The Second Ship Page 28

  “I understand what you want. I’m just telling you that our team has not yet found a solution that doesn’t decay at higher temperatures.”

  “What is the decay rate?”

  “As you would expect, it gets worse the greater the temperature. At room temperature it lasts about as long as a non-refrigerated carton of milk.”

  “Bullshit. The original fluid had those characteristics. Are you trying to tell me your high-powered team can’t do better than my first attempt?”

  The other man cleared his throat. “We do have a new formulation that hasn’t been tested. The production process should give us a testable sample size within two days.”

  “I don’t care what you have to do or how late your people work. I’m giving you two weeks. I need a solution that can survive shipment to third-world countries. And I don’t want to hear about refrigeration. You better not disappoint me.”

  “I will do my best.”

  “For your sake, I hope you do better than that. Now get out of my office.”

  Mark stopped the playback. “There are a couple of other short references to nanites and suspension fluid on the tape, but this was the only section that makes any sense.”

  Heather’s mind raced. “Could you make out who he was talking to?”

  “No names were mentioned in any part of it.”

  “Nanites are microscopic machines,” Jennifer said. “That must be the second technology the Rho Project team is working on.”

  Heather nodded. “Apparently. But designed to do what? It sounded like the nanites need some sort of solution to survive.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “They are machines. Technically it would be more accurate to say they need the solution to keep running.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Well,” said Mark, “whatever they do, I didn’t like the sound of Dr. Stephenson’s shipping them to third-world countries.”

  “He must think it is something that people are going to want, like cold fusion,” said Heather. “I mean, the president will probably have to come out and announce this new thing too, right?”

  “Unless Dr. Stephenson thinks he can get this thing out there secretly.”

  Jennifer shook her head. “That doesn’t seem too likely. He’s obviously up to something, but the government is funding his research through the lab. I doubt he could hide a project that big.”

  Mark thought for a bit. “Well, I think we finally have something that our NSA agents are going to be interested in. Maybe we can get them off our backs and onto finding out what’s going on at the lab.”

  “Carefully, though,” said Heather. “These people are better at tracing things than we thought. We have to wait to send out our next message until we have the subspace transmitter working. Then we can remotely tap into a secure line that can’t be traced back to us.”

  “Doc said that she would have that working in a couple of days.”

  “I never said that.”

  “That’s what it sounded like to me.”

  “What I said is that I have the control system working. We’ll need a couple of weeks of testing. And that’s if we don’t encounter any major gotcha’s.”

  Mark frowned. “Crap. I don’t know if we have that long. It sounded like Stephenson was really pushing his team hard. What do you think, Heather?”

  “I think Jennifer’s right. If we push our system before we’ve fully tested it, we could run into problems that could make us all very dead. Cold fusion is a wonderful thing, but if we cause an unexpected spike in the energy, then this shielding wouldn’t be adequate.

  “My calculations say these lead panels will shield us fine, so long as the power stays low. We just have to make sure our control station doesn’t give us too much of a good thing.”

  “Shit,” Mark gasped. “You mean this thing could run away like some sort of Chernobyl meltdown?”

  “No. There’s no way a chain reaction could become self-sustaining. But that doesn’t mean we might not accidentally generate a really big power spike. It wouldn’t spread out of control, but it could sure cook our collective geese.”

  “How come our dads agreed to this experiment if that could happen?” Mark asked.

  “Because the published theory doesn’t predict that it can with this small an apparatus.” Heather pointed toward the computer screen. “I made some slight modifications that Jennifer coded up for us. The embedded algorithms are so subtle I doubt that anyone other than Dr. Stephenson would even notice.”

  “You tinkered with the equations? What if you made a mistake?”

  “That’s hardly likely.”

  Mark laughed. “Really? The world's greatest minds have been spending the last several months analyzing these equations, and you come up with a better variation?”

  Heather shrugged, then reached over onto Mr. Smythe’s workbench and grabbed a handful of sawdust. With a flick of her wrist, she tossed it out onto the clean concrete floor.

  “3,487.”

  “What?” Mark asked.

  “There are 3,487 individual grains of sawdust in that spread I tossed on the floor. But if you were to count them, there would be 3,492.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.”

  “There is a 93.65894 percent probability that five of the loosely connected granules would break into two parts as they were spread out during the counting process.”

  Mark just stared.

  “Now, if you can show me some scientists that can do what I just did, then I’ll withdraw my statement.”

  “That’s if I buy your count.”

  Heather walked over to the bench where Jennifer had done her fine soldering, grabbed the large magnifying glass, and handed it to Mark, pointing toward the sawdust on the floor. “Be my guest.”

  Mark grinned. “Okay, I believe you. But then what’s the point in all the testing delay? I mean, if you’re that confident in your equations, why waste the time?”

  “The equations are the easy part. Checking the responsiveness of the control circuits and doing the tuning is the really tough work. It looks like Jennifer is making incredible progress, but she needs a chance to conduct her testing. Otherwise, we may not need a tanning bed, ever again.”

  Mark threw out his hands. “Okay, I give up. You girls get with the program then. We can’t let Stephenson complete what he’s up to before we get another message to the NSA. And we need to be very worried about Jack in the meantime.”

  Jennifer nodded. “That’s why we need you to finish off that bug detector and run a sweep on both our houses.”

  “That’s just what I was going to do. In the meantime, we have to assume that the only safe places to talk are here and in our rooms or outside somewhere. If those areas were bugged, they would have already nailed our butts to the wall. Oh, and if we do find bugs, we won’t be able to remove them. That would be a dead giveaway.”

  “At least we’ll know where they are,” said Jennifer.

  “I’m going to be reading up on the subject in my room.” Mark paused at the door, turning back toward Heather. “Good to have you back in the land of the living.”

  Heather smiled back at him. “Good to still be with you.” As he turned away, Heather called after him. “Mark.”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you for coming for me. I know Jack was there, but if he hadn’t been, I know you would have saved me.”

  Mark’s smile warmed her soul. With a slight nod, he turned and disappeared through the door.

  68

  The knock on the door of the McFarland house came just as they had all seated themselves for Sunday dinner, Heather’s father at one end of the table, Mr. Smythe at the other, with the other family members congregated around the feast in hungry anticipation.

  “Damn. It’s probably one of those magazine sales people,” said Heather’s dad, rising.

  “Now be nice,” her mother called after him.

  As he opened the door, Heather’s heart leaped into her thr
oat.

  “Jack. Janet. We were just sitting down to dinner. Don’t just stand out there, come on in and join us.”

  “Thank you, but we wouldn’t want to impose. We just stopped by to check on Heather.”

  Heather’s mother moved across the room toward them with a look that brooked no opposition.

  “Nonsense. I won’t hear of it. You two are adopted members of our family as surely as if you lived next door. Besides, I’m not going to have room in my refrigerator for all the leftovers if you don’t help us. Here now. Jack, you grab that chair, and Gil, you get another and we’ll just make room.”

  Mr. Smythe shook Jack’s hand. “You might as well get used to the drop in anytime routine that we’ve abused over the years. If Anna really minded, she would have run us off a long time ago. You may have noticed that shyness isn’t one of her faults.”

  Janet laughed, leading the way toward the others, who had risen to welcome the new arrivals. “How can we refuse? To tell the truth, we were just headed out to eat, but I would much rather have some good home cooking.”

  Jack’s eyes locked Heather’s in an analytical gaze that made her feel as though he were wearing x-ray specs, hardly the most pleasant of thoughts.

  “It’s great to see that you’ve recovered from your ordeal,” Jack said.

  “Thanks to you. If you hadn’t come along when you did, I doubt I would be here.”

  “Do you remember much of it? Sorry. I shouldn't ask.”

  “No, it’s all right. Especially since the answer is no. I don’t remember much of anything. Just getting hauled out the window, banging my head, and waking up in the hospital.”

  “I noticed the police outside. I’m glad to see they assigned a watch, even though I doubt the Rag Man will return.”

  Heather’s mother put her hand to her mouth. “The whole thing has me so nervous that I don’t think I could stay here if it weren’t for the police.”

  Heather’s father put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “It’s okay, Anna. I’m having the best alarm system they make installed tomorrow. No one is going to be getting past that. And if someone does try to get in, I’ll let Mr. Smith and Wesson talk him out of it.”

  Janet moved over to put an arm around Heather’s shoulders. “Jack, I think we’ve had quite enough of this conversation tonight. If nobody objects, I propose that we divert our attention to the wonderful meal cooling on the table.”

  Jack nodded. “Sorry. You’re right, babe. I didn’t mean to upset everyone.”

  Heather’s mother managed to recover her smile. “Apology accepted. Now if everyone will sit down, I’ll get the biscuits out of the oven before they burn.”

  As good as the meal was, Heather’s appetite had departed. While she was grateful to Jack for having saved her life, she found herself wondering what else had brought him here this Sunday evening. It was stupid, really. Jack would naturally want to check in on a person whose life he had saved the night before.

  A quick glance at Jennifer revealed she was also having a difficult time eating everything on her plate. Even Mark appeared distracted, but that was most likely because Janet sat beside him, asking about the upcoming basketball tournament.

  Heather half expected a couple of buttons on Mark’s shirt to come flying across the table as his chest expanded. The smirk on Jack’s face indicated that he had also noticed the effect his wife was having on Mark.

  As the evening wore on, all signs of the earlier tension in the room evaporated. By the time Jack and Janet said their good-byes, Heather almost regretted seeing them go, and both sets of parents certainly did. They were such a charming couple, you just wanted them around. Something about that scared Heather worse than anything else she knew about them.

  Shortly after the departure of the Johnsons, the Smythes also made their way back to their own house. Heather followed Mark and Jennifer out onto the driveway. Catching Mark’s eye, she leaned in close.

  “You better get that bug detector working, quick.”

  “Fret not. I’m on it.”

  As Heather watched them disappear through their doorway, a single thought blocked out all others.

  It was definitely time to give Jack and Janet something new to think about.

  69

  2:30 a.m.

  Donald Stephenson moved through the near darkness of the cavernous room with his head bowed in thought. One of the advantages of not needing sleep was that it gave him more time for thought, and deep thought was something at which he excelled.

  Everyone knew that he worked long hours and slept very little, but only he knew how little he slept: never. And judging by the incompetence of the team of scientists that worked for him on the project, it was a very good thing he did not need any rest. Complete morons, the lot of them.

  It really irked the deputy director to have to disrupt the truly challenging work that lay before him to have to deal with trivial things, like the formulation of the nanite suspension fluid. But no amount of pressure could drive Dr. Frederick’s team to an adequate solution.

  So tonight, in a matter of four hours, Dr. Stephenson had interrupted his own work, made his way to Dr. Frederick's section of the lab, and devised his own working formulation. Then, having left a disparaging note with the description of the production process, Dr. Stephenson made his way back to the Rho Ship. Idiots.

  As he moved up the ramp and through the inner passageways of the ship, Dr. Stephenson glanced up at the arrays of sensors and video monitors that had been installed throughout. Nothing happened on this ship that was not recorded, scrutinized, and analyzed to the nth degree. Not just by himself, but by the assortment of government watchdogs for the program, some of which were under his direct influence while others were not.

  Because of this detailed monitoring, Dr. Stephenson had added a few after-hours enhancements to the system’s inner workings. A sequence of post-processing algorithms ran the data constantly, usually just passing the input signals, unmodified, to the recording and analysis systems.

  But anything that involved Dr. Stephenson’s passage into or out of his private third of the Rho Ship did not show up. During these times, the video, audio, and other assorted systems showed him moving about other areas of the ship, working on typical, mundane tasks.

  The same was true for those rare instances, such as with Dr. Nancy Anatole, when he had taken someone else back with him. The systems within the inner portion of the ship alerted him whenever an unexpected visitor approached, allowing him plenty of time to make his exit and greet them.

  Tonight his long, lanky stride carried Dr. Stephenson rapidly to the wall that blocked access to the ship’s rear third. He stopped, his hands tracing out the complex fractal pattern required to gain entrance. The door whisked open, snapping shut again behind him, leaving him immersed in a light as colorless as shadow on asphalt.

  The apparatus that drew him through the narrow rows of equipment and cables occupied the very center of the large room. It was by far the largest single mechanism on the Rho Ship. To develop an understanding of what it did and how it had once worked had taken him thirteen years.

  But the onboard power systems had been so badly damaged by the subspace weapon that brought the ship down that they would never again be capable of powering the device. And even if it worked, it simply was not large enough for his needs. Still, it had provided the blueprint.

  Running his hands lovingly across its brutish lines, Dr. Stephenson smiled, his face contorting like a Mardi Gras mask.

  This coming project was going to take time, but that was something the deputy director had in abundance. In the meantime, global acceptance of cold fusion was going swimmingly.

  Very soon now, he would undertake the government release of the second alien technology. It would sweep the planet like wildfire, as the people of nation after nation demanded to be the next to get it. After a long procession of petty dictators’ misguided attempts, Stephenson had finally set mankind’s train in motion. Next stop
…Utopia.

  70

  The last two weeks had passed so quickly it seemed to Heather they were gone in the blink of an eye. Of course, the buzz around school was all about basketball and how the Hilltoppers had breezed through the district tournament. Now it was on to the state basketball tournament at The Pit in Albuquerque, the traditional home court of the University of New Mexico Lobos.

  But what had made the time truly fly was the progress Mark, Heather, and Jennifer made on the cold fusion power supply that would drive their subspace transmitter. The initial tests had gone so well that they had grown cocky, something that had nearly gotten them all killed last Saturday morning.

  Deciding that they were ready for a full up test, the three teens had brought the power supply online. Jennifer had been at the controls while Heather monitored measured power output versus that predicted by the mathematical model. All had gone well until a diode on the primary control circuit board burned out, sending a massive power spike through the system. Only Jennifer’s quick reflexes in switching to the backup controller had prevented the power from reaching dangerous, perhaps even deadly, levels.

  Although Heather thought the scare probably took two years off her expected life span, the test demonstrated that their backup system worked. It also convinced them they needed more automated fail-safe circuitry.

  While Jennifer worked on that, Mark finished building a sophisticated bug detector. A sweep of their houses revealed three bugs in each house, not counting the phone lines, which they just assumed were being monitored. Tiny transmitters were hidden in each kitchen, office, and master bedroom.

  After the initial sweep, Mark had become concerned there might also be hidden burst transmitters, which stored data but only sent out quick transmissions at infrequent intervals. Only after he had conducted an extended test did he relax, convinced he had found every bug.

  Heather’s personal life was improving too. With the Rag Man gone, her mood lifted, restoring a joy that she had not realized was missing. Also, Raul was rapidly becoming a very good friend, not in the same way that Mark and Jennifer were almost family, but a good friend nonetheless. He didn’t press his attentions on her. He was just there when she needed someone to talk to, providing a respite from the drama surrounding her and the twins.