Gregg Loomis - The Sinai Secret

"So?"

The mayor was making a display of checking the diamond-encrusted face of his gold watch, apparently forgetting that he had time to spare that, quite possibly, would expand into years.

"So?" Morse repeated. "That's the part that don't make sense. Stuff wouldn't dissolve in acid."

The significance was lost on Lang, who realized that he didn't know enough chemistry to know what made sense and what didn't. "Tell you what: I'll call Tech, get the name of somebody who'll use their equipment."

"Sure 'preciate that, Mr. Reilly."

Lang put the phone down and looked up. The mayor had left.

The day showed signs of improvement.

As Lang entered the lecture hall at the Bar Association, the first person he saw was Alicia Warner.

"Hi," he said, too surprised to come up with something more original.

"Hi, yourself," she replied.

"Thought the feds had their own CLE."

She treated him to a smile that could have served as an ad for toothpaste. "We do. If you'd checked the program, you'd have seen I'm on it, too."

He did, and she was.

" 'Mechanics of a Federal Prosecution?" Lang asked. "You're giving secrets away?"

She tossed shoulder-length red hair that Lang suspected was as real as the faint freckles makeup didn't cover. "No more than you are."

"I'd say the attendees are in for a pretty dull session."

Green eyes sparkled merrily. "And this is news?"

Lang was becoming increasingly aware that the seminar audience of thirty or so people was watching. He moved toward the podium. "I've been out of town the last few days or I would have called you."

She said nothing, watching in amusement.

"I, er, I figure I owe you a nice, quiet dinner after… after our lunch date."

Several attending lawyers made no effort to hide the fact that they were listening to the conversation.

Screw 'em.

Lang plunged ahead. "I'd love the pleasure this evening."

She cocked her head as though to view him from a different angle. "My Kevlar vest's at the laundry. How 'bout you just come by my house rather than we go out in public? I'll throw something together. Not only less expensive but safer."

Alicia nodded to where the program's moderator was watching, shifting his weight. She dug into a purse that could have served as a suitcase and handed him a business card. "Call me and I'll give you directions."

She turned and headed for the door.

Along with every male in the room, Lang watched her departure.

There was the clearing of a throat behind him. "Now that Lang Reilly has his social plans in place, perhaps we could entice him to speak."

Lang was not sure what a blush felt like, but suspected he was experiencing one.

School of Chemical Engineering

Georgia Institute of Technology

Atlanta, Georgia

Two Days Later

Like students receiving remedial instruction, Lang and Detective Morse sat in folding chairs across the desk from Hilman Werbel, Ph. D., professor of advanced chemical engineering. The man's credentials were displayed in a series of gold-framed degrees that shared the white plaster walls with photographs of the professor embracing, shaking hands with, or simply smiling beside people Lang guessed were luminaries of the scientific world. A window air-conditioning unit provided more noise than cooling, and Lang was beginning to feel uncomfortably warm as well as annoyed with himself for letting the policeman convince him to come along.

"I can't explain it," Werbel said, eyes downcast as though the admission were one of guilt. "Frankly, until yesterday I'd never heard of anything with these properties."

Morse leaned forward. Lang had noticed that the policeman's street jargon and accent had not followed him onto campus. "Doctor, had anything beyond the most basic science courses been required for graduation, I'd still be in high school. Reckon you could reduce all this technical stuff to something I can understand'?"

He had echoed Lang's thoughts.

Werbel regarded both men over half-moon glasses while his hand went to a perfectly adjusted bow tie, a gesture that he had repeated so often as to seem unconscious of it. "I'll try. First, of course, we weighed a portion of the material, the powder, to the nearest thousandth of a gram, recording that weight on the outline of the experiment you have before you." He pointed to the papers in the other men's hands. "We began with emission spectroscopy, placing the material in a carbon electrode cup and using another to create an arc. The elements in the sample ionize, revealing the specific light frequencies of the elements involved…"

Lang held up a hand. "Doctor, neither Detective Morse nor I has the background to appreciate the various protocols of your experiments. Could you dumb it down a little, make it understandable to two nonscientists?"

The professor's pudgy face contracted into a quick frown, the sort of expression he might have used had been asked to actually teach undergraduate students. "But without explaining the process, the results, and my conclusions…"

Morse put his elbows on his knees. "The results and your conclusions, Doctor, are what Mr. Reilly and I came for." He smiled innocently. "We are far too chemically unsophisticated to understand your thorough scientific process."

The professor considered this a second and nodded. "I'll try to put all this in layman's terms. In the first few seconds, silica, iron, and aluminum were indicated, with traces of calcium, sodium, and titanium. Then, as the temperature increased, we saw what appeared to be… Well, without going into exotica such as iridium and rhodium, let's say the material seemed to be composed entirely of platinum group metals."

Lang's interest picked up at the words. Whatever they were, platinum group metals seemed to be a recurring theme.

"I thought you said it contained iron and aluminum," Morse interrupted.

Werbel sat back in his chair. "That's just it, Mr.-Detective Morse. The very composition seemed to change, and that isn't even the strange part."

As one, both the policeman and Lang crossed their arms expectantly.

"As the subject material heated in a separate test, it increased its weight by one hundred two percent. As it cooled, the mass reduced itself to fifty-six percent of its original weight. In other words, it levitated."

"Levitated?" Lang asked. "As in it rose into the air?"

"We couldn't see it actually rise," the professor said, "and there was no indication that it dissolved into the atmosphere of the chamber we used."

"But it had to go somewhere, didn't it?" Morse.

"One of physics' and chemistry's basic theorems is that matter is not created nor destroyed, so, yes, it had to go somewhere."

One of the few things Lang remembered from his brief and unpleasant exposure to the sciences. "Okay, so where did it go?"

The professor came forward in his swivel chair so suddenly, Lang thought he might be catapulted into a wall. "I'm no theoretical physicist, you understand," he said, as though apologizing for the oversight, "but my colleagues in that area speculate that the material must have gone into a different dimension."

Lang and Morse looked at each other, their expressions saying what manners prohibited: The professor was nuts!

Werbel saw the glances. "No, no, I'm not crazy-at least, no more so than anyone else who works here. Einstein as well as lesser-known physicists have long speculated that there are one or more parallel dimensions."

"Like in Star Trek?" Morse asked.

"We don't know-not yet, anyway. Stranger still, not only did the sample levitate, but so did its container. Further heating to over a thousand degrees Celsius transformed the subject powder into a clear, glasslike substance, which, when cool, returned to one hundred percent of its original weight."