The Bonneville Salt Flats were blindingly white.
Jason squinted against the glare. The heat waves shimmering off the salt made the massive object in front of him look like a mirage.
It wasn't a mirage. It was a monster.
The Icarus.
It lay on the salt crust like a beached whale made of duralumin and rivets. A thousand feet long. Sleek, silver, and utterly impossible.
It wasn't a blimp. It didn't have gas bags. It was a "rigid-body lifting body"—essentially a giant, armored wing designed to float on thrust and aerodynamics.
"She's ugly," O'Malley grunted, dropping a crate of canned beans onto the loading ramp. "But she's big."
"She's beautiful," Howard Hughes corrected, sliding down a ladder from the cockpit. He was wearing grease-stained coveralls over his tuxedo. "And she's nuclear."
Jason walked under the shadow of the hull. He touched the cold metal.
Six months. They had spent six months hiding in the Utah desert, pouring every ounce of gold and genius they had into this machine.
"Status on the reactor?" Jason asked.
"Oppenheimer is slotting the core now," Hughes said, wiping his hands on a rag. "We're at 60% shielding. If we run at full power, the engine room gets a little... spicy."
"What about the armor?"
"Port side is plated. Starboard is still exposed frame. If they shoot us from the right, we die."
Jason checked his watch. "We don't have time to finish."
Sarah ran down the ramp. She was holding a radio headset.
"Jason! We have a problem."
"Hoover?"
"The Army Air Corps," Sarah said breathlessly. "Radar picked up a squadron of bombers launching from Nevada. DH-4s. They'll be here in twenty minutes."
Jason looked at the unfinished hull. Then at the vast, empty sky.
If they stayed on the ground, they were sitting ducks. A single bomb would crack the reactor and turn Utah into a wasteland.
"Cut the anchors!" Jason yelled. "We launch now!"
"We aren't tested!" Hughes protested, his eyes wide. "The turbines have never spun up to full RPM! We could vibrate apart!"
"Would you rather vibrate apart or get bombed apart?" Jason snapped. "Spin them up, Howard! Now!"
The sound began as a low thrum. Like a giant cat purring deep underground.
Then it rose. A high-pitched whine that set Jason's teeth on edge.
Inside the engine room, Oppenheimer stood behind a lead glass window. He turned a dial.
The "Blue Battery"—the nuclear core—glowed. Steam turbines hissed, driving the massive propellers mounted on the wings.
"Power at 80%!" Einstein shouted over the noise, reading a gauge. "Structural integrity holding!"
Outside, O'Malley and his men were hacking at the mooring ropes with machetes.
"Clear the ramp!" Jason ordered. "Seal the doors!"
The massive cargo bay doors groaned shut. The airlock hissed.
Jason ran to the bridge. It was a glass-walled bubble at the front of the ship, offering a 180-degree view.
Hughes was in the pilot's chair. He looked manic. Happy.
"Here we go!" Hughes yelled. "Gravity is just a suggestion, Mr. Prentice!"
He slammed the throttles forward.
The Icarus didn't leap. It groaned. It shivered.
Then, slowly, majestically, it began to move.
The salt flats blurred beneath them. The ship picked up speed. 50 knots. 80 knots.
"Lift!" Hughes pulled back on the yoke.
The nose tilted up. The wheels left the ground.
They were airborne.
"Contact!" Sarah shouted from the radar station. "Six bogeys! 12 o'clock low!"
Jason looked out the window.
Biplanes. US Army DH-4s. They were buzzing toward them like angry mosquitoes.
"They're climbing to intercept!" Sarah warned. "They have machine guns!"
"Take us up," Jason ordered. "What's their ceiling?"
"About 15,000 feet," Hughes said. "Maybe 18 if they push the engines."
"And us?"
Hughes grinned. "With nuclear power? We don't need air to burn fuel. We can go until the wings freeze."
"Climb!"
Hughes pulled the yoke back hard. The deck tilted. Jason had to grab a railing to stay standing.
Rat-tat-tat!
Bullets pinged off the hull. Someone screamed below decks.
"Starboard side!" O'Malley yelled over the intercom. "They're hitting the exposed frame!"
"Ignore it!" Jason shouted. "Just get us above them!"
The Icarus roared upward. They punched through a layer of clouds. Then another.
The air outside turned thin and cold. The sky shifted from blue to a deep, dark violet.
Jason looked down.
The biplanes were tiny specks below them. They were stalling out, their engines choking in the thin air. They fell away, spiraling back toward the earth.
"Altitude 25,000 feet," Hughes announced calmly. "We are untouchable."
Jason walked to the front of the bridge. He looked down through the glass floor.
He could see the curvature of the Earth. The white stain of the salt flats was just a smudge.
He wasn't running anymore. He was ascending.
"We did it," Sarah whispered, standing beside him. "We left the world."
Three hours later.
The ship was cruising at a steady 30,000 feet. The vibration had settled into a rhythmic hum.
Jason gathered the senior staff in the mess hall.
It was a motley crew. The billionaire pilot. The communist quartermaster. The pacifist physicists. The Irish mercenary.
"Status report," Jason said.
"Hull is holding," Hughes said, eating a sandwich with a knife and fork. "We lost some pressure in Sector 4 from the bullets, but I patched it."
"Reactor is stable," Oppenheimer said. He looked tired. "But the cooling loops are running hot. We need more water."
"We have water recycling," Sarah said.
"Not for the reactor," Oppenheimer corrected. "For the crew. We have thirty people on board. And we left half the supplies on the salt flats."
Maria, the former bandit/union organizer who had smuggled herself aboard, slammed a ledger onto the table.
"I did inventory," Maria said. Her voice was grim. "We have canned food for three months. Water for two. Fuel is infinite, yes. But you can't eat uranium, Jason."
She looked around the table.
"We aren't a country. We're a lifeboat. And we're going to starve."
Jason looked at the faces of his crew. They were brilliant. They were brave. And they were looking at him for an answer.
"We won't starve," Jason said. "We have something valuable."
"What?" O'Malley asked. "We're fugitives."
"We have technology," Jason said. "Encryption. Energy. Medicine."
He walked to the window and looked out at the endless clouds.
"We are a floating city-state. We don't have allies. But we have customers."
"You want to trade?" Sarah asked. "With who? The governments hate us."
"Not the governments," Jason said. "The black market. The smugglers. The people who operate in the shadows."
He turned back to them.
"We're going to the mid-Atlantic," Jason ordered. "Set a course."
"Why there?" Hughes asked.
"Because that's where the liquor ships are," Jason said. "Prohibition is failing, but the supply lines are still open. And I know a man who needs better encryption for his fleet."
"Who?"
Jason smiled.
"Al Capone."