Stranded (A stand-alone SF thriller) (The Prometheus Project Book 3) (16 page)

“Exactly,”
replied Ryan.
“I’ll bury the crystal right next to the shield. Look for a ring of ash by the shield where my fire was. I’ll also mark its location with a few sticks.”

“How will you explain how you got through the barrier?”

Ryan thought for a few seconds. Having set foot back on Earth had done wonders for his mood and his powers of concentration.
“I’ll say I was getting attacked and the barrier just opened for me somehow. Like this was another safety feature the Qwervy built in to protect zoo visitors that we didn’t know about.”

Regan nodded.
“That should work.”

“Regan,”
he broadcast.
“Thanks. And sorry for being such a jerk. I owe you one. And I’m going to make it up to you.”
Ryan paused.
“But before I go, I could use your help one last time. Remember in Nathaniel’s letter he said something about gravity being an insanely weak force. A force that isn’t a force.”

“I remember.”

“I might be facing a weapon that controls gravity. So the more I understand it, the better.”

“So you want me to ask Dad about that part of Nathaniel’s letter?”

“Yeah. And any other thoughts he might have about this weapon.”

“It isn’t really a weapon, Ryan. It’s a device that could change the world in some really great ways. Nathaniel is just misusing it.”

Regan told him she’d be back in ten minutes and ended their connection.

She returned just five minutes later. Ryan was surprised. Once their father began talking about science it was usually hard to get him to stop.

“Okay,”
began Regan.
“Nathaniel called gravity ridiculously weak. That’s because it is. There are only four known forces in the universe. Two of them are called the strong and weak nuclear forces. These do things like keep atoms from flying apart and … I don’t know, something else. I only took notes when Dad got to gravity. The third is the electromagnetic force. And the fourth is gravity.”

“So why did Nathaniel say it wasn’t a force?”

“I’ll get to that,”
replied Regan.
“Anyway, gravity is by far the weakest of the four forces. Dad says magnetism is … “
She looked down at her notes.
“Well, he doesn’t remember exactly. But it’s something like a thousand trillion trillion trillion times stronger than gravity. Which he says would be a 1 followed by 39 zeros if you were gonna write it.”

“Are you sure you heard that right?”
asked Ryan.
“That doesn’t seem possible.”

“That’s what I thought. But it’s true. Dad reminded me that the gravity produced by an object depends upon its mass. So the gravity we feel on Earth is produced by the mass of the entire planet.”
Regan glanced at her notes once again.
“Dad says the Earth weighs about twelve million billion billion pounds.”

“Really,”
commented Ryan, amused.
“I’ll bet it was hard finding a scale big enough for that weigh-in.”

Regan smiled.
“The point is, even when the weight of the entire Earth is trying to hold a paperclip down, a tiny little magnet can lift it off the ground.”

Ryan thought about this and nodded. His dad made a good point. He had never thought about it that way.
“Okay. Magnetism one, gravity zero,”
he broadcast.
“Which means that if you did have the technology to affect gravity, there’s a lot of room to strengthen it.”

“I guess.”

“So why is it not a force?”
asked Ryan.

“Well, some scientists classify it this way, some don’t. According to Einstein, gravity isn’t so much a force as it is a change in the shape of space-time.”

“What’s space-time?”
asked Ryan.

“Dad says it’s like space and time rolled into one. But Dad told me when he was explaining not to worry about that. To think of it as the same thing as just space. Anyway, he told me to think of space as a gigantic sheet of rubber. Or a gigantic trampoline. And objects dent this trampoline, causing other objects to roll toward them. That’s what gravity is.”

“What?”
broadcast Ryan uncertainly.

“Let me give you an example.”
She consulted her notes once again. “
Suppose you spread marbles out on a large, circular trampoline. Then you set a hundred pound bowling ball in the very center of the tramp. If you did, the bowling ball would stretch the tramp down, creating a crater-shaped pocket, and the marbles would roll toward it. But even the marbles dent the tramp some, creating their own little indentation to sit in.”

Ryan thought about this.
“Okay. I sort of get it. So space is like a trampoline. And everything pushes into it. Light things dent it just a little. Heavy things, like the Sun, dent it a lot. And the heavier an object is, the bigger the crater it creates, so the more other things are forced to roll toward the bottom of this crater.”

“Right. So gravity isn’t really a force. It’s what happens when objects stretch space.”

“Interesting,”
noted Ryan.
“But I can’t see how any of this is going to help me stop Nathaniel.”
He paused.
“Did Dad say anything else about the Enigma Cube?”

“I tried, Ryan. But we got interrupted. There’s a lot going on right now. He said he would tell me more at another time.”

After another few minutes of telepathic conversation the siblings ended their connection.

Ryan took a deep breath and crossed the barrier again to leave a red crystal for the expedition. As had happened earlier that same day the first time he had crossed the Isis shield—could it really be true that only four or five hours had passed since then?—he felt the stretching sensation that meant he was brushing against the forth dimension. Now that he understood it—a little—he fought to open his mind as wide as he could to the experience.

Ryan buried the crystal and stabbed the two spears he had been making deep into the soft soil beside it to mark its location as he had promised. He shoved the other red crystal into his pocket. “Better luck next time, wolf-things,” he said with a sneer.

With that, he crossed through the shield and headed to the portal back to Earth.

C
HAPTER
19
Pinned

R
yan peered around the zoo exit cautiously. Not seeing anyone he emerged from the building, keeping an eye out for surprises.

A body was stretched out like a human speed bump on the ground twenty yards away. No one else was in sight.

He rushed over to the body and knelt beside it. It was Lieutenant Lebron Williams, and he was sprawled out like a snow angel on his stomach. He had been assigned to guard the entrance to the zoo. His automatic weapon was lying next to him, and every square inch of his body that could possibly be touching the ground was pinned there.

The guard’s eyes were closed but he was still breathing.

“Lebron, it’s Ryan Resnick. What happened?”

The guard managed a shallow grunt but that was all.

Ryan grabbed one of Lebron’s hands that was palm-down against the floor and pulled. He was able to move it, but it was far heavier than a hand should have been. Nathaniel must have used the Enigma Cube. The gravity of the ground on which the guard was glued hadn’t changed at all. The gravity of his
body
had changed. It was as if Lebron was wearing a bodysuit made of powerful magnets and the Earth was made of solid steel. To Ryan, the gravity around Lebron was the same as it had always been.

Nathaniel had chosen the setting on his weapon carefully. He didn’t change the guard’s gravity so much that his heart stopped or he could no longer breathe. Just enough so that every movement was a battle. Ryan suspected Lebron had been strong enough to drag himself this distance away from his post before he became too exhausted and was forced to give up.

There was nothing Ryan could do for him. “I have to go, Lebron,” he said apologetically. “But I promise I’ll try to find a way to help you.”

Ryan checked several more buildings and the security headquarters but it was all the same. Everyone inside of Prometheus was now pinned to the floor. Nathaniel must have set the Enigma Cube to a broad enough radius that the gravity effect had hit all life within the city at the same time.

He calculated that he was only two or three hours behind the deranged physicist and his hostage. And if
Nathaniel had further business within Prometheus after using the gravity device, or had been delayed for any reason, Ryan might be almost on his heels.

Ryan entered the manmade cavern that abutted Prometheus and rushed to the elevator. Everyone in the cavern was anchored to the ground as well. When he reached topside it was the same story. The guards protecting the elevator were down. Everyone appeared to be alive, but all of them had their eyes closed tightly. Whenever Ryan stayed up really late—or when he was even a little tired and Mr. McPherson was boring him to death in chemistry class—his eyelids seemed as heavy as lead and it was a struggle to keep them open. He could only imagine what it must be like to have eyelids that actually
were
as heavy as lead.

Ryan exited the concrete bunker that housed the Prometheus elevator and entered the lobby of the decoy building that surrounded it. A clock on the wall read 6:14 and the sky was beginning to darken. He carefully peered outside.

Anyone within Proact who had been outside on the grounds when Nathaniel had used the Enigma Cube, probably a dozen in total, were spread-eagle on their stomachs. Whatever they had been doing when the wave hit, they had used all of their strength to change their body position so they were as flat on the ground as possible, lessening the strain on themselves. Hundreds of creeping and flying insects that had been caught in the
wave were also glued to the ground, along with eight or nine birds that had had the misfortune of being in the gravity weapon’s path.

It was a scene straight out of some psychotic nightmare, yet it was very, very real.

Ryan had little doubt that he would find the same scene, without the insects, within every Proact building, but he didn’t have time to investigate further. Before he considered doing anything else—including going after Nathaniel—he had to leave this eerie war zone and find a way to bring back help for the rest of his family and the stranded Isis expedition.

As Ryan crept around the chemistry building the parking lot just inside the main gate came into view.

He stopped in his tracks!

Four very fit and very dangerous looking men were huddled there.

Mercenaries! While they weren’t in uniform, each soldier held an assault rifle as though this were the most natural thing in the world. After Tezoc’s attempted invasion the year before, Ryan knew a professional soldier-for-hire when he saw one. Nathaniel had promised mercenaries in his letter and he had clearly delivered.

Dropping to the ground, Ryan crawled behind a grove of trees that adorned the grounds nearby so he wouldn’t be spotted.

The parking lot was nearly empty of cars, which meant that Nathaniel had trained the Enigma Cube
on the Proact facility only recently. He had waited until after closing when the majority of employees had gone home for dinner and the weekend. A smart move, thought Ryan.

Under the mercenaries’ watchful eyes, six large SUVs were idling next to each other, facing outward in a circle. A few of them began to turn slightly. One now faced Ryan head on!

Had he been seen?

Ryan’s breath caught in his throat and he tried to stay as still as a statue behind the trees. If he had been seen, he was all out of options.

Ryan was bracing himself for being discovered when the four mercenaries suddenly jogged through the wide open gate and spread out around the large gravel area just outside the Proact grounds. They quickly surveiled the surrounding woods and then gave the all clear signal to the vehicles.

The six SUVs immediately began to exit the grounds. The one facing Ryan turned away and Ryan finally allowed himself to breathe. He crept closer to the gate, hoping to memorize a license plate belonging to at least one of the six off-road vehicles.

But he was too late.

All six of the SUVs immediately drove into the woods. Each went in a different direction, carefully maneuvering their way between trees and finding paths that would allow them to proceed.

The four remaining mercs regrouped at the most distant end of the gravel area abutting the Proact grounds, so Ryan continued moving until he was through the gate. He stayed well concealed and was confident none of them would be able to spot him.

Unfortunately, he didn’t count on the two mercenaries who were approaching him from behind.

C
HAPTER
20
Pursuit

R
yan got lucky. Just as they rounded a corner, one of the two approaching mercenaries coughed.

Ryan whirled around and spotted them an instant before they spotted him. Adrenaline surged through him as he raced through the gravel, past the tree line, and into the woods. One of the mercenaries sprinted after him, but Ryan had a considerable head start. He was also one of the fastest kids at his school.

Unfortunately, the merc chasing him was even faster.

Ryan darted around trees and over fallen logs. He was racing against the mercenary but also against time. While there was enough light for him to see well now, this would not be true for long.

He saw two figures ahead in the distance. As he ran they began to take shape. One was tall, with long blond hair and wearing a yellow sweater, and the other was
shorter, with darker hair and a hooded sweatshirt. The short one was holding a plastic thermos bottle and a pietin. The taller one had binoculars around her neck and was holding a small camcorder in front of her face. She lowered the camera.