“In any case we have no choice but to push on,” Danielson said. “If they pause now to assess our reaction, we can get to the lab and back to the President so he has all the facts to negotiate with. If they choose the insane path, well, those mountains will be as good a place as any to be.” She gestured to the slopes rising to the east.
Isaacs was pleased that her common sense, though grim, was asserting itself again.
“Okay, let’s go.” He gave her upper arm a squeeze as he guided her toward the waiting helicopter. Runyan hurried forward to help her climb in. Danielson noticed him and paused. With her mind freshly cleared by the heightened air of crisis, she decided a show of independence would be healthy for both of them. She turned to the lieutenant who had delivered the message, smiled at him and offered her arm. The young man leapt quickly to her side and helped her to clamber in, leaving Runyan standing nonplussed on the tarmac. Isaacs watched this quick tableau and then climbed in himself, jaw muscles knotting as he clenched his teeth.
The flight up to the research complex headed by Paul Krone took only fifteen minutes. As they approached they could tell that Krone commanded a huge authority. There were six or seven large buildings linked by a maze of roadways. They landed on a pad in front of one of the buildings and were met by a small, jaunty man of about sixty. He wore a plain white shirt, green and white checked pants, and white patent leather shoes. The shirt was anchored at the neck with a large silver and turquoise string tie that clashed with his nineteenth hole outfit.
“Hello,” he bubbled. “I’m Ralph Floyd, executive site manager here. We’re so pleased to have you. We don’t get attention from the top levels here very often.” Behind his facade he was troubled, sensing a threat to his conspiracy of silence over Paul Krone’s attempted suicide. Who were these people with their peremptory visit, vague credentials?
Isaacs recognized the type. Quintessential bureaucrat, delighted with the sudden interest that this delegation purported to represent, but fearful because he didn’t know exactly who they were or what they wanted. Isaacs eyed the man impatiently. An ominous image formed in his mind—the Russian laser gathering power for an imminent onslaught. He gritted his teeth and determined to play out the cover story until he could get a firmer feel of the situation. Where in the hell was Krone? Isaacs introduced the members of his party, and they followed Floyd into the nearby administration building. Floyd led them to his office and seated them. Just the right number of chairs had been brought in.
“Now, what can I do for you gentlemen—and lady,” Floyd corrected himself. Danielson returned his smile with a blank stare. The smile faded and he turned to Isaacs.
“This is very short notice, but of course, we are all at your disposal.”
“The President keeps tabs on all the crucial components in our research and development program,” Isaacs began, bluffing his way. “He has heard good things about the work Dr. Krone and all of you are doing here, and he wants to be brought more directly up to date.”
Floyd beamed possessively, but there was a wariness behind his smile.
“We understand this complex is autonomous,” Isaacs continued.
“Oh, yes,” said Floyd, “our mandate comes from Los Alamos, and our budget from there and from Krone Industries, but we are self-contained and Dr. Krone has a free hand to do as he wishes.” He leaned forward and assumed a frank look. “Dr. Krone is an authentic Genius, you know.”
Isaacs could hear the capital G, but something in Floyd’s tone suggested that being a genius was not something proper folk did.
“He does need some help in practical matters,” Floyd continued with a self-effacing smile. “I do what I can to make his job easier.”
“I’m sure,” replied Isaacs with an answering smile that did not quite reach his eyes.
“We were hoping to see Dr. Krone.”
“Ah,” said Floyd, his face drooping mournfully, “Dr. Krone has not been well for some time. We have not seen him at all for a few months. But,” he brightened, “all our programs are proceeding actively.”
Isaacs divined that Floyd was in manager’s heaven—all programs routinely active and no boss to foul things up with new ideas, directions, and suggestions. Managing the affairs of a genius would be trying. He fixed on the time Floyd mentioned. A few months. What did Krone’s absence imply? That was about as long as they had been tracking the black hole. Could that be coincidence?
“Is Krone available if necessary?” Isaacs persisted.
“Well, that would be difficult,” answered Floyd. “He has a house up off the road a few miles back. A quite nice one actually, built with money from his patents, a product of his mind, he likes to say. He has always demanded his privacy there and has no phone. I’m afraid he’s not in a condition to accept visitors personally.”
“May I ask what the problem is?”
Floyd was silent for a moment, then made a futile gesture with his hands.
“I’ve been led to understand it’s nothing serious, that is to say, nothing organic. The stress, though—Dr. Krone carries many responsibilities.”
Isaacs caught the implication—cracked up, occupational hazard for geniuses, not the kind of thing that happens to proper folk. Isaacs fought down a wave of despair. He could feel the mission slipping away, sabotaged, inconclusive, leaving them at the mercy of the deadly laser, on the precipice of war. There were still the facilities to check out. Maybe they would learn something of interest. They had to move on.
“Well,” he said, with forced conviviality, “perhaps you would care to give us a look around.”
“Certainly, certainly,” agreed Floyd, anxious to prove that all was in working order and, despite a suicidal boss, fit for presidential approval.
Floyd led them to a waiting van and played tour guide as the driver steered around the maze. There was a small section of simple tract homes and apartments for the personnel. A powerful nuclear reactor supplied the prodigious energy needs of the various experiments. They stopped at several buildings with Isaacs fuming inwardly with each passing minute. They were treated to a zoo of fantastic devices that shot, banged, sizzled, lased, fused, fried, evaporated, imploded, and exploded. Despite his growing frustration, Isaacs was impressed with Floyd’s acumen in his own area. While no expert on the basic scientific and engineering principles, Floyd knew the origin and use of every nut and bolt and their price to the penny. Apparently Krone was good at picking people, as well as at creating new inventions.
At last, Runyan drew Isaacs aside.
“This is a waste of time. What the hell are we doing on this two-bit tour?”
“Goddamnit, we had to start somewhere!” Isaacs replied just as hotly, in a fierce whisper. He was not sure what they were looking for, but he was sure they hadn’t seen it. He had been ticking off the various buildings mentally. As they climbed into the van once more and Floyd began to make noises about the end of the tour, Isaacs stopped him.
“We haven’t seen that farthest building, out near that large cleared area.”
“Oh,” Floyd seemed nervous, tentative. “These experiments I’ve shown you are all basically mission oriented, and each has its own project scientist. That building contains Dr. Krone’s own special experiments.”
He leaned closer to Isaacs and lowered his voice.
“Frankly, we regard that set up as part of the overhead. It has been frightfully expensive, but it has kept Dr. Krone occupied and happy when he was not working directly on one of the other projects.”
“I’ll need to see it.”
“Oh, but it was shut down when Dr. Krone became—ill.” Floyd could see visions of presidential commendation vanishing with the opening of the door to that boondoggle building.
“Just the same,” Isaacs insisted.
“Very well.” Floyd gestured to the driver, and they were deposited in the drive of the far building. Perhaps, he thought, this will finally distract them from the condition of Krone himself.
Floyd
dawdled over his keys, but finally accepted the inevitable and opened the door. The small group stopped immediately inside the door and craned their necks upward. The building was essentially one immense room, ten or eleven stories tall and somewhat larger in length than width. What arrested their attention was the behemoth construction that dominated the room, towering almost to the ceiling. It had the complex unfinished look of a research project as opposed to some of the production prototype devices they had just seen. An array of massive tubes projected radially from a hidden core, giving the whole structure the look of a giant monstrous hedgehog.
If Isaacs had any doubts that this was it, the look on Runyan’s face banished them.
Runyan stood transfixed as his brain catalogued the components he vaguely recognized and wrestled to identify myriad paraphernalia that were foreign to him. Then he slowly moved toward the device, circled it and within a minute was scrambling up ladders and around catwalks in a furious desire to lay hands on the machine.
Ralph Floyd jittered from foot to foot, aware of the change in mood that had come over his visitors, but unable to comprehend it.
Isaacs turned to him.
“Do you know what the purpose of this thing is?”
“Only very vaguely,” replied Floyd. “I believe Dr. Krone was studying states of matter at very high density. I believe he had some goal of generating large amounts of cheap energy in a new way.”
He snickered behind one hand.
“To tell you the truth, the technicians who worked in here had a private name for it—Gravel Gertie.”
Isaacs raised an eyebrow.
“Well, when the thing was working, if that’s what you could call it, it consumed vast amounts of material. Lead bricks! My god, you don’t know how he had me scouring the whole country for lead bricks. He’d feed them in over there at a whopping rate—”
Floyd pointed to an extension of the machine at the far side.
“They would vaporize and disappear. And at the same time he’d feed it granite from that hopper up there—vaporize that too. At one point about a year ago he hired fifty dump trucks. Fifty of them! And he kept them working around the clock for a month dumping gravel into that hopper. That’s where the name came from. Just the overtime alone I had to pay! My head still spins.
“That’s where that clear area out back came from, by the way. Disappeared into that hopper.”
Isaacs looked at the little man and refrained from asking him where he thought all that rock went to. Instead he said, “My companions and I would like to look around here a little. Would you mind waiting outside?”
“Oh, no, of course not. I’ll, I’ll just be outside.” Floyd dreaded the thought of leaving his visitors alone, unable to make convenient excuses and explanations, but he turned to leave, pulling the door shut behind him.
Isaacs looked at his watch. 3:40, local time, twenty till six in Washington. The world was still in one piece. Apparently rationality reigned, if only for a little while, and global catastrophe was held in abeyance. He hadn’t really expected a first strike, yet some small fatalistic corner of his mind would not have been surprised to see a mushroom cloud rising in the distance as they walked between buildings. Now he could be confident their mission would not be a total disaster. If they could learn nothing from the machine that loomed before him, others would follow who could. With this the Russians could be stalled, if not convinced. There was time to look a bit here, he thought, try to see Krone, and still get back in time to lay the whole story out for the President. He stood and watched as Runyan scrambled around the device like a kid on a city park playscape.
A call from Pat Danielson came from the far side of the room.
After a minute of staring at the gargantuan, incomprehensible device, Danielson had looked around the room. Along its perimeter individual cubicles had been partitioned off. Although dwarfed by the looming device in the center, they were normal sized rooms, some even fairly large. She walked the perimeter peering into each through their large glass windows and discovered they were shops. The first was crammed with oscilloscopes, amplifiers, power supplies, and other electronic accouterments. Next was a machine shop with a multitude of drills, lathes, and saws, and a carpet of coiled, oily shards on the floor.
After wandering past several more rooms, one housing a late model large capacity scientific computer, Danielson found a small windowless room just opposite the door from which they had entered. She tried the door and stepped in, groping for and finding a light switch. There was a small but comfortable desk, shelves filled with books and computer output. What caught her eye, however, was a bound laboratory notebook resting alone on the desk. She reached for it and thumbed rapidly through. The book was three-quarters empty. She found the last entry, read briefly and then walked to the door.
“Mr. Isaacs,” she shouted, “Bob? I’ve found something!”
Isaacs rounded the device looking for her and hurried across the intervening space, stepping over cables strewn on the floor.
Danielson watched him approach with an air of excitement.
“Look here! I’ve found a lab book describing the experimerit.” She twisted to let him read over her shoulder where her finger marked a place. “The experiment has been a tremendous success,” Danielson read aloud, “much has been learned about the properties of matter at ultrahigh densities and the transition to the final state of that matter. The experiment is not over, but it is no longer in my hands.”
There was a gap and then other entries in a more hurried, scrawling manner.
“How could it have gone wrong!” Danielson read. “The sudden loss of containment is shocking, some instability, something unexpected in the containment process. The principle is now established. Must 1) study containment 2) study implications 3) retrieve them.”
The two exchanged a long glance.
“That’s the last entry?” Isaacs wanted to know. Danielson nodded.
“Are there any more of these?” Isaacs inquired, turning to examine the shelves.
“Not in here,” Danielson replied. “There is a computer. It may have files of interest, but this book seems to be where he records his personal insights and reactions.”
“Let’s keep looking,” Isaacs said.
They toured the rest of the perimeter, but found only shops. There were no more lab books. Isaacs went outside and spoke briefly with Floyd who was fidgeting in the driveway. He returned and explained to Danielson.
“Floyd says anything connected with this experiment should be here, unless Krone has other books at home. He worked at home a lot.”
He raised his voice.
“Alex? Time to move on. We’ve got to go see Krone.”
Runyan was near the top of the device. His voice carried faintly.
“A little longer. I’ve hardly explored a tenth of this thing.”
Isaacs allowed control of his temper to slip a little.
“Goddamnit, Alex, we’re on a tight schedule. You’re never going to understand that thing poking around by yourself. It’s not going anywhere, and we’ve got to talk to Krone if we can!”
Runyan muttered something unintelligible at the height, but began to climb down, feet clanging on the scaffolding steps. When he reached the bottom, his eyes still contained a glow of passion.
“That thing is fabulous! Do you see those immense particle accelerators?” He pointed at the hedgehog protrusions. “And apparently a gigantic superconducting magnet. Inconceivable that one man did that!”
Danielson clutched the lone lab book to her chest and felt a pang of jealousy. Jealous of a machine! Damn him! she thought.
Back at the administration building, Isaacs gave Floyd a receipt for the lab book.
“We’d like to try to see Krone. Perhaps we could borrow your van.”
“I’m really afraid that won’t “ Floyd said, then halted, stopped by the steel in Isaacs’ eyes. He thought desperately, but could see no recourse. He could try to stymie this group, but
others would follow. Silence had been his only defense, and now that silence would inevitably be shattered. Why had these people come?
“Yes, of course,” he conceded. “I’ll give instructions to the driver.”
“That won’t be necessary. The pilot who flew us up can drive. I don’t want to cause you excess trouble.” Or let you in on any more than necessary, Isaacs finished to himself.
“Fine, if that’s what you wish. I’ll give directions to your man, it’s just a short drive, perhaps fifteen minutes.”
“Is there anyone else in the house?” Isaacs inquired.
“There is a, ah, woman. She’s lived with him in the big house for, well, I guess about two years now. I believe she’s been taking care of him while he’s—incapacitated. There is also a Mexican couple who come in to help, but they are only there for half a day. They wouldn’t be there at this hour.”
Isaacs herded his team into the van and made sure they had the directions straight. A woman. He remembered the stories of the Soviet refugee he had heard from his contact in the FBI. Of course, she could be some old peasant lady who changes his sheets.
Chapter 17
Maria Latvin opened the door and knew the dreaded visit had come at last. The two men wore conservative western business suits, but she recognized the type and, despite herself, felt as if she had been suddenly yanked eight thousand miles back to the home she had fought so hard to leave.
The taller man stepped forward and reached into his inner jacket pocket for a small leather identification folder. He flipped it open and Maria stared at it. Not his papers, but photographs. Her mother and younger brother still trapped in Lithuania. Fighting the growing feeling of numbness, she stepped back and held the door open for them.
The tall man spoke quietly in Russian.
“We must see Paul Krone.”
“He’s not well,” Latvin replied, slipping into the same language.
“We know that. We must see him anyway and judge his condition for ourselves.”
“You know who I am. Why are you interested in Paul?”
The Krone Experiment k-1 Page 33