Finch’s confusion grew. “That mixture would dissolve metal!” he exclaimed. “Why would I give him such a thing?”
“Because his heart will heal with the musket round still inside,” “Bacon” said, as if explaining the alphabet to a very slow child. “The iron oxide, combined with the sulfur, will break down the metal in short order, while the pre’lak will keep it from breaking down his blood as well. Do you follow now?”
Finch’s eyes widened. “My God, that’s brilliant.”
“Don’t get too excited,” the man said as he returned his alchemical tools to his purse. “In most cases, it’s far easier to get the round out of the body first, because if the wound is still open when you apply the mixture I described, the air around the wound would cause the surrounding tissue to break down quickly. Remember, Doctor—everything has an effect on everything else.”
“Of course,” Finch said, closing his eyes and trying not to snap back at the man. Causality was perhaps the most basic tenet of the Great Work, and his pride was threatening to burst forth at the man’s chiding. “What is that stone you used?”
The man frowned. “It is an inferior creation, an earlier attempt at a greater success that was later taken from me.”
The realization dawned on Finch like a thunderbolt from Zeus. A greater success…taken from an obviously accomplished alchemist…on the same world where Cagliostro was found….
Dumbfounded, he regarded the man with new eyes.
“It’s…you,” he said slowly. “Of course! You, of all people, would want Cagliostro caught!”
The man gave a little smirk. “You’ve a sharp mind when it’s not addled by drugs, Dr. Finch. Your time amongst naval discipline has been good for you.”
“Indeed it has, despite my best efforts to the contrary,” Finch replied before turning to Anne. “Did he effect our release, then?”
The girl looked slightly uncomfortable. “Well, no….”
“She did,” the man said flatly. “She managed to convince the Xan of your good intentions, and mine as well. And I can tell you she’s a keen negotiator. I significantly reduced my alchemical stores to revive this man—in return for my very life.”
“But how?” Finch asked.
“Later,” the man said curtly, looking over Finch’s shoulder toward Weatherby. “I believe he’s coming out of it.”
Finch and Anne moved to Weatherby’s side just as he began to stir. “My God, that hurt,” Weatherby groaned softly.
“Weatherby!” Finch breathed as he kneeled by his lieutenant’s side. “How are you feeling?”
The young man opened his eyes and looked about. “Far better than before.” He cast his eyes around the room and fixed them on Anne. “You’re all right?”
“Yes,” she said, fighting back tears. “Welcome back.”
“Back from where?” Weatherby asked, eying “Bacon” suspiciously. “And who is that?”
“I am the Count St. Germain,” the man said. “We need to get you on your feet. The Xan are waiting for us, and I imagine they have some explaining to do. If my theories are correct, they are as much to blame for Cagliostro’s fell mission as the man himself.”
July 27, 2132
“Jain, I’ve got two officers in sickbay, the mess hall’s been trashed, and I personally beat the shit out of somebody just to prove a goddamn point. We’ll all be lucky to get off this rock in one piece. Now what the fuck… Oh.”
Diaz’ voice trailed off as the door to the containment lab closed behind her and she saw the book, which had thankfully obliged Shaila—and her career—by continuing to write itself in Diaz’ presence.
Diaz stared for several long minutes, well after Finch’s journal entry had finished. Then she simply hit the comm button. “Ops, report.”
“Ops to Diaz, Adams here. We’ve managed to contain the miners to the lower Hub and their dorm wings,” the young lieutenant said nervously. “We’re holding the stairs to the upper dome and the doors to the JSC wing. So far, no further incidents.”
“Good,” the colonel said absent-mindedly. “Call me if it gets worse. Have Greene and Hiyashi report to the containment lab. Diaz out.”
After that, Diaz fell silent, her fingers steepled in front of her as she stared at the book, seeming to dare it to write again. Shaila could see the red on her knuckles and idly wondered which malcontent miner Diaz punched. When Greene and Yuna arrived, it fell to Shaila to show the others the video recording of the book’s writing, which was met with the same quiet bewilderment from each of them.
Now, they waited. Yuna and Greene sat in the room’s other two chairs, while Stephane and Shaila leaned against the worktable. Nobody looked at each other. Their eyes were unfocused, their thoughts kept to themselves.
Finally, Diaz turned around to address everyone. “Well, then.” She stopped, paused, and visibly gathered herself. “We all know what we just saw. And unless the chef’s been sneaking hallucinogens into the mystery meat, this is absolutely 100 percent real.” The joke had the desired effect, producing smiles and the barest hint of relaxation.
“First off,” she continued, “this lab is completely locked down for everyone except you guys. And Dr. Greene, I really hope I don’t have to say anything extra to you.”
Greene got the message clearly. “Colonel, even if I came in here with a crew and recorded it, nobody on Earth would believe me,” he said quietly. “Some things just…” His voice trailed off as he ended his thought with a shrug.
Diaz nodded. “Good. We need you on this. We’re way out of our league here.” There were nods from around the room. “So what we’re going to do now is, we’re going to go around, one at a time. I want to hear your thoughts. Obviously, I don’t care how crazy they seem, because we’re way outside the box here anyway. Jain? You found this book. Talk to us.”
Shaila looked up at her boss and, for once, had a profound appreciation for her. Diaz didn’t ask whether the book was fake, nor did she exclude Shaila, even after everything that went down earlier that day. So she took a leap. “Well, you said to think outside the box. I’m going to trust you on that.”
“About damn time,” Diaz said with a tired smile. “Go.”
Shaila looked around the room. Most everyone was still staring off into space, but Yuna looked at her with concern—probably expecting another career-ending moment. So be it. “We’ve got three things going on here, by my count. We’ve got earthquakes that shouldn’t be happening, a bunch of buried devices creating a ring of linear EM fields, and now…this thing,” she said, nodding toward the containment unit. “I think they’re related.”
“I think we pretty much assumed as much at this point,” Diaz said. “You guys even found Cherenkov radiation at the collapse today, right?”
“It’s more than that.” Shaila stood up and walked over to the book, looking at the neat handwriting again, as if to draw strength from it. “The energy that fried the rover and seemed to be involved in the collapse—it seemed to be following the EM ring. But that device we dug up, it couldn’t have generated that kind of energy.”
Shaila looked to Greene, who nodded and picked up her line of reasoning. “Right. If there is a ring out there—and that seems to be the case, by the way—and if it really is a particle accelerator, it still couldn’t singlehandedly cause the collapse at the mining site. And it couldn’t cause the earthquakes we’ve felt over the past few days.”
“Exactly,” Shaila said, warming up to the subject. “So where’s the energy coming from?”
The room fell silent once again.
“And,” Shaila continued, “while we’re at it, where’s the energy coming from to create the writing in this book? We’re not detecting it within the containment unit. And we can’t pinpoint the source of the Cherenkov radiation. So if the energy isn’t here, it’s got to be somewhere else.”
Diaz looked at the book again quizzically. “All right, I’ll bite. Where?”
Shaila pointed at the book. “From whe
rever that book came from. And I’m betting that the energy that’s ripping up Mars right now is being unleashed from there, too.”
“Yes, but where is ‘there?’” Stephane asked.
“From whatever world Weatherby is—was—writing from,” she concluded, surprised at the pang of sorrow she felt at his apparent death. “Another dimension of space-time, I suppose. And we may have to accept the possibility that there’s some truth in there, and that this Cagliostro guy, or somebody else, is actually doing something that’s affecting us here.”
More silence. Shaila looked at each person in turn. Stephane seemed both intrigued and amused, while both Yuna and Diaz fixed her with expressions of deep concern, seemingly for her mental health. She was glad that she had refrained from mentioning the strange stuff that filtered into her head while in the cave, because that probably would scotch the whole thing.
But Greene…when Shaila looked at him, she could see his wheels turning.
So could Diaz. “Dr. Greene, your turn.”
He straightened up in his chair and smiled slightly, almost seeming embarrassed. “I remember this show, an old 2-D show from the beginning of the 21st century. This quantum physicist was talking about how you could theoretically access a…well, a parallel dimension,” he said, turning slightly red as he carefully pronounced those last two words. “He said you needed a huge amount of energy, and came up with the idea of using asteroids to create a massive particle accelerator around the entire asteroid belt. He figured he’d either create a bubble universe spliced off from our own…or open a doorway to another dimension, a parallel universe.
“But what he didn’t figure, I suppose, was the possibility of having someone on the other side of the door trying to do the same thing,” Greene continued. “If you were doing things on both sides, then your energy price tag would be a lot lower.” He looked up with an embarrassed smile. “Theoretically, of course.”
“So you’re saying Jain’s right?” Diaz said, sounding a bit stunned.
Greene shrugged. “Hell if I know. I mean, give me enough time and I can come up with a variety of theories to explain everything that’s going on here. But right now, Jain’s theory seems to be the only one that fits all this strangeness. I mean, there’s all kinds of space-time variables that don’t make sense, but still.”
For all the emotion she felt at being vindicated in front of her commander like that, Shaila settled on a simple nod in Greene’s direction, which he returned in kind.
Yuna was unimpressed, however. “Colonel, I would strongly recommend against adopting any theories at the present time,” she said, “especially ones that would take what’s written in that book at face value, or ones that rely on theoretical particles that we can’t even test for. There are far too many actual questions that need answering before we delve into the realm of…of fantasy!”
“Well aware, Yuna,” Diaz said. “I’m going to have to report to Houston on this, and I’m less than thrilled at the idea of saying, ‘Hey, guys, we think we’ve got a parallel universe pushing through here on Mars.’” That got the laugh Diaz intended, and even Shaila chuckled. “However, I’m not going to dismiss that theory out of hand, either. It goes into the pot with whatever else we come up with. Now, what do we—”
Diaz was cut off by the sound of the base alarm, which filled the room with a loud, nerve-jangling dissonance. “Col. Diaz, Col. Diaz, report to the command center immediately. Col. Diaz to the command center immediately.” It was Finelli, and he sounded stressed.
“Christ, what now?” Diaz said as she turned to the others. “All right. Adjourned for now. Greene, welcome to the team. You, Steve and Yuna try to come up with some kind of testing scheme for the book, the EM devices, all of it. Jain, you’re with me.” Diaz took one long stride to the door and wrenched it open, and Jain hustled to follow her.
The two officers bounced down the corridor quickly, with JSC personnel flattening against the walls to let them pass. But before they got to the Hub, Diaz stopped and turned quickly to her subordinate; Shaila had to grab the wall to keep from plowing into her.
“Look, you had a good theory back there, OK? It’s crazy, but Greene seems to think you’re on to something,” Diaz said quietly. “But you’re not off the hook. If it’s hitting the fan, I need you. But dammit, I need you on the ball. Read me?”
“Aye, ma’am,” Shaila said. “Thank you, ma’am.” The “thank you” seemed inappropriate, somehow, but Shaila’s sense of relief—from Greene backing her up, from simply being needed—prompted it to come out.
Diaz nodded and the two officers bounded into the Hub, covering the vast room in a dozen quick leaps en route to the command center. As she ran through, Shaila saw a couple groups of miners loitering near the equipment lockers and, across the way, four very nervous looking junior officers standing watch on the emergency transports and the stairs to the upper part of the dome, weapons in hand.
McAuliffe had a half-dozen handheld microwave emitters on base to help police the civilian population. They used a focused microwave beam to overload the target’s nervous system, knocking them out for about 15 minutes. And the pain was excruciating, too, though there was no lasting damage done. The emitters—dubbed “zappers” by everyone on base—had been gathering dust for years. Until today.
A few of the miners loudly lobbed invectives and threats toward the officers, who stood their ground quietly with zappers at the ready. To Harry Yu’s credit, he was among the miners and appeared to be trying to calm them, though he still had a moment to regard Shaila with a furious look, one made a bit more palatable by the bruise on his jaw from her fist. Shaila ignored him and, a moment later, she and Diaz entered the command center to find nearly everyone on watch at their emergency stations. “Report,” Diaz barked.
“Incoming transport has lost power a hundred clicks out,” Finelli reported from his ops station. “There was a massive energy surge outside, and the transport was caught in it.”
While Shaila jumped over to the ops console, Diaz slid into her seat and pulled out her datapad. “Send me a visual,” she ordered.
“Negative,” Finelli responded. “Overhead MarsSats are offline. Same with half the outside sensor grid.”
“Say again?” Shaila said.
“Sats and sensors are out. Gone. Fried,” Finelli said, frustration entering into his voice. “Right when the transport got hit, so did our gear.”
Diaz keyed a button on her datapad. “Transport, this is McAuliffe. What’s your condition? Over.”
The radio crackled a moment before a response came back. “McAuliffe, this is transport Giffords. We have no flaps, no rotors, only thrusters, and our electronics are out. Radio is on backup. We are inbound without the ability to stop. Over.”
“Shit,” Diaz said. “Stand by, Giffords. Finelli, what’s their course?”
“Can’t tell yet. But they were heading for the pad earlier. Don’t know if they made their turn. They could end up on the surface or crash right into the base.”
Shaila, meanwhile, was pulling up a schematic of the Giffords. It was a small crew-and-cargo ship, capable of carrying a couple of tons. It used a combination of heat-shielding, an inflatable front cone, massive retractable wings and dozens of small rotors to navigate the tricky path to the Martian surface. Without rotors or attitude control, it could only plow into the surface or try to blast back into orbit.
The manifest showed it was carrying food supplies—enough to feed the base for the next three months—and empty ore containers.
There were also eight people aboard—a pilot, co-pilot and six miners.
Shaila opened the comm again. “Giffords, this is McAuliffe. What’s your fuel situation? Can you make orbit again? Over.”
“Negative,” the transport replied. “We were late getting off, so we were told to burn the reserves getting here. Over.”
Cheap bastards. “Roger that. Stand by.” Shaila turned to Diaz. “I got a plan B.”
Shaila
quickly filled Diaz in. It would be tricky, especially without any visuals to help guide the ship in, but it would have to do. If nothing else, it would spare the base. “All right, Jain. Your show.”
“Aye, ma’am,” she said, reopening the channel. “Giffords, this is McAuliffe. You got enough radio bandwidth to link me to your controls? Over.”
“Roger that, McAuliffe. You can have the stick, for what it’s worth. So long as we get down in one piece, you can have whatever you want.”
Shaila called up the holographic virtual control panel the base ops people used to guide ships in for landings. Most pilots preferred to land on their own, but it was a handy backup. She linked the radio into the VR panel and a moment later, she was surveying the ship’s readouts as if she were sitting in the cockpit, while her headset and force-feedback gloves allowed her to hear and “feel” the controls as if they were in her hands.
It didn’t look or feel good. Main fuel was nearly tapped—maybe 10 percent left, and they needed at least 40 percent to achieve orbit again. Wing flaps and rotors were gone. Controls were completely unresponsive in her hands. On the bright side, landing thrusters remained on backup. Hopefully, that would be enough.
Shaila stabbed a button and got no response. “Giffords, I need you to go back and manually open the rear cargo door, then cut the gear loose,” she said.
“Say again?” The pilot sounded incredulous.
“Open the rear cargo door! Now!” Shaila ordered. She heard a faint echo in her headset, but couldn’t spare the time or attention to care about what it was.
“Roger. On our way.” Twenty seconds later, the pilot came back on. “Cargo door open, cargo is loose, over.”
Shaila activated the two forward landing thrusters. She hoped that, between the thrusters and the remaining lift in the wings, the ship would start to nose up.
And when the cargo shifted….
“We’re nosing up and losing cargo,” the pilot reported. “Lift won’t be enough to land, though.”
Shaila left the forward landing thrusters on and diverted the remaining fuel to them. “Roger, Giffords. Just trying to get you vertical.”
The Daedalus Incident Page 28
