—I did not know that.
—Yes. Since we found the second piece, all our attention has been focused on the robot itself. With Vincent unable to train, Alyssa suggested we take the opportunity to go back to the metal. We already know the parts activate in contact with radioactive material, but she wanted to know if it had anything to do with what they’re made of. Anyway, now that it’s just the two of us in the lab, I decided to have Kara help me run some experiments Alyssa had designed.
—I am somewhat perplexed. Did you not perform a metallurgical analysis of the material early on?
—I did, several times. Every piece is a solid block of metal, 89 percent iridium, 9.5 percent iron, 1.5 percent other heavy metals. I could go on about the physical properties of that alloy until morning. Only nothing I would say would mean anything because we know for a fact that it can’t be true. This alloy should weigh ten times more. Metal doesn’t shine light in fancy little patterns, and it sure doesn’t move when you put pieces of it together. What science we do have tells us we’re looking at a solid chunk of metal, but this has all the physical properties of a complex mechanism.
So I’m trying to devise experiments to find out more than what metallurgy says I can find out. I know it sounds a little iffy, and it should. I’m making this up as I go along.
I first exposed one of the panels to plutonium-238 and measured its light output. It turns out the parts don’t just activate with radioactive material, they feed off it—any kind of nuclear energy, it would seem. Exposure to even a small amount of radiation increased the light output of the panel by about half a percent.
—Is that how these things power themselves?
—That would be my guess, but that’s not the interesting part. We had originally managed to cut a small speck off one of the panels for analysis. I had it encased in transparent resin afterward. It was just sitting on my desk as a paperweight. When we noticed an increase in luminosity in the panels, I had the idea to measure how much energy the material could absorb. I put the fragment in a closed environment in direct contact with the plutonium. It turns out the metal does absorb radiation, but it saturates fairly quickly and needs to release the superfluous energy.
Upon discharge, it emits a very strong electromagnetic pulse. It knocked out the two computers that were in the room. It’s possible the parts emit the same kind of pulse when they activate. It could be what brought down Kara’s helicopter in Turkey, though an EMP wouldn’t explain why her engine failed. Now that I know what to expect, I’ll monitor anything I can think of. I’d also like to see if it feeds off other types of energy.
—If it had not been made a cliché by another fellow, I would call this fascinating.
—I’m glad you like that. But that’s not even the good part. What’s really interesting is that it also generates a strong energy field, strong enough to destroy surrounding objects.
—What do you mean by “destroy”? Like an explosion?
—No. Nothing explodes. The stuff around it is just…gone, vaporized, without vapor. I was running the experiment in a glass-enclosed environment. It made a perfect spherical hole in the glass—surgically precise, like a laser. There is no ash, no debris, no trace that the missing matter ever existed.
—How much energy could the entire robot absorb?
—A whole lot. If that little speck of metal can discharge enough energy to make a one-foot hole, I can’t begin to imagine how much energy kilotons of this material can swallow. Obviously, I can’t place any instruments anywhere near it, but once I figure out a way to measure the energy output from the small shard, I can extrapolate a figure for the entire thing.
—Could the robot withstand a hit from a missile or a bomb?
—It’s complicated. Conventional weapons will generate heat, but most of the damage usually comes from kinetic energy. I have absolutely no idea how it handles kinetic energy. I can run some experiments. It might be as simple as putting a sledge to the panels and measuring the light output. I’ll think of something.
I can tell you we applied some insane amounts of pressure trying to cut a piece off one of the panels. I really don’t see how a shock wave could seriously damage her. It might knock her on her back if it’s powerful enough. I just don’t know enough about weapons.
—Do you believe it could withstand a nuclear explosion?
—I don’t know. Maybe? I think a more important question is how much the sphere is shielded from what happens outside. It might be almost impossible to destroy the robot itself, but it doesn’t mean all that much if everyone inside is dead.
In any case, if it did survive a nuclear blast, the energy the robot would release would probably be nearly as destructive as the blast itself, unless it can be focused somehow. The fragment I used only weighs a few grams, it’s smaller than the nail of your little finger, and it made a hole about one foot in diameter. I’m just now realizing how powerful this thing might be. I must admit, she’s beginning to scare me.
—What do you think she was built for?
—Up until now, I tried to ignore the fact that this might very well be a weapon, an enormously powerful weapon. But when I think about it, there’s simply no reason to build something this massive for anything else. There’s nothing practical about it. She’ll weigh about seven thousand metric tons if we manage to put her together. She’ll destroy anything she steps on. What worries me is that you could have walked through an army of ten thousand men with something a tenth of this size. There was nothing remotely powerful enough six thousand years ago to justify a weapon of this magnitude, nothing of this Earth anyway.
—You believe she is that powerful?
—We’ll just have to locate the head to find out.
—We will have all the answers very soon. Unfortunately, we will need to go under the sea to get them.
—I thought about that possibility. I’m hoping it’s not, because I can’t get the ARCANA compound to disperse well under water. It’ll take months to develop a new delivery system, and a whole lot longer to go through all the oceans. Whatever I come up with, I can already tell you that dispersal will be a lot slower under water. With a slower vehicle, like a submarine, it could take decades before we find anything. It might be wishful thinking, but I’m really hoping that whoever buried these things was afraid of water.
—You misunderstood. What I meant is that I know exactly where the head is. It is beneath the sea. The Bering Sea.
FILE NO. 143
INTERVIEW WITH CAPT. DEMETRIUS ROOKE, UNITED STATES NAVY
Location: Naval Submarine Base Bangor, Kitsap Peninsula, WA
—Please state your name and rank.
—Captain Demetrius Rooke, United States Navy.
—What is your current assignment?
—I’m in command of the USS Jimmy Carter, designated SSN-23.
—If I understand the designation correctly, that is a nuclear attack submarine.
—Yes, sir. Seawolf class.
—How long have you been in command?
—Five years in October, sir.
—I am not part of the military. You do not have to call me “sir.”
—What would you prefer I call you?
—On second thought, sir will be just fine. Please describe, in your own words, the events that occurred on the morning of August 17.
—Very well. We left Bangor Base alongside the USS Maine. She’s an Ohio class ballistic missile sub. We were on our way to SEAFAC in Ketchikan, Alaska, for a week of detection exercises when we got a call from SECNAV.
—You received a call from the Office of the Secretary of the Navy.
—No. I mean from the Secretary of the Navy himself.