Chapter 5

Now that John had worked out how the humans could use the antigravity belts and they had enough tubs and belts on hand, Bill wanted John to teach others how to pilot the ridiculous looking, but effective, craft. John reluctantly agreed to take time out from hunting Wasps to teach some new pilots, but he was in a hurry to get back to hunting down the enemy.

Two men and one woman volunteered to be the first class of pilots, so John spent three days introducing each one to the controls and how to use them. He hated to take nine days away from his fun, but Bill insisted. After that, he went back to chasing Wasps and left the fledgling pilots to work out their own techniques for flying what were affectionately known as "tubs." Two factors were quickly discovered: the belts would not permit collisions and the belts would completely dampen the inertia of anything carried in the tubs. The combination made it a lot easier to learn to fly than it might have seemed at first, and it did not take long for the new pilots to become quite accomplished fliers.

Since they were short of manpower, Jimmy ordered that the gunners in each tub be cut back to only three. This maximized the number of fighting craft available without making a significant reduction in the fighting effectiveness of the tub. Now that four craft were available, they started using them for general transportation as well as hunting Wasps.

Jimmy, Sue, and Ann took a flight to Maxwell AFB in Montgomery to see if there were anything useful, either personnel or equipment, that they could scrounge. They were not looking for airplanes, those weren't needed now that they had the tubs. They were looking for people to plan and people to fight, and things like longer range radios to install in the tubs. There might be bombs and rockets available, but Ann doubted it, since the base was now mostly used for classrooms for upper level officers.

They flew high over Montgomery because they did not want to encounter a stray Wasp while they were concentrating on other things. If John was right about the anti collision properties of the antigravity belts, then there was little chance of them being successfully attacked, but they didn't want to experiment with that on this trip.

They found the Base and swooped down for a landing. As they got close to the ground, bullets started TINKING off the metal tub shell. Bill leaned over the edge with a bullhorn and blasted out with, "STOP SHOOTING, YOU DAMNED FOOL! CAN'T YOU SEE THAT WE'RE NOT A WASP?" A moment later, the shooting stopped, but the folks in the tub were not sure whether they could trust those fools on the ground.

They landed, but stayed below the edge of the tub while Bill said through the bullhorn, "THERE ARE FOUR HUMANS FROM AUBURN UNIVERSITY RIDING IN THIS THING! DON'T SHOOT WHEN WE STAND UP! WE ARE LOOKING FOR PEOPLE TO HELP US FIGHT THE WASPS! WE'RE COMING OUT, NOW!"

As the Auburnites stood up, there was a shout, "BOGY AT 10 O'CLOCK HIGH!" The machine gun started to chatter and they looked up. There were two Wasps headed toward the tub. Ann, Sue, and Jimmy fired at them and they tumbled out of the sky, since they were headed down, anyway.

A woman in Air Force ODs ran toward them and yelled, "WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU USE ON THOSE BEASTS? I WANT SOME OF THAT!"

She was wearing a First Lieutenant's silver bars, and skidded to a halt and saluted when she saw Ann in her Captain's uniform. "Sorry, Ma'am. I didn't see you at first. Please come with me before we attract more Wasps." She led them into what looked like a Day Room and offered all of them coffee, which they took, to be polite.

"I'm sorry that we shot at you by mistake, but around here, if it flies, it's a Wasp. By default, I'm in command here, and I have 14 airmen, male and female, reporting to me. What can we do for you? You certainly don't need maintenance on your craft! By the way, I'm Lt. Judy Jones."

Introductions went around, including Ingrid Olsen, who was the Auburn pilot. Bill explained why they were there and that they had a powerful weapon against the Wasps, but they needed help to use it effectively. Right now, they were having trouble finding enough people to mount a fight.

Lt. Jones said, "We would like to help, but I don't know how much good we could do. There are only 15 of us on the base, and none of us are combat troops. We were left behind to act as an emergency maintenance unit. We have a few guns, but you saw how poorly we can use them."

Bill said, "We don't need you so much as shooters, though you could easily learn to do that, I think. What we need are people who can build and repair things. You look like a very good prospect for that, to me. Are you willing to relocate to Auburn where we need you?"

"Yes, Sir, we are. Do you have transportation, or do we need to find something?"

"We can transport you on our flying machines. One of the things we will want you to do is to build more of them for us. We need all we can get. Basically, the craft is nothing but a big metal tub powered by the Wasps antigravity belts. Right now, all we have are four like the one you saw us arrive in, but we want a lot more, and some of them bigger."

"We can certainly help you there, since four of my people are first class metal workers, handy with a welding or cutting torch."

"How about radios? We would like to equip our tubs with more powerful units than the hand held units we use now."

"Yes, Sir. We have plenty of radios. Maybe, the thing to do is to show you what we have, instead of having you list specific items. You might forget something if you do it that way, or we might have something useful that you don't even know about. For example, we have small GPS units that would be perfect for your craft. Please follow me, and I'll show you just some of what we have available."

Two hours later, Bill telephoned back to Auburn to have all of the tubs to report to Maxwell Field as soon as they could get there. He had found a proverbial gold mine of useful stuff. He said to tell John that even he would be willing to divert for this. They should come prepared to stay for two days.

The next two days were a madhouse of activity as radios, GPSs, and other things were added to the tubs, and the pilots learned to use them. Yes, even John thought that the trip was worth while! One mundane item added to the tubs was a ladder to make it easier to climb in and out, something that had literally been a pain to do at first.

On the third day, a shuttle service was set up to transport everybody to Auburn. Several trips for each tub was necessary to get everybody and everything moved. As soon as they arrived, the welders got busy making some more tubs ready to accept the antigravity belts. The work went much smoother now that some professional welders were available.

While this was going on, plans were being made to evacuate to Auburn everybody in Montgomery who wanted to move. It was assumed that would be everybody still in the city, but there might still be a few holdouts.

They now had two tubs which could transport 20 passengers, plus the pilot and six gunners. As soon as the first one was ready, Ann had taken a crew to Fort Benning to salvage a full load of MREs to be used as field rations and emergency supplies for people who might be starving. The Auburn basketball stadium was used as a warehouse for this sort of thing, since they didn't expect to fill such a large building right away. Of course, the fork lift they had commandeered played hell with the fine quality basketball court.

That evening at supper, one of the men asked Bill why they didn't just wrap antigravity belts around a semitrailer and load it, using it for storage as well as transportation. Bill exclaimed, "Damn, that's a great idea! But how will a pilot control it? It wouldn't be practical for him to sit on the roof and try to fly the trailer from there. We need to rig up some sort of cockpit for him to sit in while he's flying the thing."