As they drove down the main arterial road, Tom’s memories of the halcyon days of his youth came flooding back. He had lived onsite, where there was a real sense of community connected by a shared purpose: to unravel the mysteries of the Universe, from the Nano to the cosmic scale. Anything was possible and he was going to be the one that pioneered it. As he looked out of the passenger window at the silhouettes of the trees lining the road sweeping by, it saddened him to think that age and, with it, so-called wisdom, had tempered the intrepid explorer within him. He needed to rewind the clock and tap into that indomitable spirit now if he were going to succeed.
They pulled up outside the main building and made their way to the reception area for visitors. There, they had to re-present their passports before being issued with badges that would allow them to proceed through the sliding doors and into the inner sanctum.
Jed led them down a long corridor, flanked on either side by the closed doors of darkened offices, towards a room at the far end, where they could see light seeping out from under the bottom. It was identified by the brass nameplate screwed onto the wall as the Research Director’s. Jed knocked resoundingly and, without waiting for a response, opened the door and showed his two charges in.
A well-groomed, stately gentleman was just leveraging himself out of his high-backed leather chair when Tom and Serena entered. He continued with the movement, but accompanied it with a broad smile as he recognised one of the newcomers.
‘Tom, good to see you again,’ he exclaimed, covering the distance between them in a few strides.
The two men shook hands warmly. Tom noticed that the preceding years hadn’t been too kind to Charles. He remembered him as a stalwart man with the vitality and vigour of someone half his age. The weak, almost effeminate, handshake was that of a fragile old man, whose features were gaunt, his eyes dulled and sunken by age. The hairline had receded to his crown and deep furrows ploughed across his forehead, linking the liver spots at his temples. Despite the ravages of time, it was obvious that he still cared about his appearance. The dark blue suit was perfectly tailored to his frame, not something that could easily be achieved off-the-peg. The silk tie with its geometric pattern and pale blue shirt complemented the made-to-measure apparel, perfectly.
‘Charles,’ said Tom, ‘I’d like to introduce you to Serena Mayer.’
‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, my dear.’ The elderly gentleman’s bony fingers reached out to take her hand. ‘Come, please sit down. You must be exhausted after your long journey.’ He led her to one of the two chairs opposite his and beckoned for Tom to take the other.
Jed, who was still standing in the doorway, shouted across the room. ‘If you don’t need me anymore boss, I’ll get cracking on firing up the beast.’ With that, he left without waiting for an answer.
‘Damned fine physicist, bloody awful employee,’ Charles remarked as his office door slammed shut. ‘So, why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me what all this is about,’ he said, turning his attention back to his guests.
For over an hour Tom told him everything — everything that was, apart from Shiva’s role in trying to stop the Collider discovering the God Particle. For some reason he couldn’t explain, he felt protective over the organisation, as though he’d been let into a confidence that he couldn’t betray. He concluded by summarising what he hoped to achieve by firing up the RHIC.
Charles listened intently, without interruption, his fingers steepled contemplatively underneath his chin. Once Tom had finished, Charles leant back in his chair, as if to digest the information. After what seemed like an eternity, he broke the silence.
‘When you phoned me on your way here, I took the liberty of contacting some colleagues in NASA and pulled in a couple of favours. You know they have a facility here, don’t you?’
Tom did. ‘Yes, the NASA Space Radiation Lab.’
Charles addressed Serena, who was looking blank. ‘We have a programme running that can identify the possible risks to astronauts associated with prolonged space travel. To study the effects of space radiation we use beams that can simulate cosmic rays.’
‘Sounds dangerous,’ she replied. ‘Remind me not to volunteer as a guinea pig.’
‘Quite,’ Charles turned back to Tom. ‘I asked them to run a simple algorithm to track magnetic north against true north, over time. As you’re aware, they’re not the same point — magnetic north tends to move around a bit.’ He adjusted the angle of the laptop on his desk so they could see the image. It showed a global map of the earth dissected by a straight red line with various points marked on it. ‘In 2001, magnetic north was determined by the Geological Survey of Canada to lie near Ellesmere Island in northern Canada. In 2009, whilst still within the Canadian Arctic territory, it was moving toward Russia at between thirty-four and thirty-seven miles per year. Last year, the pole moved just beyond the Canadian Arctic territorial claim.’
He pressed a button on the keyboard and the image changed to a similar map but, on this one, the red line had dog-legged. ‘This is in real time. As of now, magnetic north is hovering somewhere over Greenland, travelling south at a rate of seventeen miles an hour. That means that, within the next thirty days, it will reach the South Pole.’
Tom and Serena stared at the screen, aghast. It was obvious to them that the directional change could only have been caused by the collider. In the bottom left quadrant of the display was a scrolling table with three columns. Tom read the headings: Time, Speed, Acceleration. The first column measured second intervals, the next, the actual speed of the field, while the third had a series of red numbers in it.
‘Does that indicate that the field is accelerating?’ Tom pointed to the last column on the screen.
‘Unfortunately, yes. They change to green if the field decelerates. Since I’ve been monitoring it they’ve always been red. When I said that within the next thirty days the field will have reached the South Pole, I should have pointed out that that was at its current speed. If it carries on accelerating the way it has been, there’s no telling how long it will take.’
‘Can’t they extrapolate the data?’ Serena queried.
‘Yes, but the acceleration isn’t constant,’ replied Charles. ‘It varies by the second. The only thing we can say for certain is that the speed of the magnetic field is increasing, but by how much is anybody’s guess.’
The phone rang on Charles’s desk. ‘Excuse me,’ he said, apologising to Tom for the interruption, and picked up the receiver. He listened to the voice on the other and then responded. ‘Good, send him straight in,’ he said, before putting the phone back in its cradle. ‘There’s somebody I’d like you to meet.’
Tom and Serena turned in their chairs to see the door opening and the menacing figure of Deiter strolling in.
CHAPTER 35
Tom’s jaw dropped, his face a picture of incredulity as a thousand questions flooded his brain.
‘But… but how did you know we were here?’ was all he could say.
Deiter strode across the room and positioned himself behind Tom and Serena, casually resting his hands on the back of each of their chairs. Serena cowered in her seat at the close proximity of the man who had tried to kill her. Tom was more defiant; he made to stand up, but was forced back down by a firm grip on his shoulder.
‘I wouldn’t do anything stupid.’ Deiter inclined his head in the direction of Charles, who had retrieved a handgun from the top drawer of his desk and was now levelling it in their direction, his hand trembling slightly as he aimed it from one to the other.