Jocasta listened carefully from the shadows as Schadel outlined his schemes, but her thoughts were elsewhere. So he thinks he can dismiss me so easily. Well Herr Schadel, you will find that the price for this job just went up again.
CHAPTER 7 — THE ANSWER MAN
The blue Ford Tourer sedan coasted to a halt at the checkpoint gate and was greeted by a smartly dressed MP who instantly recognized the driver. "How are you doing today, Mr. Dalton?"
Behind the wheel of the hired car, Dodge flashed a smile. "Nothing but blue skies today, Corporal."
The weather was indeed balmy — the morning sun burned in a cloudless sky, promising a humid afternoon — but Dodge’s comment had nothing at all to do with a meteorological assessment. "Blue skies" was a code word, indicating to the guard that he was not under any sort of duress. Nevertheless, the guard did not neglect his duty with respect to the other person in the car.
"Who’s that with you today?"
"Agent Tom Fuller, with the FBI." Fuller passed over his credentials for inspection.
The military policeman scanned the paper carefully before handing it back. "You can pull ahead to the parking area, Mr. Dalton. I’m afraid you’ll have to wait with the vehicle, Agent Fuller."
Both men nodded. Dodge had explained the security procedures to the G-man during the drive from the train depot. Fuller’s position in the FBI was enough to get him through the main gate into Fort George G. Meade, but access to the special scientific research lab required nothing less than a letter of authorization from the President himself.
"I’ll see if I can arrange for Dr. Newcombe to join us outside," Dodge said as they pulled down the gravel drive and into a large fenced off area where several other automobiles were parked. He slotted the Tourer in with the rest, then got out and made his way to another security checkpoint.
It had been a long night for Dodge. Although his berth in a Pullman car on the express from New York to Baltimore was a dry and comfortable change from the soaking he had endured earlier, sleep proved elusive. His waking dreams were plagued with images of his friends suffering diabolical tortures, subjected to mind-control experiments like the poor souls on Flight 19 or worse, already dead. Yet that was merely the beginning of his nightmare. The Staff was in the hands of the enemy; the potential for catastrophe was limitless.
He knew what he had to do, already determining that the only logical course of action was to reach the Outpost ahead of their foes and perhaps there find the means to defeat this new, unknown enemy. But in order to do that, he was going to need help from the one man who understood the strange — some might say alien — technology that had been found in that remote base. That man was the President’s special scientific advisor, Dr. Findlay Newcombe.
Newcombe — Hurricane always called the frizzy-haired scientist "Newton" — was, practically speaking, also a member of the inner circle. Almost from the moment that a gang of high-flying sky pirates had swooped down on the White House Rose Garden and abducted the President, Newcombe had been working to unravel the secrets of the Outpost. Although he had not ventured to the Antarctic ice cave with Dodge and the others, his knowledge of Outpost technology was far superior to theirs for the simple reason that he labored to understand the physics that made it all possible. Dodge and his friends may have grasped intuitively how to operate the strange equipment, but Findlay Newcombe was well on his way to reproducing it… or so he hoped.
A driver was waiting for Dodge on the other side of the second checkpoint and drove him to the converted aircraft hangar where Dr. Newcombe had set up shop. Dodge had previously visited the facility on three different occasions and each time he was amazed at how the project had metamorphosed from something that resembled a juvenile science fair project to a full-blown and fully funded effort to solve the mysteries of the Outpost.
As much as he liked the tall scientist with the crazy hair and Coke bottle spectacles, Dodge was dreading this meeting. He and Newcombe had quarreled, albeit in a manner befitting civilized men, over the merits of Dodge’s determination to keep the Staff in New York and away from the Army. General Vaughn had likewise appealed to both Dodge and the President to have the relic kept at the Fort Meade facility where security was tighter and Dr. Newcombe would have full access to it, but Dodge had steadfastly refused. That decision, made for the best of reasons, now seemed like the worst sort of mistake and Dodge wasn’t looking forward to admitting to Newcombe that the Staff had been stolen.
He found the scientist in the central laboratory, a vast open area in the center of the oversized Quonset hut structure. The lab was a maze of pipes and conduits, branching into spidery nodes that ended in large metal spheres. One entire wall of the lab was dedicated to chalkboards, laid together like enormous tiles to form a continuous writing surface, which was presently nearly three-quarters filled with formulae and diagrams, even as high as twenty feet off the ground. A librarian’s ladder was affixed to a rail that ran the length of the wall in order to facilitate the use of the huge slate, but Dodge noticed, much to his amusement, that the frizzy-haired genius needed no ladder. He hovered more than ten feet overhead, scribbling furiously with a piece of chalk and muttering to himself.
"Heya, Doc!"
Newcombe looked around perplexed, but upon spying Dodge, broke into a broad grin. As naturally as one born with wings, he floated down to Dodge’s level, but still a few inches above the floor. Poking out from under the hem of his lab coat, Dodge saw a familiar contraption of metal rods that formed a sort of outer skeleton. It was one of the devices that the gang of raiders had used to assault the Rose Garden several months previously. It was technology taken from the Outpost and it not only imbued its wearer with the power of flight, but also afforded a virtually impervious force field and the ability to throw lightning-like bursts of energy as a weapon.
"Mr. Dalton! Always a pleasure. Just checking up on me, eh? Well, I think we’re getting close to licking this one."
Before Dodge could say a word, Newcombe zoomed over to a control box in the center of the lab. "Watch this."
"Dr. Newcombe, I’m not here to—"
The scientist threw a switch and electricity began to crackle in the air. Dodge felt invisible tendrils of energy emanating from the nearest nodule and retreated a step. After a few seconds, the lights overhead began to flicker and dim and then there was a popping noise and the entire facility was plunged into quiet and darkness.
"Don’t worry," Newcombe chirped. "Sam will have the fuse… ah, there we go."
The lights came on to reveal the scientist’s grinning visage. "Not bad, eh?"
"Ah, what exactly did you just do?"
Newcombe drifted up to a schematic on the chalkboard. "We’ve figured out the energy field. It’s just electricity. The key is these emitters." He tapped a picture that looked suspiciously like the metal globes which had moments before crackled with electrical current. "They’re like Leyden jars, static electricity generators."
"So…what exactly did you just do?"
Newcombe frowned as though Dodge had missed the point. "I created an energy field."
"So you can actually build a device just like the exoskeleton?"
"Oh… well, yes and no. We can’t generate anywhere near the same magnitude of power with our current technology, so the field isn’t very strong. Even if we could generate enough electricity, the materials we use are much too bulky and heavy to achieve flight." He dropped down once more to Dodge’s level, his enthusiasm undiminished. "But we’re cracking the code. If we can figure out how to reproduce this alloy and find a way to generate and store massive amounts of energy in a very small package and of course find a way to miniaturize the electrical circuitry…"