“But that doesn't answer the question — why keep it a secret from the former administration?” The President directed the comment at Colonel Michael Argentine.
A little over six feet tall and lean with a straight nose, dark hair, and hollow cheeks, Argentine was a cognitive psychologist specializing in training techniques. Officially, the forty-five-year-old career officer served as director of the Institute for Defensive Research at the Southern Command Headquarters, Miami. Unofficially, he was the military coordinator for Deep Scan.
The colonel cleared his throat. “Well, sir, once President Bush created Deep Scan, he made arrangements for it to go on even after he left office. One of the last things he did was to instruct that the current President be informed about the existence of Deep Scan only if it were successful in its mission.”
“I'm still not clear on exactly what that mission was, gentlemen.”
Dolen spoke up. “The original assignment of Deep Scan was to evaluate existing military technology and adapt it to our nation's dependency on foreign sources of oil.”
“About a month ago,” Argentine said, “during a routine electronic file search through the Department of Defense archives, we came across a reference to something called Project Candle Power. It was only a partial document and our guess was it might have been a file fragment. It contained just enough information to attract our attention. Are you familiar with the principle of fusion, Mr. President, particularly the theory of cold fusion?”
The President nodded. “There were a couple of scientists in Utah—”
“Pons and Fleischmann,” Dolen said.
“Didn’t they claim to achieve fusion at room temperature?” the President asked. “But I thought the scientific community regarded their work as fake. Just a chemical reaction, not nuclear.”
“Until recently it was never duplicated in other labs,” Argentine said. “Even when there was success, it was inconsistent. Palladium is just too unreliable. But what we’re talking about came prior to the Pons and Fleischmann experiments. Apparently, a decade earlier, the government conducted secret tests to develop an alternative energy source based on cold fusion. The tests were much more successful than what came later with Pons and Fleischmann in Utah.”
“Obviously, it wasn't much of a success or there’d be a noticeable lack of gas pumps today,” the President said. “So what happened?”
Dolen answered. “What started out as an energy experiment turned into the development of a new type of weapon, a weapon of unthinkable power capable of mass destruction on a global scale. It's referred to in the document as a korium device and was code named Thorpe's Candle.”
“Interesting name.” The President made a note on his pad. “Do we know how it worked?”
Dolen went on, “Yes, sir. To create conventional nuclear fusion, you need to operate in temperatures way beyond what can be safely handled in the lab.”
“Like what you would find at the core of the sun,” Argentine said. “One hundred million degrees or more.”
“That's what makes cold fusion so attractive,” Dolen said. “Theoretically, we're talking about very manageable temperatures and conditions. The theory of cold fusion is amazingly simple — a rod of metal such as palladium is placed in heavy water. Heavy water contains the hydrogen isotope tritium that is also an essential component of nuclear fusion weapons such as the hydrogen bomb. The palladium is placed near a second metal electrode and an electric current is applied to both poles causing electrolysis — the splitting of water molecules. Atoms of deuterium, a heavy isotope of hydrogen, are forced into the palladium metal where the deuterium atoms fuse to form helium atoms.”
“My eyes are glazing over,” the President said. “Can you give it to me in plain English?”
“I'm sorry, sir,” Dolen said, blushing. “When the people working on Project Candle Power substituted the palladium electrode with one made of a rare mineral called korium, all hell broke loose. They came close to cooking themselves and everything in sight. There was heat produced in a factor of a hundred thousand to one, neutrons and gamma rays along with massive quantities of helium and tritium. All the makings of a nuclear event.”
“Korium?” the President said. “Never heard of it.”
Dolen said, “Korium has existed only in small quantities. Somewhat similar to platinum or rhodium, it was used for a short time for plating tiny precision instruments. There have only been a few sources of korium, mostly in remote areas of the Arctic. In fact, only one commercial mine ever existed. It was located in Iceland and played out after only a few years. According to the Department of Mining and Exploration, none are known to exist today.”
“All right,” the President said, “you've convinced me this korium is rare.”
“Much more than rare,” Dolen continued. “Essentially non-existent. That's why we theorize they abandoned Project Candle Power because there was no korium to build the device. Using anything else yielded minimal or no results — not worth the investment. The scientists destroyed their one working model and put their research data under Alpha level protection.”
“So if there's no more korium, why are you so concerned about someone stealing the design of the device?” the President asked.
Reynolds answered, “Technology has come a long way since the discovery of cold fusion using korium, sir. Utilizing virtual elements created with the VR molecule engine at Lawrence Livermore, we've already confirmed that the device is possible. We can show in theory that Project Candle Power works using computer generated element simulations. All we need is a sample of korium to build and test the real thing.”
“So this brings us back to the original problem,” the President said. “You tell me that you’ve actually located a new source of korium but it's on foreign soil. And you want me to approve a covert mission to go in and get enough for you to confirm your tests?”
“That's correct, sir,” Argentine said.
“Well, the suspense is killing me, gentlemen. What country are we talking about?”
“Since we uncovered the existence of Project Candle Power,” Dolen answered, “we've had the Department of Reconnaissance reconfigure their RAYKR satellite to perform a search for any trace of the mineral. Yesterday they scanned the Caribbean. Their data confirms small traces of korium at a remote mining site in the mountains of Eastern Cuba.”
The room fell silent as the President leaned back in his chair and stared at the ceiling. “Couldn't be someplace easy, I guess.”
“No, sir,” Argentine replied. “Never seems to work out that way.”
“You said you believe someone else is working on a korium device. Do you think it's the Cubans?”
“We have no idea, sir,” Reynolds answered.
“Well, if they're going to the trouble of digging it out of the ground, they must be doing something with it. Are they plating tiny precision instruments or are they building some new kind of hydrogen bomb?”
“There's no market for the mineral as a plating agent anymore,” Argentine said. “There are too many other cheap, synthetically produced alternatives. I doubt the Cubans have the technology to construct Thorpe's Candle. Although cold fusion is simple in theory, it would still take a great deal of skill to set up a lab and build the device. We think they're extracting it for someone else.”
Dolen added, “We're convinced that someone removed the files on the original Project Candle Power. Last night, Professor Reynolds ran a latent image sector and cluster scan and found that about six months ago the files were copied and subsequently erased.”