Douglas Preston - Impact

Ford peered down the hole with a flashlight; it went straight down as far as the beam could reach. He shivered. Something about this business frightened him; he wasn't sure why. He measured the hole, recorded the entry angle on it, took some pictures. Getting his rock hammer out of his pack, he chipped a few fragments from the lip of the hole, some displaying the glassy inner wall, and sealed them in ziplock bags. He also took samples of dirt and plants.

"How the heck," said Abbey, "could a meteor big enough to light up the Maine coast only leave a tiny hole like that?"

"A damn good question." Ford rose to his feet, brushed the dirt off his knees.

"How deep do you think it went before it finally stopped?"

Ford cleared his throat and looked at her. "It didn't stop."

"What do you mean?"

"It went all the way through the Earth."

She stared at him. "You're kidding me, right?"

"No joke. It came out in northwestern Cambodia. Only it was a lot bigger when it exited--the hole wasn't three inches in diameter, it was ten feet."

"Holy shit."

"It blew out of the ground with such force that it flattened a square mile of jungle."

"Any idea what it was?"

Ford began packing up his gear and samples. "Not a clue."

"Sounds like a miniature black hole to me. Goes all the way through the Earth, getting bigger as it goes, leaves behind traces of radiation."

"That's an intriguing hypothesis."

"Have you figured out where it came from?"

Ford hefted the bag. "No."

"Why not?"

Ford sighed. "And how would one do that?"

"You've got a photograph of it coming in, you've got the entry point and angle, exact time of impact, exit point and angle--heck, with that information I'm pretty sure you could extrapolate its orbital trajectory backward. They do it all the time with ECOs."

"ECOs?"

"Earth Crossing Objects. It's a classic problem of orbital dynamics."

Ford stared at her. "Could you do it?"

"Gimme an hour and a MacBook running Mathematica."

44

Corso let himself into the brownstone, moving slowly, trying not to wake his mother. He stumbled over the rug in the front hall, cursed, and went into the parlor, shutting the pocket door to keep down the noise. He had just finished up the shift at Moto's, although he had stayed on to have a drink or two of his own. It was now two A.M. Eleven P.M. in California.

Eleven. He sank down on the sofa, feeling flushed. He had talked to Marjory earlier that day, a very unsatisfying call, cut short because she was at work. They'd only been going out a week when he left; what they had together was wild and erotic but it wasn't going to work long-distance.

God, it was awful. He'd never had so much fun with a girl. And he desperately needed to talk to someone else, get a second opinion from someone who knew the players, knew the place.

He picked up the phone, dialed the number. It rang four times before her voice answered, small and far away.

"Mark?"

"Yeah, hi, it's me."

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine, no problem. Listen, I have to talk to you about something . . . something at work. Really important."

A silence. "What about work?" Her voice sounded wary. She'd made it pretty clear she didn't want to get involved in his travails or endanger her own career because of him.

"I've got a hard drive from NPF. One of the classified ones. It's got all the high-res imagery on it."

"Oh, shit, Mark, don't tell me this. I don't want to hear it."

"You've got to hear me. I found something on it. Something incredible."

"I really don't want to hear any more. I'm hanging up now."

"No, wait! I found an image of an alien . . . machine or artifact on . . ." He paused. Don't tell her the real location. "On Mars."

A silence. "Wait a minute. What'd you just say?"

"I found an image. A very, very clear image of a very, very old construction on the surface of Mars. Unmistakable."

"You've been drinking."

"Yes, but I made these discoveries when I was sober. Marjory, you know I'm not an idiot, you know I graduated first in my class at MIT, and you know I was the youngest technician in the entire Mars mission. You know that when I tell you this is real, it's real . I think this machine is the source of the gamma rays."

He could hear her breathing on the other end of the phone. "A lot of geological formations can look artificial."

"This is no formation. It's about six meters in diameter, consisting of a perfectly cylindrical tube with a rim projecting from the surface about two meters in diameter, surrounded by five perfectly spherical projections, the entire thing mounted on a pentagonal platform, partially drifted over with regolith."

"How do you know it's old?"

"The regolith. And you can see pitting and erosion from micrometeoroids. It's got to be many millions of years old."

Another silence. "Where on Mars is it? I want to see the images."

"Sorry, I'm not going to tell you that."

"Why not?"

"Because I found it, I'm getting the credit. Surely you understand."

"I do. But . . . What are you going to do about this? How are you going to get credit?"

"I called Chaudry."

" Jesus. You told him you stole a classified drive?"

"I didn't actually steal it, but yes, I told him. I said if he rehired me, I'd come back with the drive, all would be forgotten, and we'd share in the discovery. If not, I'd send the hard drive to the FBI and his career would be fucked."

"Oh my God. And?"

"The asshole didn't believe me about the alien machine. He said I was a psychopathic liar. He didn't even believe I had a classified hard drive. So I e-mailed him a detail from a high-res image--to prove it. Not a picture of the machine, of course, because he'd then find it using the data file. But I did send him a super-high-res of another image. The fucker called me back so fast."

"You're crazy."

"This is a high-stakes game."

"And?"

"It sort of backfired. He said he wouldn't do shit for me. And now I couldn't do shit to him. Because if I mailed the drive anonymously to the FBI, and he got nailed, he'd point the finger at me. ' I go down, you go down ,' he said. It's a Mexican standoff."

A long pause. "He's right, you know."

"I realize that now. The fucker stalemated me."

"Now what?"

"This isn't over by a long shot. I'm thinking of taking the drive to the Times . I swear to God I'm getting the credit for this if it's the last thing I do." He hesitated. "I need a second opinion. I need to hear what you think. I've been thinking about this so much I'm about to explode."

He could hear the long-distance hiss on the line for a long time, the faint sound of music in the background. "Don't do anything right away," Leung said slowly. "I'm not sure going to the Times is the best idea. Give me a few days to think about it, okay? Just sit tight and don't do anything."

"Hurry up. I'm a desperate man."

45

Abbey hadn't been able to figure out what to say to her father at dinner, and now, at six A.M., as she lugged her suitcase down the stairs, she still had no idea how she was going to break the news.

She found him sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and reading the Portland Press Herald . She was shocked at how tired he looked. His light brown hair lay in straggly locks plastered to his forehead, he hadn't shaved, and his shoulders were stooped. He was not tall but he had always been straight, stocky, and muscular. Now he looked half-collapsed. Since she had sunk his boat and wrecked his livelihood, he had quit bugging her about college and her future, stopped complaining about all the money he'd spent. It was almost like he'd given up on her--and his own life. He couldn't have made her feel worse if he'd tried.