including, perhaps, that of his obstreperous colleague at the table. He proceeded with the matter at hand.
'The Navy lost a ship, the Stinson, with tragic loss of life, while monitoring this phenomenon. That relates to another important point. At the same time, also beginning last April, another chain of events was set in motion, which.are well-known to all of you here.' Drefke hunched forward, leaning on the table, and looked intently at his colleagues. 'I am referring to the Soviet carrier, the Novorossiisk.'
There was a rustle and exchange of glances around the table. Drefke continued.
'You all know what transpired from that seemingly minor incident. The Soviets unveiled their first laser and demolished one of our surveillance satellites. We captured that satellite, thanks to the brave action of our shuttle crew, but that led to the launch of a new laser satellite and our nuclear weapon in a standoff which was broken this morning, leaving us in our current state of emergency. We now have reason to believe that the object which damaged the Novorossiisk and, in sad fact, sank the Stinson, was the very thing the Stinson was sent to monitor, the source of the odd seismic and acoustic waves.
'Mr President,' Drefke faced his commander-in-chief, 'we now believe that all these events and several more peculiar happenstances are intimately related, although it was difficult, until very recently, to see the common thread. It is very much to the credit of Mr Isaacs and his team that the crucial connection was made. The seismic information was used by the OSI to predict that the source of these waves would appear in Nagasaki and Dallas on specific dates last summer, July 7 and July 26, respectively. In each instance, there was some relatively minor, unexplained damage. In each case there was also a death, but neither was directly attributable to the source of the seismic waves. This much information was presented to Jason by Mr Isaacs in early August. A possible explanation was forthcoming.'
Drefke leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath, looked at Isaacs and Phillips, and then exhaled. He looked keenly at the President.
'Mr President, I know you have heard the term 'black hole'.'
'Yes,' the President answered with a note of questioning in his voice, 'some sort of gravitational trap, I believe. Supposed to be formed by a collapsing star, if I have the picture right.'
'That is the basic idea,' Drefke assented.
'So what's the point?' the President demanded. 'Are you going to tell me that in addition to the Russians threatening to blow us to kingdom come, we are about to fall into a black hole?'
'Apparently, Mr President, we are doing so at this very instant.'
This statement brought outbursts of protest from around the table. Drefke looked pained again and raised his voice.
'Mr President! Mr President! I beg your pardon! If I could be allowed to explain.'
The President quieted the group. 'Russians I can deal with somehow, Howard, but what the hell are you feeding us now?'
'Please consider my position,' Drefke pleaded in the most dignified tone he could muster. 'I sympathize with your incredulity, but you have not heard all the arguments. Understand that there is no way to introduce this idea without surprise and shock.'
'All right, all right,' said the President with protesting hands in the air. Then he dropped his elbows to the table and supported his head in his hands muttering, 'Jesus Christ!'
'At the Jason meeting the suggestion was made that, despite the seeming impossibility, the only explanation consistent with the facts was a very small black hole. In addition, a suggestion was made for a definitive test of this hypothesis. Such a thing should have a precise and measurable gravitational field. The meeting with Jason was on the second and third of August, nine days ago. An expedition was mounted a week later, and results were obtained only yesterday.
'Mr President, the answer is unambiguous,' Drefke continued. 'An object with a mass of about ten million tons and of very small size is oscillating through the solid matter of the earth as if it did not exist. The conclusion seems inescapable that the object is a black hole and that it is slowly consuming material from the inside of the earth. Left unmolested, that process will proceed to completion.'
A stillness had fallen on the room as Drefke spoke. It continued for a few moments, then was broken by the President.
'And now you are going to tell me the Russians are onto this thing and think we have done it?' he said in a forlorn voice. 'Why wasn't I apprised of this before I had World War Ill dumped in my lap?'
'Sir,' Drefke pleaded, 'as I said, the results confirming the hypothesis only became available yesterday, and even then there were important unanswered questions. You must understand that the notion was so incredible that we had to be absolutely sure before bringing it to your attention.'
Drefke paused to collect his thoughts. He had always been comfortably frank with this man before and after he became the President, but he did not care to confess in front of this group his culpability in delaying Isaacs's investigation. He chose his words carefully.
'Besides drawing us into a confrontation in space, the I Soviets have been pursuing their own investigation of the ' damage to the Novorossiisk.' He could not suppress a quick glance at Isaacs. He also did not want to expose Isaacs's role in tipping the Russians to the nature of the black hole. 'We are not sure of the details, but with their extensive naval deployment in the Mediterranean and the Pacific, they have evidently also discovered the regular sonar pattern associated with this thing. We have recently found that I they have a series of vessels deployed precisely on the path that the, uh, black hole follows as it punches through the earth's surface.'
'May we deduce then,' an abrupt voice broke in, 'that the Soviets have the same information that was available to ! our Navy?' The forceful baritone belonged to the Secretary ' of State, a diminutive man whose tone belied his physical stature. 'But they have gone ahead to reach the conclusion that this thing is a great danger?'
'I believe that is a fair statement,' Drefke replied. In his peripheral vision he could see the jaw muscles of the naval intelligence officer clinch and bunch.
'And they have concluded as you have,' the Secretary of State continued, 'that it is a black hole and have further concluded that we are responsible?'
'That seems to be the best guess,' answered Drefke.
'They have individuals with the necessary insight and imagination. Often their highly compartmentalized system keeps the people with the data from the people with the insight. In this case, however, one of their very. best scientists has been in on it from the beginning, starting with the analysis of the events on the Novorossiisk. Academician Viktor Korolev.'
There were several nods of recognition around the table. Korolev's defence-related work was known to many of them.
'We think,' Drefke continued, 'that it is very likely that, faced with the same data, Korolev would come to the same conclusions that we have.'
'Where did this thing come from then?' the chairman of the National Security Council demanded. 'Outer space?' He glanced at the Secretary of State. 'Why do they think we had anything to do with it?'
'Those questions are closely related,' Drefke said. 'I want you to follow the logic so that you can see that the Russians, Korolev, have probably done the same thing. I would like Bob Isaacs to lay that out for you and report what he found today.'
'Very well,' said the President, 'Mr Isaacs, why don't you proceed?'
Isaacs stood, fighting the fatigue of his hectic day, images flashing: the discovery of Krone's lab, the race to New Mexico , the machine, the encounter with Krone and the woman, Latvin, the flight back. He had to admire Drefke's presentation, a politician who'd scarcely heard of the phrase black hole a day earlier. He moved behind Drefke to the projector, switched it on, and picked up a laser pointer, as the officials swivelled in their chairs towards the screen.
'I'm going to leave out some of the background details for now,' he said, pushing a button to advance through a number of the slides Gantt and Phillips had prepared, until he came to the one he wanted.
'This,' he said, 'is an illustration of the path the black hole takes when it comes out of the earth, rises to a peak, and falls back in. It will then go through the earth and come out the other side. For now, I want you to concentrate on the fact that it rises to a fixed height each time. We can determine the amount of time it is above the earth's surface, and that tells us how far up it goes. The answer is fifty seven hundred feet. The simplest hypothesis is that it was formed somewhere at that altitude and always returns to that height as it swings in orbit
