The Rock

by Robert Doherty

  "Steinwatz convinced the parents to allow him to accelerate her education. She graduated high school at nine. She attended MIT and graduated with a doctorate in quantum physics at fifteen. For the next seven years she worked as a researcher in the physics department there. She started teaching at seventeen but apparently there was some problem with students eight to ten years older than her taking her seriously."

  "What about her personal life?" Hawkins asked.

  Lamb shook his head. "Nothing. She works, teaches, and goes home. We've still got people doing some checking, but we have no record of any boyfriend-or girlfriend, for that matter."

  Lamb folded over a page. "There was something interesting, though. A year ago she had a breakdown and was committed to a mental institution for two months."

  "What was the cause of the problem?" Hawkins asked.

  "We're having trouble getting the hospital records.

  It's a very elite place in upstate New York." He looked at Hawkins. "Why the interest in Levy?"

  Hawkins shook his head. "I don't know. There's something about her that makes me feel uneasy. I can't put a finger on it. Let's just call it a gut feeling."

  That was good enough for Lamb. "I'll get the records."

  "Any problems other than the breakdown?"

  Lamb looked at the security folder on her. "No. Only the fact that she's young and has never been exposed to this type of situation before."

  "What about this crater person-Pencak?"

  "She's on the way. We picked her up three hours ago. Should be here late tonight or early tomorrow."

  "What about her background?" Hawkins asked. Lamb frowned. "Not good. She's a class-one weirdo who also happens to do some brilliant work concerning strange geological formations." His face twisted, the muscles around his deformed cheek jumping. "We've got her listed in the computer as having made six trips to the former Soviet Union. First one in '59. Last one in '87."

  Hawkins understood how Lamb felt about that. "What else?"

  "Langley and the FBI had a folder on her. She had a Russian boyfriend for a while-they wrote back and forth quite a bit. A Felix Zigorski, an aerodynamics expert who was involved with their space program. It all seemed pretty innocent, but they wanted to keep an eye on her."

  "Back up," Hawkins said. "Tell me about her from the start."

  Lamb scanned the faxed printout. "Not much here. Born in Hutchinson, Kansas, in 1938. Her parents had a farm there. Both were killed in a car wreck when she was sixteen. She was banged up pretty bad and also severely burned. She was in the hospital for a while and then on her own-no known living relatives. Sold the farm and went to the University of New Mexico at Albuquerque. Undergraduate major was physics. Got a doctorate in geology. Then she went to Meteor Crater and has been there ever since. She teaches occasionally as adjunct faculty at various universities. Travels a bit. Writes articles for scientific journals."

  "Personal life?"

  "Nothing so far. Apparently she doesn't look too good. She lost an eye in the accident and was badly scarred."

  Hawkins stretched out his back muscles. "I'm going to have to keep an eye on her."

  "That you are." Lamb absently ran a hand over the reports on his desk. "How are you doing?"

  "I'm fine."

  "How's your wife?"

  "The same," Hawkins answered succinctly, his tone indicating that issue was not to be discussed.

  Lamb switched the subject quickly. "I had security go through the team members' personal baggage and they found several bottles stashed in Batson's small carryon bag. I had them confiscated-this isn't the time or the place to put up with that stuff."

  Hawkins shook his head. "Sounds like we've got a winning team here. Anything else I should know about?"

  Lamb pressed a button on his desk and the door opened. Colonel Tolliver who'd been waiting outside walked in, his fatigues drenched with sweat. "Colonel Tolliver just flew in from the Rock. What's the tactical situation?"

  Tolliver pulled out a rag and wiped sand from his forehead. "The Rock is secure. We're a hundred and eighty feet in and the drilling is going well."

  "Strategic SITREP?" Lamb continued.

  Tolliver frowned. "The Russian Task Force is making the Australians very nervous. My Aussie counterpart says he's getting a lot of pressure from his higher-ups to find out what the hell is going on. That's besides the flak about the drilling."

  "What's the location of the task force?"

  "They're in the Coral Sea still heading south. Intelligence believes they will go around the east coast of Australia and position themselves to the south in the Great Australian Bight, a thousand miles to the south of here.

  "One of the dish antennas on the Gagarin is oriented directly toward our location. The other tracks the sky above Australia in a sweep pattern. We're picking up a lot of secure SATCOM traffic between the Task Force flagship and Moscow."

  "How long before they're in position?"

  "Thirty-six hours."

  "Think they picked up the second transmission?" Lamb asked.

  Tolliver shrugged. "We were on top of the Rock and didn't pick it up because we weren't up in that band width. Depends if the Russians were-we have no way of knowing."

  Something had been in the back of Hawkins's mind. "Is there any activity at the site in Siberia?"

  Lamb reached behind him and pulled out some papers. "Yes. Our eye in the sky is picking up extensive military maneuvers being carried out there. They're looking for something."

  "Their Rock," Hawkins mused out loud. "What else?"

  "Langley is concerned that the Russians will try to infiltrate the project here."

  Hawkins nodded. He knew that. He was worried about it, too, and having Levy here already and bringing in Pencak didn't thrill him. He looked at Tolliver. "Remind your men that we're looking for more than direct military action. It's more likely that any action that occurs will be covert. They're to check everyone and take nothing for granted. It's possible we've already been infiltrated."

  "Yes, sir." Tolliver paused. "Of course, you know that the most likely source of a compromise is one of the outsiders that have been called in."

  Lamb fixed the marine with a cold stare. "I know that."

  He dismissed Tolliver and then looked back at Hawkins. "Things are not going well in the big picture. There's already political instability in several Third World countries. The governments are keeping the loss of the gold reserves quiet, but some of those leaders are already scrambling to cover their own position-never mind worry about the welfare of their people. It looks like there will be at least four new governments before the end of the year."

  He let out a deep breath and again changed the subject. "Anything from your people on the bomb search?"

  "They're pursuing two possibilities," Hawkins replied, "One is Libya."

  "He certainly had the money to buy a bomb," Lamb noted. "And it fits with some other Intel I've been getting. Qaddafi's suddenly begun making noises again about his line of death in the Gulf of Sidra. The President is thinking about using the Sixth Fleet to push him on it. Intel believes that Qaddafi wants to draw the fleet in and then have a small boat-or more likely a submarine-with the bomb on board try to get near one of the carriers and detonate it."

  Hawkins frowned. "Why is the President reacting, then?"

  "That's his job. All I know is that a carrier task force is cruising the thirty-third parallel waiting on the President's word to cross." Lamb sounded frustrated. "I'm sort of out of the loop here, sitting on my ass in the middle of Australia." He shook his head. "What's Orion's status on Libya?"

  "They've infiltrated two small recon teams. Nothing yet, according to the last transmission."

  "What's the other lead?"

  Hawkins picked a slim file folder marked TOP SECRET/Q CLEARANCE. "They picked up a smuggler who disclosed under questioning that he delivered something to an Arab. A check of his cargo hold picked up slight traces of radioactivity. That and the smugg
ler's description of the package makes it possible it was one of the bombs. He transported his cargo from a point on the northern shore of the Black Sea down to the Mediterranean and cross loaded offshore of Syria to the Arab."

  "Do they have a line on the Arab?"

  "Not yet, but they're pushing it hard."

  "Could it have gone to Qaddafi?"

  "Possible. Or it could be someone else-that is, if it was one of the bombs. It could even have been the South African bomb on its way down there."

  Lamb rubbed his forehead wearily. It could be anyone in that cesspool known as the Middle East. The Syrians would love to use one on the Israelis. The Lebanese against each other. The Jordanians against just about anyone. "All right. Let me know right away if you break anything out on that second transmission."

  Hawkins didn't move. "You've been deploying some of my people in Orion about, without consulting me."

  "Yes, I have. We're both out of the loop here. We have to be prepared for some contingencies, and your people are the best ones trained for action if we need it.

  Hawkins nodded and left the van, accepting the fact but intensely disliking that he had to accept it. He had a feeling they no longer were in control of much of anything-this whole business seemed to be an exercise in reaction, which was not a mode of operations that he preferred.

  21 DECEMBER 1995, 1950 LOCAL

  21 DECEMBER 1995, 1020 ZULU

  When Hawkins got back to the control center, Fran and Don were gathered in front of the computer, peering over Spurlock's shoulders, awaiting the answer to their eight-hour question on Voyager. Levy did not appear to have moved from her position in front of the other computer. On Spurlock's screen the messages from the computer slowly scrolled up as the seconds went by.

 
 
 
  Spurlock looked at the digital readout on the upper left-hand corner of the screen. It slowly clicked off the seconds, winding down. "Five seconds," he muttered unnecessarily.

  The last digit flickered into a zero and then stopped. Spurlock blinked and looked at the screen.

 
  He grabbed the keyboard and furiously typed out a message.

 
  The reply was brief and to the point.

 
  His fingers slammed the keys again.

 
 
  Spurlock wasn't going to give up.

 
  There was a ten-second pause during which Spurlock's fingers gouged the arms of his chair.

 
  Spurlock let his fingers slide off the keyboard and turned to the others. "Voyager 2 is gone."

  "Gone?" Fran repeated.

  "It's no longer out there."

  "Maybe just the satellite's dish is damaged and that's why you didn't get a bounce back," Hawkins offered.

  "Even without the dish we would have gotten some sort of signal off the body of the satellite itself, a radar image." He pointed at the screen. "There's nothing out there where Voyager should be."

  Silence settled over the room as each person contemplated what that meant. After a minute Levy slid her chair back from the keyboard. She didn't even appear to have heard what had happened to Voyager as she turned to the other members of the team.

  "I think I have some answers to the questions raised by the second transmission."

  "Have you broken the code?" Hawkins asked.

  "We don't have the entire message. Actually," she said, "I think there are several messages, one of which was directed to us but the main part of which was directed elsewhere."

  "Give us what you do have," Hawkins said.

  Levy tapped the screen. "It's very strange. I think the part that slides up and down the microwave scale-from fourteen twenty to sixteen sixty-two megahertz-was actually a lead in and out to the main transmission-sort of like tuning a radio. I think the key message was in the blank parts."

  "How can that be?" Lamb asked, confused.

  "Well, I think-and it's only a theory-that the message is getting skipped about in time, somehow." Seeing a blank look on the others' faces, Levy continued. "When you transmit a message, you have several options in order to make it difficult for someone else to intercept and decrypt: You can vary the amplitude, the frequency, the message itself. But the best way would be simply to not have the message intercepted in the first place. If I had a way of transmitting where I could bounce the message back or forward a little in time, it would make it impossible for the person listening to pick it up."

  "Is that technology possible?" Hawkins asked.

  "We don't have it."

  "Do the Russians?"

  "Possibly, but not likely," Levy said. "Remember, that this is only speculation on my part."

  Her eyes took on the unfocused look that Hawkins was getting used to. "The key to it all is that microwave transmissions are made up of atomic matter. This makes the possibility of being able to skip them about in time infinitely likelier than achieving the same end with larger objects. In fact, it is quite well accepted in the scientific community that there are a myriad of tiny wormholes-which are essentially time tunnels, or what you often hear about in science fiction as a warp tunnel-at the subatomic level.

  "If you could surround the core of your message with negative energy matter, it would keep it intact through the hole. And since negative energy matter can be generated relatively easily, the real key to the problem is to generate a tiny wormhole-and of course to have a destination. Basically you would have a miniature tunnel through space, which means a small degree of time-shifting, since the message is not following a normal spatial path.

  "The significance of such a message, though, is not that we can't intercept it in the first place, but rather that it is essential for an advanced race that is spread over the cosmos to be able to have what we would consider almost instantaneous communication over vast distances. Even at the speed of light a message from the nearest star system-Alpha Centauri-would take over four years to make it to our solar system. But if you could make use of these wormholes, you could get your message to your intended audience almost instantaneously across vast distances."

  Levy halted, noting the way everyone was staring at her. "Well, that's what I think might be happening here, and not only can't I prove it but even if I could, there's not much you or I could do about it because we don't have the technology to receive it." She idly tapped her fingers on the desk. "If we did, space travel at a speed greater than light would be the next logical step, and we can barely put a satellite up into space. This technology is light-years ahead of what we have here on Earth now."

  "Do you have any idea what such a transmitter would look like?" Hawkins asked.

  "No. But, as I said, it would certainly be different from anything we've ever seen. Of course it might be so small that it could be easily concealed or it might be larger than the Great Pyramid. I have no idea. I only know the subatomic theories involved."

  "You said that there was a part of the message that you think was directed to us," Fran noted. "Did you get that part at least?"

  Levy nodded. "At the very beginning and the very end-beginning at fourteen twenty and sixteen sixty two megahertz, where it would be likely that we would be listening, there were two words in the same digital form as the first transmission. It took me a while to decode it, because even with just the two words expressed digitally, the frequency was shifting. The binary code was spread over ninety megahertz in each case."

  Ha
wkins restrained his impatience with great difficulty. "Could you please tell us what that message is?"

  Levy turned and hit one key on the computer and pointed. Hawkins looked at the two words.

  WELCOME DEBRA

  "Is this someone's idea of a joke?" Batson demanded.

  Levy shook her head. "No. That format is the same as the one used on Voyager and the first transmission." She pointed at the computer. "That's the Rock talking." She smiled dreamily.

  "It's just saying hi."

  Hawkins reached into the desk drawer behind him and drew out several aspirin. With a swig of water he downed three.

  THE ROCK

  Central Australia

  22 DECEMBER 1995, 0700 LOCAL

  21 DECEMBER 1995, 2130 ZULU

  Hawkins watched the dusty terrain float by underneath as the helicopter banked slightly and then leveled. The other members of the team were peering out the side closer to them, looking at the sprawling Australian outback. The low-lying dunes that stretched to the horizon were an off-red color with an occasional sprinkling of rocks. It reminded Hawkins, though on a far larger scale, of west Texas, where water holes and places of civilization were few and far between.

  "We'll see the Olgas in a minute or two," the pilot announced in their headsets. "Once we get over them you can see the Rock straight out on the horizon."

  The seat bottom pushed up against Hawkins as the pilot increased altitude. A series of strange rock formations appeared ahead, like large isolated stones set on edge in the desert floor. "There's thirty-six of them," the pilot commented as the hodgepodge assortment of rocks drew close.

  The domes and pillars of the Olgas passed by quickly and then they had their first glimpse of Ayers Rock looming on the horizon. "It's beautiful," Hawkins heard Debra Levy whisper into her mike.

  The sun was bouncing its rays off the eastern face, coloring the rock bright red. It looked like a hunched whale beached upon a flat plain of sand. It appeared totally improbable-a massive monolith rising out of what was otherwise, for miles around, flat terrain. As they drew closer, the color mellowed out to a lighter shade of red. From the distance it had looked deceptively small, but as the miles decreased, the Rock expanded to fill up more and more of the horizon until finally it was the entire horizon. The pilot gained altitude to crest the top.