Isaacs was pleased that her common sense,
though grim, was asserting itself again.
“Okay, let’s go.” He gave her upper arm a
squeeze as he guided her toward the waiting helicopter. Runyan
hurried forward to help her climb in. Danielson noticed him and
paused. With her mind freshly cleared by the heightened air of
crisis, she decided a show of independence would be healthy for
both of them. She turned to the lieutenant who had delivered the
message, smiled at him and offered her arm. The young man leapt
quickly to her side and helped her to clamber in, leaving Runyan
standing nonplussed on the tarmac. Isaacs watched this quick
tableau and then climbed in himself, jaw muscles knotting as he
clenched his teeth.
The flight up to the research complex headed
by Paul Krone took only fifteen minutes. As they approached they
could tell that Krone commanded a huge authority. There were six or
seven large buildings linked by a maze of roadways. They landed on
a pad in front of one of the buildings and were met by a small,
jaunty man of about sixty. He wore a plain white shirt, green and
white checked pants, and white patent leather shoes. The shirt was
anchored at the neck with a large silver and turquoise string tie
that clashed with his nineteenth hole outfit.
“Hello,” he bubbled. “I’m Ralph Floyd,
executive site manager here. We’re so pleased to have you. We don’t
get attention from the top levels here very often.” Behind his
facade he was troubled, sensing a threat to his conspiracy of
silence over Paul Krone’s attempted suicide. Who were these people
with their peremptory visit, vague credentials?
Isaacs recognized the type. Quintessential
bureaucrat, delighted with the sudden interest that this delegation
purported to represent, but fearful because he didn’t know exactly
who they were or what they wanted. Isaacs eyed the man impatiently.
An ominous image formed in his mind—the Russian laser gathering
power for an imminent onslaught. He gritted his teeth and
determined to play out the cover story until he could get a firmer
feel of the situation. Where in the hell was Krone? Isaacs
introduced the members of his party, and they followed Floyd into
the nearby administration building. Floyd led them to his office
and seated them. Just the right number of chairs had been brought
in.
“Now, what can I do for you gentlemen—and
lady,” Floyd corrected himself. Danielson returned his smile with a
blank stare. The smile faded and he turned to Isaacs.
“This is very short notice, but of course, we
are all at your disposal.”
“The President keeps tabs on all the crucial
components in our research and development program,” Isaacs began,
bluffing his way. “He has heard good things about the work Dr.
Krone and all of you are doing here, and he wants to be brought
more directly up to date.”
Floyd beamed possessively, but there was a
wariness behind his smile.
“We understand this complex is autonomous,”
Isaacs continued.
“Oh, yes,” said Floyd, “our mandate comes
from Los Alamos, and our budget from there and from Krone
Industries, but we are self-contained and Dr. Krone has a free hand
to do as he wishes.” He leaned forward and assumed a frank look.
“Dr. Krone is an authentic Genius, you know.”
Isaacs could hear the capital G, but
something in Floyd’s tone suggested that being a genius was not
something proper folk did.
“He does need some help in practical
matters,” Floyd continued with a self-effacing smile. “I do what I
can to make his job easier.”
“I’m sure,” replied Isaacs with an answering
smile that did not quite reach his eyes.
“We were hoping to see Dr. Krone.”
“Ah,” said Floyd, his face drooping
mournfully, “Dr. Krone has not been well for some time. We have not
seen him at all for a few months. But,” he brightened, “all our
programs are proceeding actively.”
Isaacs divined that Floyd was in manager’s
heaven—all programs routinely active and no boss to foul things up
with new ideas, directions, and suggestions. Managing the affairs
of a genius would be trying. He fixed on the time Floyd mentioned.
A few months. What did Krone’s absence imply? That was about as
long as they had been tracking the black hole. Could that be
coincidence?
“Is Krone available if necessary?” Isaacs
persisted.
“Well, that would be difficult,” answered
Floyd. “He has a house up off the road a few miles back. A quite
nice one actually, built with money from his patents, a product of
his mind, he likes to say. He has always demanded his privacy there
and has no phone. I’m afraid he’s not in a condition to accept
visitors personally.”
“May I ask what the problem is?”
Floyd was silent for a moment, then made a
futile gesture with his hands.
“I’ve been led to understand it’s nothing
serious, that is to say, nothing organic. The stress, though—Dr.
Krone carries many responsibilities.”
Isaacs caught the implication—cracked up,
occupational hazard for geniuses, not the kind of thing that
happens to proper folk. Isaacs fought down a wave of despair. He
could feel the mission slipping away, sabotaged, inconclusive,
leaving them at the mercy of the deadly laser, on the precipice of
war. There were still the facilities to check out. Maybe they would
learn something of interest. They had to move on.
“Well,” he said, with forced conviviality,
“perhaps you would care to give us a look around.”
“Certainly, certainly,” agreed Floyd, anxious
to prove that all was in working order and, despite a suicidal
boss, fit for presidential approval.
Floyd led them to a waiting van and played
tour guide as the driver steered around the maze. There was a small
section of simple tract homes and apartments for the personnel. A
powerful nuclear reactor supplied the prodigious energy needs of
the various experiments. They stopped at several buildings with
Isaacs fuming inwardly with each passing minute. They were treated
to a zoo of fantastic devices that shot, banged, sizzled, lased,
fused, fried, evaporated, imploded, and exploded. Despite his
growing frustration, Isaacs was impressed with Floyd’s acumen in
his own area. While no expert on the basic scientific and
engineering principles, Floyd knew the origin and use of every nut
and bolt and their price to the penny. Apparently Krone was good at
picking people, as well as at creating new inventions.
At last, Runyan drew Isaacs aside.
“This is a waste of time. What the hell are
we doing on this two-bit tour?”
“Goddamnit, we had to start somewhere!”
Isaacs replied just as hotly, in a fierce whisper. He was not sure
what they were looking for, but he was sure they hadn’t seen it. He
had been ticking off the various buildings mentally. As they
climbed into the van once more and Floyd began to make noises about
the end of the tour, Isaacs stopped him.
“We haven’t seen that farthest building, out
near that large cleared area.”
“Oh,” Floyd seemed nervous, tentative. “These
experiments I’ve shown you are all basically mission oriented, and
each has its own project scientist. That building contains Dr.
Krone’s own special experiments.”
He leaned closer to Isaacs and lowered his
voice.
“Frankly, we regard that set up as part of
the overhead. It has been frightfully expensive, but it has kept
Dr. Krone occupied and happy when he was not working directly on
one of the other projects.”
“I’ll need to see it.”
“Oh, but it was shut down when Dr. Krone
became—ill.” Floyd could see visions of presidential commendation
vanishing with the opening of the door to that boondoggle
building.
“Just the same,” Isaacs insisted.
“Very well.” Floyd gestured to the driver,
and they were deposited in the drive of the far building. Perhaps,
he thought, this will finally distract them from the condition of
Krone himself.
Floyd dawdled over his keys, but finally
accepted the inevitable and opened the door. The small group
stopped immediately inside the door and craned their necks upward.
The building was essentially one immense room, ten or eleven
stories tall and somewhat larger in length than width. What
arrested their attention was the behemoth construction that
dominated the room, towering almost to the ceiling. It had the
complex unfinished look of a research project as opposed to some of
the production prototype devices they had just seen. An array of
massive tubes projected radially from a hidden core, giving the
whole structure the look of a giant monstrous hedgehog.
If Isaacs had any doubts that this was it,
the look on Runyan’s face banished them.
Runyan stood transfixed as his brain
catalogued the components he vaguely recognized and wrestled to
identify myriad paraphernalia that were foreign to him. Then he
slowly moved toward the device, circled it and within a minute was
scrambling up ladders and around catwalks in a furious desire to
lay hands on the machine.
Ralph Floyd jittered from foot to foot, aware
of the change in mood that had come over his visitors, but unable
to comprehend it.
Isaacs turned to him.
“Do you know what the purpose of this thing
is?”
“Only very vaguely,” replied Floyd. “I
believe Dr. Krone was studying states of matter at very high
density. I believe he had some goal of generating large amounts of
cheap energy in a new way.”
He snickered behind one hand.
“To tell you the truth, the technicians who
worked in here had a private name for it—Gravel Gertie.”
Isaacs raised an eyebrow.
“Well, when the thing was working, if that’s
what you could call it, it consumed vast amounts of material. Lead
bricks! My god, you don’t know how he had me scouring the whole
country for lead bricks. He’d feed them in over there at a whopping
rate—”
Floyd pointed to an extension of the machine
at the far side.
“They would vaporize and disappear. And at
the same time he’d feed it granite from that hopper up
there—vaporize that too. At one point about a year ago he hired
fifty dump trucks. Fifty of them! And he kept them working around
the clock for a month dumping gravel into that hopper. That’s where
the name came from. Just the overtime alone I had to pay! My head
still spins.
“That’s where that clear area out back came
from, by the way. Disappeared into that hopper.”
Isaacs looked at the little man and refrained
from asking him where he thought all that rock went to. Instead he
said, “My companions and I would like to look around here a little.
Would you mind waiting outside?”
“Oh, no, of course not. I’ll, I’ll just be
outside.” Floyd dreaded the thought of leaving his visitors alone,
unable to make convenient excuses and explanations, but he turned
to leave, pulling the door shut behind him.
Isaacs looked at his watch. 3:40, local time,
twenty till six in Washington. The world was still in one piece.
Apparently rationality reigned, if only for a little while, and
global catastrophe was held in abeyance. He hadn’t really expected
a first strike, yet some small fatalistic corner of his mind would
not have been surprised to see a mushroom cloud rising in the
distance as they walked between buildings. Now he could be
confident their mission would not be a total disaster. If they
could learn nothing from the machine that loomed before him, others
would follow who could. With this the Russians could be stalled, if
not convinced. There was time to look a bit here, he thought, try
to see Krone, and still get back in time to lay the whole story out
for the President. He stood and watched as Runyan scrambled around
the device like a kid on a city park playscape.
A call from Pat Danielson came from the far
side of the room.
After a minute of staring at the gargantuan,
incomprehensible device, Danielson had looked around the room.
Along its perimeter individual cubicles had been partitioned off.
Although dwarfed by the looming device in the center, they were
normal sized rooms, some even fairly large. She walked the
perimeter peering into each through their large glass windows and
discovered they were shops. The first was crammed with
oscilloscopes, amplifiers, power supplies, and other electronic
accouterments. Next was a machine shop with a multitude of drills,
lathes, and saws, and a carpet of coiled, oily shards on the
floor.
After wandering past several more rooms, one
housing a late model large capacity scientific computer, Danielson
found a small windowless room just opposite the door from which
they had entered. She tried the door and stepped in, groping for
and finding a light switch. There was a small but comfortable desk,
shelves filled with books and computer output. What caught her eye,
however, was a bound laboratory notebook resting alone on the desk.
She reached for it and thumbed rapidly through. The book was
three-quarters empty. She found the last entry, read briefly and
then walked to the door.
“Mr. Isaacs,” she shouted, “Bob? I’ve found
something!”
Isaacs rounded the device looking for her and
hurried across the intervening space, stepping over cables strewn
on the floor.
Danielson watched him approach with an air of
excitement.
“Look here! I’ve found a lab book describing
the experimerit.” She twisted to let him read over her shoulder
where her finger marked a place. “The experiment has been a
tremendous success,” Danielson read aloud, “much has been learned
about the properties of matter at ultrahigh densities and the
transition to the final state of that matter. The experiment is not
over, but it is no longer in my hands.”
There was a gap and then other entries in a
more hurried, scrawling manner.
“How could it have gone wrong!” Danielson
read. “The sudden loss of containment is shocking, some
instability, something unexpected in the containment process. The
principle is now established. Must 1) study containment 2) study
implications 3) retrieve them.”