by Shain Carter
The children walked around the table and politely introduced themselves. Dawson shook hands with Andy, but Cindy didn’t get any farther than Meredith. The two whispered and giggled until Derek clapped his hands impatiently. “Come on, kids, it’s time for bed. You’ll have plenty of time to talk to the scientists later, but for now another exciting installment of the Hardy Boys awaits.”
The children reluctantly shuffled over to their father. As Derek herded them out of the room he told the group that he would return in a few minutes.
“He reads to them every night,” Burt explained to the others after Derek left. “He’s completely devoted to those kids and has been ever since his wife died a few years back. Derek is quite protective of them - maybe too much so. The kids rarely leave the compound and when they do, they’re under Derek’s constant supervision. They never even get to play with kids their own age. They have each other, but they’re lonely, too.”
Alec turned to Burt. “What exactly did Becker mean about there being plenty of time for them to talk to us later? He isn’t planning to bring those children on the mission, is he?”
George, not Burt, answered. “That is exactly what he is planning. I have told him again and again that this is a very unwise decision. It is not safe for them in Turkey. The area is wild and dangerous and the children could easily come to harm there. Besides, there is no reason to have children come, and once there, there will be nothing for them to do. They will be a burden for us. I have begged Mr. Becker to reconsider, but he is very determined. They will come.”
With Derek gone and the discussion about the children ended, Ted had undisputed control of the conversation. “Very smart dinosaurs. The whole thing makes perfect sense, it’s just so obvious!” he spoke almost too fast to understand. “It’s just the Fermi Paradox, turned on its side!”
He turned to Meredith and blurted, “Don’t you think so?”
Meredith mumbled that she had never head of the Fermi Paradox. Ted grinned and took a breath. “The story is that a bunch of scientists from the Manhattan project were sitting around at lunch one day, trying to figure out the probability of there being other intelligent life in the galaxy. Being scientists, they approached the question quite logically and decided that this probability was really a function of a bunch other numbers: how many stars there were in the galaxy, the fraction of stars with planets, the percent of planets that could support life, the fraction of those planets where life actually did form, the chance of intelligent life forming once life existed, and so on. This analysis is called the Drake Equation, and these scientists made some guesses and began calculating.
“This whole time Fermi’s just sitting there listening, not saying a word. The others crank through the calculation, and the number they come up with is huge - it says there ought to be thousands, maybe millions, of intelligent life forms out there. ‘What do you think of that?’ they ask Fermi. Fermi just shrugs and asks, ‘So, where are they?’.”
Ted had been directing his story to Meredith. Without pausing he asked her, “So what do you think, Meredith? Where are all these intelligent beings?”
Meredith shrugged, then held one hand up, towards the ceiling. “I guess out there somewhere, too far away for us to see.”
Ted clapped his hands in delight. “That’s exactly what these guys told Fermi! But they didn’t realize that Fermi had taken their calculations one step further. He explained it to them like this: Once intelligent life forms, it will almost surely spread out to other planets and other stars. And if you consider that the Milky Way is ten billion years old, and that it’s a hundred thousand light years across, and that these intelligent beings should be able travel at least at one one-thousandths of the speed of light, then by now they should have overrun the galaxy hundreds of times over. So that’s the Fermi Paradox - if extraterrestrial intelligent life is anywhere near as common as it ought to be - if there is even just one other intelligent species - then why haven’t we seen them? Why haven’t they taken over the galaxy? There’s a lot of debate, of course, but I think the most likely explanation is that they either can’t travel through space or don’t want to.”
“That’s interesting, Ted,” Alec said impatiently, “but what the hell does it have to do with smart dinosaurs?”
“Fermi’s Paradox looks at one point in time - now - and asks where in space - the galaxy - that we should find intelligent life. But the fossil is telling us we ought to look at one point in space - the earth - and ask where in time we should find intelligent life. Now the math is a lot cleaner, we don’t have to guess at things like the number of stars with hospitable planets, or the chances of life forming there. The earth is hospitable and life did form here, that’s a given. All we have to do is guess how long it should take intelligent life to rise from the masses, and like Derek showed us, it shouldn’t take too long at all, let’s say a million years, tops.
“So we can ask ourselves the same sort of thing Fermi asked - If intelligent life is so abundant, where is it? The answer to Fermi’s original paradox is that intelligent life is now present somewhere else in the galaxy, it just can’t travel through space to get here. The answer to our paradox is that intelligent life was present here somewhere else in time, it just couldn’t travel through time to get here. Something big happened on earth sixty-five million years ago, maybe it was nuclear holocaust like Becker thinks, maybe it was an asteroid after all. But whatever it was, it prevented earlier earth-based intelligence from traveling through time to the present. Until now, that is. Or, I should say, until November, when our interceptor craft makes contact with the messenger probe.”
Ted suddenly turned to Dawson. "You’ve been quiet all night, Jones. What's the matter, no theories of your own?"
The room grew quiet and Dawson shifted uncomfortably as everyone's attention turned to him. "The whole thing’s incredible,” he finally said. "It’s unbelievable." Something in his voice made clear that he meant the latter statement quite literally.
He thought for a moment, then continued. "I’m still unclear on too many points to get excited about it.” He turned to Burt. “For starters, how can you be so sure about what the probe’s signals mean? You think it’s flashing a message to you, and you seem to think you know what message to flash back, and how. How can you be so sure?"
A voice came from behind Dawson. "Let me answer that, Professor."
Dawson turned to find Derek standing in the doorway. “We don’t know exactly what the flashes mean. Some are pretty obvious, like the sequence of prime numbers from 2 to 211, and the powers of six up to six cubed. We’re guessing they use base six numbers, since they have three fingers on each hand. But we haven’t figured all of the message out. So what we’re going to do is play back the entire flash pattern exactly, at various radio frequencies. We’re guessing that will get a response from the probe."
"Guessing?" Alec exclaimed. "You expect us to do all this work just based on a guess?"
"Yes, I do,” Derek replied bluntly. "You've hit on the weakest part of the program, and you bring up a point I want everyone to understand going into this project. It's a gamble. I don't have all the answers and I might not succeed even if you all do your parts right. But I'm certain my plan is the most likely to succeed, to catch the messenger probe’s attention and bring it to earth. To play it safe, we will program the interceptor to repeat the entire pattern, from start to finish. We believe that any life form intelligent enough to send an interstellar probe would realize that simple repetition is a likely response, and that they have programmed the messenger probe to respond accordingly.”
As he spoke Derek slowly looked around the room, making eye contact with each scientist in turn. “What I need to know from you is whether you’re willing to commit the next four months of your lives to making my program work. I’ve taken care of things with your employers; you don’t have to worry about missing work. It will be a lot of hard work and, for some of you, personal hardship. Ted has a wife and two young ch
ildren, and Alec will be away from his physician.
"I don’t need an answer from you tonight. It's getting late and for some of you it's been a long day of travel. I want you think about what I've shown you today. Sleep on it, if you can, and let me know your decision in the morning."
Derek glanced down at his watch. “I must leave you now to attend to some business, but feel free to stay and talk about this among yourselves.” He gestured towards the butler. “Jeremy will show you to your quarters when you’re ready.”
Derek bade them good night and left. The others sat quietly for a moment. Then Ted put his napkin on his plate and stood. "I don't know about the rest of you,” he announced, "but I don’t need to sleep on it. This is the biggest chance any astronomer could ever dream of. I wouldn't miss it for the world."
Alec nodded. "I'm in, too. My doctor won’t be happy, but so be it."
"Me, too,” Meredith agreed.
Burt turned to Dawson. "That just leaves you. What about it, Jones - what are you going to do?"
Dawson reached for his empty glass and stood. "What I'm going to do is get another drink." He walked to a buffet along the wall, where he picked up a bottle of whisky and filled his glass. His back still to the others, he continued. "I told you from the outset, Burt, that I had no interest in resuming green flame research. I plan to spend this summer like I have the last twenty, teaching remedial chemistry to a bunch of uninterested cowboys."
Dawson guessed from the ensuing silence that his words had surprised everyone, including Burt. Self-consciously he put the bottle on the counter and turned to the others. Burt seemed the most surprised - clearly he thought that Dawson would come onboard with the program. The others simply stared at Dawson uncertainly. Without saying another word, Dawson motioned to the butler and left.
Chapter Seven
Jones had great difficulty sleeping that night. He tossed and turned, thinking about the strange story Derek had told, the research program he was initiating. An incredible opportunity, if Becker was right, but like most scientists Jones was a skeptic by nature. The intelligent dinosaur theory was too a huge of a leap from the status quo, a leap that could not be take easily.
After all, Becker had shown them only one piece of direct evidence for his theory - the fossil. Jones usually thought very little of theories that were based on a single observation, but he had to concede that it in this case the observation was both definitive and convincing. Proof enough, in fact, to persuade the others. As he lay in bed, though, Jones told himself that they were too easily swayed, that they had so readily agreed to join the program because they confused the potentially enormous benefit of the theory with the likelihood that the theory was correct.
It’s just like buying lottery tickets, Jones thought. Ask the man on the street to guess a randomly chosen number between 1 and 80 million, and he won’t waste his breath - the odds of getting the right number are astronomically small. Ask him to pay a dollar for the privilege of guessing, and he’ll laugh and walk away. But offer him $250 million if he gets it right, and not only will he pay that dollar, he’ll be willing to wait hours in line to do so. The potential of a huge payoff makes him truly believe that he can guess that number, despite the enormous odds against it. And that, Jones concluded, is exactly what was happening here with the others.
Scientists pride themselves on being logical, and for this reason very few play the lottery. But they are human and so are not immune to this type of illogical thinking; it just shows itself differently. From the dawn of science to the present day - from alchemists trying to transmute lead into gold to modern chemists devoting their entire careers to cold fusion - scientists have worked on impossible projects, irrationally expecting to succeed for the sole reason that the rewards of success were so great.
Dawson reasoned that his refusal to jump on the bandwagon simply showed that he was more objective than the others were, more levelheaded and logical. What he could not admit, as he lay there awake, hour after hour, was that the real reason he did not want to believe Derek’s theory had little to do with its plausibility. The real reason was that, if Derek was right, then the existence of the messenger probe would virtually force Dawson to resume the green flame fuel program he had abandoned years earlier. It was anxiety over this prospect that kept Dawson awake until the early hours of the morning.
Dawson’s aversion to returning to green flame research would not have surprised anyone who knew him well. As a child, Dawson was recognized as extremely gifted - a bona fide child genius. His strength lay in instantly adsorbing and interpreting facts, assimilating them into coherent theories and using these theories to successfully predict new observations. He was exceptionally mechanical as well, and spent hours tinkering with tools, appliances, machinery - anything he could get his hands on - and instantly understanding not only how they worked, but also how they could be improved. While still in high school he secured patents for fundamental improvements to combustion engines, mining equipment and medical instruments.
While child prodigies are uncommon, they are not as rare as generally believed. What is truly rare, however, is the prodigy that fulfills the expectations of his or her early successes. All too often a prodigy simply realizes an earlier, but no higher, potential than his contemporaries. A four-year-old who can multiply three digit numbers in his head is a child prodigy. A thirty-four year old who can do the same thing is unusual, but not extraordinary. But Dawson was that rare exception - a prodigy whose abilities continued to increase as he matured, seemingly without bounds.
It was only natural that Jones pursued the physical sciences. He attended Berkeley on a Westinghouse scholarship and at age nineteen graduated summa cum laude with a double major in physics and chemistry. Dawson pursued his interest in chemistry and moved from Berkley to NETI, the New England Technology Institute, where he joined Professor Leon Woolf’s group as a graduate student. Woolf had just begun his pioneering work in the area of solid state semi-conductors. At the time his work was considered highly speculative and unlikely to produce practical results. Today it is universally recognized as the critical breakthrough needed to develop tiny, high density storage media such as ultra-high capacity thumb drives. His watershed research revolutionized the way that the computer industry handles data storage.
Woolf’s large research group consisted of an assortment of graduate students, postdoctoral assistants and visiting faculty. It was perhaps the most impressive assembly of world class scientists since the Manhattan project. And next to even the greatest, most established stars in the group, Dawson shone as a bright light, someone to watch closely. Though still just a graduate student, Jones’ combination of chemical intuition and synthetic skills was unmatched. Woolf bragged that Dawson was “charmed” and more than once declared that he would sooner lose any three other scientists than lose Jones.
Woolf’s assessment of Jones’ abilities was well founded. Time and again Jones overcame seemingly insurmountable obstacles to succeed where others had failed. In some cases he did this by inventing new techniques and equipment. In other cases he made simple, subtle, and, invariably, successful modifications to the procedures or equipment that had failed others, turning their near misses into direct hits.
It normally took five years to earn a doctorate from NETI. Dawson completed all of the academic requirements and more than enough research after only three. Reluctantly, Woolf agreed to graduate Dawson two years early. While he was disappointed to lose such a gifted co-worker, he knew that it was in Dawson’s best interests that he be cut loose to undertake research of his own.
In the months before graduation, Jones applied to seven universities that were advertising faculty openings. As part of the application process he was required to provide a detailed research proposal. His initial plan was to continue on some promising solid state work that he had started several months before. However, when Woolf learned of his intentions he cautioned Jones that most schools would look unfavorably on this.
Woolf recommended that Dawson instead develop an entirely new area of chemistry - an area that would be clearly identified as his own. Woolf went on to suggest that Dawson’s solid state project be given to Erik Kyle, a Nevada State University professor who had just begun a one-year sabbatical at NETI. Both suggestions were sound, and Jones agreed without reservation.
After careful deliberation, Dawson chose rocket fuels as his new area of research. In particular, his research proposal centered on the use of organoboranes as fuels. Organoboranes are a group of roughly twenty compounds composed of boron, carbon and hydrogen. They differ from most chemicals in three ways. First, they burn with a bright green flame. The intensity of the green color is so striking that organoboranes are informally referred to as “green flame compounds”. Second, when burned these materials release more thrust per pound than any other class of chemicals, giving them a significant power advantage over conventional rocket fuels. Finally, they are extremely sensitive to oxygen and moisture. The reaction between oxygen and organoboranes is so strong, in fact, that organoboranes spontaneously erupt into brilliant green fireballs when exposed to even trace amounts of air.
The United States military recognized the fuel potential of green flame compounds in the late 1950’s. The air force undertook a series of research programs to develop organoboranes as rocket and jet propellants. At one time the effort commanded significant resources and manpower. The air force even built a prototype airplane - a modified B-70 bomber called the Green Dragon - to prove the effectiveness of green flame fuels. However, in the early 1960s these programs were progressively scaled back, and by the mid-1960s all military research in this area ended. The exact reasons for this remain classified, but it is generally understood in the chemical community that government scientists failed to overcome corrosion problems in the engine exhaust systems. The incredibly hot combustion products of these fuels attacked virtually all metals and alloys known at the time. Those few alloys that were resistant to corrosion were, for other reasons, unsuitable for exhaust hardware.
