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Chapter 5

Jack Halloran was having a good day. It hadn't started out that way; there'd been a couple of little red imps, gremlins almost, following him around in the morning, waving their pitchforks and trying to get him to cut people off in traffic and speed through school zones. He'd finally gotten rid of them during breakfast at Hardee's by picking up a little litter in the parking lot and helping an old lady with her tray. It was the kind of thing you got used to quickly in North Carolina, and he didn't regret leaving Spartanburg for a minute. He'd been at Celestial almost two years now, and he'd never looked back.

He whistled a little of the Dominoes' "60 Minute Man" as he soldered the last trace onto the modulator board clamped to his workbench. Case in point: Where else could a thirty-four year old electrical engineer work on an honest-to-God space drive? He breathed the pungent fumes of the rosin flux and eyed the joint critically. It looked good, and he raised the iron, watching carefully as the solder cooled to a shiny silver jacket, ensuring a good connection. Perfect. He used the iron to conduct his imaginary band for a second, then flipped off the power and laid the soldering iron back in its stand.

"Okay," he told the board, "time to come to poppa." He loosened the clamp. His wrist grounding strap was barely long enough to reach the table where the trolley was set up, but he wasn't about to risk static blowing a chip after all the time he'd put into this board, so he left it on, working against the slight tension of the coiled cord. He oriented the pins and seated the board securely in its socket on the trolley, then worked the ribbon cable on over the edge connectors. When he was satisfied, he popped the strap free, and looked down at his handiwork. On the metal lab table a steel wire linked two solid blocks of bronze that were bolted to the frame at either end. Between them sat a little cart, just four wheels and a platform, with hooks rising at each end to curl around the wire for guidance. That was the trolley. The prototype drive sat on the trolley platform, with a long flexible lead connecting it to the power supply which hung from a stanchion under the table.

The power supply had a simple rocker switch; one side was off, the other on. Jack put his hand on the switch, then hesitated. The design was his boss Rhea's (and there ought to be a law that all women that gorgeous be that smart), but the implementation was his. If this worked, then the name Jack Hannah Halloran was going to be in a lot of history books. Hell, if this worked, he was going to space. On the other hand, if it didn't work, he would probably wind up in a Leno monologue. "You knew the job was dangerous when you took it, Fred," he quoted to himself and threw the switch.

A pleasant hum filled the lab, but nothing else happened. Jack waited a second, then gingerly touched the trolley. It would roll freely in either direction, but showed no inclination to move on its own, and was certainly in no danger of running into the brass stops. The humming increased in frequency and suddenly a little puff of acrid smoke rose from the board he'd just finished. The humming stopped.

"Damn!" Well, he'd always preferred Letterman anyway.

 

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Framed