Freefall by Judith Reeves-Stevens & Garfield Reeves-Stevens

Author:Judith Reeves-Stevens & Garfield Reeves-Stevens [Reeves-Stevens, Judith & Reeves-Stevens, Garfield]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: eBook, Fixed, SciFi
ISBN: 9780743406079
Publisher: Pocket Star
Published: 2005-02-28T13:00:00+00:00

10

UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO AT COLORADO SPRINGS

DEPARTMENT OF PHYSICS AND ENERGY SCIENCE

20:47 MDT, TUESDAY, APRIL 8

“The Moon has no magnetic field,” Tripurasundari Shiourie said as she gestured gracefully with a bottle of hydrochloric acid, tracing an imaginary magnetic field around an imaginary Moon.

Webber concealed his growing restlessness, forced himself to sit quietly on the worn stool in the basement lab of the Royceman Energy Science physics lab, in front of a laptop computer whose screen displayed a magnified, polarized, and unidentifiable image. He, and the rest of Cory’s former circle of four, had spent the last half hour watching Shiourie sweep back and forth through her lab, switching on humming machines, cutting, electrifying, and spending an inordinate amount of time aiming a macroscopic video camera at a brightly lit sliver of bone she had carefully planed from what she referred to as “Cory’s objects.”

“That’s what makes this so very easy,” the physics professor continued. She lowered a slender glass tube into the bottle of acid, let it dip just below the surface of the clear liquid, then deftly placed the tip of her bare finger over the open top and lifted it out again.

“How easy?” Cory asked.

“You will all want to keep watching…”

Webber sighed inwardly while the physics professor hunched over the camera and the laptop screen went dark as the shadow of her hand blocked the lights that illuminated the bone sample.

“This will now be the moment of truth,” Shiourie said. With absolute precision, she lifted her fingertip from the glass tube just long enough for a single drop of acid to fall on the bone. She discarded the tube into a thick-walled metal container the size of a wastebasket, then stood back and flashed a brilliant smile at her audience.

There was no doubt that Hubert’s friend and expert was a skilled performance artist. But she also possessed a quick intelligence that made Webber wonder if the physics professor had agreed to carry out this procedure to humor Bailey’s husband, or because she also believed in his wild theories.

“How long is this moment going to be?” Bailey asked.

Shiourie checked the delicate gold bracelet-watch she wore on an equally delicate wrist. The small diamonds sparkling on her watch face were a match for the considerably larger stones in her stud earrings. Webber decided that unless physics professors were paid exceptionally well in Colorado, Shiourie had other sources of income. Her expensively coiffed dark hair swept back from well-tended, dark-brown skin, and her pleated camel trousers and precisely-tailored navy blazer were uncommon on a casual campus that favored jeans and plaid flannel.

Shiourie raised an eyebrow. “Five minutes should do it.” Then she smiled slyly at Bailey. “So, tell me, Major, what do you know about Roswell today?”

Hubert laughed as his wife shook her head. “Same as any day, Sunny. Nothing.”

Professor Shiourie shared her joke with Webber and Cory. “I am always asking Wilhemina that. And she is always answering, ‘Nothing.’ But someday, when she says, ‘I cannot talk about it, that is the day I will know that the topic has come up at her work.

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