A tomblike silence descended. Churchill allowed his gaze to flicker curiously over the faces of the Americans who were hearing all this for the first time. At last Ferracini said dryly, "I, er . . . I assume you're not expecting the six of us to take it by a frontal assault."
Winslade smiled as if he had been enjoying a small private joke. "There are limits, Harry, even to the things that I consider reasonable."
He turned back toward the table and slid away a movable section of the model to reveal a cutaway view of the underground installation and the two shafts leading down to it. The model showed other things down below ground, too, such as rock strata, piping ducts, and drainage channels. Also, there was something that looked like another vertical shaft of some kind. It lay under the general plant area, outside the Citadel and its defenses.
"The first industry on this site was a soap and dye works that grew around a potash and rock-salt mine dating from the late Middle Ages, Winslade went on. "Although no mining has been done for over a century, some of the old shafts were found to be still in existence when the later plant was constructed, and subsequently when parts were extended. They were usually sealed or filled in, but some that proved useful were cleaned out and retained. He indicated the shaft that the partitioning of the model had revealed. "This one, for example, still exists underneath one of the waste collection and disposal plants—that's the building and the tanks behind it at the top, there. To avoid dangerous reactions between inappropriate substances—acids and organics, for example—a number of separate waste-handling systems are used. In general, solid wastes are taken off down the river in barges, and liquids are simply dumped down old mine shafts such as this one and get lost in the collapsed workings and galleries below—very simple, and very cheap."
But there was a further channel, running from the lowest level of the underground Hammerhead installation, diagonally downward and in under the main plant area to meet the old mineshaft deep down. Winslade traced it with his pointer. "I said earlier that the excavation housing Hammerhead was originally intended for secret chemical work. That, too, required a waste-disposal system. It was provided by this sloping conduit, which as you can see discharges into one of the main plant's disposal shafts." Winslade smirked apologetically through his spectacles, unable to resist it. "The armadillo's anal orifice, as it were," he told the listeners.
"And that's our way in?" Ryan said. Just at that moment he wasn't in the mood for bad jokes.
"Quite."
There was a short silence. At last, Payne said, "With all that protection up top, well . . . it seems kind of strange that something like this was overlooked."
"The place isn't serving the purpose it was built for," Winslade reminded everyone. "That conduit has never been used. There was a lot of confusion and mislaid blueprints when the SS took over from the Ordnance Department. It's almost certain that nobody there today even knows it exists. It took us an enormous amount of detective work to find out about it ourselves, which involved tracking down one of the original construction engineers from 1935 . . . all kinds of things."
"So all we have to do," Cassidy summarized, "is get across to the other side of Germany with a war on, get inside the plant and into that shaft, go down it a few hundred feet and follow the conduit up into Hammerhead, blow the target, and then get out again after we've stirred up a hornets' nest of three hundred SS."
"Yes, Winslade agreed pleasantly. "Except for one other thing. The conduit joins the main disposal shaft quite deep down. We ought to assume that it lies below the surface of the liquid that's been poured down there, perhaps some considerable depth below. That, ah, would be another reason, of course, why somebody responsible for security wouldn't consider it very seriously as a possible means of entry."
"Exactly what kind of liquid are we talking about, Claud?" Ferracini asked suspiciously.
"Impossible to say," Winslade replied. "It varies with the different processes being scheduled around the plant, and that kind of thing. But you can generally count on a mixture of acid solutions, cyanides, nitrides, arsenic compounds, organics . . . in other words, it'll be highly toxic and probably corrosive. Also, the gases trapped above the liquid surface are most likely lethal." This time everyone in the group was too stunned to say anything.
Winslade let the mood linger for a few seconds. Then he informed them, "But the sealed canisters being shipped from New York were brought with the mission as insurance against precisely this kind of eventuality. They contain kits of specially developed protective clothing, complete with breathing apparatus, and other equipment. We've already made arrangements for practice and familiarization sessions for you all, first at the Royal Navy's submarine and escape school at Portsmouth, and then in a more realistic environment at a flooded tin mine in Cornwall."
Winslade, true to form, had delivered the worst up front and was saving no nasty surprises. As the initial shock started to wear off, the others found their voices, and then the questions began coming thick and fast.
If this stuff did turn out to be corrosive, how long could these suits be expected to give protection? Cassidy wanted to know. It depended, Winslade told him. It was no accident that one of the party, Captain Payne, was a chemist. The equipment included an analysis kit, and the answer to the question would depend on his findings at the time.
How would they descend the shaft and get up the sloping conduit? They would be spending some time at the limestone caverns in Derbyshire for a course on caving techniques and equipment. What did the shaft walls consist of? What was their probable condition? How big was the conduit, what was its gradient, and how slippery was it likely to be?
What was at the top of the conduit? A steel coverplate resting on a steel-rimmed concrete seating, secured by eight one-inch-diameter bolts. Thermite charges would be used to melt the fixed nuts holding the bolts.
And when the seal was broken, then what? The conduit opened into a basement level of Hammerhead, containing pumps, air circulation equipment, and other machinery, with the return-gate itself on the level above. Since the precautions against intruders were directed upward, not down, an experienced team proficient in stealth should have a reasonable chance of placing demolition charges and effecting a safe exit. "And if not . . . well, that's why we attach so much importance to initiative training," Winslade completed.
A silence followed, punctuated by shuffling feet and long intakes of breath. Then Ferracini said, "That's all very fine as far as the assault goes, Claud, but how are we supposed to carry suits, weapons, caving and other gear, plus enough explosives to do the job, halfway across Germany?"
"You're not," Winslade replied. "That side of the operation depends on factors that couldn't be anticipated, and therefore, hasn't been finalized yet. You'll be traveling in pairs, but the details will be the subject of another briefing at a date yet to be fixed."
"Couldn't we just fly into Berlin from Sweden or somewhere as American neutrals—journalists or something?" Ryan asked.
"Too many problems with being kept under surveillance by the police all the time," Winslade answered. "Best not to risk it. As for getting the equipment there, we're looking into several alternatives. Air-dropping it is one possibility. Another is smuggling it in independently. Again, this will be covered in detail later."
"How about contacts in the area?" Cassidy asked finally. "Can we expect local help?"
In reply Winslade looked inquiringly at Churchill, who looked at Lindemann. Lindemann cleared his throat. "Oh, my department, I think." He stood up and moved a couple of paces forward. "As some of you may know, I spent some years in Germany after the Great War. When the Nazis came to power, I made several return visits to help endangered European scientists, especially those of Jewish descent, to escape and find suitable employment in the West. Leo Szilard was also involved in that, as a matter of fact. Anyhow, to answer the question, yes, I have been making discreet inquiries through channels I prefer not to disclose, and it should be possible to arrange s
ome help for you from people who are opposed to the Nazi regime enough to want to help, and whom I consider sufficiently reliable."
Winslade added "But we won't say more about them for now. Naturally, each pair of you will be given the name of your own contact only."
There remained only one further question. Payne asked it. "When?"
Major Warren answered. "At present, we're aiming for the end of February. He looked at the squad and treated them to an imitation of a sadistic leer. "But don't get carried away with visions of a nice, cozy Christmas. We've got one or two other things lined up in addition to what Claud talked about. You've all been having it too easy for too long back at Gatehouse. For the next month, we'll all be getting back into shape. I've booked us all a vacation on assault course training—as guests of the British Army."
Anna Kharkiovitch was sitting at the back of the room with Gordon Selby, reflecting on what had been said. It was obvious that long before the mission's departure from 1975, Winslade had seen fit to take elaborate precautions against a possible failure to reestablish contact. How much had Claud known all along, and how much more might he know now that he wasn't telling? Was there no chance of any of them ever returning? Had there never been any chance?
Or was the explanation nothing more sinister than Claud's habit, inculcated by a lifetime of working amid secrecy and intrigue, of never telling anybody more than they needed to know to do what needed doing at the time?
As always, everything connected with Claud was murky, enigmatic, and uncertain. And that, to a woman of Anna's disposition and temperament, added up to: infuriating.
CHAPTER 30
CHRISTMAS WEEK, 1939, BROUGHT great excitement to the scientists working at Gatehouse. For the first time, the monitoring instruments connected to the return-gate indicated that it was picking up pulsed energy. The only evidence was a flickering trace on the screen of a primitive oscilloscope hooked up to a typically outlandish Fermi improvisation of coils, vacuum tubes, and bits of wire, but the characteristics of the pulses confirmed that the long-awaited contact between different universes had at last been initiated. Much had yet to be done before meaningful information could be exchanged, let alone physical objects, but it was a start. A fine seasonal present for all involved.
In one of those inexplicable flashes of sudden insight that illuminate the lives of the truly great, Einstein had realized that a crucial but unquestioned assumption—that time at the two ends of a connection between future and past would run at the same speed—was without any proven foundation. In day after day of debating and theorizing that usually went on all through the night over take-out snacks and endless coffee, the red-eyed but excited scientists reexamined and reformulated their basic premises and eventually produced a revised mathematical model. The equations deduced from the model revealed that, indeed, as Einstein had suggested, the rates of time-flow at the two ends of a link would not be the same. They would differ, in fact, according to the fourth power of the time interval between the ends, with time at the future end running slower; thus, if time ran twice as slowly a certain distance into the future, it would run sixteen times as slowly twice as far into the future, and so on. The exact relationship depended on certain constants that could only be found by experiment, and which were not yet known.
This explained why the 1975 machine had failed to contact them. Before a projector could link with and power a return-gate, it first coarse-scanned the designated zone of spacetime with a probe "beam," closing the connection only when it detected the formation of a multidimensional field resonance across the dividing interval. For the probe to lock on, a precise synchronization had to be achieved with certain wave functions generated at the return-gate end—analogous to a radio receiver's having to be tuned to the same frequency as the transmitter to pick up a station. Synchronization depended on timekeeping, and if no allowance were made for the difference in time-rates at the two ends, the link-up wouldn't work. It really was—well, almost—as simple as that.
With the key fallacy exposed, the rest was expected to follow fairly rapidly, and the scientists set up preliminary experiments to determine the unknown constants. This required little more than modifying the operating ranges of some of the electronics, which was a straightforward task, and the first tests produced an incoming signal that was identified as a component of the probe beam. Measurements of the pulse rate and other parameters, and comparison with the known design data for the machine transmitting from 1975, showed that, from the 1939 reference frame, time would be flowing slower in 1975 by a factor of 5.7.
Getting the link to work wouldn't be as easy as twiddling the tuning knob of a radio to the correct position, however. Because the people, including Kurt Scholder, who, in 1975, had rushed through the construction of the system from purloined German records hadn't fully understood the fundamentals, the machine they had produced wasn't designed to be "tunable"; and the fixed mode that it worked in was wrong. Putting it right would require the reengineering of some components and the complete redesign of others. By mid-December, a stream of requisitions and specifications for the required parts was going out to suitable laboratories and workshops. Thanks to Roosevelt's involvement, there was no problem in obtaining whatever level of authorization was needed to ensure top-priority response.
Once that work was under way, the scientists followed up some rough calculations they had produced which suggested that, even though all modifications had not been completed, a partial interaction between the machine and the probe beam scanning from 1975 ought to be possible. When the first of the reengineered components came in and were fitted, the scientists set about putting their hunch to the test.
"It's right on the threshold," Scholder announced, peering at a sensitive light-spot galvanometer wired into the jumble of apparatus that was strung together on a portable bench placed near one of the control panels. "It's rising again. . . . Close—nineteen point two. Very close . . . fading slightly now, eighteen-nine . . . eight."
The green trace flickering on the tiny screen that Fermi was watching swelled for a second or two, then shrank again. "Q must have been above ninety-eight percent of critical that time," he said. He adjusted a control on the panel and checked a reading. "I've reduced beta to five. Recharge the bank and let's try that again with everything else the same."
Einstein, Teller, and two of the assistants looked on, Einstein puffing his pipe and watching with amused interest like an amiable science teacher; Teller more intent, serious,and a shade edgy after almost forty-eight hours without sleep. It was Christmas Eve, and they had just finished installing the first of a set of resonant cavity devices delivered to Columbia University that morning from a precision engineering firm in New Jersey. Although the device wouldn't be enough to support the communications channel, the hope was that it might just give the system enough responsiveness for the probe beam to find it. That would be an important milestone reached.
"Up to charge," Scholder said. His voice was calm and matter-of-fact. "Loop energized. Okay . . . the ramp's climbing now."
Fermi took up the commentary. "Nineteen . . . nineteen point two . . . point three . . "He tensed visibly with excitement. "Three-five . . . point four . . . my Cod, it's going to make it!"
Teller stepped forward and peered over Fermi's shoulder. Q is critical now," he said.
"Nineteen point five! Fermi exclaimed. At the same instant, an orange lamp glowed on one side of a panel crudely hacked out of sheet aluminum, and a pointer on a dial next to it swung up from zero on the scale and steadied.
Scholder smiled tiredly as Fermi whooped and slapped him on the back. "We've got contact!" Teller shouted behind them. "The probe beam's reacting!" The assistants standing with Einstein cheered, and other figures began appearing from places around the rig to see what all the fuss was about.
The readings confirmed that although the return-gate system was responding, the partial resonance that it was setting up was too feeble for the probe to lock on and open
the auxiliary channel. The interaction itself, however, should have induced a disturbance in the physical dynamics of the beam sufficient to alert the operators at the far end to the fact that the probe was encountering something. If that condition could be maintained, it offered an opportunity, perhaps, for conveying a crude form of message by making and breaking the energizing circuit in a coded pattern.
They had already agreed to try it if the test succeeded, so no time was lost on deliberations. As soon as the pointer registering contact had stabilized, Scholder commenced flipping the energizer supply switch up and down, using it as a Morse key: P-R-O-T-E-U-S . . . P-R-O-T-E-U-S . . . P-R-O-T-E-U-S
He continued until Fermi announced that the fleeting contact had been lost. It reappeared a few minutes later and then died completely. "We were lucky to get that," Teller commented. "It was right on the threshold all the time. We're not going to achieve much more until the phase modulator amplifiers arrive.
"Edward's right," Fermi said, sitting back in his chair. "And we won't see them until after the holiday. I vote we all take a break. Hitler or no Hitler, tomorrow is reserved for my wife . . . assuming I still have one. What's the point of preserving freedom if you're never free for a moment to benefit from it?"
The others agreed. They shut down the system and collected coats, hats, and papers to take home. After a final round of salutes, best wishes, and arrangements made by some to get together later in the evening or sometime for dinner the next day, they broke up to go their various ways.
Teller agreed to take Fermi in his car and drive Einstein to Princeton before returning to his own flat in Morningside Heights. "You know, it's a strange thought," Fermi remarked as the three of them walked through the machine area toward the front of the building, where the vehicles were parked. "If they do spot the perturbations in 1975, then with a dilation factor of almost six, only two months or so will have gone by in their world since the Proteus people left."
The Proteus Operation Page 28
