Tracer

Now the only thing standing between Jeff and relaxation was the monstrous crowd of reporters all wanting to cover the "story of the century."

"How did you find that alien?"

"What planet does it come from?"

"Are there any others like it?"

"What does the box do?"

"Hold it, hold it!" yelled Jeff. "One at a time! Okay, here's the story as I know it. I was driving down into Joshua Tree National Monument last night, when I saw this yellow-white streak coming down from the sky."

He paused momentarily for the few reporters who still used notepads to scribble down what he'd said. It was amazing how much the portable tape recorder had changed their profession. Then: "At first I thought it was a meteor, but it was too close and too small for that, especially considering how hot it would have to be to glow that color. It also didn't look heavy enough."

"How's that?" asked one of the reporters.

"It bounced when it hit the ground. Anyway, I stopped my car and rushed over to it just in time to watch it die. The pattern of lights faded from its body, and the box around its midsection — the one I'm wearing now — unclamped itself and arched up."

"What did you mean by 'Pattern of lights?'"

"There were little swirls, or streaks, or something, of bright yellow light going all over its body, which I'm guessing came from this box."

"How does that box work? Could you give us a demonstration?"

"Okay," he decided.

'I might as well,' he thought, 'But I have a feeling I'm going to regret this!'

He pressed the pale-pink button with his left index finger. Instead of mildly humming and glowing this time, though, the body clamps sent out one shimmering tracer of light apiece, and kept sending them out as the old tracers followed the shape of his body and died away, completely covering him in yellow streaks.  Jeff gasped, then meekly whimpered, frozen in place by his fear that the lights might vaporize him if they ran into him.

And then, cautiously, s-l-o-w-l-y, he moved his left arm. The patterns of light instantly altered their course to compensate for the arm's new position, leaving it covered with the same ever-changing light bands. He moved his right arm, with increasing speed, and then began to walk forward. He let out a triumphant laugh of joy as he leapt straight up, moving every little part of himself in unison.

Happily, he balled his left hand into a fist and struck himself on the belly right below the box. There was a dull "clack," and his hand stopped dead against the energy curtain. Puzzled, he hit harder, this time over the box itself. His fist didn't even reach it.

"Gentlemen," he announced at last, "What we have here is the futuristic equivalent of a suit of armor."

Some of the reporters vigorously scribbled down every detail they saw; the rest simply stared in awed silence. Here, they realized, was something just as important as the dead alien.

"How do you work that 'armor' again?" one of them asked.

"I just push the button, and it turns on. That's simple enough. To turn it off . . . let's see. . . ." He pushed the button a second time, but nothing seemed to happen. "Nope. Maybe this'll do it. . . ."

He reached his left index finger up inside the hood, and firmly pressed the soft panel on its underside. The clamp-nodes stopped producing light streaks, and the remaining shimmers traced out the rest of their paths and dissipated completely. "To turn it off, you just press this little do-hickey in here," he finished as he indicated the hood.

Aside, he breathed a heavy sigh of relief and wiped the sweat from his forehead; he was grateful that the thing could be turned off.

More scribbling, more awed looks.

"Does it do anything else besides give you a protective energy coating?"

Jeff thought for a moment before admitting, "Well, there's only one way to find out." He pushed the button again and watched incredulously as the energy field enveloped him once again. Turning back to the reporters, he asked, "Now then, what else could it do?"

"Does it give you super strength, X-ray vision, and can it make you fly?"

The other reporters scowled at their amateurish contemporary. Jeff Boeing, on the other hand, took kindly to the question.

"Let's find out, shall we?" he asked as he grabbed the reporter who'd made the comment by the collar and lifted him off the ground single-handedly. He could hold him there, but not without some effort.

"It about triples or quadruples my strength," he said, lowering the startled reporter to the ground, "But nothing I would really call 'Super.'"

He swished his now-free hand through the air, and followed up by taking a few frolicking skips. "It also gives me extra maneuverability; cuts through the air, takes away some inertia, stuff like that. As for the X-ray vision, I don't think so. Unless you're all wearing lead underwear."

That line caught some of the reporters where they least expected it. "Anything else?"

"Oh yes, you wanted to know if it makes me fly. We'll see about that."  He gestured for everyone to clear out of his way. He was joking about the whole flying business, but for all the reporters knew, maybe he actually could fly. He stepped back onto his left foot, then did the "flying leap" maneuver he had learned during the few months of his life he had studied dance.

What happened next served to only increase the level of awe in the reporters, but took Jeff completely by surprise. His leap didn't follow the parabolic path it was supposed to, but thrust him directly into the air and continued moving him upward at a 30-degree angle from the ground.

He was too frightened to move, save to instinctively stretch his arms out in front of him. For at least a quarter of a minute his petrification continued, but then he shook off the initial shock and began to tabulate his feelings. He had imagined flying as a sort of effortless, gliding experience, from which what he was doing now differed. It was as if his energy-armor was pulling him along in front, and pushing him up from below to keep from falling. He wasn't a glider, he was an engine-powered aircraft.

'And if I'm being pulled forward,' he thought, 'Then maybe if I re-aim my body . . .'

He moved his outstretched hands a nearly imperceptible amount to the right.  Sure enough, he successfully curved his path and headed in a new direction.  Now that he had control over his movement, the full elation hit him: "Wahoo!" he shouted. "This is great! Fantastic!"

'Now then,' he thought after pulling through a few more excited test turns, 'Let's see what this energy generator can do in the way of speed!'

He wasn't quite sure how to make the contraption accelerate him, but he tried the most logical courses. He pushed his arms out farther, lowered his head, and generally streamlined his body through strain. He could begin to feel his speed pick up even as he thought about it, as though all his little tricks of straining himself were only hindering his acceleration.

"Wow," he declared. "Whoever designed this sure put in a lot of nice features!"

Now he was ready to test the limits of the box's flight power. He set his arms off at a sharp angle, banked in a tight curve, and dove straight back toward the reporters at an angle that would frighten the best of jet fighter pilots.

In the eyes of the reporters, he was only a yellowish streak dashing toward them; a streak whose seemingly endless contrail was not a trick of the eye. The scene glared with blue-white flashes as the photographers took a myriad of snapshots of what was, to them, a once-in-a-life happening.

Jeff swooped down as close as he dared, and at the last possible instant yanked up into a 45-degree climb. The world flashed by below him in a multicolored blur, giving him an awesome idea of how fast he was moving. He was going faster than a Daytona racer, over a hundred-and-fifty miles per hour. And at that speed, he realized, he had turned in a radius that would have ripped even the smallest airplane to pieces; yet he had hardly noticed the forces involved.

'That wasn't bad,' he thought as the sensation of speed ebbed to something near gliding, 'But I don't think that was the best it could do. I'm going to see what the ceiling is on this baby.'

He shot straight up, still wondering about exactly how to accelerate, but streamlining himself anyway. He easily felt his speed increasing in direct violation of terrestrial gravity.

He pierced the cloud layer and looked back at the uneven layers of water vapor stretched out beneath him. His ears rang from the rumbling air around him as he continued to accelerate and pushed the atmosphere out of his way. The whooshing sound was louder than it had been a half minute ago, as well as hollower; he figured he must have been going at least twice as fast as what he'd formerly deemed his "top speed."

The bright blue air began to darken as the Earth fell away beneath him. Soon, stars which only shone in the daytime were casting their light on Jeff Boeing for the first time. And before another minute had passed, the atmosphere was only the vacuum that held the label, "space."

Jeff stopped when he realized he was no longer climbing, but floating.  Abruptly, he locked out any spin he may have had and faced the Earth as viewed from space. The cloud-enshrouded globe had the physical appearance of all the NASA photos, but no light pattern on film could capture the majesty that filled Jeff Boeing at that moment. The bright blue fringe of nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere scintillated like a living halo, dwarfing the continents' significance.

It took a few seconds for the achievement he had just made to overcome the glorious scene. The alien box had just flown him completely into space, and he wouldn't have been surprised if it could traverse interplanetary distances.  And what was more, it not only got him up to orbit, it kept him alive and maintained a separate environment while in space. He definitely felt the vacuum tugging at him from outside the box's energy field, but felt comfortable within it, if only a little bit chilly.

"The aliens who designed this," he said to himself, "thought of everything.  And they must also breathe oxygen and live in the same temperature range that we do. Hm! Parallel evolution and parallel biology — wonder what the odds are that life on their planet would be so similar to ours."

Jeff gazed out through the cloud layer and just barely made out the continent of North America. Following the western coast line, he focused his attention on what he presumed was Southern California. He commanded the energy-armor's flight power to come to life once more, and hurtled down through the gradually thickening outer atmosphere, now without his glowing contrail. By all rights he was super-human, capable of flying and withstanding much more than an unaided human could, including space. And since he was known, his powers would probably be called for again and again.

"I could really help people now," he said out loud inside his armor. "I think it's time I got out of my vice-presidency at the non-profit organization and into the crime fighting business."

With all of California fast approaching, he would never locate the group of reporters that had been questioning him; but wherever he came down, he'd find people asking questions, staring in disbelief, and requesting favors from the man in yellow.

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