The Second Ship (The Rho Agenda #1)(90)

“Mom, I’m going over to the Smythe’s for a little while.”

“All right, but don’t push it. No more than half an hour. Then you are going to bed. You don’t get over something like that right away.”

“Okay, Mom.”

As she stepped into the Smythe garage, Heather suddenly found herself engulfed in a three-way hug between Mark and Jennifer.

A leak in Jennifer’s plumbing sent tears streaming down her face. “Oh my God, it’s so good to have you back home. I have never been as scared as I was when Mark and I heard you calling us in our minds.”

Heather’s mouth dropped open. “You heard me?”

“You bet we did. Mark even broke the railing on our staircase as he was scrambling into his running suit.”

“Running suit?”

Mark nodded. “I could feel you out there, tugging me toward you. I ran like I’ve never run before. Thank God it was a full moon. Anyway, I found the cave where the Rag Man had you.”

Heather’s knees almost buckled as the memories came crashing back in on her. She sat down on a crate. “I don’t remember a cave.”

Mark repeated the story, only leaving out the most graphic details of the Rag Man’s death.

Heather did not move for several seconds as she tried to absorb what Mark had just said. “But that isn’t the story that Jack told Mom and Dad, or to the police.”

“Interesting, isn’t it.” Mark leaned closer, reminding Heather of someone telling a ghost story around a campfire, just as they were getting to the good part. “One other thing. The Rag Man was fast and strong. Maybe even faster than me. But Jack killed him anyway. From what I saw, Jack’s a professional killer. A damned good one, too.”

Jennifer put a hand on Heather’s arm. “We think he and Janet are NSA agents.”

Heather’s mind whirled. Despite the shock at what she had just been told, a huge wave of relief swept through her body. Jack had killed the Rag Man. Despite her brave outer facade, a deep terror had been growing inside her since long before last night. To know that the maniac was dead lifted an invisible weight. She could feel the tension in her shoulders ease.

Jack had killed him.

For the next several minutes, Mark and Jennifer filled her in on everything, including Jennifer’s progress on the cold-fusion powered subspace transmitter controls.

“And check this out,” said Mark, pointing her attention to the laptop and recording equipment he had retrieved from the Second Ship. “The tape had a bunch of garbage on it and has a lot of gaps, but I saved the interesting parts in an audio visual file on the laptop.”

Mark pressed the play button on the screen. Dr. Stephenson was talking to someone, although neither person appeared in the imagery, most of which was blocked off by some obstruction on the shelf where their small airplane was being kept.

“I am not happy with your progress.”

“I’m sorry, sir. The nanites work perfectly, but the suspension fluid is not holding up well at temperatures above about three degrees Celsius.”

“That is completely worthless to me. I told you to find a way to keep the suspension valid indefinitely at temperatures up to sixty degrees Celsius. What did you not understand about that?”

“I understand what you want. I’m just telling you that our team has not yet found a solution that doesn’t decay at higher temperatures.”

“What is the decay rate?”

“As you would expect, it gets worse the greater the temperature. At room temperature it lasts about as long as a non-refrigerated carton of milk.”

“Bullshit. The original fluid had those characteristics. Are you trying to tell me your high-powered team can’t do better than my first attempt?”

The other man cleared his throat. “We do have a new formulation that hasn’t been tested. The production process should give us a testable sample size within two days.”

“I don’t care what you have to do or how late your people work. I’m giving you two weeks. I need a solution that can survive shipment to third-world countries. And I don’t want to hear about refrigeration. You better not disappoint me.”

“I will do my best.”

“For your sake, I hope you do better than that. Now get out of my office.”

Mark stopped the playback. “There are a couple of other short references to nanites and suspension fluid on the tape, but this was the only section that makes any sense.”

Heather’s mind raced. “Could you make out who he was talking to?”

“No names were mentioned in any part of it.”

“Nanites are microscopic machines,” Jennifer said. “That must be the second technology the Rho Project team is working on.”

Heather nodded. “Apparently. But designed to do what? It sounded like the nanites need some sort of solution to survive.”

Jennifer shook her head. “They are machines. Technically it would be more accurate to say they need the solution to keep running.”

“You know what I meant.”

“Well,” said Mark, “whatever they do, I didn’t like the sound of Dr. Stephenson’s shipping them to third-world countries.”

“He must think it is something that people are going to want, like cold fusion,” said Heather. “I mean, the president will probably have to come out and announce this new thing too, right?”