\u201cDevon, what was your genius\u2019s name?\u201d I asked.\u00a0 \u201cBertram McKenzie.\u00a0 He was originally from rural Maine and all the rest of his family were working class people who labored in the fishing and lumber industries.\u00a0 But he had always had a mind that looked at things differently.\u00a0 When he looked at a landscape of hills and trees his mind saw curves intersecting in geometric figures.\u00a0 Everything was a jigsaw puzzle waiting for him to find the missing pieces.\u201d said Devon.<\/p>\n
I could see he had lost focus and was stewing over whatever loss he had suffered.\u00a0 I said, \u201cHad he made any progress on your FTL drive?\u201d\u00a0 Devon startled, then nodded, \u201cYes, yes, he had figured out a way to produce tachyons and use them to freeze time while a vessel moving at normal speed was translated across any distance in almost no time at all.\u00a0 It had to do with a particular juxtaposition of different atomic environments adjacent to an electron flow.\u00a0 Very thin layers of complementary metallic elements produced a surface against which time slipped by without aging what was enclosed in the field within the surface.<\/p>\n
He had performed thousands of tests to perfect the environment needed.\u00a0 He\u2019d been sending out orders to a firm that did atom thickness vacuum metal vapor deposition work.\u00a0 He\u2019d built small test units with a number of crazy metallurgies.\u00a0 Various platinum metals with layers of gold, tantalum, niobium and several other exotic elements sandwiched between in various geometric shapes.\u00a0 Finally, he identified the perfect metallurgy.\u00a0 There were even hollow spaces designed to allow cryogenic liquid hydrogen and helium to be pumped in. \u00a0With these as walls he built his miniature ship, about three feet long.\u00a0 Inside he installed various generators to produce electric current and a control system to run the programs that his machines needed to perform.\u00a0 It was fascinating.\u00a0 The test program was to place the ship on a platform at the top of a cell tower and then when it disappeared, to immediately inspect a spot fifty miles away that lay in line with the rotation of the Earth from that spot.\u00a0 The first fifty-three times the experiment was run absolutely nothing happened.\u00a0 The ship stayed completely still.\u00a0 But Bertram doggedly retrieved his test vessel and changed some of the parameters of the equipment or the program.\u00a0 On the fifty fourth run the vessel disappeared.\u00a0 It did not show up at the site it was meant to reach.\u00a0 A careful inspection of the ground in between found it embedded in a tree about half a mile south of the expected line of motion.\u00a0 The tree had been knocked down and the vessel was a flattened hunk of junk.\u00a0 But it worked.\u00a0 The concept had been proven.<\/p>\n
Bertram\u2019s budget was expanded asymptotically.\u00a0 No expense was spared.\u00a0 We got to work on a prototype that would be a craft one hundred feet long and capable of flight inside and outside of planetary atmosphere.\u00a0 The work was done under the highest level of secrecy.\u00a0 But somehow the secret leaked out.\u00a0 Intelligence agencies around the world were buzzing with news that we had a star drive.\u00a0 Washington was livid.\u00a0 But what could they do?<\/p>\n
Once the vessel was built and its first few trials to the Moon had been successfully run it was decided that the first exploratory mission would be to Pluto.\u00a0 After all that was a good tune-up for a stellar mission.\u00a0 I insisted on being aboard and since Bertram was game, I made sure he would be there too.\u00a0 And after all, he might be needed for repairs.\u00a0 The takeoff was a traditional aircraft ascent into the upper atmosphere, no gee force, no rapid climb.\u00a0 When we reached a cruising height the field was built up and the program was activated.\u00a0 It was the strangest feeling when the ship energized.\u00a0 I could no longer hear the rush of the air against the outer skin of the vessel.\u00a0 All I could hear was the hum of the drive.\u00a0 But I also felt some strange sensory effects.\u00a0 It was as if my skin became numb and I had a feeling of depression settle on my mind.\u00a0 But when the drive shut off all the effects ceased.<\/p>\n
When we uncovered the viewing window there was the strange heart-shaped vista of Tombaugh Regio visible on the surface of Pluto!\u00a0 An unforgettable sight.\u00a0 I sat there and stared for half an hour before I could believe it was true.\u00a0 We had a star drive.\u00a0 I congratulated Bertram and realized he hadn\u2019t heard me.\u00a0 He was doing some calibration measurements for the journey home and was singing lowly what sounded like the \u201cRide of the Valkyrie.\u201d\u00a0 When I floated closer to where he was sitting, I could make out the words, \u201cDeath to the Wabbit, Death to the Wabbit, Death to the Wabbit.\u201d\u00a0 He really was a strange man.\u00a0 But he was also the greatest genius of all time.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cDevon, what was your genius\u2019s name?\u201d I asked.\u00a0 \u201cBertram McKenzie.\u00a0 He was originally from rural Maine and all the rest of his family were working<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2510,1289,1263,4],"tags":[1290,265],"class_list":["post-33176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-literature","category-fiction-by-me","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-sff","tag-my-fiction","tag-science-fiction"],"yoast_head":"\n