Bretti still had a small crystal-lattice trap rigged in the beam-sampling substation where he had shot the FBI agent, but the main treasure was the larger trap down in the experimental target area. He hoped he could retrieve both, to increase his reward. Now that he knew the Indians planned to use the p-bars for weapons work, maybe Bretti could get them to up the price.
He scowled. Fat chance! For all he knew, they would take the antimatter and throw him to the wolves. He had to make sure he was paid up front, before he finally delivered the merchandise.
Snuffing out his cigarette in the ashtray, Bretti pulled his dark blue rental car into the shadows next to the concrete building, glad he had turned down Chandrawalia’s offer to get his own car back. He couldn’t afford to draw attention to himself. He could slip in and out, and be gone forever. Bretti shivered and pulled his jacket around him.
To the south, in the broad, cleared area of mangled earth, the construction machinery for the Main Injector sat like silent behemoths, ready for another day of hard work. Big plans, big new projects-Bretti thought of the weapons work the Indians were conducting with their huge capacitor banks and physics machinery at Bangalore. They would never be able to compete with Fermilab.
He used his key to gain access through the side entrance into the experimental target areas, where a quick walk brought him to a series of doors and chain-link gates. After opening two other locks with slightly different combinations, he was down the hall from the main accelerator control. Warning lights glowed red, cautioning that the Tevatron beam was up and running, but nobody would be down here in the target areas. Dumenco’s accident would have done a good job of spooking all of them.
The floors were tiled with an orange and blue checkerboard of linoleum, worn but still garish; the ceilings hung with suspended acoustic tiles, water-stained in places from leaky plumbing. The piping on the walls was painted a deep blue.
Years ago, the halls would have been filled around the clock with students and staff alike, everyone eagerly anticipating the latest results of an accelerator run. Grad students would pull large photographic plates that had been exposed in a bubble chamber, and then they would painstakingly measure each swirl, each line and corkscrew of high-energy charged particles, shrapnel from nuclear collisions spiraling in magnetic fields.
The tracks on the film corresponded to fundamental types of matter, most of them known and well-characterized from years of research. But everyone searched for an unknown track, spirals with the wrong curvature, the wrong direction-a new elementary particle.
But that task was now automated. Every second, millions of collisions took place in the counter-rotating beams, and the tracks were scanned, catalogued, and scrutinized by an immense farm of Cray supercomputers in the Feynman Supercomputing Center. Individuals no longer played such a pivotal role in the big science of accelerator physics, replaced by the cold efficiency of automated machinery.
All of which allowed Bretti to move with confidence through the deserted complex, knowing that no one would be around to confront him. He couldn’t afford another disastrous situation like when he had unexpectedly encountered the FBI agent.
Bretti opened one more locked door to where a bank of computer terminals showed displays of each of the experimental target areas. Here, he’d have access to the main lattice trap he’d planted.
A thick bundle of fiberoptic cables ran into the room, taped to the floor before running up to banks of diagnostic equipment. Thick concrete walls enclosed the room, shielded by fine wire mesh to prevent electromagnetic interference.
Bretti checked the status of the Main Ring and the Tevatron. Dumenco’s gamma-ray laser had been up and running, operating in the small-signal regime, exciting the nuclear resonances so that an elevated, steady supply of p-bars would be injected into the main racetrack.
Bretti allowed a smile to form at the edges of his mouth. No one had discovered that he was bleeding off p-bars, and old Dumenco wasn’t in any condition to point the finger at him.
He debated leaving another collector in place, perhaps coming back in several months-by which time he might even have a gram of antimatter available! But that would be far too risky-he shouldn’t be loitering here even now. No, the Indians didn’t deserve any more, and he wanted to be long gone. Cut his losses, eliminate further risks.
Gaining entrance, he quickly typed in a command sequence. He raced past the menu of options and posted warnings that scrolled up on the screen, then waited until the computer confirmed that the crystal-lattice trap had been pulled from the beam.
Now, with nothing to capture the surplus antimatter, the Fermilab researchers would suddenly find a dramatic increase in “events.” He expected they would find it quite baffling, and no doubt work to concoct a harebrained theory of physics to explain it all.
Bretti glanced at the clock set above the row of computer screens. It was just after 5 a.m. Time to grab the device and get moving. He had a plane to catch that afternoon.
A few moments later he pushed a lab stool under the joint in the main beam channel that ran to the experimental target area. The thick pipe that made up the channel ran down the upper part of the concrete tunnel. Diagnostic wires, vacuum piping, and metal struts extended from the conduit, accompanied by a faint chugging of the pumps that maintained vacuum. Dim light, thrown out from bulbs screwed into protective cans, illuminated the tunnel with yellow light.
Bretti grunted as he reached up to disengage the antimatter trap from the experimental canister, which had been designed for quick and easy access by the researchers. Hundreds of such canisters hung in the main beam path, and so Bretti’s addition had drawn no special attention.
He carefully pulled the crystal-lattice trap away from the interlocking mechanism and held the device by two bulky protrusions, the base for the solid-state diode lasers that trapped the p-bars in potential wells between the sodium and chloride atoms.
The crystal-lattice trap was much more efficient than the crude Penning trap he had transported to India earlier in the week. He was aware of the danger of carrying such a large quantity of antimatter-the glassy crater from the substation explosion provided clear proof of that-but the diode lasers seemed stable.
He stepped down from the stool while holding the trap, careful not to bump it against anything. The device was designed to be rugged, but he couldn’t afford to be sloppy. If he knocked the lasers out of alignment, this cache of antimatter would be enough to wipe out several city blocks.
Bretti eased the small, cube-like container onto its side, then stepped back up on the stool to close the experimental container above. The whole apparatus weighed no more than a few pounds. Electrical wires ran from the container down to the antimatter trap. He would attach the battery and clean up the area.
In less than ten hours he’d be out of the country. And a million dollars richer.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Friday, 6:17 a.m.
Aurora, Illinois
Jackson snatched up his cellular phone on the car seat after the first shrill ring. The traffic in small, residential Batavia was almost nonexistent at this hour. It beat the hell out of putting up with the idiots driving in downtown Chicago, and for an assignment away from the Oakland area, it wasn’t bad-except for the fact that Ben Goldfarb was lying in Intensive Care.