The Proteus Operation

by James P. Hogan

  Winslade nodded. "Commendable," he acknowledged. Any more?" The others who had arrived with Pfanzer and Jorgassen looked at each other and shuffled uncomfortably. Specifically, I need somebody who knows the control-room operating procedures." Winslade said. "Or at least, somebody who is sufficiently familiar with them to make sure that the people in there do the right things."

  "First, suppose you try telling us what it is you intend doing," Pfanzer suggested.

  Winslade glanced across at the elder Scholder. "Kurt, the time dilation factor here will be much greater than for 1975, yes?"

  "Yes," Scholder replied. "I wondered if you'd think of that."

  "How much will it be? Any guesses?"

  "About two hundred. I've calculated it."

  Winslade nodded as if he had been half expecting something like that. "Then the parts for the A-bombs scheduled to go through for Hitler's 1942 offensive against Russia would need to be ready pretty soon."

  Scholder's eyes widened as he began to see what Winslade was driving at. He performed a quick conversion in his head. For the bombs to be available by summer 1942, the components would need to be delivered, say, two years after the present time there—spring 1940. Twenty-four months at thirty days, divide by two hundred . . . He nodded. "It works out at about three and a half days from now. You're right. The components must be here now."

  "They'll be through the big doors across the antechamber from the transfer lock," Winslade said. "That's the Dispatch Preparation Area, isn't it?"

  "Listen to them!" Kahleb protested from where he and his group were glowering by the far wall. The guard that Winslade had floored was sitting up, clutching his stomach, and looking groggy. "They're insane. Are you going to allow yourselves to be parties to mass murder?" Anna Kharkiovitch silenced him with a menacing wave of the gun she was holding.

  "I don't think we should continue this discussion in the present company," Winslade said. He began moving across the room. "Let's go next door." Anna and Scholder kept Kahleb's group covered while Adamson ushered the rest out behind Pfanzer and Jorgassen. "Make sure they don't have any personal communicators on them, Kurt," Winslade said. Scholder quickly frisked those who were left and came away holding several pocket sets and a wrist unit as well as the belt packs worn by the guards. Winslade indicated the room's permanent video unit to Anna with a nod of his head, and she obligingly shot it to pieces. "Sorry about that," Winslade told the indignant occupants as he backed out. "Don't try anything heroic. The door will be covered, and the same thing will happen to the first person who comes through." He posted Adamson outside with instructions to fire at anyone who tried leaving, and then went to rejoin the rest in the conference room that he and Anna had been taken to initially.

  Inside, Anna and Scholder were still keeping the others at a distance, but their manner was less threatening now that Kahleb's people were out of the way.

  "Now wait a minute," Pfanzer began in an alarmed voice as Winslade came in. "If you imagine for one moment that anyone here is going to help you send a live nuclear device through the link, then you are insane. We've only got your word about what's allegedly happening at the far end. But there are people there—human beings. I'm certainly not going to lend my authority to getting anyone killed. I'll agree to, or condone, none of it, do you understand? None of it."

  "Nobody's talking about sending through a bomb," Winslade said. "But the parts you've got downstairs are for devices that detonate by imploding a critical fission mass with shaped charges of conventional explosives." He looked back at Scholder. "That's what you worked on here, right?"

  "That's you," Scholder said to his younger analog. "We make two experts."

  Winslade looked at Pfanzer. "This is my proposition," he said. "You don't want to be responsible for anyone's getting killed. Well, neither do I. Now, whether you believe it or not right now, at the other end of that link is a world that your operation here has created, in which a war has already begun that will lead eventually to the destruction of Western civilization unless something's done to change it. I'm talking about deaths counted in tens of millions, not just a few who might be around when a bomb goes off."

  "Very well, suppose we accept that for the sake of argument," Pfanzer conceded guardedly. "You still haven't told us your proposal."

  "Simply that we disable the return-gate at the far end until the situation here is resolved by the appropriate authorities," Winslade said. "We go for the machine only, with a couple of strategically placed charges, without harming anybody. Then we call in the CN and have the whole place here put under CIAF control until everything's been investigated."

  "Sounds reasonable," someone commented.

  "Why disable the gate?" Hallman objected. "Why not simply call in the CN?"

  "Because of the time factor." Winslade said. "Time is running two hundred times faster there. Delay could be fatal. A few days wasted here means years lost at the other end."

  Hallman shrugged. "So? We just suspend operations at this end until further notice. I still don't see the necessity of disabling the gate."

  "We can't risk leaving it intact," Winslade insisted. "We have the upper hand here for now, but that could change for any one of a number of reasons. The only way to be certain that the link won't be used for a while is to make sure that it can't be."

  "And look at it this way." Scholder suggested. "Even if the gate is damaged to the extent that it will take years to repair, that's still only a matter of a few days here. You're not losing very much. But the result at the far end if the link became active again in the wrong hands could be catastrophic."

  Eddie moved out to join young Scholder in the middle of the room. "Hell, someone's gonna have to start making decisions around here," he said. "Okay, I'll buy it. I'm with you, too."

  "And me," another declared, following suit.

  Dr. Pfanzer vacillated. "Again, exactly what are you proposing?" he asked Winslade.

  "One group goes to take charge in the control room," Winslade said, speaking quickly in an urgent voice. "They have the duty crew bring up the beam and stand by to initiate a transfer. The two Kurts take another group through into the Dispatch Preparation Area to obtain explosives, detonators, and time fuses to make up several charges. Then we—just some of us; I don't want any of you people risking yourselves on this—make a transfer through to the other end, place the charges on short settings, and are brought back, hopefully before the 1940 end wakes up to what's happening."

  "Is that likely?" Sen asked dubiously.

  "I don't know," Winslade admitted. "But I'm willing to try. We're prepared to take the risks. All we're asking for from you is help."

  "Ten seconds." Scholder said. "If it takes ten seconds to place the charges at the other end and get back into the machine, what will that translate into here? Nothing! It will be no time at all."

  Pfanzer nodded. "And then?"

  "Then we go to the Message Center and put a call through to CN Headquarters in Zurich," Winslade said.

  "That'll really stir things up," Eddie said. "Security hasn't caught on to what's happening yet, but they will if you go holding up the Message Center at gunpoint. They'll all be heading this way. What happens then?"

  "As long as that gate's out of action, I don't really care what happens," Winslade said. "Perhaps we'll hand over the guns and take our chances. You could tell them you didn't have a choice—we made you cooperate. That's all we're asking—a few minutes of cooperation. What's that to give if it saves millions of lives?"

  "And what if we don't want to cooperate? Pfanzer asked.

  Winslade smiled apologetically and motioned with the gun he was brandishing. "Then, I'm afraid, we really would have to insist that you do so, anyway." he replied.

  CHAPTER 43

  FERRACINI FOLLOWED A CONCRETE path running between some oil-cooled transformers standing behind a wire fence on one side and a bank of pipes running down from a processing vat on the other, and came to the conveyor feeding the nit
rate hoppers. He turned right, came to the roadway over a rail crossing, and began walking beside a long, black-painted, tin shed. It was all just as in the model he had studied in London.

  A squeaking sound came from behind him, and a moment later Cassidy caught up and swung himself off his bicycle to walk alongside. "No problem," Cassidy said.

  "I know. We came in just ahead of you. See anything of Floyd and Ed?"

  "A bus passed me on the road, but I don't know if it was the right one."

  "I guess we'll soon find out."

  "Where's Gustav?"

  "Parking the car. He'll be along in a minute."

  They rounded one end of a building containing noisy rock-salt crushing machinery and walked along a narrow roadway with railroad tracks embedded in the cobbles. To their left lay part of the waste-processing plant that they were heading for: a jumble of steel supports and piping beneath several domed steel tanks; two larger, taller tanks stood behind. A short alley, in front of a single-storey pumphouse just ahead, led left from the roadway.

  They turned into the alley; here Erich was supposed to have left the truck. There was no sign of it.

  Cassidy propped the bicycle against a wall, and they carried on past the pumphouse at a quickening pace to where the alley ended at a supporting wall beneath two more, horizontal storage tanks. To their left again, a short set of railed steps descended between the concrete-block foundations of the girders overhead and banked retaining walls. At the bottom of the steps stood a squat, brick-built, hexagonal building, which enclosed the top of the disposal shaft itself. Above it, behind a clutter of tanks, piping, and steelwork, was the rear of the waste-processing building, from which several massive pipes ran down at a steep angle to disappear into the top of the brick hexagon.

  The hexagon was a half-sunken construction, eight feet high and perhaps twenty across, with a narrow trench running around it, shored by a concrete retaining wall. Lamson and Payne were waiting crouched in the trench at the bottom of the steps, opposite a three-foot-square steel hatch in the wall of the hexagon. "We've already checked," Lamson said before Ferracini could ask. "The truck's not around here anywhere."

  For just a few moments, Ferracini's mind seized up. He closed his eyes and exhaled a long, despairing breath. Not now, he pleaded inwardly. Don't let it screw up now—not after all this. He shook his head a couple of times to clear it and looked about to check the surroundings.

  The hexagonal building was low-lying, with a canopy of girders, pipeworks, and tanks overhead. The retaining wall of the trench and the concrete formations above provided good cover, and this wasn't a busy part of the plant in any case. There was no great immediate danger of detection. On the other hand, the alley they had come down was a dead end; if they were challenged, there was no other obvious way out.

  "We could get trapped here pretty good," Cassidy said, as if reading his mind. "Especially since we don't have any weapons." They were in the truck, too.

  Lamson, however, had a toolbox with him. "Have you checked out the cover?" Ferracini asked him, indicating the steel hatch.

  Lamson nodded. "I can get it off, no problem."

  "Let's do that and check out the situation inside," Ferracini said. "That'll give the truck a few more minutes. Cassidy, keep a watch on the alley from the top of the steps." Lamson nodded and turned toward the hatch, while Cassidy went back up the stairs. Ferracini stared at the tanks and steel structures overhead. A continuous roaring of exhausts came from the pumphouse across the alley, and steam hissed from an outlet high on the back of the waste-processing building above. A locomotive whistle sounded from somewhere farther away in the plant. What he really wanted was time to think.

  The disposal shaft, ten feet square as was usual for mines, was capped by a cylindrical steel shaft-head chamber, into which the discharge pipes from above connected. It was fitted with gas-tight inspection covers in its side, which were the team's intended means of entry. The brick hexagon formed an outer chamber enclosing the steel inner one. Thus, a double barrier prevented noxious gases reaching the outside, enabling maintenance or inspection work to be performed with only one of the two covers being open at any time.

  "There might be a way of getting down without suits," Ed Payne said as he passed tools to Lamson.

  "How?" Ferracini asked.

  "It's something I was thinking about to pass the time in the barn, just in case the worst happened," Payne said, straightening up. "The shaft-head chamber inside here should have sampling valves through the walls as well as manhole covers, for testing the gas mixture in the shaft. Now, this place makes ammunition, okay? Well, to make bombs and shells you use big pneumatic presses to mold the charges into shape. In other words, something you'll find available all over a place like this is a high-pressure air supply."

  Ferracini nodded, all the time scanning the vicinity instinctively with his eyes. "Okay."

  "If we could couple a high-pressure line to one of those valves on the inner chamber, it would raise the pressure of the gas trapped above the liquid in the shaft, and force the level down. We might be able to force it low enough to uncover the opening into the conduit that goes up into Hammerhead. If so, we could maybe rope down the shaft and get into the conduit without having to swim through any liquid at all."

  "That would take time, wouldn't it?" Ferracini said.

  Payne shrugged. "Yes. But that's about all we've got left."

  Ferracini considered the proposition. At least it was something positive to be working on in case the truck didn't show. And as Ed said, they didn't have much else to do for the time being. "How long, do you think?" he asked.

  "I don't know. It depends on how far above the conduit the liquid level is, what pressure we've got, things like that. If we could find a way of opening the inner chamber to drop a sounding line down without asphyxiating ourselves, I could figure out a rough estimate."

  "Cover's off," Lamson announced. He lifted the steel plate, uncovering the opening into the outer chamber, and propped it against the wall.

  "See how it looks inside," Ferracini said. Lamson nodded, took the flashlight from his toolbox, and climbed in through the hatchway. Ferracini looked back at Payne. "Gustav's mixed up with safety and firefighting gear. He might be able to get us respirators or something." He checked his watch. "Where the hell is Gustav? He should be here by now."

  Payne became more enthusiastic. "We'd also need ropes, weapons, explosives, thermite to blow the cover at the top of the conduit—"

  "One thing at a time, Ed." Ferracini went over what they had said so far. "Would it work? If we pressurize the shaft and force the liquid down, wouldn't that force a column of liquid up into the conduit, too? Wouldn't it get trapped up there and seal it off?"

  "Yes, but only until the level of the shaft drops below the conduit outlet." Payne said. "Then the stuff in the conduit will drain back out and go down the shaft, like a bottle emptying when you tilt it. Bubbles will go up to the top and balance out the pressure."

  "You're sure?"

  "That's my department, Harry."

  Ferracini nodded and was about to say something further when Cassidy came halfway down the steps. "Gustav's coming—in a hurry. It looks as if something's up."

  Moments later, the sound of descending footsteps came from above, and Knacke appeared behind Cassidy. "What is it?" Ferracini snapped, reading the expression on Knacke's face.

  Knacke shook his head miserably. "The truck's not here. Erich called Marga—she's been trying to get hold of me. He had a breakdown over on the other side of Weissenberg." He raised a hand before anyone could say anything. "That's not all. There's more—worse. A column of SS troop-trucks passed him coming in this direction, fast. It sounds bad. I mean, with two of your people and one shipment of gear lost, well, anything could have happened. I'm not even sure if there's time to get you back out of the plant."

  "Hey, not so fast," Ferracini said. "Maybe we're not through vet. So what's Erich doing? Is he getting the truck
fixed?"

  "Yes, but Marga told him to call her again in her office before he tries entering the plant. If the SS take over at the gates or something, we couldn't ask him to try it. He'd have no chance."

  "Can't argue with that," Ferracini said. He tried to estimate how much time they might have, but there were too many imponderables.

  Lamson reappeared inside the access hatch. "Everything's fine in here, pretty much as we expected,' he reported. "No surprises." He saw that Knacke had arrived, and nodded. "Hi."

  "We've got all the surprises out here, Floyd," Ferracini said. "The truck's broken down on the other side of Weissenberg, and a column of SS is on its way here. It sounds like trouble."

  Lamson's only reaction was to raise his eyebrows. "Better get this show on the road, then," he concluded laconically.

  The wail of emergency sirens rose above the din of the surroundings. "That's gotta be them," Cassidy said, looking up and turning his head. "They must be at the gate."

  "Get back up top," Ferracini told Cassidy. He drew Knacke closer and spoke rapidly and urgently. "Look, we have to get into a conduit that opens off the waste shaft that goes down underneath here. Very probably, the opening is below the liquid surface—that's what those suits you saw were for. The conduit leads up under what's inside the Citadel. Okay, Gustav?" Knacke nodded, listening intently. Ferracini went on, "Now, Ed's got this idea of running an air line in to uncover the conduit by pressurizing the shaft. We'll need coupling adaptors to connect into the sampling valves inside, breathing gear or something to get through the gas and garbage, lights, ropes, and explosives to blow our way out at the far end of the conduit, then take out the target. Also, we'll want guns."

  "And how about some heavy clothing and lots of grease for skin protection?" Payne threw in.

  Ferracini nodded. "What can you do?"

  Knacke shook his head helplessly, boggling at the impossibility of it.

  "Come on, Gustav, come on!" Ferracini urged, grabbing him. "Let's start with the air line. Can we hook into one anywhere near here? Where can we get union joints and couplings?"