Sam was slightly taken aback by the question. He merely carried something light across a few feet. He was even going to say so, and then he noticed the strange feeling in his fingers. They were tingling. The sensation ran right up each arm, kind of like that time you fell asleep on your arm or leg for too long, and when you woke up or tried to move them the entire thing felt like it was full of pins and needles. He wondered if he should have been wearing gloves when he handled the strange stone. It could be toxic for all he knew, emitting some sort of radiation.
The professor glanced at both of them as though they were his students. “Come closer, so you can get a good look.”
Sam and Billie both stepped right up to the scale and looked at the reading. It was set to metric, the universal measurements of science, and read less than ten grams.
“Woah, that’s amazing!” Sam shook his head in surprise, and turned to Capel. “How can it weigh so little?”
The professor ignored the comment. “Just watch.”
The scale hadn’t quite balanced, yet. The number was going up already. Eleven, Twelve, Thirteen grams. It increased slowly at first, but as it gained mass, the counter started to take-off.
Twenty-five grams.
Fifty grams
It was a parabolic curve — getting faster and faster.
Sam was holding his breath in disbelief. Next to him, he noticed the examination light flicker. It was so subtle, it wasn’t until it did it the fourth time that the sight caught his eye. The light was bending, only slightly, but it was being pulled toward the dark stone.
He glanced at the scales.
500 grams.
“That’s quite enough,” the professor said. “Let’s put it back inside the Göbekli Tepe pillar before we can no longer lift it!”
Sam reached in and grabbed the stone. It instantly felt much heavier, like carrying a brick instead of a feather. He worked quickly, and slid it back inside the ancient astronomer’s stone.
“Are we safe?” Sam asked.
The professor, now grinning like a mad scientist, nodded. “Quite safe. The Göbekli Tepe pillar appears to neutralize the stone, allowing it to return to its nominal weight of less than a single gram.”
Billie shook her head in awe. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”
Sam eyes narrowed. “What the hell is it?”
The professor stared at them both, wonder filling his intelligent blue eyes. “This, my friends, is the first physical evidence of the theoretical particles named Blackbody.”
Chapter Thirty-Six
Sam turned to the professor. “What the hell is Blackbody?”
“It was first theorized in 1860 by a man named Kirchhoff, who predicted what he called then as perfect black bodies.” Capel took on his lecturing voice. “Basically, a blackbody is an idealized physical body that absorbs all incident electromagnetic radiation, regardless of frequency or angle of incidence.”
Sam and Billie stared at him, without speaking.
“Does that clear it up for you?” Professor Capel asked.
“Not really,” they both replied.
The professor sighed. “All right. Imagine there is a single hole in the wall of a large enclosure.”
“Okay.”
“Any light entering that hole is reflected indefinitely or absorbed inside and is unlikely to re-emerge, making the hole a nearly perfect absorber. The radiation confined in such an enclosure may or may not be in thermal equilibrium, depending upon the nature of the walls. In this case, the dark stone holds everything. Think of a sponge. Bereft of water, it is light. Leave it next to water and it absorbs as much water until its full.”
Sam asked, “What’s the dark stone absorbing?”
The professor smiled. It was cheerful and entirely indifferent to any real concerns they may have for destroying the planet with such a bizarre and alien material. “Why everything of course.”
“Everything?” Billie asked.
Capel nodded. “Yes, yes. Everything that has any mass.”
“It was stripping the electrons straight out of my hands, wasn’t it?” Sam asked, in awe. “And bending the light from the examination beam?”
“Yes, and yes.”
Billie took a deep breath and said, “It’s a little alien black hole, isn’t it?”
“I like that,” the professor said. “It’s a little dramatic, but mostly accurate.”
“When would it have stopped?” Sam asked.
The professor answered without hesitation. “When the sponge was filled, I suppose.”
“How long?” Sam persisted.
“It’s hard to guess, but each of these stones could conceivably end up weighing a hundred thousand tons or more.”
Sam let that concept sink in. “There are more of these stones hidden out there in space. One of them is heading toward us right now. That’s why it’s going to flip the magnetic poles.”
“What?” Billie asked.
“Think about it,” Sam said. “The asteroid has been following the same trajectory around the sun for the past thirteen thousand years… and yet no one has been able to see it with modern technology.”
“What are you getting at?” The professor asked.
“I’m saying the stones have been out there all along, plain as today, yet no one’s seen it because the damned thing absorbs all light around it.”
“Exactly.”
“Then how do we locate it?” Sam asked.
The astronomer sighed. “We don’t.”
“We can’t?”
The professor nodded as though it were obvious. “No. We have to look for signs of light being taken away.”
“Can you do that?”
“Yes, and I already have.” The professor’s blue eyes glistened with his own grandiose vision of his greater intelligence and discovery. “Using a database of astronomy charts with a new search input, specifically looking for light being distorted, I was able to track our devastating asteroid.”
“And?” Sam asked, excited.
“It was there, plain as daylight for us all to see.”
“How close is it?” Sam and Billie asked.
“It’s close. It should enter our orbit before the end of the week.”
Sam swallowed hard. “The question is, now that we know that it exists, is it too late to do something about it?”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
The Secretary of Defense listened as Sam Reilly relayed all the new-found information regarding the asteroid, the strange material named blackbody, and their theory that the four dark stones could be used to somehow re-establish the correct position of the magnetic poles.
She offered him any resources he required and then hung up.
A moment later, she dialed a new number by heart, and relayed the information to one of her leading scientists.
The man had listened intently, letting her speak without asking any questions.
When she was finished, she said, “Well, what do you think?”
“If the original meteorite is still out there, we’ll find it, ma’am.”
“And if you do. Then what?” she persisted.
“Assuming your man, Mr. Reilly manages to correct the magnetic poles, and there’s still a U.S. government left to protect, we’ll be able to use the material.”
“But, will it be enough?” she asked.
The scientist thought about it for a moment. “We won’t need much. If it’s as powerful as Reilly told you, a small collection of the material should be enough to complete it.”
“Good.”
“One more thing, ma’am.”
“Yes?”
The man paused and then said, “Given what we now know about what is rapidly approaching, should we really be focusing on the Omega Project?”