Read Online The Infernals by John Connolly - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: John Connolly
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nervous and impatient. Professor Stefan had been present when all that nasty demonic business had happened, and a lot of people had pointed the finger of blame at him, which he felt was a bit unfair as he hadn’t
known
that the gates of Hell were going to open because of his nice, shiny particle accelerator. If he had known—
Oh dear, that was the thing of it. If he had known, he probably would still have allowed the Collider to be switched on. They’d gone to all that trouble to build it, and had spent all that money: $7 billion, at the last count. They couldn’t very well just lock the door, put the key under the mat, leave a note for the milkman canceling their order, and go back to doing whatever it was they had been doing before the Collider was suggested. That would just be silly. And there would have been no guarantee that the gates of Hell would open anyway, because nobody was sure if Hell even existed. It would be like saying, “Don’t turn that thing on. The Easter Bunny might pop out!,” or, “A fairy’s wings might drop off!,” or, “A unicorn might fall over!” That wouldn’t be science. That would be nonsense.
On the other hand, the scientists now knew that (a) Hell, or something similar to it, did exist; (b) it was full of creatures that didn’t like them very much, although it wasn’t just scientists they didn’t like but everything that existed on Earth; and (c) somehow the Collider had provided these creatures with a way of poking their heads into our world and eating people. The general consensus among those who knew about CERN’s involvement in the near catastrophe, and who didn’t particularly want to be eaten by demons—thanks very much, everthought of trying a salad?—was that it probably wouldn’t be a very good idea to go turning the Collider on again. The scientists argued that they’d figured out what the problem was (kind of), and they were certain (sort of) that nothing like what had happened before would ever happen again (or probably would never happen again, within a given margin of error. What margin of error? Oh, tiny. Hardly worth bothering about. What, you want to see the piece of paper on which I’ve made that calculation? What piece of paper? Oh, this piece of paper. Well you can’t because—
munch, munch
—I’ve just eaten it. So there).
Eventually they decided that it might just be okay to turn on the Collider again, but the scientists had to be very careful, and if it looked like something bad involving creatures with claws and fangs and bad attitude was about to occur, they were to turn off the Collider immediately and go and inform a responsible adult. The scientists were reasonably confident that this would not be necessary, as they had worked hard on what was thought to have been a source of potential weakness. The joints holding the machine’s copper stabilizers were discovered not to be strong enough to withstand the forces being unleashed against them—five hundred tons per square meter, or the equivalent of five jumbo jets at full throttle being pushed against each square meter—but now the stabilizers had been reinforced, and all was believed to be well.
But the changes and corrections that the scientists had made to the Collider had also enabled them to increase its energy levels. The energies involved in its collisions were measured in tera electron volts, or TeV, with each TeV being equivalentto a million million electron volts. When the first “incident” had taken place, the Collider was sending twin beams of 1.18 TeV each around its ring, giving collision energies of 2.36 TeV. The new, improved Collider was set to more than double the collision energy to 7 TeV, the first big step toward its routine capacity of 14 TeV.
Which was how the scientists came to be standing around looking at the switch with fingers crossed and lucky rabbits’ feet in hand while Professor Stefan inquired if anything had happened yet, and Professor Hilbert, his
known
that the gates of Hell were going to open because of his nice, shiny particle accelerator. If he had known—
Oh dear, that was the thing of it. If he had known, he probably would still have allowed the Collider to be switched on. They’d gone to all that trouble to build it, and had spent all that money: $7 billion, at the last count. They couldn’t very well just lock the door, put the key under the mat, leave a note for the milkman canceling their order, and go back to doing whatever it was they had been doing before the Collider was suggested. That would just be silly. And there would have been no guarantee that the gates of Hell would open anyway, because nobody was sure if Hell even existed. It would be like saying, “Don’t turn that thing on. The Easter Bunny might pop out!,” or, “A fairy’s wings might drop off!,” or, “A unicorn might fall over!” That wouldn’t be science. That would be nonsense.
On the other hand, the scientists now knew that (a) Hell, or something similar to it, did exist; (b) it was full of creatures that didn’t like them very much, although it wasn’t just scientists they didn’t like but everything that existed on Earth; and (c) somehow the Collider had provided these creatures with a way of poking their heads into our world and eating people. The general consensus among those who knew about CERN’s involvement in the near catastrophe, and who didn’t particularly want to be eaten by demons—thanks very much, everthought of trying a salad?—was that it probably wouldn’t be a very good idea to go turning the Collider on again. The scientists argued that they’d figured out what the problem was (kind of), and they were certain (sort of) that nothing like what had happened before would ever happen again (or probably would never happen again, within a given margin of error. What margin of error? Oh, tiny. Hardly worth bothering about. What, you want to see the piece of paper on which I’ve made that calculation? What piece of paper? Oh, this piece of paper. Well you can’t because—
munch, munch
—I’ve just eaten it. So there).
Eventually they decided that it might just be okay to turn on the Collider again, but the scientists had to be very careful, and if it looked like something bad involving creatures with claws and fangs and bad attitude was about to occur, they were to turn off the Collider immediately and go and inform a responsible adult. The scientists were reasonably confident that this would not be necessary, as they had worked hard on what was thought to have been a source of potential weakness. The joints holding the machine’s copper stabilizers were discovered not to be strong enough to withstand the forces being unleashed against them—five hundred tons per square meter, or the equivalent of five jumbo jets at full throttle being pushed against each square meter—but now the stabilizers had been reinforced, and all was believed to be well.
But the changes and corrections that the scientists had made to the Collider had also enabled them to increase its energy levels. The energies involved in its collisions were measured in tera electron volts, or TeV, with each TeV being equivalentto a million million electron volts. When the first “incident” had taken place, the Collider was sending twin beams of 1.18 TeV each around its ring, giving collision energies of 2.36 TeV. The new, improved Collider was set to more than double the collision energy to 7 TeV, the first big step toward its routine capacity of 14 TeV.
Which was how the scientists came to be standing around looking at the switch with fingers crossed and lucky rabbits’ feet in hand while Professor Stefan inquired if anything had happened yet, and Professor Hilbert, his
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