Independence Day: Silent Zone by Stephen Molstad

was refracted and
splintered, causing tiny dots of light to bounce around the inside of
the
chamber. The Mothers would dig this, Okun thought
with a nod.
    Dworkin
blew a puff of air into the chamber, and, to the visitors' surprise,
the rock
walls of the hexagon reacted, fluttering like the paper walls of a
Chinese
lantern.
    "No
way," Okun said, wide-eyed. "Do that again." Dworkin obliged,
and as the long-haired young scientist watched the gossamer walls
shudder under
the swirl of light dancing through the threads, a word popped out of
his mouth,
"Fragility."
    "Seemingly,"
Dworkin allowed, "but watch this." He stepped away to give Dr. Lenel
center stage. Lenel turned the flashlight around in his hand, reached
up into
the chamber, and began clanging and smashing it against the walls.
Radecker and
Okun were horrified, positive Lenel was doing irreparable damage to the
device.
But a second later the gruff old man showed them no damage had been
done. The
walls swayed back and forth as serenely as they had before. Dworkin's
voice
came over their shoulders. "We've tried for years to cut off a sample
of
this material so we could have it analyzed. Believe me, as delicate as
it might
appear, it is extremely tough."
    "You
should see what that sucker does when we pump some juice through the
system.
It's beautiful," Freiling put in.
    Radecker's
ears perked up. "What's he talking about? Does that mean you can make
it
work?"
    "Not
exactly." Dworkin told them about an experiment Dr.
Wells had organized some years earlier, in which the ship was bombarded
with a
controlled ray of electromagnetic energy. "When we pointed the beam
into
the aqua-box, we were able to bring the ship's system to temporary
life. The
instrumentation lit up, and the generator here—we sometimes call it the
aqua-box—produced a faint whirring sound. However, the power was purged
from
the system just as fast as it could be fed in."
    "Sounds
like your circuit isn't closed," Okun mused. "Maybe there's a wire
you didn't connect right and the power's leaching out."
    "Exactly."
The old man sighed. "We've been searching for that missed connection
for
years, but because we don't have any blueprints or another ship in
working
order, we're having to do a lot of guesswork. It's rather like
searching for a
needle in a haystack with the lights out."
    Radecker
interrupted. "Wait a second. Let's back up so I can get this straight.
You
guys brought some kind of generator down here and pumped power into the
ship
and it worked for a second?" He didn't wait for an
answer.
"Well, I'm not a scientist, but why don't we just get a bigger generator and pump in more power?"
    "Because
our power isn't like theirs." This time Lenel answered. "The most we
can do is raise a spark. Even for that we have to use so damn much
energy we
overheat the circuits and the ship gets hot as an oven. If we gave it
more
charge, we'd just burn her up."
    Okun
listened to the explanation, wagging his head deeply. "And I bet you
guys
tested a whole range of levels."
    "Yes,
of course. The minimum application of
EM radiation required to wake up the system is five
thousand volts. We
tested up to two hundred thousand volts and found no difference other
than the
resulting temperature of the ship."
    "I
see your problem," Okun said, stroking his beardless chin. "That's a
toughie, a definite toughie."
    Everyone
fell silent for a moment. The tour had led Okun through the labyrinth
of what
was known only to drop him off here at this dead end.
    "Another
question." Okun's hand was up in the air again. "Aren't we missing
something here? Something more important than whether we can get this
ship to
work. The so-called bigger picture?"
    "What
question are you thinking of?"
    "Are
there more aliens out there, and are they going to come back?"

4

The Y
    The
elaborate dinner the scientists had cooked up
was reheated, but by the time the food was actually ready to be served,
no one
felt like eating after Radecker had gone off like a