Also, its physics should be different, so different that it would have either died right away or, more likely, exploded. Like, another nuke type explosion but larger as the full mass of the creature converted to energy. Didn't. What we're looking at is a gate or a wormhole. Obviously to another planet. Maybe, probably, to a planet in this universe. Might be to the future, probably not. The big question is: is it stable? Is it going to just go away? Is it going to release energy from that planet or universe into this planet? Is it expanding? Contracting? And, most interesting overall, what's on the other side? Another world? A world of gates maybe? Now I'm into skyballing which is the other side of speculation."

"Okay, so we have a gate and no theory as to why it formed?" the national security advisor said.

"No, ma'am, but I do have an ideahow it might have been formed, based on some of Ray Chen's last papers, engineering rather than physics, and we might be able to figure out the physics before long. Once you know something's possible, especially if you can study it, that's nine tenths of the battle. Might, probably would, get the same explosion, though."

"The explosion we can handle," the defense secretary said, nodding. "Assuming it occurred somewhere like Los Alamos. On the ranges, not in the lab, obviously." "I'm going to say something," the President intoned. "I donot want this followed up until we have a better handle on it. Not at MIT, not at California, not at Los Alamos. We have enough problems with terrorism.

I do not want our cities popping like fireworks. I do not want another quarter of a million dead on our hands."

"I'm sorry, Mr. President," Weaver said, "if I was out of line."

"Not at all," the President said. "I just want that to be made clear."

"Dr. Weaver, may I ask a question?" the national science advisor said. "Dr. Chen's papers were open source, were they not?"

"No, sir, they weren't," Weaver said, shaking his head. "If they were, the President's order would, obviously, be impossible."

"Where did . . . ?" the science advisor said then stopped at a raised eyebrow from the defense secretary.

"Dr. Weaver, through his association with the Department of Defense, has access to restricted files . . ."

"Are you saying this was a DOD project?" the Homeland Security director asked, his fleshy face turning ruddy in anger. "That it actuallywas a bomb project?"

"No," the defense secretary said, definitely. "Let's try to leave the rumors to the press, okay? Dr. Chen had funding from the National Academy of Sciences," he said, gesturing at the science advisor, who blanched. "From at least three nongovernmental agencies and from the DOD. Most of it was private funding. But for the DOD grant, and we pass them out for quite a few things, he had to make his reports and projections classified. I'm not sure that there'sno open source but everything in the last year or so is black. I don't even, frankly, know why or how he got funding from us. But we fund quite a few purely theoretical projects because, sometimes, they pay off."

"And it was these classified documents you saw?" the President asked.

"Yes, sir," Weaver replied. "I was interested in the physics. If you can change physics in a limited area you might be able to do a lot of things, Mr. President. I hadn't anticipated this sort of explosion or I would have rung the alarm bells. But there are other applications. Change gravity in a limited area and you've got a much better helicopter. Not to mention lightening the load on infantrymen. Change the physics another way and, yes, maybe you get a bang. I'd been thinking about some uses for the people who pay my salary, Mr. President. Besides being fascinated with the math. But I didn't anticipate this at all."

"Okay, so we have a gate and physics we don't understand but might eventually," the national security advisor said. "And since we don't understand the physics, we don't know what the eventual outcome might be."

"No, ma'am."

"But there's clearly a world on the other side," the President said. "Dr. Weaver, would you be willing to go to that world? Assuming it's survivable for a human?"

"Sir, it would take a platoon of marines to keep me away from that gate." "Funny you should say that," the defense secretary said with a slight smile.

"I'm Spec . . . Sergeant Crichton, sir," Crichton said, saluting the Navy officer in desert camouflage. "I was the NBC guy that did the initial evaluation."

"Lieutenant Glasser," the SEAL said, returning the salute and then shaking his hand. "I saw the approach; good work."

"Thank you, sir," Crichton said. He knew he was getting a swelled head but didn't know what to do about it. The battalion commander had passed on good words from the Chief of Staff for God's Sake.

His evaluation, that it wasn't a nuke, that it wasn't an asteroid and that it was a gate, had been ahead of FEMA's, the national science advisor and God Knows who else. And now he was being complimented by a SEAL.

Glasser just nodded his head and looked into the hole. The team had been at McDill Air Force Base in Tampa, home of the Special Operations Command, doing a dog and pony show, read briefing, for the incoming commander. It was the sort of shit that SEALs normally managed to avoid but the new SOCOM commander was a Green Beanie, Army Special Forces, Green Berets, who had limited experience in commanding or managing SEALs or most of the other forces that fell under his command.

The team had been chosen because it was in country, not doing anything important and it had a wide range of experience from Command Master Chief Miller, who had been a SEAL since Christ was a corporal and had been in every land and sea action since Grenada, to Seaman First Class Sanson who still didn't have the Coronado sand out of his boots.

And lo and behold they never even got around to shining those same boots before they were loaded in vans and, preceded and followed by a police escort doing about a hundred and eighty, driven up to Orlando and dropped off in a howling wasteland that looked suspiciously like Beirut. They'd caught just enough on the tube to have some idea what was going on but there wasn't much to see at the moment except a bunch of national guardsmen standing around drinking coffee under klieg lights.

That and the globe.

"If there's a penetration of the globe, from our side that is, we're tasked to do it," Glasser said. "There's no SOP for this; we're into science fiction. Do you read science fiction?"

Crichton wasn't sure how to answer; most military officers were death on SF. But Glasser didn't seem to mind.

"I used to," Lieutenant Glasser mused. "Used to read a lot. I'm dead worried about biological or chemical contamination from that side. What happened to that bug?"

"Well, sir, it's two bugs now," Crichton answered, gulping. "Sergeant Grant and I got them both up out of the hole. We wore our protective gear and decontaminated afterwards."

"Decon foam might not work on bugs from another world," Glasser pointed out. "As I said, no SOP."

"Yes, sir, but we also used bleach," Crichton said, stubbornly. "Sir, if it can stand up to bleach, I don't think it can bond to anything inthis world."

"Where are the bugs?" the SEAL said, ignoring the comment. "The sergeant and I trussed them up with duct tape and then dumped them in the back of a Humvee with all the windows rolled up and big signs on it not to open it. But they're both dead, sir. They just stopped twitching after a while."

"I guess something on this side is poisonous to them," Glasser said. "Which is the first good news I've had today. And bad, for that matter, it doesn't mean the other sideisn't poisonous. Any idea what?"

"No, sir," Crichton responded. "They were moving fine and strong as bejeezus. Sergeant Grant helped me because he usually works in an alligator farm wrestling gators. And it took both of us on them to get the tape on them. They didn't attack us or anything but it was like riding an elephant if you know what I mean; they just didn't seem to feel the weight, even the smaller one. If I'd make a guess, sir, I'd say that it's a higher gravity world on the far side and that something in our air, carbon dioxide or oxygen, is probably what killed them. Too high or low of oxygen or too high carbon dioxide. Just a wild-ass guess, sir. I've gone up by the globe and taken readings but the instruments I've got don't show anything harmful coming out of it."

"Youdo read science fiction," the lieutenant said, smiling at him. "Crichton, right?"

"Yes, sir. I did. Still do for that matter when I've got the time."

"My boys can kill anything they can see," the SEAL said, reflectively. "They can move like lightning, go anywhere, do anything. But with the exception of the command master chief, who readsStarship Troopers once ritually before every overseas assignment, I don't think any of them have ever read an SF novel. Or thought about how an alien world could be different. Comments?"

"You'd better brief them carefully, sir."

"That iswe , Sergeant.We had better brief them carefully. Believe it or not, SEALsare willing to listen to people who know what they are talking about. And, also contrary to popular opinion, they're smart.

Which may matter one hell of a lot. Or not at all."

Orlando International Airport's call-sign was MCO, which stood for McCoy. It had previously been McCoy Air Force Base back when the security of the United States against the Soviet nuclear arsenal rested in Mutual Assured Destruction and intercontinental bombers were one leg of the triad that assured the Mutual.

As Orlando grew in size and importance from a small cow town with a few defense firms to an entertainment and research center, MCO had grown as well, adding flights, adding congestion and eventually adding runways. But the main runways were the same that had been laid down in the 1950s and they were more than adequate to handle an F-15. Which was how Dr. Weaver arrived after a flight from Andrews Air Force Base he would remember for some time.

FAA regulations prohibited military jets from breaking the sound barrier over inhabited areas. Jets which were supersonic, therefore, were limited to training over water or uninhabited desert areas.

Bill Weaver had flown in F-15s before, including aerobatics to try to make him sick. They hadn't. But this was radically different. The F-15, carrying conformal wing tanks, had climbed for altitude at what was called "maximum military thrust." Since an F-15 is one of the very few aircraft in the world that has more thrust than mass, that meant virtually straight up for a minute and a half. It was very much what heimagined being in the shuttle would be like, if you were able to look around in every direction. When it reached its optimum altitude, 65,000 feet, it had turned south and the pilot had pushed the afterburners to full. From that high it is normally hard to notice the change in motion relative to the ground at all. Just as high jets look as though they are moving slowly from the ground, from the air the ground itself tends to look stationary. Not at darned near Mach Three. It had taken thirty minutes from when the pilot turned south to when he flared out for a landing in Orlando. And the earth, which from their altitude had a very distinct roundness to it, looked as if it had shifted rotation from west-east to north-south. Even at their height Bill was pretty sure they'd left a string of broken windows behind them.

There had been very little conversation. Ground crewmen had helped him into a G suit, hooked him up, explained the two switches he was permitted to touch, pointed out the ejection system which he was not permitted to touch except in obvious circumstances and climbed out. The pilot had, if anything, less to say.

"Can I ask who you are?" the pilot, a lieutenant colonel, said when they reached cruising altitude and the bone crushing acceleration had eased off.

"I'm an academic egghead," Bill said, glorying in the view out the window. The sun was down in the west on the ground but they were still in sunlight at altitude. Despite that they were high enough that the sky was purple and he could see stars. It was as close as he'd ever been to space, the one place he'd wanted to go since he was a kid.

"Pull the other one," the pilot said.

"No, really, they're sending me down to look at this thing in Orlando. I'm a physicist."

"I figured that they weren't sending you to Disney World, but you don't look like any academic I've ever seen."

"You need to hang out at the Hooters in Huntsville more often."

Bill had heard it before. If you had a Southern accent and looked like a track and field coach everyone assumed you were a jock. But at the level of physics which was his specialty, you could get as much "work" done working out, or mountain biking, or SCUBA diving, or rock climbing, as you could sitting in a darkened office with the door locked and your clothes off contemplating your navel. Which was what one academic of his acquaintance swore by. It was all in the head until it came time to sit down and start drawing equations, which if you'd done the head work in advance practically drew themselves. And if you grew up with a body that only required two hours of sleep a night, a mind like an adding machine and the energy level of a ferret on a pixie stick, you had to find some way to burn off the energy, physical and mental. So he mountain biked, consulted with the DOD, went to national level Wah Lum Kung-Fu tournaments and, occasionally, stood in front of a white board for a few hours and then stayed up for three days writing a thirty-thousand-word paper which he sent off to theNational Journal of Physics and Science serene in the knowledge that it would both pass peer review and be published.

Many of his friends, and most of his colleagues, referred to him jokingly as a rat bastard.

He'd recently considered going back to grad school to polish off another Ph.D. The only question was in what. Asshole physics, astrophysics to the uninitiated, was out. The whole field was filled with eggheads who couldn't tell reality from fantasy and most of them put their fantasies squarely on the liberal side of the political divide. Maybe atomic level engineering, but the only school that had a department, yet, was MIT. Bleck. Among other oddities in his field, Weaver was a staunch and outspoken politicalconservative of a seriously military bent. A year, about what it would take despite the "recommended"

three years, in the People's Republic of Massachusetts was more than he could stand.

Maybe genetics or molecular biology, branch out a little.

But that had been yesterday, before "the event." If there wasn't a whole newbranch of physics about to open up, he didn't have a nose like a hound dog. And he was in, practically, on the ground floor.

The math was probably going to kick his ass, though. At certain levels even the top-flight physicists sometimes had to resort to pure math guys. Ray Chen, for example, had been a go-to man for gauge boson and multidimensional field equations but even he bowed his head a few times and consulted with a pure mathematician in Britain. What was his name? Gonzales? Something like that.

Bill was coming up with a mental list of people he might need to consult with when he realized the plane was already flaring out to land. It had hardly banked at all and done a power-on approach. They must have cleared every other plane out of the way for the fighter. The pilot flared out, hit reverse thrusters and turned off the runway so hard it seemed as if they were going to fall over.

"In a hurry, Colonel?" Bill asked.

"Very," the pilot replied. "I got two in-flight requests for ETA. Somebody wants you pronto."

"Well, thanks for the ride, hope we can do it again some time."

There were soldiers waiting for the plane who obviously had no idea how to unhook all the umbilicals and straps that held him in the seat. The pilot unstrapped and got him unhooked, then he clambered out of the plane and onto the runway.

"Mr. Weaver?" one of the soldiers said. "I'm Sergeant Garcia. If you'll come this way?"

"Can I get out of the flight suit?" Bill asked, unzipping same. He reached up and managed to get open the small compartment he had seen his bag disappear into. He stuffed the G suit into the compartment and retrieved the backpack, then headed to the waiting Humvee.

"I understand you know what's going on here," the sergeant said as he climbed in as driver. The other soldier climbed in the back.

"No," Bill replied. "But I understand what might have happened, somewhat, and I've got some theories about what is happening and what might happen. And I know some of the questions to ask. Other than that, I'm in the dark."

The sergeant laughed and shook his head. "Can you explain it in small words?"

"Not unless you know what a Higgs boson particle is," Bill said, aware that he was going to have to explain it over and over again.

"A theoretical particle in quantum mechanics that can contain a universe," the sergeant replied. "But you can't form them unless you've got a really big supercollider. Right?"

"Right," Bill said, looking at the sergeant in surprise. "Did somebody call ahead?" "No," the sergeant replied, making a turn onto the Greenway. For once it was nearly empty of traffic. He took the Sunpass lane despite not having a transponder. "I was working on my masters in physics and then things went awry. Optics, actually."

"I've got a Ph.D. in optics," Bill said. "And physics for that matter."

"Sorry, Doctor, I didn't know that," the sergeant said, wincing.

"I don't make everybody call me Doctor, Sergeant," Bill said, grinning. "I'm just an overeducated redneck, not some soi-disante academic. So how'd you end up in the National Guard?"

"Long story," the sergeant replied. After a long moment he shrugged. "I was working on my masters, working with blue-light lasers. One of my classes I had to have a peer reviewed paper published. You know the routine."

"Sure."

"Didn't have my experiments in lasers as far along as I wanted so I made the mistake of branching out. I got tired of everybody mouthing off about nuclear power so I did a comparative study of radioactive output from the Turkey Creek nuclear power plant vs. the big coal plant east of Orlando."

"Forgone conclusion," Weaver grunted. "Coal's nasty stuff."

"I knew that and you know that, but I'd done the research and there wasn't a single peer reviewed comparative."

"None?" Weaver said, surprised.

"Not one. So I did the tests, no detectable radiation outside of the plant itself for Turkey Creek and enough to cook a chicken in the tailings of the coal plant, which were, by the way, blowing into a nearby stream, and submitted it. ToPhysics . Got a response in a month. The paper was rejected for peer review and was not accepted for publication. My credentials were in optics, not nuclear physics."

"That's . . . odd," Bill said. "I smell a fish."

"So did I. Especially when I was summarily dropped from the master's program shortly afterwards.

Nobody would talk to me except one of my professors, who made me swear not to say who it was or make a stink. Not that it would do me any good. Know the senior senator from West Virginia?"

"Oh, no," Weaver said, shutting his eyes. "King Coal."

"You got it. He apparently made a deal all the way back in the 1960s. Florida got NASA stuff but to power it they had to build a coal-fired power plant. And keep it running. He protects coal like it was his own personal child, which in a way I suppose it is. Anyway, a lowly master's candidate had attracted the personal ire of a senior senator. Said master's candidate needed to go away now. Please, don't bother submitting at other institutes of higher learning. You are the weakest link. Goodbye."

"I hate politics," Weaver said, then shrugged. "But that's why Huntsville has the Redstone Arsenal and Houston has the Space Center. Since I got my education because of the former, I suppose I shouldn't complain too much. But, yeah, that's a shitty story. On the other hand, it's good for me." "Why?"

"Well, we're going to have to measure this thing and I've got my very own soldier who can handle laser equipment. That's going to help."

"Okay," the sergeant said, chuckling. "Do I get a pay increase?"

"Doubt it," Bill admitted. "But we'll see. Ever thought about going to other planets?"

"You'll get me through that thing kicking and screaming," the sergeant admitted. "I saw those bugs. I don't want to be on any planet that has them on it. Worse than arachnophobia. I just wanted to curl up and scream. I don't know how Crichton and Grant could stand to touch them."

"Touch them? What about contamination?"

"Wait until we get there, if you don't mind, Doctor, sir," the sergeant said. He had turned off onto the ramp to University Boulevard. They had been waved through a checkpoint and the ramp had been roughly cleared of rubble. But it was still a rough ride.

University Boulevard had been a four-lane highway connected to numerous side roads and residential communities. One lane had been partially cleared by an army of civilian bulldozers and military and a few emergency vehicles now picked their way down that single cleared lane. The suburbs on either side had been smashed, as if from a strong wind, and as they proceeded eastward it got worse until they entered an area that had been wiped clean of all vegetation except some burned stubby grasses and was devoid of anything but foundations. Bill shook his head as he mentally counted up the human life that had been erased in a bare moment. Families, children, dogs, cats, fish, birds in the trees, the trees themselves, gone. It was shocking and horrifying and, after a while, so overwhelming that his mind just tuned it out.

"I'm glad our company got detailed to secure the site," Garcia said, noticing his glances at the devastation.

"Why?"

"The other companies around have been pulled in for search and rescue."