Disclosing the Secret

by Vincent Amato

  As he was being pushed away, the 10-year-old boy strained to see back past the soldiers toward the creature. He hopelessly tried to wrestle out of the arms that had him facing the opposite direction, marching him away from the crash site, but couldn’t even turn his shoulders enough to look back toward the hillside. The soldier kept shoving him forward, possibly harder than was necessary, eventually shoving the defenseless child to the ground.

  “Hey!” the boy’s father snapped.

  Turning his attention away from the soldier he was arguing with, the father rushed over to the aid of his son, who was now on the ground nursing a grazed knee.

  “What’s going on?” the father demanded. “Do you have to be so rough? Who’s in charge here? I want to speak with your CO and…”

  Using his machine gun to shove the father in the same direction, the soldier ignored the hysterical man, sending him reeling backward onto the ground.

  Clearly shaken, the trembling father picked himself up. The civilian group now understood the gravity of their situation. They were being rounded up and marched away from the crash site, with or without their consent, and by force if necessary.

  *

  The sound of the father crashing to the ground jolted Armstrong out of his telepathic experience. Shaking it off, he tried to return to normal consciousness. However, not all the higher order telepathic links between the captain and the creature could be severed, as Armstrong could still sense what the creature was feeling. It knew its situation was hopeless. It had just lived through the nightmare of watching two of its crew die; another crew member was dying before its eyes. It knew there was no chance of rescue now that the military had arrived. It was totally alone on a hostile planet, and now the only humans who had shown it any compassion were being marched away at gunpoint.

  Wait a goddamn minute! Armstrong reminded himself that he was commanding the Extraterrestrial Recovery and Disposal Unit. Atomic threats from the US enemies’ intercontinental bombers was alarming enough for the general public – the prospect of interplanetary or interstellar threats was deemed to be too horrifying to share with an already excitable population. He was there to do a job – to ensure national security by sanitizing the crash site, civilians included if necessary.

  With an upwelling of determination, the captain stormed toward the father, who was picking himself off the ground.

  The man had recognized the lieutenant as a higher ranking officer and rounded on him. “Look, my name is Glen Anderson. I’ve moved my family out here because I’ve been commissioned to work on nuclear weapon designs at the secret base at Sandia. If you could just explain to me what’s going on and where we’re all being taken…”

  Glen was cut short by the lieutenant’s grim expression and unexpected response. His tone left no doubt that he was not to be tested. “I don’t care who you are. Shut your mouth and keep moving.”

  Glen’s teenage son now challenged the lieutenant: “You know, this is bullshit! I’m in the Marine Corps and we don’t treat our own kind like this! What the hell’s going on here?!”

  Adding to the hostilities, the boys’ uncle also tore into the lieutenant. “Where the hell are you taking us? You can’t shove us around like this! What did we do? What the hell’s going on?”

  Before he knew it, the uncle found himself being thrown to the ground by the lieutenant, who yelled, “THAT’S ENOUGH!”

  As the uncle hit the ground, he looked up to see four soldiers stepping forward to flank the lieutenant, two on each side.

  Incredulous, the uncle found his feet. Filling with rage he lunged at the lieutenant with an adrenalin-fueled right hook. The lieutenant simply evaded his blow, blocking it with his left arm.

  Armstrong had now reached the conflict. He snatched the rifle clean out of the hands of one of the soldiers flanking the lieutenant. White-knuckled, his muscles rigid, he introduced the butt of the rifle to the uncle’s chest. The intense blow hurled his victim backwards before he hit the ground, limp.

  Glen’s teenage son now stepped forward to shape up to the captain. As he moved in to strike, two of the flanking soldiers intercepted, restraining the teenager’s arms and forcing him to the ground face first.

  “Okay! Okay! Hang on a minute!” Glen yelled, his eyes filled with fear. He was waving his hands in the air as he stepped into the middle of the fight in an effort to save his family from receiving any further injuries.

  The captain ordered his soldiers to step back and waited for the uncle to find his feet again. The injured man got up holding his chest, leaning on Glen’s shoulder. Glen’s older son snatched his arms back and picked himself up. Glen’s 10-year-old son and eight-year-old nephew, who belonged to the uncle, clung to the teenager, who was now dusting himself off.

  The redheaded captain looked over at the three boys then back to their terrified fathers. He took a menacing step forward.

  Captain Armstrong’s tone was as cold as it was precise. “What you have just witnessed is a secret military aircraft. You are never, and I repeat, never, to divulge what you have witnessed to anybody, EVER! If you do, your children will be taken away, and you will NEVER SEE THEM AGAIN!”

  CHAPTER 11

  Three Months Prior to the Building Collapse

  The building foreman was sitting beside the construction site entry gate, making his way through his morning sandwich. His eyes shot up from his newspaper and he grumbled aloud at being disturbed as he probed the street for the approaching noise.

  He locked unamused eyes on the offending intrusion. Emerging through the traffic was a rider throttling his motorcycle. The foreman was even less amused when the bike flashed in front of him and stopped short of the entry gate, waiting to be given permission pass.

  With all the elegance of a grazing wildebeest, the building foreman cleared his throat and said in a monotone, “All deliveries go to the site office. Head back the way you came and turn right.”

  The rider slipped of his helmet to reveal a man in his late twenties. “I’m Jake Marcel; I was called out to meet your site manager.”

  “You the engineer?”

  The younger man nodded.

  “You sure don’t look like one.”

  Thank God for that, Jake thought, pausing for a moment before motioning beyond the gates toward the building under construction. “Our office is of the understanding that there’s a problem with the entry.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Straight ahead then. He’s expecting you.”

  *

  “The damn fool can’t read drawings!”

  Jake Marcel stood with the site manager in the foyer of the new building being constructed. The two men studied the building’s glazed entry.

  The site manager cursed. “The steel fabricator idiot not only stuffed up how the main beam over the opening carries the weight from above, but he also got the beam’s shape wrong!”

  Jake couldn’t help but give a half-smile as the other man struggled to contain his anger. Errors during construction were common. As an engineer, Jake had seen mistakes made during construction on almost every project he had been involved in. However, the problem being explained to him appeared serious enough to be ranked among the worst he had seen in some time, bordering on professional incompetence by the builder’s subcontractor. The engineering company Jake worked for had designed the building, and today he had been called out to the site in an effort to provide a solution to the builder’s current predicament.

  The builder’s rage continued. “So now I’ve got this circular beam that’s bowing because the weight from above is being concentrated at its mid-point, the worst possible place. And who the hell uses circular beams anyway??”

  Jake studied the steel framing to the entrance. The architectural intent was for the entry to be totally glazed with the structural steel being thin and inconspicuous. The beam in question supported the weight of the floors above. The problem was the extent of the beam’s deflection, or bowing, would not only look unacceptable to the buil
ding’s owners, but also meant that the glazing panels would no longer fit underneath it.

  The builder was right to question the circular section. Not only did the tubular member not have the geometrical properties to be strong enough to carry the load, but anyone installing the steel should have had enough experience to realize that a square or I-shaped beam would be more suited to provide the structural capacity required.

  Reaching inside his motorcycle jacket, Jake pulled out the folded set of structural drawings to compare against the constructed frame before him. A further problem immediately became apparent. The plans showed the steel beam in question was to support the weight from the floor above via five vertical struts evenly spaced along the length of the beam. Looking up he saw that the contractors had only installed a single strut at the beam’s center, effectively concentrating all the load from above to a single point in the middle of the steel beam, causing the already inadequate circular beam to bend more than it should.

  Jake looked up from the design drawings. “There was supposed to be a larger I-beam spanning this entry, supporting five struts. When did it change?”

  “And that’s another thing!” The builder’s rant intensified. “The bloody architect decided that the highlight windows over the door need to have, how did he put it…‘a cleaner form.’ So he deleted the five struts to have only one instead.”

  Jake was unsurprised. “And he didn’t think to run that little detail by us?”

  The site manager cursed under his breath.

  Sounding hopeful, Jake said to the grumpy builder, “Is there a reason why we can’t replace the circular section with a larger I-beam that can do the job?”

  The builder’s eyes turned grim. “When we suggested that to the architect, he lost his shit because the deeper beam would hang underneath the ceiling line. He doesn’t want to see a bigger beam because then we’ll have to wrap an ugly bulkhead around it.”

  Jake turned back to the steel framing. “Then cut the strut and install the bigger beam higher.”

  “Jake, we’re already weeks behind. I don’t have time to do a measure, cut and install. Was hoping more for a quick solution, so we can just replace it with something around the same size.”

  “You’re not making it easy,” Jake said, his voice conclusive. “There really isn’t any steel section the same size with enough capacity.”

  A wide grin crept across the builder’s face. “C’mon, Jake, you’ve bent the laws of physics for us once before.”

  Jake’s eyes met the builder’s. “And there’s a reason for that being only one time; it’s not very easy to do.”

  Now it was the builder sounding hopeful. “Can’t you come up with one more of your magical solutions?”

  “You’re not giving me much space to work with. Let me go back to the office and look at the numbers. We do the impossible every day.” Jake looked back up at the overstressed circular beam, and added, “But miracles take a little longer.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Jake’s computer screens told him what he expected – there wasn’t was a steel section size available that was small enough, as well as having sufficient structural strength, to replace the failing circular section he had seen on the site earlier.

  He heaved an ominous sigh as he sat back in his chair. Scattered across his office desk were steel fabricator catalogues containing the specifications and properties of all the readily available and off-the-shelf structural sections that could be sourced worldwide. Jake’s abilities in mathematics and physics were such that he was able to “feel” the right answer without having to solve complex mathematical equations. Both his laptop screen and desk screen displayed diagrams and analysis that all confirmed his initial feeling, which was that anything that could work was going to be too big to fit. Jake’s eyebrows furrowed at the screens; his numbers also indicated that the capacity of the closest matching I-beam size that would fit was only just short of capacity by a few percent.

  There has to be another solution!

  On a scrap piece of paper he drew the cross-section of the circular beam. Over the top of the circular section he drew an I-beam, paying particular attention to how much room there was available to fit in an alternate section shape.

  Feeling a growing sense of defeat, he shut down his computer. As his laptop logged off, Jake caught a glimpse of his silhouetted reflection in the darkened screen. The man staring back at him usually had deeply inquisitive eyes, but this afternoon he looked drawn and mentally drained. The organized mess that was his dark hair was scruffier than usual. But his strong jawline remained unchanged, framing his face to reflect a family resemblance. Despite his weary appearance after an afternoon of problem solving, he was staring at a younger version of his father.

  Recognizing the familiar image, Jake felt an unexpected memory rise to the surface. His mind filled with an image from a bedtime story that his father, Jesse Marcel Jr., used to tell Jake as a boy.

  A wave of inspiration took hold. He instantly flicked his computer back on and snatched a pen to draw the image he remembered visualizing from his father’s bedtime story.

  Sketching frantically, he recalled the story of his grandfather coming home in the middle of the night with a box of top secret metal parts. His father was only a boy then, but distinctly remembered that his grandfather had spread the bits and pieces across the kitchen floor.

  When he finished sketching, he inputted the geometric properties into the analysis program and let it run. When the screen refreshed with the results Jake Marcel felt a chill propagate through his flesh.

  It works!

  Reaching for the phone, he dialed the number printed on the back of one of the steel supplier’s catalogues scattered on his desk.

  After a short moment he was connected. “Yes, hello, I’m calling to enquire about your customized sections.”

  After a short pause he said, “So you can fabricate customized shapes?”

  Jake was pleased to hear the voice confirm his enquiry. “If I emailed you a dimensioned cross-section of what I had in mind, would you be able to advise if it was possible to fabricate?”

  After hearing another confirmation Jake checked the email address listed under the number he had just rung, took a snapshot of his screen and attached the image to the email. “Okay, I’m sending you a picture of what I need as we speak.”

  Moments later the voice on the line told Jake what he wanted to hear.

  A broad smile spread across Jake’s face. “Thank you very much. Yes, I understand there’ll be a premium for the non-conventional shape, but this is exactly what we need. We’ll draft up a more detailed schematic and email the drawing so you can get started.”

  As Jake put the phone down the double-checked his analysis output one last time. The reason the conventional I-beam section was failing was due to the manner in which the I-beam behaved under bending stresses. There are three parts to an I-beam: two horizontal “flanges” and a vertical “web” that joined the two flanges. Together all the three parts form the “I” shape, hence its name. As the I-beam experienced bending and started to deflect, or bend, one of its flanges is stretched as the beam changed shape. If it’s bending downwards under a heavy weight, then it’s the lower flange that is stretched. Simultaneously, its upper flange is compressed as the I-beam changes shape to bend.

  As a material, steel is extremely strong in tension, but not so sturdy in compression. Thus, as the I-beam tries to bend under heavy loading it will be the flange being compressed that will fail long before the flange being stretched. Jake always pictured the compression failure mechanism as being the same as what happened when he compressed both ends of a plastic ruler with his hands back in high school – it tended to buckle sideways.

  The analysis output on Jake’s screen indicated that the closest sized I-beam available was under capacity by only a few percent, and its failure mechanism was exactly the same as that of a plastic ruler being compressed – under full loading the beam’s top fl
ange would buckle sideways under compression as it tried to bend.

  The solution Jake sketched from memory inspired by his father’s bedtime story was both simple and elegant. It was a way to strengthen a steel beam without having to make it bigger. As he was frantically sketching the image he recalled from his father’s description, he realized for the first time that the geometric shapes solved the top flange’s lateral buckling problem by locally strengthening the top flange in the direction it wanted to fail. This simple principle added overall strength to a beam section without significantly increasing its depth.

  Jake held up his sketch. He was staring at two flattened diamond-shaped flanges pointing up and down on his scrap piece of paper, connected by a vertical web. It fit within the height limit of the existing circular section.

  An added bonus was that the apex of the top triangular flange could fit snugly inside of the concave base of the single strut it was to support.

  It’s crazy enough to work!

  CHAPTER 13

  The scorching desert sun pelted down on the huge white spheres that sat atop a number of smaller buildings, all sporadically located within the top-secret facility.

  Although located near Alice Springs in the center of Australia, Pine Gap is a United States managed underground facility. Built in 1968, it’s officially known in the Australian defense community as the “Joint Defense Space Research Facility”. Its various white spheres, some of which are up to five storys high, protect super-sensitive satellite dishes. The odd-shaped structures appeared out of place in the backdrop of the Australian outback.

  Under these huge satellite dishes, and beneath the desert floor, exists a multi-level underground labyrinth. Each level houses countless arrays of networked super-computers generations ahead of commercially available workstations and mainframes available to the mass civilian mark.