Chapter 19

On the evening of January 5th, a taxi made its way from Logan Airport , skirting the Charles River along the edge of Boston. Eventually, it came to Newton and slowed on the tortuous suburban streets. The air was noticeably colder outside the city, and the snowflakes fell more thickly. The passengers huddled in the corners of the flat Checker seat listening to the wheels plough through the slush. The smaller figure tried to ignore the stream of frigid air which came from his window which would not quite close. He wore a topcoat, but shivered from lack of natural insulation. The man was in his early forties, of average height, thin to the point of frailness. His head was round in profile, but thin so his face was a flattened oval. His sparse hair was combed straight back; a trim Vandyke adorned his chin. He wore old nondescript hornrim glasses, the temples of which showed the grey corrosion of long exposure to facial grease.

The other passenger was a large, hulking man. His coarse Slavic features were broken by a relaxed smile as he looked out at the snow. His bulky winter coat was undone to display a grey suit of plain utilitarian cut. His mind spun with the excitement of his first visit here, and his eyes had captured all the details — from the gross flashing signs atop Kenmore Square to the fine old houses with large yards they now passed by.

The taxi finally pulled up in front of a large white house on which the porch light signalled welcome. The Gabble flicked the plexiglass partition open without looking back, disgruntled at the thought of the long trip back to the airport without a fare and scheming for a way to cover that loss. The slim passenger grimaced at the figure on the meter despite it being covered by his expense account and shoved some bills through to the driver, waving for him to keep the change. The driver showed his gratitude by remaining immobile while his passengers worked the doors open and stepped out. The smaller man's left foot landed ankle deep in water in the gutter. He uttered a quiet exclamation of dismay, shoved the door shut and stepped gingerly to the ploughed walkway leading to the front door. He navigated the cleared path, waited for his companion, then pushed the button as he stamped his wet shoe.

Inside Wayne Phillips rose quickly from the couch and got to the door just before his wife who had come in from the kitchen. He opened the door and greeted the men on the stoop.

'Clarence! Viktor! Come in.'

He turned to his wife, 'Betsy, you remember Clarence Humphreys from Princeton ? And I would like you to meet my good friend and colleague, Viktor Korolev, from the Soviet Union. They've been working together in Moscow on our project.'

'Of course,' she nodded, 'how are you? I'm afraid we've welcomed you with rather dismal weather.' She spoke with a British accent, being a lifelong cherished companion from Phillips's youth at Oxford.

Helping Humphreys off with his topcoat, Phillips was too close to notice the soggy shoe. From her vantage point a few feet off and blessed with an eye for such things, his wife saw it and gave a small gasp.

'Oh, my! You've stepped in a puddle!'

Humphreys acknowledged this misfortune sheepishly.

Betsy Phillips immediately took complete control.

'Here. You sit down before the fire and get those wet, cold shoes off. Professor Korolev, won't you sit here? I'll fetch a pair of Wayne 's slippers and fix you both a nice hot toddy.' She guided her guests towards chairs in front of the fireplace. Alex Runyan arose from the couch, his right arm encased in a sling.

'Viktor, welcome to the United States.' He pumped the Russian's hand awkwardly, backward, with his left hand.

'After all these years — such a delight to have you here. When your name came up in La Jolla , I never actually thought I'd see you working with us.' He turned to the other scientist. 'Clarence, how are things in Moscow ?'

'Hello, Alex,' Humphreys returned the greeting. 'Well, it's snowing there too, but the rivers are still in their banks.' He lifted his wet foot and both men grinned.

Humphreys sat and with a disdain for propriety which belied his academic standing, quickly removed his shoes and socks. He extended white, blue-veined feet towards the fire and wiggled his toes. Korolev looked around the room. It was large and tastefully decorated, mostly in colonial, in keeping with the house which dated back to shortly after the Revolution. The floors were original, wide planks held down with wooden pegs. He was admiring a large heavily decorated Christmas tree in the corner when Betsy Phillips returned with a pair of faintly scruffy slippers and a tray upon which she balanced two steaming concoctions in tall glasses. Humphreys slid his feet into the slippers and smiled gratefully. The Russian feasted her with his glass and smiled his broad smile.

'I'm glad you could stop over before we have to go to Washington ,' Phillips said, after his wife had discreetly retired. 'That is when the real work will begin, but Alex and I are anxious for a chance to hear your ideas while there is still a little peace and quiet. I understand Krone's notes have been useful?'

'Absolutely! They're invaluable,' said Humphreys enthusiastically. 'The man understood an incredible amount, and there's an even greater wealth of information implicit in the computer data that will require years to completely analyse. We've only had time to scratch the surface.'

Humphreys looked at his Russian colleague.

'Things have been so hectic. We've been under tremendous pressure to digest those notebooks.'

He spoke to Phillips and Runyan.

'I want both of you to know what an immense help Viktor has been. More than that, most of the time I have foundered in his wake.'

Korolev nodded in silent sober acquiescence at the praise.

'I don't know what bolt of enlightenment hit the Soviet hierarchy,' Humphreys continued, 'volunteering his services for this project when he was not even allowed to attend a conference before. Anyway, we should all be grateful.'

'Ho,' said the Russian in his deep rumbling baritone. 'I explain certain facts to them. Sometimes they understand. But this is a complicated thing. Your government. My government.' He waved a hand in dismissal and tossed down a healthy slug of his drink.

'The fire was unfortunate,' Korolev said. 'Some important things are missing.'

'Viktor has filled in most of the missing parts,'

Humphreys explained, 'but there are a couple of awkward gaps. The books weren't the only casualty. I'd heard you'd been hurt, Alex. How's the arm?'

Runyan flexed his fingers slowly. 'I had surgery again a month ago,' he said. 'Damn tendons are tough to heal.' He leaned back and fingered his beard to show the scar on his jaw. 'Got me in the chin and arm with one blow. Tough lady, let me tell you.'

Humphreys shook his head in sympathy.

'Where is this man Krone now?' Korolev inquired. 'I must talk with him.'

'Unfortunately, he's in no condition to talk even yet,' Runyan explained. 'He's in Walter Reed Hospital , and they're doing everything they can to bring him round.'

'How about the woman?' Humphreys asked.

'Well, under the circumstances, I didn't press charges. Everything she did was under coercion. She's got an apartment in Washington I hear and visits Krone daily. The doctors think she is a beneficial factor.' Runyan stared into the fire, recalling his encounter with Maria Latvin, and shivered slightly.

'Listen,' Runyan brightened, shaking off his reverie, 'we want to hear more about this idea of yours. You think you have some way of attacking the hole?'

'Well, it's not fully worked out yet,' said Humphreys, 'but we do have a proposal. I wish we had a bit more time. I'm not so sure how we will fare trying to convince the President and his advisers of its workability.'

'Try it out on us,' encouraged Phillips. 'You suggested in your letter that stimulated emission was involved?'

'That's right. You know how the principle works in lasers. Atoms are energized and ready to emit a photon of light. Then if a seed photon is sent in, it stimulates one of the atoms to emit an identical photon. The two photons then induce the emission of two more identical photons, the four become eight, the eight, sixteen and so on, leading to a chain reaction.

'The same process can be made to work on any system which radiates. If a thing emits photons spontaneously, then it can be induced to emit photons on cue under the proper circumstances. Viktor pointed out that, in particular, this applies to black holes. We know that because of the quantum mechanical uncertainty principle, the event horizon of a black hole is slightly fuzzy and that light leaks out. Every black hole slowly radiates away its substance. The question is, can our black hole be stimulated to radiate away its mass and disappear faster than it would ordinarily?'

Humphreys stopped and took a sip of his drink. Runyan, his mind churning, fixed him with a stare.

'You would need an intense source of light then,' said Runyan, gesturing with his good left hand as if trying to conjure up such a scource on the spot.

'Yes,' answered Humphreys, 'and it needs to be focused since the target is so small.'

'A laser then,' said Phillips quietly.

'Right,' Humphreys addressed him. 'We think a super powerful laser could be fashioned which could siphon off some of the mass of the hole. Even more,' he paused, 'there are hints from Krone's notes that such a process could be even more efficient than the basic first order theory would indicate. We haven't worked it all out yet, but certain of his data suggest the existence of non-linear effects which could improve the efficiency of the stimulated emission dramatically.'

'Just how dramatic is that?' asked Runyan. 'You don't want to liberate too much energy too fast — Me' for that hole is a lot of E.'

'There is no way to eliminate the hole in one step with any foreseeable technology, and, indeed, we would not want to if we could, as you rightly point out,' replied Humphreys. 'If what I'm suggesting works at all, the best we can hope for is to peel a little bit of mass off at a time and to repeat the process many, many times.

'Viktor has also devised an interesting variation on that theme. A properly shaped initiating blast may cause the bulk of the energy to be liberated in one direction. We might be able to guide the impulse in such a way as to offset the drag and keep the hole from settling prematurely completely into the earth. Our hope is to boost the orbit so that it is totally outside the earth. Then little by little we could widen the orbit and eventually set it adrift into interstellar space.

'If the process must be repeated a thousand times to gain control, we have hope. A million times? Well, we should begin looking for a new home.'

'Do you have any idea how effective the process will be?' inquired Phillips, maintaining his quiet demeanour.

'It depends on the relative efficiency for the production of photons and particles with mass: electrons, protons, neutrons. There will also be neutrinos. The particles are the most efficient repository for mass and momentum, from our point of view. The neutrinos can in principle carry off a large amount of energy. If the process works at all, there should be a large explosion.

'To answer your question, Wayne,' Humphreys continued, 'our current estimates are that the hole could be nudged out of the earth with about a hundred thousand repetitions, each releasing about the explosive energy of a ten megaton bomb. Those numbers are very tentative. They could be off by a factor of a hundred either way.'

'Your recommendation then?' Phillips wanted to know.

'Put every talented scientist available on the analysis of Krone's notes, and begin the design and engineering of the necessary laser. The first goal is to run a field test to see whether it works. Then go into full scale mass production. The lasers will be immense and expensive, and, if the process works, you'll destroy them every time.'

'We must also worry about the others,' rumbled Korolev, 'the three he made first.'

'As I understand it,' Runyan said, 'our government and yours are analysing every scrap of seismic and sonar data available. I think one of them has been found.'

Phillips swirled his drink and took a reflective sip of it.

'Viktor,' he said, 'I think there's no question that you and Clarence are to be congratulated for coming up with such a clever and positive sounding approach. What about the practical problems, though? It strikes me that what you have suggested is going to be fiendishly difficult to accomplish in reality.'

Korolev gave Phillips a long frank look devoid of the self— effacing geniality he had been displaying.

'This frightens me,' he said. 'I can think of no other way to proceed, but what we ask, to hit a rapidly moving, vanishingly small particle in just the right way — this is very difficult. By comparison, the moon is huge, your Apollo programme a trivial exercise.'

The Russian paused to rub his chin. 'The stakes are very much higher now,' he said in a ruminative tone. 'If we fail, it is not just the prestige of a country that is at risk, but the future of all life.' His head sunk on his chest, and he lost himself for a moment in the flicker from the grate. 'We must try,' he continued, 'but some projects are too-complex, too difficult, to be solved by any number of talented people, any amount of resources.'

He was silent again for a while. Then his head came up, and he leaned forward with a more earnest air. He gestured with an extended forefinger.

'Here are some of the problems we face. How do we make a laser which works at the energies most destructive to the black hole? The lasers must be huge, but they must swivel rapidly while maintaining infinitesimal accuracy. How do we do that? The operation must be computer controlled, but the task is monumental. I fear a new generation of computers must be invented just for that purpose alone.'

The four men talked late into the night, analysing the strengths and weaknesses of the plan and solutions to unprecedented engineering problems. The next morning they caught an early shuttle to Washington.

Four months later on a Saturday afternoon. Pat Danielson shouldered her way through the door other new condominium, kicked the door shut with her foot, and set the bulky box of kitchen utensils down in the middle of the disarray. The room was piled with cardboard boxes pilfered from liquor and grocery stores. The only piece of furniture was a sofa bed which would have to do double duty until she could buy more furniture. She walked down the hallway to the left, sniffing the acrid, clashing odours of new carpet and paint, past the small bedroom she would use as a study and the bathroom opposite, and into the larger bedroom with its own bath and dressing area. She walked the length of the room to the curtainless window which faced the front of the complex and opened it to the fresh spring air. Looking straight down six storeys, she could see the security guard structure at the front gate. Craning her neck to the right she could see, just past the small balcony jutting from her front room, the swimming pool sauna complex, and the tennis courts beyond. What a swinger, she kidded herself.

'Coffee's on!' she heard Janine shout from the kitchen.

Coffee? 'How are you making coffee?' she called back as she retraced her steps down the hallway. Her old coffee pot was in the box she had just carried in. As she entered the front room she inhaled the delicious aroma and followed it into the kitchen. The cabinets were bare except for a new automatic drip coffee maker and a bag of freshly ground mocha java.

'Where did that come from?' Pat marvelled.

'House present,' Janine said. 'From Alex Runyan. He stopped by while you were gone. He tried to call the apartment, but I guess you weren't there yet, or had left. Did you know he was in town?'

'I'm not too surprised. There's a meeting next week that I thought he'd be involved in, but he's not a great one for advance notice.'

'He said he had some business this afternoon, but would call you later.'

'Great, and I'm supposed to hold my Saturday open until the last minute in case he shows up.'

Janine was embarrassed by her friend's predicament and covered up by grabbing a couple of glasses off the counter.

'Well, at least we can drink his coffee. I couldn't find the cups. Can we make do with these?' She brandished the tumblers.

'Sure,' Pat conceded. 'It smells marvellous.'

Janine filled the glasses three-quarters of the way to the top. 'Watch out,' she warned, 'they'll.be hot with no handles. Hold the top.' She banded one to Danielson, and they moved through the tableless dining area into the living room.

Pat looked around at the piles of boxes, the sofa heaped with clothes, laughed and sat on the floor, leaning against the wall, crossing her legs in front of her. Janine perched on the edge of a box. She lifted her glass, held gingerly by the upper rim.

'Here's to your promotion and new home, ex-roomie; may it become the den of iniquity you've always wanted.' Pat chuckled, 'Fat chance of that.'

They sat quietly, sipping the rich coffee, each lost in her own thoughts.

'Pat?'

'Um?'

'What's the matter between you and Alex? He's always seemed so charming to me.'

Pat was silent for a moment.

'Would you go out with him?'

'Sure, I guess so.'

'That's the problem. He'd take you up on it. Roommate or not. The truth is, of course, that I still find him fascinating. He knows so much about so many dungs. He's warm and engaging and can focus some sort of personal intensity that makes it easy to fall into the illusion that you're the only interesting person in the world.'

Pat stopped to take a drink of coffee. 'I think he really does like me. But he's got enough "like" to spread it around pretty liberally. He separated from his wife, but, as they say, the chances of him settling down are between slim and zero.'

Janine took a sip of coffee and rolled the glass between her palms.

'Is he good in bed?'

'Hey!' Pat laughed. 'What kind of question is that?' She leaned her head back against the wall staring at the white ceiling. She could feel Runyan's hands on her waist, his lips near her navel. 'Yes, damn it,' she said with resignation, 'he's pretty good.'

'Well, then,' said Janine, with an impish sidelong glance at the sofa, 'I suggest that we prepare yon piece for its proper initiation.'

She drained her glass, set it down, and went to grab an armload of clothes off the sofa.

Pat laughed again as Janine disappeared down the hall.

'Thank you, lord,' she said in a loud stage voice, 'for delivering me at last from nosey, interfering roommates.'

Then she stood and looked around. The last shall be first, she decided. She betted the box of utensils she had most recently deposited and headed for the kitchen, bent on the task of imposing order in her new abode.

The following Friday, Robert Isaacs put the finishing touches on his report to Drefke as the setting sun sent lances of light through the blinds of his office windows then dropped below the wall of trees. He was tired, but exhilarated. The report concerned the epochal meeting which had begun early Monday and wound up after lunch Friday, a complete success. A small coterie of scientists from both sides of the Iron Curtain and a larger group of diplomats had come to unprecedented, unanimous agreement. The public confrontation would continue, but driven to a close and desperate cooperation, the two countries would, in complete secrecy, launch a massive joint effort to rid the world of Krone's creations.

If all went according to plan, in three or four years an international armada of ships would form a circle a hundred miles in radius in the expanse of the north Pacific. In the centre of the circle would float an artificial, portable island. On the island would be an immensely powerful and complex piece of machinery designed for a suicide mission. The product of a dedicated, cooperative effort between the superpowers, it would produce intense beams of laser light, finely tuned and aimed by the gravitational pull of the black hole itself. Since there would be no way to control the orbit of the hole, the device would be located where orbit perturbations by irregularities in the earth were minimal. The position of the device would be precisely fixed by accurate orbital calculations to be steadily refined over the years.

In addition to settling on the basic engineering attack, there had been a host of ticklish political problems to resolve. Paramount had been the continuing demand by the Russians that the United States cease work on beam weapons. Isaacs had admired the consummate skill of the team from the State Department. They had pointed out how item after item which the Soviets wanted banned was, after all, related to the massive effort before them. Other projects they discarded spontaneously, activities that had to take second seat to the main effort anyway. Neither country had the resources to devote to full scale development of beam weapons when faced with the resource-devouring assault on the black hole. In the final analysis, the Soviets had enough concessions to feel they had accomplished their goal, and the United States did not feel significantly weakened politically in the process.

Another issue had been the manner in which to treat the results of the test. If the project were successful, an explosion of considerable violence would ensue. Technically, it was not in violation of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, but in certain quarters all doubt must be forestalled, and that in turn called for an explanation of the predicament which demanded the undertaking. The NATO allies and Japan would be notified and sworn to secrecy and certain aid would be solicited from them. All would be allowed observers stationed at the site.

Dissension over the role of the Chinese had nearly split the meeting, but a precarious accord had been reached. When the time came, the Chinese would be informed of the test, but the underlying reason would only be hinted. The Soviet Union had chosen to inform none of the countries in its orbit, and the US had not demurred.

Isaacs gathered up the report with its final corrections and headed for the outer office. His eyes skimmed the brass letters on the doorway — Deputy Director of Scientific Intelligence — and the ones below — Robert B. Isaacs. The report was virtually his last official act in that capacity. There had been no scandal, no public condemnation, just the gentle irrefutable suggestion. He thought of his new position with the Georgetown University Center for International Studies, amused at the irony. After years of suspicion and mistrust of academics, he would join their ranks. He was actually looking forward to it. Time to do some thinking. Some writing. 'Forget it,' Martinelli had said. 'You'll be as busy as ever.'