Sam looked like he was relishing the offer and lifted her off the ground in the process. “I missed you, too,” he said in a mocking voice.
Matthew was the last to climb the ladder. “What did you find?”
Sam looked at him. “They have the weapon. We found the Island where it’s going to launch. Its twenty miles north-east from here.”
“Good. You’ll need to get a message to Elise on board the USS Texas. We don’t have anything with anywhere near enough grunt to destroy the Island!”
“Do you know where the Texas currently is?” Sam asked.
“Satellites show her another forty miles east of the coordinates you gave for the Island,” Genevieve said.
“Okay, here, send this to Elise,” Sam handed Genevieve the coordinates.
“Sorry, Sam,” Genevieve replied. “The radios are still blocked by that depressing music.”
“That’s okay. I want you to send it via Morse code.”
Genevieve stared at Sam with a vacant expression, but said nothing.
“Okay, change of plans.” Sam took the piece of paper with the coordinates out of Genevieve’s hand and placed it in Matthew’s hand. “New plan. Matthew, I want you to send these coordinates repeatedly to Elise.”
“Via Morse code?” Matthew asked.
Sam took a bite out of an apple. “Yes.”
“But the radios are still down.”
“What happens every time you try and make a radio transmission?” Sam asked.
“It makes an interruption in the radio waves that sounds like incomprehensible static.” Matthew smiled. "But a series of interruptions makes Morse code — I get it.”
“Exactly,” Sam said.
Tom looked at them both. “What makes you think Elise is listening to the radio at all?”
Sam grinned. “Because Elise’s computer is always listening. It will identify the Morse code immediately. Then Elise will read it and notice it’s a standard set of GPS coordinates, and put it all together. The Texas will head there with its quad fourteen inch guns.”
“Okay, Sam.” Matthew looked at the coordinates. “Are you going to wait for them?”
Sam shook his head and started walking down stairs. “No. It’s too far. They’re at least another two hours away at best. Robert Cassidy may have launched his rocket by then. We might have to take a look at the Island ourselves.”
Matthew followed him. “What do you want us to do?” Matthew’s voice was tense and sharp. “There’s nothing we’re carrying capable of destroying the Island before it launches!”
“Tom and I are going back in the de-Havilland Tiger Moth.”
“Why?” Matthew looked startled. “The Island is twenty-five miles out to sea and deeply sunk. It’s not like you’re able to land there.”
Sam grabbed a dry diving suit, a military grade rebreather, dive mask, fins and an MP5. “You’re right. Then I guess Tom and I had better be prepared in case we crash into the ocean … intentionally.”
Chapter Seventy-Six
Alexis stared at Robert Cassidy after he told her that he had already replicated her canisters and had almost fifty stable Higgs Bosons stored inside.
“You’ve actually done it?” Alexis’s heart raced with a mixture of excitement and guilt. “Nobody’s ever seen more than one Higgs Boson in the same place before!”
“Do you want to see them?” He asked, more like a doting father, than a maniac who was willing to sacrifice everything to destroy the planet.
“Yes,” she answered immediately.
“Follow me then.”
She followed him through a series of tunnels, hollowed out of the same porous volcanic rock found in her room. Cassidy stopped inside a large laboratory. An individual canister stood on a table and a powerful electron microscope was perched above it. Sitting at the table was Robert Cassidy’s son, her ex-fiancé — Daniel.
Robert was the first to speak. “We’ve been able to insert two Higgs Bosons inside the canister, but the instant we introduce a third the Higgs field loses its strength and the Higgs Bosons degrade.”
“Why would you be trying to introduce three?” she asked.
“Not three, but thirty-six!” Robert laughed. It was warm and kind. “My dear, Alexis — I thought you were following my plan? I’ve engineered a model of Higgs Bosons, which I believe will specifically weaken the Higgs field specifically related to electricity. It will be strong enough to stop major electrical activities such as computers, communications, and robotics, but not damaging enough to destroy the world or the tiniest electrical impulses that drive a person’s heart. How did you think I was going to remove electricity from the world?”
Alexis stared at Cassidy. Her green eyes, hard and piercing. “It can’t be done. What you want is impossible. The Higgs field affects the mass of all electrons on the outskirts of any atomic particle. Don’t you see, even if you could design a field to remove one part of the field, the Higgs Bosons used to build it would already degrade before you reach a stable model.”
“My son seems to think you may have a solution?” Robert said.
Alexis’s eyes darted towards Daniel, who quickly looked away. “It can’t be done, Daniel.”
“You once believed it could,” Daniel said without looking at her. “In fact, you showed me your theory. I tried my best to understand it, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t make sense of it.”
“Did you ever think that maybe you couldn’t understand it because it wasn’t possible?” she asked.
“You think you were wrong and I was right?” Daniel shook his head. “You’re just trying to get out of helping us.”
Robert Cassidy stood up. “The Battleship USS Texas is hunting for us with depth charges specifically designed to destroy the Island. The time for squabbling over who can do what is over. If you can build the model that I showed you, Professor Schultz — I suggest you do.”
“I’m not going to help you destroy the science that has taken us thousands of years of evolution to reach. Why do you keep suggesting I will? You may as well kill me now. You have nothing to offer that’s going to be more valuable than the livelihood of the planet’s billions of human beings.”
“Come with me.” Cassidy grabbed her by her arm. “Let me show you what I must do if you can’t make this work!”
Alexis followed him through another two long tunnels. Daniel walked with them and remained silent, but mimed the words, “I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry for what, Daniel? Sorry you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants, or sorry your father’s insane and plans to destroy the world?”
“I’m sorry I hurt you. You must understand we needed you. I never meant to be around long enough to nearly marry you — I really am so sorry.”
She laughed. “Christ, Daniel. That’s you in a nutshell. You’ve been so timid all your life. We’re about to destroy the planet, and you’re worried about my feelings after I caught you fucking my best friend on the night before our wedding? You’re more insane than your father!”
Robert unlocked the door and all three of them stepped inside a room that reached nearly a hundred feet into the air. There were two massive rockets standing upright. At least thirty people worked around each of them, testing, analyzing and preparing for the imminent launch.
“Professor Schultz,” he said using her title. “This is what the inside of a nuclear missile silo looks like. Those are both based on the Thor W40 Rockets used during the early high altitude nuclear tests taken in 1962. Both have the potential of bringing about my great plan and returning earth to the way God chose it to be. Back to before humans felt they had the right to infinite knowledge and the power to destroy everything. To a time before electricity. The one to your left requires the energy derived from thirty-six Higgs Bosons.”