Well, he was a good Catholic but he didn’t believe in that kind of prayer. It was an advanced technology, that was all. But one that he couldn’t, for the life of him, figure out how to replicate. So it was back to the drawing board.
Microencapsulation was the key. If he could microencapsulate, instead of using fossil fuels, the entire world (what was left of it at this point) could convert to antimatter. Now that production was fixed, microencapsulation was the Holy Grail.
There was one theory of microencapsulation that might work. There was a material called “fullerene,” after Buckminster Fuller the inventor of the geodesic dome, which was a spherical molecule of carbon. Since each of the carbon atoms generated a “repulsion zone,” any molecule or atom trapped in the center was automatically held away from contact not only with the carbon atoms but with the rest of the universe.
After exhausting every other theory, Mickey threw himself into the chemistry and physics of bucky balls. There was an existing knowledge base of how to produce them, and even how to wrap them around another atom. But wrapping them around anti-hydrogen, without it coming into contact with them, was a whole nother ball of fullerene.
It took time. And the process was not without its failures. But if Tennessee had anything it had miners (to dig holes in mountains to build the remote-controlled experimental facilities) and mountains. And it had only taken three mountains to find a way to perform microencapsulation safely. (Well, relatively safely. They weren’t going to move it out of mountain four and into the middle of a city any time soon.) In the process he even got a minimal understanding of how the Indowy were warping physics to their own ends. Unfortunately what he got was useless for his purposes.
Fullerene was tough stuff. To get the energy out of the encapsulated hydrogen required “breaking” the fullerene first. And breaking it took nearly as much energy as was recovered from the explosion. It worked better setting up a chain reaction, putting a quantity of the “hyperfullerene” into a vessel and forcing the destruction of a small amount (usually by injecting anti-protons) which then broke up the rest.
Unfortunately, gauging the exact amount was difficult. After the first such difficulty, and at the request of the University of Tennessee regents, they moved the new lab into another mountain until the building was rebuilt. And somehow he couldn’t see GM buying into a “chain reaction drive.” What he basically had was a handful of black dust that was darned near impossible to get to explode. But when it did, look out.
He had an explosive, not a fuel. And had he mentioned the radiation problem?
When the initial carbon atoms were reacted, they were not fully consumed and they released a blast of alpha and beta particles along with a bit of gamma rays (“The Castanuelo radioactive chain reaction drive?” No, GM would not be happy.) The violence, at the atomic level, of the explosion also tended to cause some of the surrounding carbon atoms to chaotically fuse. The result was a spray of very “hot” radioactive material, more deadly than, if not as long lasting as, standard nuclear fallout.
Well, the Posleen had arrived at this point. And they seemed exactly the sort of people that deserved a very hot, radioactive, antimatter-driven, reception. Unfortunately, the President of the U.S. did not agree. So he was left with this remarkably stable stuff that in a nanosecond could turn half the eastern U.S. (he saw no point once the process was perfected in shutting down the production facility) into a radioactive wasteland. Although it was only really hot for a day or two. On a theoretical level it seemed like the perfect area denial weapon.
And, as has been mentioned, Miguel was a fanatic.
“You’ve got a what?” Jack Horner rarely shouted so it was that much more surprising when he did.
“We can range to the Gap.” Gerald Carson, the President of the University of Tennessee, was not happy about the call. But he had been asked a question so he was answering the question. Calmly, politely and with sweat pouring down his face.
“We’ve got a gun project,” he continued to the general’s nod. Since the Posleen apparently couldn’t hit ballistic projectiles, practically every school with an engineering program did. “It’s able to range. It lofted a fifty-pound package into a low temporary orbit last month. It’s a modified Super-Bull, three hundred millimeter. And we’ve also got this professor in the nuclear program, Mickey Castanuelo. He’s a… he was considered a bit of a tenured nut before First Contact because he’s been crazy about antimatter. Since First Contact he’s been crazy about production and containment, which is why he’s been getting a blank check from Ground Force R and D. He was working on energy systems.”
“So we paid for this?” Jack asked.
“I don’t know exactly what he was supposed to be researching,” the president frowned furiously, “but he finally figured out a way to microencapsulate. Unfortunately, it was useless from an energy standpoint. But he’s been from nuke energy to weapons and back so I guess he went back again. And he apparently got the specs for the Supergun so what he went and built was an antimatter cluster bomb…”
Cally walked out of the cache and sat down on the exterior ledge, looking down at the long slope to the distant valley. She’d never really looked over the terrain on this side of the mountain before and now seemed like as good a time as any; the adults weren’t going to be back for a while.
To the north there was another ridge that flanked the narrow valley before her. The valley curved to the east, then back to the south before it reached Rabun Valley just west of the Rabun-Nacoochee School; the stream in the valley twisted its way through the former school property before reaching the headwaters of the Tennessee.
To the west there was another line of ridges that at the head of the valley, just below her position, were practically a knife-edge. There were some trees even there, but with the recent winds the leaves had mostly been stipped away. There was a red-tailed hawk flying just above the trees in the valley about a hundred feet below her and she watched it circle down and back until it disappeared around the shoulder of the ridge.
As the hawk crested the north ridge she noticed a movement among the trees and pulled up her binoculars for a closer look. At first the figures appeared to be a line of deer heading for the bisecting ridgeline but then her eyes adjusted to the perspective. And deer only carried weapons in cartoons.
“Oh, shit,” she muttered.
It was a short company of Posleen with a God King, dismounted from his saucer. If she drew back, the group would probably pass right by the cache. But there hadn’t been a Posleen group in the area since the first attack and this one was in a really odd place; the Posleen generally tried to stay off of ridges. So there had to be a reason they were here.
And the only really viable target in the area was the resupply team.
The Posleen weren’t all that fast on the ridges, but as soon as they got down in the valley they’d be able to really speed up. And with all the guys loaded down with those huge frigging boxes, there was no way that the guys were going to be able to outrun them, even if they knew they were coming. Which they didn’t.
She stood up and walked back into the cache, looking around at the kids. After a moment she came to a decision. It wasn’t a happy decision, but it was the only one that made sense. Sometimes you just had to be an O’Neal, even if you were a thirteen-year-old girl.