Groom Lake (9 page)

This was Blake’s first visit to the professor’s Malibu home since his wife had passed. The security gate surprised him. He couldn’t believe the way the professor had imprisoned himself by having ten-foot fences installed around the property. The house appeared to have deteriorated step for step with the professor: the flowers and colorful plants were dead; bushes needed trimming; the lawn begged for a mow; and a good spray from the hose would rejuvenate the slate courtyard.

The professor answered the front door in a withered T-shirt and boxers that struggled to stay above his waist. Blake suspected the pair had fit well a few months ago, before the professor started losing weight.

“I’m not ready for you,” the professor admitted. “I was jotting down some notes this morning, and one thing led to another, and now you’re here.” Looking at his underclothes, “And if I don’t get some clothes on, you’ll see a few more objects than you bargained for.”

“I’ve got an idea,” Blake said. “Take your time getting ready. I’ll mow the lawn. Looks like you can use a gardener around here.”

“Ooo! That’s not a bad idea. I’ll pay you. Fifty bucks is what that crook gardener used to steal from me. When he insisted on knowing the code to my gate, I told him to go to hell.” Paying attention to his yard for the first time in a long time, he noted, “Looks like he took my yard to hell with him, but I don’t care. I’ve got too much on my mind to worry about trivial things.”
Trivial things
, as the professor put it, included anything not concerning his research. He had concluded that professors like himself who lost track of time, made socially unacceptable mistakes by dressing funny or not combing their hair, were not nutty or absentminded, but mentally preoccupied. If he were an athlete, some might say he was in a zone. Being in a zone with his research meant everything else was a distraction—dressing, eating, haircuts, housework, the yard—only his research mattered.

After struggling under the high-noon sun to cut the shin-high grass, Blake pushed the lawnmower back to the garage before returning to the front door, which he found locked. For a few minutes he knocked, pounded and waited.

“Oo! Ooo! Good timing,” the professor said when he finally answered.

Blake was glad to see signs of the professor’s childlike giddiness return to his voice.

“Look at those muscles,” the professor gawked, staring at Blake’s shirtless, tan and sweaty body. “Come in, we’ll get you cleaned up and hydrated.”

“I told you I’ve had too much time on my hands,” Blake replied, following him to the kitchen. “Working out helps me pass the days.” He noticed along the way that the house’s interior was as neglected as the exterior. The living and dining rooms were filled with dust-gathering furniture, and dismal rays of sunshine fought to sneak past closed curtains.

The south end of the house was where the professor spent most of his time, in a sprawling area shared by the kitchen and family room that featured an arched ceiling and expansive picturesque windows that offered inspiring views down the mountainside with the vast ocean in the distance, when the curtains weren’t closed. Large warehouse club packages of plastic cups, flatware and plates cluttered the kitchen counter. Their used counterparts filled the trashcan; the professor had phased out dishwashing.

“Are you still jogging?” the professor asked, offering Blake a cold can of iced tea from the fridge.

“At least 20-miles a week. I’ve never seen a plump astronaut.”

“I like the optimism. Soon NASA won’t be the only group sending people into space.”

“You mentioned that at dinner the other night.”

“Do you believe in flying saucers, Blake?”

“Extraterrestrials?”

“People associate the two, but I plan on building a saucer of my own—terrestrial, no
extras
on board. The other day I mentioned the science of controlling gravity. I was involved in the field decades ago.”

“I’ve heard of anti-gravity, but never from your mouth.”

“My silence related to those ghosts from my past that I told you about. For a while anti-gravity looked as though it would become as promising a field as computer technology is today. From 1947 until about 1952, UFO’s were a hot topic—thousands of reported sightings. The scientific community began analyzing eyewitness reports and theorizing about the technical aspects of such craft. Anti-gravity was believed to be the basis behind their propulsion systems.

“I was about your age at the time,” he continued. “Just finished graduate school, and instead of looking for a job I built a model flying saucer. The local paper snapped my picture with it and ran a story on my anti-gravity research. Two weeks later I was working for the government at Los Alamos.

“One scientist in our group had immigrated from Germany after World War II, which wasn’t uncommon. We took many of their top scientists. Fritz something. I forget his last name. Maybe I never knew it. We called him Fritzy. One day we arrived at the lab and everything was missing. All our notes, test results, models—gone. Fritzy too.”

“What happened?”

“Russia ended up with some of Germany’s scientists as well. The government claimed Fritzy had close friends in the Soviet Union and sold us out. It seemed logical at the time, but reflecting back, I wouldn’t be surprised if our own government took everything and blamed it on Fritz and the Russians. Primarily because I see signs and hear rumors about anti-gravity type designs in
our
high tech programs, not Russia’s.”

“What happened to your research program?”

“Anti-gravity research became top secret.” The professor answered Blake’s questions about a part of his life on which he rarely spoke. He told him how the government had black-listed him. His bitterness. His fears. How he put everything behind him and moved on. Until now.

“What caused the change of heart?” Blake asked.

“A need to do something with my life … unresolved questions … and anger that something with so much potential and positive implications is kept secret.”

“So how do I fit in?”

“Obviously I’ve started my research again. I have a few old friends sponsoring me. Corporate people. They want to make commercial uses for the technology.” The professor did not like having to fabricate a story, but gave his word he would not divulge the FBI’s involvement in his research.

“Aren’t you being paranoid by keeping it such a secret?”

“Think about it, Blake. If the government has anti-gravity powered craft, it means they never stopped the research. Someone went through great lengths to keep me out of a loop that’s been around fifty years, with very few knowing about it.” The professor knew he had sparked Blake’s interest. “There’s a lot more to the research, Blake. But you have to be committed to the project before I open up. I already explained how it would be good for you in the short run. The long-term possibilities will be what you make of them. But you must be aware that sending ripples through the wrong puddle could tarnish your future.”

“If I understand you, I don’t need the government. We can build our own ship.”

“It’s easier said than done, but you’ve got the right idea. Now come on,” he motioned Blake into the family room. “You’re going to get a kick out of this.” Lifting a small crocheted sampler hanging on a wall, he revealed a keypad and pecked in a code. Several feet away, two ceiling-high bookshelves made a subtle
click
noise. Next the professor slid the shelves apart, exposing a small hallway. He smiled and swooped his hand toward the opening. “You have the grand distinction of being the first to see my new lab.”

Blake marveled at the stark mood change between the professor’s lab and his neglected house. The sterile laboratory with its white walls, hard linoleum floors and absence of decor also contrasted the adjacent domicile by lacking a scrap of paper or speck of dust. Any evidence that the professor’s life and mind were diminishing didn’t exist in the microcosm environment of his lab.

“You’ve got to admire the way I let the yard grow to hide this place from the courtyard,” the professor said, proud his remodeling addition was hardly evident from outside, and in.

“I just thought you didn’t care about the yard anymore.”

“That’s true too.” After hyping Blake’s entrance into the lab, he did little to point out the finer details and expert craftsmanship, like the hidden storage cabinets in the walls and floor for his cherished research. Instead he offered Blake a stool at a long worktable.

Anxious to begin, and absent the smile that had accompanied his jovial attitude about his yard, the professor asked, “How familiar are you with wormholes, Blake?”

“Wormholes?” he mused, recalling past astronomy and physics classes, and realizing the dynamic of the professor’s work if it involved wormholes. “I think that sometime in the eighties physicists began theorizing that tunnels linking black holes existed in the spacetime continuum. Kind of like shortcuts through space, and they called them wormholes.”

“Decent answer,” the professor complimented. “Their popularity caught on in the eighties, but the term was coined decades ago. I knew the details about wormholes in 1951! But we called them gravity tunnels back then.”

“That’s what the government had you working on?”

“Our program evolved from theories about traveling through deep space. We knew finding a way to travel at the speed of light was still too slow for mankind to explore the vast reaches of space in a lifetime, so we searched for alternatives. After Einstein’s early relativity equations were introduced in 1915, physicists began working with the concept that a black hole has two portals, each representing a different point in spacetime and linked by a tunnel, or wormhole. The government collected over three decades of research on the theory and provided it to us. Upon studying the mathematics we discovered you don’t need a black hole to create a wormhole. The calculations show we can take any two points in the spacetime continuum and link them with a wormhole.”

“So why did it take so long for wormholes to become a mainstream topic?”

“Because when we started crunching the numbers in the fifties, the government didn’t want the results lending credence to the UFO talk they were attempting to suppress. But more importantly, the government didn’t want someone else developing the technology, so they classified it.”

“If I remember correctly, a wormhole will collapse if foreign matter, such as a spaceship, disrupts the gravitational balance.”

“That we realized in the fifties too, and someone proposed an answer.”

“Anti-gravity,” Blake realized.

“Precisely. So in totality, a functional anti-gravity craft can generate wormholes and then sustain them as it traverses the shortcut.”

“Are you going to tell me that UFOs use wormholes to warp between two points in space and that’s how they visit earth?”

“All this talk about UFOs, don’t get caught up with that. Whether extraterrestrials exist or not, considering they did allowed us to open our minds to the possibility that man can travel through deep space, and the medium to transport us was within our understanding. Even 50-years later, wormholes and anti-gravity propulsion are still the most advanced idea presented thus far. It doesn’t matter if the resulting technology is back-engineered from captured UFOs, inspired by actual UFO sightings, or inspired by imaginary sightings if UFOs don’t exist. The undeniable truth is that 50-years ago we had the mathematical and theoretical foundation to pursue developing the technology, and the government has been perfecting it ever since.”

Blake’s mind raced to process all the professor had discussed—UFO sightings, relativity theories, wormholes, space travel, anti-gravity—topics he was familiar with or had heard of independently, but not in synchronicity. “What I find most unbelievable is that you’ve never said anything to me about this.”

“I never said anything to anyone for reasons I’ve already explained. And I thought long and hard about saying anything to you now because I was concerned for your wellbeing. But I’ve been careful, and I just want you to help me with some collateral research, nothing dangerous.”

Danger
intrigued Blake the greatest.

“What you must realize is that I’m not trying to convince you of the possibilities, but what has been done. Anti-gravity already exists. The technology is out there.”

Any underlying skepticism Blake had was being replaced by keen interests, fascination and a desire to get involved. The project was like a hot stock to him, and if he didn’t jump on the opportunity, he thought he might miss out. “It almost sounds too good to be true,” he said. “You’re going to pay me to work on this?”

“And get your Ph.D. Is that a problem?”

“I know at least a half dozen qualified students who would volunteer to work with you on this,” he answered, still unsure why he should receive such a windfall.

“So do I, but none are as trustworthy as you are. As far as it being too good to be true, I’m going to show you how true it is.” With that, the professor shooed Blake off the stool and out of the lab, telling him to brew a pot of coffee in the kitchen while he readied the lab.

Blake had always considered the professor’s style unique, which was a polite way of calling him goofy. He didn’t question the validity of what the professor had told him about the past. It was the drastic change in his cognitive state that worried Blake most. Was the professor still able to think rationally? Was he becoming senile? Or, as the professor claimed, did God leave him on Earth to work on this project? Blake at least owed him the benefit of the doubt in return for his past support.

When Blake returned to the lab with coffee he found the professor at the long table where he had left him, except a stack of documents was now arranged in front of him.

“Earlier I mentioned a German scientist named Fritzy.”

“The one who vanished with the documents.”

“Well not all of them,” he answered with a wink. “Fritzy always wanted my opinion, but never offered his. Once he gave me a document to study. I was busy and set it aside, and somehow took it home with me by mistake. Fritzy went berserk and showed up at my apartment in a tirade looking for it—screaming at me in German. I thought his reaction was so strange that I quickly traced the figures onto another sheet while he waited outside, and ultimately hid it in a box where it sat for decades.” He turned over the top sheet in his stack to reveal an aged piece of paper with fading pencil markings, and slid it in front of Blake.