“Well,” Isaacs paused, “this was a two-story place with a bar underneath and a strip joint upstairs.” He gestured with his hands flat, one above the other. “The woman was, uh, dancing upstairs. This tunnel, or whatever it was, weakened a support structure on the stage and it collapsed on her.”
“I see,” said Noldt, sitting up straighter in his seat, a little embarrassed.
“A hundred meters away,” Isaacs continued, “the rear quarter of a seven-story building gave way and collapsed into the alley behind it. In this case, fortunately, no one was injured. The cause of the structural failure has not been positively determined, although some pieces of masonry show elongated gashes that bear similarity to the holes in the concrete floors in the other damaged buildings in Dallas and Nagasaki. Two agents in the area reported hearing a whistling noise of some kind. Their impression was that it receded up from the bar, and one of them thinks he heard it again about forty seconds later, prior, he believes, to the collapse of the building. There is no question now in my mind that this thing, whatever it is, causes physical damage, and that it was similar effects that damaged the Russian aircraft carrier, the Novorossiisk, and sank our destroyer, the Stinson.”
“You say,” remarked Zicek, “that this phenomenon seems to have gone up and then down in Dallas, in consonance with your feeling that something goes back and forth in the Earth.”
Isaacs nodded.
“I remind you that I remarked before I didn’t see how any beam could do such a thing, reverse directions. That feeling seems to be reinforced with your new evidence.”
“Wait a second, now,” Leems broke in. “What about satellite locations? I need to be convinced that more than one source isn’t involved somehow, one shooting one way, one, the other.”
“I checked that,” Danielson responded to him. “There are hundreds of Soviet satellites in orbit. Occasionally, there was a marginal coincidence of position with a single event, but no pattern that could explain all the incidents we know of. And no case when two satellites lined up on the trajectory simultaneously on opposite sides of the Earth to account for the reversal of direction.”
She looked down and brushed a piece of lint from her skirt and then looked back at Leems.
“I also tracked all US, European, and Japanese satellites, with again the same null result. Nothing currently in orbit can account for what we have seen, even discounting the question of what the technology could be, something that could propagate through the Earth.”
Beside her, Alex Runyan smiled lightly, taking pleasure in her neat parry. Leems scowled more deeply, but did not respond. After a long quiet moment, Danielson leaned around Runyan to address Zicek.
“Excuse me, Dr. Zicek, but there’s another thing that I’m not sure came out clearly just now. The marks that we’ve investigated, the holes in the concrete, look very clean. There’s no sign of a great release of energy, no blackening, no melting or fusing of the material. Perhaps that makes the situation more confusing, but there’s no indication of explosion or burning that you’d expect of radiation from a beam of energy. It looks more like the material was drilled out; it’s just gone.”
The group of scientists fell silent, thinking. Fletcher and Noldt muttered to one another.
The idea hit Runyan like a physical blow. Suddenly he was encased in a suit of armor from neck to groin, three sizes too small. He stared at Danielson, and she returned his look, her right eyebrow arched quizzically.
Runyan felt as if he were balanced on a vertex. He sensed the grip of forces of which he had been unaware until moments ago. Danielson’s words had lifted a curtain to reveal the crest and the chasm yawning immediately before him. Random moments from his career flashed out of his subconscious, and he perceived them as stepping stones that had led him inexorably up to this teetering edge. He had no choice but to take the step that would send him plummeting headlong down the other side.
He knew the antagonist. He knew the mathematical structure of its bones and sinews, its space-time stretched tight on this frame. He knew the roaring cauldron deep inside which marked the boundary where knowledge stopped, but from where new beginnings would inevitably arise. He knew the men and women, past and present, who had pieced it together in their imaginations, fragment by careful fragment.
But this was not imagination. This was not mathematics. This was the most delicate dreams of the intellect come real in nightmare fashion. And that reality changed everything. Everything.
He had an urge to close his mind, as if by sealing off the thought he could seal the abyss, but he knew it was there. A dynamic, hurtling, all-consuming void.
“Do you have a pen, some paper?” Runyan whispered hoarsely to Danielson. He was scarcely breathing.
Danielson rummaged in her purse and produced a pen and a small airline cocktail napkin she had salvaged on the flight down.
“I only have—” she started to say.
“Fine,” Runyan breathed, grabbing the pen and napkin, “that’ll do.”
He pressed the napkin onto his bare knee and began to scratch symbols and numbers on it, oblivious to the uncertain, dispirited conversation in the room. Danielson was confused by his action, but could feel a new tension radiating from him. She had trouble following the discussion. Even though he was completely ignoring her, she felt partially mesmerized by Runyan’s newly focused intensity. She found this intensity, contrasted with a potential for warm amiability, strangely attractive.
Runyan was uncertain how much time had passed when he finally drew a long breath and let it out slowly. He handed the pen back to Danielson and locked eyes with her for a long moment. Then he stuffed the napkin into a pocket of his shorts and waited for a break in the discussion. At an appropriate point he poked a finger up.
Phillips nodded at him. “Dr. Runyan. You have a thought?”
Runyan lapped his fingers together and leaned forward, forearms on his bare knees. He pressed his thumbs in opposition, looked down at his hands and then up toward Phillips. His terrible conclusion was inescapable. Now he had to lead his colleagues down the same path.
“Let me see if I can speak to what is bothering all of us,” he said slowly and reflectively. “We’ve been unable to account for any extraterrestrial source, natural or artificial. The fact that we’re dealing with something that has a fixed direction in space suggests an origin out there.” He jerked a thumb toward the ceiling. “But the basic phenomenon occurs within the depths of the Earth.” He jabbed a long forefinger toward the floor. “It only comes to the surface periodically.”
Danielson sat tensely on the sofa, partially turned toward Runyan, watching his eyes and mouth as he spoke. The words were neutral enough, but seemed darkly ominous to her, a cold vapor filling the room.
“Incredible as it seems,” Runyan continued, “I think the conclusion we’ve been avoiding is that there is actually something inside the Earth, something moving around through the Earth, triggering seismic waves and tunneling holes as it goes.”
He glanced sideways at Danielson, his eyes crinkled by a faint smile. “I don’t remember whether it was Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe who argued that one should throw out every impossible explanation, and the remaining one, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” The smile faded. “I’ve done something like that in my own mind and reached a conclusion, but it’s bizarre, and I don’t want to prejudice you with it yet. I’d like you to follow this line of reasoning and see where you think it leads.”
Runyan seemed to be sitting calmly, looking around at his colleagues, but Danielson happened to glance down at his feet. His toes were curled around the end of the thongs, gripping them, pale splotches on the knuckles contrasting with the tanned skin.
Across the room, Isaacs was staring at Runyan, mentally groping, trying to grasp the implications of the scientist’s statements. The quiet was broken by Fletcher who sat up straight in his chair and muttered, “Oh, Jesus.” He swiveled to look at Runyan. The two locked gazes and star
ed at one another for an extended moment. Then Fletcher broke off and waved a hand inviting Runyan to take the floor.
Runyan stood and made his way slowly to the blackboard, deep in thought. With a habit born of long hours in the classroom, he selected a moderately long piece of chalk from the tray before turning to face his audience.
“Let’s forget the seismic signal itself and concentrate on the derived trajectory for a moment,” he began, unconsciously slipping into a pedagogical tone. He turned to the board and sketched a circle representing the Earth, with a curved arrow above it indicating the direction of rotation. Then he added a straight line beginning a third of the way from the equator to the North Pole. The line passed through the center of the circle and out the opposite side.
Watching the tip of the chalk, Danielson suddenly pictured a stiletto, piercing the Earth. Her shoulders contracted in a brief shiver.
“The source moves like this,” Runyan tapped the line with the chalk, “with a period of eighty minutes and thirty seconds. We can think of the Earth as a sphere of roughly constant density, which produces a certain gravitational potential. An object falling freely in that harmonic potential would oscillate back and forth along a line. To close approximation, the line would point to a fixed direction in space. The period would be eighty some-odd minutes.” He looked at Fletcher, then at Leems. “Essentially the same as that of an Earth-orbiting satellite.”
There were scattered rustlings in the room as a couple more individuals began to see where Runyan’s arguments were leading.
“Now, if we consider the real Earth,” Runyan continued, “there would be some differences. A minor factor would be that the density of the Earth is not constant. An orbiting object would feel a somewhat different gravitational pull than the idealized case I’ve described. That would alter the period of the trajectory somewhat. There could also be precessional effects on the orientation, but all that’s negligible for now.”
He looked around the room, focusing briefly on Danielson. Her stomach tightened as if his gaze were a physical grip. His face was a sharp image against blurred surroundings. She could make out beads of sweat along his hairline.
“The significant feature,” Runyan continued, “is that the path is anything like a free orbit since, as we all know, the Earth resists quite effectively the attempt of any material body to move through it. If I’m on the right track, the orbiting body can’t be ordinary material.”
“Let me get this straight,” said Gantt. “You’re proposing that something is actually orbiting within the Earth?”
“C’mon!” snorted Leems.
“That’s the only picture that makes sense to me,” Runyan replied, his voice tensing at the implied skepticism. He turned to the board and drew heavily, repeatedly, on the line that slashed through the circle. “Back and forth on a line fixed by the inertial frame of the stars, independent of the rotation of the Earth. That’s been one of the strangest features of the story Dr. Danielson has told us.
“The problem,” he continued, “is to identify what the thing could be. It’s apparently slicing through the Earth like the proverbial knife through butter. That seems to call for something significantly denser than the densest parts of the mantle and core, denser than anything occurring naturally on Earth or made in any laboratory.”
“I don’t see where you’re going,” said Leems sceptically. “Are you talking about some superheavy element?”
Runyan glared at him. He could see the answer so clearly. Was Leems being deliberately obtuse?
“In a sense,” he replied, coolly. “My thoughts go to stellar examples, where high densities naturally result from huge gravitational fields.” He glanced at Fletcher who gave a brief nod. “White dwarf matter, which is crushed until atoms blur into one another, exists at densities from a million to a billion grams per cubic centimeter. Neutron star material is even more extreme. Matter is squeezed until atomic nuclei dissolve at densities greater than a hundred trillion grams per cubic centimeter. If you could drop a chunk of either kind of matter on Earth, it would meet virtually no resistance and plunge to the center and pass through to the opposite side as it performed an essentially free orbit.”
“Are you suggesting a neutron star is orbiting inside the Earth?” asked Gantt incredulously.
“No,” Runyan replied, frowning. “A full-sized white dwarf would be as large as the Earth and have as much mass as the Sun. A neutron star would only be a few miles across, but again would have the mass of the Sun. The Earth’s orbit hasn’t been appreciably affected since the astronomers haven’t raised an uproar, so whatever we are dealing with can’t have much mass.”
“Then you’re talking nonsense, aren’t you?” It was a statement more than a question from Leems.
Runyan ignored him. “We might consider a small piece of a neutron star or a white dwarf, but we understand the physical processes involved there reasonably well. Freed from the gigantic self-gravity, a small piece would explode under its own outward pressure. What we need is something that will remain at high densities even though it has relatively low mass. Although I can list reams of practical objections, I can only think of one possibility that fits the picture we now have.”
Leems was exasperated. “Honest to god, Alex,” he said in a disgusted voice, “you’re not making any sense at all. What in the hell are you getting at?”
Runyan’s resolve to proceed dispassionately dissolved. “Oh, for chrissake, Harvey!” he stormed. “Can’t you see it?”
He was suddenly angry that the responsibility for the message was his. He aimed his fear and frustration at Leems.
“It’s a black hole!” he raged. “The Earth’s being eaten by a goddamned black hole!”
Danielson recoiled back against the cushion of the sofa at Runyan’s outburst, her face draining of color. Black holes? Her mind reeled at his vehemence, the radical leap of his argument. Black holes had to do with stars, space, galaxies! Not downtown Dallas, Nagasaki. What in god’s name was he talking about?
“Oh, bullshit!” blurted Leems. He locked eyes with Runyan and then looked down and away to a neutral point in the room.
“What?” demanded Noldt. “What did he say?” Fletcher leaned over to him and began an intense reprise of Runyan’s arguments.
Runyan continued to glare at Leems and made no attempt to respond to the commotion. He felt the first wisps of relief that the burden was no longer solely his to bear.
Good god! Have I blundered? Isaacs thought to himself as he sat upright in his chair. With a sinking sensation, he looked quickly from Runyan, to Leems, and back to Runyan. Was coming to Jason a grievous error? Was his innate distrust of these far-out academics finally justified? He could feel his months of work and risk slipping away. What a disaster, if all he had to take back to Drefke was some harebrained idea. He turned to Phillips with a look of dismay.
Phillips saw the startled concern on Isaacs’ face. As he stood and moved to the front of the room beside Runyan, he surveyed the others. Leems was red-faced, as if he’d picked up the color Danielson had lost. Fletcher was still explaining, waving a finger back and forth, tracing a trajectory in front of the nose of a bewildered Ted Noldt. Gantt and Zicek were attempting a disjointed analysis across the length of the room, their voices ringing with surprise. Phillips motioned for quiet.
“Gentlemen,” Phillips said firmly, “let’s see if we can have an orderly and objective discussion of this remarkable suggestion Dr. Runyan has made.” Turning to Runyan he continued, “Alex, you’ll have to forgive our collective skepticism, but this notion strains all credibility. From where could such a thing have come? What could it be doing in the Earth? Surely, there’s a simpler explanation.”
When he answered, Runyan’s voice was still too loud, his normally avuncular tone replaced by a hint of righteousness.
“Simple? What we all crave is a less radical solution. We’ve striven for that and come away empty-handed. I submit we won’t find a simple solution i
n the sense you mean, Wayne. Only an orbit fits the odd trajectory. Only an orbit would have a fixed period and a direction anchored in space, independent of the Earth’s rotation about its axis and revolution about the Sun. Can anyone deny that a simple orbit fits the picture?”
The rhetorical question was greeted with silence.
Runyan paced back and forth in a tight little orbit of his own. Danielson’s thoughts were awash with the idea he had thrust upon them. Her eyes watched the muscles flexing in his Sun-tanned legs. His tone became calmer.
“I ask myself what sort of thing can be orbiting through the Earth, and I see no alternative to the conclusion that it is very dense. Ordinary, even extraordinary matter can’t exist in small quantities at extreme densities, so I’m forced to conclude that we are dealing with a small, but very deadly, black hole. Don’t get the idea I’m happy with this idea. On the contrary. It scares the hell out of me.”
He continued to pace, thinking.
“Here’s more support for it,” Runyan said. “Look at the holes drilled in solid concrete with no sign of searing or scorching. That’s one of the singular pieces of evidence and very hard to understand any other way. It’s just what a small black hole would do. A black hole will pull in matter from a volume much bigger than itself as it moves, the gravitational force sucking the material in from the immediate vicinity.” He made a crushing motion with his fist. “A black hole will carve a tunnel as it goes, but leave no other sign of its passage, not like a laser beam or any other such device, as Dr. Danielson was quick to see.” He smiled at her for a moment. “In fact, from the size of the holes left behind, I can estimate the mass of the thing.”
Runyan paused and dug into a pocket of his cutoffs and brandished the napkin. The numbers blotched irregularly where the ink from Danielson’s pen had run in the porous material. He did this more from a sense of drama than from a need to refresh his memory. He recalled the result perfectly well. He made an abbreviated OK sign with index finger and thumb and peered through the small hole at his audience.
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