Chapter 5

Emily IV was kind of a side issue. I realized that I wanted some personal transportation, combined with a trainer for my spaceship. The perfect answer seemed to me to be an RV with a modulated anti-gravity device added to it. This would give me the answers to several questions, as well as giving me practice in handling an air ship/space ship fitted with the device.

The AGD (anti-gravity device) didn't take much power, so I was able to power it off the normal electrical system of the RV. I did have to rework the AGD slightly to make it compatible with the nominal 24 volt DC that was now common for cars, etc., but that really was no a big deal. I found a used RV that had everything we needed, including sleeping capacity for four people.

The expensive part of the project was coming up with a set of louvers that would fit under the chassis and not interfere with the wheels. For forward propulsion, I added a pulse jet to the roof and steering thrusters to each corner of the vehicle. The advantage of the pulse jet was that it would operate at a low speed, even dead stop, when fed with propane gas for fuel. The same for the thrusters, which were nothing but added vents for the jet exhaust. By the very nature of the device, I did not have to add any control of pitch or yaw, since the lifting plate was going to stay exactly oriented toward the center of the Earth, and nothing could change that as long as the field was turned on.

Speaking of having the field always turned on, a second device was added in parallel with the prime device to act as a backup if anything ever went wrong with the prime lifter. I even had a second battery system installed in case the first batteries ever screwed up.

The first test run was made on the back roads northwest of Auburn where I figured that I would have some privacy. Jenny and I were the only ones in the RV, since it was not a pleasure trip. I was driving, and Jenny was "flight engineer." We drove out to a deserted section of road and I turned on the ramjet and the AGD to get some idea of how much the jet had to work to move us along the ground on the wheels.

The jet could not maintain our speed, or even our forward motion, for very long without the AGD. However, as soon as we got up to 25% reduction in weight and inertia, the jet was pushing us along at 60 MPH with the transmission set in neutral and the gasoline engine idling. There was still enough weight on the wheels that the RV steered normally, just as it would with the conventional engine running.

At a 50% setting for the louvers, there was some trouble steering, and our speed was over 100 MPH, far too fast for this particular road. I cut off the jet and let us coast until the speed dropped back to 75 MPH, purely an arbitrary number, and set the louvers for 100% closure. We rose slowly, probably some sort of ground-effect in action, but we were in danger of running into trees, etc. without some form of steering, so I turned the jet back on.

The steering thrusters took over, controlled by a joystick, and I immediately regained control of the vehicle. Nevertheless, we were too close to the ground to be traveling like this, so I activated the down-pointing thruster and took us up to around 300 feet.

Now that we were safely out of reach of any ground hazard, but too low to be a bother to, or be bothered by, airplanes, I tried all kinds of steering maneuvers. The absence of inertia made it feel like we were traveling straight and level the whole time. There was a problem, though, in the weightlessness. Both Jenny and I began to feel a little airsick as we watched the ground rushing by, but with no feeling of stability to our bodies.

We tolerated weightlessness for about 10 minutes and finally had all of it we wanted. I opened the louvers a little bit and added down-thrust until we were balanced, again. This still was not enough gravity for comfort, so I opened the louvers to the 75% closed setting and increased the down-thrust. We rode around like this for another half-hour, but were still feeling a little bit queasy. I put us back down on the road and drove home like a normal RV would do.

On the way home, Jenny and I discussed the test and what we might do to alleviate the air sickness. She suggested that we split the louver control system into two parts, one under the passengers and a second one under the rest of the RV. That sounded like a good idea, so I started working on that as soon as we got home.

By using a CAD (computer aided design) program, I was able to work out what we needed. The problem was that we needed a new set of louvers, since the current ones would not fit with what we wanted to do. It took the rest of the week to get the louvers fabricated and installed on the RV, so the experiments were on hold for a while.

ET was ready to show off his family, including the children, so the four of us arranged ourselves in the workshop and waited for the display to show up. What we finally saw was a group of six male adults, one female adult, and 14 children, some male and some female. Each one was introduced, starting with Mu7o as the head of the family. She then introduced each of her husbands and all of her children. We waved to each one, and they waved back.

It took quite a while to get through all of the introductions, so there was not much time for general conversation. Mu7o spent a lot of the time talking to Emily and Jenny, mostly asking questions about family life and how they were able to get by with only one male to service them. It was obvious that Mu7o thought that Earth culture was many steps behind theirs by making provision for only one husband. Jenny was a little embarrassed by this phase of the conversation, but I noticed that Emily agreed with Mu7o. I wondered if Emily was serious or just being polite.

We had no time for technical discussions that night, but I had several questions for ET the next time we talked. Emily and Jenny asked Mu7o a number of questions about clothes and fashion in general among the ETs. Apparently, most people went in for utilitarian clothes with a few basic dull colors. It happened that Emily was wearing a bright orange and blue sweater with a big AU logo on it. She took it off and showed it to Mu7o. Mu7o had much to say about the sweater and how impressed she was by the bright color and decoration. Jenny asked why she didn't start a company marketing such brightly colored clothes, and Mu7o was very interested in the idea.

By this time, the children were tired and getting restive, so it was time to shut down for the night. It was fun to meet ET's family, but I was tired of the small talk, too, especially since I was the one who had to do all of the communicating back and forth.

The next night we got a rundown on the progress with the paint. They were moving along, and the patent application was already submitted. Jenny and I wished him luck.

The hammer and nail situation was not so rosy, since they still had not found a material suitable to make a nail. ET had not given up hope, but the situation was a bit discouraging.

ET told us that his PhD dissertation had been approved, and he was about to be awarded his degree. However, other than a few sociologists, there was not much academic interest in his invention. Jenny and I told him not to lose heart, he still had plenty of time to be recognized, besides, we were certainly happy to have met him. That bucked him up a little, but he perked up a bit when we went back to talking about applications for the paint.

I gave ET a report on the status of my spaceship development. I told him about our experience with zero gravity, and I asked if they had a remedy for the problem. I told him that I was looking for something like artificial gravity, and ET said that he would look around. ET said that they did not use spaceships, since none of his people could see any advantage in visiting another planet. That correlated with the lack of interest in his invention.

The louvers were finally ready, so I got them installed as soon as I could. That took two days, and it took another day to get the controls set up. At last, we were ready for testing.

Jenny and I drove out to the same road where we had been on the previous test. This road seemed perfect for our purposes because nobody seemed to use it but us. The first thing I did was open the louvers under the passenger compartment so that we could get the full gravity treatment when I turned on the AGD. Of course, we felt no different when that was complete.