“Damn right it is,” Jenks said, as the new design was his contribution to what he now knew was madness.
“Go or no go is an acceptable turn of phrase, I believe,” Virginia said without looking at Jenks. His being unnerved by a scientific experiment was starting to get to Virginia’s psyche. It was the master chief’s natural engineering skills and his inability to respect a very dangerous science that made her apprehensive.
“Collider is functioning at expected parameters,” called out a nervous female technician as she monitored the X ray — like view of the spinning particle accelerator that enhanced the magnification inside the round collider by ten thousand power. The view was controlled through Europa and her electron microscope underneath Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.
“Dr. Morales, are you ready to initiate signal search?” Virginia asked.
“As ready as we’ll ever be,” Morales said from his monitor.
Virginia Pollock tried to swallow her fear as Moira saw her face as she studied the spinning blue and green lasers as they created and animated a circle of spectacular light against the lead-lined wall. She closed her eyes and spoke. “Initiate power upgrade to sixty-five percent, please. Okay, let’s target our initiated point for dimensional signal disbursement.”
“What is that?” Jack asked Niles as they watched from above.
“In order to disburse the signal into as many directions and dimensions as possible, Europa will bounce the signal off the surface of the moon and have it bounce back to Earth; after all, we can narrow one parameter down as to where Mr. Everett is: Earth. Once the signal is brought home, so to speak, it will again disburse into all dimensions and start its search for the corresponding return signal from the escape pod.”
“Right, I should have figured that out myself.” Jack smiled and looked at Niles, who only nodded in appreciation of Jack’s limited imagination when it came to quantum physics.
Inside the engineering spaces of the USS Los Angeles the propulsion engineer from General Dynamics, although he didn’t know what was going on inside the building, frowned as he eased the power setting forward on the reactor core.
“Sixty-five percent power flow.”
“Thank you, Los Angeles.” Virginia, for one last time, turned and looked at Niles Compton. He looked at Master Chief Jenks and saw his frown. “Permission to open the doorway for signal acquisition search?” Niles nodded. “Make sure your target settings are at zero. Contact satellite transfer and get them our signal net. Let’s slam this baby into the moon and see if this dog will bark.”
“Doorway signal has satellite acquisition. The transfer is in motion, dimensional shift is bouncing off the surface of the moon at its equator. We now have a return from the moon, it is now in active search mode according to Europa.”
The specified tone, an exact match to the rescue beacon’s frequency that came in one-second intervals from the sealed unit inside the escape pod, shot free of its invisible cage and shot up into the sky, where it connected with the Group’s own KH-11 satellites, Boris and Natasha. From there Europa sent it slamming into the moon for its return trip, almost like a radar wave. Europa had stolen the frequencies of no less than sixty-one communication and broadcast satellites around the globe. Europa had picked these orbiting relay stations to cover the entire surface of the planet with the signal as it searched for its mate through time and space. The real secret of the Wellsian Doorway was its power to send and receive signals that cannot be contained. Like water overflowing a glass, the wave of energy would cover the world and then start expanding outward as the Wellsian Doorway opened up to the many dimensional walls it breached. At the same moment the doorway came online, millions of television viewers the world over watched their screens go dark and then suddenly pop back on. The signal went out on a wave riding the coattails of the regularly scheduled programming and those late-night viewers never realized that their favorite shows had just burst through the time and dimensional barriers that only existed in the mind of a brilliant man named Albert Einstein.
The room once more exploded into light as the lasers rose to over half of their efficiency. The lasers slammed into the wall and then bounced back toward the glass wall protecting the technicians. It hit like a wave, the laser light actually bent as the particle accelerator created a dimensional shift that snatched the straight line of spinning light to rebound, and then it happened — the vortex started to take shape as the tunnel formed once more, only this time it was almost a solid field of light.
Jack and the other veterans of the space battle over Antarctica recognized the dimensional wormhole, which evidently was a form of nature that did not change from one application to the next… nature’s own design of power and differing dimensions. The multicolored spin of the tunnel was creating its own weather system inside the building. The vortex of spinning laser light widened and then settled into a round spinning wall of waterlike illumination that approached the speed of sound and vanished after only a few feet, ending in a sparkler-type fountain that flew to nothingness. The doorway to other dimensions was now open. All they had to do was find the right corresponding doorway to catch the broadcast of Everett’s escape pod geopositioning system and transponder beacon.
The room settled and the doorway became a steady hum of light and power. The artificial winds had calmed. Virginia took a deep breath. “The doorway is open, Dr. Morales. You and Europa can start your search.”
In Nevada, Xavier Morales patted the console in front of him and then smiled at his new department personnel and up at Europa’s enormous main monitor sitting in the middle of the main wall.
“Okay, Europa, old girl, let’s start making some calls and see if anyone answers.”
Xavier’s new computer department watched as he gave Europa the order and they all heard the search-and-rescue tone burst from the speakers. Morales smiled as his searching signal went out into the newly expanded multi-universe.
“All right, Admiral Everett, I hope you didn’t leave your phone off the hook.”
14
The New York City police captain wore civilian clothing as he always did when meeting with his financial partners. The large man was sitting in the back room of Kellum’s bakery, a shop that used to be owned by his family in what seemed like a million lifetimes ago. Now it belonged to the man he was there to meet. The precinct captain was in serious debt to the man known around legitimate police officers as the “Bolshevik.” Alexi Doshnikov had originally agreed to finance a failing bakery in a run-down section of Brooklyn — a bakery whose livelihood was threatened not by economic downturn, but by its resurgence. The fashion was now to buy, renovate, and then sell to the highest bidder for homes and businesses that once made Brooklyn work. It had taken an unsavory alliance for Captain Kellum’s family to keep their business. An alliance with the Butcher, and the bill was coming due big time. The captain had managed to save his family from being run out of their home and business, but the cost of that was his soul.
He poured himself a glass of cold milk and then sat and waited by the stainless-steel table. As he did he removed the thirty-eight snub-nosed revolver from his ankle holster and then placed it on the shiny tabletop. He sipped his milk and waited.
He heard the back door open and the footsteps approach from behind him. He was tempted to finger the loaded weapon on the gleaming tabletop but instead took another swallow of cold milk and waited.