Michael C. Grumley
Ripple
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks to Frank, Donna Tim, Dale, Jim, Rob, John, and Les. For all of their expert help and advice.
And to the best group of beta readers a writer could hope to have.
1
Les Gorski stared through his dark-framed glasses with a weary expression. Most of the men before him were not the normal soldiers he was used to working with — those with a grizzled toughness and the ability to endure extreme conditions.
This group was very different. Instead of fighters, these men were engineers. Smarter in some ways, but greener. Navy engineers who, along with Gorski and his own team, were there for one reason and one reason only.
Watching as the row of men donned their gear, Gorski turned around and glanced out over the emerald waters of the Caribbean Sea. Gorski stood firmly on an oil platform approximately one hundred miles off the island of Trinidad. All of it was nothing more than a cover, he mused. A smoke screen.
A story concocted by the U.S. Navy, in which the obsolete oil platform had experienced a technical malfunction on its way back to the scrapyard. But in reality, the Valant had been stopped precisely in its current location to conceal something discovered in the waters beneath it. Something astonishing. Something that could have been ripped straight from the pages of a conspiracy handbook.
But there was no conspiracy.
This time, it was real. No painted stories or embellished eyewitness accounts. In an ironic twist, it was much simpler than that. The first verifiable extraterrestrial craft ever to be found on Earth. Underwater and buried hundreds of feet beneath the coral.
That was why Gorski and the team were there. Which now included his new group of soft and inexperienced divers. There was however, one exception.
Gorski glanced back from the rising sun, down to the large face of his wristwatch. They had to hurry. They had precious little time to find out just what they were dealing with. Before anyone else did.
Two stories above Gorski, Will Borger sat in a ratty old chair, staring at an even older CRT-style computer monitor. The quarters module of the aged oil rig left a lot to be desired, both in terms of comfort and technology. But it was good enough. At least for this mission.
Borger’s large, overweight frame remained motionless as his eyes darted to a second monitor with a live feed of the dive team below him. They were the engineers from the naval research ship Pathfinder, now anchored less than a thousand meters from the edge of the giant rig.
What they were doing had to be done quietly. With the least amount of resources possible. Not because of a lack of funding — Admiral Langford and Secretary of Defense Miller were making sure of that. It was to avoid attention. They couldn’t risk being noticed. By anyone. The official explanation for the oil rig and the Pathfinder ship was thin but just enough to keep the operation quiet and away from the attention of any other U.S. government entities. And from the rest of the world.
Borger’s tired eyes returned to the first monitor, and back to one of the recordings the team had made beneath the surface. Detailed images capturing large sections of the alien ship’s dark gray hull; smooth and unblemished.
So far they had only traced a small portion of the structure through the maze of coral and vegetation. Two things had immediately become obvious, given its position and orientation. The first was that the ship was big. The second was that it hadn’t crashed. It was buried. Intentionally.
Borger crossed both arms over his large stomach, which rested beneath a loose-fitting blue and green Hawaiian shirt. His steely eyes stared at the visible portion of the hull in the underwater video.
Dozens of questions raced through his mind. Questions that couldn’t be answered. Not yet.
Borger twisted slightly in the chair, causing it to squeak. The room around him remained silent, much of its faded interior paint now peeling and giving way to dozens of small patches of rust. However, the one thing Borger was extremely thankful for was the air conditioner. Although on its last leg, it was still pumping out enough cool air to keep his perspiration to a minimum.
He leaned forward and began typing on the keyboard, zooming in on the video and playing the last part of it back. Steve Caesare, one of the divers, could be seen touching the alien ship’s hull, brushing his hand firmly against it. Each time he did so, a green glow appeared and traced his motion before fading again. None of them, including Borger, had ever seen anything like it. The effect was so strange that every time Borger watched it, the same thought ran through his mind: What the hell was that?
2
Half a mile away, aboard the Pathfinder, Neely Lawton had a similar thought. As a systems biologist, Neely was staring at her own monitor, observing something very different taking place. She was far more interested in the plants and vegetation surrounding the alien craft than the ship itself. Or more precisely, the genetic behavior of those plants.
She breathed in, barely moving, watching the image on her screen with fascination. A small dark-green tube from a sea whip lay on a flat glass Petri plate, positioned beneath a large Euromex biological microscope. Its powerful lens focused in on the severed end of the fibrous tube.
In silent amazement, Neely watched as the damaged cellulose fibers moved like tiny searching fingers. Then very slowly, and one by one, the microscopic fingers found each other and began rebuilding, weaving themselves back together. At a speed that was simply stunning.
It was only the second time she had ever seen it. The first time happened with a different plant, pulled from the jungles of Guyana. A plant that was very different. But their structures, or more specifically their DNA, were very similar. Both plants possessed the same incredible healing properties she was now witnessing.
The testing of the plant’s genetic behavior was easy to replicate. And like the first sample, this one’s behavior also mimicked one of the smallest and most sinister living organisms known to man: the human cancer cell.
Yet, unlike a cancer cell, these plant cells were not dedicated to the growth of a deadly tumor. The reconstruction witnessed here applied to all parts of the plant’s biological structure. And it worked just as fast.
Another difference was that cancer cells were the result of a more natural biologic breakdown caused by damage to DNA base pairs of a cell’s genes. The plant’s cells, on the other hand, had mutated as the result of a compound from the alien ship. A catalyst they had yet to fully identify, let alone understand.
Neely bit her lip, keeping her eyes on the monitor. From a scientific standpoint, the process she was witnessing was… almost magical. Far beyond anything she ever expected to see in her lifetime.
But there was no denying it now. Test after test showed the same behavior: a holy grail of modern biology. The rapid-growth behavior of a cancer cell, without the horrific repercussions.
Yet as quickly as Neely Lawton’s excitement grew, a worry was also building.
Yes, the plant cells had a very similar DNA sequence to cancer, with none of the side effects. At least none she could detect. But the strain had yet to be studied in a larger, more complex environment.
Neely relaxed, then took a deep breath and stood up. The small room had become uncomfortably quiet since the rest of her research team was abruptly reassigned to another ship.
It was all part of the ruse.
She faced another table with neatly organized testing equipment, including a small matrixed tray with thirty-six shallow Petri dishes, all containing a small amount of pink liquid.