“Good. Very good. OK, folks, let’s get to work. Barry, Dick and I will let you know later today about cutting into the ceiling. Rank, if you can use any additional help, let me know. I want to get to the second level as soon as possible. I’m sure some of our grad students could use some exercise.” Rank smiled and nodded.
With that, the group broke up. Eugene Northrup stayed seated, waiting for the bulk of the group to leave before he got up and approached Reynolds.
“Dr. Reynolds?” he asked.
“Hal,” Reynolds replied.
“Hal, I hope you didn’t take offense at my answers to Mr. Sinclair’s questions.”
“Eugene, I think Bob took a cheap shot at you. You’re entitled to your beliefs, just as he is to his. I think he overstepped his boundaries a bit, and I mean to talk to him about it.”
Northrup was somewhat surprised at Reynolds’ reaction. He’d half expected Reynolds to defend Sinclair’s viewpoint.
“Dr. Reynolds… Hal. May I ask you a personal question?”
“Sure.”
“Are you a Christian?”
Reynolds looked at Northrup for a moment before responding. Then he smiled.
“Well, Eugene, that really is a rather personal question. But I’ll answer it anyway.
“When I was a kid, my parents took me to church and sent me to Sunday school until I was around ten or eleven. They then told me that it was up to me whether I wanted to continue. I thought about it quite a bit, and I continued to go for a while. But eventually, I decided that organized religion and I weren’t meant for each other, and I stopped going.
“I guess I’d say that the answer to your question is no, I’m not a Christian.”
Northrup was disappointed in the answer. Reynolds appeared to be a fair and honest man, and he had difficulty reconciling Reynolds’ behavior with what he had just said. He’d hoped that Reynolds might have been a potential ally.
“What was it that made you stray from the church?” he asked.
Reynolds regarded Northrup, and sensed the young man’s earnestness.
“Eugene, I think that that’s a bit too personal a question,” he answered. “I don’t know you well enough, and you don’t know me well enough to go into that in any detail.”
Northrup dropped his head and nodded. Looking back up at Reynolds, he said, “I understand, sir.”
Reynolds grinned, and started towards the coat rack where his parka hung. “Eugene,” he said, “please stop calling me ‘sir.’ “
“Yes sir,” Northrup replied.
Reynolds pulled on his parka, turned and gave Northrup a thumbs-up sign, and exited the office. Northrup started towards the coat rack to retrieve his own parka when the door opened and Sandy Ruggiero walked in.
“Good mornin’, Gene,” she purred.
“Um… good morning, Miss Ruggiero,” he nearly stammered.
“Oh, so formal!” she replied. Since they were not alone, she leaned close to whisper to him. “Was that a pistol in your pocket last night, or were you just happy to see me?” she asked.
Northrup, having no idea what she was talking about, immediately through about the Glock semiautomatic hidden in his kit. He looked self-consciously around the room before responding.
“I, uh… I’m sorry?”
Ruggiero giggled. “Don’t be sorry. I thought it was charming. I hope to get a look at your… pistol someday.”
Northrup was now thoroughly confused, but after a moment’s thought, decided that she was referring not to the Glock but rather, to his sexual organ. This brought another flush to his face.
“Excuse me, please, but I have to go,” he said, and hurried towards the door.
“Bathroom’s on the other side, at the far left end,” she replied with a chuckle. She was certain that she’d end up winning twenty dollars from Reynolds before this was over, and get laid in the process. And given the extent of the suppression that Northrup must have been maintaining over the years, she expected it to be very, very rewarding.
As he walked toward the elevator, Northrup was upset, and more than a little confused. Sandy Ruggiero had proven herself to be a brazen hussy, a whore and a sinner, yet if he was honest with himself, he found himself strongly attracted to her. Aside from her overtly sexual behavior, she seemed intelligent, cheerful and… well… nice. How could such an unsaved sinner be nice? In a way, it was the same situation as with Reynolds, but to a greater degree. He’d expected to find Godless sinners among the team, and had prepared himself to deal with their intellectual depravity, but the people here seemed for the most part to be decent, friendly and in all cases intelligent.
Northrup was also greatly troubled by the new theory of a dinosaur civilization. According to creation science theory, the dinosaurs were beasts from the original creation that had perished in the flood. Since they had lived at the same time as man, how could it be possible for them to create a civilization without it being mentioned anywhere in the Bible?
This amounted to nothing less than blasphemy, yet his analytical side told him that the evidence did seem to support the theory, and it seemed far more reasonable than the alien theory.
As he stood waiting for the elevator, he resolved to discuss the matter with Billy Joe Wilder that evening. He needed guidance.
•
After discussing the pros and cons of Hanrahan’s suggestion, Reynolds and Behling agreed to let him take a slice out of the ceiling. They insisted that the work be done wearing bio suits, and with the air lock sealed. Using a rotary masonry saw, Hanrahan and his partner would cut a four-inch deep inverted pyramid out of the ceiling.
The grad students rigged scaffolding that allowed them to lie on their backs just under the ceiling, and began their cutting. Four hours and three saw blades later, their sample fell free.
Along with Behling and Bob Fletch, they started their analysis. They began by slicing the sample in half, and then cutting a series of thin slices a millimeter thick from one of the halves for various types of analysis. Fletch ran chemical and spectrographic tests, while Behling and the engineering students performed mechanical and electrical tests.
They found a complex series of layers right at the ceiling surface. The outer layer, which contained the chemicals that created the glow, was only a few microns thick. It might as well have been painted on, except that its base was essentially the same granite concrete composition.
Behind the outer layer was a second distinct layer, also granite based, but with a very different mix of organic compounds and an assortment of metallic elements. It also was only a few microns thick.
Behind that layer, the sample was essentially the same as all the rest of the concrete.
Just before lunch time on the second day of testing, Hanrahan gave out a shout. “Hey, guys, look at this!” The others came over and crowded around. “I got it to glow!”
Hanrahan had been working with one of the thin slices, and the piece on his workbench was indeed glowing. Behling noted the wires attached to clamps.
“It’s electroluminescent!” he said.
“Exactly,” Hanrahan replied. “I was testing the resistance of the second layer, and it turns out that nine volts DC does the trick.”
“Incredible,” said Fletch.
Hanrahan looked at his test equipment and frowned. “But this can’t be right.”
“What,” asked Behling.
“Look at the resistance. It barely registers.”
“What amperage are you set to?”
“Um… Jeez, just under one amp.”
Fletch gave Behling a puzzled look. “What’s the deal?” he asked.
“The deal,” said Hanrahan, “is that if these readings are correct, this material is damn near a superconductor. A room-temperature super conductor!”
“Let’s try the full sample half,” said Behling.
Hanrahan clamped his probes onto the larger sample, which immediately started to glow.
“Try varying the amperage.�
�
Hanrahan started turning the amperage down, and as it dropped below a half amp, the sample began to fade visibly. He turned it back up, and found that beyond one amp, the glow remained the same.
“As I recall from my physics classes,” said Fletch, “Watts equal Volts times Amps.”
“Keereckto,” said Hanrahan. “It looks like we have a nine-volt system here,” he said. “With near-superconducting transmission and an incredibly efficient electroluminescent material. This puppy’s pulling nine watts.”
“That’s less than a night light,” said Fletch.
“Right again,” said Hanrahan.
“So not only had they developed electrical technology…” Fletch started.
Hanrahan finished for him. “They did it a lot better than we do.”
Chapter 17
The Second Level
Consciousness came over Reynolds gradually, lifting sleep away like a morning fog. As he began to awaken, he became aware that he had no feeling in his left arm. He opened his eyes, and realized why this was as he saw Stephanie Mitchell’s face, eyes closed, not four inches away. His left arm was angled above his head and hers, the result of the two of them having fallen asleep on his narrow cot.
He shifted onto his back, taking care not to fall off the edge of the cot, and brought his left arm down to his side. At the movement, she stirred, and after smacking her lips a few times, said, “Hmphhphhmph.”
“Hmmph, yourself,” he replied.
She froze for a moment, then opened her eyes wide, and then closed them again, relaxing. “Good morning.”
“Good morning,” he answered.
She snuggled up against him. “I didn’t mean for this to happen,” she said.
“I know.”
She opened her eyes again and smiled at him. “But I’m glad it did.” He responded by kissing her gently. She replied by kissing him back. In retaliation, he kissed her again. After a minute or two of seriously escalating lip lock, she broke free to ask a question. “Are you in a rush to get downtown?”
“It’ll still be there whenever we get there.”
“Good,” she said, a bit hoarsely, rolling on top of him. “This shouldn’t take too long.”
Reynolds and Mitchell had known each other casually and had been attracted to each other even back at Berkeley, but it seemed that whenever he was spending time on campus instead of in the field, she’d been involved with someone. Her extended stay at the site has served to end her most recent relationship, and the two found themselves together for the first time with means, motive and opportunity.
They’d managed to resist for more than two months, trying to maintain a professional relationship, in which they’d pretty well succeeded. Until the previous evening, that is, when she’d come to his room to discuss the plans for the day to come; the big day, when the team would finally reach what they hoped would be the entrance to Town Hall.
They’d managed to cover most of what they needed to discuss, her sitting on the edge of the cot and him in his chair across from her, when the sexual tensions finally overcame them. In less than a minute they were both naked and, as a famous movie critic would say, “making the sign of the two-headed aardvark.”
Thirty minutes after they’d first awakened, Reynolds finished dressing, and said, “Let me leave first. If there’s anyone in the hall, I’ll get them away from the door.”
Mitchell gave him a sideways look, and he broke into a chuckle. In a community of 25 people who all lived within feet of each other it was ludicrous to imagine that a relationship between two of them wouldn’t be detected immediately by the others. If they planned to continue this — and as it happened, they both did — there was no point in trying to keep it secret.
“OK, let’s go,” he said. “I’m hungry.”
She grinned and followed him into the hallway, which was empty.
When they entered the main office, which also served as the dining room, all eyes turned to greet them, with more than a few sly smiles. Virtually the entire team already knew that she’d spent the night in his room.
They got their food — there was an actual cook in residence now — and found spots at a table with Bob Sinclair and Dan Lightfoot.
“Good morning, you two,” Sinclair offered. “Nice of you to join us.”
“Up yours, geek,” Reynolds replied, with a twinkle in his eye. Sinclair grinned as he shoveled some scrambled eggs into his mouth. “Big day today,” he said with his mouth full.
“Yep,” said Reynolds.
In the days since the assessment meeting, the idea that the town was the relic of a dinosaur civilization had become the prime theory. Dan Lightfoot had talked to Doug Lee, and had confirmed that it had been Lee’s original instinct.
Among the team, the level of excitement was up, and the tension level was down. Despite Fred Taylor’s concerns, everyone seemed more comfortable with the possibility, if not the likelihood, that what they were dealing with was a part of Earth’s natural history and not some alien artifact.
After some discussion, the theory had been released to the press and added to the team’s Web site, and the debate now raged around the world. The alien theory had been all but forgotten. The dinosaur craze that had previously existed was already in the process of being ratcheted up several notches. Attendance at museums of natural history and dinosaur theme parks was up. Dinosaur-related books temporarily disappeared from library and book store shelves. Movies about dinosaurs were being readied for re-release.
Eric Jeffreys’ special report for CNN had been seen around the globe, and excerpts had been shown on hundreds of other networks and stations. Dewey Manley’s report to the San Francisco Times had been picked up by Reuters and reprinted around the world. Hundreds of media requests for travel to the site had been received at Berkeley, all of which had been turned down.
Mitchell had spent the last few days collecting data over the Internet on the various identified dinosaur species that were close to the size she extrapolated from the Outhouse findings. She had concentrated on varieties that were known to live at the end of the Cretaceous period, when the dinosaurs suddenly became extinct.
The most widely accepted theory of the cause of the dinosaur’s disappearance was that a large meteor or asteroid had collided with Earth, striking near what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. The explosion and its aftermath had probably created a global dust cloud that would have lowered the Earth’s temperature for years or decades, and caused the extinction of nearly all large creatures, including the dinosaurs. Smaller creatures, including the mammals of the time, had managed to survive, eventually repopulating the planet and setting in motion the evolutionary path that led to modern species.
As a paleontologist, Mitchell was extremely excited about the possibility of finding fossils of a new species of dinosaur, and had already come up with the name “Sapiosaurus,” meaning “wise reptile.” Finding a new type of dinosaur wasn’t all that rare an event in itself; paleontologists do it all the time, but this would be a very special case. She’d even daydreamed about finding carcasses preserved in the ice, but realized that this would be awfully unlikely. Finding fossilized bones in the dirt layer under the ice was a realistic hope, however.
Three days after the assessment meeting, the tunnel crew had reached the second level of Town Hall, and a day later the face of the upper pyramid, which they’d dubbed the “Penthouse.” As the crew cleared the ice from the area directly across from the top of the stairs, the team had experienced its first major disappointment: There was no evidence of a door. No seams, no combination lock. Nothing.
The Penthouse had a band of writing around it just as the lower portion of Town Hall and the Outhouse, and the band continued unbroken where they’d hoped a door would be. This forced a decision between two alternatives, neither of which were attractive. One, they could try to drill into the wall, forcing an entry. Or, two, they could tunnel through the ice to one of the other two faces, hoping to
find a door.
There were several problems with either approach. In terms of drilling through the wall, they had no idea how thick the wall was. Anything over about a foot would require additional equipment to be brought in. In addition, the equipment they had was limited to a six-inch bit. It would take at least a dozen holes to open a space large enough for a person to crawl through. Finally, even if they could get all the way through the wall, they had no idea what kind of mechanisms they might damage inside the Penthouse in the process.
The problems with tunneling through the ice to another face started with the fact that their assumption that there would be a door was just that: an assumption. There might not be a door at the Penthouse level. And if there was, it could be on either of the alternate faces. Here, Reynolds thought he at least had a better than even chance, guessing that since Town Hall and the Outhouse were exactly aligned with each other, the door would likely be on the face that corresponded to the location of the Outhouse’s door. That would mean making a left turn, and going roughly West.
But the final problem was simply the fact that it meant tunneling through nearly 120 additional feet of ice just to get to the corner, and another 120 to get to the middle of the other face. It had taken them eight days to go the roughly 80 feet up the stairs, and tunneling around to the other face would add weeks to the project.
Reynolds, Sinclair, Matthews and the tunneling crew thrashed through the options in one of the brainstorming sessions that had become routine, and the decision was to tunnel through the ice to the Northwestern face. Matthews assured Reynolds that now that they were on a level surface, and with six additional crew, volunteers from among the grad students — including Eugene Northrup — running a swing shift, he could get their progress up to 40 feet or better a day. In fact, he ended up averaging nearly 50 feet a day.
Five days later, they’d reached the middle of the Northwestern wall, and to everyone’s immense relief, there was indeed a door. It was virtually identical to the one at the Outhouse, right down to the keypad and combination.
It took another day to set up the airlock around the door, and everything was now in place for the entry into the Penthouse. Reynolds decided that the same basic team that opened the Outhouse should repeat their performance for the Penthouse, but Mitchell had persuaded him to allow her to be present as well. Her argument was that the preservation of artifacts was now one of their highest priorities, and since that was her specialty, she should be present. Somewhat reluctantly, he’d agreed.
Sapiosaurus | Out Of Time Page 15