by Ben Bova
THE GREEN TRAP
Tor Books by Ben Bova
As on a Darkling Plain
The Astral Mirror
Battle Station
The Best of the Nebulas (editor)
Challenges
Colony
Cyberbooks
Escape Plus
The Green Trap
Gremlins Go Home (with Gordon R. Dickson)
Jupiter
The Kinsman Saga
Mercury
The Multiple Man
Orion
Orion Among the Stars
Orion and the Conqueror
Orion in the Dying Time
Out of the Sun
Peacekeepers
Powersat
The Precipice
Privateers
Prometheans
The Rock Rats
Saturn
The Silent War
Star Peace: Assured Survival
The Starcrossed
Tales of the Grand Tour
Test of Fire
Titan
To Fear the Light (with A.J. Austin)
To Save the Sun (with A.J. Austin)
The Trikon Deception (with Bill Pogue)
Triumph
Vengeance of Orion
Venus
Voyagers
Voyagers II: The Alien Within
Voyagers III: Star Brothers
The Winds of Altair
THE
GREEN TRAP
BEN BOVA
A TOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK
NEW YORK
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This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel
are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.
THE GREEN TRAP
Copyright © 2006 by Ben Bova
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book,
or portions thereof, in any form.
This book is printed on acid-free paper.
Book design by Mary A. Wirth
A Forge Book
Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC
175 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10010
www.tor.com
Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bova, Ben, 1932–
The green trap / Ben Bova.
p. cm.
”A Tom Doherty Associates Book.”
ISBN-13: 978-0-765-30924-2
ISBN-10: 0-765-30924-6
1. Microbiologists—Crimes against—Fiction. 2. Cyanobacteria—Fiction. 3. Hydrogen as fuel—Research—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.O84G74 2006
813'.54—dc22
2006004876
First Edition: November 2006
Printed in the United States of America
0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Still and always to Barbara,
to D. H (again),
and
to the memory of Melvin Calvin
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My thanks to Eric Von Leue, who provided crucial technical advice and support. The section titled “Novel Reaction Produces Hydrogen” is reprinted with permission from Science News, the weekly newsmagazine of science, copyright 2005.
Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to
humanity, and is the torch which illuminates the world.
LOUIS PASTEUR (1822–1815)
THE GREEN TRAP
CONTENTS
Gasoline Prices Expected to Climb Higher
Tucson: The Mirror Lab
Palo Alio: Calvin Research Center
Redwood City: Days Inn
Melvin Calvin
Tucson: Steward Observatory
Palo Alto: Cochrane Residence
Palo Alto: Marriott Residence Inn
Palo Alto: Calvin Research Center
Greenhouse Gases Cause Rising Global Temperature
Manhattan: Waldorf - Astoria Hotel
Tucson: Student Recreation Center
Tucson: Las Casita De Molina
Tucson: Sunrise Apartments
Tucson: Bmaa
Brain-Destroying Algae
Oracle, Arizona: Biosphere 2
Cessna Citation VII: 38,000 Feet Above Nebraska
Tucson: Sunrise Apartments
White House Calls For New Technology As Solution To Energy Problems
Tucson: Police Headquarters
Tucson: Sunrise Apartments
Tucson: Sunrise Apartments
Is It Time To Shoot For The Sun?
Arlington: Cambridge Savings Bank
Revere: Four Points Sheraton Hotel
America West Flight 64: Boston To Tucson
Tucson: Sunrise Apartments
Dallas: Gould Energy Corporation Headquarters
Tucson: Sunrise Apartments
Hydrogen Fuel Storage For Automobiles
Tucson: Arizona Inn
Manhattan: Gould Tower
Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters
Is Hydrogen Clean?
Interstate 95: Bridgeport, Connecticut
Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Hybrid Sales Lag
Boston: Top of the Pru Restaurant
Palo Alto: Calvin Research Center
Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters
Boston: Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Fuel for Thought
Washington, D.C.: Old Ebbitt Grill
Washington, D.C.: Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C.: J.W. Marriott Hotel
Washington, D.C.: Senator Bardarson’s Office
Washington, D.C.: National Academy Of Sciences
New York: United Nations Secretariat Building
Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University
Washington, D.C.: J.W. Marriott Hotel
Catch-22 for Lite Fuel
Philadelphia: The Franklin Institute
Washington, D.C.: J.W. Marriott Hotel
Interstate 95: Delaware Memorial Bridge
Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters
Washington, D.C.: J.W. Marriott Hotel
Local Man’s Car Gets 250 Mpg
Dulles, Virginia: Dulles International Airport
Cabo San Lucas: Hotel De Las Flores
Cabo San Lucas: Hotel De Las Flores
Novel Reaction Produces Hydrogen
Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters
Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters
Manhattan: Gramercy Park Hotel
Palo Alto: Calvin Research Center
San Francisco: Russian Hill
Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters
Palo Alto: Calvin Research Center
Palo Alto: Calvin Research Center Parking Lot
Tucson: Sunrise Apartments
Tucson International Airport
Tucson: Police Headquarters
Las Vegas: Mccarran International Airport
Gould Trust To Acquire Calvin Research Center
San Francisco: Russian Hill
Terrorist Scandal Hits Unesco Official
San Francisco: Russian Hill
Palo Alto: Calvin Research Center
Manhattan: Gould Trust Headquarters
Gould Energy Corp. Confirms Hydrogen Fuel Breakthrough
Ua Professor Killed In Hit-And-Run Accident
Gasoline Prices
Expected to Climb Higher
WASHINGTON—There’s pump shock at every corner gas station, with prices well over $7 a gallon—and the government says you’d better get used to it.
The Energy Department projects high gasoline prices at least through next year as producers struggle to keep up with demand, which has not slackened appreciably despite rising prices.
Crude oil prices climbed to an all-time high of $112 per barrel yesterday, triggering a 634-point drop in the Dow-Jones Industrial average on the New York Stock Exchange.
“We can expect to see gasoline prices soar as high as nine or ten dollars a gallon this summer,” said James Dykes, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. “Gas prices have nowhere to go but up.”
Energy Department officials blamed the climbing oil prices on the growing demand for petroleum by China and India, two of the fastest-growing economies in the world, coupled with the fact that global oil production has peaked and is unlikely to increase.
“There hasn’t been a major new oil field discovered in well over a decade,” said Roberta Groves, head of Gould Energy Corporation’s explorations division. “With global oil production flat and global demand increasing steadily, oil prices will continue to climb for the foreseeable future.”
—FINANCIAL NEWS
TUCSON:
THE MIRROR LAB
Paul Cochrane dreaded leaving the Mirror Lab. Set beneath the massive slanting concrete of the University of Arizona’s football stadium, the lab was only a three-minute walk from Cochrane’s office, but it was three minutes in the blazing wrath of Tucson’s afternoon sun. It was only the first week of May, yet Cochrane—who had come from Massachusetts less than a year ago—had learned to fear the merciless heat outside.
As he limped down the steel stairway toward the lab’s lobby, he mentally plotted his course back to his office at the Steward Observatory building, planning a route that kept him in the shade as much as possible.
He was a slim, quiet man in his mid-thirties, wearing rimless glasses that made him look bookish. Dressed in the requisite denim jeans and short-sleeved shirt of Arizona academia, he still wore his Massachusetts running shoes rather than cowboy boots. And still walked with a slight limp from the auto crash that had utterly devastated his life. His hair was sandy brown, cut short, his face lean and almost always gravely serious, his body trim from weekly workouts with the local fencing group. Although his Ph.D. was in thermodynamics, he had accepted a junior position with the Arizona astronomy department, as far from Massachusetts and his earlier life as he could get.
He reached the lobby, nodded to the undergrads working the reception desk, and took a breath before plunging into the desert heat outside the glass double doors. He saw that even though the window blinds behind the students had been pulled shut, the hot sunlight outside glowed like molten metal.
His cell phone started playing the opening bars of Mozart’s overture to The Marriage of Figaro.
Grateful for an excuse to stay inside the air-conditioned lobby for a moment longer, Cochrane pulled the phone from his shirt pocket and flipped it open.
His brother’s round, freckled, red-haired face filled the phone’s tiny screen.
Surprised that his brother was calling, Cochrane plopped onto the faux leather couch next to the lobby doors. “Hello, Mike,” he said softly as he put the phone to his ear. “It’s been a helluva long time.”
“Hi, there, little brother. How’s your suntan?”
Michael Cochrane was a microbiologist working for a private biotech company in the Bay Area of California.
“I don’t tan, you know that.”
Mike laughed. “Yeah. I remember when we’d go out to Lynn Beach. You’d get red as a lobster, and the next day you were white as Wonder Bread again.”
Cochrane grimaced, remembering how painful sunburn was. And other hurts. His marriage. The auto wreck. Jennifer’s funeral. Jen’s mother screaming at him for letting her drive after drinking. He hadn’t even been out of the wheelchair yet. Everybody in the church had stared at him. Just the sound of Mike’s voice, still twanging with the old Massachusetts inflection, brought it all back in a sickening rush.
“I try to stay out of the sun,” he said tightly.
“So you switched to Arizona,” said Michael. “Smart move.”
Keeping his voice steady, Cochrane asked, “How long has it been, Mike? Six months?” He knew it had been longer than that. Mike hadn’t called since Cochrane had asked his brother to repay the thirty thousand dollars he’d loaned him.
“Don’t be an asshole, Paulie.”
“Come on, Mike. What’s going on? The only time you call is when you want—”
“Stuff it,” Michael snapped. “I’ve got news for you. Big news. I’m gonna pay you back every penny I owe. With interest.”
“Sure you will.” Cochrane couldn’t keep the sarcasm out of his voice.
“I damned well will, wise-ass. In another few days. Your big brother’s going to be a rich man, Paulie. I’ve come up with something that’s gonna make me a multimillionaire.”
Cochrane raised his eyes heavenward. Ever since they’d been teenagers Mike had touted one get-rich-quick scheme after another. His bright, flip-talking big brother. Quick with ideas but slow to do the work that might make the ideas succeed. The latest one had cost Cochrane a chunk of his insurance settlement from the accident.
“Mikey, if you want to get rich you shouldn’t have gone into research,” he said into the phone.
“Like hell,” his brother replied tartly. “What I’ve come up with is worth millions.”
“Really?”
“You bet your ass, little brother. Hundreds of millions.”
Cochrane started to say Really? again, but caught himself. Mike had a short fuse.
“Well, that’s great,” he said instead. “Just what is it?”
“Come on over here and see for yourself.”
“To San Francisco?”
“Palo Alto.”
“Near the big NASA facility.”
“That’s in Mountain View,” Michael corrected.
“Oh.”
“So when are you coming? This weekend?”
“Why can’t you just tell me about it? What’s so—”
“Too big to talk on the phone about it, Paulie. C’mon, I know you. You’ve got nothing cooking for the weekend, you dumb hermit.”
Cochrane thought about it bleakly. Mike was right. His social life was practically nonexistent. He wouldn’t have a class to teach until Tuesday morning. And there were all those frequent flier miles he’d piled up in the past eighteen months attending astronomy conferences.
“Okay,” he heard himself say halfheartedly. “This weekend.” He never could oppose Mike for very long.
“Good! E-mail me your flight number and arrival time and I’ll meet you at the airport. See ya, squirt.”
PALO ALIO:
CALVIN RESEARCH CENTER
Mike wasn’t at the airport to meet him.
Cochrane’s Southwest Airlines flight from Tucson arrived at San Francisco International twelve minutes early, but the plane had to wait out on the concrete taxiway for twenty minutes before a terminal gate was freed up. Once inside the terminal Cochrane searched for his brother at the gate, then walked down the long corridor pulling his wheeled travel bag after him. Mike wasn’t at the security checkpoint, either.
“Just like him,” Cochrane muttered to himself. He went down to the baggage claim area even though he only had the one piece of luggage, on the off chance that Mike might be waiting for him there.
Nettled, Cochrane yanked out his cell phone and called his brother. The answering message replied brightly, “Hey, I can’t take your call r
ight now. Leave your name and number and I’ll get back to you pronto.”
Anger seething inside him, Cochrane took the bus to the Budget car rental site, phoned Mike again while he stood in line, and again got the cheerful recorded message. He started to call Mike’s home number, but by then he was at the counter, where a tired-looking overweight Asian-American woman asked for his driver’s license and credit card.
It was late afternoon, with the sun still a good distance above the low hills that ran along the coast. Speeding down U.S. 101, Cochrane decided to pass his hotel and go straight to Mike’s office. He’s probably working in his lab, Cochrane told himself. He never did have any sense of time.
The Calvin Research Center was nothing more than a single windowless boxlike building off the highway in Palo Alto. Not even much of a sign on it: merely a polished copper plaque by the front entrance. Cochrane parked his rented Corolla in a visitor’s slot and walked through the pleasant late-afternoon breeze to the smoked-glass double doors. The young woman behind the receptionist’s desk smiled up at him.