by Gen LaGreca
However, it was unclear from the writing on the folder whether sunbeam was spelled as one word or two, or which letters might be capitalized. I knew from my prior experience that I had only three chances before I would be locked out for this session by the security system. I made one attempt. It failed. Another attempt. It too failed. I had one more chance left before the computer would shut me out. I tried to imagine how a busy, direct person, as Charles Merrett seemed to be, would write the code word. He would cut to the essence, I figured, so I gave the computer simply one word with no capitals: sunbeam. A new electronic hum and change of color greeted this last attempt. To my astonishment, flashing on the screen before me was nothing less than a menu of files that were the secret documents of Project Z!
So the name appearing on the report folder for Steve Caldwell’s injury was the password into Project Z. That was proof of the connection I had suspected. I skimmed the entire database, finding reports written by those who worked on the project, letters between Charles Merrett and his customer, and memos circulated among the small group of trusted insiders who knew the full nature of the undertaking. I studied the screen, mesmerized by the treasure trove I had unearthed. The mystery of Steve Caldwell’s injury and the undertaking of Project Z were unfolding before me.
Somewhere on the edge of my mind, I noted that although Feran knew the name sunbeam, proved by the comment he had made on Asteron about the sunbeam’s sting, the name alone would not have been enough to gain him access to the project’s files. Computer access would have required Feran to know that sunbeam was a valid code for getting into the database, at least on Dr. Merrett’s computer, and also to know a valid password for that terminal. Instead, Feran had resorted to a camera for reading the Project Z files from Dr. Merrett’s computer screen. The supreme snooper somehow used the robot Dustin to plant the camera and replace it regularly while it cleaned Dr. Merrett’s office, thereby providing him with ongoing data.
I located the laboratory notes that Steve Caldwell had recorded on the night of the accident and began my search there. He was testing a sample he had received from the MAS Space Research Center, a group studying materials collected from other stars and planets in the galaxy. That night Steve’s sample was a rock taken from the dusty terrain of an uninhabited planet named . . . Zamea.
In studying the nuclear structure of the alien matter, Steve placed a sample of it in the beam of a particle accelerator. This produced a new kind of subatomic energetic particle with properties unknown to him. Steve then experimented with these particles to learn more about them. He collided them with matter from Earth. Then something truly extraordinary happened: The masses of the Zamean matter and Earth matter in the experiment completely annihilated each other, leaving no residue—no liquid, gas, or ash—of any kind. This did not happen with the fundamental particles naturally occurring in Earth’s matter, Steve noted.
Was the Zamean mass completely convertible into energy? Steve asked in his notes. If so, this would make the Zamean rock the most powerful energy-producing substance ever discovered.
Steve commented that of all the energy that fueled the Earth, even from the planet’s most powerful nuclear reactions, only a very small amount of mass was ever converted into energy. From this small conversion, the amount of energy produced was tremendous because it equaled the mass multiplied by the speed of light squared. Steve calculated that if the Zamean matter could be collided with Earth’s matter to convert completely into energy, then the two-pound sample sitting on his lab counter could generate enough energy to power the entire Earth for one whole day! And according to the Space Research Center, he noted, there were millions of pounds of the same rock readily available on Planet Zamea—enough to power the Earth for millennia.
Reading these notes, I understood why Steve had gotten so excited.
He found the Zamean rock capable of generating particles that were totally different from the ones found in Earth’s matter, particles that were mirror images of Earth’s particles, which meant particles that had the same mass but opposite charge, just as positrons are mirror images of electrons.
Actually, something like what occurred with the Zamean matter did exist on Earth, Steve noted, but only in small experiments. Scientists knew that Earth’s fundamental particles and their mirror images could be collided, and that they could completely annihilate each other, forming pure energy. However, the researchers were unable to produce mirror-image particles except in infinitesimal quantities and at great expense in experimental labs. Using Earth’s matter, scientists could produce only a scant few million mirror-image particles yearly, an amount smaller than a grain of sand and insufficient to generate enough energy to power an Earthling home for five minutes. But the Zamean rock, Steve observed, seemed able to produce such mirror-image particles in abundance and on a monumental scale. The implications for a revolutionary new kind of energy production, he noted, were staggering.
Steve wanted to learn more, so he was going to repeat his tests, this time using a larger sample of the alien matter. I directed the computer to give me the next page of Steve’s notes, but there was none. That was the last comment that Steve Caldwell ever made as a scientist.
Next, I located the report on Steve’s injury, whose printed copy had been stolen from Dr. Merrett’s home. It confirmed Steve’s findings that when Zamean matter was accelerated, it produced a new energetic particle, and that this particle could be collided with Earth’s matter, leading to the complete annihilation of mass and the creation of pure energy. The investigation, however, revealed a fact that Steve did not know: Before he had redirected the energetic particles to interact with Earth’s matter, he had been exposed to them, and they were indeed harmful. Dr. Merrett and his team later isolated and studied these particles, which they named the Zamean beam.
Nowhere in the stolen report did I encounter the word sunbeam. At the time, it must have been merely Dr. Merrett’s personal nickname for the Zamean beam, appearing only as a handwritten term on the charred folder landing in his fireplace. Later, when Project Z began, the nickname must have stuck, because I saw it used in print on project materials, and not only by Dr. Merrett but also by members of his inner circle in their private memos. Feran must have encountered this name in material photographed from Dr. Merrett’s computer screen through the hidden camera in the plant.
In the report on Steve’s injury, Dr. Merrett’s scientists described their studies of the harmful new radiation emitted by the Zamean beam. Though it had no damaging effect on inanimate matter, this ray of subatomic energetic particles, they found, penetrated the human body and had a chilling effect on brain tissue. The Zamean beam blocked the proper functioning of nerve impulses in a way that impaired an exposed person’s ability to make decisions, exercise judgment, and consciously choose among alternative actions. According to the report, a person’s will, the seat of personal autonomy, was damaged by the Zamean beam.
After Steve’s accident, others were exposed to the beam in secret experiments. Convicted murderers awaiting execution were offered a chance to volunteer to be exposed to the beam in exchange for having their death sentences commuted to life imprisonment and receiving an antidote to the radiation as soon as one became available. The judge who permitted the experiment said he was doing so in the name of science. However, he urged the murderers not to volunteer, because their execution, he believed, would be preferable to the effects of the radiation, which he described in detail to discourage them further. Nevertheless, doomed murderers did volunteer, and twelve were exposed to the Zamean beam.
The results described by the prison guards were extraordinary. The most disorderly and violent of the inmates, those constantly clashing with the guards, were reported to have become completely changed in personality. They became calm, docile, indifferent, lacking any initiative, much easier to manage, remarkably responsive to directions, and compliant. One prison guard said: “Even when I give orders remotely over the computer, the phone, or the loudspe
aker, they’re carried out without question or delay.” So the Zamean beam, which Dr. Merrett called the sunbeam, produced model prisoners.
Before the robbery, Dr. Merrett wrote calmly of the implications of a “new and dangerous substance that must not get into the wrong hands,” and therefore the “need to avoid publicity about Steve.” Because Earth had experienced no wars for a century and it maintained the best military force in the galaxy, Dr. Merrett had no real cause for alarm.
However, after the robbery, he wrote in anguish: “Not only has my beloved wife been brutally attacked and taken from me and my daughter forever, but we have no assurance that she succeeded in protecting the secret she fought for with her life. The Zamean beam in the hands of Asteron—if they are the culprits—could be a real and horrifying threat to us all.”
Dr. Merrett had contacted the highest government officials of Earth’s various countries. Their intelligence agencies banded together to conduct a secret investigation of Asteron. Officials considered military action, but no hard evidence against my homeland emerged. For one thing, Earth’s intelligence found no indication that Asteron was producing the sunbeam. Furthermore, no one was tapping the only known source of the rock on the planet of Zamea, which was being monitored by Earth. And officials believed that critical pages of the report on Steve Caldwell’s injury were burned in the fire.
The Asteronian coin in the perpetrator’s pocket was insufficient evidence to implicate Asteron in the crime because such alien coins did circulate on Earth. A high-level government official commented in a confidential memo: “We need more evidence than just a coin in someone’s pocket to send our troops to that hostile place to risk their lives and to open up once again a long, bloody chapter of history that we closed a hundred years ago.” Because no additional evidence appeared, Asteron was not invaded.
Earthling fringe groups sympathetic to Asteron were also investigated, but no evidence was found linking any of them to the crime at Charles Merrett’s house. I wondered how thoroughly this investigation had been conducted. Even though Earth had the most advanced military in the galaxy, it might not have had the most robust human-intelligence network, I figured. With its peace and prosperity so complete and enduring—without any wars for a hundred years—the Earthlings seemed innocent, relaxed, and unwary of evil. Did they really have all the resources needed to seek out and infiltrate groups where Feran’s spies could be active and recruiting cells to further their vile aims?
Despite the lack of hard evidence to justifiably blame Asteron for the crimes committed in Dr. Merrett’s home, the possibility of the Zamean beam getting into the hands of my vile homeland still troubled Dr. Merrett and the officials. For that reason, they launched a project.
This led me to documents describing the formation of Project Z. I called them up on my screen and read feverishly.
Project Z’s customer was Earth’s military, a force formed from an alliance of nations to handle their mutual self-defense. The project’s purpose was to create a compact device to generate the Zamean beam and then aim it at a target, producing a military weapon called a zametron. The official name for the undertaking, known to the insiders, was Project Zametron. The code name was Sunbeam.
I looked at a file describing the purple-colored protective suits used in the project, one of which sat in Feran’s spacecraft. Experiments showed that the Zamean beam did not penetrate a material called flexite, a substance that, like lead, blocked harmful radiation. But unlike lead, flexite was lightweight, was flexible, and could be made into clothing. So the Project Z area was lined with this substance and everyone inside the area wore flexite suits.
Project Z had Dr. Merrett’s full commitment. He said in a memo: “If there’s any chance that Asteron is making this weapon, Earth, of course, will produce the first and best one. This is essential for our self-defense.” But he had one great concern: “The sole purpose of the sunbeam is to disable the enemy, allowing us to capture its rulers and military without shots fired or lives lost. The purpose is not to create a population of zombies. Such a thought is more reprehensible than war itself. We must find an antidote that can be administered immediately after the perpetrators are captured, to free the innocent civilians from the sunbeam’s grip. The sunbeam is not intended to induce a permanent subhuman state in a population but only a temporary anesthetizing effect to achieve military victory. Any other purpose would pose a threat to all human life. I will make this weapon only on the condition that an antidote also be developed, so the sunbeam can be used as I have specified.” Because Earth’s alliance of governments shared Dr. Merrett’s concerns, they agreed to finance both the development of the zametron and its antidote.
The weapon that Dr. Merrett and his team produced surpassed his expectations. They designed a compact device capable of creating enough Zamean beams to irradiate the entire planet of Asteron. Incredulous, I read the sentence twice.
In the weapon, an accelerator would generate the Zamean beam. Then this beam would propagate through the air like radio waves. It would be sent to the electrically charged ionosphere and be reflected back down to the ground and up into the ionosphere again, back and forth, traveling at nearly the speed of light and propagating completely around Asteron within seconds. As the particles propagated, they would lose some of their energy, so that after forty-eight hours, the beam would dissipate completely and the threat of radiation would disappear. All of this would be accomplished using a small sample of Zamean matter contained in a weapon that was a miniature particle accelerator. As Charles Merrett concluded, “With no battles, no destruction of physical material, and the immediate surrender of the entire population, the lightweight, portable sunbeam is the ultimate military weapon of all time.”
But I saw from his memos that a great concern troubled Dr. Merrett: “While we made the sunbeam to use against Asteron, that planet is so similar in size and atmosphere to Earth that with minor modifications, the very device we made, if it fell into their hands, could be used against us.” His fears intensified when repeated attempts to find an antidote failed. In a memo to Earth’s military alliance, Charles Merrett insisted on waiting for the antidote before he could in good conscience deliver the sunbeam. The reply from the military assured him of additional funding as needed to continue work on the antidote but sternly warned him that its interpretation of their contract required delivery of the weapon in the meantime. A dispute arose: The military demanded the weapon, and Dr. Merrett’s lawyers confirmed that the contract he had signed supported the military’s claim.
Then suddenly, just when the sunbeam was completed and ready for delivery, Dr. Merrett reneged. He wrote a memo to his inner circle announcing his decision to break the contract. This memo, containing the first mention of the cancellation, was written on the same Sunday two months ago when he dismantled the invention. So apparently, no one in the project’s inner circle knew of his decision beforehand. The memo stated:
As president of MAS, I have decided that I cannot deliver the sunbeam without a suitable antidote. Since I was overconfident of finding one, I didn’t adequately address the contingency that we would fail and that I would be in violation of the contract. MAS will have to take quite a financial hit for my action, but nevertheless I am canceling the contract.
Stunned by the tragic loss of my wife and the unthinkable implications of the report being stolen, I now believe that I acted too hastily in accepting the contract for Project Z. After all, there never has been any evidence that Asteron is producing the sunbeam. Our sensors on Planet Zamea tell us that no one has ventured there, and the supply of its rock remains untouched. Our surveillance of Asteron reports no signs of new weapon production. And I think that a regime such as the one heading up Asteron couldn’t preserve a mind capable of making the sunbeam from the fragments of the report it got, if it stole the document.
Charles Merrett told the inner circle of Project Z the same thing he told his employees, that he could not release his new invention to the
world because it had “far-reaching and irrevocable consequences.” But he added an extra phrase for the insiders: “dire consequences for the human race.”
I leaned back in my chair and rubbed my eyes, releasing for a moment the hold that the monitor had had on them for the past half hour. I thought that I finally understood why Dr. Merrett had been reported to be so upset since he had canceled Project Z.
I leaned forward again, determined to learn more. I tried to access the technical data and mechanical drawings of the sunbeam. But they were off limits to me. Accessing them required an additional level of security that I did not have. I tried, nevertheless, to get a picture of the zametron. As I maneuvered through various files, searching for an image or sketch of the device, I thought of the things I urgently needed to tell Dr. Merrett, things that would intensify his worries, because Feran had stolen secret information from Project Z and was now here on Earth stalking me for a—something on the screen made me gasp.
Then a glance out the window gave me another start. Escorted by an MAS guard and about to enter the building were two men whose business suits looked too civilized for their sly faces. They were Feran’s spies!
I could not delay my next task an instant. I knew I had become too engrossed and stayed too long. I could understand what had happened to Steve when he got too excited and forgot danger. Would I too suffer far-reaching and irrevocable consequences for my lack of caution? Would Earth suffer? I could not let that happen, so I got ready to leave immediately. By the time these thoughts formed in my mind, I had copied the Project Z files available to me onto my pin drive, being careful to encrypt the data and to protect it with a password only I knew. Then I turned off the computer. There was a lot more information I had not yet absorbed that I wanted to return to later—if I was still alive.