Ball Lightning(42)

“Thank you.” He went over to the desk, wrote down a phone number, and handed it to me. “If there’s a problem, then contact me directly. Dr. Chen, it’s in your hands. I know my daughter, and I’m genuinely worried.”

The general uttered this last sentence with particular gravity.



* A line from the Su Shi poem, “Inscribed on the Wall of Xilin Temple”: “One cannot know the true face of Lushan while standing among its peaks.”





Skynet


Lin Yun and I returned to the lightning research base. As we waited at the gate for a few seconds while the guard checked our documents, I was gratified to realize that I had changed significantly since that evening in early spring half a year ago, when Lin Yun had first revealed her idea of using ball lightning as a weapon.

Once again we met Colonel Xu Wencheng, who was in charge of the base. When he learned that the base would not only continue functioning, but would host a new research project, he was overjoyed. But when we told him the details of our project, he was perplexed.

Lin Yun said, “Our first step is to try to use the existing equipment to search for ball lightning, and show the higher-ups its potential as a weapon.”

The colonel gave a cryptic smile. “Oh, I imagine the higher-ups are well aware of its power. Didn’t you know that the most critical location in the country was once subject to a ball lightning attack?”

Lin Yun and I looked at each other in surprise, then Lin Yun asked him where it happened.

“At the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse.”*

I had amassed a large collection of eyewitness accounts of ball lightning through the years, the earliest of which dated to the late Ming or early Qing dynasties, and I thought I had covered the field relatively well. But I’d never heard of this incident.

“It was August 16, 1982. Ball lightning simultaneously dropped in two separate locations at the Diaoyutai State Guesthouse, in both cases rolling down a tree trunk. One was near the reception hall’s eastern wall, where a soldier on guard was taken out immediately. He was standing in front of a two-meter-high guardhouse, approximately two to three meters from the tree. The instant the ball lightning came down the tree, he felt that a fireball was approaching him, and then everything turned black. When he came to, he had lost his hearing, but was otherwise unharmed. But several holes were blown in the concrete eaves of the guardhouse and its brick-faced walls, its interior electric lights were burned out, the light switch was broken, and the telephone line snapped. The other occurred in the southeast corner of the guesthouse compound, roughly one hundred meters from the guardhouse, also down a tree. About two meters away from the tree was a wooden storage shed surrounded by three enormous pagoda trees. The lightning rolled down the eastern tree and entered the shed through a window, putting two holes in the windowpane. It burned the wooden wall on the east side and the southeast corner, two inner tubes of a bicycle hanging on a wall, and also all of the plastic circuit breakers in the shed. The wire for the shed’s electric light was burned in half, too....”

“How do you know so many details?”

“After the incident, I went as part of an expert team to investigate the scene and study prevention methods. Proposals included installing a lightning cage—that is, grounded metal mesh in a building’s doors and windows; stopping up all unnecessary holes in the walls; and installing grounded wire mesh across the mouths of all chimneys and exhaust pipes.”

“Was any of that helpful?”

Colonel Xu shook his head. “The window the ball lightning passed through was already covered in a fairly fine metal mesh, which broke in eight places. But those conventional measures were all that was available at the time. If the stuff can really be put to use in combat, it will be immensely powerful. I know a little about the state of ball lightning research overseas, and you’re probably the first to have this idea. It sounds reasonable, but your next step...” He shook his head. “Lightning is one of the most uncontrollable phenomena in nature. Ball lightning even more so. It not only has lightning’s destructive power, but possesses the subtlety of a phantom. No one knows when its fearsome energy will be discharged, or into what. Controlling it will be no small task.”

“We can only take it a step at a time,” Lin Yun said.

“Indeed. If you’re really able to find ball lightning, it will be a great success for science. And a bit of success for our base as well. But I’m worried about safety. I’ve got an idea: Can’t we put the lightning generator into a car, and have cars drive the electric arc along level ground? The arc would still be able to sweep a large space.”

Lin Yun shook her head. “We’ve thought of that. And we’ve thought of using ships to drag an electric arc over the ocean. But it won’t work.”

Colonel Xu thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Right. The earth and the ocean surface are both conductors, so the induction effect won’t permit a long arc.”

“We also considered using fixed-wing aircraft, which would make parachuting out in the event of an accident somewhat easier compared to a helicopter, but that won’t work either, since air currents at that speed would blow out the arc. We’ll try to adopt as many precautions as possible prior to the actual experiments, like training the pilots to parachute from helicopters under abnormal flying conditions. In addition, naval aviation is introducing an ejection device for helicopters, similar to the kind in fighters, except along the horizontal. We’ve already requisitioned a few from the General Armaments Department.”