Chapter 18

From his helicopter seat, Robert Isaacs looked down on the lights of the ellipse, the thrust of the Washington Monument , and the illuminated sheen of the White House. His exhaustion ran so deep that the sight barely stirred him. His hands stung from burns and his belly ached from the cold, greasy, hastily packed box lunch that he had grabbed from the commissary at Holloman Air Force Base and shared with Pat Danielson on the flight back to Andrews. With luck, he thought, the car would be depositing Danielson at her apartment about now. He, on the other hand, had to face the most important meeting of his career with scarcely the energy to hold his head up. There would be shock, a lot of heat, a search for scapegoats. He knew he would be a target if his collusion with the Russians were revealed.

He hoped he didn't look as bad as he felt. The clean jacket that an aide had picked up from his home and delivered to Andrews helped, but he could see singe marks where the shirt cuffs showed. He looked at his watch as the helicopter settled onto the pad on the White House lawn. 11:37. A helluva time to decide the fate of the nation. He thought he might prefer to change places with Runyan, trussed up in a hospital bed, or the two agents who had gone chasing a Ferrari through the mountains of New Mexico. Isaacs wondered whether they had got anything to eat. He steeled himself as the door swung open and climbed down into the rotor's wash. He supervised the unloading of the precious footlocker, keeping one of the lab books to show the President and then headed for the nearest door of the White House.

Inside, a White House guard escorted him to the cabinet room. Isaacs thanked the guard, opened the door and stepped inside. Seventeen people were seated around the large table which filled the room. Isaacs nodded to the Vice— President, several cabinet officers, the Chairman of the National Security Council, and various others he knew. He recalled that the Secretary of Defence, smart enough to beat the August heat in the capital, was absent on a tour of European defence installations. Some of the faces displayed excitement at the state of emergency, others, blasй and disgruntled at the lateness of the hour, glanced at him long enough to ascertain that he was not The Man and returned to desultory conversations. The President's chair, halfway along the table, its back to the window, was still empty.

Howard Drefke rose from his seat at the far end of the table in front of the unlit fireplace. Wayne Phillips, who had been seated next to him, also stood as Isaacs walked the length of the room to join them.

'Bob. How are you?' Drefke's voice was low m the hush of the room, but warm.

'I'm fine.' Isaacs grimaced slightly at the pain of the handshake, but offered his hand as well to Phillips. They sat down, Isaacs taking a spare chair next to Phillips. He placed the scorched lab book carefully on the table. 'Sorry to call you back here so suddenly,' Isaacs said to the physicist.

'No problem at all. I'm so happy to be of service.'

'You brought the slides from Gantt?'

'Yes, they're in the machine.'

Phillips gestured at a projector sitting on the waist high table next to Drefke in front of the fireplace. Isaacs checked the alignment of the screen at the other end of the room, next to the door through which he had entered. He confirmed that Drefke had brought the satellite photos. All seemed in place.

'I caught one of those commuter flights from La Jolla to Burbank just after you called this morning,' Phillips continued, 'and Ellison was ferried over from Arizona. We had several hours in Pasadena to assemble the data and make the slides before my flight east. I'm sorry that Ellison isn't here to help with the presentation, especially since poor Alex is hurt. His condition is not too serious, they tell me?'

'No, he lost some blood, and he'll be in a bit of Paul for a while, but he'll be fine. In any case, you're the head of Jason, the man the President will want to hear from.'

The door banged open and the President barged through. Isaacs immediately perceived that the individual normally so bluff and hearty on television press conferences was thoroughly steamed. He strode to his chair and sat down so quickly that no one had a chance to stand. There was a momentary bobbing of bodies as several of the people started to rise, thought better of it, and resettled themselves. The President had a piece of paper partially crushed in his tight grip. He slammed it on the table.

'The goddamned Russians have gone berserk! This is the third hot line message from them today. This morning they wiped out the nuclear device that was our protection against their laser. All afternoon they've been methodically picking off pieces of space junk, showing what they can do. There are rumours in every major capital that our surveillance system is compromised and that one side or the other is on the verge of a preemptive strike.'

He poked a rigid finger at the paper.

'If we so much as blink we'll be at war and our NATO allies are panicked to the point where any one of them could push the wrong button.'

He looked around the table. 'The Russians are mad, and they are scared, and they are blaming us. I want to know what the hell is going on!'

The President paused and forcibly composed himself. He continued with a quieter but still strained tone. 'They seem to think that we have developed and are testing some fantastic new kind of weapon which can be fired through the earth.'

He turned towards the Director of Central Intelligence at his far right. 'Howard, you indicated you could shed some light on this. I hope you don't mind sharing one or two of your secrets with me before the whole world goes up in a goddamned nuclear war!'

A look of anguish passed over Drefke's face. The sarcastic attack from his old friend pained him, and he knew the President was not going to like the story he had to tell.

'Mr President,' his voice quavered, but then grew stronger, 'the case I have to present is highly unorthodox. My associate, Mr Isaacs, has only just this moment returned with the evidence to confirm that we are faced with a peril of unprecedented proportions. Through a bizarre set of circumstances, the earth itself has become mortally endangered.'

'I've always considered nuclear holocaust dangerous,' the President said, his irritation still plainly evident.

'I don't mean war, but something far more insidious,' Drefke pressed. 'If our understanding is correct, the issues we currently regard as crises, including this exaggerated light sabre rattling of the Soviets, become nearly irrelevant.'

Drefke could sense that his strong statement, coupled with the ire of the President, had created a profound air of discontent around the table. He rushed on.

'Our current understanding has been developed by the Office of Scientific Intelligence under Mr Isaacs with the collaboration of the Jason group chaired by Professor Wayne Phillips who is here to answer questions of a technical, scientific nature which may arise.'

Phillips nodded at the array of severe faces which surrounded the table.

'I will give you a brief overview,' Drefke continued.

'Mr Isaacs will then provide details of the present situation. He paused and looked at some notes before him.

'In late April, analysis of seismic data from the Large Seismic Array showed a peculiar signal. Closer examination by members of the OSI staff revealed this signal to be quite regular with a period of eighty and a half minutes. Attempts to relate this signal to a man-made origin were unsuccessful. On the contrary, the source of the seismic waves moved along a line which always pointed to the same direction in space.'

'Hell's fire!' The expletive came from the representative of the Office of Naval Intelligence, a man of stern military bearing. Several people in the room, including the President, flinched at the outburst. Drefke, who had beer anticipating it, looked at him stonily.

'You're talking about the same thing the Navy has beer monitoring on sonar,' the Navy man continued. 'Fixed orientation and all that. We lost a ship on that mission. What the hell's going on?'

Drefke looked Godly at the President, confident of his special relationship.

'If I may continue?'

The President nodded and Drefke proceeded to ignore the hot glare of the naval officer.

'It is true,' he said, 'that the phenomenon generates an acoustic signal in water which is the counterpart of the seismic signal within the earth.'

His voice took on a slight condescending note. 'My colleagues in the Navy are aware of the phenomenon I'm discussing. They chose not to pursue the matter in a manner which would give any useful insight.' Drefke knew that this simple statement on his part would eventually cause heads to roll in the hierarchy of naval intelligence, including, perhaps, that of his obstreperous colleague at the table. He proceeded with the matter at hand.

'The Navy lost a ship, the Stinson, with tragic loss of life, while monitoring this phenomenon. That relates to another important point. At the same time, also beginning last April, another chain of events was set in motion, which.are well-known to all of you here.' Drefke hunched forward, leaning on the table, and looked intently at his colleagues. 'I am referring to the Soviet carrier, the Novorossiisk.'

There was a rustle and exchange of glances around the table. Drefke continued.

'You all know what transpired from that seemingly minor incident. The Soviets unveiled their first laser and demolished one of our surveillance satellites. We captured that satellite, thanks to the brave action of our shuttle crew, but that led to the launch of a new laser satellite and our nuclear weapon in a standoff which was broken this morning, leaving us in our current state of emergency. We now have reason to believe that the object which damaged the Novorossiisk and, in sad fact, sank the Stinson, was the very thing the Stinson was sent to monitor, the source of the odd seismic and acoustic waves.

'Mr President,' Drefke faced his commander-in-chief, 'we now believe that all these events and several more peculiar happenstances are intimately related, although it was difficult, until very recently, to see the common thread. It is very much to the credit of Mr Isaacs and his team that the crucial connection was made. The seismic information was used by the OSI to predict that the source of these waves would appear in Nagasaki and Dallas on specific dates last summer, July 7 and July 26, respectively. In each instance, there was some relatively minor, unexplained damage. In each case there was also a death, but neither was directly attributable to the source of the seismic waves. This much information was presented to Jason by Mr Isaacs in early August. A possible explanation was forthcoming.'

Drefke leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath, looked at Isaacs and Phillips, and then exhaled. He looked keenly at the President.

'Mr President, I know you have heard the term "black hole".'

'Yes,' the President answered with a note of questioning in his voice, 'some sort of gravitational trap, I believe. Supposed to be formed by a collapsing star, if I have the picture right.'

'That is the basic idea,' Drefke assented.

'So what's the point?' the President demanded. 'Are you going to tell me that in addition to the Russians threatening to blow us to kingdom come, we are about to fall into a black hole?'

'Apparently, Mr President, we are doing so at this very instant.'

This statement brought outbursts of protest from around the table. Drefke looked pained again and raised his voice.

'Mr President! Mr President! I beg your pardon! If I could be allowed to explain.'

The President quieted the group. 'Russians I can deal with somehow, Howard, but what the hell are you feeding us now?'

'Please consider my position,' Drefke pleaded in the most dignified tone he could muster. 'I sympathize with your incredulity, but you have not heard all the arguments. Understand that there is no way to introduce this idea without surprise and shock.'

'All right, all right,' said the President with protesting hands in the air. Then he dropped his elbows to the table and supported his head in his hands muttering, 'Jesus Christ!'

'At the Jason meeting the suggestion was made that, despite the seeming impossibility, the only explanation consistent with the facts was a very small black hole. In addition, a suggestion was made for a definitive test of this hypothesis. Such a thing should have a precise and measurable gravitational field. The meeting with Jason was on the second and third of August, nine days ago. An expedition was mounted a week later, and results were obtained only yesterday.

'Mr President, the answer is unambiguous,' Drefke continued. 'An object with a mass of about ten million tons and of very small size is oscillating through the solid matter of the earth as if it did not exist. The conclusion seems inescapable that the object is a black hole and that it is slowly consuming material from the inside of the earth. Left unmolested, that process will proceed to completion.'

A stillness had fallen on the room as Drefke spoke. It continued for a few moments, then was broken by the President.

'And now you are going to tell me the Russians are onto this thing and think we have done it?' he said in a forlorn voice. 'Why wasn't I apprised of this before I had World War Ill dumped in my lap?'

'Sir,' Drefke pleaded, 'as I said, the results confirming the hypothesis only became available yesterday, and even then there were important unanswered questions. You must understand that the notion was so incredible that we had to be absolutely sure before bringing it to your attention.'

Drefke paused to collect his thoughts. He had always been comfortably frank with this man before and after he became the President, but he did not care to confess in front of this group his culpability in delaying Isaacs's investigation. He chose his words carefully.

'Besides drawing us into a confrontation in space, the I Soviets have been pursuing their own investigation of the ' damage to the Novorossiisk.' He could not suppress a quick glance at Isaacs. He also did not want to expose Isaacs's role in tipping the Russians to the nature of the black hole. 'We are not sure of the details, but with their extensive naval deployment in the Mediterranean and the Pacific, they have evidently also discovered the regular sonar pattern associated with this thing. We have recently found that I they have a series of vessels deployed precisely on the path that the, uh, black hole follows as it punches through the earth's surface.'

'May we deduce then,' an abrupt voice broke in, 'that the Soviets have the same information that was available to ! our Navy?' The forceful baritone belonged to the Secretary ' of State, a diminutive man whose tone belied his physical stature. 'But they have gone ahead to reach the conclusion that this thing is a great danger?'

'I believe that is a fair statement,' Drefke replied. In his peripheral vision he could see the jaw muscles of the naval intelligence officer clinch and bunch.

'And they have concluded as you have,' the Secretary of State continued, 'that it is a black hole and have further concluded that we are responsible?'

'That seems to be the best guess,' answered Drefke.