“It has to be negatively charged,” Emerson said. “That’s also why it can be contained safely within a magnetic field.”
Riley scanned the road ahead for Wayan Bagus. Still no sign, but she thought she heard faint sounds of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger” through the fog.
“All the baryonic matter on earth has positively charged atomic nuclei,” Emerson said. “For the strange matter to be attracted to the normal matter on earth, it would need an opposite negative charge. Otherwise, the two would repel each other, kind of like two positively charged magnets. Positively charged strange matter would just sit in a glob, not eating anything in its path.”
“And if you had a stable supply of negatively charged strange matter?”
“Theoretically, under ideal conditions, it could destroy the earth, gobbling up everything until there was nothing left but a little superdense ball of strange matter.”
“Armageddon,” Vernon said.
Emerson nodded. “Under ideal conditions, so to speak.” Riley looked at Emerson in the rearview mirror. “You know a lot about strange matter.”
Emerson shrugged. “I’ve been told on occasion I’m a strange man.”
“We study strange matter at the Keck Observatory,” Alani said. “Astronomers believe that on a cosmic level, exotic matter is much more common than normal matter and was probably created during the early stages of the universe. Around ninety-six percent of the universe is exotic matter. It’s just that none of it, before now, was ever discovered on the earth.”
Riley saw the outline of Wayan Bagus’s ATV ahead through the fog and slowed down.
“That doesn’t exactly explain how the National Park Service got their hands on it,” Riley said.
“I have a working theory, but it will have to wait,” Emerson said. “We’re about to get company. I can hear ATVs on the trail behind us.”
TWENTY-FIVE
EMERSON QUICKLY TRANSFERRED THE PENNING trap to Wayan Bagus’s ATV.
“Here’s the plan,” Emerson said. “They don’t know we have a second ATV, and they’re going to assume we’ll try to outrun them down the mountain.”
Riley looked down the mountain. The undulate terrain looked very steep and treacherous.
“Do you think we can outrun them?” she asked.
“Doubtful,” Emerson said. “That’s why Alani, Vernon, and Wayan Bagus will take the ATV with the Penning trap up the mountain to the summit and hide out at the Keck Observatory while you and I act as decoys and lead them down the mountain.”
“What about the unexploded ordnance?” Riley asked. “It’s one thing if we blow up. It’s another if the entire island of Hawaii is destroyed.”
Emerson nodded. “The bad guys won’t be looking for Alani and Vernon’s ATV, so they can drive at a safe speed, sticking to the Jeep trail and main roads.”
“And what about us?” Riley asked.
“We’ll be off-road, speeding down the mountain in the fog at breakneck speeds, trying to avoid hitting any explosives.”
Riley rolled her eyes. “That’s a relief. I was afraid we’d be doing something dangerous.”
“Be careful,” Vernon said. “Pay attention to your unagi.”
The three of them took off down the Jeep trail and disappeared into the fog. Riley and Emerson buckled in and waited.
“The dogs won’t chase the fox unless they are allowed to pick up its trail,” Emerson said.
Riley cut her eyes to Emerson. “Have you ever been to a fox hunt? Nine times out of ten it ends up badly for the fox.”
Four sets of headlights shone through the cloud cover, and seconds later Riley could make out four ATVs loaded to the gills with Rough Rider soldiers.
“Do you know how to drive one of these things off-road?” Emerson asked.
“I’m the daughter of a small-town Texas sheriff, and I have four brothers,” Riley said. “What do you think?”
She gunned the engine and took off down the mountain, fishtailing through the lava cinders before getting her bearings.
Emerson looked behind them. The four sets of headlights were still in pursuit.
“They took the bait,” Emerson said. “The good news is that they’re coming after us. The bad news is that they appear to be gaining on us.”
Riley checked the speedometer. “We’re going forty miles per hour. I’m driving blind in this fog. Any faster, and I’m afraid we’ll lose control of the ATV.”
“If you don’t, Tin Man will catch us.”
“I see your point,” Riley said. She pressed on the accelerator and the ATV surged forward, bumping over the rough terrain.
The wheels of the ATV lifted off the ground as they launched off a knoll and were airborne for several seconds. They hit the ground hard and Emerson blew a weeeoop on his slide whistle.
“For the love of Mike,” Riley said, reaching across, ripping the whistle from Emerson’s hand, and throwing it out of the ATV.
Emerson watched the whistle bounce on the ground and out of sight. “That’s a shame. I was really beginning to get good on that thing. Another year of practice and I think I would have been ready for what we in the slide whistle game refer to as ‘The Show.’ ”
“ ‘The Show’?”
“You know. Playing the ‘bankrupt’ sound effect for Wheel of Fortune. The guy who has that job is just living the dream.”
The ATV burst out of the cloud cover, and Riley could see the Pacific Ocean far in the distance. “How far from civilization are we?”
“It’s about fifteen miles until we get to the Hawaii Belt Road,” Emerson said.
Riley looked down at the speedometer. It read sixty miles per hour. “At this speed, that’s fifteen minutes. Maybe we can stay ahead of them that long.”
The four pursuing ATVs emerged from the cloud cover, and Emerson turned to look.
“It’s Tin Man and about a dozen goons wearing khaki uniforms and campaign hats,” Emerson said. “They’re maybe a hundred yards behind us.”
Riley applied more pressure to the gas pedal, and the ATV leaped forward. They could see green pastures in the distance at the lower elevations, and the cinders lining the ground were starting to give way to scrubby grasses.
“I have my foot all the way to the floor,” Riley said. “We can’t go any faster.”
The pursuing ATVs were keeping pace, but they weren’t closing the gap.
“It looks like they’re at maximum speed too,” Emerson said.
Riley passed a rusty, tarnished metal tube with fins on one end. “Um. What was that?”
Moments later there was the sound of a tremendous boom, and one of the pursuing ATVs was catapulted at least thirty feet into the air before crashing to the ground and exploding into flames.
“I have good news and bad news,” Emerson said. “The good news is that there are only three ATVs and nine Rough Riders chasing us now.”
“And the bad news?”
“I think we’re passing through an artillery dump. The rusty metal tubes stuck into the ground all around us look to me like unexploded shells.”
Riley swerved, narrowly missing one.
“There’s one dead ahead,” Emerson said.
The ATV was going too fast to steer around it without rolling the vehicle and killing them both.
“Hold on,” Riley said, launching the ATV over a hillock and flying over the shell before landing roughly on the other side of it.
“This is nice,” Emerson said after they’d passed completely through the dump. “We’ve been on the island for less than twenty-four hours and already we’ve seen so many off-the-beaten-path things most tourists don’t even know about.”
Riley glanced behind her. The pursuing ATVs had made it through and were still a football field’s distance away.
“We could have died,” Riley said. “That’s not nice.”
“Do not dwell in the past,” Emerson said. “Do not dream of the future. Concentrate the mind on the present moment.”
“Buddha?”
Emerson shook his head. “Fence.”
“Who’s Fence?”
Emerson pointed at the green pasture ahead. There was a barbed wire fence strung across their path, stretching on for miles in either direction.