The Orion Plan (36 page)

This warning made Joe nervous. “You mean I'll get dizzy?”

That's one possibility. As a precaution, you may want to sit down.

He looked around. The only place to sit was the pitcher's mound. He walked toward the low hill of dirt and sat down at its center. He drew his knees toward his chest and wrapped his arms around them. “Okay. I'm ready, I guess.”

Then lightning flashed inside his mind.

 

TWENTY-TWO

Sarah was surprised when Luis brought her to Yankee Stadium. But she was astonished when she saw Tom Gilbert there. For twenty years she'd fantasized about a vengeful reunion with her ex-fiancé, but she'd never imagined it happening at a ballpark.

She saw him step out of a black limo parked in front of the stadium's corporate entrance. The limo looked official enough, exactly the kind of vehicle the White House science adviser would tool around in. But the two young men who accompanied him didn't look official at all. Unlike Tom, they weren't dressed in drab gray suits; instead, they wore baggy pants and sleeveless shirts, and their bandannas matched Luis's. They also had matching implants in the palms of their right hands.

The boys walked on either side of Tom, gripping his arms to steer him toward the stadium's glass doors. He didn't seem to be physically hurt—he had no visible bruises, at least, and he wasn't limping—but as Sarah drew closer she saw the agitated expression on his face. He'd lost some hair and gained some weight over the past two decades, and there was a sheen of sweat on his forehead. He opened his mouth when he saw Sarah and Luis, as if he were about to yell for help, but he gave up on the idea when Luis greeted his friends in Spanish. Then, as the teenagers bumped fists, Tom stared at Sarah, scrunching his face as he recognized her.

“Jesus,” he hissed. He sounded more annoyed than frightened. “What are
you
doing here?”

She didn't respond. With one question he'd squashed whatever sympathy she'd felt for him. Sarah's presence here was just a distraction for him. His only concern was his own safety.

He hasn't changed a bit,
she thought.

While they stared at each other, a fourth boy emerged from the darkness on the other side of the glass doors. He let them inside, and then all six of them headed down a long corridor. Two of the boys walked in front and two behind. Sarah walked alongside Tom but remained silent. After several seconds he edged closer to her.

“Can you believe this?” he whispered. “These delinquents broke into my house in Bethesda at three in the morning. They scared the shit out of me, forced me into the backseat of my car, and drove me all the way up here. And I have no fucking idea why.” His voice rose, but the teenagers didn't seem to notice or care. “Did they do the same to you?”

“Not exactly. I was in a jail cell.”

“What? How did—”

“It was your friend, General Hanson. Turns out that he wasn't the best person to give all those emergency powers to. In plain English, he's gone wacko.”

Tom scowled. “First of all, Hanson's no friend of mine. Second, it's your own fault that he has those powers. You're the one who gave him his so-called evidence. Your name is all over the reports he's been sending to the White House.”

“So you've seen everything? The analysis of the probe's trajectory? The sample with the nanodevices?”

“Yes, I was at the National Security Council meeting where Hanson's report was discussed. I didn't agree with his conclusions, and neither did the defense secretary or the Joint Chiefs. But the national security adviser took Hanson seriously and authorized the emergency operations.”

“Well, Hanson's no friend of mine either, but the White House
should
be taking him seriously. The alien probe is using its nanodevices to establish a foothold. Its machinery has spread miles beyond the landing site.”

“Oh, I don't doubt the seriousness of the threat. I just don't believe that aliens have invaded Manhattan.” Tom's voice was heavy with disdain. “The Russians have been working for years on nanotech weapons. It's a thousand times more likely that they're the ones who built and launched this probe.”

Sarah shook her head. The problem with Tom was that he had no mind of his own. In bureaucratic language, he was a team player; in cruder terms, he was an ass-kisser. If most of the people around him believed that extraterrestrial life was a fantasy, Tom believed it too. That had been his attitude twenty years ago when he'd betrayed Sarah, and it was still his attitude now.

Frowning, she pointed at the pair of boys in front of them. “What about them? Who do you think they are?”

He shrugged. “They look like gang members. Someone's probably paying them to do this. Maybe the Russians.”

“Look at their hands, their right hands. Don't you see what's implanted there?”

“Yes, I see it. It's some kind of initiation ritual, I suppose. The gangsters brand their hands or pierce them with cheap jewelry.”

Sarah rolled her eyes. Tom was incredibly obtuse, especially for a scientist. That probably explained why he'd given up research and become a science adviser—on some level he must've recognized his lack of imagination and decided he was better suited for government work. She found it mind-boggling that she'd once been attracted to him.

“You're way off, Tom. The implant's a weapon, a high-energy laser. And I think they've already used it.” She pointed at Luis. “The kid told me there was a battle with Hanson's soldiers in Inwood. It happened early this morning, about three o'clock.”

Tom shrugged again. “The delinquents had already kidnapped me by then, so I can't say for certain that he's lying. But if someone told me there was a laser battle on the streets of New York, I think I'd be a little skeptical, wouldn't you?”

While they were arguing they descended a staircase and walked through the Yankees locker room. Sarah had no interest in baseball, so she didn't give the place a second glance. Then the teenagers brought them outside, leading them past the dugout and on to the baseball field. The morning sun had risen above the stands and now it shone upon the outfield and its neatly trimmed grass.

Sarah gazed at the deserted field and the empty stands and the blank video screens. She didn't understand why Luis had brought her here. The boy had said she needed to meet someone, a man who had a message for her. But no messenger was in sight.

One of the other boys, the one who'd opened the glass doors at the stadium's entrance, went into the dugout and grabbed a baseball from a carton on the bench. Casually tossing the ball up and down, he started walking toward the infield. He stopped a few yards away from the first-base line and cocked his arm. Then he threw the ball toward left field, even though nobody stood out there.

Sarah heard a thud. Instead of flying over the pitcher's mound, the ball bounced back to the teenager and rolled to a stop near the dugout. At the same time, the air above the infield seemed to shimmer. For an instant Sarah thought she saw something solid there, a huge black dome.

She ran toward it. She stopped near the infield and took a few careful steps forward. Then she stretched her hand into the air above the first-base line.

Her fingers touched a smooth, cold wall. She couldn't see it, but it was there.

Tom stepped forward too. His eyes were wide and his mouth hung open. He stood a few feet to Sarah's left and extended his arm. His face quivered as he touched the invisible wall.

Sarah turned to him. “You see?”

For once he didn't argue. He couldn't argue. The evidence was right in front of his nose.

As they stood there, side by side, part of the wall dissolved. The section in front of them softened under their hands and then melted away. In its place was a rectangular doorway, about five feet wide and seven feet high, just big enough for both of them to pass through at the same time. Sarah squinted but couldn't see anything through the doorway. It was pitch-black.

Tom let out a barely audible whimper. He took a step backward, and for a moment it looked like he was going to run away. But Sarah grabbed his elbow. “No, you're going to see this. You owe me that much.”

Then she went through the doorway, dragging Tom with her.

*   *   *

Sarah held her breath as she stepped under the black dome. She expected to witness something strange and mysterious, something that transcended human knowledge so completely that she might not even be able to comprehend it. But instead she saw a middle-aged man in a blue suit. He stood on the pitcher's mound, about thirty feet away, looking like the world's most overdressed baseball player.

The light under the dome was dim and gray, like the sky on a summer evening ten minutes after the sun goes down. Although the walls were black, the underside of the dome seemed to glow. It was peppered with stars, just like in a planetarium, but when Sarah looked up she saw none of the constellations, neither northern hemisphere nor southern. This made her feel uneasy, disoriented. She looked again at the man in the blue suit, and he pointed at the dome and smiled, trying to put her at ease.

“Yeah, I also noticed that,” he called. “The different stars in the sky.” He waved at her and Tom, motioning them to come closer. “Why don't you come over here so I don't have to shout?”

Sarah stepped forward, eager to find out who the hell this guy was, but Tom just stood there, rooted to the turf. He seemed too scared to move. She had to grab his elbow again and pull him toward the pitcher's mound.

She halted at the edge of the mound, keeping her distance from the mystery man. His body was like a pitcher's, tall and lanky, but he was clearly past the major league retirement age. He had long, graying hair and a weathered face, with deep furrows in his forehead and around his eyes. The man seemed old beyond his years, marked by fatigue and hard living.

“That's better,” he murmured. “I've got a lot to tell you, so we might as well get started.” He splayed his hand on his chest, pressing his fingers against his jacket and tie. “My name's Joe Graham. I used to be a surgeon at St. Luke's Hospital in Manhattan. You're Dr. Sarah Pooley, correct? Principal investigator for the NASA Sky Survey project?”

His voice was casual and unhurried, as if he were introducing himself at a cocktail party. Sarah was so flummoxed by his relaxed tone she didn't know how to respond. She glanced at Tom but he was no help at all. He just stared with wide eyes at Joe Graham the surgeon. The man stared back at him, not unkindly, still trying to put them at ease.

“And you're Dr. Thomas Gilbert?” he ventured. “Assistant to the president for science and technology?”

Tom said nothing. His face was very pale. Despite everything, Sarah felt sorry for her ex-fiancé and angry at the man who'd frightened him, this well-dressed stranger who seemed to know so much about both of them. She stepped forward, placing one foot on the edge of the pitcher's mound, and pointed at him.

“Okay, enough with the introductions. What the hell's going on?”

She practically yelled the question at him, but Joe seemed unperturbed. He nodded and gave her a sympathetic look, the kind of look that a surgeon would give to a nervous patient. “Well, this will probably sound very strange to you, but I'm serving as an intermediary, a translator. I'm the human representative for an alien machine that calls itself the Emissary.”

Sarah immediately looked at the man's right hand. There was no crystalline disk in his palm. “The Emissary? What the … how did that happen?”

“Believe me, it wasn't my choice.” Frowning, he raised his hand and tapped the side of his head. “The alien probe infected me. It put devices into my brain so I could communicate with it. That's how I know your names.” He pointed straight up. “Take a look at the screen. The Emissary built this structure to help you understand.”

Sarah tilted her head back. The underside of the dome brightened and the stars winked out. In their place the screen showed an image of Earth, the familiar blue marble. The planet grew larger as Sarah stared at it, and after a few seconds she could see the outlines of the continents—Africa, Asia, Europe—against the blue oceans. At the same time, the Earth rotated, and its night side came into view. The image was so realistic that Sarah felt as if she were inside a spacecraft speeding across the solar system. She looked away for a moment and glanced at Tom, who'd also tilted his head back to stare at the screen. He seemed less afraid now.

When Sarah turned back to the screen she noticed that the perspective had shifted. Now she saw a thin red line curving across the blackness of space near Earth. At the tip of this line, like a knot at the end of a string, was a black disk careening toward the planet. It was clearly a spacecraft designed for interstellar travel, with dozens of rocket nozzles at the back and a conical shield at the front to protect the craft from high-speed collisions with space dust. As Sarah admired it, the shield separated from the disk, revealing a small probe attached to an aeroshell and another rocket engine. Then the probe fired its engine and sped toward Earth's night side.

Sarah tore her eyes from the screen and turned to Joe Graham. The man was staring at her, observing her reactions. He smiled again, but it was a bleak, knowing smile, as if he were sharing an awful secret.

“You guessed right,” he said. “The probe was programmed to land near the brightest city. So it could tap into the electric lines.”

She grimaced. She didn't know this man. She didn't like the way he was looking at her. “How do you know what I guessed?”

“All that information is on the Internet. All your reports about the probe, all of General Hanson's reports, everything. And the Emissary tapped into the Internet lines too.” He pointed at the dome again. “Look at the screen. It'll show you how everything happened.”