“I need to remind you that the confidentiality clauses you have already signed remain in full effect. Anything you see or hear inside the situation room is not to be disseminated to the press under any circumstances without prior permission by the white house.”
The White House legal counsel walking along with them looked harried and off balance.
“Cell phones aren’t allowed. There are detectors installed in the ceiling so don’t even try to send a message out.”
Lois nodded. She’d given her cell phone to Susan before the hearings anyway.
“Why do you look so upset?” Dr. Ledderman asked.
“I don’t know why you are going in there, and that means I don’t have any way of formulating a legal strategy…”
“You don’t need to know,” the secret service man beside them said. He held the door open for Lois and Dr. Ledderman and turned to the lawyer. “This is as far as you go.”
There wasn’t just one situation room, of course. It was actually a complex of several rooms covering five thousand square feet. Lois had seen pictures of various presidents in the situation room throughout the years, but it was different now since the recent upgrade.
In the past, the situation room had been far more primitive than it had been depicted in movies and in the media. It had been a place of mahogany wall panels and quiet elegance.
This too was something that had changed over the past seven years. The entire place had been upgraded with flat screen panels on the walls and it had a modern sort of elegance. This, the main conference room was dominated by a large oval rosewood table.
What surprised Lois was the quiet sense of power she had from this place. She’d traveled among the rich and important in the past, but this was where the work was really done. Maybe it was the scent of the industrial cleaner used on the place.
Black ergonomic chairs circled the table, and most of those chairs were already filled with men Lois vaguely recognized. Generals, cabinet members and close associates of the President were all sitting and staring at the screen at the front of the room.
A few glanced in their direction as they entered, but Lois and Dr. Ledderman slipped into two chairs near the center of the table.
On the overhead speaker Lois could hear the sudden sound of gunshots.
“That was the last contact we had with the staff at the CERN control center.”
The men around them murmured among themselves before one man spoke up. “How serious is this threat?”
Dr. Ledderman cleared his throat. “We should start evacuating Denver at the very least. The rifts only seem to move at the speed of the earth’s rotation, so we have at least a six hour head start on it.”
“Are we sure they even intend to turn the thing on?”
“It doesn’t have any strategic or symbolic importance except for this one thing,” A young man sitting beside a general said. “It would be like stealing a nuclear weapon and thinking it won’t be used.”
“What is the potential damage if they do get it working?”
“It depends on how long they can keep it running. It takes a team of engineers to keep the collider calibrated, or eventually the beams will rip through the magnets and the whole process will stop.”
“So we’re looking at a downside similar to what we’ve seen before?”
Dr. Ledderman shook his head. “The worst of the storms occurred after the collider was running for just 90 seconds. With a full support staff the system is designed to run for ten hours. Just how long they’ll actually be able to keep it running is anyone’s guess.”
“If that happened, what are the potential casualties?”
“There’s no way of telling, “Dr. Ledderman said. “We know that there are half a million people in Denver who are at definite risk of dying if the refinery rift expands beyond its previous size. If there are other rifts leading to similarly dangerous atmospheres, and they open over someplace like Los Angeles or Beijing…”
“We need to keep the Chinese in the loop about this. If they were to think Beijing had been nuked…”
The room was silent for a moment. The Chinese had been building their nuclear capabilities for years, and they had submarines to deliver them.
Lois glanced at the faces around her, and she saw their expressions hardening. There was a grimness in their expression that hadn’t been there before.
“How long do we have?” the man at the head of the room directed his question to Dr. Ledderman.
“If they can get the scientists to cooperate, it takes twenty minutes to get the system to running at full capacity.”
“The attack occurred thirty minutes ago,” one of the generals said. “Do we have anyone in the area?”
“It would take an hour for our agents on the ground to reach the complex and another twenty minutes to infiltrate the place. We don’t know how many of them there are or how they are armed.”
“It wouldn’t be that hard to get in; there are several buildings along the path with access points, buildings holding compressors, ventilation equipment, control electronics and refrigeration parts. The actual control mechanisms are all aboveground.”
“That will make things a little easier. I wasn’t looking forward to trying to hit something covered in a hundred fifty to five hundred feet of dirt.”
“What happens if we hit the refrigeration units?” On voice near the back of the room asked. “Doesn’t the system have to be super cooled for the superconductors to work?”
“It would take weeks for the system to heat back up, unless it’s in use,” Dr. Ledderman said. “I’m afraid we’re going to have to hit the CERN control center.”
Lois frowned. “Are we talking about bombing the Hadron Collider? There are two thousand innocent scientists working there.”
“It’s only a matter of time before some of them give up and help the terrorists.”
“You don’t think much of your colleagues,” Lois said.
“When someone has a gun pointed at your head, it’s hard to make the brave decision,” Dr. Ledderman said.
“It’s a big complex,” Lois said. “Twenty seven kilometers in diameter. Surely they haven’t been able to get control over all the buildings along that pathway. Can’t you get scientists on the other part of the ring to sabotage things?”
“That’s not a bad idea Ms. Lane,” the younger man in the suit.
“There are automatic safety systems that will shut the whole system down in only three revolutions of the system…and the particles will be revolving around the system eleven thousand times a second.” Dr. Ledderman said.
“You’ll need to work with us on the easiest ways to sabotage the system,” the younger man said, nodding at Dr. Ledderman.
Lois felt herself beginning to relax. “So you won’t launch bombers…”
“We launched bombers from Germany fifteen minutes ago,” the man said. “That gives us thirty minutes to come up with another solution.”
“We just have to hope the scientists hold out that long.”
*************
“We’ve got to call security,” Lars said.
“It’s probably one of the Americans,” Piers muttered. “Gone postal. Everybody knows how gun crazy they are.”
“Eh, they’re not that bad,” Lars said. “I thought you liked the blonde, what was her name?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered.
They moved quickly through the tunnels hoping to reach the access tunnel leading to the surface. From there they’d be able to contact security in hopes of getting whoever it was shooting under control.
“If they set this project back any further, I’ll kill them myself,” Piers muttered.
They hadn’t heard the sounds of any more gunfire, and that made Piers nervous. As long as they could hear the gunfire, that meant they knew the crazy person was far behind. Silence meant they could be anywhere.
He was surprised to feel himself sweating, given the coolness of the underground tunnels.
As they turned the corner, he found himself resenting Lars’ imperturbability. The big man didn’t look worried at all, just cool and competent. Piers had always resented his height and his luck with the ladies, but this was different.
He didn’t like to think of himself as a coward, but his stomach was knotting up as it seemed to take forever to reach the surface.
At last they saw the heavy metal doorway in front of them. Piers sighed in relief as Lars reached out to open it.
All Piers could see were the muzzles of the guns on the other side.
***********
“Why don’t you just pull the plug?” Lois said. “Cut the power. They’ll still have the hostages, but…”
“The whole complex uses about two hundred thirty megawatts…the collider uses a hundred and twenty megawatts. It was too much power for either the Swiss or the French power grids, so it’s powered by both.”
“Will getting just one of the grids to shut off power be enough to stop the process?”
Dr. Ledderman nodded. “We’ve had problems with power failures in the past.”
Several men stood up and headed for teleconferencing rooms set off from the main room. Lois assumed they were going to attempt to convince the power utilities to cut power.
Lois could only hope that they were able to convince officials to act in time. It would take time to convince the officials in those countries to act, and given the slowness of bureaucracies, it might happen too late to stop things.
“Are you sure Superman can’t be contacted?”
“The Chinese have been alerted,” the man next to her said. “They’ll tell him when he next sees them.”
“He doesn’t have to see them,” Lois said.
They stared at her uncomprehendingly. She began to lay out her plan.
*************
Lars held his leg, grimacing in pain as blood began to darken his thigh. Piers held a shirt against the wound, grimacing.
“As I understand it, we only need thirteen of you to operate this machine. There more than thirty of you in the room. Those who elect to cooperate will live.”
Piers had a momentary vision of himself jumping up and wrestling the rifle away from the man facing them, then spraying the others arrayed around the room like some sort of an American action hero.
He didn’t move.
Lars had tried to be a hero, and this was what it had gotten him. Piers suspected that they’d be less forgiving of the next person who tried it. Looking around, he could see the same realization on the faces of the others.
“Why would you do this?” One of the American scientists was the first to speak.
Piers winced at the sound of a rifle butt striking flesh.
The man speaking to them said, “You will provide us with what we need, if we have to kill all but thirteen of you…and those thirteen don’t have to be completely healthy either.”
“There aren’t enough of us to monitor the experiments,” Lars gritted out.
Piers was surprised. He’d though his friend was going into shock.
“We don’t need to monitor any experiments. Just turn the thing on and keep it running.”
“You’d destroy the entire world…why?” Lars’ voice faded in and out.
“That’s just American propaganda.”
Piers frowned. If they didn’t believe the collider was going to create environmental effects then why were they here?
“No other nation was affected,” the man said. “So they had to lie and say it would hurt the rest of us.”
“If it was so bad, why would they tell the world about it at all?”
Piers grimaced. Lars wouldn’t shut up. Despite the bullet in his leg he was still trying to argue. At the rate he was going he was going to get a bullet in his head.
“Because their media is stupid,” the man glanced at his comrades. “They have no loyalty to their own country.”
Lars sighed and sagged against the wall. His energy was fading and if he didn’t get medical attention soon, he would die.
For all his faults, Lars was his only friend.
Piers found himself speaking. “I’ll do it.”
“What?” Lars stared at him for a long moment.
“I don’t believe we caused those problems at all,” Piers said. “I’m not even sure those problems really exist or if they are just another attempt by Fermilab to get a head start on us.”
“If there’s even a chance…” Lars said.
“We’ve dedicated years to this,” Piers said. “Put our careers on the line. If they shut it down all our work is going to be for nothing. This is our chance to prove that it was all a big understanding.”
Piers felt as though he was standing outside his body saying these things. He felt odd and numb, almost dissociated.
Gesturing toward a woman on the other side of Lars, he waiting until she’d replaced his hold on the cloth covering Lars wound. “The sooner we do this, the sooner these men will get what they want and get out of here. Then we can get you to a hospital. Nobody has to die here today.”
He stood up, and after a moment first one and then another and another of the other scientists did as well.
**************
“Neither the Swiss or the French are cooperating,” one man reported, looking harried. “We tried going directly to the power companies, and they refuse to believe us. We’re trying to go through diplomatic channels now.”
Lois grimaced. She supposed it would have been difficult for the French government to convince a private power company to cut off power to New York City, but this was frustrating.
Wasn’t there some sort of red phone to cut through this sort of bureaucracy?
One of the analysts looked up from his computer screen. “There was a spike in power usage from both grids starting fifteen minutes ago.”
It took twenty minutes for the machine to power up.
“How far are the bombers?”
“They are still ten minutes away.” The analyst looked harried.
“Do we have anyone able to hack into their power grid and shut it down from here?”
“They’ve been beefing up security,” the analyst said. He looked embarrassed. “I’ve already been trying to get in. I haven’t had much luck.”
The tension level in the room was rising. The bombers were going to arrive five minutes too late, and there wasn’t any telling just how bad things were going to get if the system was allowed to run for more than three times as long as it had before.
“I have an idea,” Lois said.
*************
Colonel Kwan listened to the radio and then turned and relayed the instructions to his subordinates. The same instructions were being relayed to unit after unit throughout a hundred mile radius, the efficiency and organization of the Chinese military finally being put to the test.
The men around him relayed the instructions to each other, and they gradually fell silent.
Colonel Kwan raised his voice and for the first time in the history of the world yelled two words not as part of an entertainment, not as part of a movie or radio act or play, but in all seriousness.
“Help, Superman!”
His voice was echoed by those of his men, and he knew they were being echoed by the voices of units all through the region.
According to the news reporter Lois Lane, Clark Kent could hear everything in a thirty mile radius. If there was even a chance that anyone was close enough it had to be taken.
Colonel Kwan shuddered at the thought of these rifts reaching China. China had all it could handle with the earthquakes and floods.
Neither it, nor the world needed any more disasters. What it needed was Superman.
*************
“I’ve got something!” For the first time an analyst’s voice held something other than stress and anxiety.
He flipped a switch and a picture of the globe appeared on the main monitor, replacing the satellite picture of the CERN facility.
“Holy…” one of the generals stared at the radar picture. “He can really move.”
“At this rate he’ll get to CERN in under two minutes.”
An audible groan went through the crowd. It had taken too long to relay the messages, eve as efficient as the Chinese military apparatus had been.
The collider was going to go on line in just under one minute.
He was going to get there too late.
