2012 Read Online Free PDF

experience. He came to his feet and put out his hand. Martin shook it, and looked into the strange, empty eyes of the professional leader.
    Another man, bald, big-dominating the room, in fact, despite the presence of two resplendent generals-pumped his hand, drew him past the president, and sat him down. “We know you’ve had a shock,” he murmured. His hands were soft, his eyes were not full of fear like the president’s. They sparkled. They watched. Martin recognized Bo Waldo, of course, he was all over the news all the time.
    “Doctor Winters-may I call you Marty-“
    “Martin.”
    “Okay, Martin is a distinguished member of our country’s archaeological community. He’s managed to cause a small revolution of his own.”
    It wasn’t small, it was huge, but Martin couldn’t say that.
    “You lived through the pyramid?” the president asked. “Where were you, because I’ve been in that thing, and it’s not easy to get around.”
    “I was in the burial chamber a hundred feet beneath the surface.”
    “How could you have been there and survived?” one of the generals asked. This was a man with a narrow, almost cruel face, and small, ugly eyes, gleaming as black as obsidian.
    Martin decided not to even address the question, it was so impertinent and, frankly, so stupid.
    “What General Samson means is-“
    “I meant what I asked, Al!”
    The other general went instantly silent. Obviously, the tall man with the mane of white hair was the lesser of the two. He had a better face, aquiline, aristocratic, and, Martin thought, sad.
    “I survived because I was so deep. We picked up unusual pulsations about three minutes before the structure blew, so I had time to withdraw.”
    “Doctor Winters, if I tell you that these same lenses have appeared around the world at fourteen different sites, all the exact same distance from an axis point near the north pole-“
    The room became distant, the voices like memories.
    “Doctor Winters?”
    He fought to pull himself together. The first one of them he saw was the beady-eyed general, gazing at him like a guard might at a dangerous prisoner. He swallowed, looked around for water, saw none. “All right,” he said, “I know what that would be. That’s the Sacred Circle. You’d have Ollantaytambo, Easter Island, Preah Vihear-are you telling me that all of these sites have been destroyed?”
    “All,” the president said. “Our interest is this. Are these lenses a matter for concern, as I certainly think they are. If so, would you be willing to speculate on defense implications?”
    Wade was portrayed by the media as an idiot, but that was an impressive question. “Sir, we know that there was some sort of advanced civilization on earth fifteen thousand years ago, that abruptly disappeared in a catastrophe. All of those sites except the pyramid are later structures built at specific geodesic points. The why of that, we have never known.”
    The snake-like General Samson almost spat his words. “I think this is largely speculation.”
    “General Samson,” the president retorted, “you’re here to gather information that’ll help you execute your orders. Thank you, General.”
    “This man’s work is highly controversial,” Samson snapped.
    “Actually, um, it’s not,” Martin said.
    “Well, I read my share of science journals and I say it is!”
    Martin didn’t know how to react to a yelling general. It made him mad, though, the rudeness of it.
    The president asked, “Doctor Winters, tell us what you think these lenses might be?”
    “From strictly an archaeological point of view, I don’t know. But if you read old chronicles, a lens like this could have been the mechanism of destruction.”
    “Of what?”
    “The civilization. It ended in a day, you know. In a matter of minutes. It happened on an afternoon in June, actually. Over five minutes, perhaps a little less.”
    That silenced even the blustering general.
    “What is our risk now?”
    Martin