“The problem,” he continued, “is that I can’t
do any of the analysis. I’m rarely directly involved with raw data
and computer analysis any more. If I were to go anywhere near that
data on a regular basis, McMasters would be on my back immediately.
Any kind of blowup is apt to foreclose the investigation
completely.”
“On the other hand,” Danielson looked at him
coolly, “I interact with other data and the computer on a routine
basis.”
Isaacs returned her level gaze. He knew he
did not need to spell out the situation for her further.
Danielson lowered her eyes to the damp spot
on the table again. Isaacs watched her averted eyes and noted the
crinkling between her brows. When she looked up there was a hint of
mischievousness and triumph on her face.
“I can do it! I can add a couple of
subroutines to my fourier transform package. Then I can read in and
print out the seismic data interspersed with the results of other
projects at intermediate stages when no one routinely examines the
output but me. The chances of someone noticing without going
through step-by-step would be very small.”
“I’m sure you can do it. The question is
whether you should and will. If we’re caught at it, your job could
be at stake. I would take responsibility for giving you the order,
but that might not be sufficient. I’m asking a great deal of
you.”
Danielson paused. “Do you really think we can
do any good? We can rehash the old data, but if that’s all, can we
accomplish any more than the Navy?”
Isaacs suddenly pounded his fist onto the
table and then hunched in chagrin as the bartender looked up in
their direction.
“We can think!” he whispered intensely. “The
Navy is sailing in circles, no one is really trying to understand
what is going on!”
He relaxed and put his hand momentarily on
hers. “There’s no doubt we’ll be at a handicap. This analysis by
subterfuge will be far less efficient and useful than the way we
proceeded before. But we can use our heads on the data at hand
rather than hide from it. Any effort at analysis will be preferable
to the fiddling that is going on now. Our Rome is up there in
orbit,” he glanced at the ceiling, “and it could burn any
minute.”
Danielson looked at him. She concluded that
he acted from a variety of motives, but that the overriding one was
a deep concern to prevent the escalation of the conflict with the
Soviets by understanding what was happening to the Earth. She could
not readily accommodate the notion that she might personally affect
global power politics, but she keenly felt the need to come to
grips with the mysterious motions in the Earth that she herself had
coaxed into rational form. Could the alignment of the Stinson and
the Novorossiisk with the trajectory she had mapped out be only a
coincidence? To believe that would be so easy, but, like Isaacs,
she could not do so. The alternative was horrendous to contemplate,
but impossible to ignore. Whatever drove the seismic signal,
killed. What bizarre, implacable thing plagued them?
She recalled her notion that Isaacs might
have had some romantic motive for this meeting. A wave of
embarrassment burst upon her. How trivial that notion was compared
to the fearsome reality.
The idea of violating a directive both
fascinated and terrified her. She nodded at Isaacs, and he leaned
back in satisfied relief.
Jason, he thought to himself. The next step
is to call Jason. Aloud to her he said, “Next weekend is the July
Fourth holiday. I’ll have to ask you to keep it open. We may have
to take a trip.”
*****
Nancy Wambaugh pedaled down the sidewalk on
her bike. School was out for the day, and the crisp air and warm
winter sun of late June felt good in her windblown hair. Sometimes
the teacher made her do things in the first grade she didn’t like,
but she was delighted with the lesson she had learned today. Her
daddy had taught her some time ago to recite, sing-song, where she
lived— “Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.” When she was too
young to be ashamed, she would put a little curtsy at the end,
pleased at her father’s big smile. She had always loved the image
in her mind of a new castle, full of princesses and good things,
but today she had learned a new grown-up thing about it. She had
learned to spell it, and it made a little poem! As she pumped, she
sang, “N, E, W, C,”
Left foot, right foot, left foot, right. A,
S, T, L, E,
Left foot, right foot, left foot, right.
Wham!
Nancy landed on her right elbow and cheek,
feet tangled painfully in the pedals of the bicycle. She sucked in
her breath from the shock and then wailed as she looked at the
blood that began to seep from the long scrape on her arm. She
scrambled away from the bike and looked around, hurt and angry. She
was sure her older brother, David, had bumped her off the bike with
a pillow, that’s what it had felt like when the bike tumbled, like
when they had pillow fights and David knocked her down. She put her
fingers to the sting on her face, and they came away bloody. She
screamed louder.
Her cries drowned the hiss that rose above
her head. The raucous whisper returned some distance away as Nancy
ran toward home.
“MOMEEEE!”
McMasters’ head snapped up from the report he
was reading at the sound of the intercom buzzer.
“Yes, what is it?”
“Alan Mirabeau, from the computer section, is
here to see you.”
“Umm, ah, yes.” McMasters leaned back in his
chair in anticipation. “Send him in.” McMasters watched as the
earnest young man peered around the door and then walked to his
desk.
“Sir? You asked for me to monitor requests
for certain files?”
“Indeed.”
“Well, a request did come this morning for
some of the inactive files associated with Project QUAKER. Here’s a
list of the files that were requested.”
McMasters leaned forward to take the
proffered sheet.
“The files were transferred out for about an
hour, then written back in and deactivated again.”
Long enough to transfer their contents to any
active files, McMasters mused. He glanced over the list. They meant
nothing to him, and everything. “Who requested this?” He knew, but
he wanted to hear.
“It was a written request, sir. Signed by Mr.
Isaacs.”
Mirabeau was nervous. He had dreamed of a
chance like this to interact with the upper echelons, but this was
not what he had envisioned. He wanted terribly to please McMasters,
but not at the expense of getting in trouble with Isaacs, another
member of the ruling circle. He had not realized that McMasters’
seemingly routine and innocuous request was going to put him in the
position of spying on Isaacs. Every fiber of his being was attuned
to sensing the desires of his superiors and satisfying them. He was
in agony at the thought that he could not please one of these men
without incurring the displeasure of the other.
“Can you put a trace on this material?”
McMasters put a finger on the list in front of him.
“But it’s been deactivated again,” Mirabeau
protested, but then the light of understanding spread over his
face, and his admiration for McMasters increased. “Oh, I see. You
think a copy was kept out.”
“Precisely,” McMasters replied.
The young man concentrated for a moment.
“The file names will have been changed, so a
search for them would be pointless. There is no simple way to
search for this material, but I can do a sampling of running jobs
to search for particular combinations of data and instructions that
occur in these files.”
“I want to know when this material is used,
and by whom,” McMasters demanded.
“Yes, sir.”
“That’s all.”
“Yes, sir.” The young man headed for the
door.
“Oh, Mirabeau.”
“Sir,” he replied, swiveling quickly.
“Not a word of this to Isaacs, or his
associates.”
The young man smiled with relief.
“No, sir, of course not, sir.” That solved
his problem of divided allegiance. Now he was acting under direct
orders. He gave a brief bow toward McMasters and then shut the door
behind him.
Saturday morning Isaacs paced up and down in
front of the check-in counter at Dulles. He felt unmoored, detached
from the bearings that had given him stability for almost two
decades of his career. He was desperate to get on with this quest,
but awash with anxiety over the risks he was taking, risks he had
convinced Pat Danielson to share. And now she was late. He stopped
to look at his watch and glance down the passageway toward the main
terminal. He fought down the urge, born of frustration, to blame
her tardiness on her womanhood. She didn’t deserve that. She was
too good, too responsible. She’d have some good excuse. He clinched
his fist on the handle of the slim briefcase he carried and resumed
his pacing.
He prayed that some glimmer of understanding,
some hint of where to turn next, would come from this hurried
unauthorized rump meeting with Jason. He feared that it would prove
nothing but a scamper out onto a limb, with McMasters grinning,
sharpening his saw. He rethought the steps he had taken, the
precautions. He had done everything practical to minimize the
chance that McMasters would stumble onto his resurrection of
Project QUAKER, but the old bird was canny, there was no way to be
absolutely sure. He jumped when the hand grasped his arm. He turned
to see Pat Danielson’s flushed, excited face.
“Bob—Mr. Isaacs.”
His irritation at her faded with the relief
of her arrival and the infectious sparkle in her eyes.
“Right the first time.”
“Bob.” She touched his arm again, still
animated. “I’m sorry I’m late, but I’ve found something. I got up
early to look over my calculations and then lost track of
time.”
“We’ve got a couple of minutes.
Let’s—Here.”
Isaacs looked around, then took her carry-on
bag and led her to a vacant waiting area. As they sat, he inquired
in a low voice, “What have you got?”
“A prediction, I guess,” she almost
whispered, leaning toward him. “I’ve been running my programs since
Wednesday, checking the position and phase of the signal. I can
guess with fair accuracy where the signal will come to the surface
each cycle.
“The question that has been preying on me is
the sinking of the Stinson. That means something destructive can
happen when the signal comes to the surface. So I asked myself, why
aren’t there reports of some destruction on land?”
“I wondered the same thing,” Isaacs remarked.
“One possibility is that much of the path falls along areas of
relatively low population density. Maybe most of the time no one
notices. Another factor is that we don’t really know what to
expect. Sporadic reports of strange events could easily be
overlooked in the undeveloped countries, even here in the United
States.”
“Exactly,” nodded Danielson. “But
occasionally the phenomenon should surface in a region of high
population density. That would increase the probability of someone
noticing something.”
Isaacs raised a quizzical eyebrow.
“Four days from now, it should come up in
Nagasaki about 11:13 in the morning local time,” said Danielson
flatly. “That’s 9:13 Wednesday evening, our time. And nineteen days
later, July 26, it will surface in Dallas about midnight.”
Isaacs leaned back and looked at her.
“How well can you pinpoint the location?”
“There are uncertainties in the period and
location from the seismic data alone, but those are big, sprawling
cities. I am reasonably sure there will be a surfacing somewhere
within their boundaries.”
Isaacs turned to look out of the window,
staring past the airplanes arrayed on the tarmac.
“Would it help you to have some of the Navy
data?”
“Yes, sir, even just one or two recent high
precision locations would allow me to calibrate my curves. We might
be able to pin down the site within. . .” She paused to think.
“Well, maybe a few hundred meters to a kilometer.”
“I may be able to get that,” said Isaacs
intently, returning his gaze to her. “It’s very short notice, but I
may also be able to get some satellite time to monitor the area in
Nagasaki.” He mulled the chances of contacting an agent in Nagasaki
who could make an on-the-spot observation, without tipping his hand
to others in the Agency.
“Okay, Pat, that’s good work. When we get
back, I’ll try to get some of the Navy information so you can
refine your estimates.”
“Aren’t you going to have to tell McMasters,
to issue a warning to Nagasaki?”
“We’re still on shaky ground here. I’m hoping
we can gain enough information on the Nagasaki event that we can go
above board in time for Dallas. And with luck, this trip to Jason
may give us some insight into the whole mess.”
Danielson looked uncertain, but then their
flight was called and they had to queue up to board.
During lunch on the plane, Danielson queried
Isaacs about the nature of the group with whom they would meet.
“These people who serve on Jason—how are they
selected?”
Isaacs paused to swallow a bite of
gravy-swathed grey meat.
“Well, they operate under the auspices of the
Secretary of Defense as you know. They’re quite autonomous though
and select their own members. The idea is, I suppose, that they
themselves are the best judges of whatever arcane talent is
required to participate in a general-purpose think tank.
They receive the standard security clearance,
but the hard part is getting elected—a single no-vote eliminates a
prospective member.”
“They don’t have any particular training at
defense work?”
“No, they’re just required to be the very
best in their chosen area of science.”