by J. T. Cross
He read out loud from the text. “The Smilodon grew to a maximum of seven feet in length and one thousand pounds in weight. It was one of the largest and most ferocious predators of the Pleistocene age. There is evidence to support the theory that Smilodons hunted in packs.”
He handed the book to her, and she put it back up on the shelf. “Back then, life could get real ugly if an animal came face-to-face with a Smilodon,” said Christie. “About the only animal that could take one on was a full-grown mastodon.”
“Whatever attacked me out in the Eastern Mountains was about that size,” Luc said.
Christie walked to the back of the garage and opened a cabinet and withdrew a narrow white box. She came back to Luc. Opening the box, she pulled out a long incisor and held it next to Luc’s sample.
“Look familiar?” she asked.
He looked closely at the two teeth. They were almost a perfect match.
“Adult Smilodon,” she said, raising her eyebrows. “It was found embedded in a mastodon bone at the La Brea tar pits.”
She glanced at the door and Luc saw Philip enter the lab. He was a dark-haired, medium height, slender man who moved quickly. He immediately reached out and shook Luc’s hand and introduced himself.
“Christie does love to show off her collection,” he said.
She held the two teeth up in front of him. “One of these is from an animal that lived 20,000 years ago, the other one broke off a living animal last week.”
“You don’t say,” he said with a hint of curiosity in his voice. He looked at the teeth for several seconds. “She never gets enough of that stuff,” he said casually.
“The rock I told you about is over there in the metal box. It’s wrapped in some insulation,” Luc said, pointing at his toolbox.
Philip hurried over to the box and opened it. He carefully unwrapped the insulation and placed the black rock into a metal dish. He tapped it with his finger, and quickly pulled it back, “Wow, you weren’t kidding when you said this thing was hot. How long has it been like this?”
“I have no idea. A year, two years, a thousand years, your guess is as good as mine. It hasn’t cooled down a bit since it was found four days ago.”
“This is incredible.”
Philip quickly performed some tests on the sample. He held up a Geiger counter to it, measured the temperature of the rock, and weighed it. He then did a rough calculation of its volume and mass.
“This sample is astounding,” Philip said.
Luc glanced over at Christie and gave her an I told you so look. She went back to her workbench and began working with the fossils.
Philip wrapped the sample up in the insulation and put it back in the toolbox. “Would you mind if I took this over to the university this afternoon and had another physicist examine it?”
“I’d rather not let it out of my sight.”
“You could go with him,” Christie said.
Damn, I should’ve just let him take it, thought Luc. The last thing he wanted to do was spend time alone with Philip.
Christie looked up from the tooth and stared at the two men. “I’ll be fine here alone. I want to examine the incisor more closely anyway. That would be all right, wouldn’t it, Philip?”
Philip looked like he had been caught off guard. He looked at Luc. “If you’d like to come along, I guess that would be okay.”
Well that worked out well, thought Luc. Trapped. Philip wasted no time pulling his cell phone out and making a call. He waited for several moments while drumming his fingers on his workbench.
“Jim, this is Philip. I have a geological sample I think you would want to see. Are you available this afternoon? Good, we’ll see you in about thirty minutes.”
Philip handed the toolbox to Luc. “This sample, whatever it is, might just be the solution to the world’s energy problems. Not to mention the fact that it, appears to be violating the most fundamental laws of physics.”
“I thought it might be valuable, but nothing like that,” Luc said.
“The processes going on inside this sample could revolutionize our understanding of physics and energy generation. Even if we only used them to boil water and turn steam turbines, that alone could free us from petroleum and coal products.”
“Do you have any idea how it’s generating all this heat?” Luc asked.
“No, but the man I asked to examine this is one of the most respected physicists in the country. If anyone can figure out what this is, it would be Jim Lackland.”
Chapter 9
Philip drove straight to the university campus. He pulled into the faculty parking lot, parked, and they quickly made their way to the physics building. He led the way down a stairwell and through a long hall to the basement physics lab.
They stopped in front of a large door with a spin-style combination lock built into it. A small sign to the left of the door read: Dr. Jim Lackland.
Philip held his ID card up against a reader and the door clicked. He pushed it open, and they walked in. The medium-sized lab was packed with electronic test equipment. In one corner at the rear, a man sat hunched over an LCD monitor and keyboard.
“Jim, come on over. There’s someone I’d like you to meet,” Philip called out as they entered.
“Just a moment, I’m downloading the last bit of satellite data,” said the man at the monitor.
“Around here, they call him the satellite man. He spends more time analyzing satellite data than anyone else. He’s also an acknowledged expert on high-density matter. It’s called Stability Theory.”
“Stability theory?” Luc said.
“You know, islands of stability and such. Right now the heaviest elements last only fractions of a second before they decay. Stability theory predicts there might be areas where much heavier elements exist and are stable. We haven’t found any yet, but the theory says they could exist.”
Luc had very little idea what Philip was talking about and decided he wouldn’t say anything and make his ignorance known.
Lackland, a heavyset rather tall man, with hair that rivaled Einstein’s, rose from his chair and came over to greet them. He reached out and shook Luc’s hand.
“I can spend a couple hours on your sample, but not much more. I’ve got to finish my analysis of a magnetic anomaly we found...”
Philip handed him the toolbox. “Analyze this.”
Lackland chuckled and took the small toolbox. He walked over to a work area and unpacked the specimen. “Why the hell is it so hot?” he asked.
“Well now, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be asking you to do an analysis,” Philip said.
“How very interesting,” Lackland said, as he picked up the black rock with a pair of tongs. “It should take me about three hours to do a thorough analysis on the sample.”
Lackland walked back over to Luc and Philip scratching his head. “I think I might run it through the multi-scale, X-ray CT scanner. It might reveal the internal structure of the sample.”
“Whatever you think is appropriate. I’m going back to my office and take care of a few things. You can stay here and observe, or you could take a walk around the campus while we wait for Lackland’s results,” Philip said to Luc.
Great host, Luc thought. No wonder he and Christie were having problems.
“I’ll be back here at about five,” Philip said, and left the lab.
“Fun guy to hang out with, huh?” Lackland said.
“Yeah. I think I’ll take a walk around the campus,” Luc said.
He left the building and began exploring the university. He eventually arrived at the center of the campus where one of the buildings seemed to have a lot of activity and he walked toward it.
He saw a sign above the door that read The Irishman. No wonder there was so much activity around here it was the campus pub. He decided to go in and check it out.
Inside, he found groups of students watching sports and playing darts. It was definitely noisy. Not the kind of place one would go to study
, although there were many laptops open on the tables with students looking at screens.
Luc took a seat at the edge of the bar, ordered popcorn and a beer then began to watch the football game with everyone else. He quickly lost track of the game and his mind drifted back to the medicine lady. What if she had been right and he had made a terrible mistake? He began to regret bringing the samples to Christie and Philip, but it was too late now.
The noise in the tavern suddenly increased and he noticed the game had ended. He glanced at his watch and realized it was time to head back to the lab.
He began to walk back to the physics building. Multicolored leaves blew across the walkways, picked up by a chilly breeze. The sun was beginning to set and a few of the campus lights had already turned on. He walked quickly, and he was soon back at the lab. He knocked on the door and waited. No one came. He knocked on the door again and still no answer.
At that moment, Philip appeared behind him.
“I knocked, but no one opened the door,” Luc said.
“Maybe he left for a moment to get a bite to eat or something,” Philip said.
He took his ID card and held it to the badge reader. The door unlocked with a click, and they walked in. To Luc’s surprise, he saw Lackland in the back corner of the lab on the phone. He glanced over his shoulder then returned to his telephone call. He finished the call quickly and came over to them.
“Have a nice afternoon?” Lackland asked Luc.
“Yes. I strolled around the campus and checked it out. I ended up hanging out at the Irishman waiting for five o’clock to roll around.”
“Kind of a loud place. Don’t you think?” Lackland said and took his coat off and laid it over the chair. He sat down at a round table in the middle of the room and Luc and Philip joined him. “So, what have you got for me, Jim?” Philip asked.
“I’ll just cut to the chase. We’re going to have to invent some new names for the elements in this sample.”
“Are you serious?”
“Yes. Its mass is off the charts. Even more interesting, I ran a multi-scale, x-ray CT scan on it and found it has a complex internal structure. It’s not a simple heterogeneous rock.”
“Any idea how it’s generating the heat?”
“I have a theory. From what I can tell, the sample is composed of hundreds of thousands of tiny spheres of metallic hydrogen encased in concentric shells of an incredibly dense crystalline material. For some reason, each shell is contracting and exerting tremendous pressure on the hydrogen within it, so much pressure that a type of controlled fusion is taking place.”
“If fusion is taking place why isn’t it spewing out all kinds of radiation,” Philip asked.
“It is! Just not in the bandwidths you’re thinking of.”
“If it’s really fusion we should be seeing lots of alpha particles.”
“The alpha and neutron emissions are somehow converted into three distinct bands of microwave radiation by the crystalline shells. It’s a very peculiar signature.”
A large smile spread across Philip’s face. He sat forward on his chair and stared at Lackland. “Is the radiation strong enough to be detected by satellite?”
Lackland smiled and nodded. “I guess it’s true what they say about great minds thinking alike. I pulled up the wide-band frequency scans we did of Alaska last year with the Earthworks satellite. I filtered the data for the bands that we’re interested in. The result’s over here.”
Lackland took them to the back of the lab. A large LCD monitor displayed a map of central Alaska. He pointed to an area covered by a red blob.
Luc studied the map for a moment. “I think I recognize this area. My grandfather’s village should be right about there,” he said, pointing to an area south of the red area.
“This is the interesting area,” Lackland said, and used the mouse to zoom in on the red blob.
More and more detail was revealed as he zoomed in. Slowly, the area expanded into hundreds of individual red dots of varying intensity.
“So, what are we seeing here?” Philip asked.
“Each one of the red dots is an area radiating the exact three microwave bands as the sample. According to this, there are massive amounts of this material right there,” he said, pointing to an especially thick area of dots.
Luc looked at the scale of the map and estimated the area was about 150 miles North East of his grandfather’s village, right in middle of the forbidden eastern mountain range.
“This looks like a classic meteorite swarm impact pattern,” Philip said.
“That would be correct, and whatever it was, it broke up into thousands of pieces before it impacted,” Lackland said.
“Do we have any recent satellite photos of the area?” Philip asked.
Lackland gave Philip a smug grin. “I’ve found photos of the area taken on twenty different days over the last two years. On every single one of them, there was dense cloud cover over the entire area. I couldn’t see one bit of the geography below the clouds. Fortunately for us, the microwave radiation is able to penetrate the clouds.”
“I can’t believe it,” said Philip. “How can all twenty scans taken over that period of time all have cloud cover?”
Luc rubbed his forehead and looked away from the screen for a moment. In a way, it made sense, he thought. He turned back to Philip. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence. It must have something to do with the warmth provided by the large amounts of the material. If you mix water and heat in that area you’re going to get lots of fog and cloud cover.”
“I guess it’s possible that no one’s ever noticed it before,” Philip said. “What’s the area like up there?”
“As remote as it gets,” Luc said. He didn’t volunteer any more information about the eastern mountains.
“Where’s the sample?” Philip asked.
“It’s in the metal box next to the scales.”
Philip left the table and retrieved the box. He handed it to Luc. “Hang on to this thing. It’s worth a fortune.”
He pulled a small flash drive out of his pocket. “Print us out a hard copy of the map and copy all the data to this,” he said, and handed the small device to Lackland.
Lackland went back to the computer system. A few minutes later, he returned with a map and handed the flash drive back to Philip.
“Now erase the data off the school’s computer,” Philip said.
“Are you sure?” asked Lackland.
“Absolutely.”
As they were about to leave, Lackland took Philip aside for a moment and talked to him privately. Philip acted surprised about something then began nodding his head. Luc began to get the feeling they were holding something back. After a few moments, Philip nodded at Lackland and they returned and joined Luc.
“We should probably be getting back,” Philip said, as he put his jacket on and opened the lab door.
The drive back to Philip and Christie’s house was dead quiet. Philip appeared to be in deep thought and didn’t say anything. Luc had the distinct feeling that something was up.
As Philip pulled into the driveway, Luc noticed a long limousine parked in front of the house. It looked out of place for the neighborhood.
Luc got out of the car and walked toward the porch with his toolbox in hand. He heard the sound of children as he got closer, and he began to feel excited. He saw the screen door burst open and his two children, Stuart and Kelly, came running out to him. They wrapped their arms around his legs.
“What took you, Dad? We’ve been waiting for an hour,” asked Stuart, his twelve-year-old son.
He handed the small metal toolbox to Philip and reached down and picked them both up and gave them kisses.
“I’ve really missed you two,” he said.
They squealed and kissed him back.
“We missed you, too, Daddy,” said his seven-year-old daughter, Kelly.
It was such an incredibly good feeling to hold them. He broke out in a big grin as he carried them
and climbed the steps up onto the porch.
Philip opened the door for him and he walked in. It became immediately apparent that something had been going on behind the scenes.
Chapter 10
Luc looked around the room. A man in a business suit sat on the couch to his right. A leather briefcase lay on the couch next to him. A man wearing an exquisitely tailored Italian suit, displaying a distinct air of supremacy, sat in an armchair across from him. This was a guy who obviously thought he was a cut above, thought Luc. He instinctively took a dislike to the man.
He put the kids down and, as if on cue, Christie entered from the kitchen and took their hands. She wore an expression that said she was as surprised about things as he was.
“I’ll take them back to the family room and get them situated. I’ll be back in a little bit.” He watched her lead them down the hall to the rear of the house.
Philip walked in behind him. “Luc, I’d like to introduce you to Roland Valenkamp. He’s here to discuss the sample we analyzed this afternoon.”
The man in the fancy suit stood up and approached Luc with an outstretched hand. “It’s a pleasure to meet you Mr. Moon, I’m Roland Valenkamp, CEO of Northern Energies Corporation.”
The other man stood and introduced himself. “Jack Montague, general counsel for Northern Energies.”
“You can call me Luc,” he said, as he shook their hands.
“We’ve been told you’ve made a pretty amazing discovery Luc.”
“You’re referring to the rock sample I brought down?”
“Yes.”
“I didn’t actually find it. Two boys found it in a remote mountainous region in the Alaskan interior. One of them never made it out. The other one I found and brought back to the hospital.”
At that moment, there was a knock on the door. Philip opened it and Jim Lackland walked in. He sat down in a chair in the corner without looking at Luc or saying anything. Philip walked over and sat down next to him.
“Let me explain what’s going on, Luc,” Valenkamp said.
Luc had a pretty good idea of what was going on, and he began to feel angry.
