The Trigger Read online

  Blam! Plink plink

  Blam! Plink plink plink…

  The same pattern continued down the line until the last shell was gone. At that point, Horton's monitors told him the emitter was at less than fifteen percent power.

  'Plenty of range to reach the gate and the parking lot,' Horton said, scribbling a calculation on his personal information manager. 'Even if this effect follows the inverse square rule -'

  'It was as if we'd gone down the line hitting them with a hammer,' Brohier said in wonderment. He felt his way to the nearest chair and slumped into it. Mopping his brow, he said in a shaky voice, 'Dr Horton, when next you see him, you may tell Gordie that the corporation will replace his car.'

  * * *

  3: Secrecy

  Windsor, NC - Police report few leads in yesterday's shocking triple murder at a Be-Lo convenience store. Security camera recordings of the crime show two masked assailants binding their six victims with duct tape, making a pile of their bodies, and then shooting into the pile 'as though they had all the time in the world', according to police sources.

  Complete Story

  Terabyte Corporation's Columbus campus remained officially closed for nine days. But when it finally reopened, it was immediately clear to the returning staff that the campus had not been idle during that time.

  The brownies have sure been busy,' said Gordon Greene, peering out the passenger window of Leigh Thayer's boxy Skystar.

  'Brownies?'

  'Brownies, Girl Scouts - whoever it was that made all those shoes for the cobbler while he slept.'

  Greene was reacting to the sight of a new guardhouse and gate on the main drive, adjacent to the new black asphalt parking lot that had been carved out of what had been a grassy field dotted with trees.

  Near the guardhouse, blocking what had been the exit lane of the main drive, was a new cargo dock. Concrete obstacles flanked the delivery chute, which was occupied at the moment by a brown UPS van. On the campus side of the dock, a pale blue Terabyte flatbed was nestled against the wall, and two men in corporation security uniforms were transferring packages between the two trucks.

  The gate and the cargo dock straddled a new fence separating Terabyte from Shanahan Road. 'Looks as though they're not going

  to allow any outside vehicles anywhere near the labs from now on,' said Lee.

  'Seems like they're overdoing things just a bit, don't you think?'

  Lee's guess was confirmed a moment later by the two gate guards who directed them into the parking lot. 'Dr Leigh Thayer, space 8,' the first officer said, affixing a responder decal to the inside of the windshield. 'Dr Greene, when you get your new car, you'll be in space 9. You can wait for an escort driver at the pavilion.'

  As he spoke, the guard jerked a thumb in the direction of a covered, plexiglas-walled enclosure a few meters beyond the airport-style security pass-through. Beside the enclosure were three six-seat canopied carts that would not have looked out of place on a golf course - or, Greene thought, in an episode of The Prisoner.

  'I think there's something we don't know yet,' said Lee, peering out the Skystar's windshield. 'Let's get up there and find out if they plan to tell us.'

  Before they could pass through the gate, Lee and Gordie had to surrender their old Terabyte identification cards in favor of new and larger cards worn on a chain around the neck.

  'If I'd wanted to wear a sheep collar, I could have gone to work for IBM,' Greene grumbled as they crossed to the pavilion.

  Another minor indignity awaited them at the pavilion. They were not allowed to drive themselves up to the labs. That required a special key, entrusted only to the 'escort' - in this case, a thirtyish woman with an athlete's shoulders and friendly but warily alert eyes.

  Neither Lee nor Gordie tried to talk over the whine of the shuttle's electric motors and the wind whipping the canopy fringe. But half-way up the drive, Gordie silently pointed between the seats at the driver's odd holster, which contained a rectangular black shape that in no way resembled a gun.

  They were driven directly to and through the former main gate, which had been rebuilt with a six-sided armored guardhouse.

  'Al Capone,' Gordie said as their shuttle entered the 'canal lock' entry, whose reinforced steel-bar gate arms looked solid enough to stop anything short of a military vehicle.

  'What?'

  'He means the new gate post,' their driver called back over her shoulder. 'It's like the gun booths little towns used to build to fend off bank robbers in the Thirties. I saw one once, in Goshen, Indiana

  - right on the corner of the courthouse square. Machine guns on Main Street - can you imagine?'

  'Do I have to?' asked Lee.

  As they were cleared through the lock, she silently pointed out to Gordie that the inner fence had been electrified in their absence.

  He nodded acknowledgement. 'Reality shift,' he said. 'We're not in Columbus anymore, Dorothy.'

  The escort drove them directly to the main entry of Planck Center, where they endured yet another check of their new identification cards, this time with a wand that scanned both the barcode and the memory strip across the bottom edge so the security log could compare their contents. 'Dr Greene, Dr Thayer,' the guard said with a nod a moment later. The Director and Dr Horton are expecting you in the conference room.'

  'Don't you want to walk us there?' Lee asked archly.

  'No, ma'am, Doctor,' said the guard, emphatically shaking his head. I'm not authorized to enter this facility.'

  Jeff Horton's face brightened when his assistants entered the conference room. 'Lee - Gordie - it's good to see you.'

  It's good to see you, too, Boss,' said Greene. 'I was a little worried I was going to come in here and see Patrick McGoohan -'

  As Horton and Karl Brohier burst into laughter, Greene became aware of the third person in the room - a slender man with angular features and an almost palpable air of calmness. Brohier rose from his chair and waved the stranger forward.

  'Dr Greene, let me introduce you to the newest member of your team,' said the director. 'Pete McGhan, this is Dr Gordon Greene, Dr Leigh Thayer. We've given Pete the title of Co-ordinator of Special Materials.'

  'Special materials?' Greene shot a questioning glance sideways at Horton.

  'A euphemism for his tax return,' said Brohier. 'Mr McGhan - the former Colonel McGhan, USMC - will be in charge of obtaining, storing, handling, and preparing the samples for your new test program. Which reminds me, Dr Greene - did you receive your check? Any problems securing a replacement for your vehicle?'

  'They're making me wait another week to get the color I want -which I wouldn't call a problem,' said Greene. 'I do want to thank you again -'

  'No need for that,' said Brohier. 'What happened was our responsibility.'

  While Greene frowned over that, Thayer stepped forward. 'Dr Brohier, Dr Horton - would one of you be so kind as to start at the beginning? Why all the increased security? And with all respect to Mr McGhan, why do we need someone new just to handle our samples?'

  'Because he has fourteen years' experience working with munitions and explosives, and we don't,' said Horton. 'Gordie, we blew up your car - you, me, Lee, and Baby.'

  'How?' Thayer demanded.

  Horton and Brohier exchanged wry smiles. 'I don't know yet, Lee. That's why it's time to get back to work.'

  First there were new and even more stern nondisclosure agreements to sign. Then Brohier and Horton showed the new arrivals the recording of the midnight tests, and took them to Davisson Lab to show them the changes.

  The first and most obvious change was that the entire target assembly, including the marble pedestal, was gone. 'We've built a new test chamber outside,' said Horton, pointing toward a new all-metal door and a plexiglas viewport in the far wall.

  'Twelve-inch-thick walls covered by a Kevlar and steel-plate armor sandwich, sealed and vented through a five-hundred-liter water muffler,' added McGhan. 'We tested it yesterday - big splash, very little
sound or smoke.'

  'We want to keep our Good Neighbor status,' Brohier explained. The fewer questions, the better.'

  'Looks like we need to turn Baby around, then,' said Greene, studying the geometry. 'Now that we know we have to be careful

  'Actually, we don't know that. That's your first priority - finding out what the effect envelope looks like. Pete will get you some test material that won't put you or the lab at risk,' said Horton. 'Lee, your priority is to figure out what sort of data collection we can do inside and through the port, and get it rigged up for Steady Hand.'

  'What sort of samples are we going to be testing?'

  'More ammunition, first - all calibers and propellants. Then the whole catalog of explosives, from Amatol to Torpex,' said McGhan. 'Everything my licenses cover and my contacts can provide.'

  'And then the entire Handbook of Chemistry,' said Brohier. 'We need to know exactly what compounds are affected, and what compounds aren't - a very practical necessity, in the absence of any theoretical base.'

  'Which is my first priority,' said Horton. 'We need to understand what's going on here - why what came out of this lab made something happen that natural radiation doesn't. Or doesn't where we can see it, anyway.'

  'Any help from PSR Index, or the JPSI?' asked Thayer.

  Horton shook his head. I've been searching the literature for a week now, and it looks as though this effect has never been observed before - or never been reported, at least. So I'm starting with a blank page.'

  'Then we'll have to fill it with some good data, so you have something to work with,' she said, then looked expectantly at Brohier. 'Is there anyone besides the five of us who knows what we've stumbled on?'

  'Not yet,' said Brohier. 'And that is the problem on my table. Because when we choose the sixth person, and share this with them, the world will start to change. I cannot emphasize this enough - our discretion will buy us necessary time. Indiscretion will cost us the opportunity to shape what comes next.'

  His words sobered the others but his gaze measured the weight he had laid on them, and found it insufficient. 'Make no mistake,' he went on, 'no one will be able to control the future once this discovery leaves this room. We will be in the realms of politics and psychology. This discovery will rewrite the rules of power which and spear. And we will not be the ones who write the new rules -we are merely the reason why they will be necessary.

  'We did not choose this responsibility, but we cannot refuse it. There is no turning back. What we can discover, others inevitably will discover. You will remember today fondly as one of the last days of the old familiar world. Your children will know a different reality.' Brohier glanced across the room at the apparatus, then back, a kind smile softening the solemnity. 'May it be a better one.'

  * * *

  4: Inquiry

  Dale City, MD - Investigators are counting on an emergency dispatch center's 911 call recording to shed some light on last night's drive-by shooting in a mostly-white subdivision. The cries and screams of party-goers punctuate the 100-second recording, which begins just before bullets smashed through a kitchen window and killed home-owner Gil Dellard as he tried to report a car full of teens driving across his front lawn.

  Complete Story 911 Recording

  For the next several weeks, life in Davisson Lab was fast-paced yet deceptively tranquil.

  The generator/emitter unit was relocated, realigned, and rededi-cated to the purpose of detonating the samples delivered four times a day by Pete McGhan. Because of the danger to McGhan if he were to approach the lab while a test was underway, his comings and goings dictated the rhythms of the test program and the daily schedule of Horton's team.

  The first delivery was at 8.00 a.m., with the other deliveries following at three-hour intervals. Half-hour 'blackouts' were programmed into Steady Hand for each delivery. As insurance, McGhan called in on a dedicated line as he neared the Terabyte campus, to verify that the emitter was cold and the test chamber ready.

  'Can the doctor see me?' he asked each time.

  'Come on up to the office,' was the reply that told McGhan to proceed. 'Sorry, there are no appointments available,' was the reply that told him to stay outside the safety radius.

  McGhan never lingered longer than was necessary to set up the samples in the test chamber and turn over the sample tags and standard yield data to Horton. Then he disappeared again to whatever undisclosed off-campus location he was using to receive, store, and prepare the samples.

  'Thanks for seeing me,' he said each time as he left the safety radius.

  'Please come again,' was the countersign.

  The cloak-and-dagger aspects tended to elicit childish giggles and snide jokes from Horton's team - especially Lee, who'd been drafted to field the calls. 'He sounds like a hypochondriac with a drug habit,' she complained to Horton. 'I sound like a Cincinnati madam. And if you put one word about this part in the research paper, we'll all sound like paranoid James Bond wannabes.'

  'Just because you're paranoid -' Greene began.

  'I know, I know.' She hunched over her console and glanced furtively to either side.'Ve must be careful,' she said in exaggerated comic-book German. 'Ze enemy may be listening effen now. Any vun of us may haff been compromised -'

  Apart from McGhan's deliveries and calls, there were few other intrusions on their work. The administrative staff protected them from routine inquiries, deflected personal contacts with a shield of plausible excuses, and took over a wide range of mundane obligations, even to picking up Dr Greene's new car and putting ready-to-eat meals in Dr Horton's home refrigerator.

  Karl Brohier visited daily for the first few days, then fell out of sight after announcing he would be away from campus for a time. Exactly where he had gone and with what purpose was grist for much speculation, but not even Horton could get answers from Brohier's staff.

  'He wouldn't sell us out, would he?' asked Greene. 'Make a deal behind our backs?'

  'No,' Horton said firmly. 'I don't believe he'd ever do that. He's on Diogenes's mission. It's going to take some time.'

  'Diogenes,' Thayer said with evident displeasure. 'You could have picked a more comforting allusion, Boss.'

  'Looking for an honest man? Isn't that what we need for Number Six?'

  'Boss, the one thing everyone knows about Diogenes,' she said with a sigh, 'is that he was the founder of the Cynics -'

  Greene's face brightened. 'Papa! At last I find you!'

  Thayer glowered at him. 'His nickname was Kayo - "dog" -because he slept in the streets. He taught his students to hold civilization in contempt. He gave up all worldly goods in a rejection of it. Boss, if we have to cast Dr Brohier as a Greek philosopher, couldn't it at least be one of the lonians? Thales, or Anaximander?'

  'I had an Anaximander when I was a kid,' Greene said. 'Kept it in a glass bowl on my dresser - till it died.'

  She balled up the nearest piece of paper and threw it at his head.

  As the days slipped by, the data piled up.

  The first round of tests centered on ammunition similar to that in Eric Fleet's pistol - ammunition using cellulose hexanitrate propellants, or guncotton. Having little personal experience with guns, Thayer and Greene were surprised by the seemingly endless parade of varieties McGhan Was bringing them. The Winchester catalog alone offered eleven powders and more than two hundred cartridges.

  Blend, grain size and shape, loading, maker, caliber - any one of those factors could be the difference that made a difference, that separated a positive test from a negative one. But the first twenty samples all duplicated the anomaly with such reliability that the team began calling the last mouse-click of the test protocol 'pulling the Trigger'.

  When the run of positive tests had reached thirty-two, consuming eight days, Thayer and Greene succeeded in infecting Horton with their impatience to test other materials. From that point on, they accelerated their testing by putting three ammunition samples in the chamber at once.

  It made
no difference in the results. Magnum and ACP, rimfire and centerfire, rifle and handgun, .218 Bee through .458 Winchester - within a fraction of a second after the emitter reached the ten percent power level, the sample cartridges would discharge, the soft brass shell splitting and curling in the clamp, the bullet crashing weakly into the catch box.

  At the end of the seventeenth day of testing, with one hundred forty samples logged, ennui threatening to replace the healthy impatience of curiosity, and no sign of Karl Brohier, Horton finally reclaimed control of the project.

  That's more than enough of this,' he said to himself, closing the research log and calling McGhan. 'Pete? There's a change in the schedule. I want to do the raw powders tomorrow and Saturday, and start the Series Three materials the first of the week. Can you accommodate that? Good. Thanks. See you in the morning.'

  As he logged off, he heard thin but earnest applause behind him, and turned away from his desk to find Greene and Thayer had been eavesdropping. 'Good decision, Doctor J,' said Greene. 'I was getting so bored that I was thinking about taking the new car down to Tennessee this weekend.'

  'Why are men in love with explosions?' Lee asked with a sigh, not expecting an answer. 'Boss, if we're doing powders in the morning, we probably should test the exhaust and fire suppression systems tonight.'

  'No,' said Horton. 'We're done for the day. And I'm taking both of you out for a decent meal.'

  Greene nodded approvingly. 'Good decision number two. You're on a roll.'

  'Wait till you hear number three,' said Horton. 'Both of you, take a minute to swab and fluff, and then let's get going - it's an hour's drive to Zanesville.'

  I'll drive,' Greene cheerfully volunteered.

  'No, you won't,' said Horton, and Lee sighed her relief.

  On the way to dinner, Horton told them of his other plans.

  'With our test emitter behaving itself, I don't think I've been getting the best possible use out of you, Gordie. So tomorrow I want you to start working on a second-generation emitter,' he said.