"What's in there?" Taft shouted as the Sikorsky with the commandos aboard noisily took off again.
"Antifreeze and water," Benson said. "Are the tracings safe?"
"Yes, I have them right here," Martinez shouted.
"Good," Benson said, closing the lid of the cooler. "Grab a handle of this cooler and let's take it inside."
At the door of the hangar, Martinez was deemed nonessential by the air policemen and asked to remain outside. Taft and Benson entered the hangar and walked toward Dark Star, carrying the cooler. To the left side of the hangar, the pilot and copilot emerged from inside a small lunch room used by the mechanics.
The pilot stared at the cooler for a second. "What is it, an organ transplant for a VIP?"
"No," Benson said, "it's an old board."
"You're kidding," the copilot muttered.
"But," Taft added, "it's an old board Albert Einstein whittled on." Dark Star lifted off from Andrews within five minutes of loading the cooler aboard. The sixteen-hundred-mile trip to Colorado took Dark Star just over twenty minutes. They landed at the nearest base to Boulder, the Buckley Air National Guard Base in Aurora, Colorado, where the cooler was immediately transported to a U.S. Army Huey helicopter for the rest of the trip to the Advanced Physics Laboratory. Touching down on the grounds of the laboratory, the helicopter pilot handed the cooler to two NIA agents, who carried it inside and handed it to an NIA photographer who was waiting to shoot the wooden board.
Outside the Advanced Physics Laboratory it was twilight. Behind the mountain Boulder nudged up to, the setting sun burned with an orange glow. Crickets began to chirp as night came. The wind died down to a whisper.
Scaramelli and Choi stood off to the side of their laboratory, studying the etchings Benson had faxed to them. Once the photographer had finished his work, the laboratory began to quiet as everyone except Scaramelli and Choi filtered out. When they were alone, Scaramelli lifted the board and rubbed his fingers over the etched symbols. He stared at Choi and smiled. "What do you think, my friend?" he said easily. "Should we see what Dr. Einstein discovered?'
Choi stared at his watch. "We might as well. General Benson called. He's taking a commercial flight here. He arrives in just over six hours on the early-morning flight."
"It would be nice if we had something to show him by then," Scaramelli said.
"That's what I was thinking," Choi agreed.
That morning brought a fierce thunderstorm that blackened the Colorado sky. High in the mountains the storm brought snow, but down in the foothills the storm was mostly wind, intermittent rain, and lightning. The storm blew over the top of the series of rocks outside Boulder known as the Flatirons, then spread out toward the eastern plains. Loud thunder boomed in the distance followed by bolts of lightning that streaked quickly downward to the dry ground like spears from heaven. The light from the natural electrical discharges quickly disappeared into the clouds, then reappeared in seemingly random order.
All at once, the skies opened up and rain and hail began to pelt the ground. Strangely, certain parts of Boulder were bathed in sunshine.
General Earl Benson sat in the director's office of the Advanced Physics Laboratory with Scaramelli and Choi. He stared at the pair in anticipation.
Benson looked slightly haggard. Black rings formed half-circles under his eyes, and his forehead was lined with tension. Even so, he was cleanly shaven and alert, as though he refused to accept the fact he had slept less than three hours in the last twenty-four.
"Tell me what you've found," Benson said without preamble. Scaramelli picked a piece of crust from his eye and flicked it on the floor. "To put it simply, we think we have the key to moving matter instantaneously." Benson immediately saw the possible applications and leaned forward in astonishment. "You need to explain this to me in as simple terms as possible." Scaramelli thought for a second before beginning. "Think of the Apollo missions. The astronauts needed to steer the craft into an exact position with the moon to be sucked in by the moon s gravitational field. Every orb has a gravitational field — and the earth is no different. But what is unusual about the earth is the presence of orbs scattered across the globe, a result of the earth's very formation. Our planet's gravitational field is unique. It is altered by the presence of so much metallic mass below the surface. The presence of metals beneath a planet's surface is unusual, and probably quite uncommon in the universe."
"Go on," Benson said.
"Okay," Scaramelli said. "Now, are you familiar with the ionosphere?"
"Yes, I remember studying it in school. It's a belt of free electrically charged particles in the earths atmosphere from about twenty-five miles to 250 miles out. Once radio waves bounce around in it they can travel around the globe."
"It's often used by our military to send secret communications great distances," Scaramelli noted.
"So we have a spinning ball — the earth — and on that ball we have intense magnetic fields that form into bands encircling the planet. Outside the bands, suspended miles above, is the ionosphere — a band of free electrically charged particles."
"I'm following you so far," Benson said.
"May I?" Choi asked.
Scaramelli nodded.
"Let's say you had a ball bearing on the floor and you turned on a gigantic electromagnet that was mounted on the ceiling," Choi said.
"The ball bearing would be pulled to the ceiling," Benson said.
"Except if the electricity in the ionosphere prevented that," Choi said. 'Then it would be drawn up until the opposing force of electricity exerted a force sufficient to offset the magnetism. If that occurred the ball bearing would hover in place."
"So you balance the forces to suspend the object?" Benson asked.
"We upset the very matter that forms the object. The combination of electricity combined with gravity and magnetism acts upon the strong and weak forces at a subatomic level. The resulting intense vibration separates the matter, so it may be drawn along through space."
"Then it is sucked along the magnetic belts that encircle the earth," Benson said logically, "in the area between earth and the outer edge of the ionosphere."
"Exactly," Scaramelli said.
"How much time does it take to move an object?" Benson asked. "And does the matter rearrange itself in the same form?"
"The speed the object would obtain is unknown," Scaramelli admitted. "Einstein's notes about the curvature of space still have me baffled. However, our preliminary tests indicate that the amount of time that would elapse would be negligible, approaching zero. As to the form of the object, that is what we will test today."
"You already have a test that can prove this?" Benson asked, incredulous.
"Einstein's final notes were the piece of the puzzle we were missing," Scaramelli said.
"It explained the theory beautifully."