Piter turned apologetically to Paige and the two FBI agents. “The Tevatron has been touchy for the last day or so. The heavy construction is causing all sorts of problems, and our only consolation is that when the Main Injector is finished we’ll have even higher energies at our disposal.”
“You’ve trained your technicians well,” said Craig, watching the long-haired man quickly check over a bank of diagnostics.
“Graduate students,” corrected Piter curtly. “Mr. Chang and the others are working on their Ph.D. thesis topics. Their degrees ride on the success of this experiment.”
“Did the explosion at the substation cause any problems?” Craig asked. “We saw the crater.”
Piter sighed, maintaining his sidelong glance toward the grad students’ station. “Luckily, with more than three meters of dirt berm and the concrete shielding of the buried tunnels, neither the Main Ring nor the Tevatron suffered significant distress. My technical crew checked the bending magnets to insure that the vacuum pipes are sealed down to correct operating pressure. We’ve verified that the data ports, computer links, and optical diagnostics are all up and running. So far, the beam seems clean and consistent.”
“Can’t have a dirty beam,” Goldfarb muttered.
As if to bely Piter’s optimism, the grad students scrambled over each other to correct alignments and alter power outputs and sensitivities in probes within the flow.
Piter continued, “The FBI team out at the crater, however, wanted us to shut down the accelerator, the colliders, everything, while they investigate.” He chuckled scornfully. “Obviously, that is impossible. Every airport in the country doesn’t shut down because of one plane crash. Hundreds of people here and around the world depend on the results from these test runs. No technical flaw could have caused the explosion, and so there’s no reason to put our work on hold.”
The graduate students settled down, and Piter relaxed visibly. “My office is fielding phone calls from irate researchers, to crackpot groups that claim we’re leaking radiation into the environment, to the Physicians for Responsible Radiation Research-we were unfortunate to experience an accident while their annual gathering was taking place in Chicago.”
Craig kept his face expressionless, knowing that Trish LeCroix had come here for the PR-Cubed conference, and that she had stumbled into Dumenco’s case.
Paige took charge. “Nels, it would be very helpful if you could show us where Dr. Dumenco had his accident. Is the area safe, or are you running fixed-target experiments?”
“Those areas aren’t online yet.” He touched Craig’s elbow, guiding him down the claustrophobic tunnel. “Right this way, Agent Kreident. We’ll need a car. I’d like to be outside and away from all this noise and clutter.”
They parked outside another low building like a Quonset hut with curving channels on its roof and brilliant orange exterior walls framed with deep blue: Fermilab colors. An offshoot beam pipe from the Tevatron deflected high-energy particles away from the main stream and shot them a quarter mile down to the experimental target area.
Inside the locked building and underground again, Craig squinted down the long, garishly lit tunnel. Access doors, chain-link gates, and interlock codes prevented Piter from letting them inside until he had bypassed numerous safety procedures. “It seems kind of deserted around here for all the repair activity,” Craig observed. “Where is everybody?”
Piter’s eyebrows shot up. He had removed his out-of-place lab coat and now wore only his well-fitted suit jacket. “I suppose it does look deserted to a nontechnical person, but you must remember the sheer size of our facilities.”
Craig bristled with irritation-Piter had no idea that he had completed extensive scientific training.
“We have teams out in the diagnostic alcoves, a few in the beam-sampling substations around the Main Ring, but most of us just get our results and work in our offices. We’re interested in the data, not the… the
“Unlike some other labs,” Paige said. Craig caught her smiling as he noted the reference to their previous work at the Lawrence Livermore Lab and the Nevada Test Site.
As they walked down the long tunnel, their footsteps echoed in the enclosed space. Given an active imagination, night shadows, and a sickening fear after receiving a radiation exposure, Craig could imagine how Dumenco could have become suspicious, even paranoid. The place was so
“Was this Dr. Dumenco’s experimental area?” Craig asked. “Did he work with any of the technical people directly?”
Piter swelled with pride. “Many of the graduate students and faculty members are continuing the work I started at CERN. Georg preferred to work alone, or with a very small crew. One of his graduate students, Nicholas Bretti, has been here for many years.”
Craig turned to Goldfarb. “Make a note for us to talk to Bretti.”
Paige interrupted. “I already checked, after you called this morning. He’s on vacation and not expected back for a week or two.”
Piter frowned, his lips pale with distaste. “Other than that, I can’t say that Georg has made many professional relationships. He’s the type who wants all the credit for himself, if you’ll pardon my being so blunt.”
Goldfarb flipped open a small notebook and looked at the Belgian scientist. “Why do other researchers have so many people working for them, Dr. Piter? Are their experiments more important than Dumenco’s?”
Piter paused in his tracks and brushed a hand down his suit jacket. “It’s not a matter of importance. As Director of High-Energy Research, I allocate people and money to projects. If successful, the experiments continuing my own work could have profound scientific consequences. It is just that their work is much more manpower intensive than Dumenco’s-they need the entire Tevatron.”
They reached a thick conduit that ran out of the concrete wall and splayed into several smaller pipes leading in different directions down branched tunnels. Piter pointed out a jumble of equipment. “When the Tevatron is running in fixed-target mode, the beam can be diverted to this location. The particles strike various targets with sufficient energy to create a shower of subatomic particles. We trace the collisions, looking for the secrets of the universe.”
“Unless some guy happens to be standing in the way,” Goldfarb said.
Nels Piter bridled. “Dr. Dumenco risked a great deal by working in here when the accelerator itself was running. Our safety interlocks are normally impossible to circumvent, but many of them have been kludged together so we could keep the Tevatron running during the Main Injector construction. Dumenco himself subverted the mechanisms designed to protect him, and unfortunately he is paying the price for his foolishness.”
Craig noted the man’s indignance with interest. “You don’t think the substation explosion was
“Absolutely not!” Piter said, lifting his chin. “The two incidents are totally unrelated.”
Goldfarb dutifully scrawled a few comments on his notepad; Craig knew, though, that nobody would ever be able to read the words. “So if Dr. Dumenco was working on something different from the other experiments, what was he doing, exactly?”
“Well, it’s very technical,” Piter said evasively. “Dumenco was attempting to radically increase the number of p-bars present in our beam-”
“You’re going to have to define ‘peebars,’ please,” Goldfarb said. Craig suppressed a satisfied smile to see his partner playing the dummy and drawing the Belgian out. Paige seemed to know exactly what they were doing, but Nels Piter didn’t catch on at all.
“Antiprotons,” Piter said with a dismissive wave. “The antimatter analog to protons.”
“Like the antimatter in
Piter said coldly, “Yes, I suppose so.” He turned back to Craig. “For years, Dumenco’s been publishing highly theoretical papers on how to pump up antimatter production by using a gamma-ray laser to excite certain resonances in the target nuclei. His results-which have not been verified-indicate that this should greatly increase the production of p-bars. Since obtaining a gamma-ray laser from Los Alamos, he has been involved in quite a number of experiments to verify the increase.”
“Any luck?” said Craig.
Piter shook his head. “This is frontier physics, pushing the envelope. After Fermilab discovered the top quark,
