Wormhole (The Rho Agenda #3)(53)

The burly blond engineer turned to face him. “Hell, I don’t even understand how it’s supposed to work.”

“That’s not important. Can you build it?”

“Not important? For an engineer to build something that’s supposed to work?”

“Can you build the thing according to these specifications?”

The German’s steel-gray eyes met those of the physicist. “Das ist klar. Sure I can build the damned things to spec. But if they don’t work, it’s your mistake.”

“I don’t make mistakes. Make sure you do the same and we’ll get along just fine.”

“I doubt that.”

Dubois watched the American physicist eye the German for several seconds. Then Stephenson turned on his heel and strode from the room.

As the engineers turned back to the blueprints, Dr. Dubois’s eyes swept back over the table. Those engineering specifications represented the two most intricate construction projects ever attempted by man. Team One would enlarge the ATLAS cavern and then build the Rho Device around the anomaly, while maintaining the stability of the current electromagnetic containment field. Team Two would build the Matter to Energy Conversion Facility, the device that some young physicist had nicknamed the MINGSTER, short for matter ingester. It was the power generation station that would produce the awesome energy required to generate a wormhole.

The theory behind both devices was so far from the physics Louis had come to know that it bordered on quantum blasphemy. Stephenson had essentially reintroduced a variation of the old ether theory with a little quantum foam rolled in for good measure. At its core, his model held that light was more than particles guided by waves of probability, that it waved an underlying ether substance that forms the fabric of our universe.

Stephenson’s model was all about the ether medium. All matter and energy were formed from variations in ether density. Where the ether was relatively compressed, a positive energy gradient existed. Where it was stretched, there was a corresponding negative energy gradient. It allowed for ether granularity, with subspace occupying the rift between ether grains. Stephenson’s ether model embraced the dual tenets that the speed of light is not constant and that energy within our universe is not conserved, but leaks in and out of subspace.

Stephenson proposed a simple test to illustrate that the speed of light was a function of ether density. The Stephenson version of the famous Michelson-Morley experiment used the classic mirror-and-interferometer arrangement. But across one of the light paths he applied an intense repulsive magnetic field, changing the ether density along that path. The resulting shift in the interference pattern demonstrated his predicted change in the speed of light.

Where the Stephenson ether model got really interesting was in the analysis of the wave packets that formed matter. It predicted that certain rare frequency combinations produced stable standing wave packets in the ether and that these special harmonic sets formed the particles and elements we observe in nature. Through understanding the frequencies that form a stable packet, it became possible to apply another set of frequencies, an antipacket, that canceled out the original packet, releasing the energy bound within it.

Moreover, it wasn’t necessary to produce a perfect antipacket to destabilize a particle. It merely required a sufficient subset of disrupting or canceling frequencies and the packet would tear itself apart. Theoretically, this process was as reliable as clockwork.

Analyze the packet.

Add disrupting frequencies.

Harvest the expelled energy.

Rinse and repeat.

Stephenson had produced an algorithm and a design for doing precisely that. The MINGSTER’s job would be to ingest matter and disrupt its wave packets, producing energy on a scale the Earth hadn’t experienced since it was flung out of the cosmic explosion that created it. That energy would then be fed to the Rho Device so it could generate the wormhole that would transport the November Anomaly several light years out in space.

But if it was so cut-and-dried, why did the thing worry Louis so badly? Like the big German engineer, he didn’t like not knowing exactly how and why something worked. And nobody, including Louis, could understand all of Stephenson’s equations, a significant part of them constructed in an alien branch of mathematics for which he had no context and upon which Stephenson refused to elaborate.

“My dear Dr. Dubois,” Stephenson had said upon being pressed on the topic. “We are already desperately short on time. Why do you imagine I can afford to inject the additional delay of playing college professor for a semester, assuming you and your colleagues are even capable of grasping the topic?”

Anger had so engulfed Louis that only his professional pride kept his clenched and shaking hands at his sides instead of reaching out and tossing Stephenson through the adjacent plate-glass window. And thus the opportunity had passed.

With one last glance at the engineers shuffling through blueprints, Louis sighed, turned, and began the long walk from Building 33 back to his office.





It seemed a small miracle, but it wasn’t. Parting the Red Sea was a small miracle. Walking on water was a small miracle. What Raul had accomplished made those feats pale in comparison. Legless, stranded alone in the dark, he had brought the Rho Ship back from the dead.

What had started with the lightning bolt from the capacitor into the power cell had progressed to the point that Raul had acquired complete control of the starship’s maintenance system. Then, taking great care to prevent the emission of any signal that would tip off the scientists who thought the Rho Ship dead, Raul had brought a total of thirteen power cells back online. More importantly he’d restored the matter disrupter to full function, feeding it the bags of human waste for the initial fuel to power up those cells.