Van Cott: Complete or almost complete annihilation of a hundred or two hundred million tons of matter. (Holds his hands clenched in a double fist, spreads his fingers, and moves the hands slowly apart) Think of it as a kind of time-delay bomb with a fuse controlled by gravity.

Kearney ( Considerably sobered): That . . . Mr. Van Cott, that is a very disturbing thought. Have you spoken about this to anybody else?

Van Cott: No, and I'll probably be sorry I mentioned it here. It's my private speculation . I don't suppose it's private anymore.

Chapter 43

43

December 23

Walt Samshow and David Sand had been aboard the Glomar Discoverer for only an hour when they received an urgent phone call from Jeremy Kemp. Otto Lehrman, the Secretary of Defense, had released pictures from three Navy Kingfisher subtracker satellites just that morning. Why the pictures had been released was not explained; Kemp surmised it was part of a power struggle in Washington between the President and his decimated Cabinet and the military. Sand quickly hooked up a computer slate to the phone and Kemp transmitted the photos from California. There were more than a hundred.

An hour later, Samshow scrolled through the pictures on the slate screen while Sand asked Kemp about the details.

All of the pictures were of deep-ocean regions, taken from low-Earth-orbit submarine-tracking satellites. The satellites were equipped with laser spectrometers to detect oil and other detritus from submarine operations and ocean weapons testing.

The first fifteen pictures tracked the atmosphere and ocean surface above the deep trenches from south of the Philippines to the Kamchatka Peninsula, at approximately five-hundred-kilometer intervals, with little magnification. All were in false color to show concentrations of free oxygen in the near-ocean atmosphere. Within each picture were dozens of red dots against the general blue and green background.

The next group of ten showed waters off the western coast of Central America, with similar dots. In groups of two or three pictures, the ocean surfaces above all the world's deep trenches were shown to be regions of high free-oxygen concentration. Several unenhanced color photographs of very high magnification focused on an area three hundred kilometers east of Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. They showed several square kilometers of ocean turned white with what appeared to be froth or spume. Then Samshow reminded himself of the scale: each tiny bubbling speck would have to be tens of meters across.

Here was the source of the atmosphere's increase in oxygen. No natural phenomenon could be blamed for such a display.

"So much for that," Kemp said. "Did you catch the Andrew Kearney Show last night?"

"No," Sand said. "We're not watching much TV here."

"Have you ever met Lawrence Van Cott?"

Sand hadn't.

"I have. He's sharp. He said something on the Kearney Show that's got Jonathan Post very excited. I haven't heard the tape yet, but Post says Van Cott may be on to something. Not black holes. Neutronium pellets?"