A US Navy dolphin looking for mines off the coast of San Diego found a museum-worthy, nineteenth-century torpedo on the seafloor. The brass-coated torpedo was invented by Lieutenant Commander John Howell in 1870. The Howell torpedo could travel four hundred yards at twenty-five knots and carry a one-hundred-pound warhead that detonated on contact. Only fifty were ever made.
Jones gave his friend an impish smile. “I’m happy you’re happy. Pick a color.”
Zee froze suspiciously. “Kevin Jones, don’t you dare.”
“Relax. Just pick one.”
“Kevin, no. You might not think so, but we carry a certain level of prestige on this research team. Not to mention working our butts off. We can’t afford a negative background check. We could get in a lot of trouble, especially with your new job and now with this Pirelli exposure. I need things to look good on my résumé.”
“Please?” Jones begged. “Consider it operational training for one last pizza. I’m leaving tomorrow forever. You gotta give me one more chance.”
Zee exhaled a deep breath. “Black.”
“You chose wisely, my son.”
Zee cursed to himself. “I hate it when I do that.”
Jones walked to a large metal cabinet and turned a combination dial. He slid a plastic case from a shelf and brought it to the table. Inside, twelve colored drone frames rested between forty-eight sets of matching wings: blue, yellow, red, and black. He lifted a set and turnclipped four together, twisting each pair into locking slots on the rear and front sections of the drone’s thorax. Next, he inserted four pliable legs coated with rubberized silicone into the frame’s underside. Each leg tip had a textured pad that, when pressed toward its counterpart, locked into position to grip and hold.
Assembly took less than a minute.
Jones placed the drone upright on the table. It looked like some evil queen hornet. He plucked a thin plastic cartridge from the case and held it up to the light. Next, he inserted a syringe into a container of bright-orange liquid labeled “polynitrogen propellant” and drew back the plunger. He injected the liquid and snapped the cartridge cover shut. He turned the drone upside down and removed a thin plastic shield from the tip of a camera lens. Finished, Jones inserted the fuel cartridge. The wings twitched once, twice, then instantly blurred.
Zee opened a laptop and connected a USB cable. “I need you to focus.”
Jones gently tossed the drone into the air and quickly moved a toggle on the controller-transmitter. When he rolled the toggle’s tip between his fingers, the drone obediently turned, pointing its camera at Zee.
Zee’s screen showed his fuzzy image sitting at the laptop. He adjusted the picture quality and then raised one thumb.
“Okay, it’s time for the Georgia Tech slalom,” Jones said, approaching the window and surveying Fifth Street below.
The drone had flown this street course autonomously as programmed by a flight control algorithm. The record was one minute and eleven seconds. Jones had come close to beating it manually before but had never succeeded.
He positioned the controller firmly on the window ledge. “The bet is one large cheese and pepperoni pizza. The course is eight streetlights, four up the block and four back. The drone must circle each pole. When it reaches the last light, it must dock on the upper banner arm and then return through this window and back to this table. Seventy seconds or less.”
“Without losing a wing,” Zee said.
“Without losing a wing.”
Zee set a stopwatch on his phone. “Ready… go.”
Jones raced the drone forward into the night sky, gliding it downward against the building’s façade, around the first aluminum streetlight, expertly approaching and then looping around the second, third, and fourth lights like some Olympic downhill skier. It was missing the pole shafts by mere inches.
“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Zee sung, noticing several pedestrians pause on the sidewalk and scramble for their phones. “You’ve got thirty seconds.”
Video game — like, Jones contorted his body with the controller as he guided the drone across Fifth Street and through the backstretch, winding around streetlights five, six, and seven, and then deftly setting the drone onto the upper-most of two horizontal banner bars on streetlight number eight.
“We have surface locomotor grip,” Zee’s voice proclaimed in an official tone.
Jones pressed a control button with his thumb, and the insect’s legs released.
“Twelve… eleven… ten…”
Hovering free, the drone streaked for the fourth floor, narrowly missing the treetops on the grassy perimeter below.
“Six… five… four…”
Jones centered the drone at the window, took a split-second to eye the path and angle, and then eased the drone over the threshold and back into the lab. It skidded to rest on the table next to Zee’s laptop. The wing beats petered out.
“One,” Zee announced. “Unreal. You made it.”
“Yee-hah! Mission accomplished, sir!” Jones, shouted, raising his arms. “I ought to be in the military. Precision drone pilot extraordinaire.”
“That was pretty cool,” Zee admitted, removing the drone’s fuel cartridges and wings. “If Robertson ever knew about this, he’d have a stroke.”
There was a loud knocking on the lab door.
Jones quickly disconnected the laptop cable. He slammed the window shut an instant before the door clicked open.
“Who is in here?” The voice was male and stern. It wasn’t maintenance. “Mr. Jones? Mr. Zibinski? Why is this door locked?”
“Dr. Al-Aran, sir… um, we were just finishing,” Jones squeaked, standing guiltily at attention. “It’s been a long day. How are you? Locked? Um, no particular reason, sir. We just felt better about security with the project and all.”
Al-Aran gave the room a general glance. Satisfied there were no hidden women, he tucked his security SmartCard away. “You might be interested to know that your drone was named top Pirelli prize winner. Professor Robertson sent a departmental email. Your research budget just got a quarter-million dollars richer.”
Al-Aran walked to the room’s refrigerator and popped open a Coca-Cola. He spied the drone on the table.
“I suppose we might bend a few rules tonight,” he announced, lighting his pipe and dropping his match into the can. It sizzled briefly.
“Gentlemen, you should be proud. You’ve come a long way with your little flying gold mine. Did Professor Robertson ever mention that I helped design the wings for the first prototype? We cut them from containers that held Atlanta’s world-famous soft drink.” He tapped the aluminum can. The drone’s original name had been The Coke Roach until their lawyers intervened.
“They’re on the wall in Professor Robertson’s office,” Zee said. “But we’re way beyond that now. Everything’s synthetic.” He lifted the drone from the table and offered it to Al-Aran.
“I remember it being heavier.” Al-Aran set his pipe down. “But that was some time ago. Can it still carry its own weight?”
“More than double,” Jones answered.
“How long is the average flight time?”
“Fifteen to thirty minutes.”
“And then what?”
“Not much,” Jones said. “One fell from three hundred feet, and the frame was fine. It’s a pretty rugged design.”
Al-Aran made a mental note. “Who is most qualified person to provide technical answers regarding flight performance?”
“Robertson,” both answered.
“But I probably know as much as he does,” Jones added.
“One more question. How long would it take for a novice to become proficient at controlled flight, including maneuvering up to a structure and landing on, say, a vertical metal tube or shaft?”