Dark Discovery

By Greg Handermann

In the midst of a mid-life crisis, Dr. Tom Richards comes face to face with the defining Rubicon of his life. In spite of perilous warnings, he recklessly forges across. He is taking data on an asteroid that has just entered the solar system, which makes absolutely no sense. Tom Richards suspects he has stumbled on a new form of matter. Once the international race heats up to become the beneficiary of the newly discovered object, things turn ugly. To avoid calamity, Tom must overcome preconceived ideas of both science and people. Things go from bad to worse when Toms coworkers, one by one, lose their lives. By pursuing a dream without regard to cost, Tom can save a nationand maybe even himself.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jul 26, 2010
• ISBN: 9781450242646

Greg Handermann

Greg Handermann, a practicing engineer in the satellite industry, brought his scientific background to bear, developing the multi layered, science-fiction thriller, Dark Discovery,/i>. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Northern Virginia with their menagerie of horses and pets.

Book preview

Contents

Prologue

Discovery

October 17

October 18

October 21

October 23

October 26

November 6

November 10

November 13

November 20

November 21

November 28

November 30

December 7

December 13

December 18

December 21

January 6

January 16

Application

January 20

January 22

February 7

February 14

February 24

March 6

March 25-26

March 28

March 30

April 10

April 21

April 27

May 5-6

May 8

May 18

May 22

May 27

June 3-6

Darkness

June 18 - 20

June 25

June 30

July 4

July 12 - 13

July 16

July 25

July 31

August 3

August 15

August 20

August 27

September 5

September 11

September 20

September 25

September 27-28

September 28 - 29

October 2

October 2 - 4

October 5

October 6 - 7

October 7

October 8

Oct 9 - Morning

October 9 - Evening

October 9 - Night

October 10

October 12

Epilog

For Further Reading

Prologue

North West China

Fu Cheng could not believe his bad luck. It was his daughter’s fourteenth birthday and here he was bouncing along a dirt road in a military truck on the Lop Nur test range. At nearly 40,000 square miles, the Lop Nur weapons test range occupied an unpopulated patch of dessert about the size of Ohio.

Fu Cheng did not feel the least bit privileged to be driving through the world’s largest weapons test range. His back was aching. He was too old to be playing soldier. He had served as the Minister of Science and Technology for the People’s Republic of China for the past six years and had begun thinking about retirement. During the past two hours of pounding, he thought of little else.

Why this old military truck had such an impossibly hard suspension, he could not imagine. Maybe the driver was going too fast. However, asking his driver to slow down would only extend the agony. The four-wheel drive truck had no air conditioning. Consequently, the windows remained down, letting in billows of dust from the dirt road that made it nearly impossible to breath. Fu Cheng lamented — slow the driver down, roll the windows up — no matter how you looked at it, the cure was worse than the disease. On a paved road with a little cloud cover, the 79 degree, October afternoon would have made for perfect weather. With the blistering sun beating down through a dry, cloudless sky, it might as well have been 100 degrees.

Calling the truck in which they rode dilapidated would have been too complimentary. The vinyl seats were cracked in multiple places adding to the discomfort of the ride. The Spartan interior was mostly a dull green exposed metal frame. Any trim work that might have come with the truck was long gone, leaving small square holes in the frame where the trim would have popped into place.

Officer Gang, Fu Cheng’s driver, had a warrior’s confidence, bordering on cocky, that Fu Cheng found reassuring.

Gang said, At the top of this next ridge we should be able to see the test site. Do you want me to stop there so we can survey the area, or keep driving to the observation bunker?

Are you joking? Keep driving, Fu Cheng replied.

Fu Cheng watched the Army truck in front of them screech to a halt as it crested the ridge. He had a sickening feeling he might be stuck out here for hours. When their vehicle reached the ridge summit, Fu Cheng’s eyes opened wide in surprise and he sucked in a lungful of dusty air. He let out a series of enormous coughs. Through tearing eyes, he tried to take in the stark landscape below. He could not believe the scene on the other side of the splattered windshield. At the target location, a massive crater blotted out the scenery.

His skillful driver maneuvered past the other vehicle as Fu Cheng screamed, Stop!

I thought you wanted to keep moving.

Gang did not appear to be the least bit affected by the wide-ranging devastation in front of him.

Don’t you see what’s in front of us? Fu Cheng nearly screamed.

Officer Gang, still apparently oblivious to the unexpected destruction, said, With the ground clearance this vehicle has, it’s not a problem.

Fu Cheng was already out of the vehicle looking through binoculars when Gang’s truck came to a complete stop. The man-made crater in the valley below had to be at least a mile across and a couple of hundred feet deep. The walls of the crater seemed unnaturally steep. No vehicle, tracked or otherwise, could negotiate those crater walls. Large truck-size boulders were piled around the rim of the crater.

All around the crater, the scruff vegetation was gone. The blackened remains of struggling groves of poplar trees could be seen in a quarter-mile ring around the crater. The smoke from the smoldering vegetation wafted lazily into the air around the rim of the crater. Scrawny poplars interspersed with dead poplars were visible all the way to the horizon. The standing dead poplars were most likely killed off by the drying climate and the thirsty irrigation systems up stream, Fu Cheng thought.

Fu Cheng shuddered at the destruction. They had just fired a new weapon, which on prior tests had made only 20-foot wide craters. Fu Cheng felt stomach acids churning. Something was dreadfully wrong.

Twenty minutes later, they pulled up to the concrete observation bunker, which rose above the stark terrain two miles from the newly formed crater’s edge. Gang headed into the bunker without even pausing at the threshold. Fu Cheng fiddled with his radiation meter and exhaled loudly when he saw no measureable radiation. He followed Gang’s path into the bunker, through the low doorway, carrying his Geiger counter for good measure.

Fu Cheng looked around the bunker and noticed the clock on the wall still had the correct time. Racks of test equipment appeared to be functioning normally. He checked out the computer systems. The computers were flashing red failed-sensor warnings.

The young officer approached Fu Cheng.

I can’t believe how ill-conceived this test program has been. I don’t think anyone on the program really understands the weapon they are testing.

It would be hard to argue the point, Fu Cheng reluctantly conceded.

I’ve been asked to produce a report for my chief. It will be hard to convey the level of recklessness the test team has consistently displayed.

With an audible sigh, Fu Cheng said, We are on the verge of something so fantastic that big risks come with the territory.

With a respectful closed-mouth smile, Gang said, I’ll copy you on my report.

As Fu Cheng continued his inspection of the observation bunker, he felt a sense of panic rise through his body. It started down around his knees, which were weakening by the minute. Now his stomach was knotting up. A wave of nausea washed over him. He struggled to remember the timeline for symptoms of radiation poisoning. He had been in the bunker only twenty minutes, but a profound sense of loneliness made it seem like an eternity. Checking his Geiger counter, he could read nothing but background radiation. Was he succumbing to some new form of radiation poisoning not detected by his sophisticated meter? He quickly sat down before he collapsed. Sitting down, he began to feel better. Maybe it was not radiation poisoning after all. Maybe it was just the stench from the seven corpses strewn about the floor.

Discovery

I don’t try to describe the future, I try to prevent it.

Ray Bradbury

October 17

Three Years Later, Goddard Institute for Space Studies,

Greenbelt, Maryland.

Tom Richards cringed as he watched his colleague walking towards his cubicle.

As Bob Johnson approached, he said good-naturedly, Don’t tell me you’re still looking for wayward rocks that might crash into the Earth long after disease and famine have killed off all the people?

Okay, I won’t tell you. But I have found something pretty interesting.

Let me guess… another planet, Bob said with noticeable sarcasm.

It’s too small for that. I’ve logged it as BR239. It seems to be perturbing the path of everything it passes far more than an object of its size should.

Sounds like a statistical measurement variation. I wish I had a dollar for every time someone around here misinterpreted statistical variations as a new discovery. Even something with a one-in-a-million chance of happening will happen eventually given sufficient time and space. With that enlightening comment, Bob walked off, presumably to set right other misconceptions festering at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Dr. Tom Richards held a Ph.D. in Astrophysics. It amused him that Ph.D. stood for Doctor of Philosophy. He figured he knew as much about philosophy as your average dumpster diver collecting cans on Skid Row. As Tom pulled on his black leather jacket to leave work for the day, he wondered what else he might have in common with the can collectors of Central City East, Los Angeles. Unfulfilled dreams came to mind.

At six-foot tall and 180 pounds, Tom had neither a lean nor an overweight appearance. His thick, sandy brown hair and sparkling blue eyes made him look younger than his 46 years. He was neither handsome nor was he unattractive. In short, he was average.

Tom walked to his car at the end of another long day. The dark, fall evening, with an unpleasantly cool wind, reinforced his growing depression. The mild depression he felt was like a tiny cancer, asymptomatic at the moment, but having the capacity to kill given time. His previous assignment was an exciting one — searching for planets outside the Solar System that could potentially support life. Unfortunately, after twelve months, the new search algorithm he designed detected only one possible planet. To add insult to injury, an amateur astronomer discovered it at about the same time. Now, Tom was moved off to far less prestigious endeavor — predicting the trajectories of asteroids in the Solar System that have even a remote chance of impacting Earth. On the dreary drive home, Tom was confronted with the obvious — by any reasonable definition, he was a failure. With life slipping by quickly, there was precious little time to do anything about it.

Tom walked into his house wondering which wife would greet him. It was neither. Instead it was the family’s bounding German shepherd, Sojourn, never too busy to drop what she was doing and deliver an enthusiastic greeting. Tom set his briefcase down on the white tiled foyer and knelt with one knee on the floor to receive the customary salutation. The large brown and black shepherd had a beautiful face with dark features that appeared as if she was wearing perfectly applied makeup. However, Sojourn’s most endearing quality had nothing to do with her appearance. It was her uncanny ability to brighten Tom’s mood under the darkest of circumstances.

With his freshly cleaned face, Tom headed for the kitchen to look for his wife with Sojourn right behind him. Beth retained the thick, brown hair of her youth, well, maybe with a little help. Her bright red blouse and blue jeans gave her a vivacious appearance that belied her state of mind. In spite of the bright yellow kitchen walls, Tom sensed a dark cloud overhead.

Did you realize Brenda’s science project is due tomorrow? Beth scolded.

Brenda is a bright girl, I’m sure she’ll get it done on time.

All the other kids get help from their dads. Why should Brenda be at a disadvantage?

Doing her own work is hardly a disadvantage, Tom argued.

Beth was visibly irritated. I don’t see why you have to work such ridiculous hours. It’s not like you’ll ever get rewarded for the effort.

Point taken, Tom conceded.

Your priorities are out of whack. You hardly make a living wage and yet you can’t find the time to do anything around here!

I’m going to look for a better job soon.

You’ve been saying that for years now. Have you looked at our savings account lately? Given your tiny pay raises, we can’t even save money anymore! When we married, I had such high hopes.

Just a little longer.

Tom literally felt ill seeing his wife so agitated. He scrambled to think of how to diffuse the situation. He looked in Sojourn’s direction hoping for inspiration. All he got was a wide eyed look of affection saying, Anyone who can reach the dog biscuits is a hero to me!

Tom! Are you listening to me? Beth said in much louder voice. You may not have a little longer!

Tom made his decision. He would become a success in twelve months or he would drive a stake through the heart of a childhood fantasy and find a better paying job.

Daddy! Brenda exclaimed as she came to the rescue, running into the room and throwing her arms around her dad. Tom fervently believed Brenda was the most gorgeous creation that ever graced planet Earth and he told her so every chance he got. With her mom’s shiny, brown, shoulder-length hair and his own brilliant blue eyes, Tom could not help but smile every time he saw her. At fourteen years of age, Brenda was as rambunctious as she was hardworking, a perfect combination in Tom’s eyes.

So, Brenda, what’s the deal with the science project? Tom asked.

I should be able to get it done tonight as long as mom lets me stay up late.

Brenda glanced in her mother’s direction and Tom felt Beth’s glare bearing down on him.

Tom’s son, Jeff, a freshman at George Washington University, was constantly finding new ways to aggravate his dad; it was a recreational sport of sorts. Recently, Jeff’s choice in girlfriends provided the sharp stick with which Jeff used to poke his father. Jeff’s current girlfriend never graduated from high school and had no plans for her life, as near as Tom could tell. The other annoying thing about Jeff’s girlfriend was that she had a very strange name that Tom could never remember how to pronounce.

Jeff had hidden himself away in his bedroom with the door closed, playing loud music from an indeterminate genre. Tom had no doubt Jeff was talking to the girl with the strange name. As Tom looked in the direction of Jeff’s closed door, he thought maybe his annoyance with the girl’s name was a sign of social progress. Her unpronounceable name and lack of a high-school diploma bothered Tom far more than the way her African roots contrasted with his son’s European heritage.

October 18

Tom! Mike West yelled out as he approached him from across the grey cubical-filled office. What’s the deal with the e-mail you sent out yesterday? Was it really necessary to copy half the division on something like that?

Tom pushed his chair back from his desk and twisted it towards the cubical entrance. He confronted his boss in the most professional demeanor he could muster. Given how unusual the observations were, I thought it was prudent to quickly get opinions from as diverse a group as possible.

Okay, but why in the world would you copy Marylyn?

Marylyn, the Department of Defense liaison, served as the conduit to the DOD for all space-related issues that might have national security implications. Rarely did NASA observe a space event with national security implications. The only event in recent memory was when the Chinese destroyed one of their own satellites with a missile in 2007. The US loudly expressed displeasure with the Chinese, even though the United States had done exactly the same thing to one of its satellites in 1985. The unspoken implication was that if push came to shove, countries could start shooting down each other’s satellites.

Tom knew the details of that incident in Marylyn’s report were based on careful analysis of the missile’s trajectory. Her analysis clearly pointed the way to counter measures the DOD could take if the Chinese ever got the idea to perform that stunt on a US military satellite.

Tom suspected Marylyn’s extraordinary attractiveness often prevented her from being taken seriously, this being a point in case.

Mike, Tom tried to reason, Marylyn is an expert on stellar objects. It makes perfect sense to consult her on this.

Marylyn is a DOD weenie without the credentials to review your data. She makes lots of work for people with her procedures and forms and I don’t want any of my studies getting tangled up in one of her inane processes.

Her processes are quite rational and actually minimize duplicative efforts, Tom countered.

Her processes are just her way of keeping complete control over everything.

Tom went on the offensive. After you studied the address list in my e-mail, did you have a chance to look at the attachment?

The silence between them spoke loudly.

Tom continued. If you get a chance to review it, I’d be very interested in your opinion. With that comment, Tom put his head down and began reviewing data from last night’s observations.

Mike wasn’t finished. Why are you still messing around with this same small asteroid anyway? You are supposed to be doing a broad survey not a detailed analysis on a single object.

This object defies analysis... at least any analysis using recognized laws of physics.

And I suppose the e-mail attachment explains all that?

Correct.

I don’t think I have to remind you, but I’ll be doing your performance review in two months and your top objective is to complete the survey of Sector Six. You’ll never get there unless you get off this one object right now.

Just as Mike was making his exit, Bob Johnson showed up at Tom’s cubicle with his usual grin. Bob always smiled as if he had an unbelievably funny secret that he could not tell you because he feared you would rupture an organ laughing. Tom knew without question Bob had the highest IQ of anyone in the department — not that IQ was everything. However, in this line of work, it sure gave you a leg up.

Tom, what’s the deal with the data you sent out last night? Bob said. It makes no sense!

That’s why I sent it to you. I figured if anyone could explain it, you could, Tom smiled.

Very funny! No one can explain this data because there’s an error in it. I hate to be trite but it violates the laws of physics — literally.

Where do you suggest I look for an error? All the images are time-tagged by validated software. You even signed off on the software that performed the image correlations. Where would I begin to look for an error?

Deafening silence enveloped Tom for the second time that morning. Bob rubbed the stubble on his barely-started beard.

Finally, Bob broke the silence. Let me think about it. Obviously, something has affected the integrity of the data. Any high school physics student could tell you this data is incorrect.

Tom had also blamed erroneous data in the beginning. However, after weeks of double-checking and making numerous calculations by hand, he still could not find the error. If the data were correct, then the physics textbooks were wrong. It was really that simple.

Tom, deep in thought, jumped when his phone rang. The caller ID indicated Marylyn’s name. Anxious to hear what she had to say, he quickly grabbed the phone.

Hi Marylyn, did you see the data? Tom inquired.

I sure did! Totally inexplicable.

There seems to be a consensus building that bad data corrupted the analysis. Bob’s opinion was hardly a consensus but given his reputation, it was usually one in the making.

No way is it an error in the data, Marylyn confidently replied. The data is self-consistent across four dimensions. Two independently validated analysis packages arrived at comparable results."

A shiver ran up Tom’s spine. Even though he did not see how there could be an error in the data he always fell back to that explanation. This was the first time someone else said the data might really mean something.

So Tom, who else has seen this? Marylyn asked.

Only the people copied in my e-mail

Yeah — I saw you copied half the division.

So I’ve been told.

Well, Marylyn began, do me a favor and don’t expand the distribution on this.

Tom could not resist saying, I never thought I’d see the day when you and Mike were on the same page. Mike just gave me the same direction.

Mike and I are not on the same page! We don’t even read the same books! If Mike told you not to discuss this with a wider audience, it was for some obtuse reason steeped in office politics. I’m putting out an e-mail within the hour classifying this data as ‘national interest’ data and further discussions will have to be through secure channels.

So you don’t have any theories, do you?

Marylyn gave an unexpected reply. Actually I do. Have to run now.

With that, the line went silent.

October 21

Tom drove home that Friday evening completely drained. His data on the new object was as baffling as it was when he arrived at the office on Monday. Marylyn was obviously working on a theory. Who knew how many resources she leveraged at the DOD to come up with something? But this was his discovery, and he was drawing a complete blank.

To sour Tom’s mood further, he remembered Jeff’s girlfriend with the unpronounceable name was coming over for dinner.

Tom walked into the house and plopped down into his favorite old brown leather armchair. Only a few feet away, his son was sitting with barely a paper’s width of clearance between himself and his girlfriend on an equally worn matching couch. Tom felt exasperated and exhaled so loudly that Sojourn jumped up to see what was wrong. Sojourn walked over to Tom and rested her brown and black head on his knee. Tom stroked the short hair on Sojourn’s head and quickly went to a better place.

As Tom looked over at Jeff’s girlfriend, he had to admit, she was quite striking. Her dark chocolate skin seemed to be entirely blemish-free. Her skin had no freckles, no moles, no lines, in short, no imperfections of any sort. It looked as if an artist had retouched her skin in some sort of high-tech 3D photo. Her black-colored eyes looked intelligent for reasons Tom could not discern. Her long black braided hair, pulled back around a strongly featured face, completed the picture of someone self-assured, diploma or not.

Jeff’s girlfriend was as out-spoken as she was attractive. What is it, Dr. Richards? What‘s the problem?

Tom was surprised on two counts: first, the courteous, almost professional way she addressed him; and secondly, the fact that she should have any interest in his state of mind, sincere or feigned.

After he recovered from his surprise, Tom said, I’m tracking a space object entering our Solar System and it has some very strange properties. Its trajectory shows no sign of it coming close enough to Earth to be a danger but its trajectory does not fit a normal model.

How so?

Well, it behaves as if it doesn’t follow the same laws of physics as every other piece of matter we know about.

Which laws of physics?

Such a question coming from a high school dropout was surprising. The data shows it has a much stronger gravitational field then its size can account for.

Jeff said, Kind of like a black hole?

It is not nearly as dense as a black hole. A black hole occurs when matter simply collapses upon itself and ceases to exist as defined atoms. The data I’ve collected suggests this object is about a million times denser than the densest occurring element on Earth, which is either iridium or osmium, depending on how you measure it.

Jeff’s girlfriend asked, How much does osmium weigh and how much does a black hole weigh.

Tom was impressed with her enthusiasm, if not the sophistication of her questions. A baseball made of osmium would weigh around 10 pounds, about as much as a gallon and a half of water. If the Earth were compressed to 1/3 of an inch in diameter, it would become a black hole. The density of this thing is working out to be in between those two extremes, but much closer to osmium than a black hole. If the data I’ve collected is correct, a pea sized piece of this thing would weigh about 5,000 pounds.

Having come this far, Tom felt obligated to explain the conundrum. The problem is that the nuclear force that holds the nucleus of atoms together is not strong enough to hold together nuclei large enough to make matter this dense. Matter that we are familiar with would instantly decay into lighter atoms if you could ever create an atom with a nucleus large enough to be this heavy.

A voice came from the kitchen, Dinner’s ready everyone!

Tom could hardly enjoy dinner. He sat at the dark wood dining table mindlessly staring at scratches and gouges on the table top that were probably older than he was. All he could think about now was the inexplicable data. The fact that Marylyn apparently already had a theory added to his frustration.

As Beth brought out dessert, a family favorite, chocolate cake with extra rich chocolate icing, Tom heard Jeff’s girlfriend speaking and noticed she was looking right at him.

Could you repeat that? Tom said weakly.

I was saying I had a thought about your data.

Oh?

That was all the encouragement the gregarious girl needed. I remember reading that all of the characteristics of the matter around us were determined at the moment of the big bang, when the universe was created.

Tom was impressed with her knowledge of 11th grade science. She obviously did not sleep through all her classes.

Jeff’s girlfriend continued, So, I’m thinking maybe this thing you found came from a different big bang. You know, maybe an earlier big bang. And everything made from this earlier big bang has stronger forces that can hold denser atoms together.

Tom had no response. Just the same, some small part of him started to consider what she was saying.

She continued. Say our universe is 14 billion years old, but say this thing you found is 214 billion years old. It might have come from a big bang that happened 200 billion years before our big bang.

Tom thought her suggestion was quite ridiculous but he admired that she could at least invent a story to fit the data. He blanched when he realized that he had been quite incapable of even that.

Then the hair on the back of Tom’s neck stood up when he heard what she said next.

This ancient matter left over from a prior universe could be the dark matter in our universe that no one has been able to identify.

The existence of dark matter was first suggested in 1933 by astronomer and Caltech lecturer Fritz Zwicky, who noted that visible matter could not account for the rate at which a cluster of galaxies spun about one another without spinning apart. Something not visible had to be creating the gravitational pull that held the cluster together. Zwicky thought about ninety percent of the matter in this cluster of galaxies had to be this mysterious invisible matter.

In 2003, using data from the Microwave Anisotropy Probe (MAP) satellite, it was determined that our universe consists of four percent ordinary visible matter, twenty-three percent dark matter, and seventy-three percent dark energy. Still, the MAP satellite provided no evidence as to what this dark matter was.

Tom’s head spun in a cloud of conflicting thoughts. He was surprised to hear himself talking. I’m sorry, but how do you say your name?

a-lee-a-SAY, Parks, sir.

October 23

Beijing, China

Fu Cheng sat at his desk and wrote a note to himself on a Post-It. Stop for flowers. The Science and Technology minister never missed his daughter’s birthday, save once, and he always got her flowers.

Fu Cheng’s office was modestly furnished with an old wood desk, a table, and worn but comfortable chairs. Still hanging in his office was a classic portrait of the late Chairman Mao with his plain grey shirt buttoned to the neck. At one time, nearly every office in the building had a similar portrait. But now, due mostly to Fu Cheng’s lack of interest in office décor, the portrait along with the rest of his office furnishings had become an anachronism. On his pale yellow office walls, the only other picture was a re-print of a fanciful red and white dragon wearing what could only be described as a knowing smile standing in front of a backdrop of lush green landscape.

On Fu Cheng’s desk were six pictures of his daughter, Liling, at various stages of her life; they presented a variety of dental conditions. In the oldest picture she mischievously opened her mouth to show off her missing teeth. In a middle picture, sparkling braces dominated her cute round face shrouded in straight jet black hair. In the most recent shot, she showed off beautiful white pillars that propped open an infectious smile. Fu Cheng had always thought he would be retired by Liling’s seventeenth birthday, retired at least from his government job. Yet there he sat at his desk with retirement as out of reach as ever.

Fu Cheng had only one child, which he raised alone. In his younger days, he had felt duty-bound to comply with China’s One Child policy. He took pride in the fact that he had contributed to a reduction in population of 300,000,000 people compared to the projected population of China without the One Child policy.

Fu Cheng’s five foot, eight inch height gave him a several inch height advantage over most of