Chapter 40

With the computer, helped somewhat by good encryption, we had kept close contacts. The three companies tried hard to mesh in with the others in which I had an interest in Germany, as well as with the others in my corporation.

We met at a spa a few hundred miles from Berlin and after checking for bugs we started ours talks. They were well aware of the Harrier project and the three had worked with this project. Rheinmetall had even supplied the 20 mm cannons for the craft.

The Challenger had been made but only two. It was underpowered at only 1,200 horsepower. The 120 mm cannon seemed to be working well, along with the munitions I drew up to be made. NATO had put in orders for fantastic amounts of our products but they did not know of our tank yet. When they did, I expected to be made even richer.

France now wanted not only more of our war material but my contraceptives. Part of my price for assisting them in Vietnam was for them to assist me equally. Equally would mean that they still owed me a lot.

Each of the three managers got the new and smaller and more sensitive receiver for detecting bugs. They had already been given a rundown on what new developments we had found. New computer programs were now being shipped to the various companies and I explained how they would help each of their jobs. With my new algorithms, no government or group would be able to find out what was transferred for years to come. Our efforts to educate the world had worked but now we had to work to stay ahead of the competition.

On the way back to our vehicles I saw two men. One changed course on seeing us but the other was more proficient and took out a paper as if to read something. Security was close by but they could not restrict people from going on vacation. I pointed out the two individuals and I figured future private conversations in this location would now be impossible. Parabolic mikes had been around for quite a while and tube-driven amplifiers worked just as well.

This was no different than in the twenty-first century. There, people wanted to know what I was doing but used more sophisticated means of gathering the data. I was also an old hand at not letting the information be found.

In two days we were in France, where I looked in on some of my acquisitions. Most was land in the centre of Paris that would go up in value as the economy rose. All I had to do was to have a business built that would pay the taxes on it. Retailing household electronics sounded like the best way to go. I accomplished this by building the first 'The PX' in the country. Starbucks was here, too but the French still liked coffee their way.

The drug company outside Paris was half mine and they were doing a better time of getting the Pill accepted because of the government assistance. The laws in most other countries had not been as liberal as France. My efforts through my links to Japan were helping there, too.

The girls didn't enjoy London as much as they did Paris. Then again, the English are not the same as the French. It was not that one country was better but sometimes it was the difference in the customs of each country that made the difference. France would be far snootier in the future, while the British were that way now.

The three girls and six security people went out to Surrey to see the latest version of the Harrier. Hawker had run into problems and the only project that had the possibility of making money was the Harrier. I had stepped in and now owned fifty-one percent of the company. Now, Hawker Siddeley would never come about.

The girls loved to see the actual plane rise on its downward-facing thrust and slowly change to a forward or even a rearward direction. The movie 'True Lies' with Schwarzenegger came to mind because of the view before me.

This plane inspired a lot of interest in the marines. There were an even dozen of this variety there, along with the air force and the navy. I was very happy I had ensured that the plane could be more densely packed in a hangar, because the wings could fold. The compressor and fan were all metals that could take the salt-laden air much better than the magnesium that was usually used.

This model was actually our fifth generation. There was no armament in this unit but the avionics came from IBM and testing was taking place with some units from Bell. If most of the soldiers present were pilots, then they would be drooling over both the airframe and the electronics. Nobody in the world was even close to us.

The 'Made in U.S.A.' tag was not on the craft, yet and to tell the truth, I would rather its production stayed here in Britain. It would cost more to produce the plane from two assembly lines when one could do the job quite adequately.

To compensate for the loss of revenue and the fact that no Americans were employed in this endeavour, I wanted to sell Britain some of my aircraft that would be made at Fairchild. We made a much better Huey than was made the first time around; it was fitted out for attack and troop transport, not just for evacuation of the wounded. Its power, offensive capabilities, payload and avionics were much better than in the old unit used in Vietnam during my first time. We were having difficulty even keeping up to domestic consumption. We did have the option of expanding but I was trying to get the various military organizations to pay for this. The new Huey II was much more capable and had a great deal in the way of defensive countermeasures.

Sidney Camm walked over to me and said, "It makes my heart glad to see this plane fly. I had thought that your plans the first day were only rough and it took me six months to see that you had done a fantastic amount of work on the design already."

"Thanks, Sir Sidney. Things would have gone much faster if you had used a club when you talked to Rolls Royce about making the engines. You must have spent half your time working on this design and half the time fighting their engineers."

"That was certainly true. I took your advice and not only did our ministry threaten to go elsewhere to get engines but the American military threatened to take their business elsewhere if there was not some improvements soon. That clause where they have to produce or pay sure came in handy. Now things are moving along quite well and there are a few obstinate engineers looking for work."

"Theodore Roosevelt talked about speaking softly and carrying a big stick. I just made sure you had the stick to use."

I had suggested to the Royal Navy to alter the end of their flight deck to 12 degrees. To some, it was like I was asking to sacrifice their first-born child but the ministry prevailed. Harriers were now taking off much easier and safer, too, for the pilot had an extra few seconds in case something was going wrong. Our short take-off distance was just one of the things the Royal Navy loved.

Instead of staying in London we remained in Kingston-on-Thames to look into more of what was happening to Hawker Aircraft. Sir Rowe was still there and was happy to always have a running total to when the one thousand figure would be reached. There were just over six hundred and twenty to go and he was happy to keep track. Now that I owned half of the company, I had to give up that requirement up but it was still a joke between us.

The girls were now old hands at the party scene and knew most of the other guests. They were very sure of themselves and it showed in how they acted and even laughed.

Sir Sidney and Sir Rowe pulled me aside and the latter asked, "What is this helicopter you are trying to sell the ministry? Is it going to cut into Harrier sales? I think we may have lost some sales already."

I smiled and said truthfully, "It may have but the Harrier cannot do everything. You can't throw a cargo net under it to carry a dozen infantry. The helicopter is slower and more manoeuvrable but the Harrier has much better payload. I am telling you that my equipment will compliment each other, the way my companies do." I pulled the men's ears close and whispered, "I even have a replacement for the Harrier. This one is supersonic and radar will not be able to see it."

Sir Sidney just backed up with his mouth open. I could almost see the gears working in his head. He came very close and asked, "Tell me about it."

I whispered, "It is still STOVL; it generates vertical thrust through the use of the thrust-vectoring exhaust nozzle. The lift engine alone generates 18,000 lbs of thrust, compared to the 17,000 pounds we have now from our Pegasus engine. This method has the additional benefit of lowering environmental effects during primarily landing, where the thermal effects on, for example a carrier deck, are greatly reduced."

"This time we are using your old idea and have a second engine for thrust. This one will be over 27,000 pounds of force alone."

The excited man said, "Altitude and speed?"

"Only 50,000 feet at one point nine. It will be a Multi-Role Fighter and will bring in even more money than the Harrier. Even though I see the Harrier getting the new engine to provide 21,500 lbs of thrust, it will not compete with this machine. We have lots of work to do on this design and it will not come out till the Harrier is too much of a target even with new avionics. I will still get my thousand planes and at least half again more."

Sir Sidney licked his lips then said, "Who is going to be working on it?"

"Who is my best engineer, Sir Sidney?"

The man smiled widely, patted me on the back and then said, "Let's get back to the party."

The parties and meetings did not end and it was another two weeks before we were able to leave. During this time, I pulled rank and flew one of the newest Harriers. This was the second time in this life with me at the controls and I have to say that it was a lot of fun. The wives all had a chance and flew in the gunner's chair in front of me for a short flight. They were very excited when we got back and if they kept it up, I would get worn out tonight.

I took up the security detail one at a time in the same position and they came back just as exited. It was things like this that made a job fun for me and for them. I would like to think, if the roles were reversed, that I would get a ride, too.

The girls and I flew to Scotland and then home from there on a commercial flight. It was nice to be thinking of all the other jobs waiting at home. Helen and Laura had been doing work over the phone but they had learned to delegate the way I did.

In the next two years IBM made much more of the hardware used in the war craft I was manufacturing. Japan had come online and had been making sophisticated home computers. I didn't licence anyone to make processors and these all came from Silicon Ridge. The polysilicon boules, though, were grown and cut in Japan. Microwave ovens and fax machines were a hit. Many of the parts were farmed out but they were still only assembled in the plants in Japan.

We got our version of the Internet and used it extensively to communicate between various branches. The American government had taken to our computers and after some arm-twisting, so did the Canadians. Businesses, though, just loved our equipment. IBM had recovered all of its lost sheen and gained a lot more.

I was happy to say that we never had punched cards or paper tape to encode data or to store it. If the secretaries of the world knew what they missed, I would be thanked doubly.

This brought in the concept of trained people for help. When other tube-based computer companies went bankrupt, I hired their people if they were of any use. Most, I was sorry to say, weren't. Our books went across the continent and every child had a chance to learn about logic circuits if their school board bought the materials.

Some schools got computers but only after half of the teachers agreed to take a course in how to run them. Schools in my old life had far too many teachers who had no wish to learn any of this newfangled equipment.

Night school classes in computers were a very popular class in most of the world lucky enough to have a computer.

I started an Internet search engine, complete with ads for my products and services. E-store was my version of Ebay but it took a while to get going. I started my own version of Pay Pal, with the Toronto Dominion Bank taking care of the minor details. Credit cards were discouraged but debit cards were encouraged as much as possible. This, in turn, made me a lot more money. Martin Siddeley and his Purolator was the preferred shipper of most of the goods. He had found a partner in Joseph Silva and both were now much richer than they ever thought to be at one time.

Others introduced credit cards after the debit card came out. I fought this as much as I could, because of the amount of debt people would go into. The electronic card readers and the net made the difference, I think, because I charged much more for a credit transaction through my equipment. The Toronto Bank handling this for me was now, by far, the largest bank in Canada in the amount of loans and money at hand. This arrangement was protected with the many patents I had for every step of the transactions.

My oil company produced subsidiaries that prospered in many countries around the world. People compared me to a magician in my ability to sniff out oil. When I could, I brought up existing properties from other oil companies to keep the price stable.

Another popular pastime was to have companies try to sue me, or my companies. I had talked at congressional hearings many times in my life and I think in this life I would be there a lot more.

I took a page from J. Edgar Hoover and found out all I could about the congressmen asking questions and then, with the newspapers and the television recording, asked them which of my competitors had put them up to what they were doing. This helped in the short term, till the companies got stalking goats to do the same job.

I ran my corporations with this sort of interference in mind from the very start and I had less to deal with than another might have had. To make sure I rubbed salt into the wound, I mentioned that I was working hard to make sure that the 'Free World' was protected from Communism. Hampering me was the same as helping the Russians.

Many plans were made for when the Russians would launch their satellite ahead of anybody else. I had gained some shares in various newspapers and even made friends with the editors. When the time came, they would have a stream of information to print that would get back at the companies that were now impeding me.

My own aerospace company had been doing a lot of testing and I was happy to say we were ahead of everybody else. The rockets built by others were not suitable for placing a satellite in high orbit. They were much too small and, to me, had an unacceptable failure rate. Japan and Canada were testing a great many engines of various sizes and fuels. Canada did this more in line with short-range missiles.

Much of the conditions in space were familiar to me and I just had to make materials that were suited for getting there and then remaining operational when in position.

I owned a Japanese atoll. This was used as a final testing facility if there were no aircraft or ships nearby. When 1957 rolled around, we were in preparation for the Russian launch. Last time the first Sputnik was launched October the forth but they had been getting a lot of information from even my facilities. I figured it would be better to preempt them in late May instead. I was still worried that I would be late, even at that date.

There were literally thousands of workers getting everything ready for our first shot at putting a package in orbit. There were, without prevarication, thousands of man-years spent in making my satellites and the rockets. Everybody there had signed a document to make sure they kept the information quiet.

On May 25, 1957 our first launch was to take place. A hundred thousand feet of film was taken before the launch. It included most of the people there at that time, as well as footage of the launch site. The people gave their names and a bit about themselves. This was not an American effort but a full twenty-five percent happened to be that nationality. The rest were Japanese, German, Canadian, English and French in order of their numbers.

People were tense for the week preceding the launch. Everything was gone over many times. Our equipment was the best there was but it was not as good as what NASA had even in the seventies. We had to make up for our crude instrumentation with intelligence and foresight.

The first launch was at ten twenty in the morning. The atoll was much too small to allow the people to remain on the island if something went wrong. There were fortified positions but not for the number of people we had. A small island three miles away was as close as I would allow. That was still too close.

The people bitched at me and I just smiled as we shuttled them off. I was with them, too and this seemed to mollify them a bit. When the rocket went off, the noise was so loud that they had their hands over their ears. The rocket went up to approximately fifty-five thousand feet and then the gimbaled motors shifted slightly and the rocket continued its trip across the Pacific.

Everybody, who was not already deafened, heard the wild cheering. I must add that I was doing it just as much as the others. I think Aron peed himself; he was so excited. The girls just hugged me and jumped up and down. I had told them about this day for years and now it was finally here. I radioed one of our ships and they said how they had seen the launch from ninety-seven miles down range. The first stage had separated and they were on the way to recover the shell to be used later.

We did not have enough powerful radar stations to know how well the rocket was doing. We had to rely on information sent back from the rocket itself.

Much further down range, the second stage booster was sighted. Only coded messages were sent but this was not hard with the computer. Four small observatories with my people gave their progress reports. Even through their typing it was discernable that they were excited too. Others were listening for any odd reports or sightings but none had come in so far.

The satellite orbited the Earth four times and was slowly coaxed into its proper orbit. Most of this was by guess, for we had little information to go by.

That night most of the people did some serious drinking, especially when our small, hand-held radio transmitted to the satellite and it then rebroadcasted the signal back to Tokyo, almost five hundred miles away.

In the next ten days we launched four more satellites and even used the shell from the first rocket in the fastest turnaround I had ever seen. The sixth satellite was not as lucky and went up to almost seven miles before exploding.

That day the people were down as much as they had been up with the first launch. Although a replacement vehicle had been brought in for just such a case, the next successful launch did not fully overcome the loss.

In the coming months we launched twenty-seven more satellites to add to the six already working for us. On September third, the Russians launched their Sputnik. I knew that they had, for I saw the launch and recorded it from three of our own spy vehicles hundreds of miles over their heads.

The newspapers, though, had well-written stories delivered to them as soon as I knew that the Russian vehicle was in orbit. Other newsmen were called and told to run the stories they had been given. This was before anybody else even knew of the launch. The only way the articles got printed was because my name was used to verify the data.

I was very happy, for there was no leak that I could detect from any of our people. Washington, London, Bonn and even Ottawa were giving out all kinds of signals. This was when the politicians read the information in a local newspaper a mere hour after the launch was admitted. This was not to tell about our launches but to show the Russians that their efforts were being noted and even congratulated.

As predicted, the west was more than just shocked at what had happened to them. Nobody was even looking for artificial satellites till after the Russians announced their triumph. In coming days more articles went to the newspapers but nobody could find out anything about the ten additional satellites they found. The experts were sure they were natural.