Nathan spoke with enthusiasm about the egg. “Emily, you should have seen it. We have no idea how it works. We brought it back with us.”
“You did?” she said, with excitement.
“Yeah, but there’s a problem,” Nathan said, with disappointment. “The egg must have broken on our return. It no longer floats.”
Trish looked at him. “Egg? Is that what you call Kubacki’s hover-car?”
“You would understand if you saw it,” Nathan said.
“Yes, I have a short video clip of Kubacki piloting it around his cavern,” Trish said, but didn’t elaborate.
They all looked at her in surprise. Not expecting a direct answer, nobody bothered asking her to explain.
“And the egg is not broken,” Trish declared.
“What?” Uri said, in a raised voice. “You seem to have all the answers. What have we been doing here all this time?”
“Exactly what was asked of you,” she said. “Decipher and authenticate Kubacki’s document. You have done both.”
“Yes, but—”
“Uri. Let me finish,” she interrupted. “I had two challenges on my hands. The first was personal and not something I wish to discuss right now, the second, to determine the viability of Kubacki’s technology and its impact on the global economy. I have suspected for some time that this wasn’t a hoax.”
“How would you have known that?” Uri asked.
“Because he never approached anyone in an attempt to profit from it,” she said. “In fact, it was I that got hold of him.”
Emily, Nathan and Obadiah were listening to this discussion with deep interest.
“Uri, you know very well my expertise on propulsion and energy.”
“Well, of course. We worked together long enough.”
“Some years ago, I was doing research on the more esoteric sciences when I came across Norman Dean’s Reactionless Thruster documents in the government archives. Things weren’t so secretive in those days and you could actually access things. I read his theories and realised that they were correct, but his approach was wrong. In reality, it could have worked. When Kubacki downloaded them from the internet, and he was the only person who did, my curiosity piqued. Was this someone who would recognise Dean’s flaw?
“Kubacki is a very guarded person,” she continued. “I provided him with some additional funding, private, of course, but I wanted guarantees that none of his research would fall into the wrong hands. Kubacki informed me that he had the perfect location to set up his operation, but there was one condition, he wasn’t going to tell me where. I reluctantly agreed◦– big mistake on my part. Since we now know where it is, I’ve only recently learned that it’s an abandoned lodestone mine.”
“Lodestone seems to be the key to all of this,” Nathan said.
“It is,” Trish replied. “Geophysics being the other. The thing is, I now know exactly what keeps his hover-car afloat and why it doesn’t work here at Groom Lake.”
“When did you find that out?” Uri asked.
“Recently.”
“How recently, Trish?” Uri prompted, with a glint of humour.
“Very recently,” she responded, settling the matter.
As evasive as ever, Uri thought, but one thing was evident, Trish LaForgue was far less uptight and stressed out. She even smiled. He wondered about that.
“I told Kubacki how to build a simple long-wave antenna and in precisely which direction to point it. The computer he used was also provided by me. I explained that if he was ever under threat, how to instantly broadcast his document and have it wiped from his hard-drive.”
“But then you must have also told him how to encrypt the data,” Uri said.
“He obviously wanted some guarantees himself,” Trish said. “Unfortunately for us, the encryption was his idea.”
“That was some idea,” Nathan said, joining in the discussion.
“It was actually quite impressive,” Emily added. “Not only disguising the document to appear as an audio file, but what he did with the illustrations. Like a jigsaw puzzle, we had all the pieces and just needed to know how to assemble them.”
“Nothing was hidden,” Nathan said, still thinking about it. “Just very well cloaked.”
Trish went on. “The one thing that still remains in his head is how he manipulates the molecular structure of the lodestone to keep his car at a constant height off the ground, as well as putting it into motion. You do know that the base of his hover-car is entirely constructed from small interlocking tiles shaped from lodestone?”
They didn’t know that.
“According to Kubacki’s document, the hover-car’s height can be adjusted,” she said.
“Yes,” Nathan quickly interrupted. “We tried it by setting it a few inches higher and lower. It was kind of weird. If his controls are an indication, its height can be set from inches to yards to miles.” He smiled. “We didn’t try the yards or miles.”
“We need to find him,” Trish said.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Uri looked solemn. “Kubacki may not be alive any more. We found a lot of blood. If he is still alive, he’ll be wandering around in the desert somewhere.”
“Not necessarily,” Trish said. “He had an old truck. If it wasn’t there, he may have used that.”
“Who could possibly have been so great a threat that he had to leave everything behind in such a hurry?” Emily said, thinking aloud.
“Angelo Cevallos.” It was the first words Obadiah uttered since they had sat down to dinner. “Knowing mobsters, he likely has a small private army, or connections to mercenaries.”
“I agree with you, Obadiah,” Trish said. “It wasn’t Müller, or any other government run agency.”
“Ah, Müller,” Obadiah said. “I believe he’s the current thorn in your side.”
“To put it politely,” Trish said, scowling.
All sat in thought for a few minutes.
Trish broke the silence. “You didn’t happen to come across any of the lodestone in the cavern, did you? We desperately need a sample.”
“No,” Uri said. “To be honest though, we weren’t really looking. Surely we can take a sample from his hover-car?”
“No, it needs to be a raw sample before any molecular changes were made. Have Kovak fly you back there tomorrow,” she said. “See what you can find and bring back anything not mentioned in Kubacki’s document. His hover-car is already here, so that’s taken care of. Once you’re absolutely certain that there’s nothing else, I want Kovak to hit that cave with missiles. Nothing must remain. I’m going to see about locating Kubacki.”
“I’m not convinced that we should destroy Kubacki’s work,” Uri said, with a worried expression. “Surely we want to keep those Tesla coils?”
“We can reconstruct them from the schematics,” Trish said.
“What about that strange funnel-shaped pit? We were somewhat reluctant to have a closer look. Surely that needs some further investigation?”
“It’s a magnetic lens,” Trish said. “It can focus spikes from the magnetic fields active in the Earth’s core much like a magnifying glass can focus sunlight to burn through paper. I’ll gladly explain how it works in more detail, but not now.”
“There actually was something else,” Nathan said, facing Uri and raising a hand to his chin. “That box on the workbench. We didn’t bother looking inside.”
“Was it large and black with one side hinged?” Trish asked.
“Yes,” Nathan said, surprised, now looking at Trish. “I didn’t pay attention to any hinges though.”