Read Online Engineering Infinity by Jonathan Strahan - Free Book Online

nervous while they were pointing guns at him - he’d
had that happen before, and in such moments his mind became wonderfully sharp -
but now that he might actually be forced to have a conversation with these
people, he found his mouth going quite dry. “You can tell me all about it after
I’ve finished my measurements.”
    “You’re kidding,” she said.
    “I’m not kidding at all. Your job
may be saving the Earth within the next generation, but mine is saving it this
week. And I take it very seriously. I’ve come here to inspect the original
fittings of this building, but it looks like you destroyed them, no?”
    “Not at all,” she said. “Actually,
we used what was here. This bunker’s not like the other ones, you know they had
these big cement tanks in them. I’d swear this one was set up exactly like
this.”
    “Show me.”
    For the next half hour they
climbed under the hydroponic tables, behind the makeshift junction boxes
mounted near the old power shaft, and atop the sturdier lighting racks. Ambrose
went outside, and came back to report that the shipping containers they’d seen
were sophisticated CO2 scrubbers. The big boxes sucked the gas right out of the
atmosphere, and then pumped it through hoses into the bunker.
    At last he and the woman climbed
down, and Gennady shook his head. “The mystery only deepens,” he said.
    “I’m sorry we couldn’t help you
more,” she said. “And apologies for pulling a gun on you. I’m Kyzdygoi,” she
added, thrusting out her hand for him to shake.
    “Uh, that’s a... pretty name,”
said Ambrose as he, too, shook her hand. “What’s it mean?”
    “It means ‘stop giving birth to
girls,’“ said Kyzdygoi with a straight face. “My parents were old school.”
    Ambrose opened his mouth and
closed it, his grin faltering.
    “All right, well, good luck
shrinking your Earths,” Gennady told her as they strolled to the
plastic-sheet-covered doorway.
    As they drove back to
Stepnogorsk, Ambrose leaned against the passenger door and looked at Gennady in
silence. Finally he said, “You do this for a living?”
    “Ah, it’s unreliable. A paycheck
here, a paycheck there...”
    “No, really. What’s this all
about?”
    Gennady eyed him. He probably
owed the kid an explanation after getting guns drawn on him. “Have you ever
heard of metastable explosives?”
    “What? No. Wait...” He fumbled
for his glasses.
    “Never mind that.” Gennady waved
at the glasses. “Metastables are basically super-powerful chemical explosives.
They’re my new nightmare.”
    Ambrose jerked a thumb back at
SNOPB. “I thought you were looking for germs.”
    “This isn’t about germs, it’s
about hydrogen bombs.” Ambrose looked blank. “A hydrogen bomb is a fusion
device that’s triggered by high compression and high temperature. Up until now,
the only thing that could generate those kinds of conditions was an atomic bomb
- a plutonium bomb, understand? Plutonium is really
hard to refine, and it creates terrible fallout even if you only use a little
of it as your fusion trigger.”
    “So?”
    “So, metastable explosives are
powerful enough to trigger hydrogen fusion without the plutonium. They
completely sever the connection between nuclear weapons and nuclear industry,
which means that once they exist, the good guys totally lose their ability to
tell who has the bomb and who doesn’t. Anybody who
can get metastables and some tritium gas can build a hydrogen bomb, even some
disgruntled loner in his garage.
    “And somebody is building one.”
    Stepnogorsk was fast approaching.
The town was mostly a collection of Soviet-era apartment blocks with broad
prairie visible past them. Gennady swung them around a corner and they drove
through Microdistrict 2 and past the disused Palace of Culture. Up ahead was
their hotel... surrounded by the flashing lights of emergency vehicles.
    “Oh,” said Gennady. “A fire?”
    “Pull over. Pull over!” Ambrose
braced his hands