The Sky is Falling td-63 Read online

  The Sky is Falling

  ( The Destroyer - 63 )

  Warren Murphy

  Richard Sapir

  The Murderous Money Machine

  It was hotter than sex. It packed a bigger punch than the H-bomb. And best of all, it was worth a sky-high pile of blue chips for the company that could make and market the machine that could tap the full energy of the sun.

  Chemical Concepts was the lucky firm, and its gorgeous VP Kathleen O'Donnell wasn't going to let a few glitches like maybe burning the earth to cinders or sparking a thermonuclear war keep her from milking the machine for all the billions of bucks she thought it was worth.

  Only Remo and Chiun cold stop this sexplosive lady executive from making the ultimate corporate killing - unless the dynamite O'Donnell used the burning power of the sun and the heavenly heat of her body to stop them first.

  Destroyer 63: The Sky is Falling

  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir

  Chapter 1

  They couldn't see it. But it could blind. Normally they couldn't feel it, but it could kill. They couldn't touch it, but it could turn human skin to an especially virulent and burning cancer. It could destroy crops, flood the cities of the world and turn the earth into something that resembled the moon, a barren rock waiting for life from elsewhere some aeon hence.

  That, of course, was the downside.

  "There's got to be some way we can make a buck on this thing," said Reemer Bolt, director of marketing for Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts, who didn't see why they shouldn't push it through Development. "We'd have to work out the bugs, of course."

  "I'd say that not destroying all life on this planet is bug one," said Kathleen O'Bonnell of Research and Development.

  "Right. A major priority. I don't want to destroy all life. I am life. We are all life. Right?"

  There were nods all around Conference Room A of Chemical Concepts headquarters, situated north of Boston on high-tech Route 128.

  "We are not here to destroy life," said Bolt, "but to protect it. Enhance it. Make Chemical Concepts of Massachusetts a viable growing part of that life."

  "What are you talking about?" demanded Kathleen O'Donnell. She was twenty-eight years old, a tall woman with eyes like star sapphires and skin like Alpine marble, white and placid. Her hair, brushed straight off her cool forehead, was a delicate reddish-gold. If she were not always getting in his way, Reemer Bolt, thirty-eight, would have fallen in love with her. Or tried. He'd tried several times, in fact. Unfortunately, there was a problem with beautiful Kathleen O'Donnell, Ph.D., MIT.

  She understood him.

  Reemer Bolt was glad he was not married to her. Life for a man married to a woman who understood him could be hell. Reemer should know. He had had three of them before he found himself a paranoid shrew. Paranoid shrews were the easiest to deal with. They were so busy chasing their nightmares that you really could do anything with them. With Kathleen O'Donnell, he could do nothing. She knew what was going on.

  "I am talking about the basic inalienable priorities," said Bolt. "Life, living life, is important to me." His voice ached with indignation.

  But Kathleen O'Donnell did not back down.

  "I am glad to see that the survival of life on this planet is one of your priorities. But which priority? Number fifteen, after whether you can sell it to a Third World country or if it can be marketed in Peoria?" asked Dr. O'Donnell of those heavenly blue eyes and the steel-trap mind.

  "A major one," replied Bolt. And then, in a deeper voice: "A damned major one. Damned major." Heads nodded around the conference-room table.

  "Number one?" asked Kathy.

  "I don't know. I said major," snarled Bolt.

  "Might survival of life come after say, cost factors, general marketability, use in an oil-rich Third World country, and the possibility of an exclusive patent?"

  "I certainly would not discount an exclusive patent. How many companies have poured millions into developing processes and products, only to find they were stolen by others? I want to protect all of us." Bolt looked around the table. Heads nodded. Only one remained still. That coolly beautiful troublemaker.

  "Gentlemen," announced Dr. O'Donnell in an even voice. "Let me explain what we are dealing with."

  She held up a pack of cigarettes taken from an executive sitting next to her. She tilted it so that the side of the package floated at eye level. It was scarcely wider than two fingernails.

  "Around the earth is a layer of ozone, no bigger than this," she said, outlining the side of the cigarette pack with her finger. "It protects us from the sun's rays-the intense ultraviolet rays, X-rays, and cosmic rays. These are all rays which, unfiltered, could obliterate life on our planet."

  "They also give us nice tans, comfortable weather, and a bit of chlorophyll called the building block of life, among other things," said Bolt.

  "Not as we plan it," said Dr. O'Donnell. "The whole world is so scared of what might happen to the ozone shield that the only international ban ever respected to my knowledge was the abolition of fluorocarbons as propellent for hair spray."

  Bolt had thought of that. He was about to interrupt with a brief he had gotten from the legal department, but Kathy continued.

  "As you all know, fluorocarbons are colorless, odorless, and inert. They were the perfect propellant for hair sprays. It was a giant industry. The safest ecological substance since they combined with nothing. And that became the problem, because what we have on earth and what we have in the stratosphere are different things. In the stratosphere, these harmless, invisible fluorocarbons combined with the harsh, unfiltered sunlight that exists beyond the ozone."

  Reemer Bolt drummed his fingers as he listened to Dr. O'Donnell explain how fluorocarbons produced atomic chlorine in the stratosphere. He knew that. The technical people who were always getting in the way had told him.

  "What atomic chlorine does is eat away at the ozone shield which filters out all the harmful rays. Mr. Bolt is really proposing that we manufacture something that, on a broad scale, could very well destroy life as we know it on earth."

  Bolt was a taut man. He wore a tight brown suit and his hair was cut dramatically short because a sales magazine had told him that long hair offended some people. He had dark eyes and thin lips. He understood the broader picture very well. O'Donnell didn't want Concepts capital going into one of his programs instead of her Research and Development.

  "I said we had some problems," said Bolt. "Every project has a problem. The light bulb had more of them than you could shake a stick at. How many of you would have liked to own a share of every light bulb in the world?"

  Dr. O'Donnell still held the cigarette pack horizontally. "This is how wide the ozone shield was before the hair sprays," she said. She took out one cigarette and dropped the pack. Everyone heard it hit the tabletop. The single cigarette remained in her hands. Then she turned it sideways.

  "NASA has conducted experiments in outer space on the unfiltered rays of the sun. The intensity of those rays in space is frightening. But it will be far worse if those rays ever get through this side of the atmosphere with its moisture, tender cells, oxygen, and the richness of molecules that make life as we know it possible."

  "What's the one cigarette for?" asked someone. Bolt could have killed the questioner.

  "Because in some places this is how much is left of the shield," said Kathy. With a show of contempt, she dropped the cigarette on the table. "Thirty miles up we have, and I hope we will continue to have, a desperately thin ozone shield between all living things and what could destroy them. It doesn't grow. It can naturally replenish itself if we don't destroy it. I am not offering a choice of life or d
eath. I am wondering why you want to even consider committing world suicide."

  "Every step forward has been met with dire warnings," said Bolt. "Therre was a time when we were told that man would explode if he ever went sixty miles an hour. It's true. People believed it," said Reemer. O'Donnell was good. But competition made Bolt better. A book on sales had told him that. "I am proposing that we step into the future and dare to be as great as possible."

  "By shooting holes in the ozone shield with a concentrated stream of fluorocarbons? That's Mr. Bolt's proposal."

  "Right, a hole. A window in the sky to give us full controlled use of all the sun's energy. Bigger than atomic power," said Bolt.

  "And potentially more dangerous," said Dr. O'Donnell. "Because we don't know what a clear window to the sun's rays will do. Not for certain. Space tests conducted beyond the ozone shield indicate that we might be dealing with something more dangerous than we thought. But what worries me most, what absolutely terrifies me, is the fact that it's been estimated that a single molecule of fluorocarbon sets in motion a chain reaction that will eventually destroy one hundred thousand molecules of ozone. How do we know we'll be opening a window and not a gigantic door? How do we know that a concentrated stream of fluorocarbons won't start an unending tear in this desperately thin layer of gas? And if that happens, gentlemen, all life will disappear. All life. Including anyone willing to buy Reemer's stock options in Chemical Concepts."

  There was nervous laughter around the table. Reemer Bolt smiled, too, showing he could take a joke. Reemer knew how to take a joke at his expense very well. You smiled along with the others and then a week later, a month later, maybe even a year later, you did something to get the joker fired. The problem with the beautiful Dr. O'Donnell was that she would always be ready for that. She knew him too well.

  "All right," said Bolt. "Are you saying we should ditch two-point-five million dollars in development costs because we're afraid of causing a worldwide suntan?"

  "Not at all," said Dr. O'Donnell. "What I am saying is this: that before we punch this hole in the ozone layer, we make sure it's only a hole. I am talking about the safe use of the sun. Priority one. Let's not turn the world into a rock."

  The debate raged in Conference Room A for four more hours, but it was a foregone conclusion. Kathleen O'Donnell of Research and Development had won. The main priority of the Fluorocarbon Stream Generator project would be the survival of life on earth. It won heavily, five to two. Reemer had only Accounting on his side at the end.

  And Kathleen O'Donnell had an increased research budget of seven million dollars. It always paid to do the right thing.

  Six months and seventeen million dollars later, Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell stood looking at a pile of transistors, computer components, pressurized tanks, and a black box three times the size of a man and as unwieldy as an entire operating room. Priority One had still not been met. No one could predict how big a hole would be opened in the vital ozone shield around the earth. And it was on her research budget. She had gone to Bolt's office. She went with her best little-girl-coy look and her womanly perfume. She announced that she had come to discuss the project, and she wanted to do it in Bolt's office-alone.

  "We can punch the hole, and I think it would be just a hole. The probability is that it would be a hole. But, Reemer, we can't be sure," she said.

  This time her argument had force. She said it in the proper way, on Bolt's lap, playing with the buttons of his shirt. She said it smilingly, moving her hands lower down his shirt. She whispered in his ear, creating tingling warm sensations.

  "Do you think I am going to jeopardize my position at Chemical Concepts for a tawdry roll in the hay, Kathy?" asked Bolt. He noticed that the lights were dim in his office. It was very late. There was no one else in the flat single-story concept center that was like so many of the sandstone buildings dotting Route 128. Cars made a blurred procession of lights through the window as they sped by in the rain-slick night. He thought he recognized her perfume. Which of his wives had worn that? Somehow it smelled so much better on Dr. O'Donnell.

  "Uh-huh," answered Kathy O'Donnell.

  "Not tawdry," said Bolt.

  "Very tawdry," whispered Kathy.

  And thus on the floor of Marketing Reemer Bolt found himself the sole authorizer of seventeen million dollars in development funds.

  But on this day, the very intelligent Dr. Kathleen O'Donnell misjudged the mettle, of Reemer Bolt, marketing genius of the high-tech industry, for the first time.

  He had the bulky instrument loaded on a flatbed truck and carted to a field just across the state border in Salem, New Hampshire. He pointed it at the sky, saying:

  "If I don't make it in this world, nobody will make it." Dr. O'Donnell heard about the experiment one hour after Bolt and her scientific staff had left for Salem. She flew to her car, careened out of the parking lot at seventy miles an hour, and then picked up speed. She was doing 165 along Route 93 North. In a Porsche 92RS, no state trooper was going to catch her. And if one did, no speeding ticket would matter. There wouldn't be anyone to sit on a judge's bench. There might not even be any bench.

  She knew where in Salem Bolt had gone. The corporation had a field up there for softball games, picnics, and land investment. When she tore onto the field, tires gouging the soft earth, Bolt was staring disconsolately at his feet with the blank eyes of a man who knew it was all over. His normally immaculate pin-striped jacket lay on the ground. He had been scuffing it with his shoes.

  All he said when he saw Kathy stumble out of her Porsche was:

  "I'm sorry, Kath. I really am. I didn't mean for this to happen. I had no other choice. You stuck me with a seventeen-million-dollar failure. I had to go for it."

  "You idiot! We're all done for now."

  "Not you, so much. I was the one who did it."

  "Reemer, you have some logic glitches in your mentality mode, but downright stupidity is not one of them. If all life goes down the drain, what difference does it make whether it was you or I who pulled the plug?"

  "Seventeen million down the drain," said Bolt, pointing to the blackened metallic structure in the middle of the field. "Nothing works on it. Look."

  He showed Kathy the remote console her staff had devised. It had to be remote, because the fluorocarbon generator was so cumbersome that it could only be aimed in one direction: straight up. And that meant the sun's unfiltered rays would return in only one direction: straight down. If everything worked as theorized, the fluorocarbon beam would open a window that allowed raw solar radiation to bathe the earth's surface in a circle thirty meters wide. If it worked. Perfectly.

  But now Bolt was punching buttons on a dead board. Not even the on light glowed. The fluorocarbon generator stood silently a hundred yards away. Bolt pounded the console. He hated it because it didn't work. Seventeen million dollars and it didn't work. He hit the console again. He would have killed it if it weren't already dead.

  Kathy O'Donnell said nothing. Something was happening in the sky. Set against the clouds was an exquisite ring of blue haze, as though the clouds themselves wore a glowing round blue sapphire. She watched the circle. One of her staff members had a pair of binoculars and she ripped them from his neck. Desperately, she tried to focus on the clouds, on the light blue hazy ring.

  "Has it been growing larger or smaller? " she demanded. "It think it's smaller," said a staffer, one of about twenty people in white smocks or shirtsleeves. They were all looking at her and Bolt with bewildered expressions.

  "Smaller," said Kathy O'Donnell. She was speaking as much to herself as anyone else. "Smaller."

  "Yes," said a technician. "I think you're right." Kathy looked at the ground. The grass around the fluorocarbon generator had turned a lighter shade of green. At a distance of about thirty meters, the blades were dark green. Then, as though someone had sprayed a lightening agent, they grew paler, even now becoming a dry whiteness. It was as though someone had drawn the circle of pale grass around t
he device with a compass. Thirty magnificent, glorious, miraculous feet around the device. It had worked. Perfectly.

  "We did it," said Kathy.

  "What? The thing doesn't work," said Bolt.

  "Not now," replied Dr. Kathy O'Donnell. "But it did work. And it seems our first clear solar window to the sun has given us some interesting side effects."

  For the unfiltered solar rays had not only scorched the earth, they had rendered electronic circuits inoperable. The fluorocarbon generator itself was proof. It had been struck and killed by the unfiltered rays.

  The eager scientists discovered other side effects. The rays parched plant life, raised the temperature slightly, and burned the skin of living matter in a horrible and unforeseen way. Skin bubbled and blackened, then separated and peeled away. They noticed this when they saw the little furry legs of a chipmunk trying to run out of what was left of its skin.

  Some of the scientists turned their heads away. Seeing a poor creature suffer like that plunged Reemer Bolt deep in thought.

  If we can make it mobile, and aim it better, we might have a weapons sale, thought Reemer. Or perhaps we could market a screen against the rays. Maybe both. The future was limitless. As bright as the sun.

  The budget was tripled and, within a month, they had constructed an aiming mechanism. There was only one small glitch. The fluorocarbon stream could be controlled in the amount of ozone shield it opened, but it could not be aimed very exactly. They could direct the beam elsewhere instead of straight up, but they were just not sure where it would land. Which meant that Chemical Concepts would control this immense new energy source so that life on earth wasn't threatened, but couldn't direct it anywhere in particular. This shot the boards out from under Marketing. It was like owning a car you couldn't steer: if you can't steer it, you can't sell it.

  "How far off this time?" asked Kathy. She had once again found Bolt using the fluorocarbon gun, as they were calling it now, without her permission.

  "Two or three thousand miles," said Bolt. "I think you'll have to upgrade your targeting computer. I'll help you get more money."