Outland (World-Lines Book 1) Read Online Free PDF Page B

crowded around the monitor and looked at the image of the coin, which stubbornly insisted on showing heads. Richard muttered, tweaked a setting, and said, “Okay, how about now?”
    “Uuuummmm,” Matt said, pointing. There were now two coins in the globe, one showing heads and one showing tails. “I had my eye on it the whole time,” he said. “It kind of faded in…”
    Bill walked over to the device. Looking through the bars of the cage, he saw one coin, but when looking through the aperture, there were two.
    Neat stuff! he thought, stepping back to the monitor.
    Without warning, there was a loud bang accompanied by something that felt like a bright flash, but without producing any light. Everyone jumped. After a few seconds, when nothing else happened, they moved to the table. The coin showed heads once again, even looking through the gate, and the assembly had jumped across the table a few inches.
    There was some nervous laughter, and Bill grabbed his chest and feigned a heart attack. Since there appeared to be no damage, everyone relaxed.
    “Wow!” Bill said. “Either you guys are pulling off the practical joke of the century, or you’ve got something amazing here. I wonder how this would work out in Vegas? Can this be adapted to operate on roulette wheels? Maybe something portable and unobtrusive?”
    Richard made an impatient gesture toward the monitor. “Let’s look at the video.”
    They gathered around the monitor. Kevin pointed the remote at the camera and started the replay. They watched for the same interminable thirty seconds or so, punctuated by Kevin’s recorded background comment. The coin seemed to fade out of focus and then back in, but as two coins.
    “Well, I’m feeling pretty smug,” Richard said, smiling.
    Then the monitor showed the bang, flash, and movement of the whole assembly.
    “So what the heck was that?” Matt asked.
    “Don’t know,” Richard answered. “But it almost acted like it got pulled off focus. I’ll have a look at the logs later. I guess we need to tweak our design a bit.”
    Richard frowned. “And, let’s keep this quiet okay? I do not want to have to share this, and I don’t want it to get out prematurely.”
    He nodded in Matt’s direction. “Meanwhile, Matt and I will refine the control system so we can lock onto something and stay locked. Matt, I’ll send you an email with specs. Bill, I wonder if I could borrow your engineering skills again to build a bigger and more robust gate. Maybe without the decorations?”
    “Well, how can I resist a request like that?” Bill said with a smile. “The engineering department isn’t quite as deserted as Physics—it turns out we’re bigger nerds than you guys— but I’m pretty sure I can get away with some more light, off-hours metalwork.”
    “Couple of days?” Richard looked at Matt and Bill. Seeing no argument, he continued, “Well, okay then. We’ll plan on another run on Friday.”
    Matt and Bill left together, leaving Richard and Kevin to the tedious process of post-experiment analysis.
    As they walked down the hall, Bill turned to Matt. “Let’s keep this quiet?”
    Matt rolled his eyes. “Rogue physicist. Good grief.”
     

Yellowstone Activity
    June 19              Erin
    Erin and the three other students in her group, Ted, Sheila, and Cassandra, were assigned to work with Doug Reed on the third day. Doug was a geologist with Yellowstone, and he discussed his job with Erin and her classmates as they walked.
    “You get out of university, and you expect to spend all your time hiking around, looking at the scenery, checking and measuring and digging. Then reality hits. You spend so much of your time on paperwork and meetings. The level of bureaucracy is just staggering.”
    Doug shook his head. “Then there are the PR duties. You guys would not believe how much time I spend, in person or on the phone or via email, reassuring people about the probability of eruptions or explaining