Forbidden the Stars (21 page)

“Then, in the third sampling, the spectrometer did not find a color to match helium, or any isotope of hydrogen or lithium, discounted the electron count, and dismissed the element as unidentifiable.”

“Unidentifiable? Hydrogen usually is found in pairs—” Michael suggested.

“No, the spectrometer showed nothing even remotely in that spectrum.”

“What about two lithium atoms sharing an L-shell electron?” “No.” George smiled knowingly. “The spectrometer reading is completely out of that range.”

“Then what good is this information?” Michael demanded.

“First of all, we know that whatever this element is, it has two electrons, so obviously we thought it is an isotope of helium, say, a heavy helium to some degree. At first, we dismissed these findings because of the impossibilities of it. First, with a mass of .002 per cent of 10,000 teratons, give or take, would mean about 200 billion tons of helium. At a specific gravity of .000018, that would mean a volume of about 360,000 cubic meters. Initial drill samples indicate the pocket to be no more than 10 cubic meters.”

“What does all that mean?”

“Well, a rough estimate would be an isotope of helium with a nucleus, or atomic weight, of about 271, a specific gravity of about 210 grams per cubic centimeter.”

There was a stunned silence in the room, until Michael said, “Impossible!”

“Certainly…but then, so is luminous or super-luminous speeds.”

Michael rubbed the palm of his hand across his mouth and chin. “All right, for the sake of argument, say this is possible. Either this is a super-heavy helium—”

“Which is beyond the laws of physics,” added Paul, “even more than the impossibilities that we’re discussing now.”

“This, in turn, would mean that we had a super-radioactive helium isotope on our hands. About a thousand times more radioactive than uranium.”

“—Or,” the director prompted.

George nodded. “Or, we have an element that is supposed to have upwards of 271 electrons floating around it. Something with anywhere from 110 to 271 protons in the nucleus, missing its electrons. A super-positively-charged ion.”

“That would be…”

“Anti-radioactive. Although not so far-fetched. It could be compared to solid-state technology that currently exists; like semiconductors and superconductors; though this would be the most pure form found naturally; a supraconductor, if you will. The core temperature of the asteroid is probably what keeps this super-superconducting material so pure. The elemental atoms would want to absorb as many electrons as it could from any source.”

“Or neutrinos, or even photons from gamma rays,” Paul added. “Any available particle. We won’t know until we have a sample.”

“Right, and, Newton’s Law of Physics states, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.”

“Absolutely. So if this new Element absorbs the photon, the energy of that traveling photon is translated as…”

Michael finished for him. “Electricity, heat, light…or…motion.”

“In those amounts, translated at just under the speed of light. There would be a time delay, such as the thirteen seconds between detonation and launch of Macklin’s Rock, while the atoms fill to capacity. Once that has been achieved, the only thing left is, as in any radioactive reaction, for the massive energy to be released. Perhaps through the natural valve created by the Nelson II site drill, or, we think more likely instead of the propellant theory, these photon-charged atoms travel on an anti-magnetic propulsion basis, perhaps even in relation to the sun. A kind of super quantum reaction. We won’t know for certain until we have some of this element for tests.”

“But that kind of sudden acceleration! Wouldn’t that have crushed Alex?” Michael supposed.

Paul spoke up. “Normally, yes. The most-pressure a person could sustain for any length of time is about 8 G’s of force. At 8 G’s, it would take a thousand hours—five weeks or so—to achieve luminous speeds. There is an old theory about light: that it, in and of itself, has no weight. We’ve played with the physics of the Macklin’s Rock phenomenon, and all we can surmise is that, in some way, Element X operates in such a way that everything that piggybacks on it assumes a kind of superluminosity. It would, therefore, feel no effects of the acceleration, even at the supposed five million G’s of force the asteroid would have had to sustain over the course of the first minute. That would have pulverized even diamonds into fine dust.

“The Rock, the TAHU, even Alex, would have taken on an accelerated molecular condition, which could have left the cells of his body in a semi-charged state. This would prove the unofficial theory you presented last week that he is somehow able to manipulate electrical pulses in his immediate area—this phenomenon is not uncommon to people who have been struck by lightning. They, themselves, have become living ions.”

“This all sounds impossible.”

“Rationally, it seems so, but we’ve half a dozen theories that prove it on paper.”

Rocking back and forth in his chair, Michael thought about it. “For the time being, forgetting about the theories… How do we go about finding more samples, and if so, how to we keep it from reacting? What you’re saying is that this thing was in a pocket of minerals, surrounded by…” He looked to Gary, who held up a sheet of paper.

“It was a titanium pocket, if the Nelson II depth indicators were accurate. Our present Nelson II’s allow a small gap of open space between the core of the drill hole and the surface of the asteroid…more than enough room for photons to breach.”

“Then, when the drill pierced through, photons from the sun entered, and—”

“Reaction—or, should I say, anti-reaction.”

“Like the hypothetical tachyon, on this side of the speed of light.”

Michael raised an eyebrow at the possibilities.

“Right. We’ve discussed this with the engineers at CSE, and they think they could easily rig a Nelson II with a vacuum drill. We use a similar drill in the clean rooms when we don’t want samples contaminated.”

Michael knew that, but his mind was buzzing with the new information and theories. “How do we go about determining the location of this…what shall we call it besides Element X? That sounds so mysterious, and we’re already on the road to solving this particular mystery.”

George Markowitz cleared his throat, already prepared for the question.

“Well, unofficially, we’ve been calling it the light-heavy element, as a kind of joke, but I’ve discussed this with a few of the others on the team, and when the time was right, we were going to put forward either the name, Manezum—” He waited for Michael’s reaction. “—or ‘Kinemet.’ “

“Kinemet?”

“Kinetic metal.”

“Appropriate.” For a few moments, Michael considered. “Well, traditionally, the discoverer of an element has the honor of naming it. Since those discoverers are not with us, then I think the task would have to fall to the theorists who first identified and classified the element. In honor of the Manez’s, we could call the anti-reaction ‘the Manez Effect.’ For the element itself, ‘Kinemet’ it is, and I will make a memo of it.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Michael waved his hand at him. “How do we find more of this Kinemet?”

“Well, the most obvious, though hardly the most reliable, method, is to look for anomalies in the masses of charted asteroids when compared to their volumes. Anything that throws the specific gravity of an asteroid to above, say, ten or fifteen—depending on how stringent we want to get—then we give it a closer look. A specific gravity of seven is what we have found as the median of the asteroids in our catalog, with fluctuations between about four and twelve with those rich in heavy metals. But with Macklin’s Rock, we’ve calculated, based on composition and size, and preliminary mass readings without the space tugs, that it had an overall specific gravity of forty-eight.”

“Forty-eight?” Michael could not believe that.

“Yeah. That throws the estimated mass of Macklin’s Rock up to over sixty-eight thousand teratons. Based on that, there must be a number of pockets extant. Only problem with Macklin’s Rock is that it’s about six billion kilometers away.”

“Have you told anybody about this? About the theory?”

“No. When we contacted NASA and went through the SMD mine catalog, we found a number of asteroids with similar anomalies, summarily dismissed as faulty data. We’d like you to propose a follow-up survey to these asteroids.”

“Of course. As soon as you give me the mine numbers and the vacuum drill, I’ll have a survey team there ready to dig. We’ll postpone informing NASA until we have some evidence; then they can go through their catalog and try mining their asteroids.”

The director took in a deep breath.

“So, then, if this is all true, we have to ask ourselves one question…and while we’re discussing impossible theories and new rules of the Laws of Physics, I think I know the answer to my own question.”

“What’s the question?” Calbert urged.

“Why did Macklin’s Rock
stop?
What acted as a dampening rod to stop the luminous reactions?”

The men gathered in the room were, by nature, the best physics theorists Quantum Resources could hire. They did not waste time in stunned silence pondering a question that had not yet occurred to them.

Immediately, Peter suggested,
“Dis Pater?”

Michael shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think
Dis Pater
is nothing more than an indicator, a gauge to measure estimated times of arrival, put there by another space-faring race—whether for our benefit or theirs, that is yet to be determined…

“No, something else stopped the Rock from hurtling out into interstellar space, and I want you to include this possibility in your report.”

The scientists in the room pondered for a few moments before Michael supplied his supposition.

“I think, somehow, Alex stopped it.”

__________

Luna Station :

Luna :

Once the pirate ship
reached docking port at Luna Station, Alex was summoned to the bridge, escorted by First Mate Chung.

He had been keeping his mental eye on the ship’s approach, reveling in the sites that seemed so much more exhilarating than pictures on a holovid; there were not many people who could claim first-hand eyewitness to the docking of a space ship.

At first, he wondered how they had managed to negotiate their landing without the docking governor informing the authorities of the nature of the ship, but then, Alex realized the governor was just a computer that carried out instructions. Whoever programmed the governor was probably in the pay of the pirates, or the pirates’ masters.

On the bridge, Alex faced Captain Gruber for the first time since being brought on board. The bridge, although Alex had surveyed it with his clairvoyance, seemed more ominous and foreboding in person, mostly because the command crew were consciously ignoring him, and the captain was glaring at him as if deciding whether to chew him up, or skin him alive.

Trying to avoid making eye contact under the captain’s glare, Alex flicked his gaze over the DMRs and stat monitors.

As far as he could tell, most of the controls and stations were identical in function and presence as onboard the
Orcus 1
.

On the
Orcus 1
, Alex had studied each station and its purpose, and was confident that he could identify them on the pirate ship’s bridge—or any other space vessel, for that matter.

“Alex,” Captain Gruber’s voice grated in dire warning.

Alex snapped his attention back to the command chair, though did not lift his eyes to the occupant.

“Yes, sir?”

“We are going to depart the ship now, you and I. I’m going to be taking you through the port where there will undoubtedly be other people. You might think about running, or shouting for help, or something equally stupid.”

“Yes, sir.”

Gruber shook his head. “I advise you against it. I could threaten to kill you, but our client has expressly forbidden that kind of action. However, he said nothing about killing civilians.” He pulled out a lasrod; it looked lethal. “If you run from me, I will shoot one person at random until you return. If you shout at someone to help you, I will shoot that someone. Do I make myself perfectly clear?”

Alex’s eyes narrowed. He knew now that these were true pirates, callous and mean. The Doc might be something of an anomaly, but that might have something to do with the fact that he was a doctor, trained to save lives; he had still thrown in with these brigands. Alex suddenly hated every one of them.

He would go along complacently, and not try to escape. He would not, however, fully cooperate if he could help it. He had been on the verge of spilling his secrets to the Doc, explaining about the clairvoyance, and about the other thing.

A few days before, in his weekly allocated shower, Alex noticed a small clump of hair clogging the drain. When he pulled the hair out of the gap, he was shocked to realize it was his own. Since then, he had found strands of his hair everywhere. He was a ten-year-old who was slowly going bald.

As alarmed as he was by this revelation, he knew he had been wise to keep his mouth shut. The less information the doctor had, the better.

“I said, do I make myself clear?” Gruber repeated in a tone that brooked no disobedience.

“Yes, sir.”

Going along with the captain would not only provide for the safety of innocent bystanders, but would allow Alex to see for himself who had contracted their services; if he ever got away, he could report the man behind the kidnapping, with a full description.

“I won’t try anything,” Alex assured the captain.

“Good.” Gruber holstered the rod. “First Mate Chung and the Doc will accompany us. I don’t want to hear a word from you for any reason from now on, got that?”

“Yes, sir.”

Gruber’s eyes turned hard. “What was that?” he demanded in a growl, his teeth grinding together.

“Y—” Alex stopped himself from speaking another word, held himself still.

“That’s better,” Gruber said. “Let’s go.”