving. I was going to that dance. I hoped to go with Nat, but I had to ask her first, and even see if her schedule would permit it, assuming she was willing. So somewhere in the day’s business, I would ask.

Nat had driven up in her Mom’s Subaru, which her parents deemed safer for her to drive than her dad’s, which was a Ford Taurus. Next year she said she planned to go back to school driving her own car.

Nat had not been idle during the summer past. She had poked and prodded her powers, getting a better understanding of what she could do with them, now that she understood them better. She already knew the answers to some of my questions: Yes, she could see ‘inside’ hollow objects as she phased through them, as long as their was a light source, which the glowing green Wraith eyes of her costume gave her while also giving her the best night vision I could come up with, though it was not all my original work, as I’d based it on previous Gadgeteer versions.

Nat had also learned that she could partially unphase the parts of her that weren’t still embedded in solid material, so if she got her upper torso free, she could use her hands and arms. That really got my hopes up. I learned all this over coffee and pie at the Stern Wheel Cafe. When we were done we drove the Subaru down the street the short distance to the warehouse. I opened the doors with the remote Mike and I had found in the cargo van back when this all began and we pulled into the spaces left empty at the front of the warehouse floor.

“Creepy Cool!” Nat commented as we passed the thick metal door. It closed behind us and we got out of the car. Nat had her ‘suit purse’, as she called it, with her as we closed the car doors. “Welcome to your evil lair?” She asked with a giggle.

“Not quite,” I laughed. “but almost.” I led her to the elevator, she had glanced up at the row of windows above that showed the offices, but when I pushed the elevator 3 times quickly and we began to descend, she laughed again and said “Ah, here we go.”

“Indeed,” I intoned in as overly dramatic a tone as I could muster. When the door opened at last and we stepped out into what Mike and I had begun calling the ‘presentation space’, I announced it officially.

“Welcome to the Gadgeteer’s Lair!”

Mike’s remodeled, possibly never to actually be worn in public, Dragonfly Suit sat in its cradle where it usually was these days. Another just completed suit hung beside it. It was for a hero called “Dust”, except in Arabic, which apparently had a lot of different words for dust. He was based in Cairo, Egypt. The suit hung rather than sitting in a cradle because it was only lightly armored, and required only minimal artificial muscles.

“Cool,” came a rather breathless comment from Nat.

I took Nat to the control room first, so she could see my UFO from above first.

“Fuck!” she uttered the first unladylike word I’d ever heard from her. “Is that real?”

“Very real,” I laughed. “The official story is that it was captured by the government a few years back with Stellar’s assistance. The actual truth is Stellar found it on Ganymede when the aliens returned him to our dimension and he brought it back.”

“How did you wind up with it?” she asked.

“The L.A. Guardians traded it to me in exchange for donating Gossamer Wings to the Super Hero museum in St. Louis. The government hasn’t been able to get inside it and neither have the Guardians.”

“So ... This is what I’m here for? To see if I can get into that?”

“Yup, you ready to give it a shot?” I asked, grinning at her.

“You bet!” she grinned back. I led her to a room where she could put on her Wraith suit and when she came out, escorted her to the hangar. It looked even more impressive in person and seen from beneath. It was 120 feet in diameter and 60 feet thick at the center bulge, tapering out to 10 feet thick at the edges.

“This hull material,” I rapped on the hull with my knuckles softly, because I didn’t want to hurt myself. “is impervious to everything the government and the Guardians tried on it. Lasers, heat rays, explosives, diamond saws, you name it. Even a teleport willing to try a blind jump just sorta bounced off.”

“But you think I have a chance?”

“A good chance. Your grandfather’s method of super speed is different than any other speedster I have documents on. They all achieve their speed by external effect. They mess with space and time, but its outside themselves. Your grandfather’s blur field is an internal change. You blur field is a different form, but even so, it changes you, not the world around you.”

“I get that,” she said with a nod, took a step closer to the ship and raised her hand. A moment later it went blurry and she lowered it into the hull material like it wasn’t even there.

“Wow!” I said, my turn for breathless utterances. “It worked!

“What next?” Nat asked, pulling her hand out of the hull and dropping the blur.

“A HUG!” I shouted, grabbing her and twirling her around in the air several times while hugging her thoroughly. I continued to hug her tight for several long seconds after I stopped spinning and lowered her back to the floor.

School commenced. Senior year would be a light load and all my real worries were focused outside its environment, except for the usual social concerns. A lot of girls made sure I knew they were available if I was in the market for a girlfriend, or even just wanted a date. Even some who already had boyfriends. But I wasn’t going to play that game this year. My only dating concern for the year was Homecoming, and Natalie Brooks had said yes!

I spent all my spare time studying the ship. It was somewhat frustrating, staring so much unknown in the face, but I worked at it methodically. Nat and I had been methodical in getting it open and I worked extra hard to keep the mad genius in the box as much as possible while I explored its mysteries.