PROJECT CALLIOPE

PROLOGUE

Dr. Morgan Talbot was grateful that his personal phobias didn’t include claustrophobia. His agoraphobia and his acrophobia had crippled him both physically and emotionally many times in his life and had even cost him several of his dreams. N.A.S.A. wasn’t interested in astronauts with a fear of heights and it was almost impossible to do field research if you were afraid to go into the field.

Fortunately for Talbot, the hunt for the elusive neutrino was a pursuit that took scientists deep underground rather than into wide open spaces or even above them. Talbot’s shared office sat some five miles beneath the earth’s crust, about ten meters from a 50 thousand gallon tank of heavy water wherein neutrinos were being captured even as he tidied up his desk for the weekend. The project he was part of was situated at the bottom of one of the deepest mineshafts in the world, whose entrance was in the rocky Canadian Shield, just outside of Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

He whistled slightly off key rendition of the Rolling Stones “Brown Sugar” as he worked, occasionally bursting into actual song when dimly remembered words popped into his head. Friday nights in Sudbury were not usually all that exciting, but for a change, he had plans. It wasn’t unusual for him to be the last to leave on a Friday night and while he was later than usual leaving this evening, he’d left himself enough time to swing around his apartment, shower and change before his date.

A date. An actual date with an actual girl. Well a woman, to be more precise. At the tender age of forty-seven, Talbot had long since passed the time when he could reasonably expect to date girls. This woman wasn’t in the same league as the nubile students that teemed out of every classroom at the University of Toronto where he taught advanced particle physics, but then again, neither was he. Still, she was attractive and actually seemed interested in him. More interested than anyone had been in a long time. Television shows and movies always seemed to place unbelievably gorgeous young students in the beds of university and college professors. Obviously, very few Hollywood screenwriters had spent any amount of time in the pursuit of higher learning.

His briefcase was practically empty as he closed it. Thanks to the internet, most of his “paperwork” was now electronically filed and disseminated, leaving him only his personally paper notes and a tablet style laptop to lug about. In a way, he missed the tactile sensation of handing someone a sheaf of papers containing his findings or pulling a paper copy out of a cabinet and leafing through its contents. He didn’t miss retyping entire papers from scratch because he’d lost them or because he’d discovered a mistake that invalidated a large section of the work. The space that the now defunct filing cabinet had once occupied was now filled with a large rubber plant he’d named R.D. R. stood for Ralph. D. for Dibney. Ralph Dibney was the “secret” identity of an obscure comic book hero named Elongated Man. Elongated Man could stretch. That was his sole power. Stretching, like rubber. Talbot thought the appellation apt, but even among the terminally bookish crowd of scientists on the neutrino project, his plant’s name was considered somewhat geeky.

Shutting the lights down as he closed the door, Talbot noticed that someone was walking out of the elevator. For someone to be entering the facility this late wasn’t terribly unusual, but as a supervisor on the project, he was always made aware of unscheduled comings and goings. If someone was entering the facility without him knowing about it, something strange was going on. Strange usually meant that he would end up spending a lot of extra time in the hole. Normally, that wouldn’t be a problem, but with his first date in months scheduled for seven o’clock tonight, this particular bit of strangeness was most unwelcome.

Whoever it was that had come down to the project in the late afternoon on a Friday certainly seemed to know where they were going. Both men headed straight for the director’s office. Of course, at this hour on a Friday they found the office locked and empty. To Talbot’s astonishment, they had a key. Even he didn’t have a key to the director’s office. Both men entered the office and then closed the door behind them. No light went on.

Damned peculiar.

He tried to decide what he should do. As a supervisor, he had the authority to call security, but he’d look pretty silly if the security boys came all the way down to the project only to confront a couple of janitors. Best if he have a look himself. Paul Smythe, the director, wouldn’t want him upsetting the whole facility for nothing, particularly on a Friday afternoon as everyone was leaving for the weekend. He’d just pop over to Paul’s office, stick his head in the door and make sure everything was okay.

The door to Paul Smythe’s office had always had a tendency to swell in the humid underground conditions. It often closed without latching, causing Smythe to joke that he had an open door policy whether he wanted it or not. Sure enough, the door hadn’t latched and Talbot was able to pull it open without turning the handle. It swung open on silent, industrial hinges.

The office was empty. Not a soul. Talbot was certain that the two men had come into the office. With only Paul’s office and a maintenance closet right next to it in the corridor, there was nowhere else that they could have gone. It wouldn’t make sense for the two men to get off the elevator and proceed into a maintenance closet. Would it? From his office he didn’t have a clear view of the door to the director’s office and had only assumed that the two had gone in to the office. Could they actually have gone into the maintenance closet? Why would they do that? If they were janitorial staff, they would need supplies from it, but it wasn’t large enough to accommodate two grown men inside it. With a shrug, he decided he’d check it out.

The maintenance closet was locked. He might not have rated keys to the director’s office, but he did have a key to this door. Except his keys were in his office. Damn.

Seconds later, he was fishing his keys out of his coat pocket which he hadn’t thought to remove from its hook behind the door. As he reached in for his keyring, the elevator doors opened once again, revealing three more people entering the underground facility. This was getting stranger by the moment.

This time he watched the three closely as they crossed from the elevator to the corridor that he’d just come from. Sure enough, they headed straight for the maintenance closet. They too had a key. All three piled into a room no bigger than an old style phonebooth and closed the door behind them.

Damned peculiar.

Had the situation not been so strange, and had he not been in such a hurry to leave, Talbot might have done the wise thing and called security. Instead, his curiosity got the better of him. He grabbed his keys and strode purposefully over to the door. Behind this door there were five people who were causing him to be late for a very important social engagement. His key opened the door, just as it always did. Unlike every other door in the place, this one opened out rather than in, he supposed that was due to the small space within. The tiny closet was empty save for a shelf unit holding cleaning supplies, a bucket on wheels, a pushbroom and an industrial style mop. Nothing else. No people.

Five people had gone into this tiny room. Now, it was empty and he’d been watching the door the whole time. This made no sense.

Talbot stepped into the room. The door swung closed, without latching, behind him, but he paid it no mind. Thinking that there might be a door hidden somewhere, he began pushing on the walls. Nothing.

Damned peculiar.

Obviously, he wasn’t going to solve this mystery on his own. Time to call security. As foolish as it might make him look and as late is it would make him for his date, he had little choice at this point. Five unidentified people were inside a facility that housed some very sensitive and valuable equipment. That could not go uninvestigated.

Force of habit made him pull rather than push the door, latching it firmly.

With a quiet hiss and a gentle jolt, the floor dropped out from under him.