Chapter 32

Evening Star died before they reached home. Doug was inconsolable. His wives tried to get him to face the fact that Evening Star was better off now than she had been when she was wracked with pain. Doug just nodded and retired back into his fog of emotional pain. When they landed, Doug disappeared into his apartment and left the funeral details to his wives.

He did come out for the funeral and the lighting of the pyre, but went back to his hidey-hole and refused to come out for days. After about two weeks, Cactus Flower could stand it no longer. She led the rest of the wives into Doug's bedroom and demanded that he pay attention to them and what they had to say. Doug lethargically looked at her and closed his eyes.

Cactus Flower exploded at this and lay into Doug with her tongue. She flayed him for a solid 15 minutes but she finally got him to react, albeit in anger. They started shouting at each other and the other wives turned away and smiled; at last, Doug was acting like the old Doug that they knew and loved. Cactus Flower did not let up on Doug as she berated him for the foolish way he had been acting. Doug struggled to defend himself as she kept finding fault, having to stoop to trivialities to keep her tirade going.

Finally, Doug caught on to what she was doing, and he started to laugh. That was what she was looking for; she had fully broken through the shield of pain he was living with. She grabbed Doug in a bear-hug and called the other wives to join her. Doug hugged back and began kissing the women as they kissed him. Then Doug started to cry. The women held him as he poured out his grief. He cried for about 10 minutes and then seemed to be over his emotional collapse. They hugged and kissed for a few more minutes before they walked out of the apartment together. People saw them and smiled—Doug was back to lead them!

Doug huddled with Charles and some of his engineers to go over what they had done so far on the heavy-lifter Zeppelin. The overall structure they had come up with was 310 feet long and 41 feet in diameter. They planned on six diesel engines, each one driving a ducted fan which could be turned approximately 270 degrees on any axis to provide the steering. The tail plane had three lobes at 120-degree angles. They planned on seven hydrogen envelopes, each one 36 feet in diameter. This left plenty of room inside the main structure for all of the crew quarters and the other necessary items. The plan was for a 10-man crew with a captain and a radio operator.

The removable gondola was 150 feet long by 20 feet wide and deep at the maximum dimensions. The gondola was streamlined and fared to mesh very closely with the body of the Zeppelin. There were three designs for the gondola, a standard freight carrier, a refrigerated food carrier, and a mixed use carrier. The refrigeration unit worked with sulfur dioxide as the gas instead of air—this made for a much more efficient unit and the bronze construction of the compressor, etc. prevented corrosion.

Doug gave his approval for the design and they started construction on the Zeppelin proudly named Soft Touch. It was going to take at least six months to complete the airship, so a refrigerated container was hurriedly constructed and mounted in the Yorktown gondola and sent south to pick up the fish, fruit, and chocolate they had been promised in trade for fire starters and various metal hardware. The plan was for them to run a shuttle service between South Terminal and the various towns they had recently contacted. Trains would run the rest of the way between South Terminal and Doug's Town.

Soft Touch was ready soon enough to make at least one run to the southern towns before the winter weather stopped the airships from running from Doug's Town. Doug and Joy went on this trip so that she could visit her parents and show that she was pregnant. They took a mixed cargo gondola so that they could pick up freight from several towns. Doug was along to introduce the idea of money to the various communities so that they could even out the trade problems.

As a bit of insurance, they took along several small collapsed hydrogen balloons so that they could add extra lift if it became necessary. These small balloons were to be inserted between the existing large main balloons as needed. At initial takeoff, they did not need the extra lift because the freight gondola was nearly empty.

The separate passenger gondola was fastened to the nose of Soft Touch, and Kitty Hawk was hung from that. Joy was enthusiastic about flying, so Doug was anxious to take her for a long ride and teach her how to be the pilot. While they were waiting for Soft Touch to be finished and tested, Doug had worked on arming Kitty Hawk with rockets. He worked up a variation on the fire starter to act as an igniter. One was used for the propulsion system and one was used for the warhead. Kitty Hawk carried 12 rockets, and they were quite effective, judging from the results on the test range. Doug hoped never to have to use the rockets, but he was glad to have them if they were ever needed.

It was a beautiful day when Soft Touch took off. The weather was perfect for flying, so Joy and Doug climbed into Kitty Hawk as soon as they were stabilized in the trip south. They launched and Doug had a wonderful time teaching Joy how to fly. She caught on quickly and seemed to have a real knack for knowing her relative position in the air. She didn't have the inherent "I know exactly where I am, and I know where everybody else is" feeling that Doug had, but she was certainly good enough.

They flew all the way to South Terminal with Joy doing most of the piloting. When they got there, Doug had her turn around and fly back to the Zeppelin without any coaching from him. She did not relinquish control to Doug until they were ready to hook up. That maneuver was too tricky for her to try it this soon. They refueled and climbed back into the gondola for a bite of lunch.

Once Joy had a chance to rest and calm down from her first flight instruction (a little sex in their cabin helped with that), they returned to the plane for more flying time. Doug flew them a safe distance from the Zeppelin and they found a safe place for Joy to practice takeoffs and landings. Doug landed them and took off several times to make sure that she understood the basics, then he had her do touch-and-goes until the nervous willies had left her. Neither one knew how many times they did it, but they practiced for well over an hour. When the fuel began to run low, they flew back to Soft Touch and Doug hooked them up. They refueled to be ready for an emergency, then they took the rest of the day off in their cabin. Between sex sessions, all Joy wanted to talk about was the fun of flying and to ask technical questions about the plane and flying in general. Doug was sure that he had his next aviator beside him, and he was thrilled to have found a kindred soul.

They reached South Terminal that afternoon and landed to refuel. They also picked up a full cargo load of fuel for the Zeppelin and for the airplane to be left in Tichuatal where they planned to establish a forward refueling base. They also had a spare FM radio along, which they planned to leave in Tichuatal to act as a relay station. Doug hoped to remain there long enough to train several operators. Tichuatal was to be their first stop, so Doug planned to fly Kitty Hawk there ahead of the Zeppelin to have two extra days with his in-laws. The plane could carry enough fuel to manage about 800 miles, so he planned to leave Soft Touch two days out from Tichuatal and have Joy fly them to the town. They should easily make it in under four hours.

The next couple of days were spent in more sex, flying time, sex, resting, and sex. Finally, Doug judged that they were close enough to Tichuatal to launch Kitty Hawk. Joy reveled in the flying and the prospect of seeing her family. They had a nice tail wind, so they made the flight in just over three hours. Joy was very happy that she had piloted the whole flight after Doug had cut them loose from the airship, and she had actually made the landing in Tichuatal—she could hardly wait to tell her folks of her accomplishment, it was right up there just behind getting pregnant!

The plane made quite an impression when it landed on the Zeppelin field. They had seen the plane attached to Enterprise, but had never realized that it was capable of independent flight. Also, it was noisy enough to wake the dead, so there had never been any chance of using it to sneak into Tichuatal.