They passed through the front gate of the COBRA complex at 6:26 and moved immediately to Chilgers’ private garage bay. Once the door had closed behind them, the floor of the bay began to descend, heading down five stories beneath the earth’s surface. Another door slid up at 6:29 and Chilgers hurried from the bay, leaving his chauffeur behind as always. At 6:30 on the dot he swung open the door leading to the conference room which bordered his private office.
“Glad to see you’re on time, gentlemen,” he said to the two men seated in armchairs off to the right from the conference table. “Let’s get started.”
The two men rose and waited for the colonel to take his customary black leather chair before being seated again, not noticing him flip on the intercom box resting on the end table next to him. They were a study in contrasts. The larger of the two, Dr. Benjamin Teke, was a composed, confident man whose certainty of his own position on everything bordered on pomposity but never quite crossed over. His head was clean-shaven and round, showcasing his particularly spacious cranial cavity and the — he claimed — particularly large brain contained therein. Though there was no medical evidence to back him up, Teke was undaunted. He had been a COBRA man from the beginning, a damn good researcher who had risen to take over the Confidential Projects section. He was a company man all the way and Chilgers knew he could always count on Teke for support when needed. Teke wasn’t nearly as smart as he wanted people to believe, but he was exceptionally good at fooling them. When he failed to do so, there was always the intimidation route at which he was as adept as Chilgers.
Professor Lewis Metzencroy was something else entirely. Slight, balding, and bespectacled, Metzencroy was a genius in every sense of the word but a modest and humble one. Nothing was ever clear-cut for him. He was a scientist in the truest form, believing the purpose of his field was not to pass judgment or even make decisions but simply to discover and explore. He was meticulous in his work and never expounded on any theory or discovery until he had tested it from every conceivable angle. Like Teke, he was a company man, but unlike Teke his relationship with COBRA seldom extended beyond being told what to do and following through. He left the activation part to men like Chilgers who had the stomach for it, because he certainly didn’t.
Metzencroy took off his glasses and wiped them with the handkerchief he held perpetually in his right hand.
Colonel Chilgers lit his pipe. “I believe the only item on tonight’s agenda is an updated report on the tangent stage of Project Vortex.” He met Metzencroy’s eyes and already knew there was trouble, a hundred sides about to come to a problem that could have only one. Chilgers liked things neat, clean, and sure. Second-guessing and overexplaining were tantamount to lunacy, curses of the weak. He loathed men like Metzencroy and longed for more like Teke. He realized, however, that Metzencroy, for all his faults, was a brilliant scientist, specifically the scientist who had nursed Project Vortex from its inception. And Project Vortex was the biggest thing COBRA had ever taken on.
Chilgers moved his eyes to Teke. “What is the latest on Flight 22?”
Teke smiled slightly. The bright fluorescent lighting of the underground room bounced off his barren dome. “All computer reports and analyses confirm that we successfully degenerated and then regenerated the jet within all accountable limits of margin for error. In fact, I’m inclined to call the tangent phase a smashing success so far as all practical considerations go.”
“I’m inclined to disagree,” argued Metzencroy, dabbing nervously at his brow with the ever-present handkerchief. “I studied the readings in detail last night and did some computer enhancements of them this morning. Something’s wrong.”
Chilgers stroked his pipe. “What?” he asked, trying to sound sincere. Project Vortex was the professor’s baby. He couldn’t risk aggravating him.
“A bubble,” said Metzencroy.
“A bubble?” from Teke.
“In the spacetime continuum,” the professor continued. “Consider first that the gap in dimensions — the discontinuity — we’re talking about isn’t much different from a carpet laid over a floor. Sometimes a bubble appears and usually it can be smoothed over … unless, of course, the rug was too big to begin with in which case the bubble can be moved but not eliminated.”
“I’m not a scientist,” Chilgers reminded him. “You’ll have to speak plainer.”
Metzencroy frowned. “The computer grids taken during the tangent stage show a discontinuity, a lapse, probably only a second in duration in which we lost the plane.”
“Come now, Professor,” the colonel chided. “You know better than I that losing the plane was precisely what we were after.”
“To the naked eye, yes. To even the most advanced radar equipment, yes. But not to the computer relays on board. The implications of that are catastrophic.”
“But we’re only talking about a second, if that,” interjected Teke helplessly.
“In the spacetime continuum, a second might be an eternity for all we know. Besides, you’re missing my point. I’m telling you that for an instant the plane didn’t just disappear from sight, it disappeared altogether. It didn’t exist anymore anywhere.”
“Haven’t we experienced similar results before?” asked Chilgers, puffing his pipe.
“Previous tests prior to the tangent stage were conducted at speeds too high for our computers to register accurately. That doesn’t mean similar lapses didn’t occur.”
“I fail to see the enormity of your discovery,” snapped Teke.
“Very simply put, Doctor, if the plane, for however long, wasn’t where it was supposed to be, then where was it? The computers don’t lie. They’re telling us that the experiment was out of our control long enough for me to question the feasibility of the project.”
Chilgers pulled the pipe from his mouth. “The project?”
“The tangent phase of it at the very least. The new factor might have been more than Project Vortex could endure.”
“People,” muttered Teke.
“Exactly,” echoed Metzencroy. “The whole purpose behind the tangent stage was to test the effects of Vortex on human subjects instead of just machines. I agree with the concept in principle from a scientific standpoint. But from that same standpoint, I must argue in favor of abandoning all tangent phases for the foreseeable future.”
“And the rest of the project?” wondered Chilgers.
“I can’t say until I reevaluate the findings from this latest experiment. But there’s obviously something we haven’t considered about Vortex which might change everything. Frankly, the presence of that bubble frightens the hell out of me. I can see no logical explanation for it.”
“Professor,” interposed Chilgers, “logic had little to do with starting Project Vortex in the first place. Why should it enter in now?” He rested his pipe in an ashtray on a stand by his chair.
Metzencroy was dabbing furiously at his brow. “Because we’ve entered a new realm here, a realm as far removed from atomic weapons as they are from slingshots. We’ve got to tread slowly, slowly and cautiously. We can’t take extra steps until we’re absolutely certain about the ones we’ve made so far. I’m afraid that certainty no longer exists, if it ever really did.”
Chilgers just looked at him.
“I think you’re exaggerating,” insisted Teke. “This bubble of yours, Professor, could easily be the result of a simple slip in magnetization or a false reading due to movement in the jet stream. Hell, the answer may lie in the charts gathered by some simple weather balloon sitting up there in the general area of Flight 22.”
Metzencroy squeezed his handkerchief dry and shook his head. “I’ve considered those possibilities as well.”