“Their shape gives them properties that they wouldn’t normally have. Like the reflective panels on the stealth fighter. Its shape, not the composition of its skin, gives it its stealth characteristics.”

“The skin has stealth properties too,” Mark corrected automatically, because any deviation from absolute truth drove him nuts.

“I’m trying to make a point, if you don’t mind.”

“Fine.”

“So what does this particular metamaterial do?”

“No idea,” Eric said.

“Not a clue,” Murph chimed. “The design of the entire frame determines its exact purpose. The metamaterial makes it happen.”

“Could it bend light around the ship? Make it invisible?”

“Possibly. Or it could work on an electromagnetic wavelength.”

“Even acoustic,” Stoney added.

“Any explanation about why nothing was growing on it down there?”

“Oh, it’s loaded with cadmium. Absolutely toxic.” Seeing Juan’s concerned look, Mark explained, “Cadmium’s mostly dangerous if inhaled or ingested. It’s like mercury. You can handle the stuff, no problem, just don’t let it get into your bloodstream.”

Maurice arrived and placed Juan’s food on the table, lifting the silver dome with a flourish. It was an omelet exactly as Cabrillo wanted—loaded with sausage.

“Okay, you’ve told me what you know, now why don’t you give me a little speculation.”

“When you met with Professor Tennyson, did he mention anything about the French?” Murph asked.

“Actually, he did,” Juan said, recalling the bizarre turn in his conversation with the Tesla expert. “He said that Morris Jessup, the guy who popularized the story of the Philadelphia Experiment, was supposedly killed by French operatives in 1959, and his death made to look like a suicide.”

“Did he seem to believe that story?”

“That, I can’t recall. No, wait. I think he said it was a conspiracy theory, so he must have dismissed it.”

“Maybe he shouldn’t have,” Mark said with relish. As the ship’s resident conspiracy nut, he was in his element. “Get this. In the spring of 1963, a game warden in Alaska found the remains of three people who’d died sometime during the winter. The bodies had been picked over by scavengers, so a straight identification was out of the question. Here’s the thing. He found French francs in the pocket of one of them.”

“So?”

“I haven’t told you the best part. The men were all wearing lab coats over shorts and T-shirts, and they were found lying on a patch of pure white sand in the middle of a boreal forest. By the time the ranger returned with a team to recover the bodies, animals had dragged them away. The only thing he could do was recover a sample of the sand.