Suddenly she paused. If her eyes weren't playing tricks on her, one of the crosspieces on the arm of a particle had suddenly moved.
She waited, staring through the oculars at the magnified particles, a crawling sensation at the nape of her neck As she watched, another arm of a particle moved, just like a little machine, clicking from one position to the next. As it did so the particle propelled itself forward. She watched, fascinated and alarmed, as the others began to move in the same clicking fashion. All the particles were beginning to move, the arms working like tiny propellers.
The particles were still alive.
It must have been the addition of sugar to the solution. Melodic reached under her desk and pulled out the
The particles became more active, the little arms rotating in a way that drove them up the gradient, toward the higher concentration of sugar.
Melodic felt the prickle of apprehension grow. She hadn't even considered that they might still be infectious. And if they were alive, they were certainly infectious-at least to a dinosaur.
In the herpetology lab down the hall, one of the curators had been breeding parthenogenetic lizards as part of a long-running experiment. The lab contained an incubator of in vitro cell cultures. A cell culture would make an excellent testing bed for whether the particle would infect a modern-day lizard.
She exited the lab. The hall was empty-after five o'clock on a Sunday she would be most unlikely to meet anyone. The herp lab was locked but her card key worked, and it was a matter of five minutes to obtain a petri dish full of growing lizard cells. She brought it back to her lab, loosened some cells with a squirt of saline solution, and transferred them onto the slide.
Then she put her eyes to the oculars.
The Venus particles stopped in their move up the sugar gradient. They turned in unison, almost like a pack of wolves on a scent, and headed for the cells. Melodic felt a sudden constriction in her throat. In a moment they reached the group of cells, clustering around them, attaching themselves to the cell membranes by their long appendages; then, with a swift cutting motion, each one entered a cell.
Melodic, riveted, watched to see what would happen next.
2
FORD MANHANDLED THE man in the track suit back into an angle of the rock,
where he was covered from the back and sides. The three soldiers had trained their weapons on Ford and the man he was holding. The sergeant made a motion with his hand and the other two began moving to either side.
'Stop moving, all of you, and lower your weapons.'
The leader motioned them to halt.
'Like I said, this man's going to tell all of us what's going on or I'm going to kill him. Understand? You wouldn't want to report back to base with your handler in a body bag, would you?'
'You'll be in a body bag next to his,' said Hitt quietly.
'I'm doing this for you, Sergeant.'
'Us?'
'You too need to know what's really going on.'
Silence.
Ford pressed the gun to Masago's head. 'Talk.'
'Release him or I'll open fire,' Hitt said quietly. 'One . . .'
'Wait,' said Tom. 'We're American citizens. We've done nothing wrong. Is this why you went into the military-to kill American civilians?'
There was just the faintest of hesitations. Then Hitt said, 'Two . . .'
'Listen to me,' Tom continued, speaking directly to the sergeant. 'You don't know what you're doing. Don't blindly follow orders. At least wait until you know what's going on.'
Again the sergeant hesitated. The two other soldiers were looking to him. He was the key.
Hitt lowered his weapon.
Ford spoke quietly, remembering what he'd been taught about interrogations years ago. 'You lied to these men, didn't you?'
'No.' He was already sweating.
'You did. And now you're going to tell them the truth, or I'll kill you--no second chances, no warnings, nothing. A bullet to the brain and then I'll take what's coming to me.'
Ford meant it and that was key. The man knew it.
'Okay. First question. Who do you work for?'
'I'm director of Detachment LS480.'
'Which is?'
'Established in 1973 after the Apollo 17 mission to the moon. Its purpose was to study a lunar sample known as LS480.'
'A moon rock?'
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
Masago swallowed. He was sweating. 'It was a piece of ejecta from a crater known as Van Serg. The rock contained fragments of the meteorite that formed the crater. In those contaminants were particles. Microbes.'
'What kind of microbes?'
'Unknown. They appear to be an alien form of life. Biologically active. They could be weaponized.'
'And the connection to the dinosaur?'
'The same particles were found in the dinosaur fossil. The dinosaur died of an infection caused by the LS480 particle.'
Ford paused. 'You're saying the dinosaur was killed by an alien life-form?'
'Yes.'
'And the connection with the moon rock again? I'm a little lost.'
'Van Serg crater is sixty-five million years old. The dinosaur died 65 million years ago following the Chicxulub impact.'
'Chicxulub?'
'The asteroid that caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs.'
'Go on.'
'Van Serg crater was made by a fragment from that same asteroid. It appears the asteroid itself was riddled with the LS480 particles.'
'What's the purpose of this op?'
'To clear the area, eliminate all knowledge of the dinosaur, and recover the dinosaur for classified research.'
'When you say 'clear the area' you're talking about us.'
'Correct.'
'And when you say 'eliminate all knowledge of the dinosaur,' you're talking about killing us-am I right?'
'I don't take lightly the idea of killing American citizens. But this is an issue of the gravest national security. Our nation's survival is at stake. There's no dishonor in giving up your life for your country-even if it happens to be involuntary. At times it's unavoidable. You were CIA. You understand.' He paused, fixing Ford with pinpoint eyes. 'Those LS480 particles caused the mass extinction of the dinosaurs. In the wrong hands, those same particles could cause a second mass extinction-of the human race.'
Ford released him.
Masago jumped away and backed up, breathing heavily, then unholstered his Beretta. He positioned himself slightly behind Hitt.
'Sergeant Hitt, eliminate these three people. I don't need their information. We'll get it another way.'
There was another long silence.
'You're not going to do this,' said Sally. 'Now you know it's murder.'
