Moon rocks, p.4
Moon Rocks, page 4
Ray hefted the rock, gave it another look, then passed it back to Nick. “We all got the fear-of-God routine about how sensitive it was. You know, classified.”
“Weird,” Nick said, glancing at the rock. “I can’t believe I never heard about it.”
“Yeah,” Ray nodded. “About a month later, there were rumors about an ‘event’ in Nevada—Rainier Mesa. Some geologist had a breakthrough with a Spur Crater sample. We figured that he pulled some strings and had all available specimens sent to his lab.” Ray glanced at the moon rock in Nick’s hand. “Guess they missed one.”
“It all sounds pretty damn far out,” Nick said, tightening his grip on the rock.
“Tell me about it.”
“If it’s true, NASA has gone from a hot breakthrough to shutting down one of its last lunar research labs.” After a beat, Nick added, “More great logic from the ringmasters in Houston.”
“Yeah,” Ray said, casting a glance around the lab with a wistful look. “I can’t believe they’re pulling the plug.”
Nick held the moon rock up and said, “Cost the American taxpayers thirty billion dollars to collect these samples. Now they’re just museum pieces, trinkets to be stuck on a plaque to honor some puffed up politician or impress some foreign ambassador.”
Chapter 12
Ten minutes later, inside the laser lab, Ray watched as Nick weighed and measured the moon rock, then jotted the dimensions in a small notebook.
The room was filled with electronic equipment, computers, LCD screens, and the centerpiece: a large plasma laser, its rods housed in a long clear tube that took up half the room.
Nick removed the rock from a scale, then walked to a chamber at the front of the laser and placed the rock inside.
“I ran a check on the power supply. You’re good to go. All the juice you need.”
Nick didn’t respond. He was busy positioning the rock on a small pedestal inside the chamber, turning it this way and that, trying to find just the right angle. After a few more rotations, he stood back, double-checked the position, and nodded to himself.
“Nick, come on. Are you gonna let me in on this or what?”
Nick crossed the room, then turned to Ray and said, “I’m going to take the CO2 plasma laser, drive the beam through an expander, polarize it, then hit that rock with two megawatt, ultra short pulses.”
“Jesus,” Ray said after a short pause, “You’ll vaporize it!”
An impish grin formed on Nick’s face. “Hell, I’m going to blast it back to when it was just a gleam in some star’s eye.”
“Why? What’s the point?”
“Science, Ray. And the opportunity to do exactly what Houston’s doing—the unthinkable.” Nick traced a cable with his fingers, double-checking the connections. “Think about it: no one has ever destroyed a sample this large. Yesterday, it would’ve been unimaginable. But now, everything has changed.”
“I don’t know,” Ray said, a dubious tone in his voice. “What if someone else knows about that sample—knows that it was left here? They’re going to want it returned.”
“Ray, Ray—you don’t get it. They don’t give a shit. You should’ve heard Slade.” Nick pulled the cable from its power source, then plugged it back in just to be sure it was properly connected. “What we’ve got here, Ray,” Nick said, excitement rising in his voice, “is the chance of a lifetime. One moon rock. One experiment. With a lunar sample this size, we should get a very accurate measurement of its age. And who knows, maybe something entirely new—a surprise or two.”
Ray frowned. “Yeah, like maybe thrown in jail,”
* * * *
Nick was in a control booth that overlooked the laser lab. He sat at a computer keying in a series of commands. As he typed, words streamed across a large flat screen monitor.
“LASER DATA ON SELECT TARGET.”
Nick typed in another command. A picture appeared on the monitor. A 3-D image of the moon rock.
Nick hit another key, animating the picture. It began to shift, slowly revealing the entire surface of the rock. Below the image, at the bottom of the screen, data streamed across the monitor. The image stopped moving. There was a beeping sound. Then words appeared on the screen.
“TARGET LOCKED - TARGET LOCKED.”
The image shifted, and then a grid pattern appeared over the rock.
“FIRE SEQUENCER READY.”
A pause, and then:
“SELECT TIMER:”
“00 : 00 : 00”
He tapped another key.
“TIMER OVERRIDE.”
And a moment after that, the screen began to flash:
“READY.”
Nick flicked on a mike and then motioned to Ray, who was waiting in the laser lab. “Clear?”
Ray glanced at a panel on the laser and saw that it was green, indicating that it was good to go. He raised a hand and flashed a thumbs-up to Nick in the overhead booth. As he exited the lab, he shouted, “Clear.”
Nick checked the data on his computer one last time and said, “Time for some rock-and-roll geology.”
He tapped a key. An intense beam shot from the end of the laser and struck the rock. One. Two. Three. Three hyper pulses of laser light. As the third pulse hit, the rock exploded with a loud pop.
A moment after that, the laser shut down, its powerful beam vanishing like an invisible hand had suddenly been placed over the end of the gun. The experiment was over almost as quickly as it had begun.
Chapter 13
Nick and Ray rushed into the lab, both of them anxious to see the results, to see what had happened to the lunar rock. The first thing they noticed was that the chamber containing the moon rock was filled with thick smoke.
“Scrub the blast chamber,” Nick said, motioning to a switch on a control panel.
Ray hustled over, hit the switch. A fan whirred. The room filled with a loud hum. The smoke began to clear. After a long moment, the last wisps of vapor were sucked into a duct attached to the rear of the chamber.
Nick and Ray approached the chamber. They could see there was something inside. Something red hot. Something glowing. A step closer, and they saw what it was: a smooth, ovoid object.
Jesus.
“Jesus,” Ray said, his eyes like silver dollars. “What is that?”
“I don’t know.” Nick leaned forward for a better look. “But I can tell you what it’s not: lunar silica.”
Mouth agape, Ray inched closer, then in a low voice said, “It looks like some sort of ellipsoid.”
“You know what it looks like to me?” Nick said, his eyes glued to the object. “It looks like an—”
“Egg.” Both of them said the word at the same time.
* * * *
An hour later, Nick and Ray were in a starkly lit room preparing to scan and X-ray the egg. Slade had returned from Houston and hovered in the background, excitedly pacing to and fro while rolling an e-cigarette in his fingers and leaning over every couple of seconds to see if the experiment was about to start.
Nick placed the object in a plastic tray, then slid it into an axial scanner, which was a sort of mini CAT scan machine for rocks and other objects.
Ray tapped a command into the computer. There was a loud hum. The scanner lit up, and data filled the monitor.
Ray keyed in another series of commands, waited for the data to load, and said, “Whatever it is, it’s not an alloy.” Another burst of typing. The screen refreshed. Ray read the data, taking his time, slowly digesting the results. “The outer layer is some sort of crystalline matrix. And it’s dense. Very dense. Harder than titanium or tungsten carbide. And it looks like… Jesus, it might be hollow. Hold on, image coming up now.”
Ray hit a button on the control panel. “Wait one second—I’m sending it to overhead monitor number one.”
The screen of Monitor One flashed. An image began to form. Then it shifted and disappeared. As the digitized blocks of information stabilized and formed into a solid image, they all saw it at the same time—a creature. Curled inside the pod. Its head, arms, and limbs were tucked into the fetal position.
“My God,” Ray said, rising from the keyboard. “What the hell is that?”
“It’s a xenomorph,” Nick said, staring up at the monitor in awe. “Some sort of—”
“Alien creature,” Slade interrupted, barely able to control his excitement. “My God, it’s unbelievable.” Then, after a silent pause, he added, “Do you know what this is? It’s the biggest discovery of the century. Hell, maybe of all time.” Slade moved forward, and as he leaned toward the screen for a better look, the creature’s body contracted, twisting and writhing in one violent movement.
Slade’s heart stood still. He jerked back and, barely staying on his feet, yelled, “Shit!” He grabbed his chest. “Son of a bitch! Goddamn son of a bitch!”
Nick stood with his eyes glued to the monitor, not saying anything, trying to process what he’d just seen.
“Jesus Christ,” Ray said, coming out from around the computer. “It’s alive.”
* * * *
“We can’t keep it here,” Nick said, watching as Slade tapped his e-cigarette on the desktop. “This isn’t a biologically secure facility.”
“What are you talking about?” Slade said, dropping the cigarette. “The thing is sealed inside that pod.”
“We don’t know that. We don’t know anything about it.”
“Oh hell, Walker…all that noise about moon germs was a load of crap.”
“This isn’t some spore we’re talking about. It’s not some bacteria. You saw the scan—it’s a living alien creature.”
After an uncomfortable silence, Slade said, “I know what I’m doing.” He grabbed his cigarette. “My God, Walker, think about the PR boost on this. I’m not sure you realize what we’ve got here. We’ll be able to write our own ticket.”
“Are you out of your mind? Screw the PR boost. There’s a quarantine law. We have a responsibility here. We have no idea what we’re dealing with. If that thing gets out of the lab, it has the potential to contaminate the entire planet.”
“Fine,” Slade said, pursing his lips. “I’ve heard you out. I’ll take your comments under advisement. Your professional opinion as a geologist.”
“It’s not an opinion. It’s policy. It’s the law. A quarantine law.”
“It’s my decision—and my risk.”
“No,” Nick said, his voice rising. Your decision, but everyone’s risk.” Nick stood abruptly, almost knocking his chair over. “I’m going to file my position on this, then I’m calling Houston.”
“No, you’re not, Walker.” Slade stood, placed his hand on the desk, and rested on his knuckles, leaning towards Nick. “Everything on this is classified. Blacked out. You speak to anyone about this without my authority, and I’ll have you arrested.”
After a frozen silence, Nick said, “Unbelievable,” shook his head, and walked out.
Chapter 14
Later that night, in the sample room of the geology lab, a solitary halogen spot illuminated a sealed glass cylinder that sat on a stainless steel workbench. Inside the container, sitting at its center, was the ovoid pod.
The compressor of the refrigeration unit cycled off. The lab fell silent. Then the passive sound of coolant trickling out of the refrigerator’s coils burbled through the room. And just as that sound faded, there was a sharp clinking sound.
The pod had moved.
Clink.
It moved again. And then it began to rock back and forth. The clinking got louder and louder, the pod moving faster and faster, until it dropped off its perch and rolled across the base of the cylinder, coming to rest against the glass with a dull click.
There was a silent moment, then a tendril of smoke curled up from the surface of the pod. There was a sizzling sound and then one of the ends of the pod liquefied, collapsed, and pooled in the base of the cylinder.
There was another swirl of smoke. The pod began to vibrate. Then it swung around like a compass needle pointing north, slamming against the glass, and the creature exploded out of the pod.
Primitive. Powerful. Bipedal. It was utterly alien-looking. Spiked plates on its back made it look like something from the Jurassic era.
It shot across the base of the cylinder and struck the side. The glass tube shattered. The creature dropped to the floor and skated into the shadows, disappearing beneath a workstation.
* * * *
Early the next morning, a Land Cruiser drove along a highway that cut through a section of coastal scrub.
A tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico had sent moisture flooding inland over east Texas, filling the sky with angry-looking purple clouds. As stormclouds roiled overhead, the sky lowered and the light shifted.
Nick flicked on the Land Cruiser’s headlights. He leaned forward, scanned the sky, and just as the words “looks like rain” formed in his mind, the heavens opened and fat, cartoon-like raindrops began to pock the windshield.
Nick hit the wipers and rubbed his neck. For what seemed like the millionth time, he thought about the pod and the creature they had found inside.
It was unbelievable. Remarkable. Impossible. Slade was right: it was the find of the century. It was destined to change the world. And it would once and for all answer the age-old question of whether or not life existed outside of Earth.
It was going to stand the scientific community on its ear. It was going to change his life. It was going to change the lives of everyone connected with the discovery. It was going to rock the world.
Slade’s wildest dreams were about to come true. He was about to be the center of the world’s attention. Every camera and every spotlight clamoring for his attention as billions of people looked on.
It was going to be hard to take.
Nick reached down to the console, grabbed a cup of coffee, and took a sip. One thing was for sure: between Slade and old Walt’s moon rock, he hadn’t been getting much sleep, and it didn’t look like that was going to change anytime soon.
Up ahead, a turnoff loomed. As he approached it, Nick slowed the Land Cruiser and turned into a long driveway that ran to a NASA guard kiosk at the entrance to the geology lab.
He turned off the wipers. The rain had stopped as suddenly as it had started, the clouds already being swept from the sky as blustery winds sent the squall scudding farther down the coast. The rain had lasted only a couple of minutes, but it had managed to drench the ground, leaving shimmering puddles of water scattered across the plain like lily pads.
Nick pulled up alongside the kiosk and braked, waiting for Hodges to lean out and confirm that it was him so he could open the gate and wave him through.
He tapped the wheel, waiting. After a moment, he stared at the kiosk’s smoked glass window and said, “Come on, Hodges. Get off Facebook and open the gate.” He waited another couple of seconds, then honked the horn. But there was no response; still no sign of life in the booth.
Nick leaned out and yelled, “Hey, Hodges!” Still no response. What was going on?
He opened his door, climbed out, and just as he was about to knock on the kiosk’s door, Ray’s Hyundai pulled up behind the Land Cruiser.
“What’s going on?” Ray called out to Nick.
“I’m not sure. I can’t find Hodges.” Nick paused, raised a hand, and said, “Hang on.” As he went to knock on the booth’s door, a man’s voice called out, “Dr. Walker!”
Nick spun towards the voice and saw Billy Hodges struggling across the parking lot with Max, the guard dog, cradled in his arms.
What the hell?
“Hodges,” Nick shouted as he ran to meet him. “What happened?”
“I’m not sure,” Hodges said, shuffling up to Nick. “I think Max found a rattlesnake.”
“A rattlesnake?”
“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s what it was. He’s all shaky and can’t seem to stand up.”
“Jesus.” Nick stared at the shepherd’s quivering flesh. Its body was completely slack and its tongue hung out of its mouth at a freakish ninety degree angle.
“I’ve got to get him to the vet. I put a call in to Webber. He’ll be here any minute to take over. Think you can cover for me until he comes?”
“Yeah, sure. Of course. Go,” Nick said. Then he added, “Do you need any help?”
“No, sir,” Hodges said, already moving to his patrol car. “I got this.”
Chapter 15
Ten minutes later, Nick and Ray were walking down a sterile corridor, both of them nervous, excited, and a little frayed from lack of sleep.
Today was going to be one for the books, Nick thought as they made their way along the gray vinyl flooring. Last night before they left the lab, Slade had told them that he’d be in around nine thirty and to make themselves available for a ten o’clock video conference with Houston, at which time he would announce their remarkable find. Nick had suggested that they pack up the creature, drive to Houston, and make the announcement in person. But Slade had immediately nixed that idea, saying that they needed to control this thing. They needed to make sure the credit went to them and not just NASA.
“I didn’t sleep for shit last night,” Ray said with a yawn.
“Tell me about it. Alien creatures trapped in moon rocks—I still can’t believe it.”
“Yeah,” Ray said, nodding in agreement. After a few more steps, he added, “We’re going to be freaking famous.”
Three quarters of the way down the hall, they stopped in front of a heavy steel door with a small reinforced window. Nick swiped his ID card. A moment later, there was a soft click, and they entered the main geology lab.
