The analyst staring at the screen cleared his throat. “Um…check that. He just left the atmosphere and he’s speeding up.”
The analyst went pale. “He’s slowing down over Switzerland.”
“What?” The general in charge of the meetings looked up from his own monitor.
“He’s there already,” the analyst said. “He’s slowing down. Estimated arrival time is thirty seconds.”
Lois glanced at the men around her. Thirty seconds wasn’t a lot of time to assess the situation, break in and stop the collider. The tension in the room was palpable, and it was rising.
The screen switched back to the satellite picture of CERN, where the debris of what appeared to be an explosion was rising up from the side of one of the main buildings.
************
The explosion of the wall behind them caught them all by surprise, the terrorists as much as any of them.
For the space of a single instant they all froze, and that instant was enough to make all the difference. Lars couldn’t see much of what was happening, as his view was blocked by the lap of the woman who was holding him.
If he wasn’t in so much pain, he’d have laughed. Piers was an ass. Sometimes he wasn’t sure why they were friends. The man was jealous and judgmental. He was a small man with a Napoleon complex, and somehow he always seemed to fail with the women.
Lars didn’t actually believe that the Large Hadron Collider was causing the rifts any more than Piers did, but he hadn’t been willing to take the risk. Piers had, gambling the world on the idea that he was right.
The blue and red clad figure standing amid the rubble suggested strongly that Piers had made the wrong choice.
Lars groaned slightly as he tried to sit up.
The terrorists were on the ground, groaning and holding what looked like broken hands. The guns were nowhere in sight.
It did explain one of the questions Lars had always had about the American superhero.
With all his powers and skills, why didn’t he use the door?
It was clear to Lars now. That moment of horrified disbelief as the wall shattered bought him time, time to grab guns and stop bullets and do so with minimal harm to others.
“Shut the Collider down,” the man said.
He was shorter than Lars would have thought, certainly several inches below Lars’ height, but there was something about him that demanded to be obeyed.
Piers was the first to react, turning to activate some of the safeguards that would abort the procedure.
He pushed a series of buttons, then frowned, pushing another set of buttons.
“It’s not working,” he muttered.
Lars closed his eyes as he saw the displays flickering to life describing what the cameras were recording. The collider was business.
“I can’t shut it down either.”
“We’re getting some sort of sensor echoes, as though we’re seeing the same particles three different times.”
The blue clad man grit his teeth. “Any idea where they are coming from?”
“We shouldn’t have three times as many particles in the system as we put in there…”
“What if it’s the same particle,” Piers said, his face slowly going white. “In three different universes.”
“You wouldn’t be able to see them in this one,” the woman holding Lars said.
“Unless their universe and our universe are partially superimposed.” Piers looked horrified. “We DID cause the rifts.”
In that moment the whole complex went black. There were screams from the back of the room until the emergency generators kicked in.
“That’s it, then,” Lars said. “They’ve cut the power.”
The blue clad man in the red cape shook his head. “It’s still running.”
“The system takes a hundred twenty thousand kilowatts to run. There’s nothing powering the system.” The woman holding Lars spoke again. He found himself wishing she would hold his wound closed a little tighter and talk a little less.
“The other two colliders are powering it,” Piers said.
“What can I do to stop it?”
*********
“The power is out.” The man on the other end of the video screen looked incensed. “Now we will deal with the matter of the violation of sovereign French airspace.”
“It was an emergency,” the young man said. “An unavoidable happenstance that wouldn’t have occurred if you’d kept the lines of communications open and shut the power down yourselves.”
The man on the screen was turning red.
“We’re going to have other diplomatic problems over this,” the man next to Lois said, “but at least it’s over with.”
“We still have to deal with the rifts,” Lois said.
“The system was running a third as long as they did the last time. We can handle that,” the man said confidently.
Lois wished she felt so sure.
************
As he moved the magnet slightly, the cold hit him like a wave. It was a cold deeper than that of deep space, which in his experience wasn’t actually that cold. It was colder than anything he’d ever experienced, to the point of actually being somewhat painful.
It was the cold of the beginning of the universe, and as he moved the magnet the beam was deflected and it hit the mass of concrete and earth behind him with the power of a bomb.
The wreckage rained around him, but he was relieved to hear the machine no longer humming. It was silent at last, and he wondered just how long it had been on-line.
A moment was all it took to return to the control room, where an American woman and three Swiss scientists were sitting with guns held on their former captors.
“How long was it on?” he asked.
“Ninety seconds,” the small Frenchman said. “But there is no way to tell if the effect is going to be the same. We didn’t have this sort of sensor echo before, and having two other universes in Synch may exaggerate the effect.”
Clark looked down at the bleeding scientist on the floor and sighed.
“The police are going to be here in about four minutes. It may take them a little longer to get through the building. Can you hold these men until they get here?”
The blonde woman nodded. She held the gun competently, as did both of the Swiss scientists. Given that they’d likely had military training it didn’t surprise him. The woman did a little.
She smiled up at him, and Clark noticed the smaller Frenchman staring daggers at him. “I grew up in Texas with a lot of brothers.”
Clark nodded. He turned to the bleeding scientist on the floor and said, “I’m going to take you to the hospital.”
At the rate things were going this was only the beginning.
***********
“The rifts are bigger this time around,” Lois said, staring at the satellite pictures. “It looks like they’re talking longer to form.”
“But you think these are going to stick around a little longer,” the general beside her said.
“I’ve seen at least a dozen come and go, and none of them lasted this long.”
“You were just seeing the aftershock that occurred after the first set of rifts,” Dr. Ledderman said. “Perhaps these are just going to be the same…”
“There are more of them too,” Lois said, nodding toward the screen.
One of the analysts helpfully brought up a screen of the first set of rifts, which he colored green. The second set he colored red.
“It’s going to be wider spread,” one of them said. “Maybe hitting as far south as South America.”
“We’re going to need to step up the evacuation of Denver,” one man said quietly.
“How long to we have?” Another man asked.
“Whatever it is that is causing the rifts doesn’t seem to move,” Dr. Ledderman said. “It just seems to move because the earth is moving along underneath it. Because it expands, it ends up looking like a cone.”
“So we have about three hours before it hits the east coast,” the first man said. “And another two or three hours before it hits Denver.”
“I hope it’ll be enough time.”
“It’ll have to be.”
**********
“As of this moment, we are in a state of national emergency. All air traffic is suspended and with the exception of the citizens of Denver Colorado, we ask that you remain within your homes.”
Junior stared at the small flickering television. The President wasn’t in his usual office; from the hum, it sounded as though he was broadcasting from Air Force One.
As speeches went, it was a little clumsy and forced, but Junior suspected that the speechwriters hadn’t been on the plane. He had no doubt that the speech was being watched from around the world.
After all, it was on every channel.
“Most of the rifts have proven to be relatively benign in the past, so there is no reason to panic, but there is reason for concern.”
Junior felt his granduncle’s hand on his shoulder. The old man was looking better since he’d been back on his medications.
“They’re going to call you in,” he said.
At Junior’s look, he said, “What else are they going to do?”
“All national guard units are going to be mobilized, and I ask again that people remain in their homes to leave streets open for emergency responders.”
The telephone began to ring, and Junior sighed.
Cyrus smiled at his grandnephew and said, “Have I told you how proud I am of you?”
*************
“The problem is that he can’t be everywhere,” Lois said. “He’s been working off of news reports, but those have to be filtered and sometimes they don’t get through until after the fact.”
“We’re mobilizing the national guard and all the army units we can,” one analyst said. “It would be helpful if he could work with us, instead of against us.”
“We need a way to filter the information in one central location,” Lois said, “we won’t know which rifts are bad until we have eyes on the ground.”
The analyst stared at Lois for a moment, and then looked around. “What do you think this place is for?”
Lois shrugged slightly. “We’ll see.”
Her experiences with FEMA hadn’t impressed her with the federal government’s ability to collate large amounts of information and quickly get a grasp of the big picture. Of course, the military was a completely different animal, and it tended to be better organized.
“Get me in touch with CERN.”
**********
Piers stared at the blood on the floor where Lars had been lying. Because he’d stepped forward, his friend was going to live, but thousands or millions of people were going to be put at risk.
It didn’t help that the American blonde kept shooting irritated looks at him. He wished she’d keep an eye on the men on the floor. A woman holding a gun made him feel nervous.
He felt irritated that she was looking at him as though he’d failed some sort of personal test of courage. He’d done what he’d done to save lives, not take them. If he’d realized just what he was doing, he’d have made a different decision.
The hollow feeling in his stomach made him feel worse.
When the telephone rang, he was disgusted to realize that he’d jumped. Grabbing the telephone, he said, “Hello?”
The woman’s voice on the other end of the line was just as irritating as the blonde staring at him.
“He’d flying Lars Johanssen to the hospital.” He listened to the voice on the other line. “No, the Swiss one. Lars has a crush on a nurse there.”
The blonde threw him a dirty look and he shrugged. “It’s true!”
It wasn’t his fault that women seemed to like Lars.
He listened to the voice on the other end of the line and then sighed. “It’s only…yes.”
Setting the telephone receiver down on the desk, he stepped closer to the rubble around the hole in the wall. “SUPERMAN! YOU HAVE A TELEPHONE CALL!”
He’d never felt so stupid.
**********
“He can hear anything in a thirty mile radius, more or less,” Lois said, “But there’s a lot to filter out. Certain things like his name catch his attention and that’s why the Chinese thing worked. I was hoping that at least one unit was within thirty miles of him, and since they were scattered…”
Lois brightened as she listened to the voice on the other end of the line.
“I need you to meet me outside the White House. I’m going to help coordinate the rescue operations and there’s something I have to give you.”
The formerly quiet conference room was now as full of noise as a telemarketing center at dinner time. Every person in the room was on a telephone with at least one other person, if not more, and several of them had scattered to the side conference rooms to get more quiet with which to work.
“The Secret Service won’t shoot at you this time, I promise,” Lois said, glancing up at the secret service man standing next to her. He nodded grimly.
“Just get here.”
“Any one of us could work as his liaison,” the analyst beside her said.
“He trusts me,” Lois said. “And besides, my doing it frees up one of you to do something else.”
“He’s on his way,” the analyst on the other side of her said.
“I’d better head for the front,” Lois said. “He’ll be expecting me.”
It wasn’t until she reached the White House lawn that she realized there was an audience. In the distance she could see the crowd staring at her through the fence.
“Don’t they know they are supposed to go home?” Lois murmured.
The Secret Service man beside her shook his head. “They are tourists. They aren’t the brightest group either.”
It was the sound of the crowd in the distance that alerted her to look up.
He was coming in fast, and Lois could see the men around her stiffening instinctively. When he landed and walked forward, however, they relaxed, although their expression of calm readiness remained.
“Are you all right?” Clark asked.
“You keep asking me that,” Lois said. “I’m fine.”
He stared at her for a long moment before nodding to himself.
“I stopped it in time,” Clark said. “But there was something wrong…”
“We know. CERN is briefing Dr. Ledderman as we speak.”
Lois turned to the Secret Service man beside her and held out her hand. She turned back and showed him the small device she was carrying.
“I don’t need a hearing aid,” he said.
“It’s a cell phone,” she said. “You should have service anywhere in the contiguous United States. With it, I’ll be able to clue you in on the places that are going to need your help.”
He nodded.
She reached up to place it in his ear and then realized that his eyes were on her. She flushed, realizing suddenly just how close she was standing to him. She forced herself to go through the motions of placing it in his ear.
“This will go behind your belt,” she said.
His hands covered hers for a moment as he took the main unit from her.
“You won’t lose it, will you?”
“Lose one wallet and a few capes,” he muttered, but there was a twinkle in his eye.
“There has to be a line of site with the satellites,” Lois said, “So it won’t work underground.”
At fourteen dollars a minute, Lois hoped the service was everything it was touted to be.
She realized that he hadn’t released her hands a moment later and she looked up at him, suddenly more aware of him than ever.
“I…” he said. “You make me feel…”
He was struggling for words and Lois felt a moment of sympathy. She knew exactly how he felt because she was feeling that way herself.
She pulled him down to her and kissed him.
Feeling the earth moving had always seemed like a hackneyed cliché, something bad writers used when they couldn’t come up with anything any more creative.
But in this case Lois felt her center of balance giving way and she felt suddenly dizzy. She closed her eyes and it was as though the entire world faded away from around her.
It wasn’t until she heard the cheers from some people in the crowd that she opened her eyes and saw the flashes of photographs being taken.
Damn.
Although she was a reporter, this wasn’t something she wanted to share with the entire world. It was going to go out on You Tube, and it was only going to fan the flames of the bigots who were trying to kill her.
She smiled up at Clark anyway.
“There are some things we ought to talk about,” she said, “When this is all over. Preferably not over a military phone line.”
He nodded quietly, but still didn’t let go of her hand.
“It’s time to get to work,” she said finally.
A moment later he was airborne.
