Warren Murphy - Scorched Earth

"Where do you get that figure, Hulce?" Bulla demanded.

"The name is Pulse. Tom Pulse." He kicked at the red sand with snakeskin boots, pulling the brim of his white Stetson low over his sun-squint eyes. "We know the melting points of glass and steel. Any higher and the thing would have been vaporized."

"Look at it, the glass just ran out like maple syrup."

"No, Mr. Bulla. You are standing on fused molten glass."

"Right. From the dome."

"No. This is new glass. Made by the action of heat on sand."

"Sand turned to glass," Bulla croaked. "My God. What could have done that?"

"A heat source of between 1500 to 1600 degrees centigrade."

"How do you know that?" Bulla demanded.

"No mystery. That's the temperature range at which sand is fused into glass."

"Must have been one hellacious blast."

"Actually all glass is made from superheated sand."

"It is?" Bulla said.

"Yes. Sand, limestone and soda ash. Where did you think glass came from?"

"I don't know, smart-ass. Glass mines, I guess."

"Forget the sand. I think we can rule out a lightning strike."

"It must be a lightning strike."

"The evidence says different. No clouds in the sky to generate an electrical storm. And there are no fulgurites in the sand."

"I can see that." Then catching himself, Bulla added, "No what?"

"Fulgurites. Long tubes of fused glass usually found in sand that has been blasted by a lightning strike. When the electrical charge strikes sand, it naturally follows the metallic pathways in the sand until it expends itself. These pathways fuse into electrically created glass. They're almost works of art in themselves."

Bulla kicked at the red sand. "I still say it's got to be lightning."

Tom Pulse shook his head slowly. He was being paid by the hour. "Lightning might have blown a hole in the BioBubble," he drawled. "It would have shattered as much as it melted. From what I see, a directed energy source the approximate circumference of three acres did this."

"Directed energy! You mean this mess is manmade?"

"If it is, I have never heard of the kind of technology that would focus this much concentrated hell on a piece of the planet."

"You're sounding like that silly-ass Cosmo Pagan character"

"You're just saying that because Pagan is against manned space flight."

"I'm saying this because the man is a sanctimonious ass. He was the clown who first coined the slur BioBoondoggle when we refused to hire him as a consultant during our Mars phase. Man threw a hissy fit to end all hissy fits. You'd think he thought he owned the copyright on anything to do with Mars. Finally shut up when we gave up on NASA participation and went green."

"I hear he's en route."

"Sure. To gloat. Screw him. Don't let him near the area," Bulla ordered.

"What about federal authorities?"

"Who's coming?"

"Maybe EPA. Could be DoD."

"What would the Department of Defense want with this sorry slag heap?"

"If they buy Dr. Pagan's extracosmic theory, they'll be here with bells on and Geiger counters stuttering."

Amos Bulla looked up at the early-morning sky. Even it looked reddish to the eye. "There's no way a beam from outer space did this."

"The force was downward. It came from on high. Other than that, it's anybody's guess."

Bulla licked his fleshy lips. "Should we still be standing here like this? Exposed?"

"Why not? Did Uncle Sugar Able nuke Hiroshima twice?"

Bulla blinked. "Uncle who?"

"Military talk for the US. of A. Whatever did this got what he, she or it wanted. We're safe."

"I hate you tech types. Never use a simple word when a convoluted one will do."

Tom Pulse smiled a tight smile that said Sue me.

Helicopters began to rattle the shimmering red horizon.

"Here they come," Bulla muttered. "I don't know what I'm going to hate worse. The media or the Feds."

"Either way, be sure to smile real friendly-like as they Roto-Rooter your unhappy ass."

Bulla winced. "I liked you better when you talked like a techie, not a Texan," he muttered.

Then he strode off to greet the arriving media.

THEY PILED out of their helicopters, unloading video cams, sound systems and enough equipment to record the end of the world. As soon as the equipment was off-loaded, the choppers took off and began circling the site, taping aerial and establishing shots of the glass pancake that had supported Amos Bulla for six fat, happy years.

The media pointedly ignored him as he started wading into their midst, looking to shake hands and make friends before tape rolled and there was no turning back.

No one was having any of it.

In fact, they were so cold Bulla started to wonder whether he had shown up for an expose with himself scheduled for the hot seat.

"We're ready for you," someone said after the cameras were hefted onto shoulders and the reporters were pointing their microphones at him as if testing his firecracker red necktie for radioactivity.

"I would like to make a brief statement," Bulla began.

The media were having none of that, either.

"What did this?" a reporter asked.

"If I could..." Bulla said, waving the prepared statement.

"Do you believe, as many Americans do, in the existence of extraterrestrial visitants?" another reporter interrupted.

Bulla opened his mouth to reply, and a third question jumped at him.

"Have you ever been abducted by grays?"

"Grays?"

"Highly evolved aliens. Think of little green men-except they're gray. They like to perform medical experiments on humans."

Bulla swallowed his anger. "I have a statement," he said tightly. "It will only take five minutes."

"Too long. We need a soundbite. Thirty seconds or less. Can you boil it down to the pithiest point?"

"Lightning," Amos Bulla said quickly.

"How's that?"

"As far as we can now tell, a gargantuan thunderbolt struck the BioBubble. It was a freak accident. Nobody at fault. Nobody to blame. Let's just keep our heads and the lawyers out of this, shall we?"

"What evidence supports this belief?"

"Fulgurites. They're all over the site. In fact, you could say it's one gigantic fulgurite."

The media failed to ask what a fulgurite was, so Amos Bulla got away with it. Not that he expected otherwise. The media was not one to display its ignorance. At least while the cameras were whirring. Later some would question the lightning-bolt hypothesis. Others would simply report it as fact. By that time, Bulla would know if he were out of a job or not. It sure stank that way from ground zero.

"Will you rebuild?" a new voice asked from in back of the pack.

"That decision has not been made yet," Bulla admitted.

"Who will make it? You?"

"I'm only project director."

"Will the decision be made by the mysterious backer of the project?"

Amos Bulla smiled as he had been instructed to.

"You'll have to ask Mr. Mystery. If you can locate him."

No one laughed or chuckled or even smiled. They were deadly serious. He was hoping for some humor.

"Will BioBubble IV come equipped with a lightning rod?" someone asked.

"This is being looked at," Bulla ad-libbed.

A mistake. He knew it was a mistake the moment the words spilled from his lips. Great communicators did not ad-lib. You tumbled ass over teakettle down the rabbit hole that way.

"Sir, why did the BioBubble, a multimillion-dollar research station, fail to include a common lightning rod-a precaution even the most modest trailer home enjoys?"

"A common lightning rod would not have saved the BioBubble from the gigantic bolt that thundered down from the heavens last night, say our experts," Bulla said, throwing a keep-your-damn-mouth-shut glance over his shoulder to Tom Pulse, who loitered out of camera range.