Solomons Orbit | Page 5

When he neared, the tall stranger asked, "I see where weeds grew under other cars which, from the tracks, have been moved out in the past few weeks. How many did you have?"
"Twenty; but these are all I have left," Solomon eagerly replied, hoping at last he'd a customer for the best of his old cars. "They make classic cars, if you'd take the time to fix them up. That one, the Hupmobile, is the last--"
"Who bought the others?" the big man interrupted.
"No one," quavered Solomon, terror gripping his throat with a nervous hand. Had he done wrong to send cars into the sky? Everyone else was sending things up. Newspapers said Russians and Americans were racing to send things into the air. What had he done that was wrong? Surely there was no law he'd broken. Wasn't the air free, like the seas? People dumped things into the ocean.
"Then where did they go?" snapped his questioner.
"Up there," pointed Solomon. "I needed the space. They were too good to cut up. No one would buy them. So I sent them up. The newspapers--"
"You did what?"
"I sent them into the sky," quavered Solomon. So this is what he did wrong. Would they lock him up? What would happen to his cars? And his business?
"How did you ... no! Wait a minute. Don't say a word. Officer, go and tell my men to prevent anyone from approaching or leaving this place." The patrolman almost saluted, thought better of it, and left grumbling about being left out of what must be something big.
Solomon told the civilians of matching vacuum in intake manifolds to pressure from exhaust manifolds. A logical way to make an engine that would run on pressure, like satellite engines he'd read about in newspapers. It worked on a cracked engine block, so he'd used scrap manifolds to get rid of old cars no one would buy. It hadn't hurt anything, had it?
* * *
Well, no, it hadn't. But as you can imagine, things happened rather fast. They let Solomon get clean denims and his razor. Then without a bye-your-leave, hustled him to the Ontario airport where an unmarked jet flew him to Washington and a hurriedly arranged meeting with the President. They left guards posted inside the fence of Solomon's yard, so they'll cause no attention while protecting his property. A rugged individual sits in the office and tells buyers and sellers alike, that he is Solomon's nephew. "The old man had to take a trip in a hurry." Because he knows nothing of the business, they'll have to wait until Solomon returns.
Where's Solomon now? Newspaper stories have him in Nevada showing the Air Force how to build gigantic intake and exhaust manifolds, which the Strategic Air Command is planning to attach to a stratospheric decompression test chamber. They figure if they can throw it into the sky, they can move anything up to what astronomers now call Solomon's Orbit, where at last count, sixteen of the seventeen cars are still merrily circling the earth. As you know, one recently hit the Russian television satellite.
The Russians? We're told they're still burning their fingers trying to orbit a car. They can't figure how to control vacuum and pressure from the manifolds. Solomon didn't tell many people about the shingles he uses for control panels, and the Russians think control is somehow related to kitchen matches a newspaper reporter found scattered behind a station wagon in Solomon's junk yard.

Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Analog Science Fact Science Fiction November 1962. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.

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