earth to account for the reversal of direction.'
She looked down and brushed a piece of lint from her skirt and then looked back at Leems.
'I also tracked all US, European, and Japanese satellites, with again the same null result. Nothing currently in orbit can account for what we have seen, even discounting the question of what the technology could be, something that could propagate through the earth.'
Beside her, Alex Runyan smiled lightly, taking pleasure in her neat parry. Leems scowled more deeply, but did not respond. After a long quiet moment, Danielson leaned around Runyan to address Zicek.
'Excuse me, Dr Zicek, but there's another thing that I'm not sure came out clearly just now. The marks that we've investigated, the holes in the concrete, look very clean. There's no sign of a great release of energy, no blackening, no melting or fusing of the material. Perhaps that makes the situation more confusing, but there's no indication of explosion or burning which you'd expect of radiation from a beam of energy. It looks more like the material was drilled out; it's just gone.'
The group of scientists fell silent, thinking. Fletcher and Noldt muttered to one another.
The idea hit Runyan like a physical blow. Suddenly he was encased in a suit of armour from neck to groin, three sizes too small. He stared at Danielson, and she returned his look, her right eyebrow arched quizzically.
Runyan felt as if he were balanced on a vertex. He sensed the grip of forces of which he had been unaware until moments ago. Danielson's words had lifted a curtain to reveal the crest and the chasm yawning immediately before him. Random moments from his career flashed out of his subconscious, and he perceived them as stepping stones that had led him inexorably up to this teetering edge. He had no choice but to take the step that would send him plummeting headlong down the other side.
He knew the antagonist. He knew the mathematical structure of its bones and sinews, its space-time stretched tight on this frame. He knew the roaring cauldron.deep inside which marked the boundary where knowledge stopped, but from where new beginnings would inevitably arise. He knew the men and women, past and present, who had pieced it together in their imaginations, fragment by careful fragment.
But this was not imagination. This was not mathematics. This was the most delicate dreams of the intellect come real in nightmare fashion. And that reality changed everything. Everything.
He had an urge to close his mind, as if by sealing off the thought he could seal the abyss, but he knew it was there. A dynamic, hurtling, all-consuming void.
'Do you have a pen, some paper?' Runyan whispered hoarsely to Danielson. He was scarcely breathing.
Danielson rummaged in her purse and produced a pen and a small airline cocktail napkin she had salvaged on the flight down.
'I only have -' she started to say.
'Fine' Runyan breathed, grabbing the pen and napkin, 'that'll do.'
He pressed the napkin onto his bare knee and began to scratch symbols and numbers on it, oblivious to the uncertain, dispirited conversation in the room. Danielson was confused by his action, but could feel a new tension radiating from him. She had trouble following the discussion. Even though he was completely ignoring her, she felt partially mesmerized by Runyan's newly focused intensity. She found this intensity, contrasted with a potential for warm amiability, strangely attractive.
Runyan was uncertain how much time had passed when he finally drew a long breath and let it out slowly. He banded the pen back to Danielson and locked eyes with her for a long moment. Then he stuffed the napkin into a pocket of his shorts and waited for a break in the discussion. At an appropriate point he poked a finger up.
Phillips nodded at him. 'Dr Runyan. You have a thought?'
Runyan lapped his fingers together and leaned forward, forearms on his bare knees. He pressed his thumbs in opposition, looked down at his hands and then up towards Phillips. His terrible conclusion was inescapable. Now he had to lead his colleagues down the same path.
'Let me see if I can speak to what is bothering all of us,' he said slowly and reflectively. 'We've been unable to account for any extraterrestrial source, natural or artificial. The fact that we're dealing with something that has a fixed direction in space suggests an origin out there.' He jerked a thumb towards the ceiling. 'But the basic phenomenon occurs within the depths of the earth.' He jabbed a long forefinger towards the floor. 'It only comes to the surface periodically.'
Danielson sat tensely on the sofa, partially turned towards Runyan, watching his eyes and mouth as he spoke. The words were neutral enough, but seemed darkly ominous to her, a cold vapour filling the room.
'Incredible as it seems,' Runyan continued, 'I think the conclusion we've been avoiding is that there is actually something inside the earth, something moving around through the earth, triggering seismic waves and tunnelling holes as it goes.'
He glanced sideways at Danielson, his eyes crinkled by a faint smile. 'I don't remember whether it was Sherlock Holmes or Nero Wolfe who argued that one should throw out every impossible explanation, and the remaining one, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.' The smile faded. 'I've done something like that in my own mad and reached a conclusion, but it's bizarre, and I don't want to prejudice you with it yet. I'd like you 'o follow this line of reasoning and see where you think it leads.'
Runyan seemed to be sitting calmly, looking around at his colleagues, but Danielson happened to glance down at his feet. His toes were curled around the end of the thongs, gripping them, pale splotches on the knuckles contrasting with the tanned skin.
Across the room, Isaacs was staring at Runyan, mentally groping, trying to grasp the implications of the scientist's statements. The quiet was broken by Fletcher who sat up straight in his chair and muttered, 'Oh, Jesus.' He swivelled to look at Runyan. The two locked gazes and stared at one another for an extended moment. Then Fletcher broke off and waved a hand inviting Runyan to take the floor.
Runyan stood and made his way slowly to the blackboard, deep in thought. With a habit born of long hours in the classroom, he selected a moderately long piece of chalk from the tray before turning to face his audience.
'Let's forget the seismic signal itself and concentrate on the derived trajectory for a moment,' he began, unconsciously slipping into a pedagogical tone. He turned to the board and sketched a circle representing the earth, with a curved arrow above it indicating the direction of rotation. Then he added a straight line beginning a third of the way from the equator to the North Pole which passed through the centre of the circle and out the opposite side.
Watching the tip of the chalk, Danielson suddenly pictured a stiletto, piercing the earth. Her shoulders contracted in a brief shiver.
'The source moves like this,' Runyan tapped the line with the chalk, 'with a period of eighty minutes and thirty seconds. We can think of the earth as a sphere of roughly constant density which produces a certain gravitational potential. An object falling freely in that harmonic potential would oscillate back and forth along a line. To close approximation, the line would point to a fixed direction in space. The period would be eighty some-odd minutes.' He looked at Fletcher, then at Leems. 'Essentially the same as that of an earth-orbiting satellite.'
There were scattered rustlings in the room as a couple more individuals began to see where Runyan's arguments were leading.
'Now, if we consider the real earth,' Runyan continued, 'there would be some differences. A minor factor would be that the density of the earth is not constant. An orbiting object would feel a somewhat different gravitational pull than the idealized case I've described. That would alter the period of the trajectory somewhat. There could also be processional effects on the orientation, but all that's negligible for now.'
He looked around the room, focusing briefly on Danielson. Her stomach tightened as if his gaze were a physical grip. ml face was a sharp image against blurred surroundings. She could make out beads of sweat along his hairline.
'The significant feature,' Runyan continued, 'is that the path is anything like a free orbit since, as we all know, the earth resists quite effectively the attempt of any material. body to move through it. If I'm on the right track, the orbiting body can't be ordinary material.'
'Let me get this straight,' said Gantt. 'You're proposing that something is actually orbiting within the earth?'
'C'mon!' snorted Leems.
'That's the only picture that makes sense to me,' Runyan replied, his voice tensing at the implied
