"That's all?" the President asked. "I mean, these are smaller than atoms, right? It takes a lot more uranium than that to get a nuclear blast . . ."

"Yes, sir," Bill replied. "But their destructive power is orders of magnitude higher than any substance except strange matter. And we don't have any theory on how to form either one in any quantity. Even the biggest supercollider only forms one or two at a time and those almost immediately link. But the point is that wemay be able to adjust one of the inactive bosons to form a stream of unique quarks, one particular type, strange, charmed, whatever. That way, they don't link at all; it's like pushing the same poles of a magnet together. If we can, we can capture them and move them to one of the gates. When it opens, we pop them in and get either a big explosion, low in neutron emission, on the far side or, possibly, we collapse the gate. I'm virtually certain that a large enough quantitywill collapse the gate.

Permanently. It will not only close the gate it will eliminate the bosons on either side."

"Hold on," the national security advisor said. "I know just enough about quarks to know that theyalways link. A muon is two quarks, right?"

"Yes," Bill said, frowning. "But they have to have the right color to link . . ."

"Color?" the President said, puzzled.

"Ai-yai-yai," Bill said, frowning again. "Okay, quarks are described as coming in flavors and colors.

Why? Because they were discovered by physicists who didn't have much else to do but come up with strange terms. The point is that you have to have a quark and an antiquark of two different colors to create a muon. In this case, we'll create a stream of a single type of quark, probably strange since that seems to be the easiest to create for some reason."

"You've already been experimenting with it?" the NSA asked.

"Oh, yes," Bill replied. "Otherwise we'd be spinning our wheels. The problem isn't tuning the boson to produce them, it's capturing them. . . ."

"And you're going to do that, how?" the NSA asked, fascinated.

"We're looking at two different possibilities," Bill admitted. "We might put two bosons in close proximity.

Have one produce a stream of similar color muons, ones that can't bind to strange quarks, and set up a magnetic field to create a capture bottle. The muons will pass through the field and create a sort of stream field that will surround the quarks. I'm not sure that one will work but it's less energy intensive than the other way."

"What's the other way?" the President asked.

"Well," Bill said, his face working, "the other way is to create a miniature white dwarf. But that's going totake a whole lot of power."

"A white dwarf?" the defense secretary said, grinning. "You're serious?"

"Yes, sir, Mr. Secretary," Bill replied. "All a white dwarf is is a collection of electrons. What we'll do is create an electron field and then use a magnetic field to sort of cup it. Then we'll shoot a whole bunch of quarks into the cup and wrap the electrons around the quarks, compressing them at the same time, sort of like catching water in your hand. Some of the quarks will escape but, hopefully, not enough to destroy the containment vessel. The only problem is, maintaining it will require a whole lot of electricity. But it will work for sure."

"And then you slip this . . . device into the gate?" the secretary asked. "And that destroys the bosons."

"Yes, sir," Bill said.

"Destroying whole universes?" the President asked.

"Errr . . . possibly," Bill replied. "But current theory is changing as to the nature of bosons; at this point theory is pointing to them being gates to other universes, or links, rather than the universes themselves."

"How much?" the secretary of defense asked. "How many particles?"

"Probably on the order of a million, Mr. Secretary," Bill said. "We'll have to see what the rate of emission is of the boson."

"How long to do the experiment?" the national security advisor asked.

"There's a boson conveniently settled in Death Valley," Bill replied. "We'll have to assemble the materials and set up a base camp. A week, maybe less. Getting enough power to it will be the key."

"I want Dr. Weaver to have whatever he needs to get this experiment running," the President said to the secretary of defense.

"I'll see that he gets it," the secretary replied. "You're saying that these things are the equivalent of nuclear weapons?"

"Yes, Mr. Secretary," Bill said, frowning. "More like nuclear explosive material. That's why I've been pretty careful about spreading the theory around. If the theory is right, making unlinked quarks and then capturing them is going to be relative child's play. Any decent physicist with access to a boson could make them."

"Giving every two-bit country on Earth nuclear weapons." The national security advisor winced.

"Close one Pandora's Box and we open another," the President said.

"That's science for you, Mr. President."

"Remember Ray Chen," Bill said as his hand hovered over the initiator.

The base camp had been set up ten miles from the inactive boson. A bunker, constructed of concretefilled sandbags and steel beams, had been built a mere five miles away. Comfortably cooled by an air-conditioning unit, similarly protected, it had independent power and materials to dig out if it were covered by an explosion. It was there that the team had assembled to study the anticipated quark formation.

In the end the muon field plan had been a bust. A brief, and mildly traumatic, experiment had proven that they'd be unable to hold the field closed well enough to capture sufficient quarks. Bill was almost sure that tinkering would fix the problem, but they didn't have time to play around with the idea so they'd set up the white dwarf bottle instead.

The problem, of course, would be moving it; they were going to be using several megawatts of power just to create the field and about a half megawatt per hour, if they could spin the electrons in a toroid, to maintain it. The Army was trying to find a portable half-megawatt per hour generator, thus far with little success.

Mark was there, having assembled another whatchamacallit device on less than a week's notice. Bill Earp from FEMA, who pointed out that for once the agency might as well get therebefore the disaster.

Sergeants Garcia and Crichton who had been useful military liaisons. Robin had been writing code, with Garcia's fumble fingered help, eighteen hours a day for the last four. The only person missing was Command Master Chief Miller, who Bill, after a certain amount of argument, had sent off on a different project. But everything was finally in place and it was time to find out if it worked.

"Let's see what happens," Bill Earp said, inserting earplugs. "Everyone got their plugs in? Safety first."

Bill already had earplugs in and he hoped he wouldn't need them. If everything went as planned nothing would happen, outside of some changes in very sensitive instruments.

He looked around one more time "Everybody ready?" Bill asked.

"Ready, sir," Garcia and Crichton said.

"Let's get it over with," Robin said, yawning.

"Gotta test it sometime," Mark said.

"Just proud to be here," Earp intoned.

Bill pressed the button.

Nothing blew up. The lights dimmed rather deeply, though.

He looked over at Garcia who was frowning.

"Something's happening," the sergeant said. "We've got fluctuations in the magnetic containment bottle."

"Power's going somewhere," Mark added. "Quite a bit. We keep this up and we're going to start affecting California's power requirements in a bit."

"More fluctuations," Garcia added a few minutes later as everyone was congratulating themselves. Hehad stayed glued to his monitor, however, his brow furrowed in a frown. "The electrons are starting to slip. I think we're . . ."

There was a very slight ground shudder and everyone looked at the external monitors. In the distance was dust rising from a small explosion where their expensive and difficult to build quark generator now appeared to be so much metal and plastic scrap.

" . . . losing it," Garcia finished. "Negative signal."

"Back to the drawing board," Bill said.

"It looks like it's working this time," Garcia said, watching his monitors carefully. "The Quark Hotel is in operation."

Analysis of the data that they had gotten before the explosion indicated that some of the quarks, rather than being fully trapped in the bottle, had gotten caught in a magnetic eddy. When their local charge overcame the eddy they reacted, violently, with the surrounding matter and released the rest of the quarks to do so even more energetically.

The containment bottle had been upgraded and redesigned so that, as Garcia put it: "Quarks go in, but none get out."

It had been instantly dubbed the Quark Hotel.

"Negative radiation emissions," Crichton said. "But the rate of entry is really low. It looks like only a quark per second."

"Not fast enough," Bill said. "We need to increase the rate by a couple of orders of magnitude."

"Up the power input?" Mark asked. "We need to increase the size of the bottle anyway."

"Maybe," Bill replied. "We're probably only catching a fraction of the potential stream. But we don't have the generators for that. We're already pushing a hundred kilowatts through at the moment. To up it we'll need big power. I don't think we can do it here unless we can get some really monstrous generators and then we'll be hauling in diesel so fast the experiment is going to be pretty damned obvious."

"So what do we do?" Robin asked.

"Shut it down," Weaver replied. "We can do it, we just need another boson that has access to a lot of power. Set the quarks on battery backup. We need to see if we canmove the containment bottle, anyway. I'll have to kick this upstairs."

"So that's where we're at," Bill said. "We can make the material, we can even contain it and move it, with relative safety. But we need orders of magnitude more power. I don't think the rate of capture will be linear, more like asymptotic . . ."

"What?" the President said. "You're usually pretty good about avoiding extreme jargon, Dr. Weaver, but . . .".

"That means for a little more power we'll get a lot more result, Mr. President," Bill said. "But we're still looking at needing to have something on the order of a megawatt or more of power. We're going to needto move someplace that has that sort of power available."

"Savannah River?" the secretary of defense said, looking over at the national security advisor.

"Oak Ridge, Savannah River, Hanford," the NSA said with a shrug. "All have secure facilities, all have access to enormous power. Take your pick."

"Savannah River," Bill replied. "Mark worked there. He'll know where to set up and who to see when we need something. And besides, there ain't much left of Oak Ridge."

"Get moving, Doctor," the President said. "We may not have much time." He looked up as someone entered the Situation Room. The agitated messenger walked up to the secretary of defense and whispered in his ear at which message the secretary's face suddenly looked every day of his seventy-odd years.

"We're out."

10.

Despite the logistics involved it had taken far less time to set up than the period the gates were destabilized. Collective 47 had a total of nine subcollectives to draw upon, less the late Collective 15379.

Bosons were energy intensive to generate but six of the collectives had created at least one, in some cases two. Collective 47 was able to generate three.

In addition each of the collectives had disregarded trade and internal improvements to increase combat unit production. Each of the potential gates, and the three that had previously been opened, now had an overwhelming force stationed by it ranging from class one to class seven ground combat units along with twenty percent more air defense units than standard. The biologicals of the new world would not be permitted to throw their fission weapons onto the bridgeheads this time.

Last, and certainly least, all three of Collective 47's subraces had been levied for support. In some cases this included combat units. Primarily it had been contribution of biological materials to be converted to Collective combat units. One gate had been entirely ceded to the subraces and would be assaulted by a combination of Mreee and N!T!Ch, using weaponry the N!T!Ch had obtained from the Slen. They, too, however, would be supported by Collective air defense units.

A new subcollective, designated 16743, had been established at the locus of the former 15379. It was in its infancy, a colony organization rather than a truly functioning collective, but it served to support the forces sent to those open gates by the other collectives. In addition, Mreee biologicals were being added to the subcollective to accelerate its formation; as the holder of two of the open gates it was an important strategic locus and needed the boost.

All was in readiness when the gate fractal stabilized.

"All Collectives," Collective 47 emitted. "Initiate gate formation."

Even for the collective this took a few moments. In the interim, Collective 16743 sent a weak emission.

"Fission detonation, Gate 763, Gate 765, Gate 769. Assault formations destroyed. Gates closed.Twenty percent damage to collective. Initiating repairs."

Best to get this over with as quickly as possible. Collective 47 had considered using the race on the far side as a subrace, but it was simply too dangerous. All would have to be destroyed.

"All Collectives,"Collective 47 emitted as the gates popped open."Initiate assault."

Dave Pearce threw his queen of diamonds on the pile and watched as Jim Horn covered it with a king.

That was okay, it was his sole diamond. When somebody brought out that ace they were hoarding they were in for a surprise.

Dave was whistling in his teeth, a sure sign that he was out of one suit, Sergeant Horn thought to himself.

He knew the song, vaguely, something about Hallack or Harlack or something. Pearce was always whistling it, to the point that it got on his nerves. Especially when it meant the specialist was out of a suit and waiting to hop on his ace. You'd think that with an ace, king combination, you'd get at least two tricks. But in the last two weeks he swore that he'd seen every possible combination of tricks and rubbers possible in the game of spades. There wasn't much else to do but play.

The duty was incredibly, unmitigatingly, boring. Hell of a lot more comfortable than Iraq, though. The track three boson had formed in the living room of a suburban home in Woodmere, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland. After the danger of the boson became evident, the house, then the surrounding houses, then a good part of the town, had been evacuated. The house, a pleasant single-story ranch, had been cleared by moving crews and then leveled, as had several of the surrounding houses and most of their landscaping, creating open fields of fire. Last, defensive positions had been scattered around the boson and units of the Ohio National Guard were established in the positions. Well, were supposed to be established in the positions. There was always one member of the unit on the tracks at all times, but most of the rest of the brigade had settled in the abandoned houses; they were far more comfortable. The local electric company, as a gesture of patriotism, had left the electricity running. So the troops had hot and cold running water, a place to sleep out of the weather and flush toilets. Cots, and then beds, had appeared. Except for the boredom, which was relieved by television and endless games of spades, not to mention Nintendo, Sega and Gameboys and for a fortunate few internet connections, it wasn't bad duty.

Definitely better than the six months the unit had spent in the Sunni Triangle.

They all knew that the balloon could go up at any time and they'd been told it could occur without warning. But they also figured that the big brains would give them a little warning.

So Sergeant Horn was more than a little surprised when he threw his ace down, fully prepared for Pearce to trump the damned thing, and was rewarded, instead, by the explosion of a claymore mine.

Claymores were directional mines, a small box on legs that could be pointed at the direction an enemy was likely to approach from, in this case directly at the inactive boson. Normally they were command detonated, that is a soldier would close a "clacker" which sent an electrical signal to the mine telling it that it was time to perform its function, namely spilling out 700 ball bearings at approximately the speed of rifle bullets.

When the combat engineers set up the defenses for the boson, however, they laid in a rather extensive minefield around the concrete slab that had once been a ranch house. The first line of defense was a series of claymore mines on trip-wires, so that anything coming through the gate, should it form, would be met by a hail of ball bearings.

It also served as an efficient signal that the shit had just hit the fan. The four card players tossed down their hands and picked up their weapons, rushing to their bunkers as fast as they could. But there were nine people currently in the house and by the time Sergeant Horn squeezed through the press at the door, more mines were exploding. And then the first incoming hit the house.

The plasma weapon hit on the roof and tossed burning debris down into the living room, setting fire to the table where they had been playing and tossing burning cards through the air.

The overpressure from the blast threw Sergeant Horn and Specialist Pearce out of the door in a tangle of limbs. The sergeant was the first to recover, sitting up and shaking his head, then grabbing his M-16 and continuing on to his bunker. Or where his bunker had been. Which was now a hole in the ground.