"One thing we do know," declared Grant grimly, "is that the Danaan established a base on Mars."

  They had learned over the past couple of years that the Danaan used Mars as an outpost that was decimated over a period of centuries, first during the war with the Annunaki and by raids staged by the Archons. In the twentieth century, the remaining ruins of the base became known collectively as the Monuments of Mars, which included the Great Stone Face and the gigantic pyramid.

  "The question," Grant went on, "is to find out where on Mars Maccan might have taken Lakesh. Then we might understand why he abducted him in the first place and took the interphaser."

  Brigid suddenly sat up straight in her chair, eyes narrowed to slits. She inhaled a sharp breath. Kane had seen her react in a similar fashion before when a new thought or concept occurred to her. Turning her intense jade gaze on Philboyd, she said sternly, "Repeat what you overheard about mirrors and symmetry."

  Philboyd's eyebrows rose. "Essentially, all I heard was Mac talking about the interphaser helping him to take a look in the mirror and some crap about stepping through the looking glass. Does that mean anything to you?"

  Brigid lifted her shoulder in a shrug. "Lewis Carroll wrote a book in the nineteenth century called Through the Looking Glass. Maccan could have been making a literary allusion. Is that all he said?"

  Philboyd's high forehead furrowed as he tried to call up more memories. "He claimed the interphaser was built by following scientific principles his kind gave to humanity a long time ago. Then Lakesh asked him about mirror symmetry, the mirror-matter theory."

  Brigid nodded as if she had expected the answer and it satisfied her. "I'm starting to get this now."

  Kane growled impatiently, "I wish you'd give the rest of us an idea of what you're getting...and if it's contagious."

  She regarded him with a wry, almost apologetic smile. "An idea, and a very generalized one, is about all I can give you. But I think we'd be safe if we look for Lakesh and Maccan in the vicinity of the Great Pyramid of Mars."

  Grant eyed her speculatively, completely mystified. "Why?"

  Using the forefingers of both hands, Brigid drew a triangle in the air. "This is the shape of the interphaser, right?"

  Both Grant and Kane nodded, but said nothing. "And what's the shape of a pyramid?" she pressed. "Ah," Kane said as if he understood totally, drawing his own triangle in the air, but much, much larger. "Do you get it?" Grant demanded of him skeptically.

  Kane shook his head. "Not one bit. But at least we're on to something, even if it's only rudimentary geometry."

  Chapter 15

  "Well," Philboyd said wearily, "that's a lot more than I can say. I know you three have been to Mars already—it's where you first met Sindri—but what does a planet have to do with interphaser, geometry and mirror matter? And just what the hell is mirror matter?"

  Brigid poured herself another cup of coffee. "It's a theory that garnered some attention among quantum physicists at the very tail end of the twentieth century. I'm surprised you didn't hear of it."

  Defensively, Philboyd retorted, "I was on the Moon at the very tail end of the twentieth century, remember? I missed a lot of things...except for the nukecaust. I didn't even have a pager."

  Brigid chose not to respond to his complaint. "Surely you've heard of dark matter?" she inquired,

  Without hesitation, the astrophysicist crisply responded, "Non-luminious matter whose exact nature is unknown, but whose presence is inferred from observing the motion of the stars and interstellar gas clouds." His lips curved in a superior smirk. "Strictly theoretical, more in the nature of metaphysics."

  Brigid shrugged. "Could be. But one thing that was learned over the years is how the interactions of elementary subatomic particles display a variety of symmetries. Some of these symmetries are familiar, such as rotational symmetry and translation symmetry. That's known as parity, which basically means the laws of physics remain the same whether we're in Montana or Moscow."

  "And the mirror-matter theory postulates that might not be the case?" Philboyd asked.

  "Who knows? Natural symmetries are known as left-right or mirror-reflection symmetry."

  "Meaning?" Kane inquired, a dangerous edge to his voice.

  "It means," Brigid replied, unruffled, "that for every fundamental microscopic process that occurs, the mirror image process should also occur. Mirror symmetry states that the mirror-image process can occur and should occur with equal probability."

  "What the hell has this got to do with anything?" Grant demanded in an impatient growl.

  "Essentially," Brigid said, "it has to do with a universal connectedness. Any two particles that have once been in contact continue to influence each other, no matter how far apart they move. Therefore the entire fabric of space time and sidereal space is multiply connected by faster-than-light interaction, like a cosmic glue."

  Kane massaged his temples. "I remember some of this now. You and Lakesh had a field day with your quantum hypothesizing and speculating after we visited the parallel casements through the Shining Trapezohedron."

  Brewster Philboyd shifted uncomfortably in his chair. "I read your reports. They were pretty tough pills for a tried-and-true Einsteinian like me to swallow."

  Brigid favored him with a smile that was almost condescending. "Theories like those are among the most intellectually challenging in science, but Balam's people, the Archons, the First Folk, successfully reconciled quantum and relativistic physics ages ago. The primary subdivisions of the Totality Concept were built on their discoveries."

  Kane said nothing, trying to dredge up the chaotic memories of the images Balam had imparted of his people's history and its interaction with the Shining Trapezohedron. The survivors of the cataclysm that had decimated Balam's people consulted the Shining Trapezohedron, desperate to find a solution to their tragedy within its black facets. It had showed them how to build thresholds to parallel casements.

  To Philboyd he said, "A long time ago, both the Annunaki and the Tuatha de Danaan used such inter-dimensional thresholds created by the Shining Trapezohedron, because Earth was the end of a parallel axis of casements. They were still using basic principles of the mat-trans units, but expanded way beyond linear travel from place to place."

  "Did any of you ever come to a conclusion about what the Shining Trapezohedron actually was?" asked Philboyd. "That is, before Kane threw the facets of the thing off the plateau?"

  Brigid shook her head, frowning slightly. "The tests we performed on the pieces of the stone were inconclusive. In fact, the tests yielded no results, period. Lakesh suggested that the artifact was a probability- wave packet, a mathematical equation in physical form that formed an interface between our universe and others. Balam described it as a piece of 'pure' matter, which doesn't necessarily mean it's our universe's matter."

  "Which, of course," Philboyd interjected, "could make it a piece of dark matter."

  "That's very possible," Brigid admitted. "Conventional wisdom had it that the fundamental laws of physics are not invariant under parity, but a few quantum physicists took a different view. Their theory of parity predicted the existence of mirror matter. Each particle is postulated to have a mirror partner with similar properties that behaves exactly as the mirror image of its partner, only it exists slightly out of phase with our dimension. This is similar to antimatter, except the mirror particles and ordinary particles only have very weak interactions. They wouldn't annihilate each other on contact."

  "And that would explain why they weren't detected," Philboyd said, warming to the topic. "I think I see where you're going with this. Mirror particles could act as dark matter, and since it has the similar properties as ordinary matter, you could conceivably have mirror stars, planets, theoretically even entire galaxies. Mirror stars would be invisible because they would emit mirror photons, which wouldn't interact with ordinary electrons."

  "Exactly," Brigid declared.

  "That's all very not fascinating," Grant growled, "but what does any of that have to do with Mars and Maccan's need for the interphaser?"

  The corner of Brigid's mouth quirked in an enigmatic smile. "I haven't worked it all out yet."

  "But you will," Kane told her dourly.

  She nodded. "I'll do my best."

  Inhaling a deep breath, Brigid placed the palms of her hands flat on the table. "So, what's our plan?"

  "Since we're making a jump into dark territory," Grant said peevishly, "we don't have many options available to us. The plan should be simple."

  "I agree," Kane put in, "but that doesn't mean it should be simple-minded."

  Brigid glanced up at the clock on the wall. "Let's get some rest, decide what kind of equipment we'll be taking with us and embark in eight hours."

  "Eight hours?" Philboyd echoed plaintively. "Lakesh has already been gone for nearly twenty-four and—"

  "And if Maccan decided to tear his head off," Kane interrupted curtly, "he would have done it long before now."

  "The mission is to retrieve both Lakesh and the interphaser," Grant rumbled. "Or one or the other. We'll be making a mat-trans jump to Mars...not to another unit in a redoubt across the country, so we need to take a few more precautions than usual. And that means going in as alert and as prepared as we can possibly be."

  "Besides," Kane commented, "for all we know, Maccan deactivated the gateway in the Cydonia Compound and we either won't be going anywhere at all, or we'll just bounce around the entire Cerberus network as digital information for eternity."

  "What about the Mantas?" Philboyd asked anxiously. "Couldn't we fly one or two of them to Mars if all else fails?"

  Brewster Philboyd was an accomplished pilot of the small fleet of trans-atmospheric craft found on the Manitius Moon base. Of Annunaki manufacture, they were in pristine condition, despite their great age. Powered by two different kinds of engines, a ramjet and solid-fuel, pulse-detonation air spikes, the Manta ships could fly in both a vacuum and in an atmosphere.

  The Manta trans-atmospheric plane was not an experimental craft, but an example of a technology that was mastered by a race when humanity still cowered in trees from saber-toothed tigers.

  Grant and Kane had easily learned to fly the ships, since they handled superficially like the Deathbirds the two men had flown when they were Cobaltville Magistrates. But when Kane and Grant recently flew two of the trans-atmospheric vehicles down from the Moon, they reached the unsettling realization that, while in space, the ships couldn't be piloted like winged aircraft within an atmosphere.

  A pilot could select velocity, angle, attitude and other complex factors dictated by standard avionics, but space flight relied on a completely different set of principles. It called for the maximum manipulation of gravity, trajectory, relative velocities and plain old luck. Despite all the computer-calculated course programming, both men learned quickly that successfully piloting the TAV through space was more by God than by grace. Skill had almost nothing to do with it.

  Brigid, Grant and Kane all regarded Philboyd with expressions of incredulity stamped on their faces. After a lengthy, awkward silence, Brigid demanded, "Have you calculated how long it would take to get to Mars by Manta, even at its maximum speed?"

  Philboyd shook his head contritely. "No, I haven't," he admitted. "But it shouldn't be hard to figure out if you—"

  Brigid cut him off by announcing, "I already figured it out, Brewster, several weeks ago. First of all, the best time to travel to Mars from Earth is when the two planets are in conjunction, at their maximum distance from each other on opposite sides of the Sun. That makes Earth about six hundred million kilometers away from Mars at the best of times and another conjunction isn't due for several months.

  "At the optimum launch window, with the Mantas using maximum thrust when they're out beyond the gravity well of Earth, the minimum transit time to Mars could be accomplished in about one hundred and ninety-five days. Six and a half months trapped in an area not much bigger than this table is asking a little much of anybody, wouldn't you say?"

  "And even if Lakesh was still alive when we finally got there," Grant pointed out, "I imagine our muscles would be too atrophied to be much good in staging a rescue attempt." When construction of the secret Cydonia One Compound on Mars began in late 1990, Earth-normal gravity was maintained in the colony by using a network of synthetic-gravity generators that created a field using a controlled stream of gravitons. At first the intention was to terraform the Red Planet, but as time passed, it was found to be more convenient and expeditious to adapt the descendants of the first Martian colonists to the planet's environment. Thus was born the first generation of the gnome-like transadapts.

  "And God only knows what the cockpits would smell like:' said Kane. When Brigid cast him a cold look he added lowly, "But I guess that's of a secondary concern?' Capable of existing in very cold temperatures and drawing oxygen from a thinner atmosphere, the load- bearing function of the spine and legs was altered, with the legs becoming a second pair of arms. The transadapts were engineered to have a relatively short life span, with few living past thirty years of age. The transadapts were developed in secret in the Cydonia Compound. The raw genetic material used to create the first generation was provided by people taken forcibly from Earth—an ugly twist on the UFO abduction myths.

  Philboyd smiled nevertheless. "Tell me what you need from me, and I'll see what I can get together." "Could be that Mac and his people took care of them for you:' Philboyd ventured.

  "You're not going," Kane said in a tone that brooked no debate.

  "To get yourself killed, maybe," Grant declared. "No, you're staying put. You've already been a big help getting the systems back up and running and that's of equal priority."

  "But to actually visit Mars," Philboyd protested. "It was one of the great unrealized dreams of scientists like myself."

  "And it became a realized nightmare for a lot of other people," Kane said darkly. "We can't afford to act as your tour guide, Brewster. The three of us have been there before, we have an idea of the lay of the land and what to expect."

  "Sindri and his transadapts?" Philboyd asked.

  "I'm pretty certain Sindri is still the guest of Baron Sharpe," answered Brigid. "As for the transadapts..." She trailed off, glancing toward Kane and Grant with quizzical eyes. They could only shrug, indicating her guess would be as good as theirs.

  "Wouldn't that be nice," Grant commented wistfully, pushing back his chair and standing up. "Let's meet in the operations center at 1600 hours."

  Blinking at him owlishly in a way reminiscent of Lakesh before his restoration, Philboyd stammered, "But I thought—why did you want me to—? I mean, this is a great opportunity for me." Grant left the dining hall, but he didn't go to his quarters. He knew he should have been exhausted, both from the long trip and the tension born of learning about Lakesh's abduction, but he realized he wouldn't be able to force himself to sleep. Although he had trained himself to catch sleep whenever he could so as to build up a backlog in case he had to go for long periods without it, tonight he knew he could barely nap, much less drift off into deep slumber.

  Entering the dispensary, he looked around for De- Fore. When he didn't see her, he soft-footed into the adjoining room to Domi's bedside. Taking her tiny hand in his, he studied the girl's blank, pale face.

  His mind raced like an out-of-control engine, thoughts, memories and images colliding within the walls of his skull. He had no trouble mentally conjuring up his first glimpse of her on a muddy street in Cobaltville's Tartarus Pits. Her hair was held away from her piquant, hollow-cheeked face by a length of satiny cloth. She wore a T-shirt and a pair of red, high- cut shorts that showed off her pale, gamin-slim legs.

  Grant easily recalled how a minute after his first sight of her, she had led him, Kane and a Magistrate named Boon into an ambush. Domi had been acting under duress, put in fear of her life by the Pit boss, Guana Teague. At her first opportunity, she redeemed her treachery by cutting Teague's throat.

  Grant was having the life crushed out of him beneath Teague's three-hundred-plus pounds of flab when Domi expertly slit his throat. After that, Domi attached herself to Grant, viewing him as a gallant black knight who had rescued her from the shackles of Guana Teague's slavery, even though in reality, quite the reverse was true. She always carried the hunting knife with the nine-inch serrated blade, which had done the deed, as something of a memento.

  For more than a year Domi had made it fiercely clear that Grant was hers and hers alone, despite the fact he fought hard to make sure there was nothing but friendship between him and the girl, but he feared it was a fight he would eventually lose. He had no idea of Domi's true age; he was pushing forty and felt twice as old. Still, he could never deny he was attracted to her youthfulness, her high spirits and her uninhibited sexuality.

  But more than that, Domi had proved herself to be a tough and resourceful, if not altogether stable partner. At one point she had saved his, Brigid's and Kane's lives when the Cerberus mat-trans unit was sabotaged.

 

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