At the end of the first all-nighter, I had a Vauxhall Cavalier that could (with some warm-up time) hover a few feet above the ground. In retrospect, it was a good thing that I tested this at four in the morning, so none of my neighbours knew about it. It took another week of doing odd bits of work in my front room and two all-nighters installing the parts, but eventually I had a car that by all tests I could make, should be capable of at least reaching orbit and then returning in reasonable safety.
I'd just finished packing - I was literally putting my Last Will and Testament on the kitchen table - when I got call from the friend I'd bought the car from. He knew what I was doing, of course, and was calling in a favour (so to speak - we don't actually track these things). Apparently, a friend of one of his friends was in trouble with the post-Soviet 'Danelaw. His own spacecraft had been confiscated and he was holed up outside of St. Petersburg and needed a lift up into orbit. I was the first person they'd managed to get word to about who was on Earth and had a spacecraft, albeit an untested one. Could I...?
Two hours later, I was hammering across the Baltic at a height of half a mile and trying to sneak through the military radar networks of Russia and the Baltic states. This would be challenging for a professional military officer piloting a sophisticated modern stealth fighter. On the other hand, the networks were designed around the threat of modern stealth fighters, not a three-door sedan piloted by a Fen who hadn't even driven a car in six years.
The SAMs were overkill though.
They lost me over St. Petersburg, largely because I got lost myself, and I finally managed to set down in the park that had been named as a rendevous only twenty minutes later than expected. No sooner was I on the ground than I got rushed by three teenagers, who were being chased several men in what I presume were actually Russian police uniforms. I could only presume that these were the hitchikers I was looking for. I say 'could only presume' because either they didn't speak a word of English or their accents were uniformly impenetrable.
Nonetheless, I opened the passenger-side window (there was no passenger side seat (and hadn't removing that through a window been fun) and one at a time they threw their bags in, dived headfirst through the open window, and huddled at the back of the boot (I'd also repositioned the back seat to give easy access to that).
About three meters short of the lead police officer, I opened up the Jaime's throttle and headed more or less east. The Russian Air Force caught up after a fashion as I was over what I think was Moscow, but they couldn't really match altitudes and they quit panicking when we were over the Urals and evidently far too high to do anything more hostile to the Rodina than give it the finger.
At the time, I had no idea that it was going to be more than a week before I made it back home. Or that one of the teenagers I had picked up would later be better known as the Karasukage of the Village of Hidden Asteroid.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
I'd just finished packing - I was literally putting my Last Will and Testament on the kitchen table - when I got call from the friend I'd bought the car from. He knew what I was doing, of course, and was calling in a favour (so to speak - we don't actually track these things). Apparently, a friend of one of his friends was in trouble with the post-Soviet 'Danelaw. His own spacecraft had been confiscated and he was holed up outside of St. Petersburg and needed a lift up into orbit. I was the first person they'd managed to get word to about who was on Earth and had a spacecraft, albeit an untested one. Could I...?
Two hours later, I was hammering across the Baltic at a height of half a mile and trying to sneak through the military radar networks of Russia and the Baltic states. This would be challenging for a professional military officer piloting a sophisticated modern stealth fighter. On the other hand, the networks were designed around the threat of modern stealth fighters, not a three-door sedan piloted by a Fen who hadn't even driven a car in six years.
The SAMs were overkill though.
They lost me over St. Petersburg, largely because I got lost myself, and I finally managed to set down in the park that had been named as a rendevous only twenty minutes later than expected. No sooner was I on the ground than I got rushed by three teenagers, who were being chased several men in what I presume were actually Russian police uniforms. I could only presume that these were the hitchikers I was looking for. I say 'could only presume' because either they didn't speak a word of English or their accents were uniformly impenetrable.
Nonetheless, I opened the passenger-side window (there was no passenger side seat (and hadn't removing that through a window been fun) and one at a time they threw their bags in, dived headfirst through the open window, and huddled at the back of the boot (I'd also repositioned the back seat to give easy access to that).
About three meters short of the lead police officer, I opened up the Jaime's throttle and headed more or less east. The Russian Air Force caught up after a fashion as I was over what I think was Moscow, but they couldn't really match altitudes and they quit panicking when we were over the Urals and evidently far too high to do anything more hostile to the Rodina than give it the finger.
At the time, I had no idea that it was going to be more than a week before I made it back home. Or that one of the teenagers I had picked up would later be better known as the Karasukage of the Village of Hidden Asteroid.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.