Chapter 23

Morty’s body was gone, been taken to a funeral home in Clovis.

Chuck sat in the assembly room, head hanging. He’d taken the news stoically at first, then suddenly broke down, unable to contain his emotions. He fought his tears unsuccessfully, then wept for a time before regaining control. “I’m going to need some time off, Panit.”

“I’ll let Frenchy know, Chuck. Is there anything we can do?”

“I can’t think of anything. I’ll have his body shipped back to Andrews and take it to the ranch. There’s a small cemetery behind the house, maybe half a mile back. He took me to see it when I started working with him. He planted wild flowers and kept the weeds cut before, but I don’t think he’s been back since we started the company. There’s no telling what it looks like now, but my grandmother is buried there and I think Morty would have wanted to be with her.”

“Are you sure you can find her grave, Chuck? It’s probably overgrown by now, and you haven’t been there in at least a year.”

“I can find it. I got to know that area pretty well during the summers I lived with them. There’s also a stone that stands out above the low weeds that are common around there. Damnit, I should have been with him. He worked too hard, I tried to get him to slow down but it was always a chore. Maybe if I had been here I could have done something.”

“Chuck, Morty was an old man. No one can hold off death forever. He went fast, according to what I was told, and he worked on something he loved right up to the end. He probably never knew what happened. Death doesn’t get any better than that, and unless you were standing right by him with a set of charged paddles there was nothing you could have done! And even then, the paddles might not have worked!”

“I keep telling myself that, but I was wrapped up in my own concerns. I never even stopped to talk to him the last time I was here, I just flew the plane and—well, I was doing something else too, but the range people could have handled that. I wanted to get away, I just couldn’t handle what happened with...”

“With Lina. I heard, Chuck. She’s unhappy too, and she couldn’t even find you when Morty died.”

“Panit, I didn’t have anything I could say to her, there was nothing more for either one of us to say. I tried to explain, but she wouldn’t listen and anyway, that’s water down the river. We’re different people, I guess, and we just don’t see some things the same way. She sees things the way a college student does, but I was a Marine before I was a student and Fallujah changed me. I guess there’s no going back for either of us.”

“I wouldn’t give up on her just yet, Chuck. Anyway, Frenchy and Will are on the way back, estimated arrival time is about two hours. Do you have time to talk to them?”

“I guess so. I’m not sure how long it will take to get Morty home, to Andrews I mean, and there’s nothing I can do until that’s taken care of. I need to make a phone call, see if the funeral home in Clovis can handle it. If they can’t, someone in Andrews can. One more thing, I want a military style headstone for Morty. There’s a simple stone for my grandmother, but I want one that mentions Morty’s service. He never went overseas but he served, and it shouldn’t be forgotten. That’s important to me.”

“Bill the arrangements to the company, Chuck. You select the stone, have them contact us. I don’t suppose you’ve thought about it, but you’re Morty’s heir. We’ve got the documents on file for the company, but I don’t know what arrangements he might have made for any other property.”

“He had a lawyer in Andrews, Panit, not that he did much business with him, but he might have filed a will there. The old ranch isn’t worth much, but I don’t want to see it sold off; it’s got that cemetery, you see. As soon as Morty’s laid to rest there, that’s the two people who were more family to me than anyone else. I talked to him when I was trying to collect what some of the businesses owed grandpa, and I’m sure he’ll remember me. I’ll give him a call when I get there.”

“I doubt you’ll have a problem,” Panit agreed. “His holdings in the company listed you as next of kin.”

“I’m really the only kin,” Chuck agreed, “except for an uncle and aunt that grandpa refused to talk about. He never said why, but there was a rift. I don’t know how to contact them, and for that matter my uncle might not even be alive now. Even if he is, I wouldn’t know what to say to him.”

Panit made a note on the tablet. “I suppose we should look into it, just to clear up any questions. I’ll need the name of the lawyer too. I’ll give him a call, but even if he has a will on file, the papers Morty filed here will supersede that.”

Chuck nodded. “I’ll get you the name later. I’ll stay here until Frenchy shows up, but I’ll need to go into Clovis after that. The mortuary company will want to know how they’re going to get paid.”

“Like I said, bill it to us and I’ll let Frenchy know. Where will you be?”

“I guess I’ll go over to the hangar. I don’t really want to talk to anybody right now, but I’ll tell Frenchy what I’ve got in mind when he gets here. Mel’s probably at the hangar, but he’s pretty good about leaving people alone when there’s nothing to be said.”

Lina entered the hangar from the rear personnel door. Chuck was sitting in the small break room, nursing a cup of cooling coffee and looking at nothing. “Chuck, I’m so sorry. I know how close you and Morty were.”

“Hi, Lina. Yeah, he was more father than grandfather to me. I just don’t know ... I’m really going to miss him.”

“You know how proud he was of you, don’t you?”

“We never talked about things like that, Lina. We did before, when I was growing up, but that was when I was a kid. We talked about a lot of things during the summers when I stayed on the ranch. Grandma too; I rode with her, she had horses and loved to ride, and we talked about everything. It was never the same after she passed away. It hit Grandpa hard too, but at the time we never talked about feelings. Neither one of us was ever very good at that.”

“What are you going to do now?”

“Make the arrangements, and after that, I guess I’ll see. I don’t know, I’ve been flying the Twin, but that’s so routine now that I’m not sure I’m still interested. This has been a shock, even though I should have thought about it happening. But Grandpa had so much energy...”

“I know. I couldn’t believe it either, not at first. He was such a part of the ship—do you know what we’ve been working on?”

“No, I’ve stayed busy flying the Twin. We needed as many hours in the logbook as possible, but that’s pretty much over now that we’ve got the experimental certification. The inspector approved that, based on how many hours we’ve operated the impellers and how well the flight demonstration went. As for those logbook hours, each flight of the Bedstead counted four times because there were four impellers. The barge also counted, as did the marine system that’s operating now, and the Twin’s flight hours counted twice. All told, we had almost five thousand hours of operation in the various logbooks. The inspector didn’t like the idea that we’d been flying the Twin before he’d passed it, but Will pointed out that we still had the turboprops when we started. All we did was fly on battery power, using the impellers as an auxiliary system. Anyway, he approved the system for experimental purposes and crew training. No passengers, but then we don’t really have the capability now; the seats are out and the batteries and the impellers occupy most of the space in the passenger cabin. What it means is that any pilot can fly the Twin now, once he’s familiar with the impeller system.”

“We’re almost finished with the first space-capable ship, Chuck. It’s smaller than Morty wanted, but the hull is finished and the impellers are in place. We’re working on fuel storage now and running tests on the fuel cells. There are other things to do after that.”

“You’ve got the cells in?” Chuck’s surprise showed.

“Right, we’re still working on how to control fuel flow to them so we haven’t given them a full test, but they’re in place. It’s basically the same system you’re using, a charging system to feed the batteries. The batteries serve as an accumulator, temporary storage, so power is instantly available without waiting for the fuel cells to increase output. They smooth out the power supply to the impellers.”