John Cramer - Einstein's Bridge

Alice and Whitey returned to the table while the others were still laughing. “It’s a wonderful coincidence that we met you here,” she said to Belinda.

“It’s particularly nice because Whitey’s on the night shift this week and he was scheduled to work tonight,” Belinda said. “He was supposed to be doing wiring at the lab all night, but one of the ring quadrupoles quenched. They had to rearrange the schedule and let him off, so we decided not to let a perfectly good Saturday night go to waste.”

George looked up in surprise. “The ring is down?” His thoughts were shifting rapidly, formulating a plan.

“Sure is,” said Whitey. “Hell of a mess. Gonna be down till they change out that quad. They sent all the operating crews home for the weekend.”

George abruptly stood. “Then I’m very sorry, but Alice and I have work to do. We’re off to hunt a Snark.” He looked at Susan and Roger. “Sorry. I’d planned to do this next week, but if the ring is down now, we’d better take the opportunity.”

“I completely understand,” said Roger. “I hope you find something.”

“Good huntin’,” said Whitey.

ALICE FOLLOWED GEORGE OUT OF THE ELEVATOR TO THE LEM pit floor. She’d been rather annoyed by George’s abrupt announcement that they were leaving P. J.’s. But she also realized that she would have asked to come along, if he’d consulted her.

It was cool in the pit. George had given her a white lab coat to wear over her dress, for which she was grateful. A few lights supplied illumination, but most had been turned off when the crew left, and George had not turned them back on. She sniffed the now-familiar smells of machine oil, electrical insulation, and cleaning solvents, and the mustiness of the underground installation. Farther down the tunnel she heard a click, and puffs of steam began to billow outward. Cryogenics, she thought.

George consulted a printout. “This way,” he said. They rounded the corner of the giant detector and stepped into a shadowy region.

It was spooky, Alice decided. This would make a good set for a horror movie. In fact, it was just the place for an attack of giant mutant fire ants.

“Here’s where it is,” said George, looking up. He walked to a rack, typed something into a keyboard mounted there, and flipped several switches. “Do you know how to operate a beam crane, Alice?”

“Sorry,” she said, shaking her head, “they didn’t have many of those in the newsroom.”

George smiled and shrugged. “Okay,” he said, “you can watch and call for help when the experiment falls on me.” He walked to the wall and removed a control box on the end of a long wire. He pressed a button. The relative silence of the pit was broken by the jolt and hum of electrical machinery going into operation. A long horizontal steel beam rolled out from the wall along parallel rails until it was directly overhead. He touched another control and a squarish assembly at one end of the beam rolled in their direction, a hook dangling below it by several cables.

George wheeled a tall stepladder over to the detector, climbed it with the control box under his arm, removed a cover plate, and very slowly, with occasional adjustments of the crane, slid a long tray out of the detector, so that its outer end was supported by the crane hook. Alice could see that the tray contained a row of long slabs encased in black plastic, stacked like fallen dominoes or shingles on a narrow roof. The “shingles” were studded at their upper ends with silver plates trailing bundles of electrical wires.

Carefully, George removed the electrical connectors from one of the units and slid it out of the array. He slowly descended the ladder holding the unit in the crook of his elbow and placed it carefully on a workbench. Then he opened a cabinet and removed an identical unit. “We have spares,” he said, “and that one needed to be replaced anyway.” He climbed the ladder, slid the new unit into its place in the array, connected the wires, slid the tray back into the detector, and replaced the cover plate. He descended, restored the switches to their original positions, and typed commands into the keyboard and studied the screen. “Everything is back to normal,” he said, picking up the unit he had removed, “and the other scintillators are much happier with this one gone.”

George walked to a tall blue cabinet that stood back against the gray concrete wall and removed a small instrument. “This,” George said, holding up the instrument, “is a radiation survey meter for checking radioactivity.” He placed the round end of the survey meter against the unit in his hand. The instrument chirped every few seconds, and a digital readout on its face read 0.1 MR/H. Then he slid the device along the length of the unit. As he neared the far end, the chirp rate increased sharply, and the readout changed to 1.3 MR/H. “I’ll be damned!” he said. “It does seem to be a bit radioactive.”

“Isn’t that what you expected?” Alice asked. “Isn’t that what this was all about?”

George turned, smiling. “Sure, but it was only a wild idea,” he said. “I didn’t really expect to find anything. Chances were, this thing had only developed a light leak. There’s almost never any measurable radioactivity from events in the detector after the beam goes off. But the Snark made jets all along its path from ejected quarks and gluons. If it could do that, it might disrupt normal nuclei and make them radioactive, so I thought it was worth checking the level of radioactivity.”

He walked to the cabinet, replaced the meter, and closed the door. He took a small knife from his pocket and cut at the black tape on the outside of the unit. It peeled back, to reveal a transparent crystal interior.

In the dimness of the area Alice could see that a blue glow illuminated the crystal inside, and that the glow was centered at the tiny blue point near the end of the bar. “Is that the Snark?” she asked, feeling a rising excitement.

“It must be,” said George. “It has to be! We did it, Alice. We’ve captured our Snark!” He placed the glowing scintillator bar on the workbench, slowly gathered Alice to him, and kissed her. She was surprised but responded with some enthusiasm, and they stood together for a long time.

Finally they walked to the elevator. George held the glowing barlike object in one hand and Alice’s hand in the other.

DEREK INCHED ALONG THE CATWALK, PULLING THE stiff Cryogenic hose after him. Below Patricia moaned softly as she retreated to a corner, where she was hemmed in by the tall racks of electronic equipment. The train of giant fire ants, their clattering venom-wet mandibles extended, clamored toward her.

She lifted a heavy piece of equipment from a table and hurled it at the giant insect at the head of the line. It caught the object in its jaws, then flung it aside with a twist of its giant head. It paused, as if studying her with its jet black compound eyes, then brushed its mandibles with its forelegs.

“Patricia,” Derek called from above, “turn your back on them and cover your face with your arms. I’m going to try something.” She looked up at him, then turned as he had directed. She was sobbing softly to herself, waiting for the mandibles to dig into her back, waiting for death.

Derek twisted the valve at the end of the long corrugated hose. A jet of clear, steaming liquid nitrogen leapedforward and cascaded downward, producing great plumes of vapor as it fell. Derek played the stream directly on the head of the first fire ant. The insect stopped in midstride. He could hear a cracking, popping sound as the insect froze solid. It did not fall over, but stood rigidly frozen in a six-legged midstride.