Blind Eye (2 page)

New Mexico Nuclear Fusion Test Facility

M
ore than halfway home.

Even at forty-eight days into the project, Marion Kagan didn't mind working seven days a week, sixteen hours a day. She didn't have time to think about sun and clouds and trees. Sometimes, lying in her bunk, she did have to shake from her mind how much she missed the sting of the wind on her face as she whipped along on her scooter back and forth from her apartment to the UC Davis campus. Down here, there was no sunrise, no sunset. But no commuter traffic, either.

Buried in the underground research facility with eight other scientists, Marion only considered the passage of day and night when she made her journal entry at the end of a shift. The group worked in shifts around the clock. Eating and sleeping happened between shifts, and everyone reported for duty when it was time.

She was fine with all of this. They were over the hump. Only forty-two days left. And anytime she got too restless, she simply reminded herself what a boost it was in her curriculum vitae to be the only graduate assistant chosen for this highly selective project. A project that was already producing groundbreaking results. In the
scientific world, the eight academics in her group were already stars; this project would make them superstars. As for Marion, after this she didn't believe she'd have any difficulty finding a job once she had her Ph.D.

Everything was great except for one thing. She just couldn't get used to the ongoing surveillance. The cameras were everywhere, mounted in the hallways, the laboratories, the control room. Marion couldn't see them in the bunk room or the bathroom she shared with Eileen Arrington, the only other female researcher on the team, but that didn't mean that they weren't there.

Truth be told, the cameras made her self-conscious. They recorded everything. Of course, the only camera with a live feed to the world above was by the elevator. Connected to the security station on the ground floor, that hookup provided a quick way to communicate with the outside world in case of emergency.

The rest of the cameras were for documentation, she'd been told. It eliminated a lot of the paperwork that otherwise Marion would have to do. That thought helped to make the surveillance bearable, at least. It had taken only a couple of hours on the first day of the project for her to realize that, as the only member of the team lacking a doctoral degree, she was expected to be servant, gofer, slave, chief cook, dishwasher and, of course, lab assistant for the other eight making up the team.

Marion made a face at the camera in the hallway before punching in the security code on a pad to get into the control room. Hearing the click of the lock, she pulled open the door.

Five of the researchers were already in there, gathered around a rectangular conference table in the center of the room for the morning update. Dozens of computer
screens and accompanying electronic apparatuses were scattered around the spacious room. This was the place where most of them spent the day. They worked in overlapping shifts, but each had their own workstation. At any given time, six researchers were on duty and three were off. Glancing around the room, she realized she never ceased to be amazed at the way the personal peculiarities of each individual were so clearly demonstrated by the condition of their personal work space.

Robert Eaton, the project manager, stopped what he was saying and looked up at Marion.

She nodded. “The nine containers are in the test fixtures and set to go,” she told him, going around the table and taking her customary seat.

Marion was part of the team, but she wasn't one of them. The hierarchy was clear. The rest sat in their personal faux-leather rolling office chairs with the comfortable cushions. She sat on the single folding metal chair placed at the corner of the conference table. That was her chair and God forbid she should sit in anyone else's.

Eaton motioned to the man sitting to his right. “Arin, why don't you start the countdown?”

Arin Bose had an aversion to walking, due in part to his three-hundred-plus pounds. Holding his omnipresent Cal Tech coffee mug steady on his belly, he wheeled his chair backward to his station and began tapping on one of his keypads to start the sequencing.

Marion looked up at the three-dimensional fracture-mechanics analysis on the projector screen. They'd been looking at a rotating image of a pressurized nuclear-reactor container ring. Currently, the smallest commercially mass-produced reactors were between ten feet and fifteen feet in diameter and were used on smaller
naval ships. In the team's experiments, however, size was a major factor. The difference with their ring was that its diameter was about the same as a one-gallon paint can.

“Here are the characteristics of the nine identical test samples,” Eaton continued, reading the file, journal number, date and time for the sake of the cameras before motioning to Marvin Sheehan, the metallurgist at the other end of the table.

Sheehan's thin frame straightened in the chair, looking like a runner ready to sprint. The man adjusted his spectacles, his excitement shining through the thick lenses.

“The objective is to test to the point of failure,” he told them. “For the record, the material used for the container is Alpha 300-series stainless steel with a threaded lid closure equipped with the specialized HEPA filter vent. The vent allows for the controlled release of explosive gases, including hydrogen.”

Dr. Bose had already started his countdown for the sample, but no one seemed to be paying particular attention to the test start-up times, which were imminent. Marion knew the computers monitored and documented those events more closely than any of them could. Besides, this had all become part of their daily routine.

Daily routine or not, there was nothing humdrum about the successes they had already achieved. Their work was part of a series of experiments aimed at the construction of a fast transportable reactor.

Power plants already in existence currently burned only three percent of the fuel they created. The other ninety-seven percent was rejected as “spent” and fit only for disposal. In the ambitious project Marion was a part of, the ultimate goal was to create a process that
would achieve an efficiency burn rate of ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the fuel. Once this level was achieved, only one tenth of one percent of the plutonium and the other “ium” products would need long-term storage. At that efficiency level, most of the waste was simply the residue of the fission process, and that nuclear waste had a half-life not of ten thousand years, but only three hundred years.

Already, the project had surpassed the fifty-percent efficiency rate—far better than anything currently available for military or commercial use.

In short, their work would change energy production forever.

In one offshoot of the overall project, the metallurgists in the group had identified a unique alloy of stainless steel suitable for plutonium storage. The revolutionary process required revolutionary housings to go along with it, so the find was a huge accomplishment. That success alone could lead to the development of containers for very small nuclear reactors. With this, progress in energy sources could be as rapid as anything that the electronics industry had been going through in the past two decades. In the same way that computers which had been the size of a room were now palm-size and smaller, nuclear energy production would become transportable. With reduction in nuclear waste and the corresponding decrease in the need for long-term storage, it was clear where energy technology would be heading.

Marion had been told by Robert Eaton that they had already surpassed every expectation for this stage of the project. Now they were all in it to see how far they could push the envelope. She could imagine more than a few of them had started jotting down notes for their Nobel Prize acceptance speeches. She had a feeling Eaton may have already started rehearsing his.

“Each sample container is packed with plutonium-bearing solid material,” Dr. Sheehan added, before reading the specifications of the material in each container.

Marion preferred not to think too much about the specifics—and the lethal qualities—of the radioactive material she handled in this facility. They were conducting their testing in an underground facility to minimize the contamination of the geological medium, in case of any accidents. Of course, she kept telling herself, there were not going to be any accidents. Choosing this location was only a matter of convenience and security. As a team, they were following safety guidelines that were stricter than those used in any military or commercial nuclear laboratory in the country. There would be no contamination. Dr. Eugene Lee, Marion's advisor at UC Davis, had promised her when recruiting her for this project that, at twenty-five years old, she had a better chance of getting run down by a garbage truck than dying of radiation poisoning.

She looked up at her advisor as Dr. Lee started articulating his contribution to the testing.

“Two containers will undergo crash analysis in a drop test to an unyielding target. Two others will undergo collision tests. The leak test is the most critical feature of the NRC requirement, so we are dedicating five containers to that testing. The pressurized environment is temperature-controlled to plus or minus one degree Fahrenheit.”

Dr. Lee summarized what Marion already had on her clipboard as far as raw numbers. She was well-read on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's requirements. There were minimum standards they had to adhere to. Unfortunately, she knew that some of the standards were
forty years old and pretty much obsolete. But their device would be a first. A major outcome of this research project was the creation of specifications for future manufacturers.

Robert Eaton interrupted the scientist. “A delivery? Now?”

They all looked at the wall-mounted monitor that the project manager was staring at. The large computer screen dedicated to facilities data indicated that the elevator was descending from ground level.

“
Are
we expecting a delivery?” Lee asked.

“Not that I know of,” their leader answered. He looked at Marion. “Did we receive any communications from the power company this morning?”

“I'll check,” Marion replied, pushing to her feet and moving to her station. She was surprised that the landline phone connected directly to the ground floor hadn't sounded. The security above always gave them a heads-up before the elevator was sent down.

“It has to be a food delivery,” Arin Bose commented from his corner. “Maybe a cake or a dozen doughnuts for a little celebration.”

“We don't have any delivery on the schedule for today,” Marion replied. Technically, the nine scientists weren't
sealed
in this facility for the duration. Still, food and any other special requests were delivered according to a preset schedule by way of the elevator. There was to be no human contact to further minimize the risk of disruption…or contamination.

Andrew Bonn, a physicist from Texas, broke in. “I requested some antibiotics.”

Marion already knew the man to be a total hypochondriac. While the rest of them went through standard testing for radiation on a biweekly basis, Bonn insisted
on daily testing. But that was nothing compared to the dozen or so imaginary illnesses that he'd claimed to contract since they'd arrived here.

“I didn't know you were sick again,” Lee said, unable to keep the skepticism out of his tone.

Bonn snorted. Nobody in this group would survive as a politician out in the real world. Each scientist was too outspoken when it came to anything that might inconvenience them personally. They were treated like celebrities in their own university surroundings, and they brought that expectation into this situation. The Texas physicist rolled his chair back from the table and stood up. A pressurized button on the wall by each door released the lock from inside. Everyone needed to type in a sequence of numbers to get into the control room. Leaving was no problem.

Andrew Bonn left the control room through the door to the hall where the elevators were located.

“They subtract five thousand dollars a shot from our budget for decontamination every time that stinking elevator comes down here,” the project manager complained as the door closed behind Bonn.

Everyone in the room had his and her own opinion on the topic and was not shy about contributing it now. Marion, however, made a point of staying out of it. These academics were a peculiar bunch, and she'd decided on day one that she wasn't going to get involved in their little dramas and power plays.

“I'm sorry to mention it,” Eaton said over the voices of the cackling flock. “Let's keep on schedule.”

As silence gradually settled over the control room, however, a strange popping sound could be heard from the outside.

“What the hell was that?” the project leader asked.

“I'll check,” Dr Lee responded, getting up and
pressing the automated button. As the door opened, the stunned team watched two men wearing black ski masks sweep into the control room.

Lee went down as a bullet was fired at his head.

Marion's scream caught in her throat. Suddenly, everything seemed to move in slow motion. She saw the blue eyes of the assailant moving in her direction. The overhead light shone on the top of knit ski mask. She stared at the light gray maintenance coveralls and the name of the power company embroidered on the pocket.