"I've heard that referred to several times," Hawkins said. "What is this Hermes Project?"
Batson rubbed the stubble of beard on his chin with a shaking hand. "It was formed about two years ago. Some bright light in D.C. figured that the President should have a scientific think tank that he could call on when he needed answers. Not knowing what the potential questions would be that he might need answers to, the government recruited one or two of the top people in every possible scientific field and made them part of what they named the Hermes Project. I was tapped to be part of it eighteen months ago. "In that time I've been to five orientation meetings in West Virginia, but this is only the second time I've ever been called to actually work on something."
"What about you?" Hawkins shifted his gaze to Fran.
"I was one of the original members of Hermes. Last I checked, there were eighty-seven full-fledged members. I've done a lot more work under the auspices of the project than Don has, though. As a matter of fact, all I've been doing for the past sixteen months is running projections for Lamb and his people."
"A scientific soothsayer."
They all turned in surprise at the unexpected voice. Dr. Pencak stood in the tent doorway, leaning on her cane. She made her way over to the table and sat down in a chair.
"I've never heard statistical projection called that," Fran remarked. "Quite frankly, the way my projections run, they are far from being soothing."
"How does this event merge with your projections?" Pencak asked.
"It doesn't," Fran said.
"So are they still valid?"
"It depends," Fran replied. "You need to look at the course of history as a deep-running river. You can throw stones in the river, but it will still run in the same course. You need something very significant to be able to change the direction. No pun intended, but so far this is just a stone. A very puzzling one, but still just a stone."
"What direction are we headed in now?" Batson wanted to know.
"Not a very good one." Fran closed her eyes briefly, really not wanting to get into it, then opened them. She knew the numbers by heart. "There's a very strong probability we will have a severe worldwide economic depression in the next few years. The destruction of that mine in South Africa can only hasten that event. There's also a very strong probability we may have another world war, as the world's economy reaches critical mass-this one oriented more north south, industrialized nations against the underdeveloped. The shapers against the suppliers of the raw materials."
"Not a very strong chance we will live happily ever after?" Hawkins asked.
Another explosion rumbled through the Rock.
"No. If we don't screw ourselves up by setting off nuclear bombs, then what we are doing to the environment will most likely do us in."
"Is that why you had your breakdown?" Hawkins quietly asked.
Fran considered him for a few moments, then nodded. "You can only deal with so much negative information before you need a release. I had no support in my marriage, so I picked the easiest thing I could find. I started drinking too much. I thought I could handle it all, but it finally caught up with me after a year."
"And the information hasn't gotten any more positive, has it?" Pencak noted.
"No, but I deal with it better," Fran replied.
"Yes, you may deal with it better," Pencak said. "But the people who are in power don't. Why does this entire mission here have to be classified? Why can't we share what we have found?"
Fran looked at Hawkins and knew what he was thinking. If Pencak knew about the men who'd just died at Tunguska, she'd really have something to talk about.
"What do you think about the second transmission?" Batson asked the question Fran had already considered in her mind.
"What message?" Pencak interrupted Fran's answer.
Fran quickly explained the strange transmission that had faded out and in. "I think Debra might have a point," she ended up admitting.
"Hold on," Hawkins said. "We're getting too caught up in the details here. Let's get back to the big picture. We've had a lot of things happen in the past week-most of which don't make much sense. Let's back up a little bit and see if we can find any pattern to all this."
Fran hid her smile as Hawkins went to the easel and started writing on the paper with a marker. She liked his way of always trying to draw things out to make them easier to see. When he was done, he had seven blocks listed:
Hawkins tapped the paper. "The nuclear bombs may have nothing to do with the Rock. All we know is that a transmission was directed at Vredefort Dome shortly after that bomb went off. If we assume there was something under the Dome, similar to what we have here and what the Russians have uncovered at Tunguska, we might also assume that the transmission was an attempt to contact whatever it is. Perhaps what's here in the Rock monitored the blast and wanted to check on the status of the site at Vredefort Dome."
"And it failed," Fran noted, "because the nuke destroyed whatever was under the Dome."
"I don't buy it," Batson disagreed. "The area around Vredefort Dome has been extensively mined. There's a good chance that if there was anything under it, it would have been found by now."
"And there's a good chance it wouldn't have been," Pencak countered. "The Red Streak was the first mine to actually go under the Dome itself, and it angled in over a mile underground. That leaves a mile of unexplored rock directly under the Dome."
"Also," Fran said, "remember that the transmissions in 1945 occurred when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed. Maybe this thing transmits anytime nuclear weapons are used in a destructive manner."
"How can it-whatever it is-tell the difference between a nuclear blast that's for real and one that is just for testing?" Batson asked.
Pencak turned her eye to Hawkins, ignoring the geologist. "I have not been kept up-to-date on everything that's happened. What do you mean when you say 'similar to what the Russians have uncovered at Tunguska'?"
Hawkins showed her the satellite imagery and explained what had happened with his team. Fran watched the older woman's face for any sort of reaction. If Lamb was correct, the Tunguska information should come as no surprise to her. Her face betrayed little, but her voice was excited as she ignored what had happened to the men and focused on what had been found by the Russians.
"This is amazing! We never did any probing into the ground when we were there. Maybe Felix did know something, but I doubt it. They would have dug this up a long time ago if they had suspected it existed. If there is something at Tunguska, then I think we definitely have to believe that there was something under the Dome."
"What about the other three sites?" Fran asked.
"Destroyed long ago, most likely."
"Fine," Batson said. "Say we buy into that. What about Voyager 2? How did it get destroyed only yesterday?"
Pencak shook her head. "I don't know. But I think that fact also points very strongly to extraterrestrial involvement."
Hawkins disagreed. "The Russians have particle-beam weapons that might have destroyed Voyager."
"That far away?" Pencak wasn't buying it. "If they had a particle-beam weapon that could reach from Earth to beyond the orbit of Pluto, I think we would have seen it deployed here on this planet or at least heard something about it."