Deep Storm

For a moment, she was unable to hide the bitterness in her voice. So Korolis has taken her off the important work and stuck her in this backwater of a lab, Crane thought. Wasting her talent on theories and secondary measurements. "Why would he do that?" he asked. "Doesn't he trust you?"

"Korolis doesn't trust anybody, especially someone with a degree from the Beijing University of Technology." She stood up, came over, and pointed at the hovering object. "Anyway. That beam of light it's emitting? It appears to be steady, right? But when you process it, you can see it's actually pulsing on and off, incredibly quickly: over a million times a second."

"Yes. Asher mentioned that to me."

"That's not all. It looks like ordinary light, right?"

"Except for how white it is, yes."

"But it's far from ordinary. In fact, it's paradoxical. Just about every test I've run has come back with anomalous results."

"What? Light's just light, isn't it?"

"That's what I used to think. But my tests are proving otherwise. Here, I'll give you an example. That piece of equipment you're leaning against? It's a spectrograph."

"I've never seen one so big."

Ping smiled again. "Okay, it's a very special photoelectric spectrograph. But it does what all its brethren do, just a lot faster and with greater detail. You know how spectrographs work?"

"They break light up into its component wavelengths."

"Right. When matter is ionized-by heat, say-it throws off light. Different kinds of matter throw off different kinds of light. They're called 'line emissions,' and the spectrograph can pick them out and sort them. They're very important to astronomers. By studying the line emissions of a star, they can determine what that star is made of."

"Go on."

"So I used this spectrograph to analyze the beam of light that thing's throwing out. And this is the result." Ping reached around for a sheet of paper and handed it to Crane.

Crane sca

"I don't know much about photoelectric spectroscopy," he said, "but I don't see anything strange about this."

"Not strange for a distant star, maybe. But for this little object? Impossibly strange. These"-she pointed at several sharp spikes on the graph-"are absorption lines."

"So?"

"You only get absorption spectrums when there is something in front of the star you're looking at. Like a cloud of gas, or something, that blocks some of the light, absorbs specific wavelengths. You would never see such results from a beam of light in the same room with you."

Crane looked at the plot spectrum again, frowning. "So you're saying the kind of light this thing is emitting could only be seen from a faraway star."

"That's right. The spectrum of light this sentinel is giving off is, fundamentally, impossible."

Crane fell silent. He handed the readout back to Ping.

"And that's just one of a dozen paradoxes I've discovered about this little fellow. Every test I try yields incomprehensible results. It's fascinating-but frustrating, too. That's why I bothered using a spectrograph in the first place-I figured something normally used by astronomers would be safe, at least." She shook her head. "And then, there are its physical components. Why is it emitting a beam of light in the first place? And did you notice how the beam always shines in the same direction-up-whatever way the object is rotated?"

"No, I didn't." Crane reached for the floating object and, half distractedly, turned it over with his fingers. Although it swiveled obligingly under the gentle pressure, the beam of light it emitted stayed in place, rock-solid, pointed constantly at the ceiling, its point of origin moving smoothly over its surface as it rotated. The object felt cold to his touch and strangely slippery.

"Curious," he said. "The light shines from the same relative position no matter how it's oriented in space. As if the entire surface is capable of illumination." He pulled the marker closer. No doubt it was his imagination, but it seemed to be growing a little warmer in his hand. He glanced over at Hui Ping. "I wonder if-"

Then he fell silent abruptly. She had stepped back from him, and a look of shock and dread had suddenly come over her face.

"What is it?" Crane asked.

Dr. Ping took another step back, moving behind a large piece of equipment. "Gloves…" she said in a strangled voice.

Suddenly, Crane became aware of an almost painful heat in his fingertips. He quickly jerked his hand away. Released, the sentinel glided smoothly back to its former position in the precise center of the room.

He stared at it, rooted in place by sudden fear. Ping had spoken only one word, but her meaning seared its way through Crane's consciousness:

Nobody has ever handled it without gloves…

As the burning sensation in his fingers sharply increased, he felt his heart accelerate and his mouth go dry. He had just committed a cardinal sin, made the most glaring error any rookie researcher could. And now…

But further thought was cut short by the sudden call of a loud Klaxon. Metal screeched against metal: all around the lab, air vents slammed closed. The overhead illumination snapped off, replaced by red security lighting.

Ping had pushed an Emergency Alert button on the wall and sealed them both inside.

27

Crane stood, frozen. The sound of the Klaxon seemed to make the walls tremble, and the emergency lights daubed the lab the color of blood.

What had happened? He'd touched the alien device-and his touch had triggered some kind of reaction. Oh, God, he thought, fear spiking wildly. Have I been irradiated? Some kind of alpha radiation, maybe, or low neutron radiation? How big a dose? And how will I even…

He shook this speculation away, trying to fight back the fear, trying to think logically. What's the treatment for partial-body exposure?

He backed away from the hovering object. " Bath!" he shouted. "I need a saline bath, quick!"

Glancing over at Hui, he noticed she was leaning over the equipment and speaking to him-yet he could hear nothing over the shriek of the Klaxon.

"What?" he said.

More shouting, gesticulating.

"What?" he called again.

Hui turned, pressed a button on the wall. Abruptly, the Klaxon fell silent. A moment later, normal light was restored.

"I said, it's okay!" she cried. "It's only infrared!"

Crane stared at her. "Infrared?"

"Yes. I've just now gotten the readings on this console. When you touched it, the marker began emitting infrared light." Ping watched her instrumentation a moment longer. Then she stepped around the equipment and, holding up a portable Geiger counter, ran it up and down Crane's front, letting it come to rest on his fingers. "Just trace background readings-the kind you'd find throughout the Facility."

At that moment, Crane became aware of loud voices and pounding on the door. Hui turned, trotted quickly over to a communications console, grabbed a handset. "Dr. Ping here," she spoke into it. "Erroneous alert. I repeat, alert sounded in error."

An incorporeal voice responded, toneless and mechanical. "Enter validation code."

Hui turned to a keypad, punched in a series of numbers.

"Validation code verified," the voice said. "Standing down."

With another clanging of metal, the coverings drew back from the ventilation ducts and fresh air drifted into the lab once more. Hui unlocked the door and opened it; the two marines, who had been hammering on it, almost tumbled inside.