‘Okay, but that last injector was a bastard. I had to remake it four times before I could get it to fit into the exciter housing. How are things going here?’
‘We’re switching on the detector today. It will take about a week for the system to get down to its operational temperature. We should have our first proton collisions in about ten days.’
‘What about the antimatter feed you were having trouble with?’
‘I’ve sorted that. Assuming the flow of Higgs particles is constant, we should be able to start the distillation unit in about two weeks.’
‘I hope your calculations are right. The Assembly Hall boys want to start environmental testing next week, and the launch date’s only six months away,’ Orion said, returning the photographs to the colonel’s briefcase.
Anubis glanced up and saw Axel’s irritated gaze staring at him through the mirror. He smiled and mouthed a discreet kiss. ‘Take us directly to the detector hall, Axel, we don’t want them switching it on without us,’ he quipped.
Dr. Bingham entered the hall like royalty. Everybody who was anybody at CERN was there, plus an international cohort of newspaper, TV and science journalists. The crowded room exploded into cheers and clapping as he walked to the podium set under the towering, barrel-like structure of the new detector. A young intern, who could have graced the cover of Vogue, handed him a glass of champagne as he stepped up to address his audience. He stood for a moment, smiling broadly, waiting for the adulation to subside, acknowledging familiar faces amongst the rows of VIPs and press reporters sat before him. At the rear of the hall, TV camera crews and photographers jostled for the best angle for their lenses. He glanced up and waved at the gantries overhead, lined with the people that really mattered, the engineers and technicians who had converted his dream into a reality. Anubis gazed through Bingham’s eyes, humbled by his popularity and, for the first time, felt tinged with an element of guilt about the true purpose of the Atlas Three detector.
As expected, Dr. Bingham’s presentation was a triumph of motivation, culminating with him dramatically smashing a bottle of champagne against one of the detector’s steel supports to rapturous applause. As the shattering glass hit the floor, the hall was filled with a low electrical hum as the detector’s superconducting magnets were energised for the first time. Brian circulated amongst his guests, discussing his hopes for the new detector and speculating on how long it would be before the first temporal elements were discovered. He likened it to when the Higgs Boson was first detected, using the LHC Compact Muon Solenoid detector in July, two thousand and twelve. As the hall started to empty, Anubis took control of Bingham’s body, walking it across the hall to join the Gatekeeper. Axel and Natalie were huddled in a corner having consumed a bottle of champagne each. The lion in Axel had started to emerge after only a couple of glasses, convincing Natalie that she had found a kindred spirit, so the pair had sat through the presentation consuming champagne and relating stories which confirmed that all men were bastards.
Anubis beckoned the Gatekeeper to follow him, nodding towards the DTC laboratory. They entered the room and he locked the door behind them saying, ‘What do you think?’ In the centre of the laboratory stood the trihadronite distillation plant. It was toroidal in shape and about the size of a small family car.
Orion walked around the machine sliding his hand across its polished stainless-steel contours, ‘It’s fantastic,’ he said, genuinely impressed with the results of Anubis’ work, ‘What’s the yield going to be?’
‘About one point four kilos a week.’ Anubis walked across to the workbench and, picking up one of the four stainless steel flasks standing on it, removed its cover. ‘Each of these holds four kilos. Once the distillation unit’s running, I’ll be sending you one every three weeks.’
Tom’s first shot through the bathroom door had clipped Daniel’s shoulder, sending a spray of blood across the room to form a poppy-like pattern around the embedded bullet. By the time the door was smashed open, Spiro had cloaked Daniel and spirited him out of the bathroom, barging past the SWAT officer as he passed through the doorway. They were now standing in the Oval Office, Daniel gritting his teeth against the pain of the bullet wound.
Tom stood over the SWAT officer protecting the president, sweeping the interior of the bathroom with his handgun held in outstretched arms. Satisfied that the room was secure, he relaxed and lowered the weapon calling out, ‘All clear in here!’ then, turning to the president, offered his hand.
Mr. President wasn’t happy. He pushed the SWAT officer aside and ignoring Tom’s outstretched hand, stood up. He said nothing, giving Tom a hard I’m pissed off stare as he marched out of the room. Tom walked over to the rear wall and examined the imbedded bullet surrounded by the blood pattern. Two other Secret Service officers were now standing behind him and, instinctively knowing they were there, he said, ‘I want the blood matched and the bullet recovered.’ With no obvious assailant, if it hadn’t been for the spray pattern on the wall, Tom might have thought the president had been at the white stuff again. The First Lady was known to keep a little stash in their bedroom, but that was a forbidden subject. Sheepishly he returned to the Oval Office. The president was sitting at his desk talking to his wife on the internal phone, reassuring her that he was safe.
He put the handset down and looked up, ‘Well, have you got something to tell me?’ he asked Tom.
By now, Daniel and Spiro had made their way through the secret tunnel to the East Wing basement. Secret Service, SWAT and household staff seemed to be running in all directions and, on at least two occasions, had collided with Daniel, forcing him to let out a muffled cry of pain. Surprisingly, the closer they got to the visitor’s entrance, the fewer security staff were in view, almost as though the situation was being kept under wraps. But as they skated around the final corner, Spiro brought Daniel to a sudden halt. Unlike the day before, the visitors’ entrance was now guarded by two, heavily armed SWAT officers, their eyes scanning the lobby. Spiro slowly advanced, passing through the security arch which immediately started bleeping; everybody looked in their direction. ‘What do we do now?’ Daniel blurted.
The scanner operator glanced at his colleague, ‘Did you hear that?’
‘I can’t hear shit… the music in that titty-bar last night must’a been a thousand decibels.
‘Yeeaa, but it was worth it… those girls were fucking hot!
Convinced he was suffering from tinnitus, the operator thumped the scanner control panel with his fist, turned off the alarm, and gave a thumbs-up to the SWAT team.
Spiro crept forward until he was standing next to the door, and as it opened, dragged Daniel out onto the sidewalk.
Amy opened the hotel bedroom door to find Daniel slumped against the wall, with Spiro, now incarnated as a chambermaid, standing next to him. ‘What’s happened!’ she cried out, helping him into the room.
‘It was a total disaster,’ he said, carefully removing his wounded arm from the blood-soaked sleeve of his raincoat.
‘Did you speak to Mr. President?’
‘Yes, I told him everything, but he just wouldn’t listen. He kept shouting at me, saying I was mad. Then this Secret Service guy started shooting through the door. If it hadn’t been for Spiro, I’d be dead.’ The housemaid stood with a satisfied smile on her face, pleased that Spiro was now earning his keep.
‘We’ve got to try again!’
Daniel sat on the edge of the bed, looking to see how bad the wound to his shoulder was. The nick from the bullet was only a few millimetres deep and had now stopped bleeding, ‘There’s no point… he’s not gonna listen. Our only option is your original plan. We find somewhere quiet to hide-out and then wait for Director Hedrick to find us.’
36
The Reunion
In the Assembly Hall at the NASA Langley Research Center, Colonel Mackay was peering through one of the Environmental Test Chamber’s portholes. The interior was about the size of a basketball court and had an al
most identical gimballed mounting frame as the one used to launch planetary drones. The Solar Explorer space craft, standing thirteen metres tall and four metres in diameter, was being secured to the mounting frame by three engineers, all wearing white coveralls and face masks. Around the centre of the vehicle, like the segments of an orange, were the six cargo bays loaded with the experiments that would analyse the Sun’s interior. The probe was covered in the black, plasma-repelling tiles, that would protect it during the plunge towards the star’s core. How these tiles worked was a complete mystery to the physicists at NASA. The material, which was completely opaque to any form of radiation, had been discovered when a meteorite struck a remote village in central Ecuador. Coincidently, a group of engineers from the research centre had been hiking in the mountains when the impact occurred and had collected fragments to take home as souvenirs. On their return, one of the engineers analysed the black rock and discovered the meteorite’s unique properties. He found that by adding only a few grams of the finely ground rock to any material would endow it with the same shielding characteristics. A whole new industry evolved around collecting meteor fragments to produce this new compound. One of the first applications was to provide radiation shielding for nuclear reactors, replacing the several metres of lead and concrete normally required with only a few centimetres of covering. Jokingly, the engineers referred to it as dark-matter, which, unbeknown to them, is exactly what it was.
Poltergeists were not normally anxious but, as the Solar Explorer launch day approached, Orion’s anxiety grew. Mackay showed this by continually chain-smoking his favourite Panatela cigars. Smoking in the laboratories was strictly forbidden, of course, but the SCI security ranking of the colonel’s workshop allowed him to smoke his cigars with impunity. Occasionally the marines guarding the workshop door would comment to Natalie as she came or went but, each time, she assured them that the smell was Colonel Mackay carrying out tests on the heat shield material, a line they knew to be a pile of crap.
Mackay was pacing up and down, repeatedly glancing at his wrist watch. The mailroom had called to say that a DHL parcel had arrived from Switzerland and he had sent Natalie to collect it. She had been away for over half an hour and he could have walked there and back several times by now. He stubbed out the cigar butt he’d been chewing and immediately replaced it with a fresh one taken from the wooden cigar box on the desk. Before he could light up, Natalie opened the door, ‘I think we’ve got a problem, Colonel,’ she said, placing the parcel on the workbench. As he went to speak, she slashed the top of the package open with a box knife and pulled out the stainless-steel flask.
‘It looks okay to me.’ Orion said, desperately trying to contain his excitement at receiving their first delivery of trihadronite.
Natalie started to shake the flask vigorously. ‘Might look okay, but it’s empty, there’s nothing in it!’ she said, starting to unscrew the lid.
‘NO!’ Orion screamed, launching the colonel across the workshop at the warrant officer. It was a perfect NFL tackle, sending Natalie crashing into the workshop door. But she defended superbly, hugging the flask into her chest as she fell. The impact of her head against the floor stunned her, but the years of marine training instinctively kicked in. She rolled the colonel onto his back and, straddling him, pulled the thirty-eight out of her skirt belt and pushed the short muzzle against his forehead. Orion also reacted instinctively and the warrant officer found herself raising the gun, calmly placing the muzzle against her own temple. ‘Natalie!’ the colonel called out as she started to depress the trigger. As though waking from a bad dream she stopped, released the trigger and un-cocked the hammer, then slowly lowered the weapon to her side.
The marines outside the workshop looked at each other, startled by the thump against the door. One drew his sidearm and entered the security code into the door’s keypad, but he paused, having second thoughts about entering the secure area. Then came the cry, Natalie! And, without hesitating he pushed the door open, rolling the warrant officer off the colonel’s chest and onto the floor beside him. As the marine peered around the door with his sidearm pointing at the ceiling, he had difficulty stopping himself laughing. On the floor behind the door was the colonel with his jacket ripped open and his shirt pulled from his trousers. Beside him, in disarray, her skirt pulled up to reveal her pantyhose, lay the warrant officer.
Trying to be diplomatic, the guard said, ‘Is everything okay, sir?’
‘Of course, Corporal, we just slipped over on the wet floor.’
‘Are you sure, sir?’ As the marine spoke his eyes scanned the room, returning to look at the floor which, as far as he could see, was perfectly dry.
As the colonel got to his feet, the corporal asked if he should arrange for a janitor to come and mop the floor, ‘Thanks for your concern, Corporal, I’m sure we can deal with it,’ he replied.
‘Very good, sir. I’m sorry to have disturbed you.’
‘You were only doing your job, son,’ the colonel said, as the guard withdrew from the room, closing the door behind him.
Natalie pushed the thirty-eight back into her skirt belt, unable to look the colonel in the face. Before either could speak, the sound of hysterical laughter came through the door as the marine described to his colleague, in graphic detail, what he had seen. The Gatekeeper took the flask from Natalie and placed it carefully into the specially built storage unit. Now only three of its compartments remained empty. He shut the lid and, taking a bunch of keys from his trousers’ pocket, locked it closed.
The flask had appeared to be empty because it was. Trihadronite is a temporal element that exists in a form that is out of phase with the physical dimension of Space. So, although the flask contained four kilogrammes of the temporal element, to Natalie, it appeared empty and weightless. On rare occasions, trihadronite does appear in physical dimensions such as Space. On Earth it appears as the element Einsteinium, but only after an event that produces enough energy to breach the temporal boundary, such as the heart of an atomic explosion.
Nine weeks later all four flasks of trihadronite were safely locked away in the workshop and the Solar Explorer space craft had passed its pre-flight testing in the Assembly Hall’s environmental chamber. The launch date was only eight weeks away and the launch vehicle was being assembled at the Kennedy Space Centre. The booster rocket had a two-hundred and fifty tonne payload lift capacity and would be carrying four other satellites in addition to the Solar Explorer probe. Next Wednesday the converted Boeing Dreamlifter would land at the NASA Langley Research Center airfield to transport the completed probe to Florida. All Orion had to do, was to prime Anubis’ bomb with trihadronite before the probe was shipped.
‘Mo!.. Mo!’ Jessian was trying to snap Mohammed out of his daydream. He was staring into the workstation screen, blind to the columns of figures being displayed. They had been discussing ways of processing the drone data to predict Amy and Daniel’s location on the blue planet. Jessian was pointing at the screen, resting her hand on his shoulder. He could feel her whiskers brush against his ear and the light pressure of her claws against his fur. He could smell the fragrance of the shampoo she had used that morning and almost taste her breath as it drifted passed his muzzle. This was the closest he had ever come to sex and he was savouring every moment. ‘MO!’ she repeated, driving her claws into his shoulder as she shook him back to reality.
‘What!’ was all he could manage as a reply.
‘Look at these matter transfer figures, surely we could use those to extrapolate the-’ Jessian’s sentence drifted away as she reached over his right shoulder towards the keyboard, her breast pressing against his left ear. He could feel himself becoming aroused and could hardly concentrate on what she was saying. Jessian continued to enthusiastically expand on her hypothesis, hugging Mo with excitement, her breast now repeatedly rubbing against his cheek as she tapped on the workstation’s display. Then he could take no more and stood up abruptly, pushing his chair away from the desk, its w
heels carrying it across the floor towards the workbench. Startled, Jessian stopped speaking and looked at Mo with slightly different eyes. His ears were flat against his head, his eyes were like saucers, his top lip pulled slightly back revealing the tips of his fangs and saliva was drooling from his lower jaw, dripping onto his waistcoat. She felt her reproductive pits starting to contract, stimulated at the sight of an aroused male.
The long, embarrassed silence was broken as Hedrick swept into the lab. He slammed the door closed behind him and then stood for a second, realising he had interrupted more than just a discussion about drone coding.
Relieved by the interruption, Jessian turned to Hedrick, ‘Director, I think we can find them again,’ she said, wheeling the chair back to the workstation.
Mo joined her, their roles reversed, he was now leaning over her shoulder with his claw tapping against the group of highlighted figures on the display, ‘Jess is right, Director. We’ve been looking at the matter transfer figures from the drone data and I think we can use them to extrapolate the SD coordinates.’
‘That is excellent work,’ Hedrick said. ‘But how accurate will your extrapolation be? We need to know their coordinates to within a few metres.’
‘I’ve been talking to a friend in DM Extraction, she wrote the code for the Universal Timer, she’s writing a plug-in that will synchronise the SD time stamp to within nanoseconds.’
‘You’ve got a friend?’ Jessian whispered.
Mo ignored the sarcasm, ‘The extractor maps the position of every atom in a universe as it processes the Dark Matter. We can use the same algorithms to search the drone data.’
Creation- The Auditor’s Apprentice Page 32