The Krone Experiment k-1

by J. Craig Wheeler

  “On the other hand,” Danielson looked at him coolly, “I interact with other data and the computer on a routine basis.”

  Isaacs returned her level gaze. He knew he did not need to spell out the situation for her further.

  Danielson lowered her eyes to the damp spot on the table again. Isaacs watched her averted eyes and noted the crinkling between her brows. When she looked up there was a hint of mischievousness and triumph on her face.

  “I can do it! I can add a couple of subroutines to my fourier transform package. Then I can read in and print out the seismic data interspersed with the results of other projects at intermediate stages when no one routinely examines the output but me. The chances of someone noticing without going through step-by-step would be very small.”

  “I’m sure you can do it. The question is whether you should and will. If we’re caught at it, your job could be at stake. I would take responsibility for giving you the order, but that might not be sufficient. I’m asking a great deal of you.”

  Danielson paused. “Do you really think we can do any good? We can rehash the old data, but if that’s all, can we accomplish any more than the Navy?”

  Isaacs suddenly pounded his fist onto the table and then hunched in chagrin as the bartender looked up in their direction.

  “We can think!” he whispered intensely. “The Navy is sailing in circles, no one is really trying to understand what is going on!”

  He relaxed and put his hand momentarily on hers. “There’s no doubt we’ll be at a handicap. This analysis by subterfuge will be far less efficient and useful than the way we proceeded before. But we can use our heads on the data at hand rather than hide from it. Any effort at analysis will be preferable to the fiddling that is going on now. Our Rome is up there in orbit,” he glanced at the ceiling, “and it could burn any minute.”

  Danielson looked at him. She concluded that he acted from a variety of motives, but that the overriding one was a deep concern to prevent the escalation of the conflict with the Soviets by understanding what was happening to the Earth. She could not readily accommodate the notion that she might personally affect global power politics, but she keenly felt the need to come to grips with the mysterious motions in the Earth that she herself had coaxed into rational form. Could the alignment of the Stinson and the Novorossiisk with the trajectory she had mapped out be only a coincidence? To believe that would be so easy, but, like Isaacs, she could not do so. The alternative was horrendous to contemplate, but impossible to ignore. Whatever drove the seismic signal, killed. What bizarre, implacable thing plagued them?

  She recalled her notion that Isaacs might have had some romantic motive for this meeting. A wave of embarrassment burst upon her. How trivial that notion was compared to the fearsome reality.

  The idea of violating a directive both fascinated and terrified her. She nodded at Isaacs, and he leaned back in satisfied relief.

  Jason, he thought to himself. The next step is to call Jason. Aloud to her he said, “Next weekend is the July Fourth holiday. I’ll have to ask you to keep it open. We may have to take a trip.”

  Chapter 8

  Nancy Wambaugh pedaled down the sidewalk on her bike. School was out for the day, and the crisp air and warm winter sun of late June felt good in her windblown hair. Sometimes the teacher made her do things in the first grade she didn’t like, but she was delighted with the lesson she had learned today. Her daddy had taught her some time ago to recite, sing-song, where she lived— “Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia.” When she was too young to be ashamed, she would put a little curtsy at the end, pleased at her father’s big smile. She had always loved the image in her mind of a new castle, full of princesses and good things, but today she had learned a new grown-up thing about it. She had learned to spell it, and it made a little poem! As she pumped, she sang, “N, E, W, C,”

  Left foot, right foot, left foot, right.

  A, S, T, L, E,

  Left foot, right foot, left foot, right.

  Wham!

  Nancy landed on her right elbow and cheek, feet tangled painfully in the pedals of the bicycle. She sucked in her breath from the shock and then wailed as she looked at the blood that began to seep from the long scrape on her arm. She scrambled away from the bike and looked around, hurt and angry. She was sure her older brother, David, had bumped her off the bike with a pillow, that’s what it had felt like when the bike tumbled, like when they had pillow fights and David knocked her down. She put her fingers to the sting on her face, and they came away bloody. She screamed louder.

  Her cries drowned the hiss that rose above her head. The raucous whisper returned some distance away as Nancy ran toward home.

  “MOMEEEE!”

  McMasters’ head snapped up from the report he was reading at the sound of the intercom buzzer.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  “Alan Mirabeau, from the computer section, is here to see you.”

  “Umm, ah, yes.” McMasters leaned back in his chair in anticipation. “Send him in.” McMasters watched as the earnest young man peered around the door and then walked to his desk.

  “Sir? You asked for me to monitor requests for certain files?”

  “Indeed.”

  “Well, a request did come this morning for some of the inactive files associated with Project QUAKER. Here’s a list of the files that were requested.”

  McMasters leaned forward to take the proffered sheet.

  “The files were transferred out for about an hour, then written back in and deactivated again.”

  Long enough to transfer their contents to any active files, McMasters mused. He glanced over the list. They meant nothing to him, and everything. “Who requested this?” He knew, but he wanted to hear.

  “It was a written request, sir. Signed by Mr. Isaacs.”

  Mirabeau was nervous. He had dreamed of a chance like this to interact with the upper echelons, but this was not what he had envisioned. He wanted terribly to please McMasters, but not at the expense of getting in trouble with Isaacs, another member of the ruling circle. He had not realized that McMasters’ seemingly routine and innocuous request was going to put him in the position of spying on Isaacs. Every fiber of his being was attuned to sensing the desires of his superiors and satisfying them. He was in agony at the thought that he could not please one of these men without incurring the displeasure of the other.

  “Can you put a trace on this material?” McMasters put a finger on the list in front of him.

  “But it’s been deactivated again,” Mirabeau protested, but then the light of understanding spread over his face, and his admiration for McMasters increased. “Oh, I see. You think a copy was kept out.”

  “Precisely,” McMasters replied.

  The young man concentrated for a moment.

  “The file names will have been changed, so a search for them would be pointless. There is no simple way to search for this material, but I can do a sampling of running jobs to search for particular combinations of data and instructions that occur in these files.”

  “I want to know when this material is used, and by whom,” McMasters demanded.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That’s all.”

  “Yes, sir.” The young man headed for the door.

  “Oh, Mirabeau.”

  “Sir,” he replied, swiveling quickly.

  “Not a word of this to Isaacs, or his associates.”

  The young man smiled with relief.

  “No, sir, of course not, sir.” That solved his problem of divided allegiance. Now he was acting under direct orders. He gave a brief bow toward McMasters and then shut the door behind him.

  Saturday morning Isaacs paced up and down in front of the check-in counter at Dulles. He felt unmoored, detached from the bearings that had given him stability for almost two decades of his career. He was desperate to get on with this quest, but awash with anxiety over the risks he was taking, risks he had convinced Pat Danielson to share. And now sh
e was late. He stopped to look at his watch and glance down the passageway toward the main terminal. He fought down the urge, born of frustration, to blame her tardiness on her womanhood. She didn’t deserve that. She was too good, too responsible. She’d have some good excuse. He clinched his fist on the handle of the slim briefcase he carried and resumed his pacing.

  He prayed that some glimmer of understanding, some hint of where to turn next, would come from this hurried unauthorized rump meeting with Jason. He feared that it would prove nothing but a scamper out onto a limb, with McMasters grinning, sharpening his saw. He rethought the steps he had taken, the precautions. He had done everything practical to minimize the chance that McMasters would stumble onto his resurrection of Project QUAKER, but the old bird was canny, there was no way to be absolutely sure. He jumped when the hand grasped his arm. He turned to see Pat Danielson’s flushed, excited face.

  “Bob—Mr. Isaacs.”

  His irritation at her faded with the relief of her arrival and the infectious sparkle in her eyes.

  “Right the first time.”

  “Bob.” She touched his arm again, still animated. “I’m sorry I’m late, but I’ve found something. I got up early to look over my calculations and then lost track of time.”

  “We’ve got a couple of minutes. Let’s—Here.”

  Isaacs looked around, then took her carry-on bag and led her to a vacant waiting area. As they sat, he inquired in a low voice, “What have you got?”

  “A prediction, I guess,” she almost whispered, leaning toward him. “I’ve been running my programs since Wednesday, checking the position and phase of the signal. I can guess with fair accuracy where the signal will come to the surface each cycle.

  “The question that has been preying on me is the sinking of the Stinson. That means something destructive can happen when the signal comes to the surface. So I asked myself, why aren’t there reports of some destruction on land?”

  “I wondered the same thing,” Isaacs remarked. “One possibility is that much of the path falls along areas of relatively low population density. Maybe most of the time no one notices. Another factor is that we don’t really know what to expect. Sporadic reports of strange events could easily be overlooked in the undeveloped countries, even here in the United States.”

  “Exactly,” nodded Danielson. “But occasionally the phenomenon should surface in a region of high population density. That would increase the probability of someone noticing something.”

  Isaacs raised a quizzical eyebrow.

  “Four days from now, it should come up in Nagasaki about 11:13 in the morning local time,” said Danielson flatly. “That’s 9:13 Wednesday evening, our time. And nineteen days later, July 26, it will surface in Dallas about midnight.”

  Isaacs leaned back and looked at her.

  “How well can you pinpoint the location?”

  “There are uncertainties in the period and location from the seismic data alone, but those are big, sprawling cities. I am reasonably sure there will be a surfacing somewhere within their boundaries.”

  Isaacs turned to look out of the window, staring past the airplanes arrayed on the tarmac.

  “Would it help you to have some of the Navy data?”

  “Yes, sir, even just one or two recent high precision locations would allow me to calibrate my curves. We might be able to pin down the site within…” She paused to think. “Well, maybe a few hundred meters to a kilometer.”

  “I may be able to get that,” said Isaacs intently, returning his gaze to her. “It’s very short notice, but I may also be able to get some satellite time to monitor the area in Nagasaki.” He mulled the chances of contacting an agent in Nagasaki who could make an on-the-spot observation, without tipping his hand to others in the Agency.

  “Okay, Pat, that’s good work. When we get back, I’ll try to get some of the Navy information so you can refine your estimates.”

  “Aren’t you going to have to tell McMasters, to issue a warning to Nagasaki?”

  “We’re still on shaky ground here. I’m hoping we can gain enough information on the Nagasaki event that we can go above board in time for Dallas. And with luck, this trip to Jason may give us some insight into the whole mess.”

  Danielson looked uncertain, but then their flight was called and they had to queue up to board.

  During lunch on the plane, Danielson queried Isaacs about the nature of the group with whom they would meet.

  “These people who serve on Jason—how are they selected?”

  Isaacs paused to swallow a bite of gravy-swathed grey meat.

  “Well, they operate under the auspices of the Secretary of Defense as you know. They’re quite autonomous though and select their own members. The idea is, I suppose, that they themselves are the best judges of whatever arcane talent is required to participate in a general-purpose think tank.

  They receive the standard security clearance, but the hard part is getting elected—a single no-vote eliminates a prospective member.”

  “They don’t have any particular training at defense work?”

  “No, they’re just required to be the very best in their chosen area of science.”

  “How many people are we talking about then?”

  “Thirty some. But we’ll only see a small group of individuals who may have some particular expertise to bring to our problem.”

  “So all these great brains spend their summer vacations worrying about whatever problems are dished up to them.”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  “And they always meet in the same place—this Bishop’s School?”

  “Generally, yes. The grounds of the school are cloistered and secure. And, of course, La Jolla is a very congenial place to be in the summer. I believe some members rent houses in town, but most of them move right into the dorms. They’re converted into combination living and working areas. I guess I see the sense to it. You take a bunch of very bright people and make them comfortable in an environment where they can concentrate and interact without interruption. In any case, it seems to work. Jason has a long record of developing significant ideas and cracking hard problems.”

  “I’m sure.” Danielson poked at the food on her tray. “I find it an ironic mix, innocent little Episcopalian school girls during the school year and great scientists weighing the fate of mankind during summer vacation.”

  “I suppose,” Isaacs replied.

  “If you don’t mind me asking,” Danielson continued, “I’m curious as to how you could set up a meeting with them so quickly. I would have thought there were all sorts of channels to go through.”

  “Normally you’re right,” Isaacs assented. “Another piece of the tightrope we’re walking. I’ve dealt with them before, through those official procedures. I took the chance of calling Professor Phillips; he runs Jason now, a pleasant fellow, I think you’ll like him. I hinted at the emergency and let him know this was something informal, something I am doing on my own recognizance, on a weekend like this. Of course, I couldn’t come right out and tell him about McMasters’ prohibition. We’ll have to trust his discretion. I’m pretty sure Phillips is okay. I don’t know the others personally. We’ll just have to hope.”

  He cast her a worried glance.

  “Pat, I am concerned about this trip. I hate exposing us, you in particular, but we need some help, some idea of what’s going on.” He poked at his green beans then went on. “Frankly, even without the risk, I always have mixed feelings with these people. Individually and collectively they’re very bright. They have an excellent track record for making progress on seemingly intractable problems, like ours, and the fact that they do serve on Jason gives us something in common, I suppose. But I can’t help thinking they’re still academics. The fact that they choose that sort of life, rather than committing themselves to the front line like some of us are compelled to do, means we have a different mindset. A basically different view of the world, life.”

  He s
hrugged.

  “I think I understand,” Danielson said. “I guess I’m pretty nervous meeting with them for another reason, but it’s related. I’ve never had to do any Agency business in public, outside of Langley, except for that liaison with the Cambridge Research Lab, but that was just work. Now I’ve got to try to explain what I’ve done, what I’ve been thinking, to professional scientists, trained skeptics. It’s a little frightening.”

  He looked her seriously in the eyes.

  “You know your stuff,” he said confidently. “Don’t worry on that account.”

  A passing stewardess eyed their trays. They concentrated once more on the food before them. After lunch, Danielson extracted her case from beneath the seat in front of her and reviewed her notes one more time.

  At the San Diego airport Isaacs called ahead to announce their arrival, then they picked up a rental car and got on the freeway headed north, passing between steep hillocks on either side. Only the tang in the air stream through a partially opened window gave evidence of the nearby Pacific. They turned off the freeway and headed uphill to the west. The crest brought a panoramic view of a sweep of coastline to the right, broken in mid-arc by the jut of Scripps pier. To the left, the town of La Jolla snuggled around the hillside and down to the sea. In another few minutes they turned into the gateway of the Bishop’s School for Girls, nestled a short distance from the commercial center of La Jolla.

  As they got out of the car, Wayne Phillips called to them. Isaacs and Phillips greeted one another with refined congeniality. Phillips, a Harvard physicist, was, at 68, the senior member and current head of Jason. Like many of his generation he had nurtured his career both in physics and in defense-related matters on the Manhattan Project during World War II. A contributor to a wide variety of fields, he was best known for his work on nuclear physics that had earned him a share of a Nobel Prize.