The Alpha Deception

The Alpha Deception Read Online Free PDF Page B

Book: The Alpha Deception Read Online Free PDF
Author: Jon Land
that day would have been a bad one instead of a good one.”
    “In a twisted sense, I suppose that’s a compliment.”
    “Not so twisted.”
    Blaine put his hand over hers. “Call your grandfather. Tell him I’m coming to talk to him.”
    She smiled. “I already did. He’s expecting you tomorrow morning at his gem parlor in the diamond district.”
    “You know me too well, T.C.”
    “Some things don’t change.”
    “Did you also mean to leave us the night?”
    She hedged. “The morning was his idea, not mine.”
    “Then I suppose—”
    “Dinner, Blaine. Some more of this wine probably; I’ll drink while you swirl. That’ll be as far as it goes, but it’ll be plenty far for me because just having you here means enough. I don’t want to spoil it. I want to hold it just the way it is.”
    “I love it when you talk dirty.”

Chapter 4
    “IS YOUR REPORT READY , Mr. Sundowner?”
    When the scientist answered, his voice was hoarse with fatigue. In the past eighteen hours there had been time only for a quick change of clothes. Once again, the Tomb felt large and devastatingly empty to him. As he spoke, he was distracted by the echo of his own words.
    “I’m not sure it will ever be totally complete, sir,” he told the President, “at least not in the foreseeable future. To be honest, I know no more than I did yesterday; I’ve just confirmed my original feelings.”
    The other men in the room—Kappel, Stamp, Mercheson, and Lyman Scott himself—stared at him with laymen’s confusion and disdain.
    “Then get on with it,” urged the President.
    Sundowner didn’t know where to start. Or rather, he did—and that was the problem.
    “It all comes down to the symmetry of the destroyed radius. I’ll spare you the explanatory details. Suffice it to say that the town of Hope Valley was destroyed by a hostile action in the form of a particle-beam weapon fired from between ten to twenty thousand feet above the Earth’s surface.”
    “ Beam weapon?” raised Secretary of Defense George Kappel. “You mean like a laser?”
    “Not at all. Lasers fire focused beams of energy. A particle beam fires matter, subatomic particles accelerated to the speed of light. The mass of these particles increases with speed, and the energy produced goes up by the square.”
    “In English please, Ryan,” requested the President.
    Sundowner sighed. “An ordinary television set is actually a particle-beam generator which utilizes a gun to shoot particles in the form of electrons through two magnets. Presto! You’ve got a picture, the density of which is directly related to the concentration of particles fired from the set’s gun. If it was too dense, the beam would obliterate the screen and everything in front of it. Now picture that on a much larger scale with a gun firing particles other than electrons. On the subatomic level almost anything is possible.”
    “As yesterday would seem to attest to,” advanced Secretary of State Edmund Mercheson. “But how could this beam we’re facing leave no trace whatsoever of people’s remains, wood, plants, trees, grass, even rubber and cloth?”
    “Organic matter,” Sundowner stated flatly, rotating his stare from one to the other. “The subatomic particles break up organic matter.”
    “Speak plainly,” ordered Lyman Scott.
    Sundowner swallowed some air hoping the dull fear rising in him would slide down with it. “All life on Earth is based on the carbon atom. The subatomic particles composing the Hope Valley beam have the capacity to destroy the glue which holds that atom together. It breaks down the carbon chains into their basic elements. Separates the oxygen from the hydrogen on a molecular level which reduces organic matter to black carbon dust.”
    “The cloud,” realized the President.
    Sundowner nodded. “I had my suspicions after viewing the tape the very first time. But I wanted to put off my report until I had time to examine the evidence further—what did
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