Dangerous Minds (Knight and Moon #2)(63)

“It’s a good theory,” Alani said. “But what if we’re wrong and Riley isn’t there?”

Emerson shrugged. “We have until morning to try. If we fail, then we still have the option of bargaining with Tin Man.”

“It’s a three-hour drive just to Volcano,” Vernon said. “By the time we get to the Kazumura it’ll be past midnight. That’s going to put us way behind schedule.”

Emerson smiled. “Not to worry. I’ve already arranged for a ride and supplies. We should be at the entrance to Sexton’s Maze in less than an hour.”

Riley jiggled the handcuffs binding her to the heavy metal desk in the corner of the cavern and looked around the room. Tin Man, Bart Young, and the other Rough Riders were nowhere to be seen. Berta was at a workstation across the room, calibrating what looked to be a large, complicated bomb. A couple dozen similar devices were stacked neatly nearby.

“What are you working on?” Riley asked.

Berta continued her work. “It’s a delivery system for the strange matter.”

“You mean a bomb.”

“I suppose you could call it that.”

“Then you’re Bart Young’s bomb maker.”

Berta looked up. “I’m a mechanical engineer. Spiro and I spent the past ten years designing the technology to harvest and contain the strange matter.”

“Spiro is dead,” Riley said.

Berta went back to her work. Riley guessed she had nothing more to say on that subject.

“If you’ve really discovered strange matter, you deserve a Nobel Prize in Physics,” Riley said.

“I didn’t discover anything. It was discovered more than a century ago when the U.S. government was exploring the area known today as Yellowstone. Of course, all they knew at the time was that once in a very rare while a little blob of matter, which was like nothing ever seen before, would bubble to the surface of a mud pit or a hot spring and, well, you’ve seen what it can do under the right conditions.”

“It was horrible,” Riley said. “What did they think it was?”

“They didn’t know. It was impossible to collect and study because it bubbled to the surface so rarely and randomly and always in such small quantities. The reaction would be over in seconds and, as you saw, there was nothing left to study. Later, they discovered more in Hawaii and then in Samoa and so on. The government decided to create the National Park system to protect and study the mysterious substance that had such an enormous destructive potential. They didn’t know what it was at the time. They only knew that it was connected to volcanic activity. The real breakthrough was in 1970.”

“What happened in 1970?” Riley asked.

“We realized that certain volcanoes were formed over mantle plumes and were drawing magma directly from the earth’s core.”

“Cosmic leftovers from the big bang,” Riley said.

Berta looked surprised. “That’s right. The world we know is composed of normal matter, but at the earth’s core there are small bits of exotic matter leftover from the early universe.”

“Like strange matter.”

Berta nodded. “Correct.”

“So why hasn’t the earth been destroyed long ago?”

“Most of the strange matter we find is no bigger than the size of a light nucleus. They’re called strangelets, and they don’t seem to have the mass to do any significant damage. Every once in a couple hundred thousand years, a larger mass is extruded, and the results can be devastating.”

“Destroy-an-entire-continent devastating?”

Berta shrugged. “You’ve heard of the lost continent of Atlantis? We also suspect strange matter is the catalyst responsible for the past couple magnitude-eight eruptions at Yellowstone.”

“And you’ve discovered a way to collect strange matter?” Riley asked.

“Strangelet by strangelet. It’s been a painstakingly slow process. Even after ten years all we’ve managed to put together is the size of a tennis ball.”

“Is that enough to destroy a continent?”

“It’s enough to destroy the earth and turn it into a little dense ball floating through space. The little field experiment you witnessed was mostly plasma. The actual strange matter was less than a single drop, and it would have destroyed all of Mauna Kea if it wasn’t contained within a magnetic field.”

Riley looked around the room. She needed to find a way to escape before Berta decided to conduct another field experiment on her.

“Why doesn’t it destroy the earth’s core?” Riley asked.

“We don’t know yet. There’s a powerful magnetic field at the core. Maybe it’s the intense heat or pressure. Maybe something happens to change its charge from positive to negative when it reaches the surface. For whatever reason, it’s not until it reaches the surface that it seems to react with normal matter.”

“It seems to me that you’re a scientist, not a killer.”

“Your life means no more to me than a lab rat’s. If the director wants me to experiment with human subjects, I have no problem with that. If he wants me to build him a super-weapon, that’s just fine with me too.”

“Why?” Riley asked. “What’s in it for you?”