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"I think first we need to have a better idea what we're dealing with," Hawkins interjected.

Lamb seconded that. "It has been decided not to attempt any communication with the Rock quite yet.

"That's if there is anything in there to communicate with," he added. "Despite the fact that something apparently transmitted out of there, we can't be sure that it can receive."

"Well, what are you doing?" Fran asked.

"Colonel Tolliver's people have secured the immediate area of Ayers Rock with the help of the Australians," Lamb answered. "By the way, the Australian government is aware that there was a transmission out of the Rock and that it is somehow tied in to the explosion at Vredefort Dome and the missing bombs, but they do not know we have decrypted the message."

Fran rolled her eyes. "Besides guarding the Rock and keeping the message secret, what else are you doing?"

"It's more a question of what you're going to do," Lamb replied. "We are setting up living areas on top of the Rock. We're also bringing in mining equipment in case we have to dig down to the chamber. The Australians will not be very keen about that, since the Rock is a national landmark and legally it is set aside as a place of worship for the Aborigines, but if this is connected with the bombs, we might have to do that and they'll play along."

Batson raised a hand. "Can you show us the slide with the locations that the first transmission went to again?"

Lamb backed up the projector. "The one in North America is centered in northeast Arizona. Near the town of Winslow. The one in South America is in Argentina near a place called Campo del Cielo. The one in Europe is centered around Nuremberg, Augsburg, and Stuttgart in Germany. The one in Russia is in Central Siberia."

Don Batson was suddenly alert. "Do you have an atlas?"

Lamb pulled one off the table and handed it to Batson, who eagerly thumbed through. "Campo del Cielo is similar to Ayers Rock and Vredefort Dome in that there is a unique geological feature. I want to see what's in Germany and near Winslow."

He flipped open to Germany and looked. "I've been here-Nordlingen is right there in the center of a triangle formed by those three cities. There's a feature called Ries Basin there. And I know what's outside Winslow." He started turning pages, then stopped and looked up, his finger pointing down at the page. "Meteor Crater is only twenty miles outside of Winslow."

"I don't understand," Fran commented. "What does that have to do with the message?"

Batson was tapping his finger on the atlas. "Campo del Cielo and the Ries Basin are also suspected of having been formed a long time ago by meteor impact. As is the area around Vredefort Dome. I think it's very interesting that four of the five areas the transmissions were sent to are very close to suspected meteor strike spots."

"What about Siberia?" Hawkins asked.

"I don't know about that," Batson admitted. He thought for a few seconds and tapped the map, which was open to Arizona. "But there is someone who might."

"Who?" Lamb inquired.

"Dr. Susan Pencak. She lives by the crater in Arizona. She's the best-known authority on it in the world. If anyone can make a connection between those various sites, it would be her. She makes her living studying strange geological formations and teaching." Batson smiled wryly in remembrance. "But she's also a little bit flaky. She has some weird ways of looking at things."

"I'll bring her here," Lamb decided. "We need every piece of information we can possibly get our hands on."

"Right now"-Lamb pointed to three boxes full of documents stacked on a table-"you have access to all information concerning these events. There are also computers linked into our main data base for your use. If there is anything else you need, please contact me immediately. We'll be moving to the Rock in about twenty-four hours, once everything is set up out there."

Lamb made his way out of the room, followed by Tolliver. Fran glanced around at the other members of the "team." Hawkins was hiding any reaction he might have. Batson looked befuddled after his insight into the transmission reception sites. Levy looked mildly interested in what was probably to her an interesting intellectual problem.

"He's lying to us," Fran announced.

"What?" Batson blinked at her.

"They're going to drill into that Rock the minute they have the equipment there to do it," she replied. "They're scared, and when they're scared, they usually overreact and keep everything a secret."

She'd expected Hawkins to get upset by her comments but instead he nodded slightly. "That's true. I'm sure they will start or probably have already started drilling." He looked at Batson. "You're the mining engineer. How long will it take them?"

Batson shook his head. "I'd have to know what kind of rock it's made of. Where they're starting from. What kind of equipment. What diameter bore they're making. It's impossible to just-"

"Just a SWAG, Mister Batson," Hawkins interrupted. "A simple wild-ass guess. A day? Two days? A week? A month?"

Batson rubbed his chin. "He said center of mass of Ayers Rock. They'd go in from the top. Say five or six hundred feet of tunnel through solid rock." He looked up at the ceiling briefly. "Five days. Give or take two days either way. That's if they only drill and don't blast, and I don't think they'll be blasting here on a national landmark."

"That's all well and good," Fran commented. "So we have a week of sitting around with all this data and no earthly idea where to start and no idea where we're going with it."

Hawkins stood. "Listen up for a second. You all are the scientists. I'm just a dumb soldier, but whenever I get a mission tasking, the first thing I do is organize the information I am given. I do that before I start making my plans." He pointed at the boxes. "I suggest we break down the stuff in there. Mr. Batson-"

"Don," Batson interrupted. "Call me Don. Mister makes me nervous."

"All right, Don." Hawkins nodded. "You can call me Hawkins-I'm used to that from the military and I probably wouldn't respond if you used my first name." He glanced at the other team members and they introduced themselves.

"Fran."

"Debra."

"All right. Don, since it's your area, you become the Rock expert. You find out everything there is to know about Ayers Rock and then brief us on it later today."

Don looked relieved to have something he could handle. "All right." He moved across the room and began digging through the books and folders in them.

Hawkins swung his gaze around. "Fran, I hate to show my ignorance, but what is statistical projection?"

Fran was used to the question and was impressed that Hawkins was admitting his ignorance up front. "I take information, collate it, and then make a computer program that gives probabilities on future trends."

"You predict the future, then?" Hawkins asked.

She graced him with a slight smile. "It's not that simple. Let's say I predict possible futures and give you the percentage chances of them occurring."

"How about the present?" Hawkins asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Could you try to make some sort of connection between the Rock, Voyager, the explosion at Vredefort, and the messages?"

Debra Levy spoke. "You're making a flawed assumption."

Hawkins didn't seem bothered by either the interruption or the negative comment. "In what way?"

"There are too many unknowns here to even begin to think all those events are interconnected," Levy said. "We know the message and Voyager are connected because of the use of the information from the record on board the probe. We don't know that the messages and the explosion at Vredefort Dome are connected. If they are, then the explosion occurred first and we know-or at least Mr. Lamb has told us-that was caused by radicals in South Africa. So I would say that it is very unlikely that those same radicals are causing the messages to be sent."