“That’s just it. The Japanese scientists were able to pinpoint the source of the neutrino spike. They know where the burst came from.”
Painter extrapolated the answer. Why else would Gray be calling? “From the blast site in the mountains,” he concluded.
“Exactly.”
Painter let the shock wash through him. What did this news mean? He questioned Gray until they were talking in circles, getting no further. He finally signed off and sank back into his seat.
“What was that about?” Kowalski asked.
Painter shook his head, causing the dull ache behind his eyes to flare. He needed time to think things through.
Earlier, he’d talked to Ron Chin, who had been monitoring the blast site. He reported a strange volatility there, described how the zone remained active, spreading deeper and wider, eating away anything that it came in contact with, possibly denaturing matter at the atomic level.
Which brought Painter’s thoughts back to the source of the explosion.
Kanosh suspected something hidden inside the golden skull, something volatile enough that just removing it from the cave had caused it to explode. He’d also found evidence that the mummified Indians — if they were Indians — possessed artifacts that indicated some sophisticated knowledge of nanotechnology, or at least some ancient recipe for manufacturing that allowed them to manipulate matter at the atomic level.
And now this news of a spike in neutrinos — particles produced by catastrophic events at the atomic level.
It all seemed to circle back to nanotechnology, to a mystery hidden amid the smallest particles of the universe. But what did it all mean? If his head wasn’t pounding like a snare drum, he might be able to figure it out.
But for the moment he had only one firm sense, a jangling warning.
That the true danger was only starting.
Part II
Firestorm
Chapter 14
“We should tell someone,” Jun Yoshida insisted.
With his usual insufferable calmness, Dr. Riku Tanaka merely cocked his head from right to left, like a heron waiting to spear a fish. The young physicist continued to study the data flowing across the monitor.
“It would be imprudent,” the small man finally mumbled, as if to himself, lost in the fog of his Asperger’s.
As director of the Kamioka Observatory, Jun had spent the entire day buried at the heart of Mount Ikeno, in the shadow of the massive Super-Kamiokande neutrino detector. So had their Stanford colleague, Dr. Janice Cooper. The three of them had been monitoring neutrino activity following the early-morning spike. The source had been pinpointed to a mountain chasm in Utah, where some explosive event had taken place. But the exact details remained sketchy.
Was it a nuclear accident? Was the United States trying to cover it up?
He wouldn’t put it past the Americans. As a precaution, Jun had already alerted the international community about the spike, refusing to let such knowledge be buried away. If this was a secret experiment gone awry, the world had a right to know. He glared a bit at Janice Cooper, as if she were to blame. Then again, her incessant cheeriness was reason enough for resentment.
“I think Riku is right,” she said, speaking respectfully to her superior. “We’re still struggling to pinpoint this new source. And besides, the pattern of this new burst doesn’t look the same as the one in Utah. Perhaps we should hold off on any official announcement until we know more.”
Jun studied the screen. A graph continued to scroll, like a digital version of a seismograph. Only this chart tracked neutrino activity rather than earthquakes — but considering what they’d found, it was earthshaking in its own right. For the past eighty minutes, they’d picked up a new surge in neutrino generation. Just as before, it appeared to be coming from earth-generated geoneutrinos.
Only Dr. Cooper was correct: this pattern was distinctly different. The Utah explosion created a single monstrous burst of neutrinos. Afterward it had died down to a low burble, like a teapot on a stove. This new surge of activity was less intense, coming in cyclical bursts: a small spike, followed by a stronger one… then a lull, and it repeated, like the lub-dub beat of a heart.
It had been going on for over an hour.
“This has to be related to the earlier event,” Jun insisted. “It’s beyond statistical possibility to have two aberrant neutrino surges of these magnitudes within the span of a day.”
“Perhaps one caused the other,” Tanaka offered.
Jun leaned back and took of his glasses. He rubbed the bridge of his nose. His first knee-jerk reaction was to reject such an idea — especially considering its source — but he remained silent, contemplating. He had to admit it wasn’t a bad hypothesis.
“So you’re suggesting the first spike ignited something else,” Jun said. “Perhaps an unstable uranium source.”
In his mind’s eye, he pictured that initial burst of neutrinos radiating outward from the explosion, particles flying in all directions, passing through the earth like a swarm of ghosts — but leaving a trail of fire, capable of lighting another fuse.
“But neutrinos don’t react with matter,” Dr. Cooper said, throwing cold water on that idea. “They pass through everything, even the earth’s core. How could they ignite something?”
“I don’t know,” Jun said.
In fact, there was little he understood about any of this.
Tanaka pressed ahead, refusing to admit defeat. “We know some mysterious explosion generated this morning’s spike in Utah. Whatever that source was, it is very unique. I’ve never seen readings like this before.”
Dr. Cooper looked unconvinced, but Jun believed Riku might be following the right thread. Neutrinos were once thought to have no mass, no charge. But recent experiments had proven otherwise. Much about them remained a mystery. Maybe there was an unknown substance sensitive to neutrino bombardment. Maybe the Utah explosion of particles had lit the fuse on another deposit. It was a frightening thought. He pictured a daisy chain of blasts, one after the other, spreading around the globe.
Where would it stop? Would it stop?
“This is all conjecture,” Jun finally concluded aloud. “We won’t know any true answers until we find out where this new surge is coming from.”
No one argued with him. With a renewed determination, they set to work. Still, it took another half hour to finally coordinate with other neutrino labs around the globe to triangulate the source of these intermittent bursts.
They gathered around a monitor as the data collated. A world map filled the screen with a glowing circle that encompassed most of the Northern Hemisphere.
“That’s not much help,” Jun said.
“Wait,” Tanaka warned tonelessly.
Over the course of another ten minutes, the circle slowly narrowed, zeroing tighter and tighter upon the coordinates of the new neutrino surges. It was clearly nowhere near Utah.
“Looks like we can’t blame the United States this time,” Dr. Cooper said with relief as the contracting circle cleared the North American continent.
Jun stared, dumbfounded, as the source was finally pinpointed, fixed with a set of crosshairs.
They all shared a glance.
“So now do we tell someone?” Jun asked.