The group of scientists fell silent,
thinking. Fletcher and Noldt muttered to one another.
The idea hit Runyan like a physical blow.
Suddenly he was encased in a suit of armor from neck to groin,
three sizes too small. He stared at Danielson, and she returned his
look, her right eyebrow arched quizzically.
Runyan felt as if he were balanced on a
vertex. He sensed the grip of forces of which he had been unaware
until moments ago. Danielson’s words had lifted a curtain to reveal
the crest and the chasm yawning immediately before him. Random
moments from his career flashed out of his subconscious, and he
perceived them as stepping stones that had led him inexorably up to
this teetering edge. He had no choice but to take the step that
would send him plummeting headlong down the other side.
He knew the antagonist. He knew the
mathematical structure of its bones and sinews, its space-time
stretched tight on this frame. He knew the roaring cauldron deep
inside which marked the boundary where knowledge stopped, but from
where new beginnings would inevitably arise. He knew the men and
women, past and present, who had pieced it together in their
imaginations, fragment by careful fragment.
But this was not imagination. This was not
mathematics. This was the most delicate dreams of the intellect
come real in nightmare fashion. And that reality changed
everything. Everything.
He had an urge to close his mind, as if by
sealing off the thought he could seal the abyss, but he knew it was
there. A dynamic, hurtling, all-consuming void.
“Do you have a pen, some paper?” Runyan
whispered hoarsely to Danielson. He was scarcely breathing.
Danielson rummaged in her purse and produced
a pen and a small airline cocktail napkin she had salvaged on the
flight down.
“I only have—” she started to say.
“Fine,” Runyan breathed, grabbing the pen and
napkin, “that’ll do.”
He pressed the napkin onto his bare knee and
began to scratch symbols and numbers on it, oblivious to the
uncertain, dispirited conversation in the room. Danielson was
confused by his action, but could feel a new tension radiating from
him. She had trouble following the discussion. Even though he was
completely ignoring her, she felt partially mesmerized by Runyan’s
newly focused intensity. She found this intensity, contrasted with
a potential for warm amiability, strangely attractive.
Runyan was uncertain how much time had passed
when he finally drew a long breath and let it out slowly. He handed
the pen back to Danielson and locked eyes with her for a long
moment. Then he stuffed the napkin into a pocket of his shorts and
waited for a break in the discussion. At an appropriate point he
poked a finger up.
Phillips nodded at him. “Dr. Runyan. You have
a thought?”
Runyan lapped his fingers together and leaned
forward, forearms on his bare knees. He pressed his thumbs in
opposition, looked down at his hands and then up toward Phillips.
His terrible conclusion was inescapable. Now he had to lead his
colleagues down the same path.
“Let me see if I can speak to what is
bothering all of us,” he said slowly and reflectively. “We’ve been
unable to account for any extraterrestrial source, natural or
artificial. The fact that we’re dealing with something that has a
fixed direction in space suggests an origin out there.” He jerked a
thumb toward the ceiling. “But the basic phenomenon occurs within
the depths of the Earth.” He jabbed a long forefinger toward the
floor. “It only comes to the surface periodically.”
Danielson sat tensely on the sofa, partially
turned toward Runyan, watching his eyes and mouth as he spoke. The
words were neutral enough, but seemed darkly ominous to her, a cold
vapor filling the room.
“Incredible as it seems,” Runyan continued,
“I think the conclusion we’ve been avoiding is that there is
actually something inside the Earth, something moving around
through the Earth, triggering seismic waves and tunneling holes as
it goes.”
He glanced sideways at Danielson, his eyes
crinkled by a faint smile. “I don’t remember whether it was
Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe who argued that one should throw out
every impossible explanation, and the remaining one, no matter how
improbable, must be the truth.” The smile faded. “I’ve done
something like that in my own mind and reached a conclusion, but
it’s bizarre, and I don’t want to prejudice you with it yet. I’d
like you to follow this line of reasoning and see where you think
it leads.”
Runyan seemed to be sitting calmly, looking
around at his colleagues, but Danielson happened to glance down at
his feet. His toes were curled around the end of the thongs,
gripping them, pale splotches on the knuckles contrasting with the
tanned skin.
Across the room, Isaacs was staring at
Runyan, mentally groping, trying to grasp the implications of the
scientist’s statements. The quiet was broken by Fletcher who sat up
straight in his chair and muttered, “Oh, Jesus.” He swiveled to
look at Runyan. The two locked gazes and stared at one another for
an extended moment. Then Fletcher broke off and waved a hand
inviting Runyan to take the floor.
Runyan stood and made his way slowly to the
blackboard, deep in thought. With a habit born of long hours in the
classroom, he selected a moderately long piece of chalk from the
tray before turning to face his audience.
“Let’s forget the seismic signal itself and
concentrate on the derived trajectory for a moment,” he began,
unconsciously slipping into a pedagogical tone. He turned to the
board and sketched a circle representing the Earth, with a curved
arrow above it indicating the direction of rotation. Then he added
a straight line beginning a third of the way from the equator to
the North Pole. The line passed through the center of the circle
and out the opposite side.
Watching the tip of the chalk, Danielson
suddenly pictured a stiletto, piercing the Earth. Her shoulders
contracted in a brief shiver.
“The source moves like this,” Runyan tapped
the line with the chalk, “with a period of eighty minutes and
thirty seconds. We can think of the Earth as a sphere of roughly
constant density, which produces a certain gravitational potential.
An object falling freely in that harmonic potential would oscillate
back and forth along a line. To close approximation, the line would
point to a fixed direction in space. The period would be eighty
some-odd minutes.” He looked at Fletcher, then at Leems.
“Essentially the same as that of an Earth-orbiting satellite.”
There were scattered rustlings in the room as
a couple more individuals began to see where Runyan’s arguments
were leading.
“Now, if we consider the real Earth,” Runyan
continued, “there would be some differences. A minor factor would
be that the density of the Earth is not constant. An orbiting
object would feel a somewhat different gravitational pull than the
idealized case I’ve described. That would alter the period of the
trajectory somewhat. There could also be precessional effects on
the orientation, but all that’s negligible for now.”
He looked around the room, focusing briefly
on Danielson. Her stomach tightened as if his gaze were a physical
grip. His face was a sharp image against blurred surroundings. She
could make out beads of sweat along his hairline.
“The significant feature,” Runyan continued,
“is that the path is anything like a free orbit since, as we all
know, the Earth resists quite effectively the attempt of any
material body to move through it. If I’m on the right track, the
orbiting body can’t be ordinary material.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Gantt.
“You’re proposing that something is actually orbiting within the
Earth?”
“C’mon!” snorted Leems.
“That’s the only picture that makes sense to
me,” Runyan replied, his voice tensing at the implied skepticism.
He turned to the board and drew heavily, repeatedly, on the line
that slashed through the circle. “Back and forth on a line fixed by
the inertial frame of the stars, independent of the rotation of the
Earth. That’s been one of the strangest features of the story Dr.
Danielson has told us.
“The problem,” he continued, “is to identify
what the thing could be. It’s apparently slicing through the Earth
like the proverbial knife through butter. That seems to call for
something significantly denser than the densest parts of the mantle
and core, denser than anything occurring naturally on Earth or made
in any laboratory.”
“I don’t see where you’re going,” said Leems
sceptically. “Are you talking about some superheavy element?”
Runyan glared at him. He could see the answer
so clearly. Was Leems being deliberately obtuse?
“In a sense,” he replied, coolly. “My
thoughts go to stellar examples, where high densities naturally
result from huge gravitational fields.” He glanced at Fletcher who
gave a brief nod. “White dwarf matter, which is crushed until atoms
blur into one another, exists at densities from a million to a
billion grams per cubic centimeter. Neutron star material is even
more extreme. Matter is squeezed until atomic nuclei dissolve at
densities greater than a hundred trillion grams per cubic
centimeter. If you could drop a chunk of either kind of matter on
Earth, it would meet virtually no resistance and plunge to the
center and pass through to the opposite side as it performed an
essentially free orbit.”
“Are you suggesting a neutron star is
orbiting inside the Earth?” asked Gantt incredulously.
“No,” Runyan replied, frowning. “A full-sized
white dwarf would be as large as the Earth and have as much mass as
the Sun. A neutron star would only be a few miles across, but again
would have the mass of the Sun. The Earth’s orbit hasn’t been
appreciably affected since the astronomers haven’t raised an
uproar, so whatever we are dealing with can’t have much mass.”
“Then you’re talking nonsense, aren’t you?”
It was a statement more than a question from Leems.
Runyan ignored him. “We might consider a
small piece of a neutron star or a white dwarf, but we understand
the physical processes involved there reasonably well. Freed from
the gigantic self-gravity, a small piece would explode under its
own outward pressure. What we need is something that will remain at
high densities even though it has relatively low mass. Although I
can list reams of practical objections, I can only think of one
possibility that fits the picture we now have.”
Leems was exasperated. “Honest to god, Alex,”
he said in a disgusted voice, “you’re not making any sense at all.
What in the hell are you getting at?”
Runyan’s resolve to proceed dispassionately
dissolved. “Oh, for chrissake, Harvey!” he stormed. “Can’t you see
it?”
He was suddenly angry that the responsibility
for the message was his. He aimed his fear and frustration at
Leems.
“It’s a black hole!” he raged. “The Earth’s
being eaten by a goddamned black hole!”
Danielson recoiled back against the cushion
of the sofa at Runyan’s outburst, her face draining of color. Black
holes? Her mind reeled at his vehemence, the radical leap of his
argument. Black holes had to do with stars, space, galaxies! Not
downtown Dallas, Nagasaki. What in god’s name was he talking
about?
“Oh, bullshit!” blurted Leems. He locked eyes
with Runyan and then looked down and away to a neutral point in the
room.
“What?” demanded Noldt. “What did he say?”
Fletcher leaned over to him and began an intense reprise of
Runyan’s arguments.
Runyan continued to glare at Leems and made
no attempt to respond to the commotion. He felt the first wisps of
relief that the burden was no longer solely his to bear.
Good god! Have I blundered? Isaacs thought to
himself as he sat upright in his chair. With a sinking sensation,
he looked quickly from Runyan, to Leems, and back to Runyan. Was
coming to Jason a grievous error? Was his innate distrust of these
far-out academics finally justified? He could feel his months of
work and risk slipping away. What a disaster, if all he had to take
back to Drefke was some harebrained idea. He turned to Phillips
with a look of dismay.
Phillips saw the startled concern on Isaacs’
face. As he stood and moved to the front of the room beside Runyan,
he surveyed the others. Leems was red-faced, as if he’d picked up
the color Danielson had lost. Fletcher was still explaining, waving
a finger back and forth, tracing a trajectory in front of the nose
of a bewildered Ted Noldt. Gantt and Zicek were attempting a
disjointed analysis across the length of the room, their voices
ringing with surprise. Phillips motioned for quiet.
“Gentlemen,” Phillips said firmly, “let’s see
if we can have an orderly and objective discussion of this
remarkable suggestion Dr. Runyan has made.” Turning to Runyan he
continued, “Alex, you’ll have to forgive our collective skepticism,
but this notion strains all credibility. From where could such a
thing have come? What could it be doing in the Earth? Surely,
there’s a simpler explanation.”
When he answered, Runyan’s voice was still
too loud, his normally avuncular tone replaced by a hint of
righteousness.
“Simple? What we all crave is a less radical
solution. We’ve striven for that and come away empty-handed. I
submit we won’t find a simple solution in the sense you mean,
Wayne. Only an orbit fits the odd trajectory. Only an orbit would
have a fixed period and a direction anchored in space, independent
of the Earth’s rotation about its axis and revolution about the
Sun. Can anyone deny that a simple orbit fits the picture?”
The rhetorical question was greeted with
silence.
Runyan paced back and forth in a tight little
orbit of his own. Danielson’s thoughts were awash with the idea he
had thrust upon them. Her eyes watched the muscles flexing in his
Sun-tanned legs. His tone became calmer.