Independence Day: Silent Zone by Stephen Molstad Page B

here."
    "No,
no. We own a group plot at a cemetery outside of Las Vegas."
    Disgusted,
Radecker marched away back to his office.
    "Sam"—Freiling
looked up at Dworkin—"don't let him send me away."
----
    Brackish's
room was a former office suite on the same corridor with the other
scientists.
It came with its own bathroom and a plain steel bed with a lumpy
mattress. He
stretched out in bed that night and told himself he should think about
everything that had happened on this, the most extraordinary day of his
life.
But he found he couldn't stop thinking about the generator on the ship.
He
hadn't gotten a chance to ask them why they called it the aqua-box
despite its
decidedly non-aqua color.
    On
the one
hand, it seemed so simple: the ship's power system wasn't holding a
charge.
There must be a rupture in the circuitry. In that case, it was merely a
matter
of locating the broken line and stitching it together as Cibatutto had
shown him.
On the other hand, it could be some other problem, something totally
unrelated
to the circuitry, something so exotic no human being could even
conceive of its
existence. The first possibility was, as Dworkin said, like looking for
a
needle in a haystack. The second offered even lower chances of success.
    Nevertheless, he
decided to center on the second possibility. His instincts told him to
trust
the work the scientists had done over the past twenty-odd years. Not
only that.
He didn't want to be down there for twenty years himself duplicating
their
efforts. He decided to assume that the scientists had reassembled every
piece
of the ship correctly and that it was "good as new." He found himself
thinking about the little balsa-wood-and-magnet saucer he'd caused to
fly over
Caltech. If someone had come along and found that saucer on the ground
and
started looking for its power source, they could put it together ten
million
ways and never figure it out. The power wasn't inside the ship. It was
in the
electromagnetic cannons strapped to the walls. Could the aliens have
space-based generators? Of course, they wouldn't be EMFs, or we'd have
picked
that up as radio and television distortion. He smiled at the ludicrous
picture
in his head of megamonster power stations circling the earth and
beaming power
down to the UFOs. But if the power wasn't inside the ship and wasn't
being
"beamed in" from the outside, there wasn't any place left except for...
That was it! In a flash, Okun hit upon an idea that would obsess him
for years
to come. The power must somehow exist between the
ships. Maybe the
reason the system wouldn't hold a charge was that it had been designed not to. Hadn't Dworkin said something about the energy being drained out of
the
ship? "Purged" was the word he had used. If the power was being
intentionally drained from the system, where did the energy go once the
ship
spit it out? It had to go to another ship, which would spit it right
back. He
had a vision of the stingray ships flying in groups, most likely
arranged in
rigid geometrical patterns. If this was a warship of some kind, it
would make
perfect sense from a tactical point of view. If every ship were
continuously
powering all the others, a squadron could maintain the power of its
ships even
if some of them were lost. There was only one problem: the idea
contradicted
something Radecker had told him about the so-called bigger picture.
    Out
in the
hall he heard whispering. He got up and went to the door. Three of the
scientists were out there holding a conference. As soon as they saw
Okun
standing in the doorway, they quickly said good night and broke their
huddle.
    "Pssst,
hey, you guys. I think I figured out the power problem."
    The
men
didn't seem to be at all interested and retreated toward their rooms.
As
Dworkin moved past him, Okun stepped out into the hall. "Sam, I was
thinking about the power supply. What if—"
    "Young man,
I've had a very difficult evening, and I need some time alone with my
thoughts." Not only was Dworkin