The Second Ship (The Rho Agenda #1)(33)
Heather tried calling several times but could not get through on the phone line. Finally she walked next door to find Jennifer with her nose buried in a book while Mark was closeted in his room doing homework.
Jennifer smiled at Heather, although the smile appeared somewhat forced. “Sometimes I hate being so right.”
Heather sat down on the couch beside her. “I’ve been calling you for thirty minutes.”
Jennifer pointed to the phone line that lay curled up uselessly on the floor, the plug a foot away from its wall jack. “We had to unplug it to get some peace. Everyone in town wants to talk to Mark, and quite a few people from out of town. We even had kids we don’t know dropping by to see if he could hang out. If this keeps up, I’m going to move in with you.”
“We’ll just have to hope the novelty wears off soon.”
About that time, Mark walked into the room wearing his charcoal gray sweat suit and tennis shoes. He looked exhausted.
“What’s the matter?” Heather asked. “You look awful.”
“Thanks. Good to see you too, Heather. Actually I didn’t get much sleep last night. The team bus had a flat on the way back from Espanola. It was three a.m. when I got in. Then some *s started calling me at seven o’clock this morning.” A scowl spread across his features as he glanced toward Jennifer. “And you know who kept walking in and handing me the phone.”
This time Jennifer’s smile was real. “If you want to be the big superstar, you have to pay the price. Besides, I’m not your personal answering service.”
“And I’ve got this big honors Spanish paper due tomorrow, which I only started today. So, yes. You might say I’m a bit worn out.”
“I’m sorry about that,” said Heather. “I want to raz you too, but you look so pathetic. I can’t do it.”
“That’s okay. Doc’s been making up for it. I keep expecting to look up and see ‘I told you so’ tattooed on her forehead.”
Jennifer inclined her head. “Imagine when the student body sees their new basketball hero in the hallway tomorrow. Thank God we don’t go to school on a cruise ship. The thing would roll over when everyone rushed to your side of the boat.”
The image of the school tilting up on one end and going down like the Titanic while Mark yelled, “I’m king of the world!” started Heather laughing so hard that tears began rolling down her cheeks.
The twins stared at her until the chortling contagion spread, first to Mark, then to Jennifer, leaving them all gasping for breath and clutching at their sides. Just when it seemed that they had gotten their mirth under control, one of the three would give out a snort and the whole thing would start up again.
Mr. Smythe walked into the living room, took a long look at the three of them laughing uncontrollably on the couch, then shook his head and walked back into the kitchen. Understanding high school students was a task that required mental energies well beyond what he was prepared to expend on a Sunday afternoon.
Chapter 23
Happy as Heather had been to see the snow arrive, she was even happier with the sudden warming that melted it away. Fresh snow was fun and could sometimes get you an extra day off. Old snow made you feel as gray and dirty as it was. Luckily, New Mexico's state symbol wasn’t the sun for nothing.
Work in the Smythe garage continued unabated, although most often now it was just her and Jennifer. She was thrilled with the progress they had made on the project.
First, they had successfully produced an acceptable pair of quantum twin microswitches, something that would have certainly been worthy of a Nobel Prize, if they were at liberty to reveal what they had accomplished.
They had used these in two circuit boards, which converted the signals back and forth between analog and digital. They then added a programmable interface that allowed them to send or receive signals on either end, amplifying the output so that it could be routed through a computer system.
Next they repaired and modified their damaged model airplane, adding a larger fuel tank and a set of solar panels on the tops of the wings and fuselage. Incorporating components from a handheld PDA computer allowed them to program a flight route and provided for control of the onboard camera and microphone.
Lastly they added one of the quantum twin circuits to the receiver-transmitter on the aircraft. The plane could still receive control signals from the ground in the traditional radio way. But it could also be switched to receive commands through the quantum twins—or QTs, as they had started calling them. It could even send video and audio output through the QT circuitry.
They had just successfully sent a combined video and audio signal from the small plane to the ground station, and had recorded the output on Jennifer’s laptop. Admittedly, it was only a picture of the pegboard mounted to the garage wall, along with the sound of their own whooping and clapping as they watched the signal come in, but it was a successful test.
Heather had hoped to have the aircraft ready for its first flight before Sunday, and they had achieved this with a day to spare. Heather had to admit that Jennifer was now a computer sorceress.
“It’s getting late. I guess we’re at a point where we can wrap things up until Sunday afternoon,” said Heather.
Jennifer looked down at the display on her laptop. “You go on. I want to put in a couple of changes to the payload controls before I go to bed.”