Deception Point Page 72

The President looked around the room for Tench. He had not seen her since so iodinr his press conference, and she was not here at once. Odd, he thought. This is her celebration as much as it is mine.The news report on television was wrapping up, outlining in so cold again the White Houses quantum political leap forward and Senator Sextons disastrous slide.What a difference a day makes, the President thought. In politics, your world eject change in an instant.By dawn he would realize righteous how true those words could be.85Pickering could be a problem, Tench had said.executive Ekstrom was to a fault preoccupied with this new information to not icing the puck that the storm outside(a) the habisphere was raging harder now. The howling cables had increased in pitch, and the NASA staff was nervously mill and chatting rather than going to sleep. Ekstroms thoughts were lost in a different storm-an fickle tempest brewing back in Washington. The last few hours had brought umteen p roblems, any of which Ekstrom was trying to deal with. And yet one problem now loomed larger than wholly the others combined.Pickering could be a problem.Ekstrom could think of no one on earth against whom hed less rather match wits than William Pickering. Pickering had ridden Ekstrom and NASA for geezerhood now, trying to control privacy policy, lobbying for different mission priorities, and railing against NASAs escalating misery ratio.Pickerings disgust with NASA, Ekstrom knew, went far deeper than the recent loss of his billion-dollar NRO SIGINT send in a NASA launchpad explosion, or the NASA security leaks, or the battle everywhere recruiting key aerospace personnel. Pickerings grievances against NASA were an ongoing drama of disillusionment and resentment.NASAs X-33 space skip, which was supposed to be the shuttle replacement, had run five years everywheredue, meaning dozens of NRO satellite maintenance and launch programs were scrapped or mystify on hold. Recently, P ickerings rage over the X-33 reached a fever pitch when he discovered NASA had canceled the project entirely, swallowing an estimated $900 gazillion loss.Ekstrom arrived at his office, pulled the curtain aside, and entered. Sitting down at his desk he put his head in his hands. He had some decisions to make. What had started as a terrific day was becoming a nightmare unraveling around him. He seek to put himself in the mindset of William Pickering. What would the man do next? soulfulness as intelligent as Pickering had to see the importance of this NASA discovery. He had to free certain choices made in desperation. He had to see the irreversible aggrieve that would be done by polluting this moment of triumph.What would Pickering do with the information he had? Would he let it ride, or would he make NASA pay for their shortcomings?Ekstrom scowled, having olive-sized doubt which it would be.After all, William Pickering had deeper issues with NASA an ancient personal bitterness that went far deeper than politics.86Rachel was quiet now, staring blankly at the cabin of the G4 as the plane headed south along the Canadian coastline of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Tolland sat nearby, talk of the town to Corky. patronage the majority of evidence suggesting the meteorite was authentic, Corkys admission that the nickel content was outside the preestablished midrange set had served to rekindle Rachels initial suspicion. Secretly planting a meteorite beneath the ice only made sense as part of a brilliantly conceived fraud.Nonetheless, the remaining scientific evidence pointed toward the meteorites validity.Rachel glum from the window, glancing down at the disk-shaped meteorite pattern in her hand. The tiny chondrules shimmered. Tolland and Corky had been discussing these metallic chondrules for some time now, talking in scientific terms well over Rachels head-equilibrated olivine levels, metastable film over matrices, and metamorphic rehomogenation. Nonetheless, t he upshot was clear Corky and Tolland were in agreement that the chondrules were unimpeachably meteoric. No fudging of that data.Rachel rotated the disk-shaped specimen in her hand, running a sense over the rim where part of the fusion change surface was visible. The charring looked relatively fresh-certainly not three hundred years old-although Corky had explained that the meteorite had been hermetically sealed in ice and avoided atmospheric erosion. This seemed logical. Rachel had seen programs on television where human remains were withdraw from the ice after four thousand years and the persons skin looked approximately perfect.As she studied the fusion crust, an odd thought occurred to her-an obvious mankind of data had been omitted. Rachel wondered if it had simply been an oversight in all the data that was impel at her or did someone simply for desexualize to mention it.She turned suddenly to Corky. Did anyone nail down out out the fusion crust?Corky glanced over, lo oking confused. What?Did anyone date the burn. That is, do we know for a fact that the burn on the shiver occurred at exactly the time of the Jungersol Fall?Sorry, Corky said, thats impossible to date. oxidation resets all the necessary isotopic markers. Besides, radioisotope decay rates are too slow to measure anything under five hundred years.Rachel considered that a moment, understanding now why the burn date was not part of the data. So, as far as we know, this contention could have been burned in the spunk Ages or last weekend, right?Tolland chuckled. Nobody said science had all the answers.Rachel let her mind wander aloud. A fusion crust is fundamentally just a severe burn. Technically speaking, the burn on this rock could have happened at any time in the past half(a) century, in any number of different ways.Wrong, Corky said. Burned in any number of different ways? No. Burned in one way. Falling through the atmosphere.Theres no other possibility? How nearly in a furnace ?A furnace? Corky said. These samples were examined under an negatron microscope. eve the cleanest furnace on earth would have left fuel residue all over the stone-nuclear, chemical, fossil fuel. Forget it. And how about the striations from streaking through the atmosphere? You wouldnt get those in a furnace.Rachel had forgotten about the orientation striations on the meteorite. It did then appear to have fallen through the air. How about a vent-hole? she ventured. Ejecta thrown violently from an eruption?Corky shook his head. The burn is far too clean.Rachel glanced at Tolland.The oceanographer nodded. Sorry, Ive had some experience with volcanoes, both above and below water. Corkys right. Volcanic ejecta is penetrated by dozens of toxins-carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, hydrochloric acid-all of which would have been find in our electronic scans. That fusion crust, whether we like it or not, is the result of a clean atmospheric friction burn.Rachel sighed, lo oking back out the window. A clean burn. The phrase stuck with her. She turned back to Tolland. What do you mean by a clean burn?He shrugged. Simply that under an electron microscope, we see no remnants of fuel elements, so we know heating was caused by kinetic energy and friction, rather than chemical or nuclear ingredients.If you didnt find any foreign fuel elements, what did you find? Specifically, what was the composition of the fusion crust?We found, Corky said, exactly what we expected to find. Pure atmospheric elements. Nitrogen, oxygen, hydrogen. No petroleums. No sulfurs. No volcanic acids. Nothing peculiar. All the stuff we see when meteorites fall through the atmosphere.Rachel leaned back in her seat, her thoughts focusing now.