Solomon's Orbit Read online

Solomon's lead. 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 didyou have?"

  "Twenty; but these are all I have left," Solomon eagerly replied, hopingat last he'd a customer for the best of his old cars. "They make classiccars, if you'd take the time to fix them up. That one, the Hupmobile, isthe last--"

  "Who bought the others?" the big man interrupted.

  "No one," quavered Solomon, terror gripping his throat with a nervoushand. Had he done wrong to send cars into the sky? Everyone else wassending things up. Newspapers said Russians and Americans were racing tosend things into the air. What had he done that was wrong? Surely therewas no law he'd broken. Wasn't the air free, like the seas? Peopledumped things into the ocean.

  "Then where did they go?" snapped his questioner.

  "Up there," pointed Solomon. "I needed the space. They were too good tocut 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 didwrong. Would they lock him up? What would happen to his cars? And hisbusiness?

  "How did you ... no! Wait a minute. Don't say a word. Officer, go andtell my men to prevent anyone from approaching or leaving this place."The patrolman almost saluted, thought better of it, and left grumblingabout being left out of what must be something big.

  Solomon told the civilians of matching vacuum in intake manifolds topressure from exhaust manifolds. A logical way to make an engine thatwould run on pressure, like satellite engines he'd read about innewspapers. It worked on a cracked engine block, so he'd used scrapmanifolds to get rid of old cars no one would buy. It hadn't hurtanything, had it?

  * * *

  Well, no, it hadn't. But as you can imagine, things happened ratherfast. They let Solomon get clean denims and his razor. Then without abye-your-leave, hustled him to the Ontario airport where an unmarked jetflew him to Washington and a hurriedly arranged meeting with thePresident. They left guards posted inside the fence of Solomon's yard,so they'll cause no attention while protecting his property. A ruggedindividual sits in the office and tells buyers and sellers alike, thathe 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 untilSolomon returns.

  Where's Solomon now? Newspaper stories have him in Nevada showing theAir Force how to build gigantic intake and exhaust manifolds, which theStrategic Air Command is planning to attach to a stratosphericdecompression test chamber. They figure if they can throw it into thesky, they can move anything up to what astronomers now call Solomon'sOrbit, where at last count, sixteen of the seventeen cars are stillmerrily circling the earth. As you know, one recently hit the Russiantelevision satellite.

  The Russians? We're told they're still burning their fingers trying toorbit a car. They can't figure how to control vacuum and pressure fromthe manifolds. Solomon didn't tell many people about the shingles heuses for control panels, and the Russians think control is somehowrelated to kitchen matches a newspaper reporter found scattered behind astation 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.