Phobos: Mayan Fear by Steve Alten
Authors: Steve Alten
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Science-Fiction, Fantasy fiction, Fantasy, Thrillers, End of the world
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shaking beneath him. “Earthquake!”
The three climbers hang on to one another as the rumbling builds. Jurgen Neelen’s scalp tingles, his thoughts turning to his fellow climbers at the lower base camps, their location rendering them vulnerable to an avalanche. His head continues itching. He rubs a mittened hand atop his wool ski cap, generating sparks of static electricity. The loosened hat flies off his head, caught in an upswell of frigid air.
Snow flies past his face, followed by particles of rock that glance off his goggles before raining skyward. Jurgen looks up, mystified, his gray eyes following the trail of debris as it rises into the forming tail of a white tornado! The rotating column of air soars high over Everest—a massive churning vortex that twists skyward like a monstrous snake before disappearing into the event horizon of a gelid maelstrom located hundreds of miles above the mountain.
Sean Cadden stares at the hole in the sky, dumbfounded. “What the hell is that?”
Karim Jivani shields his face against flying debris. “Hey … what happened to the Sherpas?”
“They’re descending without us,” yells Neelen. “Come on!”
The three climbers head for the ropes as the updraft’s intensity increases, inhaling Karim’s camera right out of his hand. Cadden’s oxygen mask snaps free, flapping above his eyes. He grabs it by its hose, holding it to his face as he ducks low, following his companions down the rapidly disintegrating trail from which they ascended.
Chunks of frozen snow break loose like miniature icebergs, spinning into the air. A thirty-pound brick of ice bashes Karim in the face, shattering his goggles, which are quickly wrenched free from his head.
Jurgen reaches the ropes first. He snaps the carabiner attached to his belt around the line and begins a rapid rappel, his two companions right behind him.
The tornado’s suction rips the masks and helmets from their heads. The mountain peak shudders, shaking loose a million tons of snow in a blinding whiteout that sweeps the three men away from the rock and into the air, their feet splayed over their heads, the nylon rope all that tethers them to Everest.
Through the gravity-defying ice storm Sean Cadden looks up into the three-mile-wide radius of the anomaly, its gelid-clear orifice defined by the inhaled debris, its event horizon pushing closer.
The roar is deafening—a thousand freight trains vibrating every atom in the Canadian thrill-seeker’s body, swallowing his scream—
And suddenly there is silence.
The sky is clear, the anomaly gone. The three men gaze at one another, still suspended from their ropes, unsure of what just happened, or how they are still alive.
ORGANISATION EUROPÉENNE POUR LA RECHERCHE NUCLÉAIRE
EUROPEAN ORGANIZATION FOR NUCLEAR RESEARCH
CERN RESEARCH BOARD MINUTES OF THE 162nd MEETING OF THE RESEARCH BOARD HELD ON THURSDAY, 6 FEBRUARY 2003
STUDY OF POSSIBLY DANGEROUS EVENTS DURING HEAVY ION COLLISIONS AT LHC
J. Iliopoulos reported on the study made by a committee that he chaired, concerning the possibility of producing dangerous events during heavy ion collisions at the LHC. A previous study made for RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA) had concluded that the candidate mechanisms for catastrophe scenarios are firmly excluded by existing empirical evidence, compelling theoretical arguments, or both. Following their investigation, the committee members concurred with this conclusion. They studied the possible production of black holes, magnetic monopoles, and strangelets. They also reviewed the astrophysical limits coming from interaction of cosmic rays with the moon (or with each other), which, under plausible assumptions, exclude the possibility of dangerous processes in heavy ion colliders. Black holes produced in theories with extra-compact dimensions, for which the fundamental scale could be as low as 1 TeV, might be copiously produced at the LHC.
The three climbers hang on to one another as the rumbling builds. Jurgen Neelen’s scalp tingles, his thoughts turning to his fellow climbers at the lower base camps, their location rendering them vulnerable to an avalanche. His head continues itching. He rubs a mittened hand atop his wool ski cap, generating sparks of static electricity. The loosened hat flies off his head, caught in an upswell of frigid air.
Snow flies past his face, followed by particles of rock that glance off his goggles before raining skyward. Jurgen looks up, mystified, his gray eyes following the trail of debris as it rises into the forming tail of a white tornado! The rotating column of air soars high over Everest—a massive churning vortex that twists skyward like a monstrous snake before disappearing into the event horizon of a gelid maelstrom located hundreds of miles above the mountain.
Sean Cadden stares at the hole in the sky, dumbfounded. “What the hell is that?”
Karim Jivani shields his face against flying debris. “Hey … what happened to the Sherpas?”
“They’re descending without us,” yells Neelen. “Come on!”
The three climbers head for the ropes as the updraft’s intensity increases, inhaling Karim’s camera right out of his hand. Cadden’s oxygen mask snaps free, flapping above his eyes. He grabs it by its hose, holding it to his face as he ducks low, following his companions down the rapidly disintegrating trail from which they ascended.
Chunks of frozen snow break loose like miniature icebergs, spinning into the air. A thirty-pound brick of ice bashes Karim in the face, shattering his goggles, which are quickly wrenched free from his head.
Jurgen reaches the ropes first. He snaps the carabiner attached to his belt around the line and begins a rapid rappel, his two companions right behind him.
The tornado’s suction rips the masks and helmets from their heads. The mountain peak shudders, shaking loose a million tons of snow in a blinding whiteout that sweeps the three men away from the rock and into the air, their feet splayed over their heads, the nylon rope all that tethers them to Everest.
Through the gravity-defying ice storm Sean Cadden looks up into the three-mile-wide radius of the anomaly, its gelid-clear orifice defined by the inhaled debris, its event horizon pushing closer.
The roar is deafening—a thousand freight trains vibrating every atom in the Canadian thrill-seeker’s body, swallowing his scream—
And suddenly there is silence.
The sky is clear, the anomaly gone. The three men gaze at one another, still suspended from their ropes, unsure of what just happened, or how they are still alive.
ORGANISATION EUROPÉENNE POUR LA RECHERCHE NUCLÉAIRE
EUROPEAN ORGANIZATION FOR NUCLEAR RESEARCH
CERN RESEARCH BOARD MINUTES OF THE 162nd MEETING OF THE RESEARCH BOARD HELD ON THURSDAY, 6 FEBRUARY 2003
STUDY OF POSSIBLY DANGEROUS EVENTS DURING HEAVY ION COLLISIONS AT LHC
J. Iliopoulos reported on the study made by a committee that he chaired, concerning the possibility of producing dangerous events during heavy ion collisions at the LHC. A previous study made for RHIC (Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider at Brookhaven National Laboratory, USA) had concluded that the candidate mechanisms for catastrophe scenarios are firmly excluded by existing empirical evidence, compelling theoretical arguments, or both. Following their investigation, the committee members concurred with this conclusion. They studied the possible production of black holes, magnetic monopoles, and strangelets. They also reviewed the astrophysical limits coming from interaction of cosmic rays with the moon (or with each other), which, under plausible assumptions, exclude the possibility of dangerous processes in heavy ion colliders. Black holes produced in theories with extra-compact dimensions, for which the fundamental scale could be as low as 1 TeV, might be copiously produced at the LHC.
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