Danielson maneuvered her chair so she could
see. Gantt pointed to the luminescent figures. “You see the
seismometers saturated when it got too close, so they stopped
giving any useful information.” He played with the keys some more.
“The gravimeter here in camp also went off scale. They’re meant to
measure fluctuations of a part in a billion, and this one was at
one percent before it pooped out. The outer stations were fine,
though; here’s the mass they detected, a bit over ten million
metric tons. That’s just about what you guessed, wasn’t it,
Alex?”
“Pretty close,” admitted Runyan. He thought
for a while and then asked, “How long were the seismometers
inactive?”
Gantt consulted the computer and then
replied, “Twenty- eight point— well, call it an even twenty-nine
seconds, why?”
“Maybe we ought to go back to your tent where
we can talk this over,” Runyan replied.
They left the equipment tent and walked
toward Gantt’s.
Wary glances followed them. All over the camp
men stood in groups of three and four, discussing the strange event
in muted and not so muted tones. Runyan and Danielson occupied the
chairs they had first sat in upon their arrival, only a few hours
ago. Gantt disappeared inside the tent and returned with three
styrofoam cups and a bottle of bourbon.
“A bit early in the day for normal
circumstances,” he said, “but I could use a little bracer. Will you
join me?”
The other two nodded their acceptance and
received their cups in turn. Runyan took a fairly healthy slug and
looked on with mild surprise as Danielson drained hers in one quick
motion and held it out to Gantt for a refill.
Danielson caught Runyan’s look, grinned, and
said in a voice hoarsened by the liquor, “All us Virginians are
bourbon drinkers, suh!”
Gantt smiled at the quip and raised his cup
to gesture a toast, “Well, here’s to the future; may it not be
entirely black.” He continued with a shake of his head, “I must say
that was the most god-awful feeling. I had the definite impression
that you people had snuck up on either side of me and lifted my
chair and then dropped it. All this instrumentation and electronics
are well and good, but they’re no substitute for being grabbed and
shaken to let you know you’re up against the real thing. The idea
that that thing actually came up within, what, two or three yards
of the tent? Jesus!” He drained his cup and poured another
dollop.
“Did you feel a sideways pull?” inquired
Danielson. “That’s what bowled me over. I had one foot in the air
when someone raised the floor and then gave me a shove.”
“I guess maybe I did,” answered Gantt, “but I
was sitting down, so that took some of the edge off.”
“You’re right. The thing must have come up
just outside the tent,” Runyan joined in. “Must have been one of
those times when it got jarred off course somehow. Actually, in
spite of the low probability, it’s lucky no one was hit. I was
thinking, Pat may have had a good idea; it might be of some
interest to find the hole it made coming out and the other falling
back in. Apparently that occurred just a bit further to the east,
near the edge of camp. I think we may have learned something
important here, in addition to having the wits scared out of
us.”
“What’s that?” asked Gantt.
“Well, there are three things that come to
mind. First, we’ve confirmed the fact that it comes down near where
it went up. That’s significant.”
“I thought of that. It’s the same as Dallas,”
said Danielson, her eyes shining. “It must be moving with the same
tangential velocity as the surface of the Earth as it comes
up.”
Gantt looked puzzled, and Danielson explained
to him, “Remember that, because it rotates, the surface of the
Earth is actually moving at about a thousand miles an hour. If this
thing were literally moving on a line pointed at a fixed direction
in space, then as it reached the surface we would move out from
under it at just that speed. How long did you say it was up? About
a half of a minute? Let’s see, the Earth’s surface rotates about
twenty miles in a minute or about ten in the time the thing was
up.”
“Closer to seven,” said Runyan with
unconscious pedanticism, “but clearly the relative motion could
have been much greater than it actually was.”
“I guess I still don’t quite see,” began
Gantt.
“The point is,” explained Runyan, “that when
it comes to the surface of the Earth it’s virtually at rest with
respect to the local terrain. That can’t be an accident. It must
have begun that way. We can rule out the idea that it’s a naturally
occurring black hole. To have it moving at precisely the Earth’s
orbital velocity so that it could be trapped was asking a lot. To
insist that it also move in consonance with the rotation of the
Earth is out of the question. I could never put any store in the
idea anyway, but now I think we can really lay it to rest.
“Let me put it another way,” he continued,
“if you were to imagine taking a black hole and holding it in your
hand so that both you and it were moving along with the surface of
the Earth, and then you were to drop it, and let it orbit freely,
the result would be just what we have seen. It would drop down,
pass to the far side of the Earth and return. It must return to
precisely the same altitude as that from which it was dropped, and
at its highest point, when it momentarily has no velocity toward or
away from the Earth’s center, it must have precisely the same
sideways motion as when it was released. To someone moving with the
same motion, that is, with the velocity of the Earth’s surface, it
would seem to come momentarily to an exact standstill.”
“But it didn’t stand still,” objected Gantt,
“that is, it continued on up.”
“That’s my second point,” replied Runyan.
“One we kicked around in La Jolla. We know how far up it went. It
took about fifteen seconds to go up and an equal amount to return.
At one gee, that’s a distance of about three thousand four hundred
feet. What’s the altitude here?”
“About twenty-three hundred feet,” said
Gantt.
“Then apogee is about five thousand seven
hundred feet above sea level. A bit over a mile. That must be the
altitude from which it was originally dropped.”
Before either Danielson or Gantt could
comment, Runyan was on his feet. “Let me get something out of my
luggage.” He tossed off the remaining bourbon in his cup, set the
cup on the chair arm, and strode purposefully over to the mess tent
where their luggage had been placed. The cup blew off, and Gantt
rescued it from the ground. Runyan rummaged for a moment and then
returned with a stack of computer output. He regained his seat and
balanced the paper on his knees so he could easily riffle the
accordian-folded sheets.
“Another little project of mine,” he
explained. “Pat, you said that in Dallas your agents thought about
forty seconds elapsed from the time you first heard the noise to
when it returned. That gives an estimate of the altitude to which
it rises. I figured they could be off by ten percent either way.
The Seamount event gave a more accurate estimate. I narrowed down
the maximum altitude to within three hundred feet. What I’ve got
here is a list of every point on Earth that falls along the locus
of the orbit and within three bins in altitude, each spanning a
hundred feet. With this new precise data of yours, Ellison, we can
throw out two-thirds of the possibilities. There are surprisingly
few left. Few enough that they can all be checked in a finite time.
There are a couple in California, a few in Arizona, a small batch
in New Mexico and that’s it for the continental United States.” He
looked on down the list, “There’s a couple of places in Morocco,
one in Algeria, some in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, none in
Tibet, it’s all too high, and finally, in the northern hemisphere,
several places in China.” He flipped to another sheet. “The
southern hemisphere is even more sparse. A few places on either
side of the Andes, in Chile and Argentina. That’s about it.
Everything else is lower, mostly ocean.”
Gantt’s brows knitted in concentration.
“We’re ahead of you there, Alex,” Danielson
smiled slightly, her voice touched with pride. “I made up a similar
list of sites after we got back from La Jolla. Bob Isaacs had
ordered up a photomontage along the trajectory several months ago.
The problem was we didn’t know what to look for, and there was too
much area to cover. He just told me that we are collecting new
satellite photos of the spots on my list; they’ll be ready tomorrow
morning.”
She craned her neck and looked down his list,
flipping the pages back and forth.
“I think I’ve got everything you have here,
and a few more. Here in Chile, for instance, north of Santiago.
There’s a shallow valley there and actually two points, not just
one, a few kilometers apart.”
She looked up at Runyan, and he locked her
eyes with a long, cool stare. Then he gave her a broad, friendly
wink, and her heart jumped.
“You said you had three points?” Gantt
prompted him to continue.
“This may be a bit more subtle, but just as
important.” Runyan leaned forward and put his stack of computer
printout on the ground. He retrieved his cup from Gantt and poured
himself a small bit of bourbon. Resting his upper forearms on both
knees and rotating the cup between his palms, he looked up at
Danielson from beneath his brows. “Let me ask you, why is there
such a small motion with respect to the surface?”
“But you just answered that!” objected
Danielson. “Its motion at its highest point is set by the initial
conditions with which it’s released. If it moved with the surface
at first, it always will.”
“Always?”
Danielson stopped and stared at the
bewhiskered scientist, her eyes shifting back and forth between
his. Finally she said, “You said earlier there must be
perturbations, friction. The orbit can’t be perfect, it must shift
slowly with time.”
“Now I’m with you,” broke in Gantt. “The
orbit must shift slowly with time, but it hasn’t shifted much.” He
looked at both of them. “So it hasn’t had time.”
“That’s just the sort of thing I’ve been
trying to compute,” said Runyan. “My model isn’t perfect yet, but I
have some feeling for the scale of things. I would have to say this
thing couldn’t have been around for more than ten years, and
probably less.”
“What you’re saying,” said Danielson, “is
that we only picked up a record of it recently because it’s only
been around recently.”
“Let me get this straight then,” Gantt said
slowly. “You’re arguing that someone or something, somehow, made a
black hole of about ten million tons not more than a few years ago,
releasing it at rest from a point on the Earth’s surface about six
thousand feet above sea level.” His forehead wrinkled in
consternation.
“When we examine those places,” Danielson
said, pointing at the computer paper at Runyan’s feet, “do you
expect to see something definite?”
“Maybe not,” said Gantt, looking at Runyan.
“Granted that we’re dealing with a small black hole, and that it
was created artificially, which seems to follow.”
Runyan nodded assent.
“Then,” Gantt continued, “we’re also talking
about something beyond our technological feasibility. Suppose the
only thing remaining at the ‘launch site,’ if I may call it that,
is a burned spot and the impression of three round pods—I believe
that’s the classical imprint of a UFO.”
“If we know where to look, we can find that
too,” said Danielson, “if not with satellites, then a direct
fly-over.”
“I suppose we must keep an open mind,” said
Runyan, “but I have a feeling that the clues will be more
definite.”
They lapsed into silence. Gantt broke it with
a shake of his head. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but despite the
evidence, I find the whole thing too incredible to believe. An
artificial black hole planted here in the Earth—I mean, my god!” He
raised his hands and eyes in an imploring salute to the skies.
“Alex,” he continued, “you said a while ago
you were relieved the issue was now out in the open. I must say I
don’t feel that way at all. After all, proving that we are dealing
with a black hole is only the tip of the iceberg. Until we know who
and why, we’ve barely begun to plumb the mystery. The most
stupendous, terrifying, and profound aspects of this situation
would seem to be before us.”
He was silent for a moment and muttered,
“Christ,” and poured himself another jigger of bourbon and drank it
off.
Runyan had slumped in his chair, chin on his
chest. “I suppose you could be right, Ellison,” he said. “I have a
hazy idea of what’s going on that suggests to me that, conceptually
anyway, we’re over the hump.”
“How could we be? What in the world are you
thinking?” Gantt demanded.
Runyan waved him off with a hand. “It’s too
vague. I’m probably being naive or stupid or both.”
Gantt glared at him, uncomfortable with this
dismissal.
At last he said, “Well, I don’t know about
you, but I’ll go nuts if I just sit here and think about it. I’ve
got to do something.” He stood up and looked around
impatiently.
“Should we have another look for a hole in
the ground?” asked Danielson. “I really wasn’t very thorough.”
“We could do that,” agreed Gantt. “We don’t
really want to attract too much attention to what went on here. On
the other hand, if we don’t look now, any sign may get covered up
by people shuffling around.”
The moment of tenseness forgotten, they
discussed the problem of security for awhile and finally decided
they would stage a reenactment. This would show who was knocked
down by the passage of the hole, thus showing where to look without
giving away their object. Gantt would then order some rearrangement
of equipment that would occupy most of the members of the
entourage. This would give Runyan and Danielson a chance to search
the ground for signs of penetration without drawing notice.