THE TESLA PARADOX

“Why are the Mustangs beating their meat?” Blumenkranz said.

With startling rapidity, the silver blips accelerated towards Bachelor’s Den. They became blurs reminiscent of shooting stars. The blurs decelerated abruptly and became silver spheres. The sheer speed of their approach was disorienting. They didn’t lurch as any conventional aircraft or other moving object would when decelerating, but rather came to a complete stop instantaneously. Their motion was perfectly controlled and smooth.

Ostrye’s stomach tensed, his pulsed quickened, and his throat seemed suddenly dry.

They were dead.

Some German operator on the ground or in a nearby observation plane was going to press a button and detonate the Kraut Balls remotely. That or a proximity fuse would engage. Except there had never been a report of Foo Fighters detonating or attacking. And if detonation had been the intent, the Foo Fighters would have spread out amongst numerous bombers, not stayed in a group, and might have rammed Bachelor’s Den to maximize explosive damage.

“I say again,” Smith said. “No one is to open fire.”

Ostrye calmed. Seven spheres hung in the air like balloons yet were moving 182 miles per hour along the same bearing as the B-17, about twenty feet off its left wing. The spheres stretched out perpendicular to the plane’s fuselage. A lead sphere had three spheres on either side, fanned back to form a gradual vee formation more like a mildly curved line.

Ostrye didn’t like having anything so close his wing. Not a friendly, and certainly not Foo Fighters. Turbulence could easily jostle a bomber, causing it to drift ten or twenty feet. Ostrye now had to be even more vigilant, ready to respond instantly if Bachelor’s Den drifted and prevent it from smashing into the Foo Fighters. He was taut in his seat, adrenaline coursing through him.

The spheres were all the same size and looked to be two to five feet in diameter. The separation between each sphere was three to four times the width of any single sphere. This felt sloppy and amateurish to Ostrye. In tight formation, B-17s were supposed to maintain separation equal to about one wing length or about half their width.

The spheres produced no exhaust and had no prop, turbojet engine, or rocket engine. Nothing which could reasonably be interpreted as a form of propulsion. Except perhaps the translucent sheath that seemed to encase each sphere, which blurred each one, and which seemed to be deformed fractionally by the onrushing wind.

Could the translucent sheath be the propulsion?

It had to be.

What else could be?

But how did it propel the sphere?

If it even propelled the sphere.

And either way, what was it?

Ostrye peered at the spheres, squinted, and tried to discern something in the metallic brightness that would give a clue about the propulsion method. It was futile. The spheres were too blurry. And too shiny, reflecting too much sunlight.

Ostrye tore his gaze from the spheres and glanced over at McIntire. McIntire’s brow was furrowed and he glared back ominously.

“Those high speed cameras,” he said, “are beginning to make a little more sense.”