The Krone Experiment k-1

by J. Craig Wheeler

  He turned toward the Director of Central Intelligence at his far right. “Howard, you indicated you could shed some light on this. I hope you don’t mind sharing one or two of your secrets with me before the whole world goes up in a goddamned nuclear war!”

  A look of anguish passed over Drefke’s face. The sarcastic attack from his old friend pained him, and he knew the President was not going to like the story he had to tell.

  “Mr. President,” his voice quavered, but then grew stronger, “the case I have to present is highly unorthodox. My associate, Mr. Isaacs, has only just this moment returned with the evidence to confirm that we are faced with a peril of unprecedented proportions. Through a bizarre set of circumstances, the Earth itself has become mortally endangered.”

  “I’ve always considered nuclear holocaust dangerous,” the President said, his irritation still plainly evident.

  “I don’t mean war, but something far more insidious,” Drefke pressed. “If our understanding is correct, the issues we currently regard as crises, including this exaggerated light sabre rattling of the Soviets, become nearly irrelevant.”

  Drefke could sense that his strong statement, coupled with the ire of the President, had created a profound air of discontent around the table. He rushed on.

  “Our current understanding has been developed by the Office of Scientific Intelligence under Mr. Isaacs with the collaboration of the Jason group chaired by Professor Wayne Phillips who is here to answer questions of a technical, scientific nature that may arise.”

  Phillips nodded at the array of severe faces that surrounded the table.

  “I will give you a brief overview,” Drefke continued. “Mr. Isaacs will then provide details of the present situation.” He paused and looked at some notes before him.

  “In late April, analysis of seismic data from the Large Seismic Array showed a peculiar signal. Closer examination by members of the OSI staff revealed this signal to be quite regular with a period of eighty and a half minutes. Attempts to relate this signal to a man-made origin were unsuccessful. On the contrary, the source of the seismic waves moved along a line that always pointed to the same direction in space.”

  “Hell’s fire!” The expletive came from the representative of the Office of Naval Intelligence, a man of stern military bearing. Several people in the room, including the President, flinched at the outburst. Drefke, who had been anticipating it, looked at him stonily.

  “You’re talking about the same thing the Navy has been monitoring on sonar,” the Navy man continued. “Fixed orientation and all that. We lost a ship on that mission. What the hell’s going on?”

  Drefke looked coolly at the President, confident of his special relationship.

  “If I may continue?”

  The President nodded and Drefke proceeded to ignore the hot glare of the naval officer.

  “It is true,” he said, “that the phenomenon generates an acoustic signal in water that is the counterpart of the seismic signal within the Earth.”

  His voice took on a slight condescending note. “My colleagues in the Navy are aware of the phenomenon I’m discussing. They chose not to pursue the matter in a manner that would give any useful insight.” Drefke knew that this simple statement on his part would eventually cause heads to roll in the hierarchy of naval intelligence, including, perhaps, that of his obstreperous colleague at the table. He proceeded with the matter at hand.

  “The Navy lost a ship, the Stinson, with tragic loss of life, while monitoring this phenomenon. That relates to another important point. At the same time, also beginning last April, another chain of events was set in motion, which are well- known to all of you here.” Drefke hunched forward, leaning on the table, and looked intently at his colleagues. “I am referring to the Soviet carrier, the Novorossiisk.”

  There was a rustle and exchange of glances around the table. Drefke continued.

  “You all know what transpired from that seemingly minor incident. The Soviets unveiled their first laser and demolished one of our surveillance satellites. We captured that laser satellite, thanks to the brave action of our shuttle crew, but that led to the launch of a new laser satellite and our nuclear weapon in a standoff that was broken this morning, leaving us in our current state of emergency. We now have reason to believe that the object that damaged the Novorossiisk and, in sad fact, sank the Stinson, was the very thing the Stinson was sent to monitor, the source of the odd seismic and acoustic waves.

  “Mr. President,” Drefke faced his commander-in-chief, “we now believe that all these events and several more peculiar happenstances are intimately related, although it was difficult, until very recently, to see the common thread. It is very much to the credit of Mr. Isaacs and his team that the crucial connection was made. The seismic information was used by the OSI to predict that the source of these waves would appear in Nagasaki and Dallas on specific dates last summer, July 7 and July 26, respectively. In each instance, there was some relatively minor, unexplained damage. In each case there was also a death, but neither was directly attributable to the source of the seismic waves. This much information was presented to Jason by Mr. Isaacs in early August. A possible explanation was forthcoming.”

  Drefke leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath, looked at Isaacs and Phillips, and then exhaled. He looked keenly at the President.

  “Mr. President, I know you have heard the term ‘black hole.’”

  “Yes,” the President answered with a note of questioning in his voice, “some sort of gravitational trap, I believe. Supposed to be formed by a collapsing star, if I have the picture right.”

  “That is the basic idea,” Drefke assented.

  “So what’s the point?” the President demanded. “Are you going to tell me that in addition to the Russians threatening to blow us to kingdom come, we are about to fall into a black hole?”

  “Apparently, Mr. President, we are doing so at this very instant.”

  This statement brought outbursts of protest from around the table. Drefke looked pained again and raised his voice.

  “Mr. President! Mr. President! I beg your pardon! If I could be allowed to explain.”

  The President quieted the group. “Russians I can deal with somehow, Howard, but what the hell are you feeding us now?”

  “Please consider my position,” Drefke pleaded in the most dignified tone he could muster. “I sympathize with your incredulity, but you have not heard all the arguments. Understand that there is no way to introduce this idea without surprise and shock.”

  “All right, all right,” said the President with protesting hands in the air. Then he dropped his elbows to the table and supported his head in his hands muttering, “Jesus Christ!”

  “At the Jason meeting the suggestion was made that, despite the seeming impossibility, the only explanation consistent with the facts was a very small black hole. In addition, a suggestion was made for a definitive test of this hypothesis. Such a thing should have a precise and measurable gravitational field. The meeting with Jason was on the second and third of August, nine days ago. An expedition was mounted a week later, and results were obtained only yesterday.

  “Mr. President, the answer is unambiguous,” Drefke continued. “An object with a mass of about a hundred million tons and of very small size is oscillating through the solid matter of the Earth as if it did not exist. The conclusion seems inescapable that the object is a black hole and that it is slowly consuming material from the inside of the Earth. Left unmolested, that process will proceed to completion.”

  A stillness had fallen on the room as Drefke spoke. It continued for a few moments, then was broken by the President.

  “And now you are going to tell me the Russians are onto this thing and think we have done it?” he said in a forlorn voice. “Why wasn’t I apprised of this before I had World War III dumped in my lap?”

  “Sir,” Drefke pleaded, “as I said, the results confirming the hypothesis only became available yesterday, and e
ven then there were important unanswered questions. You must understand that the notion was so incredible that we had to be absolutely sure before bringing it to your attention.”

  Drefke paused to collect his thoughts. He had always been comfortably frank with this man before and after he became the President, but he did not care to confess in front of this group his culpability in delaying Isaacs’ investigation. He chose his words carefully.

  “Besides drawing us into a confrontation in space, the Soviets have been pursuing their own investigation of the damage to the Novorossiisk.” He could not suppress a quick glance at Isaacs. He also did not want to expose Isaacs’ role in tipping the Russians to the nature of the black hole. “We are not sure of the details, but with their extensive naval deployment in the Mediterranean and the Pacific, they have evidently also discovered the regular sonar pattern associated with this thing. We have recently found that they have a series of vessels deployed precisely on the path that the, uh, black hole follows as it punches through the Earth’s surface.”

  “May we deduce then,” an abrupt voice broke in, “that the Soviets have the same information that was available to our Navy?” The forceful baritone belonged to the Secretary of State, a diminutive man whose tone belied his physical stature. “But they have gone ahead to reach the conclusion that this thing is a great danger?”

  “I believe that is a fair statement,” Drefke replied. In his peripheral vision he could see the jaw muscles of the naval intelligence officer clinch and bunch.

  “And they have concluded as you have,” the Secretary of State continued, “that it is a black hole and have further concluded that we are responsible?”

  “That seems to be the best guess,” answered Drefke. “They have individuals with the necessary insight and imagination. Often their highly compartmentalized system keeps the people with the data from the people with the insight. In this case, however, one of their very best scientists has been in on it from the beginning, starting with the analysis of the events on the Novorossiisk. Academician Viktor Korolev.”

  There were several nods of recognition around the table. Korolev’s defense-related work was known to many of them.

  “We think,” Drefke continued, “that it is very likely that, faced with the same data, Korolev would come to the same conclusions that we have.”

  “Where did this thing come from then?” the chairman of the National Security Council demanded. “Outer space?” He glanced at the Secretary of State. “Why do they think we had anything to do with it?”

  “Those questions are closely related,” Drefke said. “I want you to follow the logic so that you can see that the Russians, Korolev, have probably done the same thing. I would like Bob Isaacs to lay that out for you and report what he found today.”

  “Very well,” said the President, “Mr. Isaacs, why don’t you proceed?”

  Isaacs stood, fighting the fatigue of his hectic day, images flashing: the discovery of Krone’s lab, the race to New Mexico, the machine, the encounter with Krone and the woman, Latvin, the flight back. He had to admire Drefke’s presentation, a politician who’d scarcely heard of the phrase black hole a day earlier. He moved behind Drefke to the projector, switched it on, and picked up a laser pointer, as the officials swiveled in their chairs toward the screen.

  “I’m going to leave out some of the background details for now,” he said, pushing a button to advance through a number of the slides Gantt and Phillips had prepared, until he came to the one he wanted.

  “This,” he said, “is an illustration of the path the black hole takes when it comes out of the Earth, rises to a peak, and falls back in. It will then go through the Earth and come out the other side. For now, I want you to concentrate on the fact that it rises to a fixed height each time. We can determine the amount of time it is above the Earth’s surface, and that tells us how far up it goes. The answer is fifty-seven hundred feet. The simplest hypothesis is that it was formed somewhere at that altitude and always returns to that height as it swings in orbit through the Earth.”

  He pushed the button and advanced the projector to a map of the Earth centered on the western hemisphere. He used the laser pointer to mark twin red horizontal lines.

  “Here you see the path where the orbit intersects the Earth’s surface, one line in the north through Dallas and Nagasaki, another in the south. As you have heard, we obtained hard evidence that we were dealing with a black hole only yesterday. We immediately did an orbital survey of every point on those two red lines that was at an altitude of fifty-seven hundred feet. You can see there are not many, because of the broad expanses of ocean and low terrain, but it still took some time. You can appreciate that with the orbital path and timing data, the Russians can follow the same procedure. All the locations of interest were empty save one.”

  Isaacs paused and looked at the floor as he gently cleared his throat. He looked up and found, not to his surprise, that he was the center of undivided attention. He pointed to the map.

  “That exception is here in New Mexico, east of the White Sands proving grounds and just south of the Mescalero Apache reservation in the Sacramento Mountain Range.”

  “Wait a minute now,” the President said excitedly. “New Mexico? You’re claiming this thing was made in New Mexico?”

  Isaacs flipped through several more slides to reveal a blown-up photograph.

  “This is a satellite photograph of the point of interest taken late yesterday afternoon,” he explained.

  All around the table the members of the council peered intently at the complex of buildings perched on top of a mountain range.

  “We found out this morning that it’s a private research laboratory, subcontracted to the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, two hundred miles to the north. The man who runs it is Paul Krone.”

  “Krone? Of Krone Industries?” the President inquired.

  “Yes, sir,” answered Isaacs.

  The President exchanged a glance with Drefke. They both knew that Krone had heavily financed his opponent in the last election.

  “And now you’re going to tell me he made a black hole? There?” The President extended a pin-striped arm and pointed a finger at the slide without removing his eyes from Isaacs. “At a government sponsored laboratory? Right in our own backyard? Without our knowledge? Without my knowledge?”

  “Yes, sir, that seems to be the case. When we discovered the site this morning, I took a team for an emergency visit to confirm our suspicions.

  “There is a machine in this building,” Isaacs said, using the pointer on the screen, “the details of which we do not understand. But it is of gigantic proportions and appears to have consumed the rock missing from this ridge.” He pointed to the bare patch of mountain top bordering the lab. “That’s about a hundred million tons of rock, and the strong circumstantial evidence is that it was compressed by this machine to produce the black hole.

  “We then proceeded to a home that Krone maintains near the lab. We found him in a semi-catatonic state. He attempted to commit suicide about four months ago and has some brain damage. We recovered from his study a set of laboratory notebooks, of which this is one.”

  Isaacs stepped around behind Drefke, picked up the lab book from his place and walked half the length of the table to set it by the President’s elbow.

  “We haven’t had time to study them, but they seem to contain a complete record of Krone’s experiments that led to the creation of the black hole. There may also be important computer files.”

  “It’s burned!” exclaimed the President.

  “Yes, unfortunately. A woman who lived with Krone attempted to burn them. It was a ruse on her part to distract us while she smuggled Krone out the back door. Some were badly damaged before we could stop her.”

  “She smuggled him out? While you were there?” The President was incredulous. “Where are they now?”

  “The woman got away with him, at least temporarily. They’re somewhere in the mountains. We ha
ve air and ground search parties after them.”

  “Who is this woman?” the Chairman of the NSC inquired.

  “Her name is Maria Latvin. She’s apparently a refugee,” Isaacs explained. “From Lithuania. Krone met her in Vienna after she escaped, and she’s been living with him ever since.”

  “A plant?” the Chairman asked.

  “Not that we can tell,” Isaacs answered. “We’re still looking into her background, but the escape from Czechoslovakia seems genuine enough. It’s in Krone’s character to take up with such a person, to flaunt the possible security risks.”

  “Why would she run off with Krone?” the Chairman pressed.

  “We haven’t come up with any motive yet.”

  The President slumped back in his chair.

  “All right, let me summarize this.” He shook his head in dismay. “Krone somehow eats a mountain at government expense and makes a black hole. That black hole punches a hole in this damn Russian carrier?” He looked at Drefke, who nodded his assent. “The Russians from some perverse instinct, which turns out to be right, assume we are at fault, and start our first space war.

  “I thought we had everything fought to a standstill up there,” he jerked a thumb at the ceiling, “eyeball to eyeball, and all that, and all of a sudden they don’t just blink, they haul out a baseball bat and crack me upside the head. And turn all our low orbit stuff into a damn shooting gallery with their laser. God knows what else they’ve got in mind.

  “Now, Howard,” he turned to look at his Director of Central Intelligence, “you seem to be saying that what’s happened is that the Russians have followed the clues and deduced that we made a black hole there and are more convinced than ever that we’re out to get them.”

  Drefke straightened in his chair, his thoughts equally divided between the crisis before them and the years of friendship with the man at the center of the table. Those years would be swept away if he didn’t handle this properly.