Ghouls of the Miskatonic (The Dark Waters Trilogy) by McNeill Graham

Author:McNeill, Graham [McNeill, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
Publisher: Fantasy Flight Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2011-08-25T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The low-level hum filling the laboratory was a comfort to Kate Winthrop as she wrote up her notes and observations from the day’s experiments. Frank Pabodie and Dr. Hayes had returned from their testing of the new batteries, and the job of collating their notes and tabulating the results had fallen to her. It was a thankless task requiring convoluted equations and precise arithmetic, but one Kate was happy to perform. The calculations were her constant, the mathematics a universal language that could be used to unlock the very secrets of the universe.

She finished a set of Dr. Hayes’s books and rubbed her eyes, looking up at the slit windows high on the wall of the laboratory. The clock on the wall said it was half past five, though only blackness could be seen through the iron meshed windows. She set down the book, and looked over at the device Professor Grayson and the Irishman had brought her.

It sat in a cardboard box covered with the cloth they used for cleaning their coffee pot. It had been in Kate’s thoughts ever since it had come into her possession.

If what Mr. Edwards had described was true, then the sphere might well be one of the most important scientific discoveries of the century: though she seemed to be the only one to think so.

Neither Frank nor Dr. Hayes had been interested in even looking at the device. Their thoughts were on the upcoming expedition to Antarctica and ensuring that their newly developed technology would be sufficient to meet the hostile environmental demands placed upon it. Kate couldn’t blame them—a great deal of money, time, and effort was being poured into this expedition, and the prestige the university would gain from its subsequent findings was beyond measure.

Yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that this sphere was something that would eclipse any discoveries made upon the cold wastelands of Antarctica.

Unable to contain her curiosity any longer, and deciding that she had done enough work for one day, Kate put aside the reams of data on conductivity, resistance, voltages, and energy drop-offs. She crossed the laboratory and lifted the strange sphere from the box and set it on the workbench. Its weight was surprising, far in excess of what something of its dimensions would warrant.

Following a strict methodology, Kate took a fresh notebook from a drawer and made a number of sketches of the device. She had taken photographs the previous day and was waiting for them to be developed. It appeared to be made from machine-finished steel, but polished to such a high degree that its silvery surfaces were mirror-like. What looked like a sheen of gasoline covered the device, distorting her reflection like a fairground mirror that makes you look taller or fatter or squatter.

Yet the surfaces were not uniform, and Kate wondered if the device was in fact made up of numerous interlocking pieces, cunningly wrought to form its perfectly spherical form. Angular lines and sweeping curves crossed its surface like impossibly complex wiring diagrams, or strange and unknown writing.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.