The Secretary of Defense’s response was immediate. “Even if Sam Reilly can decipher the code to extinction in time, it will change nothing of the fact that the Master Builders are still preparing for war — and if we don’t intend to become extinct, we’re going to need a secret weapon.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Sam stared at the professor’s world globe.
It was six feet high and constructed using accurate proportions based on recent satellite imaging. Shaped much like a sphere, but with flattened poles and bulges at the equator, it depicted a more realistic image of Earth as an oblate spheroid. Throughout the globe, the locations of known Master Builder temples had been set using orange flags.
The current location of the two magnetic poles had been marked using a red flag, and purple flags were used to represent their daily positions for the past six months. Contrary to what people might assume, the magnetic poles were far from static. Instead, their position was dynamic — shifting upward of fifty miles daily, in fifty-plus mile oval shaped loops. The center of those loops indicated the real magnetic poles, but even that position was known to move roughly twenty-five miles a year.
He glanced at the data from the past week, which was marked with yellow flags. They showed that the south pole had shifted nearly five hundred miles north and the north pole had drifted six hundred miles south.
Sam looked at Billie and the Professor. “Okay, we know that the four sacred stones need to be placed inside four hidden temples, in order to reset the position of the magnetic poles. That part seems simple enough.”
“What makes you certain that the dark stones will even have enough weight to shift the magnetic poles?” Billie paused, and then looked at the Professor. “You said that once each stone has absorbed as much as they could, their maximum weight would still only be a matter of a hundred thousand tons. That weight seems trivial compared with the mass of Earth.”
“It is trivial,” Sam agreed.
“Then how can it work?”
“I’ve been thinking about this for some time now. What if we’re overthinking the process? We’re thinking that we need equal weight to move equal mass, right?”
“It’s called kinetic energy.”
“Sure. So, how do you overcome a weight that is heavier than you?”
Billie answered immediately. “You need to exert additional effort.”
“And how do we do that, when the weight is so much larger than our weight?”
She sighed, and understanding dawned on her. “You need a mechanical advantage or leverage.”
“Exactly. I’m thinking that these magnetic poles are balancing on a fulcrum. We don’t need to shift the weight of the Earth, we just need to tip the scales so that they return to their rightful places.”
The professor looked at the globe. “Based on that, your hidden temples must be somewhere closer to the equator where their mass can exert the most effect over the movement of the poles.”
Sam thought about that for a moment. “Wouldn’t they have more leverage toward the poles themselves?”
“No.” The professor was defiant. “The widest point on Earth is at the equator. That’s where you want to move the most amount of energy.”
“All right,” Sam said. “Let’s bring this back to basics, and go from there. Maybe something obvious will be staring right at us.”
Billie smiled. “You start.”
Sam said, “The Earth spins on its axis. The inner core spins as well, and it spins at a different rate than the outer core. This creates a dynamo effect, or convections and currents within the core. This is what creates the Earth's magnetic field — the same way a giant electromagnet works.”
“So then why do the poles shift?” Billie asked.
“No one really knows. It’s thought that the poles move because the internal core’s rate of spin and the currents within the molten material move, causing the convection in the core changes. Irregularities where the core and mantle meet make changes to the Earth's crust, which can also change the magnetic field.”
The Professor said, “There’s a strong correlation between earthquakes and the movement of the magnetic field.”
“And there has been a tenfold increase in the number and severity of earthquakes around the world in the past two weeks,” Billie said.
Sam thought about the reports of recent earthquakes and knew she was right.
“So, what makes up the physical structure of the Earth?” Sam asked, rhetorically. “The planet's inner core is made of solid iron. Surrounding the inner core is a molten outer core. The next layer known as the mantle is solid but malleable, like plastic. Finally, the layer we see every day is called the crust.”
He pointed toward the poles. “The magnetic poles can naturally switch places. By examining rocks on the ocean floor, scientists have been able to determine when this has happened because those stones retain traces of the magnetic field, similar to a recording on a magnetic tape.”
“When was the last switch?” Billie asked.
“About 780,000 years ago, give or take about ten millennia.” Sam glanced at his notes on his computer tablet. “It’s happened roughly 400 times in 330 million years. Each reversal takes a little over a thousand years to complete, and it’s known to take much longer for the shift to take effect at the equator than at the poles.”
Billie said, “So, based on that note, are we searching for the hidden temples at the poles or the equator?”
“I don’t know…”
Sam’s cell phone rang. He picked it up and talked for a few minutes. When he ended the call, Sam had a curious and wry grin. To the professor, he said, “Thank you for all of your assistance. You’ve been incredibly helpful. Can you gather any of your colleagues who you think might be helpful and keep trying to crunch the numbers to find the most likely position of the fulcrum? Also, I need you to work out a safe way to move the sacred stones. I don’t think moving the Göbekli Tepe pillar around to each of the hidden temples is really an option.”
“Yes, of course,” the Professor replied. “Where are you going?”
Sam said, “Billie and I are off to the Big Island, Hawaii.”
Billie said, “The same place where one of the blue sapphires from the stone tablet indicated the location of one of the hidden temples?”
“The very same place,” Sam confirmed.
“I thought Elise searched Big Island using satellite and recent bathymetric images. It all came back with nothing.”
“She did.”
“Then what’s changed?”
“There’s been some volcanic activity. A young man was killed bathing in a hot spring.”
Billie shrugged. “There are five active volcanoes on the island. Kohala, Mauna Kea, Hualalai, Mauna Loa, and Kilauea — and Loihi, which is a submarine volcano located twenty-two miles south of Big Island and nearly three thousand feet below the surface. There’s nothing extraordinary about a tourist getting burned in a hot spring.”
Sam’s voice was calm and emphatic. “This one’s connected to the four temples related to the four dark stones.”
“What’s your interest in the case?” Billie asked.
Sam took a deep breath “After the hot spring burned a tourist to death, it froze solid. At the center of the previously hot pool, a subterranean tunnel now stands. No one’s been willing to enter the ancient tunnel, but someone shined a flashlight inside, and it has ice lining its walls as far as the light could penetrate.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
It was a stifling ninety degrees Fahrenheit on the island, with humidity approaching eighty percent. A guide informed Sam Reilly that both of these were on the extreme ends of Hawaii’s average in terms of weather. He made his way along the short journey through the dense forest, feeling every bit of the lethargy that such weather extracted. Even Billie, who was generally more accustomed to the warmer climate, looked drenched in perspiration. He followed the guide past a set of large volcanic rocks, and stopped.