He went over to the second high-backed chair and swiveled it to face the room. He kept one book to read and put the others on the floor. Danielson sat at the desk and began to look at another, the last she had taken down from the shelf. Runyan rummaged through the stack to find some of the earliest tomes. He looked around, realized all the chairs were taken, and moved to the wall near the door where he plopped himself on the carpet and leaned back against the bookshelf.
Some time passed in a silence broken only by the crackling of the fire and an occasional rustle of a turned page. Danielson suddenly became aware of a small motion in the doorway. The woman, Maria Latvin, stood there looking at the chair in which Krone sat. Her hands were clasped softly in front of her, perhaps that was the motion that had caught Danielson’s attention. Danielson was sure the woman had been there for some time, quietly watching.
The same motion must have caught Runyan’s attention, too. Danielson watched him as he sat a little more than an arm’s length from the doorway.
Danielson could see his eyes as he scanned the lovely, composed face, down the curves of her body to her feet in open, tastefully designed sandals. She turned to go and Runyan bent over and craned his neck to follow with unabashed interest her passage down the hallway. When he could see her no longer, he straightened up and looked over to catch Danielson’s eyes upon him. Danielson looked quickly down at the book before her with blurred eyes. She felt ice in her stomach and warm fire on her face.
Maria Latvin opened the door to the bedroom. At first she thought only one was there, but then the tall one stepped out from behind the door.
“What do they do now?”
“They look at books in the study and talk among themselves.” A mix of truth and half-truth.
“We are taking Krone. And you. To care for him.”
God! To go back. She felt the wave of despair again.
“And what of them?” She gestured toward the front of the house.
“If you cooperate, they need come to no harm. Where is Krone now?”
“He is still in the study. With them.”
“You must bring him here. We will escape out the back to our car that is hidden down the road.”
“And if they resist?”
“You must find a way. If they discover our presence here they will die.”
“If we get away, they, and soon many others, will follow,” the woman argued.
The tall man thought for a long moment.
“You must make it look as if it is your idea. If they look only for a woman on the run, our job will be easier.”
Now Maria Latvin thought deeply. She could go to the agents in the study and reveal the Russians, but at the risk of death or worse for her mother and brother. She could make off with Paul herself and to hell with them all, but the Russians, at least, would exact the same penalty. She wanted no harm to come to those in the other room, least of all Paul. She dreaded the idea of going back, but she would be with Paul, and surely the Americans would do everything to have him released. Staying close to him was her best chance of survival.
She needed some way to distract them. She thought of the lab books. Paul had been working with them when he had drifted from her. The Americans were keenly interested in them. She supposed the Russians would be too, if they only knew how near they were. She hated them!
She spoke to the tall one.
“I will get him out in the car. You can wait to see us leave. We have a hunting lodge higher in the mountains, I’ll draw you a map. I will head in the opposite direction and then double back on another road. We can switch to your car there.”
“I don’t like it,” said the other man. “We shouldn’t let her or Krone out of our sight.”
The tall man turned to speak to him, keeping his eyes locked on Maria Latvin.
“I don’t think there will be any problem.” He smiled an unpleasant smile and patted the leather folder in his breast pocket.
Isaacs closed another book and checked his watch. He had found no reference to other useful material beyond an occasional technical journal. The lab books seemed self-contained. There was no reason to delay further.
“It’s time to get back to the base and radio a report,” he said. “How are you doing?” he inquired of his companions.
“This is amazing stuff!” Runyan replied enthusiastically. “The man is really incredible. He has developed a whole series of innovative techniques to accomplish things I would have said were impossible. Apparently, he deliberately set out to make a black hole. He wanted to use it as an energy source, utilize the power emitted as material is swallowed. Vast power from anything, dirt, water, air. He started by investigating how great a density he could create in the lab. Just a question of pure basic science with no practical application in mind. Then he got the idea of creating a black hole. He imploded pellets of iron with his standard beam techniques— iron so that there would be no nuclear reactions. The problem is that it requires vast energies to overcome the internal pressure of the compressed matter. Krone seems to have developed a way to neutralize the electrical charges in the pellet and the beam that compresses it. That reduced the pressure and allows much higher densities. I haven’t gotten to anything about black holes yet, but if I’m any judge his studies will advance our knowledge of the behavior of nuclear matter by a decade.”
“Could be,” replied Isaacs. “I was just looking here somewhere in the middle of the story,” he checked a date, “about a year and a half ago. Apparently, he has had some success at reaching high densities, but trouble maintaining them. He’s describing here the development of a magnetic confinement configuration that can support the compressed pellet while he continues to focus the intense neutron beams on it. The discussion is highly technical. I’m barely getting the gist of it.”
Isaacs paused to rub his eyes.
“The real question is whether we are going to learn anything from these that will tell us how to undo the damage. Are you getting any sense of that?”
“He’s done the impossible and recorded it in meticulous detail,” Runyan replied. “Only time will tell, but I can’t believe there won’t be some new knowledge, some hints. I know this, as long as the original knowledge is locked up there,” he glanced at Krone’s still figure, “these books are invaluable.”
Danielson had not seemed to pay any attention to this interchange. She had swiveled her chair away from the desk and was staring at the fire.
“Pat?” inquired Isaacs.
She turned to look at him with a vacant smile. “I was thinking about Shelley.”
“The poet, Percy Bysshe?”
“No, his wife, Mary Wollstonecraft.”
“Oh, right, Frankenstein. Well, our scientist has created a monster all right.”
“Four of them.”
“What’s that?”
She pointed at the book she had abandoned on the desk.
“He thinks he made four of them. At first the suspension system was ineffective. He cites evidence that he managed to start three seeds, but then they disappeared from the system. There was no sign that they had evaporated, no unexplained release of energy. He suspects they fell into the Earth, but are too small to detect. By the fourth time, he made significant improvements to the magnetic suspension and managed to force-feed and grow the one we know about. Eventually, the suspension failed again. This time he detected it seismically and knew for sure what was happening.”
“My god!” gasped Runyan from his seat by the door. “Didn’t he know what he was doing? Why didn’t he stop after the first disaster?”
She looked at him coolly.
“The journals are pretty clinical so his state of mind is only implicit, but I get the feeling that he was totally caught up in the scientific and engineering questions and driven by a powerful megalomania. Apparently, he was so consumed by his quest that he didn’t question the failures in that way, just what had become of them. When the fourth got away from him, he finally thought seriously
about the implications of what he had done—and it destroyed him.” She waved a hand toward the quiet figure in the chair by the fireplace.
“But if he’s right about the other three,” said Runyan, “then even if we find some solution to the big one we’re still in danger from the others. Drag on them is going to act more quickly to cause them to settle into the Earth where they’re unreachable. They may take a much longer time to grow to a dangerous size, but it’s still just a matter of time.”
He exchanged a long glance with Isaacs. Isaacs broke it off, gathered up the books he had been reading and stood.
“Well, let’s see if we can get these books to someone who will understand them better than we do.”
Danielson stood up from the desk, and Runyan gathered his long legs under him and shoved himself to his feet.
Maria Latvin appeared in the doorway. She gave Runyan a cool look and then addressed herself to Isaacs.
“I must put Paul down for his rest. Then I would like to talk to you, if I may. Would you please wait in the living room?”
“Certainly,” replied Isaacs. “We have a couple of issues to discuss with you as well.”
They filed out of the room and down the hall as the woman bent to help Krone from the chair.
Isaacs deposited the books he had been holding on the table in the foyer. He walked over next to Runyan who had settled in the chair next to the fireplace. Danielson examined the artifacts on the shelves.
“What next?” Runyan inquired.
“We’ll explain to her that we need the books and that we’ll have to send someone for Krone. Something tells me she’s not going to take that news too well.”
Runyan’s face clouded over. “I don’t believe I fathom that lady. Surely she realizes that we represent some threat to upset her isolated but rather posh applecart here, yet she doesn’t seem at all perturbed.”
“I’m not sure of her role, either,” Isaacs answered. “She does seem to be devoted to Krone. If he returned the consideration, he may have set her up for life, regardless of what happens.”
Runyan smiled an impish grin. “Or maybe Krone’s not as incapacitated as he seems. That’s one good-looking woman there.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Danielson turned, exasperated. “You can see what shape that man is in. Can you imagine what an effort it must be to care for him? All by herself?”
Runyan leaned toward Isaacs and said in a stage whisper, “Touchy feminist.”
“Mr. Isaacs,” Danielson’s voice was cold with fury. “I don’t believe you need me here anymore. I’ll wait in the car.” She paused to pick up the lab books Isaacs had left in the foyer and then swept out the front door.
Runyan gave a half shrug as Isaacs fixed him with a stony stare.
“That was completely unnecessary, Alex. I don’t know what you’ve done to upset her, but I want a lid on it.”
“Hey, it was a little joke.”
“There’s more to it than that. Something’s going on between you.”
“Well, to hell with you,” Runyan scowled. “My personal life is none of your business.”
“It is if it keeps one of my people from performing at top efficiency, or distracts us at all from what we’re doing here.”
“Horse shit,” seethed Runyan. “Don’t tell me I’m not on top of what’s going on.” He stood up and looked down at the slightly shorter man. “You wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me.”
“I know what you’ve contributed, and I’d like to keep you on the team, but if you get in my way, you’re out!”
The two men glared at one another, then Runyan broke off and looked at the carpet, scuffing his toe, then finally back at Isaacs.
“Look,” he said, “this thing is too big for us to lose sight of it fighting over some girl.”
“Girl! She’s a damn fine worker. Let me remind you neither of us would be here if it weren’t for her early work.”
“She’s a bright lady, I know that. She’s also attractive, in case you hadn’t noticed. We got a little friendly out there in Arizona. Didn’t mean anything.”
“I think it did to her.”
They were silent a moment. Then Isaacs spoke.
“We’ve got to get a move on here. The woman’s had plenty of time to put Krone to bed or whatever she was going to do. See if you can find her. I’ll get the two men in the car to start carrying out the books.”
Runyan headed down the hallway. He heard a noise, turned into the study, and was rooted with shock. A huge fire roared in the fireplace. In disbelief, he watched Maria Latvin pick up an object, squirt it with charcoal lighter, and toss it into the fireplace where it ignited with a FOOMPF! and added to the blaze. He looked more carefully and realized that the grate was filled with burning books. The lab books!
“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, rushing toward her.
The woman swiveled quickly, the fingers of her right hand deftly sweeping up a bone-handled knife as she turned. I wish no one hurt, she thought, but I’m too close to let this one stand in my way. I must get to Paul!
She faced Runyan in a half-crouch, the position they had learned when planning the escape. She felt the rush of irony that she should use this skill to fight her way back in. She spread her feet wide, wielding the weapon in the classic offensive position, point out, not down from her fist like a dagger. Runyan registered her savage, determined look and the wicked tip of the blade. He tried to brake, off balance.
The knife whipped in a deadly arc toward his face. He jerked his head back and threw up his arms for protection, stumbling backwards. He felt his jaw go numb as the blade went by and then a deep agony flashed through his right forearm. He crashed onto the floor. The woman’s knife hand had completed its vicious cycle, instantly ready to strike again. Runyan’s fall on his back, legs sprawled, had taken him just out of reach. He saw her look at his exposed crotch and draw back the knife. Panic seized him. He shuttled backward, crab-like, then flipped onto all fours. He screamed as his right arm gave way, and he fell on his face. He crawled awkwardly with one arm, flailing, splashing blood, then finally got his feet under him and lurched out the door and down the hallway.
Isaacs was on the front step when he heard Runyan shout. He raced into the living room just as Runyan, frightened and bloody, ran from the hall.
“Burning the lab books!” Runyan shouted hoarsely, as he collapsed onto Isaacs who lowered him to the floor. The two CIA agents pounded into the room. Danielson and the pilot followed them, breathing hard, eyes wide.
“The woman! Get her!” Isaacs directed the agents. “And watch out— she’s got some kind of weapon. Pat, see to him, will you?” he said standing, pointing to Runyan’s sprawled form. “You!” he said, fingering the pilot, “come with me.”
He raced down the hallway. At the end of it, the two agents were putting their shoulders to a locked door. Dimly, Isaacs heard the roaring start of a high performance engine.
“A car!” he shouted. “Out the front way. See if you can stop her! If she’s got Krone with her, for god’s sake don’t do anything to harm him.”
Isaacs turned into the study as the agents ran back down the hallway past him. He fought down a sense of dismay at the sight of the hearth full of burning books, then grabbed the fireplace tongs and began to frantically pull them from the grate. The pilot backed into the room watching the two CIA field men disappear into the living room. Then he turned and stopped transfixed, watching as Isaacs threw book after burning book about the room.
“Get your jacket off!” Isaacs shouted over his shoulder. “Smother those!”
The carpet was starting to smoulder in a dozen places. The young pilot stripped off his jacket and began to extinguish the flames, covering the books with his jacket, kicking them away from areas of smoking carpet.
Isaacs pulled the last book from the grate, a half-consumed block of char. He removed his jacket and methodically worked on the flames nearest him. After a frenetic minute,
the last of the flames died. Isaacs, breathing in huge gulps of air, smiled gratefully at the young man. His proud grey-blue jacket was a scorched tatter. He was covered with soot and his hands were red with angry welts. Isaacs felt his own hands begin to puff and sting with burns he had ignored.
“Sorry about your hands, and clothes.”
The young man shrugged.
“Would you make sure these are all out?” Isaacs asked him. “I’ll check the others.”
Isaacs left the soldier gently kicking the books into the hallway, checking for those still smouldering.
Pat Danielson had run over to Alex Runyan and then stopped, weak-kneed. He lay on his back, staring pale faced at the ceiling. His shirt was slashed just below his right elbow and a dark stain spread into the cloth, but it was his neck that held her attention. His beard below the chin line dripped red blood. She paid no attention to the two CIA agents who tore through the room and out the front door. My god, she thought, dropping to her knees, his throat’s been slashed!
Runyan rolled his eyes to her and smiled weakly. “I’ll never look at another woman again.”
Danielson forced herself to look at his neck. With relief, she realized the wound was just along the jaw bone. It was deep, with pink bone showing, but not life threatening.
“She—she nearly cut your throat.”
“I certainly got the impression that was her goal,” Runyan croaked.
“Let me look for something to stop the bleeding,” Danielson said. She ran through the dining room into the kitchen. She slammed through the cabinets until she found a stack of dish towels. She turned to go, then stopped and pulled open drawers until she found a large, sharp kitchen knife. She trotted back to Runyan who was struggling to sit up.
“Lie down, crazy,” she said, pushing him in the chest with the butt of the knife.
Runyan spied the gleaming blade. “You’re going to finish the job,” he groaned. “Make it quick.”
Danielson put the knife and towels down and gave him a pained look. She rolled one of the towels up and aligned it with the cut on his jaw.
The Krone Experiment Page 35