"
SECOND
EDEN is a new
kind of thriller, because in the very best sense,
it's a
new old-fashioned story."
Read the first 6
chapters of SECOND EDEN below. But first, check
out these interesting questions probed in
Second Eden...
A recent
Science magazine feature article,
"125 Questions: Things We Don't Know," polled
scientists on what daunting but intriguing
questions remained for modern science to answer.
Here are a few that
Second Eden addresses:
Is there--or was
there--life elsewhere in the solar system?
The search for life--past or present--on other
planetary bodies now drives NASA's planetary
exploration program, which focuses on Mars,
where water abounded when life might have first
arisen.
What caused mass
extinctions?
A huge impact did in the dinosaurs, but the
search for other catastrophic triggers of
extinction has had no luck so far. If more
subtle or stealthy culprits are to blame, they
will take considerably longer to find.
What
gave rise to modern human behavior?
Did Homo sapiens acquire abstract
thought, language, and art gradually or in a
cultural "big bang," which in Europe occurred
about 40,000 years ago? Data from Africa, where
our species arose, may hold the key to the
answer.
What are human
races, and how did they develop?
Anthropologists have long argued that race lacks
biological reality. But our genetic makeup does
vary with geographic origin and as such raises
political and ethical as well as scientific
questions.
Read many more intriguing questions answered
by Second Eden here...
Or begin the story now...
By
Carlton
W. Austin
Copyright© 2004
Carlton W. Austin
All rights
reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or
transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without written permission from the
author.
______________
. _______________
"The destiny of mankind is not decided by
material computation. When great causes are on the move
in the world...we learn that we are spirits, not
animals, and that something is going on in space and
time, and beyond space and time, which, whether we like
it or not, spells duty."
—Winston
Churchill
______________ .
_______________
SECOND EDEN
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
—T.
S. Eliot
We approach a condition in which
we shall be amoral without the capacity
to perceive it and degraded without
the means to measure our descent.
—Richard
Weaver
Any sufficiently advanced technology
is indistinguishable from magic.
—Sir Arthur
C. Clarke
* *
*
This is a book about
YOU
* *
*
PROLOGUE
Washington, D.C. The near future . . .
Peter MacKenzie knew Bo Randall would try to kill
him. Wouldn’t he do the same if their situations
were reversed? They were both warriors, after all.
The only question now was, did Bo, who sat beside
him, stage-side at the Good ‘n’ Plenty, already
know? Already have a plan? So far there were no
certain indications, but for the fact that they were
here, at Bo’s urgent request.
Peter leaned back on his stool and fished another
five-dollar bill from his jeans. As he did, he
glanced at Bo, straining to detect any inkling of
his hidden intentions. He knew Bo all too well—his
explosive temper, quick as a struck match. And now
he was sure that Bo knew about him and Beth. Why
else would he have insisted they get together right
away? And why here, at a seedy Georgetown strip
joint? On Christmas Eve? Something was up, and it
had stalked the recesses of his mind for the hour or
so they’d talked and toasted and bought each other
lap dances and reminisced about their days together
as “Black Aces” in the elite VF-41 squadron aboard
the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz. He’d flown
his F-14 Tomcat fighter to the edge and back again
and again, mostly as Bo’s wingman, in the third
Persian Gulf War against the Saudis and later
against the Chinese in the Taiwan Straits. He
remembered how they’d been in and out of scuffles
then, both on deck and in the air. Invincible.
Inseparable. Like brothers. Not after tonight,
he thought. Yeah, he’ll try to kill
me, all right. Like she just did.
He rubbed his cheek, which still smarted, and winked
at the lap dancer. Only moments before she’d slapped
him hard against his face. He felt the marks of her
studded ring outlined in pain at the corner of his
grin, just next to a sensitive scar from a past
encounter with another young woman of equally
unsavory disposition. Now she ignored him, gliding
to the other side of the stage, her lissome form
caressing the dance pole like a scowling serpent.
He leaned slightly forward. “So, tell me again, Bo.
What’s this Areopagus gig all about?”
“Just a cargo run,
really,” Bo said. “We’ll pick up the probe right
after it injects into Earth orbit near the end of
June. Should be back to Canaveral around the Fourth
of July, give or take. But the freight goes right
over there.” He pointed over his shoulder. “To
Goddard and Herr Professor Miles Lavisch, The Most
High and God Almighty Arrogant Prick I’ve ever
encountered.”
Peter laughed. “Intimate
friend, eh?”
“No, all my
friends are pricks.” Bo’s eyebrow went up. “Let’s
just say I know him enough not to like him. Met him
when we toured Goddard. He’ll be in charge of the
samples.”
“Neat trick, that. The Mars shot, I mean.” And truly
he thought it was: Shoot a probe to Mars, have it
land, pick up soil samples, then fly itself back
home. He felt his body tense. “There’s something
I’ve got to tell you—”
Bo took a slug of beer. "Areopagus
will
pick up where the Vikings left off in
seventy-six. Nothing else we’ve done since has been
as good. Not the Global Surveyor. Not the Odyssey. Not
Spirit or the any of the
Rovers. Oh, we got nice pictures, all right. But
only actual soil samples will tell us for sure if
there’s life on Mars—or ever was. What did you want
to tell me?”
“Ahh, it’s not important,” Peter lied, hoping he
wasn’t losing his nerve. He didn’t know where the
words came from, but somehow there they were,
falling on his ears in his own voice: “When’s the
baby due?” He forced himself to look Bo in the
eyes.
Bo stared at him for what seemed an eternity.
“July. Right after the mission. Funny you ask. Beth
thinks that getting married and having some kids is
just what you need.”
“What?” Peter felt sweat trickle down the back of
his neck.
“Look how happy it made ol’ George Bailey, there,”
Bo said, inclining his head in the direction of a TV
that hung behind the bar, where It’s a Wonderful
Life played silently in the background.
“Kids?” Peter snarled insincerely. “Hell, they’re
the reason ‘Ol George’ tried to kill himself
in the first place! He’d of been better off if
Clarence the angel hadn’t saved him.”
“Nothing changes your perspective like kids, Pete.”
Bo slapped Peter’s thigh hard. “Nothing makes you
want your wife more, want to protect her.... Know
what I mean?”
“Why would I?” He cringed and felt suddenly weak,
suddenly unwarriorlike, as he glanced down into the
white foam of his beer, noticing how the bubbles
kept popping away, like the ticking of a clock. “You
know what I’ve always said about women—”
“ ‘If they didn’t have a pussy, men would never talk
to them.’ Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard it all before.”
Then Peter thought of Beth—and all the others. A
stab of guilt surprised him, caused his stomach to
knot fiercely. “You know, the guy who wrote that
book was right. Men really are from Mars.
Women may as well be a different species.”
Bo shook his head and looked up. “Mars? Venus?
Damned if I know. Or care. What I do know is, I
couldn’t live without Beth and the kids.”
“Speaking of our fair alien friends.” Peter rubbed
the scar on his chin, which still smarted, and
nodded his head toward the stage, where his dancer
was making her way back toward them. Earlier she’d
brushed her taut breast against his cheek, lolling
her nipple on his upper lip, just beneath his nose,
her hair falling on his face as she nibbled his
ear. She smelled of lilacs. He’d rewarded her
appropriately enough, or so he thought. Now he
couldn’t resist one further taunt and waggled his
finger for her to approach, but her glare turned
meaner. She gave him the finger and jerked her head
away, her body following quickly to face the
opposite direction.
“Let’s get out of here,” Bo said. “I think you’ve
worn out our welcome.”
Peter zipped his brown leather flight jacket and
pushed open the door with his shoulder. A gust of
snow-laced wind cooled his still stinging face. He
looked up at the full moon, which broke in and out
of racing clouds, causing everything to flicker
weirdly. Walking fast along the slushy sidewalk, he
tried to maintain his well-studied, cocksure
swagger, tried to muster his courage, and stayed
just far enough ahead of Bo so as not to have to
look at him. His stomach floated curiously about;
it was a queasiness he’d not felt since having
pre-launch jitters before a combat mission. And the
more he thought about it, the more he didn’t want
this to be his last mission. “Could you believe the
tits on that babe?” he said finally, forcing a grin
as he glanced back at Bo.
“Tucking a five-spot in her Gee-string is one
thing,” Bo laughed, catching up to him. “But you’re
not supposed to touch her there, remember?” He
popped a mint in his mouth. “Want one?”
“Don’t have any Cracker Jacks, do you?” Peter
managed to keep Bo in his peripheral vision.
“You and your Cracker Jacks,” Bo snorted. “It’s a
wonder you’ve still got teeth, boy!” He ran his hand
over his balding head, brushing the snow from the
horseshoe-shaped rim of hair that circled his skull
from sideburn to sideburn before putting on a black,
wool-knit stocking cap. His eyebrows bent closer,
darkening his already tanned face. “It was good
seeing you again, Pete.”
“Yeah. Same here. Guess
it’ll be the last time....” The words caught in his
throat. “For a while, I meant. Till after your
mission.”
“Probably so…. I’ll be in Houston right up to
launch.”
They walked faster now, bobbing and weaving through
harried crowds of pedestrians loaded with
last-minute Christmas gifts, faces bent down against
snow that came in blustery squalls. Revelers in the
restaurants and bars that lined the sidewalks sang
fractured, besotted versions of carols; laughter
poured from every open door. But as they turned the
corner, the holiday sounds quieted.
For a moment Peter thought they were alone. But
then, halfway down the block, he spotted a lone
figure wearing a Santa hat and ringing a bell.
Beside him a small donation pail hung beneath a
tripod. It seemed an odd place to set up shop if you
wanted much in the way of donations. He stopped,
picked up a handful of snow and made a ball. The
ragged scar on his chin tingled, began to itch, as
it had an uncanny way of doing whenever there was
about to be trouble. He brushed the frozen ball
against the old wound. Now was the time to come
clean, to tell Bo the truth, but again he
hesitated. “You know, I wish I’d gone to NASA when
you did.”
Bo shrugged. “What? Intelligence work can’t be that
boring.”
“You’d
be surprised.”
“Well, piloting CEVs—”
“CEVs?”
“Yeah, Crew Exploration Vehicles. That’s what we
call the new space shuttles, which is still all they
are—shuttles. Anyway, it’s not as sexy as tooling
around in an armed Tomcat; I can tell you that—and
it’s more dangerous. Wanna tell me what’s eating
you?”
Peter threw his snowball at a passing cab, the icy
sphere gliding harmlessly past the rear bumper. How
could he have missed such an easy target? As he
watched the cab’s taillights recede, something in
their red aura caught his eye. Ahead, three men had
circled the bellringer. One grabbed the handle to
the money pail, but Santa would not give it up.
They spun around each other like kids playing London
Bridges until the other two thugs tackled him,
bringing him down into the street, pounding him with
their fists and what looked like a length of pipe.
“Hey! Let him go!” Without further thought, he
charged after them.
“Wait, Pete!”
The attackers looked up but didn’t stop. There was
a bright orange flash. A loud pop! Like a
bursting party balloon. The impact slammed the
bellringer to the ground, and the shooter yanked the
money pail free. As he did, his gun fired again,
wildly, knocking out the street lamp.
Peter had seen the flashes a seeming eternity before
the shots boomed in his ears. Everything had slowed
down. He felt his legs uncontrollably back peddle,
but he couldn’t stop. He slid into the lamppost.
Close to the gunman. Only steps away. He watched as
if in a dream while the gunman turned with a smooth,
almost casual motion, and pointed the pistol’s dark
barrel at him.
Click!...Click! Click! Click!
The man flung the weapon at a storefront, shattering
the glass. Flying shards stung Peter’s cheek,
snapping his paralysis. He bolted after them.
Slipping in the accumulating snow, he chased the
thugs to the end of the block, where they ran
without stopping through traffic across M Street,
then down the steep hill toward K Street, deftly
using their shoes like skis as they slid into the
shadows beneath the Whitehurst Freeway overpass.
Just before they disappeared, one of them dropped
something.
Deciding that three against one in the darkness was
too great a risk, Peter skidded to a stop where a
glint of gold shone through a thin veil of snow. He
dug out what looked to him to be something like an
Egyptian ankh.
“Those bastards! For a few stinkin’ bucks and
this?” He looked around to find the streets,
which moments before had been crowded with blaring
horns, blinking lights and scurrying pedestrians,
strangely deserted and silent. He trudged back up
the hill, panting clouds of steam, where Bo was
pulling the wounded man out of the street. Without
the streetlight it was dark, but then, with an
explosion of light, the moon broke through and he
could see the bellringer’s long blond hair was
matted with blood, which surged through a tattered
hole in his greatcoat, dribbling onto the virgin
snow in dusky pools.
Bo hoisted the man to a sitting position on the
curb. “What’s your name, fellow?”
“Apollyon,” the bellringer said with the air of a
stunned animal. “I’m an angel.”
“Sure, Clarence,” Peter said derisively, thinking of
Bo’s earlier comment, “and I’m George Bailey.” He
nodded his head toward Bo. “This here’s Ernie, the
cab driver.”
“You mock me? I’m
Apollyon!” the man
insisted. “Don’t you know it’s time?”
“What?” Peter decided not to try to talk logic.
“Look, we’ve got to get you to a hospital. You’re
bleeding pretty badly.” He looked at the dark,
accumulating pools of blood and thought the man
would never make it.
“Ohhh…” the bellringer groaned. A strong gust of
wind swirled into a mini tornado, sprinkling his
blond hair with snowflakes that glittered like
sequins in the moonlight. Then he began to shudder.
He heaved and bucked, as if having a seizure, before
quieting down. “Peter!” he blurted, grabbing his
arm.
Peter felt the blood go out of his face. “How’d he
know my name?” He looked at Bo, who stared back,
glassy-eyed and silent.
“To everything there is a season. A time to be
born, a time to die. A time—” The bellringer
coughed. “I’m cold.”
Peter took off his flight jacket and draped it over
the wounded man.
“And death and hell delivered up the dead, which
were in them: and they were judged every man
according to his works. Don’t you remember? Help me,
Bo!”
“Who are you?” Bo demanded, his voice a mixture of
anger and fear.
“Got your cell phone, Bo?”
“No, damnit, it’s in the car.”
“Well, go call nine one one.”
“No! Wait!” the bellringer gasped. “You think I’m
crazy, but you’re wrong.”
Peter knelt beside the man, holding his head up.
Then he caught the man’s sorrowful eyes. For a split
second he thought he was losing his mind as strange
images flashed before him, images of mayhem, chaos,
death. He shook his head, trying to clear it, but
had to look away.
“And I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the
first heaven and the first earth were passed away.”
The bellringer seemed to be in a trancelike state
for just a moment, far away, but then he was all too
present. “But it won’t be like you think it will,”
he said with a queer grin.
“What the hell’s he saying, Bo?”
“He thinks he’s Apollyon. One of the angels in the
Bible. In Revelation.”
“You, Beauregard Randall,” the bellringer choked,
his head shaking, “you will begin it. You will find
our chalice.” Then he turned his head. His eyes grew
luminous with moonlight. “And you, Peter MacKenzie,
you will witness the end as you drink the last
measure of its bittersweet portion. For I have seen
it!”
“He’s nuts,” Bo said, voice rattling. His face shone
a spectral white from the cold and the snow that
mounded on the ridges of his cheeks.
They tried to move the man up against the wall, but
the bellringer winced. “My wing!” he complained.
“You’re hurting my wing....” His voice trailed off
to a mere whisper.
“Okay, Clarence,” Peter soothed, and tilted his head
toward the street where an ambulance had just pulled
up. A man wearing a police uniform got out.
“He’s shot,” Bo told the man. “Talking crazy too.
Must’ve wandered away from a mental hospital or
something.”
“Yeah, a real nutcase,” Peter heard himself say
uneasily as he reached for his jacket.
But the bellringer yanked it back, “Look to the
moon! Look to the moon!” Then he laughed weirdly and
began to sing: “When the moon hits your eye like a
big pizza pie, that’s the ennnd….”
“Burt the cop is here to help you,” Bo said, picking
up on the Christmas-story charade.
“We’ll take him,” the police officer replied,
handing Peter his jacket. A second uniformed man
joined him. They quickly lifted the bellringer onto
a gurney, jumped in the ambulance, and sped away
without any lights.
Peter shivered, and he knew it wasn’t just from the
cold. “Something’s wrong here. They didn’t even
question us.”
“How’d they even get here?” Bo said. “I never
called.”
“Someone must have seen what happened.” Peter looked
around, but the streets were still vacant and dark.
“Let’s get out of here,” Bo said through chattering
teeth.
They walked on towards their cars, parked several
blocks away, hunched over in silence against the
driving snow, which seemed to reappear in spurts
every time the moon went away.
Peter glanced at Bo, who, clothes now completely
whitened with snow, reminded him of an altar boy, a
ghost—or an angel. “That guy really spooked me.” He
bent over and scooped up enough snow for another
ball.
“Come on, Pete. ‘My wing,’ for Christ’s sake?
Remember Y2K? A bust. Nothin’s gonna happen.
Nothing like that anyway—“
He fingered the snowball absently, waiting for a
target. “That’s what they said about Titanic,
‘Nothin’s gonna happen’... That’s what we all
thought about terrorism, too. Not here, not on our
front porch. That was before New York postcards
without the World Trade Centers.”
“Maybe you
don’t belong in Intelligence
work,” Bo said with a laugh that seemed to have a
bitter edge. “Besides we do know he wasn’t really Clarence.”
“What the hell do you mean?”
“Clarence didn’t have his wings, remember?”
“Very funny. But how’d he know our names? And what
was that stuff about you and me and the beginning
and the end and all that?”
Bo drew the front of his coat collar up around his
throat and said nothing.
“And besides, you’re forgetting the end of the
movie,” Peter said archly. “Clarence did win
his wings.” With all the commotion, he’d almost
forgotten his planned confession. He decided if Bo
did nothing, he’d let it ride for now. He’d had
enough excitement for one night. He felt wet with
sweat. Still, his hands were cold and he almost
couldn’t get his key into the door. He took off his
leather flight jacket and was about to fling it into
the car when he noticed something odd. “Hey, look at
this.” He held up the satin lining.
Bo picked a small white feather off the inside of
the jacket Peter had just used to warm the wounded
bellringer. “Maybe he was Clarence after
all,” he chuckled.
Fingers numb from the cold, Peter took the slender
plume from Bo. A shiver shook his hand. Suddenly a
raw gust of wind snatched the feather into the
hollow darkness.
CHAPTER 1
The space CEV
Discovery II, in high Earth orbit...23:30 Hours,
June 28...
“Jesus, i’—” a
crackle of transient static garbled Bo Randall’s
transmission, then “—‘s here!”
Floating lazily in
the blackness of space near the aft end of the Discovery II’s cargo bay, Bo could just make out
the surprised expression on Carla Pascal’s face as
her lips formed the words.
“What did you say?”
she asked in her post-feminist take-charge way.
“’Jesus is here’? Maybe you can get him to fix that
snare for you, ’cause we’re gonna need it in about
two minutes.”
Bo shook his head,
slightly annoyed at his smart-aleck mission
specialist’s tone. “What I meant was, it’s here,
it’s early, and it looks to be about five klicks too
high and a couple back. We’ll have to reposition to
capture it.” He pointed back over his shoulder where
the ship had just traced its invisible path six
hundred and twenty-five miles above a nearly
cloudless, cornflower blue Pacific and where the Areopagus now lay silently against a
star-studded field of black. “Grapple’s fixed now,
anyway. I’m heading in.”
As he clambered
along the sill of the cargo bay, heading for the
airlock in the forward bulkhead, Earth rose over the
edge of the bay door, completely filling his visual
field. Its stark beauty nearly took his breath
away. It appeared so close he felt he could reach
out and touch it. With no intervening atmosphere in
space, everything at a distance looked closer and
clearer. For an instant, he dreamily forgot what he
was doing. His foot slipped on the frozen edge of
the sill, causing him to float into a sharp-edged
bolt before he could recover his balance. That’s
all I need, he thought. Rip my suit and
have my blood boil away. In his mind’s eye he
saw Beth at the door hearing the news. “We regret to
inform you....” I wonder if she’d care?
But magnetically,
the vision of Earth pulled him back out of himself.
He looked homeward again, spellbound. Below, the
blue waters of the Gulf of Mexico met the yellow
margins of the Yucatan Peninsula with stark relief.
A brilliant white cloud deck covered half its
length. Farther down he saw the deep greens of the
Amazon rainforest, with its stunning array of life,
now partially obscured by the smoke from hundreds of
fires, intentionally set by jungle nomads, which
would eventually destroy thousands of square miles
of precious habitat, eating away at the planet’s
irreplaceable core of life.
Watching the smoke
drift in waves and curls across the continent, he
was reminded again just how thin the atmosphere
looked from up here, how thin it really was. He
remembered an article he’d read concerning a
six-mile-diameter asteroid that had collided with
the Earth near a small Mexican town somewhere just
down below. What was its name? Chixulub? Yeah.
Mayan for “tail of the Devil,” or so he remembered.
According to the article, this event, some 65
million years ago, had signaled the end for half the
species on Earth—including the dinosaurs.
He wondered how
long it would be before another, perhaps larger,
asteroid came to rip that thin atmosphere—our world,
our lives—away. He thought how easy it would be for
the Earth to become like the moon. It was just a
matter of time. But this was the pristine present,
and he would not spoil it with embarrassment over
some stray vocalization. He hit the mute switch on
his communicator.
“Mighty moon,” he
then said aloud. The moon, half bathed in the sun’s
yellow glow, craters clearly visible, testifying to
thousands of battles with giant asteroids and comets
over the eons, glowered back at him. “Yeah, old
fella, it would be all too easy for us all to go the
way of the dinosaurs and have the Earth end up like
you, a lifeless, lonely chunk of space rock.” He
thought of Beth again—and Peter—and was glad he
hadn’t confronted them about the affair. Somehow his
family, bound together, even if imperfectly, was
paramount to him now, as was, inexplicably,
forgiveness. Guess we all have our dark side.
Just like the moon.
For he knew, as
most people outside NASA didn’t, that except for
data from the Clementine probe in 1994,
little was known about the dark side
of the moon. Because of its peculiar orbit, which
caused it to rotate three hundred and sixty degrees
in the same amount of time it took to orbit the
Earth, one side of the moon—the dark side—forever
lay hidden from the Earth’s prying eyes.
“At least Mars has
an atmosphere,” he said absently, “and maybe life.
That’s what the Areopagus should tell us—if
we can just get it aboard in one piece.” With one
last look back at Earth, then the moon and then the
Areopagus, which hovered above him like a sullen
witness, he headed for the airlock.
_______
. _______
“Well, our Martian
package is safely in the vault,” Bo said with
relief, as he floated up through the inter-deck
access portal to the main deck.
“Party time,” Carla
Pascal said. She winked and did a half somersault,
catching an errant penlight that drifted aimlessly
about the cabin before stabilizing herself on the
back of the pilot’s seat. She brushed a wisp of
blond hair off her tanned face. The just-visible
crow’s feet around her bunny-blue eyes deepened in a
smile. “Boss, anybody ever tell you that you look
like the guy who used to play Captain Piccard on
Star Trek?”
Bo gave a
halfhearted laugh and winked back, not failing to
notice how nicely her cobalt blue mission suit
highlighted her slender waist and dainty breasts. If
it weren’t for Beth, he’d often thought... “No, he
was bald!”
“Remember
Seinfeld?” Mission Specialist Bill Quincy
countered. “More like a Kramer and George
combination. But you’re right about the hair.” His
close-cropped reddish beard contrasted sharply with
his brown crew cut, which rimmed his baby-moon face
like a halo.
“You mean Kramer
without the Osama bin Laden nose, don’t you?”
co-pilot Max Hudson added, smiling.
“All right, all
right,” Bo relented. “Have your fun at the old
man’s expense.” Then he looked at Max. “What’s the
status, Number One?”
“Aye, aye,
Captain,” Max saluted and continued. “All’s well and
buttoned down at the helm.”
“I always wondered
how Data’s link measured,” Carla joked. “C’mon,
Captain Jean Luke, let’s celebrate—”
“What the—?”
Suddenly, utter
blackness engulfed them. Bo had never experienced a
complete power failure. He couldn’t even think how
it was possible. There were no alarms, no flashing
lights. The only sounds were the whirring of gyros
and electric motors as they spun down, bleeding off
rpms, on their way to a useless mechanical death.
“Complete power
failures ain’t supposed to be possible,” Max Hudson
said, his voice strained but even. “What’s goin’
on?”
“Certainly not
something you see every day,” Bo affirmed, directing
his voice toward where he thought Max should be.
“Right now I can’t
see anything,” Carla stammered.
“And to answer your
question,” Bo said with determined calmness, even as
a trickle of sweat made its way down his back, “I
don’t know. Any ideas? Carla? Bill? Anything to do
with the special hookups to the sample cases?”
“Don’t think so,”
Bill answered. “But I do know this, without
power to suck this dirty air through the lithium
hydroxide canisters—”
“We could use the
portable oxygen units...and the suits,” Carla
blurted.
“Yeah, right,” Bill
argued. “But this isn’t Alien, and you aren’t
Rippley. And without power we’re just four space
road kills.”
“Road kills? That’s
quaint.” Bo forced a small chuckle. “Hit by what? A
space gremlin? There’s always an explanation. We’ve
just got to find it—and pronto!”
“Bo’s right,” Max
said. “We’ve all just got to calm down. Think this
through.”
“That’s bizarre,”
Carla declared too loudly, as if they’d all been
removed to a distance because of the darkness. “Even
the flashlight doesn’t work! Can anyone explain
that?”
Bo could hear her
rapidly click the small penlight switch on and off,
on and off. “Let’s get back to protocol. Start the
checklists.”
“With no light,
it’s going to be tough,” Max complained.
“We’ll have to do
it by feel,” Bo ordered, a little annoyed at Max’s
whining. “As for explanations, they’ll just have to
wait. Let’s get started, shall we?” Then something
drew his attention to the windows, where moments
before he’d marveled at the spectacular view of the
Arabian Peninsula outside. Slowly, he drifted toward
the cockpit side window. “My God! Where’d the Earth
go—?”
Like a silent bolt
of lightning, a searing blue radiance exploded into
the orbiter, momentarily blinding him. Reflexively
he jerked back, covering his eyes, which screeched
with pain.
Then it began.
“Hear it?” Carla
whispered.
Bo felt the sound
before he heard it. Starting low on the frequency
scale, the warbling vibration rumbled through his
internal organs like gas, and then shifted several
octaves higher, to a more piercing frequency, then
lower again. It was a queer, living sound with an
eerie intelligence about it. It investigated,
probed, and searched; it stole innermost secrets and
all sense of control. For an instant, he thought
he’d lose consciousness, but then—abruptly—there was
silence...and light. “Is everyone okay?” he
asked hopefully, but thinking it unlikely.
With a flurry of
hands, they patted themselves down, as if to make
sure all the parts were still there.
“What the hell’s
that?” Carla cried, pointing to the starboard
window.
Bo had noticed
movement outside the window an instant before Carla
spoke. It pulled his head as if on a string up
against the glass. There it was! Moving deliberately
and unhurriedly off into the distance, devoid of
exterior lights or discernible markings, a hulking
metallic shape, which moments before had totally
eclipsed their view of Earth, was now clearly
outlined against the canvas of the placid blue
ocean. Familiar with at least the rumors of any new
aerospace technology, he knew instantly this was a
craft of alien origin. My God! They do exist!
He was instantly glad he’d only thought it, not
said it.
“Discovery!
This is mission
control, over! Discovery! This is Houston, do
you read?” The frantic calls repeated.
Somehow Bo hadn’t
even noticed the power was back. Mission control
wanted to know why they had been incommunicado for
the better part of a quarter-hour. It couldn’t
have been that long!
“Houston, this is
Commander Bo Randall aboard Discovery.”
He paused, intentionally deepening his voice,
fully aware that what he was about to say could very
easily be misconstrued, could very easily end his
career. “We—that is, the entire crew—have just made
a sighting....”
CHAPTER 2
Miles Lavisch sat
in his office at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
in Greenbelt, Maryland, picked up the front section
of the Washington Post, and reached for his
glasses.
“Damnit! Where the
hell are they?”
He threw the
newspaper to the floor and, for the third time this
day, frisked himself in vain. No glasses.
Resigned, he decided to use his pearl-handled
magnifying glass that his own mother had used for
needlepoint in her declining years, which he kept in
his desk for occasions just such as this. He
retrieved it from his top drawer along with a
hand‑wrapped Cuban Partagas double‑corona cigar from
a plain brown box, nestled secretly in the far
corner. Biting off the tip, he savored the bitter
tobacco taste for a moment before spitting the
residue on the floor. With the care of a surgeon, he
dipped the corner of his handkerchief into his tea,
then gently wiped down the brown tobacco-leaf
wrapping of the big cigar. The tea, he’d found,
imparted an added hint of piquant flavoring to his
favorite smoke. He reached for the Bunsen burner he
kept going at all times to heat his tea water and
light his tobacco. Using its pale blue flame, he
caused the cigar’s tip to glow bright orange before
mouthing the tip and puffing gales of silver-blue
smoke across the room.
Mildly satisfied,
he spread the newspaper across his desk. He’d just
begun reading through the magnifier when a
front‑page headline caught his eye:
CIA
DIRECTOR TO TESTIFY AT DISCOVERY II INQUEST
Today CIA Director Carl Snow will explain to a
special Senate investigative committee why he
ordered the spacecraft Discovery II to land
at Edwards AFB instead of at Cape Canaveral as
scheduled and why the crew was quarantined until
their deaths in a mysterious fire just hours later.
“I want to know why the CIA was involved in a NASA
flight that had no defense‑related mission,” said
Michael Tomlinson, Senate minority leader and
committee chairman.
The spacecraft’s objective was to retrieve the Mars
probe Areopagus, which had returned to Earth
after a two‑year journey.
Also at issue are unconfirmed reports that
Discovery II’s Commander, Beauregard “Bo”
Randall, had reported sighting a UFO just before the
disputed change of landing orders. Admiral Snow has
denied any knowledge of these reports and the
existence of Majestic Twelve, a rumored UFO research
group of which he is said to be a member.
A former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman and
decorated veteran of three wars, Admiral Snow has
often been mentioned as a probable presidential
candidate . . .
“Lying bastard,”
Miles grumbled. “Just what we need, another Bill
Clinton. But then, maybe Snow will tell us what the meaning of is is.”
Just then his
office door creaked opened. He looked up to see his
reading glasses dangling from a hand that snaked
inside, soon followed by his daughter Molly’s
smiling face. Her smile, however, quickly faded as
she wagged her finger at his cigar.
“You don’t mention
the cigar, I won’t call you gimp,” he said, crushing
the butt into an ashtray. He planted a fatherly kiss
on her cheek, as she tucked the glasses into the
breast pocket of his tweed jacket. “Where’d you
find them?”
“In the hallway.”
“Well, well,” he
said with mild annoyance, “to what do I owe this
rare pleasure?”
Molly picked up his
newspaper and quickly began to rifle through it.
“Uncle Malcolm said it was time I paid you a visit.”
“Don’t mess up my
paper! And Malcolm should mind his own business.
I’m surprised AJ didn’t talk you out of it.”
“Allison Jamison
may be my best friend, but she doesn’t set my social
schedule. Besides, I think she’s rather fond of
you.” Molly kept flipping through the paper.
What are you
looking for, anyway?” He reached for his cigar,
held its tip over the Bunsen burner’s flame.
”Comics,” she said
flatly. “Blondie, to be specific. I’m not surprised
you don’t remember?”
“Blondie? Huh,
didn’t even know they were still around.”
“Because you don’t
read comics.” She bobbed her head from side to side,
leafing through page after page, a delighted look on
her fresh freckled face. “I’m a diehard Blondie
lover. She’s a rock. She’s never changed. Not in
more than fifty years. And even by today’s
standards, she’s all woman.”
“So long as it’s
not Dagwood you admire,” he said, exhaling a torrent
of smoke. “I don’t suppose you have time for a
tour?” She looked sternly at his cigar, but he
stared her down. He wouldn’t be cowed by her,
especially not on his own turf.
“Can we?” she
asked, waving the smoke away from her face. “The way
I was treated in the lobby, you’d have thought I was
with al Qaeda. Why the tight security?”
“High‑containment
procedures: BL‑four protocol. And, yes, we can. It’s
still my lab.”
“Long as I don’t
have to salute you.”
Miles shrugged, got
up and headed for a side door, waggling his finger
for her to follow. “Tight security might be a pain
in the ass, but it’s necessary. A Martian microbe
newly introduced to the human population would be
devastating.”
“I know. Like
Native Americans and smallpox. Or Polynesians and
syphilis.”
“A lot of people
vehemently opposed this project for that very
reason,” he said. “They wanted a manned probe to do
the experiments on Mars while we observed the
results remotely.”
“I thought that’s
what you always wanted,” Molly said.
“At first, I did.
Because no containment protocol is perfect. But
economics won out. Sending men is too expensive.”
“Too expensive?”
Molly asked, shaking her head slowly. “Depends what
you think the human race is worth, I suppose.”
”To be honest,”
Miles admitted, “I’m glad as hell it worked out this
way. Otherwise I’d have died waiting.”
“Oh, come on, Dad.”
He felt her touch
his shoulder and pulled away. It made him feel an
uncertain discomfort. And in her little-girl green
eyes he saw sadness—and the ever-present fear.
Still, he could recall no remorse—and felt none now.
He led her down the
hallway, her high-heels echoing smartly in an
off-beat rhythm against the old but highly polished
green and muted-gray vinyl tile floor, through a
series of windowless doors, which, every so often,
broke the boring expanse of sterile white walls.
Finally, he reached the changing room of the
pre-containment area, which was adjacent to the main
containment area where the rock samples from Mars
were stored, and shouldered the door open.
“Here,” he said,
handing her a disposable sterile lab coat, cap and
booties, the kind used in hospitals for patients in
quarantine, “get into these.” He began dressing
himself. “Need any help?”
Molly’s face
reddened. “No, I’m fine. Really.”
An automatic set of
doors shushed open. A familiar rush of air told him
the area was under the normal negative pressure
required to keep alien microbes from escaping.
Molly knocked on
the containment lab’s transparent enclosure.
“Three-inch?”
“Uh-huh. Standard
Plexiglas. But you knew that. Inside is sterilized
and completely robotic. Everything’s operated from
the control room.” He pointed at an elevated
platform enclosed in another wall of Plexiglas that
looked like the bridge of the starship Enterprise.
”If someone wants
to work with a sample,” he said, stepping in front
of her, “a conveyor moves the containers to
specific experimental stations, where automated
protocols can be performed.” He swept his arm
around the entire inner perimeter, pointing at the
individual stations. Beside each one, special
gloves protruded through the Plexiglas, so a worker
could manipulate the samples without venturing
inside the tightly controlled room.
“Are those the
actual sample cases?” Molly asked, inclining her
head toward two shiny stainless‑steel boxes in the
corner.
“Those are them,”
he said with sweet self-satisfaction. “The one
that’s about a meter square is the surface‑sample
container. It’s supposed to have the larger pieces.
The box that’s about half as big has one hundred
forty‑four separate compartments, each with a sample
taken from about eighteen inches below the surface,
every ten degrees of arc, four samples per arc, at
half‑meter intervals, starting at the base of the
Areopagus.”
She shook her
head. “Seems like a long way to go for so little.”
“Not if we find
what we’re looking for.”
“And have you?”
“Not yet. We got
the samples from the West Coast just yesterday.
Then there was a little excitement when the larger
box was dropped off the back of the delivery truck.”
He saw the shock in her wide green eyes. “Our
paleontologist, Paul Blalock, was responsible for
that little fiasco. Luckily nothing came undone.”
He guided her through another steel door, which set
off a symphony of animal chatter.
“Animals from
Mars?” Molly asked, pointing at cages in a smaller
room at the far end of the lab.
“If that was a
joke, it was pretty lame,” he said derisively. “No,
there’s a communicating air shaft to the area with
the samples you just saw. The macaques, chimps, and
smaller mammals—rabbits and such—are being exposed
to—” He shrugged, palms up. “Who knows what?”
Entering the
control room, they had a commanding view of the
entire automated laboratory area. He drew up a
couple of swivel chairs. “We can get out of these
things,” he said, doffing his cap and booties.
“Really don’t need the damned things anyway, since
we’re not going into the main containment area. Not
for now at least.”
Molly ditched her
sterile clothes and sat down with her left leg
stretched out, her hands clasped together, resting
on her lap. “What’s the paleontologist for, anyway?”
Miles knew he made
his daughter nervous, and not without reason. He
liked it that way. He looked at the no-smoking sign
and began fumbling around the desk drawers in search
of one of the many half-smoked cigars he kept hidden
around the lab, but found none. “A very vocal
minority in the scientific community thinks the
probabilities favor past life rather than current
life on Mars, so we had to be prepared to look for
fossil remains. At the last minute Blalock was
sent—”
“I thought you
handpicked the team.”
“I did. All except
him.” Finding a loose pack of matches, he tore off
one and began to chew on it. “He’s trained to find
small fossilized pieces of bones or teeth and
such—stuff we’d overlook. What he can find in a
pile of dirt really is amazing. Too bad I hate his
guts.”
“You’re not
serious?”
“As a heart attack,
my dear.”
Molly frowned. “I
wish you wouldn’t put it like that. Given your own
medical condition.”
He
snorted, took out some pictures showing the surface
of Mars taken from space and spread them on the
desk. “See here? Mars Odyssey took these. And
the British spacecraft Express took these.”
He ran his finger over an area with lighter
formations that looked just like dry riverbeds.
“Those are clearly erosion patterns. And here, look
here. That would have made great ocean-front
property—a few hundred million years ago.”
“So
Mars did have water in the past?”
“Still does,” he said confidently. “No doubt about
it. A series of rover vehicles proved it over the
past few years. Because of that, we fully expect to
find microbial life in our samples, at the very
least.”
“I
thought the last Mars Lander—what was it called?”
“There have been a lot of them.” He spit out a lump
of masticated match. “The Pathfinder and
Sojourner probes a few years back. And not too
long ago the Spirit, the Opportunity, and others. But they didn’t have any life
experiments on board. The last one that did was the
British Beagle 2, and it failed to work after
landing. No, only our Vikings, back in the
seventies, had the right experiments on board.”
“I thought they
didn’t find anything,” Molly said.
He shook his head.
“That’s what most people think. But in fact, the
evidence for life was quite strong, just not
conclusive.”
“Like that rock
from Antarctica a while back?”
He watched her
twist the locket that hung from a long gold chain
around her neck, just like her mother used to. It
was an irritating habit. He exhaled loudly. “We have
to be sure. This time we will be.”
Around them an
array of video screens and monitor lights blinked
furiously, like a Christmas display gone wild;
digital readouts, toggle switches, dials and buttons
encircled the room in colorful belts. An atmosphere
of pure technology. And he inhaled it like oxygen.
He gestured with a broad sweep of his hand. “What do
you think?”
“Very
impressive.”
“I call it Fortress
Lavisch,” he said proudly. “We’re making history
here, Molly.”
“No doubt about
that.” Molly rubbed her arms as if she were cold.
“Want to be a part
of it? It’s the best gift I could ever give you.
Something to tell your grandchildren about.” He
snorted a laugh. “Well...maybe not.”
Molly looked away.
He noticed the back of her neck turn red and smiled
with silent satisfaction.
“I‑I’m still not—”
“Stupid girl! I see
you haven’t changed.”
“Th-th-that’s not
f-fair!”
“I won’t ask you
again. And stop that stuttering! It’s annoying.”
She swung around in
the chair so fast he thought she would lunge at him,
but she just glared, almost as if in a state of
catatonia. What he saw now was new to him. Not fear,
not even just anger. This was hate.
Molly’s whole body
shook as she spoke. “Wha-Wha-Why do you al-al—?”
“Calm down,” he
said, cutting off the stutter. He hated the sound of
it. “Your mother never knew what she caused by
dying.”
“That was when I
was seven,” Molly said icily. “I didn’t start
stuttering until much later. And you know why—”
“Not that again! I
never touched you—not in that way. Goddamned
psychobabblists gave you that idea. Never should’ve
taken you.”
She seemed to
struggle to puff out the words. “Y-You did-did more
than t-t-that—”
“Oh, get a grip. No
one ever believed that—no one’s going to.” A
chirping warning tone sounded. A red light blinked
on the console just below a small TV monitor that
showed three men in sterile garments walking briskly
down the brightly lit corridor. A moment later they
entered the control room.
“Molly,” Miles
began, “uh, Doctor Molly Lavisch, I’d like
you to meet Doctor James Haverhills, Kim Lee, and
Doctor Paul Blalock. Gentlemen, my daughter.”
“It’s a pleasure to
meet you,” Molly said, offering her hand with what
seemed near-complete composure.
Relieved she’d
calmed herself, Miles continued the introductions.
“Doctor Haverhills is the team mineralogist. Paul,
here, is the gentleman I mentioned earlier, the one
who—”
“It was an
accident,” Paul Blalock said dismissively, extending
his hand to Molly. “Pleasure’s all mine, Molly.”
Miles glared at
Blalock, before moving on with the introductions.
“Kim, here, is our chief technical wizard. He
operates the scanning electron microscope, the X‑ray
crystallography gear, the robotics—”
“And everything
else around here that moves, blinks, or whistles,”
Lee added.
Dr. Haverhills
rocked from one leg to the other, putting his hands
in and out of his pockets like a nervous groom.
“Miles,” he said, looking at Molly, “if it’s all
right with you, I’d like to go ahead and open the
first case. It’s next, according to the protocol.”
“By all means,
Jim.”
“I’ll help you,”
Lee said.
“Are they going
inside?” Molly asked.
Miles saw Blalock
open his mouth to answer, but quickly cut him off.
“No, we keep the inside of the main room as near as
possible to the real Martian atmosphere—the same
pressure and the same temperature. Except for the
UV light—”
Blalock sliced into
his oration. “All experiments are automated, Molly.
If we find a life form, we’ll grow more of it, then
do animal tests before we risk human exposure.”
Miles felt a
squeezing sensation grip his chest. “Well, daughter,
how would you like to be among the first humans to
view rocks from the Red Planet?”
Her eyes lit up.
“Of course, but—”
“Jim,” Miles said,
trying to toughen his tone. “Are you and Kim ready?”
“Chafing at the
bit,” Haverhills answered.
Miles turned to
Blalock and tried hard not to smile. “Paul, I’m
afraid you’re the odd man out today.”
“What do you
mean—?”
“I mean you’ll stay
in the control room,” Miles said firmly.
“I will not!”
Blalock moved toward the containment area.
Heart pounding
against the too-tight collar of his shirt, Miles
blocked the door.
“I really should be
going, Dad—”
“Stay!” Miles
commanded, while he did his best to stare down the
defiant paleontologist.
“It’s all right,
Miles,” Haverhills said. “Paul can go. I’ll
recheck the baseline readings on the animals. We’ll
see if there’s any reaction.”
“All right then,”
Miles relented, stepping aside.
Lee quickly punched
a series of buttons, actuating a chain of electrical
signals that released all the latches on the largest
sample case.
“Where are the
other team members?” Molly asked. “I would think
everyone would want to be here for this.”
Miles made hard
fists and never took his eyes off the sample case.
“We are the team. Fewer people, smaller risk
of exposure. You’re here only because it’s my
lab and you’re my daughter.” He glanced
quickly left and right, at Blalock and Lee.
Lee worked deftly
with the controls, and one by one the Martian rocks
emerged from the case. The rocks were from the size
of pebbles to fist‑size pieces, mostly rust brown or
reddish yellow.
“Look!” Lee blurted
excitedly. “There’s the greenish tinge from the
Viking pictures! The colors that changed over
time.”
”Yeah,” Miles said,
unconsciously trying to rub away a twinge of pain in
his chest. “The ones we thought might indicate some
life process. Looks similar to our lichens.”
“This is weird,”
Lee said. “I can’t seem to—” He appeared to struggle
to position the robot arms and hands, seemed to find
it difficult to get a grip on something inside the
large steel case. “Got it now! This one’s heavy.”
“Gauge says almost
three kilos,” Blalock reported.
Looking again at
the sample box, Miles surveyed the emerging treasure
with delight, but he was stunned when Kim lifted out
a bluish‑black rock about the size of a basketball.
Slightly oblong, with a slick, shiny, glasslike
appearance, it was unlike anything else in the case.
Suddenly Molly’s cell phone sounded, screeching
bizarrely. “Sorry.”
“Have to go?” Miles
said, half hoping she would say no; he needed her as
buffer to keep him from strangling Blalock.
Molly shook her
head. She squinted at the message window. “That’s
weird—says I’ve got a text message, but it’s just a
jumble of letters and numbers. Never done that
before.”
“Why don’t you just
shut it off then?” Miles growled.
“Looks very much
like obsidian,” Lee nodded toward the sample case,
his hands a flurry of activity, twisting dials and
flipping switches. “Volcanic glass.”
Miles turned to
Blalock. “Not unexpected. Wouldn’t you say, Paul?”
Blalock glanced
sideways but said nothing.
“Wonder why it’s so
totally different from the others?” Lee said.
“Strange,” Blalock
finally said, “since it came from the same area.”
“A real wing-nut,”
Haverhills joked. “Can’t wait to break into that
one.”
“It’s beautiful,”
Molly breathed.
”I counted
twenty‑nine pieces,” Blalock said flatly.
“Good!” Miles said,
mildly pleased.
“Dad, I’ve really
got to be going—”
“All right, all
right,” he grumbled, not wanting to be pulled out of
the moment. “I’ll walk you out.”
“Just to the
elevators.”
“Bye, Molly,”
Blalock said with a wink.
Miles jammed his
clenched fists into the pockets of his lab coat.
“Let’s go!”
“Dad...I’m sorry
for upsetting you. Let’s not fight, okay?”
His heart double
beat at the thought of her, so young, so many years
ago.
“Blalock didn’t
seem like the research type,” Molly remarked
casually as they walked along.
“I’m going to get
rid of that bastard, one way or another.”
“Oh, don’t let him
upset you. It’s not worth it.” She arched her red
brow. “Remember your heart?”
“Don’t mother me.”
He kissed the air near her cheek, then turned and
hurried back toward the lab.
“Thanks for the
tour,” Molly called after him.
He didn’t bother to
turn around, only waved his hand in the air. He
walked quickly. His lab coat fluttered in his wake,
his mind aflame with questions, not only about the
Martian samples but also about how he could rid
himself of Blalock.
__________
. ___________
He doesn’t look
well,
Molly thought as she watched her father round the
corner. The elevator doors swished open. She stepped
in, pressed the button for lobby, and waited for the
cranky World War Two-era lift to respond. The doors
clattered closed. Echoing with the closing door, a
chill rattled through her. Was it the ugly memories
that being in her father’s presence always evoked?
Or was it her genuine concern for his health. She
had to admit her heart was stretched in both
directions.
Before she knew it,
the elevator doors banged open, and she headed
swiftly for the bright sunshine beyond the glass
doors when she heard the guard call.
“You’ve got to sign
out, Miss Lavisch.”
She turned quickly,
too eager to leave behind the bad feelings, and
bumped into a man solid enough that she bounced off
him.
“Excuse me!” she
said. “I should watch where I’m going.”
“Oh, but I’d
rather watch where you’re going.” He thrust out his
hand. “Peter MacKenzie,” he said with a canny
politeness.
“Molly Lavisch.
Pleased to meet you.” Her face flushed hot, but she
managed to take his large, warm hand before glancing
away. Still, in that sliver of a glance, she’d felt
something elemental pass between them, and its
magnetism drew her back to his delicious smile. His
black hair, sprinkled with light gray around the
ears, turned up into a slight cowlick in the front.
A shadow of a beard was flecked with red and gray.
And those hazel eyes, which seemed full of stories,
spoke silently to her on some unconscious level. She
realized she was staring and gave her head a tiny
shake. “Sorry.”
“Believe it or not,
you’re just who I was looking for. Or, rather, your
father is. Professor Miles Lavisch is your father, isn’t he?”
“Yes. But why?”
”You heard about
the astronauts?”
“I saw the papers.”
“The commander was
my best friend.”
“I’m sorry. My
father knew some of them too.”
“I think there’s
something fishy about how he and the others died,”
Peter said. “I thought your father might be able to
help. But Genghis Khan over there wouldn’t let me up
to see him.”
“What makes you
think something’s fishy?”
“They were diverted
to Edwards. Bo—my friend—always said that if they
were ever diverted to Edwards for no apparent
reason, like weather or mechanical problems, it
meant they’d seen something. Something with possible
national defense implications.”
“A UFO?” she
sniffed.
“It was part of
their flight plan,” he said flatly. “But dying
wasn’t.”
“I’m sorry I can’t
help you right now. I’m late for a meeting.”
“How about
tomorrow?” Peter handed her two tickets.
“What’s this?”
“Tickets to a
flying circus. It’s called Cilly’s Aerial Carnival.
At Bealeton, not far from Fredericksburg. You know
it?”
“Yes, I’ve been
there.”
“Come watch me fly.
It’s a good show. Bring a friend.”
She was just about
to say yes when the elevator doors opened and an
ashen-faced Haverhills stumbled out. There was blood
on his white lab coat.
“Call nine one
one!” Haverhills shouted to the guard in the lobby
as he fell up against the wall.
“What’s wrong?”
Molly asked, startled by the trembling man’s
appearance.
“I don’t know,”
Haverhills said, his voice shaking. “Kim’s just
collapsed!”
Leaving Peter
MacKenzie behind, she followed Haverhills up the
four flights of stairs to the lab, where Miles met
them at the entrance to the control center.
“Good thing we
caught you,” Miles said. “Something’s wrong with
Kim.”
As she passed
through the inner doors, her cell phone again went
wild. “Crazy thing,” she said and handed the
warbling device to her father before kneeling at
Lee’s side.
“Tell me!” Miles
commanded Blalock. “What did you do?”
“He seemed
perfectly fine. Then boom! He collapsed.” Blalock
appeared bewildered, but managed to support the
man’s head as blood spewed from his nose in
powerful, rhythmic surges. Already the front of his
lab coat was drenched with blood.
“There’s got to be
more to it than that, Paul,” Miles growled.
“I’m telling you,”
Blalock repeated. “I don’t know. He was trying to
put the black rock back into the case, and he
collapsed without a word.”
The cell phone
continued with its weird, shrill noises, which grew
louder and more erratic as Miles moved closer to the
containment area wall, near the black rock. “How do
you shut this damned thing—?” Dropping the bleating
device to the floor, he stomped it into silence.
“Where were you, Jim?”
“In the animal
room.”
She’d just begun
her examination when the man began to shake, and
blood gushed from his nose and eyes and ears. She
didn’t have a clue as to why, but it was clear the
man was near death. “M-My G-God!” she blurted.
“D-D-Did he fall? Or h-hit his head?” She took a
deep breath, held it, trying to stave off the
tremors in her speech.
Blalock shrugged.
She brushed her
hands through Lee’s hair a section at a time,
looking for evidence of a blow. She pulled his
eyelids open. Both pupils were widely dilated. She
waved her hand in front of his eyes. “Pupils
unresponsive…I’m afraid….”
“You’re hiding
something, Paul,” Miles accused. “Now tell us what
happened?”
“Just what I said,
damnit! Nothing!”
“Contamination?”
Haverhills suggested in a quavering voice.
She thought
Haverhills looked nearly as bad as Lee—and
her father. “Onset was too sudden for any
infectious agent,” she said, exhaling hard against
her palate as she spoke to smooth out the words.
“Looks like trauma.” She glanced at her father, then
Blalock.
Abruptly Lee
stopped convulsing; blood stopped spurting and
instead flowed like a river. She gently lowered
Lee’s head onto her folded jacket.
Her father stared
at her, red-faced. “Well?”
She knew that
daunting, demanding tone all too well. She looked
at her bloodied hands, then up to meet her father’s
glare. “I‑I g-guess we’ll have to wait for the
au-autopsy.”
CHAPTER 3
ELMER P. CILLY’S
AERIAL CARNIVAL, Bealeton, Virginia...
Molly Lavisch
stood with hands on hips and watched the lemon
yellow Stearman PT‑17 biplane bounce and jiggle over
the uneven turf, wings rocking jauntily, engine
barking and popping, until it rolled to a breezy
stop in front of her.
As soon as the
plane’s engine stopped, her friend, Allison Jamison,
AJ for short, stood unsteadily in the front cockpit,
fiddling with the parachute harness, grinning
stoically, her blue eyes like cutouts of the perfect
blue of the sky above, her blond hair lifting in the
wind from the dying propeller. She gave Molly a
thumbs‑up, and then triumphantly displayed a little
white airsick bag, which appeared to have been used,
before clambering with halting steps onto the wing.
The stunt pilot’s
helper, a sturdy teenager with a small gold earring
and his shorts showing behind his sagging jeans,
reached up and helped her down onto the dry July
grass, where as soon as he let go of her arm, she
fell down.
“Let me help you,”
Molly called, moving toward her. But Peter
MacKenzie, who jumped out of the rear cockpit right
behind AJ, pulled her to her feet and with obvious
relish, brushed the dust off the backside of her
khaki riding pants with slow, deliberate strokes.
“Whooo,”
her friend panted, “that’s the most fun I’ve had—”
She rocked unsteadily, wiped her sweating face with
the back of her hand.
Please don’t say,
With my pants on,
Molly said to
herself.
“You’re next,
Molly,” AJ beamed.
“How ‘bout a loop
and a roll?” Peter said, not taking his eyes off
AJ’s backside.
“No thanks,” Molly
said sternly, tightening her arms, which she'd
cordoned across her breasts. “I’m sick just thinking
about it. Besides, someone’s got to drive home.”
“Oh, my!” AJ
wobbled, bracing herself on the man.
Molly noticed she
went out of her way to rub her breast against
Peter’s arm, and she thought she detected more than
mere pleasure in Peter’s face as well.
“Sure you’re going
to be okay?” Peter asked.
“Yes, Peter,” AJ
said compliantly. “Thank you.”
Molly marveled as
AJ worked her womanly way. She smiled up at the man,
batted her eyes saucily, her lips in a pouty,
star-struck smile. What Molly couldn’t figure was
why she felt the need; AJ never had a problem luring
men. What she was doing was like dumping sugar on
Frosted Flakes. Molly sputtered a laugh.
“He’s a great stunt
pilot, Molly.”
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