Immune (The Rho Agenda #2)(67)

The deputy director entered a command and the computer screens shifted, the one on the right showing a new view of Raul hanging in the air, supported by the stasis field, which he now controlled. At the bottom of the screen, a timeline displayed exactly when each frame of the recording was produced, the times calibrated through an atomic clock for accuracy before being closed-caption encoded into the video stream.

The other computer monitor was filled with instrument readings, each matched to its own timeline. The upper right corner of this monitor displayed a special set of readings. These had been received from the Ulysses spacecraft, now approaching the August 18 perihelion of its orbit around the sun.

The synchronization of all the data was tricky. It wasn’t just a matter of matching the timelines. The times had to be adjusted based upon the location of the instrument and the velocity of the waves reaching them.

More of a problem was the sensitivity required of the instruments. He was looking for gravity waves, and those waves were weak. To measure a gravity wave required instruments to be calibrated to measure movements smaller than the nucleus of an atom. Getting rid of background noise generally required incredible efforts in vibrational shielding and damping. In addition, the devices had to be super-cooled close to absolute zero.

Only a few gravitational wave experiments were being conducted around the world and those were looking at relativistic objects such as supernovas or black holes. Fortunately, Dr. Stephenson’s position allowed him to access all available data for the time period in question.

Raul had managed something truly remarkable. Two bursts of gravitational wave activity had been measured during the day of this recording. The first of these was quite small and might have passed unnoticed if not for the Doppler anomaly with the Ulysses spacecraft.

The second wave was extraordinary, several orders of magnitude larger than any gravitational wave ever measured, a clear indication of a relativistic event in the near-earth vicinity. Although scientists around the world struggled to decide if the unexpected data was real or the result of faulty equipment, Dr. Stephenson knew precisely where it had occurred and the mechanism that had produced it. He had watched it happen.

Combined with the power surge his instruments had detected from the starship, Dr. Stephenson had been able to establish an exact timeline for the process. And that timeline confirmed his equations describing the third alien technology. If Raul could solve the power limitations under which he was currently operating, the starship would soon be supplying data that would provide the final answers Stephenson needed.

At that point, given the worldwide success of the first two alien technologies, the world governments would have no hesitation in providing him the resources required for the next step. If they refused…well, he had another way to deal with that eventuality, although it would take every penny now flowing into his offshore bank accounts.

The image of the second alien starship popped into his thoughts. It was a lucky thing for the scientific team heading that investigation that Dr. Stephenson had been so busy with his work in Rho Laboratory. Otherwise, he would have had their collective asses in a sling long before now. He hadn’t expected much, but those morons hadn’t accomplished a damn thing.

Only the knowledge that the Second Ship’s technology was far inferior to that of the starship here at Rho Laboratory kept him from taking direct control of that operation. That and because the Second Ship was dead as a doornail while his was alive and under repair.

Dr. Stephenson stared at the image of Raul floating in the air, his gaze turned inward in concentration. It had been three weeks since the deputy director had set foot inside the inner section of the starship. Since Raul had gained control of the stasis field, it was prudent to wait.

So the deputy director would content himself with his observations and measurements, while he let Raul keep working.

Dr. Stephenson smiled to himself. As long as the kid remained useful, he would keep on living.





71


Heather yawned, stretching her arms until her fingertips touched the headboard of her bed. As she opened her eyes, she could just see the peach-colored light of dawn beginning to lighten the sky outside her window. Thinking back on the last three weeks, Heather was amazed at the changes she saw in herself.

As much as she had feared the antipsychotic drugs and fought with her parents to keep from taking them, the daily dosage had turned out to be the best thing they could have done for her. She was sleeping again. Heather smiled at the thought of it. She hadn’t even known how much she had missed the ability to drift off to sleep and the wonderful feel of waking up to greet a new day.

Even more importantly, the disturbing mental fugues were gone. No more freaking everyone out while she made an unscheduled trip into zombie land. Her parents were so thrilled to have their daughter back to normal that their joy surpassed Heather’s own.

There were a few downsides to the medication, but those were manageable. The biggest of these was a mild drowsiness she experienced after taking the pills. Heather had also acquired a very slight tremor in her left hand, something that Doctor Sigmund said was a fairly common side effect of the drug. While Dr. Sigmund was monitoring that, it was such a small effect that she decided to stay with the drug, unwilling to change what was working unless it became absolutely necessary.

Heather had to agree with that logic. The only thing she hadn’t shared with Dr. Sigmund was the troubling nature of her dreams. Usually Heather couldn’t remember them. But these last few nights she had awakened with fragments of the same dream in her mind. A long black limousine lying on its roof against a tree, windows broken out, the gaping holes splattered with blood. As disturbing as this was, it was the viewpoint that bothered her more. She appeared to be gazing at the limousine through some sort of telescope, the lens lined with a crosshair and tiny little tic marks.