Dan Brown - Deception Point

“Come on now!” Corky said. “Are we back to the fake meteorite scenario?”

Tolland seemed suddenly intrigued. “Actually, that’s quite an idea. The setup would be more or less like leaving a boulder on the launchpad under the space shuttle during liftoff.”

“God save me,” Corky muttered. “I’m airborne with idiots.”

“Corky,” Tolland said. “Hypothetically speaking, a rock placed in an exhaust field would exhibit similar burn features to one that fell through the atmosphere, wouldn’t it? You’d have the same directional striations and backflow of the melting material.”

Corky grunted. “I suppose.”

“And Rachel’s clean-burning hydrogen fuel would leave no chemical residue. Only hydrogen. Increased levels of hydrogen ions in the fusion pocking.”

Corky rolled his eyes. “Look, if one of these ECE engines actually exists, and runs on slush-hydrogen, I suppose what you’re talking about is possible. But it’s extremely far-fetched.”

“Why?” Tolland asked. “The process seems fairly simple.”

Rachel nodded. “All you need is a 190-million-year-old fossilized rock. Blast it in a slush-hydrogen-engine exhaust fire, and bury it in the ice. Instant meteorite.”

“To a tourist, maybe,” Corky said, “but not to a NASA scientist! You still haven’t explained the chondrules!”

Rachel tried to recall Corky’s explanation of how chondrules formed. “You said chondrules are caused by rapid heating and cooling events in space, right?”

Corky sighed. “Chondrules form when a rock, chilled in space, suddenly becomes superheated to a partial-melt stage—somewhere near 1550 Celsius. Then the rock must cool again, extremely rapidly, hardening the liquid pockets into chondrules.”

Tolland studied his friend. “And this process can’t happen on earth?”

“Impossible,” Corky said. “This planet does not have the temperature variance to cause that kind of rapid shift. You’re talking here about nuclear heat and the absolute zero of space. Those extremes simply don’t exist on earth.”

Rachel considered it. “At least not naturally.”

Corky turned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Why couldn’t the heating and cooling event have occurred here on earth artificially?” Rachel asked. “The rock could have been blasted by a slush-hydrogen engine and then rapidly cooled in a cryogenic freezer.”

Corky stared. “Manufactured chondrules?”

“It’s an idea.”

“A ridiculous one,” Corky replied, flashing his meteorite sample. “Perhaps you forget? These chondrules were irrefutably dated at 190 million years.” His tone grew patronizing. “To the best of my knowledge, Ms. Sexton, 190 million years ago, nobody was running slush-hydrogen engines and cryogenic coolers.”

Chondrules or not, Tolland thought, the evidence is piling up. He had been silent now for several minutes, deeply troubled by Rachel’s newest revelation about the fusion crust. Her hypothesis, though staggeringly bold, had opened all kinds of new doors and gotten Tolland thinking in new directions. If the fusion crust is explainable... what other possibilities does that present?

“You’re quiet,” Rachel said, beside him.

Tolland glanced over. For an instant, in the muted lighting of the plane, he saw a softness in Rachel’s eyes that reminded him of Celia. Shaking off the memories, he gave her a tired sigh. “Oh, I was just thinking...”

She smiled. “About meteorites?”

“What else?”

“Running through all the evidence, trying to figure out what’s left?”

“Something like that.”

“Any thoughts?”

“Not really. I’m troubled by how much of the data has collapsed in light of discovering that insertion shaft beneath the ice.”

“Hierarchical evidence is a house of cards,” Rachel said. “Pull out your primary assumption, and everything gets shaky. The location of the meteorite find was a primary assumption.”

I’ll say. “When I arrived at Milne, the administrator told me the meteorite had been found inside a pristine matrix of three-hundred-year-old ice and was more dense than any rock found anywhere in the area, which I took as logical proof that the rock had to fall from space.”

“You and the rest of us.”

“The midrange nickel content, though persuasive, is apparently not conclusive.”

“It’s close ,” Corky said nearby, apparently listening in.

“But not exact.”

Corky acquiesced with a reluctant nod.

“And,” Tolland said, “this never before seen species of space bug, though shockingly bizarre, in reality could be nothing more than a very old, deepwater crustacean.”

Rachel nodded. “And now the fusion crust...”

“I hate to say it,” Tolland said, glancing at Corky, “but it’s starting to feel like there’s more negative evidence than positive.”

“Science is not about hunches,” Corky said. “It’s about evidence. The chondrules in this rock are decidedly meteoric. I agree with you both that everything we’ve seen is deeply disturbing, but we cannot ignore these chondrules. The evidence in favor is conclusive, while the evidence against is circumstantial.”

Rachel frowned. “So where does that leave us?”

“Nowhere,” Corky said. “The chondrules prove we are dealing with a meteorite. The only question is why someone stuck it under the ice.”

Tolland wanted to believe his friend’s sound logic, but something just felt wrong.

“You don’t look convinced, Mike,” Corky said.

Tolland gave his friend a bewildered sigh. “I don’t know. Two out of three wasn’t bad, Corky. But we’re down to one out of three. I just feel like we’re missing something.”

I got caught, Chris Harper thought, feeling a chill as he pictured an American prison cell. Senator Sexton knows I lied about the PODS software.

As the PODS section manager escorted Gabrielle Ashe back into his office and closed the door, he felt his hatred of the NASA administrator grow deeper by the instant. Tonight Harper had learned just how deep the administrator’s lies truly ran. In addition to forcing Harper to lie about having fixed PODS’s software, the administrator had apparently set up some insurance just in case Harper got cold feet and decided not to be a team player.

Evidence of embezzlement, Harper thought. Blackmail. Very sly. After all, who would believe an embezzler trying to discredit the single greatest moment in American space history? Harper had already witnessed to what lengths the NASA administrator would go to save America’s space agency, and now with the announcement of a meteorite with fossils, the stakes had skyrocketed.

Harper paced for several seconds around the widetable on which sat a scale model of the PODS satellite—a cylindrical prism with multiple antennae and lenses behind reflective shields. Gabrielle sat down, her dark eyes watching, waiting. The nausea in Harper’s gut reminded him of how he had felt during the infamous press conference. He’d put on a lousy show that night, and everyone had questioned him about it. He’d had to lie again and say he was feeling ill that night and was not himself. His colleagues and the press shrugged off his lackluster performance and quickly forgot about it.

Now the lie had come back to haunt him.

Gabrielle Ashe’s expression softened. “Mr. Harper, with the administrator as an enemy, you will need a powerful ally. Senator Sexton could well be your only friend at this point. Let’s start with the PODS software lie. Tell me what happened.”

Harper sighed. He knew it was time to tell the truth. I bloody well should have told the truth in the first place! “The PODS launch went smoothly,” he began. “The satellite settled into a perfect polar orbit just as planned.”