The Robert Stanek Short Story & Novella Collection Page 2

  “1 E to the minus 7. You know it doesn’t matter, don’t you? Even if you reach Bose-Einstein condensation, it won’t matter now. They’re going to replace you anyway.”

  “Kid, I reached Bose a very long time ago. That’s not what I’m after.”

  “You reached Bose and didn’t tell anyone? Who do you think you are? No wonder I’m replacing you.”

  “Shut up, kid, matter cessation was just the stepping off point. There’s something beyond and that’s what we’re after.”

  “There is nothing beyond matter cessation, that’s the ultimate state of matter. What is there beyond a standstill?” His eyes widened to unbelievably large circular globes. “What does it look like, doctor? What does Bose-Einstein condensation look like?… Good god, I’ve got to tell Project IV. Do you know what this means? Do you know what they’ll do to you for withholding this? You’ll never get a research grant ever again. You’re finished, finished. You are mad, aren’t you?” He paused to catch his breath.

  I saw the curiosity in his eyes.

  He said, “What are you looking for?”

  “Absolutes. Don’t you see? Einstein and Bose made the initial predictions and somewhere along the way we forgot the absolutes because we truly believed they couldn’t be attained. One microkelvin and 100 atmospheres simply wasn’t enough. That’s what I told them.”

  “At condensation the natural laws don’t even apply. It’s something we don’t understand; something half the world will never understand: A state of matter that isn’t gaseous, liquid or solid. So they send me a kid whose specialty is heating things up to solve it all. Well, there you go, kid, one supercooled, fuzzy atom. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  Krys said, “Where are you going?”

  “You said you’re my replacement, you got the show. See you later, kid. I’ve got everything I need right here.” I tapped my forehead. “And it’s all going to stay locked up there forever.”

  I walked away, five or six steps, stopped.

  Krys’s eyes were as wide as Kendyll’s beautiful performance minutes earlier. “You said there was something beyond matter cessation and that you wanted to see it. Where are you going?”

  “It didn’t work, kid, look at the displays. It stopped at condensation; it didn’t complete the transition. One supercooled, fuzzy atom is all I ever get. The light show and noise was just an added bonus.”

  “But isn’t that what you set out to find? Don’t you see the breakthrough here?”

  “Kid, I saw that four years ago. I’m tired. I’m going to bed unless of course you’d like my room too since you’re replacing me.” I turned to look at Kendyll. She was pretending not to notice my moment of self-tortured pity.

  I shouted, “Turn it down, switch it all down!”

  The lab slowly fell to silence. I heard the shuffling of feet and quiet whispers. I heard my heart pounding in my ears because my career was seconds away from re-birth or death.

  “I need sleep,” I muttered for the kid’s sake, “sleep’s the cure for all that ails you.”

  I walked out of Krys’s eyesight and waited. My heart stopped when I heard the whine of pulleys begin to move the elevator.

  Six miles to the surface. Six miles back down.

  I turned my full attention to Krys.

  Kendyll put her hand on his shoulder and said, “He didn’t mean to yell at you, Krys. He gets like this sometimes. He’ll get over it and in four hours or so he’ll be inspired again.”

  “He said he reached Bose-Einstein condensation four years ago. That was in the first six months of the experiment. If he told Project IV, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “He’s a stubborn, old goat, Krys. He didn’t want to achieve what others had achieved but couldn’t reproduce. He wanted to reproduce it consistently and go beyond.”

  Kendyll took a deep breath. “I really thought we finally went past that stopping point. The resonance, it must’ve been an anomaly. I really thought that was it and so did he. I could see it in his eyes.” Kendyll gasped. “Could I see it in his eyes!”

  Krys said, “He said no one else knew he reached it. How long have you known?”

  “I’ve known since day one, we all have. He’s what keeps us going. He really believes there’s something else.”

  “You mean to say that you’ve been going at this for nearly five years when you knew the madman had already achieved Bose-Einstein condensation? Are you as mad as he? You know I’m here to replace him, don’t you? Project IV wants him back at Moonbase III so they can keep an eye on him.”

  “Now there’s a laugh and a half. He’s not mad Krys. We all knew. We all believed. I believe, Krys. If he told me the sun was blue and the sky yellow, good God, I’d believe him. Don’t you understand? If you let Project IV take away his life, they’ll never find another like him. No one can duplicate his findings. He really does keep all his notes in his head. Photographic memory, been that way since the day he was born fifty-seven years ago. The experiment will go with him and it will die with him.”

  Krys’s face turned candy apple red. “You’d let him do that? I mean, you’d just let him flush it all down the drain.”

  “Funny thing about drains, Krys, you ever watch one? Here they rotate clockwise, where I lived on old-Earth, they rotated counterclockwise. Funny thing that. You’re the one holding the plug on the drain, Krys. How old are you anyway?”

  Krys frowned and said, “Twenty-three.”

  “Twenty-three. My youngest is twenty-four. She’s doing her graduate studies. What’d you do to get here anyway? … No, don’t tell me. Private tutors until you were twelve, completed your bachelor’s studies at fourteen, did your graduate work at MPI with an immediate follow on for your doctorate program. Screamed through your doctorate program and here you are, a genius at twenty-one.”

  “Twenty-three, and I completed the formulations on the last link of the sub-atomic puzzle. You don’t recognize the name, Krzysztof Steelbridge, King Supercollider… “

  Kendyll laughed. I laughed with her from the shadows.

  “I don’t give a damn, Krys, wrong end of the spectrum. We don’t heat things up here, if you haven’t noticed. You didn’t invent sub-atomic particles, Krys. They always existed.”

  Kendyll put a hand on Krys’s shoulder and stared him directly in the eye. “Have them build you another supercollider and you go back to slamming your atoms together. Leave us alone, we don’t need you. Don’t you see? This didn’t exist until he created it. That’s why we believe in him, Krys. He makes us believe. But I don’t think you understand that do you?”

  “No, I don’t,” Krys admitted.

  Kendyll turned away. The laser array was silent. The machines, all silent. It seemed I could hear the heartbeats of everyone in the lab as we all listened. Then she turned back and said, “I wasn’t describing you, Krys, I was describing him: Dr. Martin Schwenne. You’re practically following in his footsteps and you don’t even know it. You could be brilliant, a true genius with the right mentor.”

  She had tears in her eyes. I could tell by the quiver in her voice. “I was your age when I met him, divorced with two small children, going to college three nights a week and barely getting by. One day, I heard him speak. He was giving a lecture — I chanced into the wrong room at the wrong time, and there he was and there I was. Look at me today, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.”

  I sucked at the air as she turned. Now I saw her clearly staring into his eyes.

  “Everything’s about absolutes, Krys. Either you believe or you don’t. He says he’ll find it. Do you believe?” She continued. “Because if you do, all you have to do is tell him and he’ll go back to work. He doesn’t give a damn about Project IV. Project IV doesn’t give a damn about him. They pay the bills. We use the funds to keep Cryoterraform alive.”

  She walked him over to the array. “The atoms in the air you’re breathing are zooming around at more than one thousand feet per second. Zooming, zooming, zooming. At ab
solute zero, atoms stand perfectly still but there’s something beyond. He wants the absolute: the full transition, the new state of matter. We’ll use the array to achieve a thing no one beyond these walls has ever dreamed: Cryoterraform — the transformation of matter.”

  Krys watched Kendyll as she moved about the room.

  “Can you imagine the point where matter stands absolutely still, Krys, and that which is just beyond? The point where matter isn’t — a form no human has ever seen before. What happens to matter when you supercool it to 460 degrees below zero Fahrenheit and having hit the final absolute is standing absolutely still and then go just a bit further? What would it look like? Would it shine with the brightness of a hundred tiny suns? Would it be akin to a tiny and super-dense white dwarf?”

  Krys tried to answer but Kendyll wouldn’t let him. “Could you even imagine a tiny point of light radiating like a hundred tiny suns? Would this new form have spontaneity and change from instant to instant before our very eyes? Would it keep condensing, changing, growing? That’s what Cryoterraform is, Krys, that’s what it’s all about. He believes, I believe—we all believe.”

  She pointed to the technicians in the lab. “There’s something there, just beyond that stepping off point. You have to believe, Krys. It’s something wonderful, something no one has ever imagined, and now you have the opportunity to be a part of that discovery or destroy a life’s work. You’re either on the team or off, now which is it?”

  Krys was silent for a long time and just when I thought he wasn’t going to say anything, he said, “God, Doctor Kendyll, I really wish I could tell you… But—”

  She put a finger to his lips. “Stop there, before you say something you’ll regret for the rest of your natural life, Krys. Take that leap of faith. Take that small step and believe. Cryoterraform, Krys, you’ll never forget it. It will haunt you. You’ll always wonder what it would’ve looked like. Would Doctor Schwenne have been right? Would, would, would. All those questions unanswered. A hundred tiny suns, Krys. A form with spontaneity that grows and changes like a living thing before your very eyes. The next step, Krys, take it… Help us find the final absolute!”

  I watched Krys grapple the demons in his mind. I heard the elevator approaching now.

  00:29:00.

  00:29:10.

  Was he ever going to speak?

  “Project IV is waiting for a call. There’s two dozen security personnel on the surface waiting in case things don’t go quietly.”

  00:29:20. 30.

  Kendyll, bless her, didn’t flinch, and in an instant I knew she too heard the elevator’s approach. She continued her magnificently intent stare into the Krys’s eyes. “Are you on the team?”

  40.

  A life’s work. I saw the elevator now and glanced to the monitors.

  50. 51. 52. 53.

  Would it all be for nothing?

  54. 55. 56.

  The final absolute waited. The transition into the never before seen beyond, waited.

  56. 57.

  A hundred tiny suns. The point where matter isn’t.

  58.

  I held my breath. My life swam before my eyes. The years of joy and toil with Kendyll at my side — would it all be worth it?

  59.

  The elevator stopped. Krys frowned. “It’s too late. I can’t stop them. They believe he’s mad and that he’s controlling you all.”

  Kendyll grabbed Krys’s shoulders and shook him. “You are in control here, Krys. But are you on our team?”

  Krys craned his neck to look at the trooper shouting to him to get out of the way. His eyes glazed over. I watched him grapple Beelzebub himself.

  More troopers emerged from the elevator now, phase pistols drawn. I waited, my breath stuck in my lungs.

  “Doctor Kendyll,” Krys began, the glaze gone from his eyes, “How long does it take to run the array back up?”

  Right then I was never so sure that I’d see those hundred tiny suns. The final absolute would be mine and Cryoterraform would change everything. I emerged from the shadows and gave Kendyll a hug and then I turned to Krys. As I shook his hand, I said, “Welcome to the team, Dr. Steelbridge.”

  My eyes went wide with horror as Krys shook his head. “No, Dr. Schwenne. You don’t understand. The array is going back online to take readings of the condensation state. Like I said, it’s too late, they think you’re mad. Even if I change my mind, they’ll send another replacement — and another if that’s what it takes.”

  I grabbed Krys by the shoulders and shook him. “No kid, you don’t understand. I’m going to take it all with me.” I waved my hands around the lab wildly. “Every last bit of it. Kiss it all goodbye!”

  I started to shout an evacuation order as I ran toward the array controls. A moment later everything careened to blackness as I lost consciousness.

  Chapter Three:

  Struggle Against Time

  A trickle of blood ran down my cheek. I knew they’d kill me in the end, but I grinned at the monitor and began all the same. My thoughts were for Margaret’s safety and not my own.

  I took the four-hour shuttle from EOS-7 to Moon Colony to listen to an obscure scientist named Doctor Martin Schwenne, more specifically to hear his ideas on the future of space colonization, which he claimed was nonexistent. He also claimed progress in space travel was dead.

  This astounded and attracted me. Especially since he was lecturing at Space Pro Labs which only a year ago had matched and then topped the previously thought unattainable Earth-Moon Shuttle Speed Record of five hours set by Galactic Engineering a decade earlier. The five-hour record had lasted ten years. Space Pro Labs had broken it in grand style and in the process won total Earth-Moon Shuttle rights — a contract worth billions per day.

  So where did this obscure scientist named Doctor Martin Schwenne get off proclaiming the era of progress in space colonization defunct?

  For the most part, passage on the shuttle went smoothly. I gained entrance to the labs with a special clearance pass and was seated in the middle of the ninety-third row of the assembly hall exactly four hours twenty-eight minutes after departure from Earth Orbit Station Seven. A buzz of frenzy was sweeping through the crowd. I played my part, proudly relaying the latest gossip. But what everyone really wanted to know was: who was this Doctor Schwenne?

  A tiny toothpick of a man wandered onto the stage. The crowd quieted. I think most thought, as did I, that the little man would introduce our speaker, Dr. Martin Schwenne, but as it turned out he was Dr. Martin Schwenne. I was shocked.

  I settled back into my seat, vying for armrest space with my neighbors. On one side was a gaunt but thick-jawed man clad in prim business attire who undoubtedly hadn’t slept in days. He was popping red beepers like they were candy. On the other sat the inevitable robust lecture-circuit attendee. He slapped both corpulent forearms down onto the armrests with the intent of not moving either again until the meeting concluded. We conducted war with our elbows for a time.

  Then without warning, Martin Schwenne’s meek voice rang out. “Innerspace is a fraud. Cryodrives are a false hope!”

  Needless to say, I jumped straight out of my seat and screamed back at him, “What do you mean innerspace is a fraud? What do you mean cryodrives are a false hope?”

  Martin cleared his throat, his face pallid. I quickly settled into my seat and conducted armchair warfare with my neighbors again.

  Martin Schwenne talked on. I jumped out of my seat two more times. I just couldn’t help myself.

  “Yank this man from the pulpit,” I cried out when I just couldn’t take it anymore. The lectern at Space Pro Labs was sacred to me. It was here in 2391 that I had listened to Ishad Ballin defend his first dissertation after leaving Galactic Engineering in 2390.

  I shrank back into my seat — only under the weight of several thousand pairs of withering eyes. Yet, I did notice that a handful of others had joined me to their feet.

  I tuned back into the illustrious speaker, con
fident he would say nothing now that I would care to hear. Also sure that if I made a dash for the door those same withering stares would return. As I was tucked into the middle of the ninety-third row — a hard place to escape from easily — it would’ve been a long, solitary walk.

  Martin was saying, “You’ve been fed spoonfuls of warped science about space since the inception of space colonization. In this modern day, there are still some who believe that the human body will explode if it hits the vacuum of space, yet you and I know this is hardly the case. Some will not travel on the shuttle because they’re afraid of falling into the sun. Please, we know better.”

  Martin paused to rub his bifocals, the ancient spectacles, like him, a relic from the past. “I didn’t choose these facts randomly. I chose them to show you past space colonization myths. But there are books still in print this very day by some of my colleagues who ought to know better than to go on and on about innerspace and cryoterraform. It is innerspace this and innerspace that, cryo this and cryo that. And then there are the technical journals that drone on and on about the meticulous and the monotonous, theorizing, always theorizing…”

  I held my seat despite the urge to drag Doctor Schwenne from the pulpit.

  “And they’ve effectively corrupted your receptiveness to new ideas, innovations and new technologies. There will never be a cryodrive or even a cryocoil… And as for innerspace, to steal an equally antiquated phrase, bah-humbug… It will never be reached!”I jumped out of my seat again. I couldn’t help myself. My face was red. I was short of breath. My heart was pounding in my ears. “Where did they find this clown? Didn’t anyone screen him? Didn’t anyone screen him?”

  Others joined in and soon people started leaving, fanning out the doors. They’d never look back and while I was partly to blame, I felt no remorse. Dr. Schwenne stood there as calmly as you please and stared me down. I’m not sure if he could see all the way to the ninety-third row with his reading spectacles, but it sure seemed that way.