works for—Rincon Systems, or whatever. Guess who they’re under contract with?”
“Who?” I said.
“The Defense Department.”
“No duh,” I said. “That’s the definition of a defense contractor.”
“Okay, shut up. But guess what branch?”
“No idea.”
“AFSPC,” she said, turning to me with a twinkle in her eye. “Air Force Space Command.”
I stared at her. “Wait . . . Major Connor? ”
“Yeah, Vandenberg Air Force Base . . . the Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles . . . it was their helicopters that landed at the crater, it was their hazmat team, they were the ones that decontaminated our rooms. And Dr. Lacroix’s company was just awarded a four-year contract with them.”
“That’s just a coincidence, right?” I said. “Defense contracting is a big sector in Santa Barbara, so that’s not weird, right?”
“You mean, that we killed his daughter and crossed paths with his funding agency? It’s a little weird.”
“Huh,” I said, staring at the squiggles on my graph paper. Thinking about it, that seemed like either an impossible coincidence or a very minor one not even worth taking note of. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out which.
“But as weird as that is, it’s not as weird as this,” said Megan.
I looked up. “There’s more?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “His company just put out this huge document, over two-thousand pages long. Apparently, it was part of the bid that earned them the contract. The primary author is John Lacroix.”
“Emory’s dad?”
“Right. Check out the title.” She tilted the screen so I could see better.
I leaned in and read, and a chill went down my spine.
Defending Earth in the Worst-Case Scenario: Efficacy of Modern Weaponry against an Extra-Terrestrial Threat
Before I could react, Megan’s phone buzzed. A text message.
She stared at her phone. “Uh, Leona . . .”
“What? What is it?”
“It’s Sarah . . . the grad student. Look—” She held the phone out to me so I could read the text.
Get over here now. You guys need to see this.
“I tried everything,” the grad student shouted over her shoulder, leading us at a near sprint through a maze of dark linoleum hallways toward the physics lab in Broida Hall after she’d unlocked the doors for us. “And I mean everything . Visible light didn’t work, so I tried infrared, ultraviolet, microwaves, X-rays, gamma rays. Nothing showed up. I even bombarded it with Alpha particles, heavier stuff too. Gold nuclei. Whatever I could get my hands on, but it all goes right through like it’s not even there. It bothered the heck out of me.”
As we ran, an excited adrenaline buzzed under my skin.
We were onto something here. A major discovery.
Dark matter.
“Then I started losing my slides,” said Sarah. “They were turning invisible on me. Once the stuff gets on a surface, it wants to spread out and cover the whole thing. I’ve seen that behavior in superfluids before. Helium, for example. You get it cold enough, and it exhibits zero viscosity and starts doing all sorts of strange shit. It’ll climb right out of its container if you let it. Basically, I think we’re looking at a room temperature superfluid.”
“A superfluid?” I said dumbly.
“Oh, and just a heads up, the stuff grows in the presence of human tissue.”
Megan and I exchanged a nervous glance.
“The invisibility has to be an optical effect resulting from the superfluid state itself,” she continued. “I figured it was bending light around the object, and since light would obviously take longer to go around an object than straight through it, I knew there had to be a way to measure it, so I did a little experiment. That’s when it started getting weird.”
“What do you mean? What happened?” I said.
“You’ll see.”
Triggered by motion sensors, fluorescent tubes flickered on behind us, too slow to keep up. It was nearing midnight. At last, we burst into
“Who?” I said.
“The Defense Department.”
“No duh,” I said. “That’s the definition of a defense contractor.”
“Okay, shut up. But guess what branch?”
“No idea.”
“AFSPC,” she said, turning to me with a twinkle in her eye. “Air Force Space Command.”
I stared at her. “Wait . . . Major Connor? ”
“Yeah, Vandenberg Air Force Base . . . the Space and Missile Systems Center in Los Angeles . . . it was their helicopters that landed at the crater, it was their hazmat team, they were the ones that decontaminated our rooms. And Dr. Lacroix’s company was just awarded a four-year contract with them.”
“That’s just a coincidence, right?” I said. “Defense contracting is a big sector in Santa Barbara, so that’s not weird, right?”
“You mean, that we killed his daughter and crossed paths with his funding agency? It’s a little weird.”
“Huh,” I said, staring at the squiggles on my graph paper. Thinking about it, that seemed like either an impossible coincidence or a very minor one not even worth taking note of. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out which.
“But as weird as that is, it’s not as weird as this,” said Megan.
I looked up. “There’s more?”
“Mmm-hmm,” she said. “His company just put out this huge document, over two-thousand pages long. Apparently, it was part of the bid that earned them the contract. The primary author is John Lacroix.”
“Emory’s dad?”
“Right. Check out the title.” She tilted the screen so I could see better.
I leaned in and read, and a chill went down my spine.
Defending Earth in the Worst-Case Scenario: Efficacy of Modern Weaponry against an Extra-Terrestrial Threat
Before I could react, Megan’s phone buzzed. A text message.
She stared at her phone. “Uh, Leona . . .”
“What? What is it?”
“It’s Sarah . . . the grad student. Look—” She held the phone out to me so I could read the text.
Get over here now. You guys need to see this.
“I tried everything,” the grad student shouted over her shoulder, leading us at a near sprint through a maze of dark linoleum hallways toward the physics lab in Broida Hall after she’d unlocked the doors for us. “And I mean everything . Visible light didn’t work, so I tried infrared, ultraviolet, microwaves, X-rays, gamma rays. Nothing showed up. I even bombarded it with Alpha particles, heavier stuff too. Gold nuclei. Whatever I could get my hands on, but it all goes right through like it’s not even there. It bothered the heck out of me.”
As we ran, an excited adrenaline buzzed under my skin.
We were onto something here. A major discovery.
Dark matter.
“Then I started losing my slides,” said Sarah. “They were turning invisible on me. Once the stuff gets on a surface, it wants to spread out and cover the whole thing. I’ve seen that behavior in superfluids before. Helium, for example. You get it cold enough, and it exhibits zero viscosity and starts doing all sorts of strange shit. It’ll climb right out of its container if you let it. Basically, I think we’re looking at a room temperature superfluid.”
“A superfluid?” I said dumbly.
“Oh, and just a heads up, the stuff grows in the presence of human tissue.”
Megan and I exchanged a nervous glance.
“The invisibility has to be an optical effect resulting from the superfluid state itself,” she continued. “I figured it was bending light around the object, and since light would obviously take longer to go around an object than straight through it, I knew there had to be a way to measure it, so I did a little experiment. That’s when it started getting weird.”
“What do you mean? What happened?” I said.
“You’ll see.”
Triggered by motion sensors, fluorescent tubes flickered on behind us, too slow to keep up. It was nearing midnight. At last, we burst into
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