Close Up the Sky (9 page)

The scientist
continued. "Our first thought was that the failure had caused a pipe to
burst and flood the reactor floor. That would account for the water, but the
presence of the seaweed was still a mystery. We performed a detailed
examination of the reactor but failed to locate any broken pipes or damaged
equipment. Except for the water and vegetation, everything appeared normal.

"We also
checked the radiation level before we entered the reactor chamber, but other
than the emissions coming from the test substance, there was nothing. Because
the flooding and power surge occurred simultaneously, it was obvious that the
two events were connected. Certainly, nothing like it had ever happened before.
However, we were dealing with a new element whose properties were almost
entirely unknown. The water on the floor was about six inches deep, so we used
a heavy vacuum to collect it then sealed it in airtight containers for analysis
by our chemists.

"While
waiting for the results, we continued to work with the element. Since it
couldn't be identified as belonging to any known group, we decided to call it
stellarite.
We removed it from the
reactor and repeated our earlier experiments. It was then that we learned it
had undergone a change from its previous composition. A new isotope had
appeared, indicating that it was attempting to conform in some way to the
uranium series of degeneration. The only problem was that the new isotope had
apparently been independently formed by the fission test, and was therefore not
a natural transformation."

Leahy held up his
hand, interrupting the narrative. "You're saying there was no trace of
that particular isotope before the attempt at neutron bombardment?" He was
confused about the testing procedure. Durant had said it was important that he
understood, so he intended to ask as many questions as necessary for
clarification, and if they sounded ignorant, so be it.

"That's
right. The test destroyed a minute portion of the stellarite, but the new
isotope was insignificant when compared to the remaining mass. Since there was
no way to determine what the rate of transformation might be without further
testing, we proceeded. We were reluctant to use the reactor again until the
mystery of the water was solved, so we programmed the computers with all the
information we had obtained from the initial test and ran a simulation.”

Durant leaned
forward. He stared intently at Matt, as though whatever he was about to reveal
would go directly to the heart of the matter. "The computer simulation
indicated that if the stellarite was subjected to another fission test, the
quantity of the new isotope would exactly double. A third bombardment would
double that quantity, and so on until the entire mass was transformed into the
isotope, creating an entirely new element and totally destroying the
stellarite. Since the rate of change was so small, the computer estimated we
would be able to run almost unlimited tests before the transformation was
complete. At the rate of one test per week, it would take almost two hundred
years to use up the stellarite. Unfortunately, we didn't know how wrong we
were." He trailed off, becoming pensive for a moment.

A short beep came
from the kitchenette. "Coffee's ready," Taylor announced. She went
over and brought back three steaming cups of the strong black liquid, handing
one to each of the men. The hot, bitter taste helped ease the tension Leahy was
feeling. He had been listening closely to Durant’s story, alert for a clue as
to how he fitted into this, but so far there was nothing.

"Well, to
continue," Durant said. He put the coffee down and clasped his hands,
fingers interlocked. Leahy noted that he worked the fingertips nervously
against the backs of his hands. "A few days after the computer test, we
received the results from the chemists concerning the material recovered from
the reactor room. Their analysis showed the liquid to be ordinary seawater. The
plant material was identified as a marine plant, commonly called seaweed. That
part of the report was no surprise since we already suspected it. But the
second part was most amazing." He picked up his pipe and began playing
with it.

"As I said
before, we sealed the water in airtight containers before shipping it to the
lab. The seaweed content was relatively dense, and for safety reasons none of
the technicians actually examined the material during its removal from the
chamber. Had we done so, the shock we received from the lab report would have
been considerably less. During the analysis, a living organism was discovered
in the water. That, in
itself
, was not unusual, since
all water contains some type of life. The shock was that this particular life
form was a
trilobite,
a kind of
crustacean that has been extinct since the Paleozoic era." Durant fell
silent, leaned back in his chair, and waited for Leahy's reaction.

Leahy shook his
head in puzzlement. "I don't understand. How could seawater leak into a
nuclear reactor? There's no ocean within hundreds of miles, not to mention one
containing extinct shellfish, or whatever it was."

“That’s just the
point,” Durant replied in a quiet voice. “Millions of years ago there
was
an ocean here.
In fact, the entire New Mexico desert was once a sea.”

Leahy shifted to
the edge of his chair. He looked back and forth from Durant to Taylor. "What
do you mean?" His voice was almost a whisper. "Are you saying the
water in the reactor came from an ocean that existed a million years ago, here
on this spot?" Even as he asked it, the enormity of the question shocked
him.

“I don’t blame you
for being skeptical, Matt, but it’s true,” Durant answered. “That’s the same
reaction we all had when we realized the implication of the report. No one
wanted to believe it, but there was only one explanation. We explored every
conceivable way the phenomenon could have occurred, but none of them fit the
facts. There was no way to avoid coming back to our original theory. The water
and its contents were somehow pulled forward into our time from a bygone era. As
impossible as it sounded, we could not dispute the evidence. Once we accepted
the truth, we were able to get on with our work; finding out exactly how it
happened."

"My
God," Leahy muttered, dumbfounded.

Durant continued,
"Since the energy released by the stellarite was of such short duration,
we constructed a special test chamber to use for future testing instead of the
reactor. After the new equipment was in place, we updated our computer program
and performed a second test. Once again the tremendous power surge occurred,
accompanied by brilliant green light. This time the seawater failed to appear. Instead,
the floor of the chamber was covered by marshy earth and decaying vegetation. Analysis
of the material revealed microscopic organisms that our biologists were unable
to identify. Because of the disparity between the first and second tests, we
repeated the experiment using the same parameters. The results were identical: more
marsh and vegetation materialized. It even had the same smell as the first
batch; a kind of wet, musty odor indicative of a swamp that receives too little
sunlight due to constant overcast.”

The scientist rose
and began to pace back and forth behind his desk. "We were almost afraid
to speculate on what was actually happening, but if our assumptions were
correct, the marsh was actually part of an ancient sea turned to swamp by the
passage of eons. Accepting that as true, we were looking at a piece of ground
that existed before man was ever conceived by the mind of God."

He stopped pacing,
put his hands on his desk, and leaned toward Leahy. "You can imagine the
implications of such a thing! But the question remained: how, or why, did the
stellarite materialize water on the first test, but marsh on the second and
third? The computers gave us the answer.

"You see,
each time the stellarite underwent neutron bombardment, it responded by
releasing a new kind of energy. The energy surge was instantaneous, and a
miniscule portion of the stellarite was changed into the new isotope. During
the transformation process, it interacted with Earth's magnetic field,
interrupting it in some way we don't yet fully understand. When the interruption
occurred, the energy forced a separation of the space-time continuum and opened
a kind of window into the past. During the instant the window was open, the
immediate area surrounding the stellarite became part of a past era. But
everything that stayed
outside
the
stellarite's sphere of influence remained in the present. In other words, if
you were outside the forty-foot circle of influence, you stayed in the present;
if not, you went into the past.

“We later found
that the different kinds of things that materialized during the tests were due
to the varying strengths of the electrical fields generated by the test
equipment. During the first test, when we were using the reactor, the type of
support machinery was different from that used in the special test chamber for
the following tests, so two different amounts of electrical flux were produced.
That’s why the second and third tests opened a window on a later era. In other
words, the amount of energy used was equal to a specific place along the time
continuum. Once we understood these basics, we were able to explore the
possibilities in greater detail."

Matt was
completely absorbed in the story. In fact, he was mentally racing ahead of
Durant, torn between excitement and fear about what its conclusion might
reveal.

"Of course,
there were still many unanswered questions about how to harness this new power
and how to use it for constructive purposes. That's when Apache Point came into
being. Over the next few years, the combined talents of hundreds of scientists,
engineers, and technicians from every related field were utilized to resolve
most of the problems. The result of their efforts has been the creation of
something man has imagined since the beginning of scientific thinking.”

Durant sat down
and leaned back in his chair. "H. G. Wells was more of a prophet than he
knew. We now have a fully operational instrument capable of opening the door
into any era of our past, allowing us to step through into history and return
at will."

Matt was stunned. If
he had not personally seen the gigantic research facility and witnessed the
extensive military involvement, he would have discounted the story as cleverly
designed fiction. If Feldon and Summerhour had been aware of what Durant had
just revealed to him, it was no wonder they couldn't disclose it. He understood
now why Taylor had insisted on avoiding the issue during their flight. The
knowledge made him light-headed. Time travel was something writers and
freethinking scientists had kicked around for years, but no one took them
seriously. Yet here he sat, a hundred feet beneath the surface of the Earth, in
the real world, listening to a noted physicist saying they had actually
accomplished it! The implications of such a thing were staggering. He wanted to
say something intelligent, but visions of Eloi and Morlocks kept disrupting his
thoughts. He felt soft fingers touch his forearm.

“Matt?” The sound
of Taylor’s voice interrupted his journey aboard Wells’s time machine and
brought him back to the present.

"I'm okay,
Taylor." He smiled and put his hand over hers. "I was just
daydreaming."

"Believe me,
Matt. I fully understand what you’re feeling," Kasdan sympathized. "I
underwent the same emotional trauma myself."

"I know it's
hard to accept, Matt. It's a little like finding out Santa Claus really does
exist, only this is worse," Durant said in an attempt to lighten the
atmosphere. "Would you like more coffee before we continue? I'm afraid
we've only skimmed the surface."

"No, please
go on." It was the most amazing thing Leahy had ever heard, and he was
anxious to hear more. However, he also felt an inexplicable dread, and wanted
to face it as quickly as possible.

"Good." Durant
got up and turned toward the star map. He stood staring at it for a few
seconds, hands clasped behind his back.

"You haven't
yet had time to fully realize the importance of such a discovery, Matt,"
he said. "But then, neither did we at first." He turned to face them
and continued with his story. "After we realized what we had stumbled onto
and had solved the control problems, there were still some very important
questions: what do you use such a device for? Do we hold in our hands the power
to change
history
as we know it? What about the
present? Could it be altered because of something we changed while tampering
with the past? What about the future? Does it already exist? Can we open a
window and see man's destiny a thousand years from now?

"The
implications were staggering, and we paid dearly for some of the answers. We
learned through experience that the past and present are locked together into
something like a chain. Each link is composed of an unalterable sequence of
events, so no matter what we do in the past, it appears to have no known effect
on the present. That is, with one very important exception: anything from the
present
, while operating in the past,
can
be altered. After a while it became
clear that the main danger involving expeditions into other eras was to the
agents themselves, not the possibility of their accidentally changing the
course of history. Do you follow me?"

"Let me be
sure,"
Matt
answered. The nerves in the back of
his neck were bunched into a knot. He massaged them absently while he thought
about Durant's question. "Suppose one of these agents caused the death of
.....
say, Napoleon before he became Emperor of France. I
don't see any way around the obvious consequences. History would be changed. There
would be no historic retreat from Russia, no Waterloo, and no French history as
we know it today."