“They rely a lot on eyes being the true window into our souls here,” Ivar said.
“Save it for Eagle,” Doc said shortly. “He likes that kind of philosophical stuff.”
They got into the elevator.
“It takes a while,” Doc said as the doors slid shut after they entered.
“How far down?” Ivar asked as the elevator began to accelerate into the Earth.
“Two miles.”
That took ten minutes and it seemed Doc had run out of things to talk about, so the only noise was the whirring of the elevator’s engine. Actually, Doc never ran out of things to talk about or ways to spread the wealth of his knowledge. His mind had slipped into a dark rut — more a valley, actually — which it always did whenever he went down to the Can. The left side of his brain, the numbers side, was calculating the tons of pressure accumulating around them as they descended and how small a mass of protoplasm his body would be crushed into if it all collapsed.
Sometimes being smart had its disadvantages.
“The Can is a Super-Kamiokande,” Doc said as he gave up, knowing he’d be crushed into a tiny, tiny object if everything imploded.
“Like the one in Japan?”
“Yes. Early on when they started digging into Groom Mountain to develop the base, they did soundings and found a large, natural void deep underground. No one thought it was of much use until we realized we needed to build the Can.”
“And the Can detects Rifts.” Orlando would have been proud, because Ivar made it a statement, not a question.
The elevator came to a halt and Doc opened the metal gate. A corridor carved out of solid rock beckoned. They began the two-hundred-yard walk down it, fluorescent lights flickering overhead.
It ended, opening to a cavern eighty yards in diameter.
“The Japanese have one, we have one, and the Russians have one,” Doc said as they walked out onto metal grating suspended over still dark water.
“So you can triangulate.” Another statement.
Two people were on duty, staring at computer monitors with the glazed look of someone who spent 99.9 percent of their time doing nothing with nothing happening. Ivar understood that. He’d spent a lot of bench time doing the exact same thing.
Doc and Ivar walked over. “The Can picks up muonic activity, which Rifts give off when they begin to form. Gives us thirty-eight minutes of warning at least. That’s the fastest from first indication to activation recorded. We usually get more time.”
Ivar looked over the shoulder of an operator. Four large displays were further broken down into data boxes with various electronic readings, graphs, and charts. He began to ask questions of the two operators, much to the irritation of Doc, who finally walked away to a stack of printouts and began going through them.
Even the operators eventually had enough of the questioning and turned back to their screens. Ivar walked out onto the metal grating that extended over the dark pool of water covering the stainless steel tank, which was sixty meters wide and deep. Along the walls of the tank, over 20,000 photomultiplier tubes (PMTs) were patiently waiting for incoming muons. PMTs are extremely sensitive light sensors that can detect a single photon as it travels through and reacts with water. They were all linked together with the output displayed on the computers at the workstations.
The tank was filled with very pure water. The surface was dark black and Ivar found it quite mesmerizing. Pretty much everyone who came down here did. Ivar knelt and glanced quickly over; Doc was flipping through some charts and the two operators weren’t visible, hidden behind their large monitors. He pulled a small black orb out of his pocket, pressed the top, was rewarded with a slight buzz, and dropped it into the water. Then he stood, hands on the railing.
After five minutes, Doc had enough, dropping the readouts. “Let’s go. All that matters is that we get our Rift alerts.”
“Really?” Ivar was surprised. “But if we don’t understand the Rifts, how are we going to stop them completely? Moms said—”
“We know enough to shut one when it happens,” Doc said.
“Seems a bit shortsighted,” Ivar said.
Doc stopped abruptly and faced Ivar. He jabbed a finger in his chest. “When you have more time on the team, then maybe you can question me. For now, I suggest you shut up and learn.”
Ivar didn’t step back. “Excuse me, Doc, but you didn’t know how to shut the Rift in my lab. You didn’t even know what the hell that was in my lab. I barely remember what I was doing. This thing seems to be evolving, changing, as Ms. Jones said. Think about what happened in North Carolina in my lab. This guy, Burns, coming through in St. Louis. The scientist who opened the Gateway Rift received a fatal dose of radiation, yet Burns apparently is still moving about. And what he did to the Snake. That’s all something new, right?”
“You did not even get your PhD,” Doc said. “Do not dare lecture me.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Ivar said.
Both operators had turned their chairs around to observe the fireworks, which was more interesting than the screens they’d been watching. Which was unfortunate, because in one of the data boxes on one of the screens, there was a slight disturbance — not muonic, and not enough to trigger an alarm, but something, a slight surge.
Something that should have been noticed.
“It’s just a piece of paper,” Ivar said. “You can wipe your ass with it.”
Instead of continuing the fight, Doc headed for the elevator. “You coming?” he added over his shoulder.
The operators turned back to their screens and all was normal.
At least it appeared that way.
Scout was getting antsy. She’d ridden back home, hiding in her room, waiting for her iPhone to come alive with a message from Nada. Her mother was still off doing whatever it was that her mother filled her days with. Probably shopping for a pot or something. And then for something to put in the pot. Then something to put the pot on. Then she’d come home and spend hours trying to figure out the exact right place to put the pot. Decide there was no exact right place. And spend tomorrow returning the pot, along with the thing she’d wanted to put in the pot. And the thing she’d wanted to put the pot on.
The usual crap.
Scout was curled up, arms around her knees, on the window seat in her bedroom staring out at the river.
It was no longer as enchanting as it had been.
A crackling noise caught her attention and she cranked open the window and leaned out. The metal skeleton holding up the power lines had a slight golden glow on the one leg the black line had been heading toward.
Not being an expert on unnatural forces except for her brief stint with the Nightstalkers, Scout figured she ought to be cut some slack for her guesstimate being off as she watched the glow go up the leg, as if steel were turning to gold.
It reached the first arm holding a power line and moved vertical.
Without even realizing she was doing it, Scout’s hand went into her pocket and she pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes. She’d quit, really, last week, but circumstances were getting a bit weird.
She scratched a wooden match on the roofing tile outside the window just as the glow touched the wire. Her shoulders were hunched, expecting an explosion, a ball of flame, an earthquake, flying monkeys, something.
But nothing. Except the gold didn’t spread any more on the tower.
The cigarette dangled from Scout’s mouth, unlit as she waited, until she cursed as the match burned down to her fingers. She dropped the match and took the cigarette out of her mouth.