It would be a little less than five months before Percival would fly-by less than a hundred kilometers from the strangely changing planet, but in the meantime the instruments and science suite began to come online for checkouts and operational status.
“Waiting sucks,” Major Gries muttered under his breath while he flipped through an unclassified white paper about synthetic gecko skin. This small five-employee company in New Mexico had decided that they had a new invention that would allow infantrymen to walk up walls, trees, windows, you name it. But Gries was having a hard time getting in to see the scientist who was supposed to be there to meet him. Apparently, as Carolyn Breese, the secretary of Gecko-Man, Inc. explained to him, Dr. Forrester had forgotten that today was Wednesday and that he was supposed to be there for a meeting.
“Major Gries,” the secretary told him. “I just contacted Carl, uh, Dr. Forrester, again and he was in his car on the way here. He apologizes for his confusion and says you should make yourself at home. Would you like some coffee?”
“Yes, ma’am, that would be nice,” Shane said.
“Normally, one of the other engineers could show you around, but everybody is at a preliminary design review in Clarendon this week. Sorry.” Carolyn Breese finished filling a Styrofoam cup with hot black coffee. “Sugar or cream?”
“Black is fine, ma’am. Thanks.” Gries sat back down into the folding chair against the wall across from the secretary a bit annoyed now that he realized there was going to be a considerable amount of time killed in small talk with Mrs. Breese. That was not a real bad thing and Shane was not the type who was too stuck up or important to spend time talking to a little old lady. In fact, she kind of reminded him of his mother. But he had a lot of work to get done and he had a three PM flight from Albuquerque to LAX that he had to make. He had hoped he would have time to get lunch from some place other than the airport; that didn’t look promising now. Airport food was killing him and making him soft. Shane hoped that he could get in a ten kilometer run sometime tonight but most likely he would end up on a hotel treadmill, which got old fast.
After about forty-five minutes, Forrester finally arrived. Shane guessed he was about five foot nine and weighed in at about two hundred and thirty pounds, not much of it muscle. His hair, although short in length, was extremely unruly and did not appear to have been touched by a comb in years. The most stereotypical part about the scientist’s appearance was that he was wearing slacks, a shirt and tie, but at the same time was wearing running shoes.
“Hello, Major. Sorry I’m late. It simply slipped my mind about our meeting today. I’m Carl Forrester.” He shook Shane’s hand, smiling happily in return.
“Hi, nice to meet you, Dr. Forrester.” The humor in the man’s appearance was enough for Shane to forget about being angry that he had been kept waiting.
“Come, come with me,” Dr. Forrester told him, leading him down the hallway. The little laboratory was located in an old strip mall that had gone belly-up. The walls had holes and raw unsanded white spackle and sheetrock mud splattered at random, as if someone had made a piss poor attempt at fixing them. There were filing cabinets, one Moesler safe with little green magnets on each drawer saying closed, books, and spiral-bound reports stacked all along the floor and on top of the cabinets.
“Here we are.” Dr. Forrester pecked in some keys on a cipher-locked door, then swung the door open to a makeshift laboratory that was filled with workbenches, a Snap-on toolbox, a few computers with wires running from them into aluminum boxes, and rolls and rolls of what looked like orange sandwich wrap — Shane had already been to several composite armor companies and recognized it as Kapton, the polyimide material that was used in most of the next generation armor labs.
“This is a sputtering chamber where we grow our synthetic gecko skin.” Forrester pointed at a large enclosed chamber with a computer control panel on the front of it. There were several manipulators, spinning tables, and stylus arms inside the large enclosed device.
“Why don’t you give me a little background before we get into the show? I’m not certain I understand how this stuff is supposed to work,” Gries requested.
“Ah, great, great.” Forrester motioned to a workbench stool with a stack of papers on it. “Yes, yes, have a seat.”
