...And We Will Have Snow

Chapter 8-6: Sky Dome

Dema, never one to dwell too long in the infinite, said, "Were you up there all night? When did you come down?"

"We didn't. We left them there," Sedna told her.

"You left your drones in orbit?"

"Sure. I've left mine overnight in worse places. We could bring them back right now if we needed to. But we're thinking of going up again tonight."

"What are you going to do next, fly to the Moon?"

With a straight face Newt said, "No, I'll have to double check the fuel consumption calculations on that. I think we should visit a Sky Dome first."

Sedna could tell he was more than half serious about the Moon, and began to consider the possibility herself. But the Sky Dome idea was immediately inviting.

"Can we do that today?"

"I'll have to call some friends, see if we can arrange it. But I think there's one drifting across the Midwest right now that we could go see."

"Super."

So arrangements were made, and soon Newt and Sedna were back in his apartment, settled on the bed, and their drones were swooping down toward southern Iowa. Sedna had a few minutes to admire the sweep of the plains from above before the Sky Dome came into view. The big balloon was in transparent mode and was hard to see from far above, but they had its GPS coordinates so they were letting their drones fly in on autopilot.

The apartment cylinder was suspended just below the balloon. As they approached Sedna could see differences between this and the usual Sun Dome deployment arrangement. She began to comment on them to Newt.

"It has a big deck at the bottom! It makes it look like a flying top hat!"

"That's where we'll land. Air cars land there, so watch out for them. The cables can reel up the whole deck, then it seals against the bottom of the balloon so the cylinder is safe inside if the weather gets rough."

"This looks very similar to the Sea Shell cylinder, the way the apartment levels are completely enclosed, glassed in."

"That's like our Space Pod too. I think they borrowed our design. Here it's for flying at altitude, where the cylinder has to be pressurized. In a Sea Shell it's to keep the water out, so it has to be engineered a little differently."

"I see air locks at every level. The Sea Shell has those too, so people can enter the water wherever they want. But here the locks seem out of place. Surely no one would want to casually jump out of a Sky Dome!"

She wondered for a moment if the whole structure had been originally designed for a Sea Shell, and adopted for the Sky Dome use without removing the air locks. Then she saw one of the locks open and a person did step out. And hovered for a moment before zipping down to the deck.

"A drone! Of course!" She was accutely embarrassed for a moment. "I of all people should have seen this coming."

"What do you mean?"

"I bet you've known all along that there are hundreds of people flying DDM drones. Especially if they live in a Sky Dome."

"Sure. Maybe thousands by now. You may have been the first."

"That's what I mean. But I've had my attention too much on other matters."

"Like me, I hope?"

She had no appropriate verbal response. Back on the bed she punched his arm. "I mean I've been thinking of Sky Domes hardly at all. What else don't I know about them? Newt, this is exciting!"

They were close enough that they had turned off their GPS autopilots and were getting ready to land on the deck. Newt said, "That must be Andy Metcalfe over there waving at us." He flew that way and landed near the man, with Sedna right beside him. Newt said, "Hi Andy. This is Sedna." Andy stepped forward and they nodded the usual drone greetings.

"Welcome to our Sky Dome," he said. "Before we go inside, maybe I should point out a few things that we can see better from here."

"Please do!" Sedna encouraged him.

"The big difference is the deck we're standing on, and the way it can raise the cylinder up and seal against the bottom of the balloon. But the balloon is different too. It's not so easy to see when it's in transparent mode like now, but the bottom half is shaped more like a cone than a hemisphere."

"Why is that?" asked Sedna.

"It's because our power generators are also DDM thrusters. So we don't need as much hot air to hold us up. We can keep the bottom at a people-friendly temperature. So there's a temperature gradient from the top to the bottom. But that means there's not enough pressure differential at the bottom to hold the spherical shape. Hence the inverted cone."

Andy led them inside the cylinder through a small air lock. As he did, he explained that the big garage door style panel to the right opened into another air lock that could accommodate air cars and cargo drones.

"Our altitude is only about three miles right now," he said, "but even here the air is too thin for human comfort."