The Twelve Stones (25 page)

Alex’s interest was piqued.
“What is it?”

“
The stone is made out of an element that doesn’t exist in nature.” Scott said examining the tray as he took it out of the Spectral Analyzer. “Do you know what you’ve got here?”

“
Yes, I’ve totally set this whole thing up as a gag. Smile
;
you’re on Candid Camera.”

Scott ignored him. “You remember your periodic table of elements
,
right?” Scott asked, jutting his thumb towards the diagram hanging on the wall, familiar to all tortured high school
chemistry
students.

“
Just
t
he basics
,
really; number equals atomic weight, the symbols, hydrogen’s first, that sort of thing.” Alex said scratching his head. “What does that have to do with the stone?”

Scott raced over to the periodic table and pointed at the last few elements on the table. “See these? Because the electrons orbit so far away from the protons and neutrons the make up the nucleus – the glue that holds atoms together
,
of course
–
the strong nuclear force is overcome quickly
,
and the element becomes unstable.”

“
Radioactive decay, sure
;
that’s why we don’t use plutonium metal to build houses with.” Alex motioned for Scott to continue.

“
Close enough
.” Scott said, rolling his eyes.
“See these last few elements?”

Alex looked at the table and read the various names on the chart. Some wer
e named after
the people
who discovered them;
Lawrencium, Mendelevium, Rutherfordium. Others appeared to be just nonsense words, with exotic names like
ununoctium, ununseptium, or ununbiem.

Alex looked at the familiar chart on the wall
.
“
Th
at
chart doesn’t even go past 118.”

Scott snorted, “Right
;
that’s because up until now, the only elements that are stable enough to hang around for the lifetime of the universe are numbered 1 through 92 up on that chart. Anything higher than that is subject to radioactive decay
.
N
o
one’s been able to find any stable isotopes in nature.” Scott slowed down a bit; his friend may have been a wiz on the football field
,
but he was never much with chemistry.

“
It is theorized that these elements can be created
,
though. The elements belong to a group called the Island of St
ability.
” Scott’s eyes
shone
with possibilities
.
“And if you were able to synthesize some of those elements, the properties they would have are just mind
-
boggling.”

Alex shook his head. He hated it when Scott went ubernerd on him.

“
Scott, slow down and try again,” Alex said. “Dumb it down a little
.
W
hat
are you talking about?”

“
The rock you’re holding should not exist
.
T
he
technology that could create that element is
,
at best, two hundred years away
.
A
nd
yet
…
”
Scott said wistfully
,
his excitement palpable, “here you are holding onto it, using it
, healing yer wounds
…” Scott stopped himself and took a deep breath. He looked up, serious at his friend. “What it comes down to Alex
,
is
…
I’ve got nothing.”

Alex’s brow furrowed.
“Are you sure the test was accurate?”

Scott's voice was confident.
“If there’s one thing I take care of in my lab, it’s my instruments. The test wasn’t wron
g.” He handed the paper to Alex.
“Take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me.”

“
Toootally.” Alex said sarcastically, jerking his thumb back towards the ruined laser as he examined the paper in front of him. Well, solving what it was made out of didn’t help much.
But
a
t least it’s a start,
Alex thought grimly to himself.

“
So we’ve solved what it’s made out of
;
any way we can figure out where it came from?”

“
Only if we wanna ruin another three
-
million
-
dollar laser. There aren’t many more tests I know how to do that I want to risk trying with that stone
,
after it turned my best piece of lab equipment into scrap metal. There’s no telling how it
might react to any other tests,
” Scott replied sadly. He stared at the
stone in front of him woefully.
“This is some seriously advanced alien stuff right here.”

Alex whirled around and looked at his best friend, a smile spreading over his face. “What’d you say?”

“
I said we probably can’t do much more with this unless we want to ruin another…”

“
No, not that,” Alex cut him off.
“The thing about aliens.”

“
Well,” Scott said, confused, “I was just thinking about how that element isn’t supposed to occur in nature, and really the only way you’re going to be able to make…” Scott waved his hand at Alex’s stone, “whatever the hell that is
… Y
ou’d
need some pretty serious technology...” He trailed off, “I dunno, I was just making a joke is all.”

Alex smiled, “Not just a joke
,
my friend, but a brilliant suggestion. Who do we know that’s spent her entire life looking for aliens?”

Scott thought for a moment, and his face fe
ll. “Alex, you can’t be serious. S
he…”

“
She’s the only one besides you left out there I know I can trust with this kind of information.” Alex said firmly. He grimaced
,
thinking of the implications. “It’s also about time she knew I was alive.”

Scott nodded. “I’ll back whatever play you want to make. I’m just saying I nearly had a heart attack when I saw you alive for the first time…” He trailed off. “I have no idea what seeing you is going to do to her.”

Alex considered what he was saying
.
U
nfortunately,
he knew,
Scott was right. “We’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.” Alex put the necklace holding the powerful stone back around his neck and grabbed his jacket. “Come on buddy! Time’s a
-
wasting!”

Alex moved to the door on the other side of the lab. Scott shook his head and got up from the chair. “This is
the part
where I’m supposed to say this is a bad idea
,
isn’t it?”

“
Well, you already know I’m not gonna listen, so
why bother? L
et’s go!”

Scott
hung his head as he
pressed the button, opening the door to the lab and back towards the elevator. “Is there any way I can resign my post as sidekick?”

“
You have no sense of adventure,
” Alex replied, a smirk spreading across his face. “Just imagine what’s out there for us! Eh?” He jabbed an elbow into Scott’s gut, as his friend forlornly stared at the ruined remains of his formerly shining lab.

“
Adventure, explosions, gunfights with evil billionaires…” Scott replied sarcastically, “I didn’t know I was signing up be in a summer blockbuster.”

The doors slid shut, and the elevator moved up towards the surface. The adventure was coming, whether Scott liked it or not.

Chapter Eighteen

Rupert Kline peered around the corner looking into a dark and dusty hole that had been quickly dug into the side of the
m
esa
only a few hours before.
He
had shed the expensively tailored London suit for clothing more suited to the hot Mojave Desert. Now, Kline wore khakis, a modest brown shirt, and a long overcoat to protect from the night’s chill. The sun had set long ago, and with little vegetation to hang onto the day’s heat, the desert cooled quickly.

The only illumination on the site came from several large halogen spotlights connected to a noisy diesel generator. All the artificial light created a halo
-
like glow to the entrance of Kline’s newly dug mineshaft. Smaller lights
wound their way
down the long tunnel, hooked precariously on lines
the pneumatic drills had quickly stamped in
.

Kline dodged two men exiting the cave entrance, hauling away more rock and dirt in a large portable mine car. The mining cars were squat, holding two tons of rock and dirt in a long and deep carriage
as they
ran
along on
their
six heavy duty tires
.
Kline smiled at the two working men and gave them and their car
t
full of rubble a wide berth. The two men kept their heads down, not looking to start any trouble. They were paid well, but no one said they had to be friendly with the boss.

Kline wandered down further into the hole. They were making good progress, but he had heard over the radio that the drill team had hit a snag. Not one to let things lie, Kline had immediately left his desk to find out exactly what was the problem was.

He sniffed the air
,
scrunching his nose as he did so. There was a sickly
-
sweet tinge to the atmosphere, vaguely smelling of sulfur, sweat, various other offensive body odors, and finally, like whip
ped
cream on top of hot chocolate, the unspoken, unnatural fear of being buried alive under several tons of unmovable rock. It was this last smell that made Kline smile. He closed his eyes and inhaled as deeply as possible.

Throughout the world,
and
every race of people
, fear never discriminated. A Homo
Sapiens’
body, through years of evolution and conditioning, learned to contract muscles, activate danger sensors,
and
ready
itself for fight or flight at the slightest hint of danger.

Kline had a healthy respect for fear. He believed it had been fear that brought
m
ankind
down from swinging through the branches and
in
to
its
greatest achievement: technology. With sharp stone tools to protect and outsmart the fearsome might of nature, man evolved to
control
nature, sadly without learning how to control himself.

To Rupert Kline, fear was exotic cologne
with which
everyone sprayed themselves on a daily basis. Using this innate ability to correctly guess what people feared most in the world, the billionaire was able to deduce a man’s greatest fear
,
like an experienced wine steward choosing the best bottle to go with a good piece of fish.

Kline sniffed the air around him several more times, experiencing the aroma as if enjoying a particularly fine vintage. He smiled grimly to himself as he continued down the dank hole
,
hoping to find the man in charge looking for Kline’s treasure.

Walking several hundred
more feet
down into the
m
esa
, Kline walked into a pocket of open and exposed rock. The drilling team had stopped, waiting for orders
,
as their portly foreman screamed insults and curses into his radio.

“
I don’t care what that limey Kline says
!
I
f
we keep drilling, we risk blowing this entire damn mountain up
,
and no one goes home happy!” The
f
oreman’s
face was red from the effort of yelling into the compact radio he held in his massive hands. “Find me that pansy Englishman and send him down here if he wants to deal with me himself.”

The impatient man threw the radio down in a fit
.
Kline looked on with amusement.
As with
all his employees,
Kline had ensured a
thorough background check. His name was Red Howel
l, a graduate of MIT in the mid-
seventies with an above average GPA; he had landed a cushy government job right out of graduate school with several perks
—
among them, his
boss
’s
new wife.