22. fly by night

“This looks like late 1990s or early 2000s tech.  The chip-sets used, the overall board designs, the fact that the boards are separated, with the communications on its own board … these days the communications would be all integrated into one chip on the motherboard, or even into the primary processor” Josy Lynx said to Yellow Yama Leaping Lynx, as they pulled the computer units out from the dash inside the flying saucer in Leo and Catia’s front yard.

“That’s what I suspected when I saw the diagrams, but I’m not a hardware specialist.”

“Well, neither am I, it’s just a hobby.”

“Yellow Tiger warned me you don’t give yourself enough credit” Yellow Yama Leaping Lynx replied.

“What I don’t see here is something that resembles a LoJack or an AirTag.  Just a simple but robust extra-sensitive receiver antennae, and a broadcast-pulse chip using a capacitor that needs very little power-input, but has a strong output signal pulse.  Not for technical communications, like this setup here, but for a tracer signal that can be activated remotely if the unit is lost.  Certainly, there would be one installed somewhere.”

“I was wondering about that myself, but I didn’t see it in the diagrams, either.  We should look for it.”

It didn’t take long for the duo to find the remote-tracer circuitry integrated directly into the saucer’s internal framework hiding behind snap-out panels in the dash, and deactivate it by cutting the power supply pins on the pulse-chip and the receiver-chip.  The communications board was simply unplugged at the main connector, rendering it unpowered, unseen, and useless to the main computer.

“Shall we try?”  Yellow Yama Leaping Lynx said daringly to Josy Lynx, preparing to turn the system on.

“Never try.  Do.” Josy said, daring her back.

The navigation screen came to life, as the twin thin outer-perimeter rings around the saucer began to spin in opposite directions along the same geometrical "plane", one directly above the other, faster and faster.

“It sounds like a Tesla driving in reverse” Yellow Yama Leaping Lynx said to Josy Lynx.

“Must be for stability control.  Gyroscopic.  I guess.  Do you think you could fly it?”

“Yes, I do” Yellow Yama Leaping Lynx said with confidence.

They consulted with Violet after she returned in Leo’s sister’s car with Jasmine.  Yellow Yama Leaping Lynx flew the saucer out of the front yard where it would attract attention in the morning, and set it down on top of Josy Lynx’s bus.  It had fancy-dandy electro-magnetic feet on the landing gear that locked it on.  Then Josy unplugged the navigation computer from the system, thinking the saucer’s main control computer could not even lift off without it.  Josy grabbed some caver’s rope out of his storage locker; it was like climbing rope, but stretches far less, is more durable, and typically holds more weight-load, he told Yellow Yama Leaping Lynx.  “It could lift a car, even your van.”  He used the rope to tie the saucer on the top of the bus, just in case.  It was still unclear where the main power supply was coming FROM … it seemed it had something to do with the gravitron system, perhaps converting gravity to electricity?  But if it shut down, the landing gear would no longer hold…  Josy grabbed a handful of wrenches from his toolkit and held them to the ceiling inside his bus.  The electro-magnetic feet of the saucer on the roof held the wrenches in place.  “If they drop while I’m driving, I know the saucer is letting loose, and can stop quick before it shifts from vibration and inertia.”

The team departed the house, driving the rental Caddie, Leo’s sister’s car since it had been hidden in the garage, and Josy Lynx’s bus.  They left Leaping Lynx’s parked van in the driveway.  It was her full-time home away from home, but she had a brick house tucked away in Colorado where her real personal valuables were stored.  They met Leo in the rental truck on the road less than an hour after departing, and Pink Panther was driving Leo’s car.  They decided not to leave it at the rental store.

Violet directed them to a storage facility in the middle of the night, prepaid 6 months before by the F.B.I. as an emergency safehouse storage location, and they parked the bus and Leo’s vehicles in enclosed units, out of site.  They transferred everything into the U-Haul truck, including the flying saucer.  It was a trick that Yellow Yama Leaping Lynx had to figure out, to fly the saucer in the back door slightly angled to clear the doorway and the overhead roll-up door tracks.  Then it sat down on the floor inside the U-Haul box truck with ½-inch of clearance on either side.  They managed to leave the storage facility before 3:00AM, and drove the backroads as fast as they could, heading northwest, towards God’s Country in the Finger Lakes region of rural central upstate New York.