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  “Because as of this moment they are reinforcing the superstructure of that collider to withstand over two-hundred Tera-Electron-Volts, or six times as much electricity, Atol.” Whitaker shook his head. “Jesus, man, you saw what happened when they turned the collider up to handle the power of just one nuclear plant. Right now they’re insulating that thing so that it can handle the full power of six nuclear plants. And what do you think they’re going to do when they’re finished with this upgrade? Sit back and open a few bottles of champagne? Or does it occur to you that they’re going to turn that thing up to full power, reopen that gateway, and see what happens? Atol, those fools are going to keep that portal open long enough to let a damn demonic army loose in our backyard. And that, gentlemen, is the surprise the president doesn’t want to be woke up with at two in the morning. So this is a military situation, Atol. And a damn serious one.”

  Admiral Waters’ eyes narrowed. “What makes you so certain that this is a living creature and not an illusion?”

  “We’re living creatures,” said Whitaker. “It’s arrogant to presume that an alternate dimension wouldn’t also have living creatures. And something did snatch those people out of that room. Only, that bastard isn’t human, by god.” He fiercely slapped the photograph. “That’s a demon.”

  “Are we talking about Hell here?” grumbled Jackman. “Now, don’t get me wrong. I believe in Hell and I believe in God. Anybody who’s been neck deep in combat believes in Hell and, as they say, there’s no atheists in foxholes. But is that what we’re getting at? That these fools have opened a gateway to Hell and we, meaning the rest of the sane universe, have to find a way to stop them from opening it again?”

  Whitaker motioned at nothing, “For brevity, we’ll call it Hell. I don’t know what else to call it. But whatever it is, the president has decided that it is unfriendly and he wants us to do something to insure this doesn’t happen again.”

  “So why don’t we just destroy it?” suggested Jackman again and with more emphasis. “We can definitely put it out of commission. But, like I said, this supercollider ain’t the only game in town. A dozen countries are building copies of this thing. And if these fools in Geneva can open a highway to Hell, so can everybody else. The only solution that I see is that we make this world the one place Hell don’t wanna’ visit. We teach ’em a lesson.” He stared. “Let’s open this portal again and send through the biggest nuclear warhead we’ve got. I’m talking one-hundred megatons of our own kind of Hell. It might not kill all of them, but it’ll sure brighten up their day. In fact, why don’t we send through every nuke we’ve got? That’d sure hang up a ‘No Trespassing’ sign.”

  “There’s a hole in your logic,” said Admiral Waters. “These creatures might not even be affected by radiation, Atol, so we have no reason to believe they’d be deterred at all. And we cannot go around blowing up every supercollider in the world. If nothing else, it would precipitate World War III. And, frankly, I’m not sure which would be worse—to let an army of those things through that portal or a global-thermal nuclear war. Either way, it’s a party I think we’d all rather skip.”

  Jackman scowled for a long time before he rumbled, “I hate to admit it, but Jason has a point. Fighting these creatures with nukes on their own ground or our ground could be a disastrous tactical move. For all we know they eat radiation for breakfast, so using a nuke is a last-stand move—a Samson Option. If we’re all gonna die, let’s make sure we take all of them with us. On the downside, if something as small as a platoon of those creatures gets through that portal, we’ll have to mobilize a battalion of Rangers and fight them with conventional weapons. Sadly, I don’t think we have a conventional weapon that would even wound one of them. That bastard looks pretty tough to me. I mean, I doubt that it would survive a Javelin. But anything less than an antitank gun will probably just piss it off.”

  Whitaker agreed, “I think we’re all on the same page, Atol. Fighting these creatures with nuclear weapons is not the best option. Hell, for all we know, they have nuclear weapons, too. And for the love of God we don’t want to get involved in an interdimensional nuclear war. So if they get through that gateway and into our world in sufficient numbers, we’ll have to fight them hand-to-hand.”

  Admiral Waters reached out and slowly rotated the photograph without lifting it from the table. “Doctor,” he began, “this … creature … is encapsulated by the ATLAS cylinder. Is that correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And what are the exact dimensions of the ATLAS?”

  “The ATLAS detector weighs seven-thousand-eight-hundred tons. It is seventy feet in height and one-hundred-forty-seven feet in length—approximately half the length of a football field, so it is quite large. It has a magnetic strength of about forty thousand times more powerful than the Earth’s own electromagnetic field and measures eight hundred million particle collisions per second.” Mansfield paused, as if uncertain. “But I digress. Why did you wish to know the size of the ATLAS detector?”

  Admiral Waters frowned over the photograph as he asked, “In proportion to the size of the ATLAS detector, what is the size of this creature?”

  “Ah,” Mansfield nodded, “yes, we have those calculations.” He strolled down the table. “From its precise distance to internal cameras and its exact position to measured components inside the ATLAS we estimate the creature to be approximately eight feet tall. We can only speculate as to its weight. But if its weight is proportional to its height and width, then it weighs at least a thousand pounds.” A pause. “Or more.”

  Jackman muttered, “That’s the size of a grizzly.”

  “And these,” Admiral Waters pointed, “are claws?”

  “Yes, admiral. We measure the claws to be six inches in length.”

  “And this creature is made of flesh and bone?”

  “We have concluded that it’s made of what qualifies as flesh and bone in its dimension, admiral. But, in our dimension, it would qualify as some kind of hybrid matter and antimatter so, frankly, I’m not sure that we could even touch it with a weapon and survive the resulting explosion.” Mansfield glanced at the image. “Unless …”

  Whitaker raised his chin. “Now is not the time to be conservative, doctor. Please speak your mind.”

  “Well,” Mansfield grimaced, “the whole truth is that we don’t know that much about neutrinos, which are stupidly called ‘the God Particle’ by fools who know even less. In truth, the men who originally discovered a neutrino named it something quite the opposite because it was so difficult to isolate. But for the sake of decorum and to facilitate civilized discourse it was tastefully renamed ‘the God Particle.’ And it’s just another theory that neutrinos have any electrical charge at all—positive or negative.” He cleared his throat once more. “What I’m saying, gentlemen, is that this creature might be electrically neutral. And if that’s the case then it would have no trouble emerging from the portal into our world fully intact. It would be able to interact with any positively charged matter. In other words, it would be just another insanely murderous, demonic creature running loose among us.”

  “Another insanely murderous creature?” queried Whitaker.

  “Besides one of us,” answered the doctor.

  “Theory is all we’ve got?” asked Jackman. “You don’t know anything for certain about this thing?”

  “We know it is not an illusion, general, but we do not know the electronic nature of the neutrinos that comprise it. As I’ve said, we’ve never measured the electrical registration of a neutrino. Some still insist they don’t even exist. But I, for one, believe that they do and they’re so small you could fit billions of them into a single electron, as I stated earlier. However,” he raised a hand, “if this creature were to pass through that dimensional portal, then there is no reason to doubt that it would retain much of its original dimensions by absorbing the neutrinos of this dimension.”

/>   Admiral Waters asked, “Do these creatures have the power to assume any shape they wish in our universe or would it retain its relative form?”

  Mansfield lifted both hands. “That is a very difficult question, admiral, and we have no answer. But we suspect that neutrinos gather on the basis of the mass of atoms, and Einstein’s theory of relativity mandates that atoms comprise all elements specific to their universe. But to more accurately answer your question, I would say that in our universe it would be proportionate in size to a grizzly bear or a gigantic gorilla. And that does not even take into consideration its molecular density, which would determine its main strength. It is my personal belief that because of its molecular density this creature would possess the physical strength of a hundred men.”

  “What about its intelligence?” asked Jackman. “Can they—wait a minute. Let me put it this way. Do they work as a cohesive unit? Do they think strategically? Do they plan tactically? Or do they just drop like baboons from trees and start railing on you?”

  “Baboons don’t live in trees, Atol,” muttered the admiral.

  Turning his head with a sullen gaze, Jackman released a cloud of smoke. “I actually don’t give a hoot in hell where baboons live, Jason. I want to know if this thing thinks like a soldier or an animal.”

  Mansfield sighed as he shook his head. “Gentlemen, any hopes you might entertain that these are just dumb animals are useless. We know for a fact that these creatures possess a very high degree of intelligence. In fact, they’re probably more intelligent than we are. And just as we know that they inhabit their dimension, they also know that we inhabit our dimension. And I would suggest that they know our strengths as well as our weaknesses, which is more than we know about them.”

  Jackman snatched the cigar from his mouth, “Just how in the hell do these bastards know all that about us when we barely know they’re out there?”

  Mansfield spoke up with supreme certainty, “During that brief interaction between dimensions, one of our detectors received what can only be described as a mathematical code sent to us from their dimension.”

  Everyone stared until Jackman exclaimed, “A code for what?”

  “A code for the means to make the Large Hadron Supercollider more powerful,” Mansfield answered. “Whatever inhabits that dimension is attempting to help us build a stronger supercollider so that we can keep the portal open for a longer time.”

  “I’ll be damned,” muttered Jackson, grinding his cigar. “These fools are messing with powers they don’t understand and they’re leaving the door wide open. They are gonna get us all killed.”

  “Not if we come up with a plan to shut this door forever,” Whitaker counseled. “Be advised, the Large Hadron Collider is the most powerful collider in the world. Nothing else comes close. And, using the total output of energy from a nuclear plant, they can only keep that portal open for a tenth of a second. But if these maniacs can somehow fix that with six nuclear reactors and a gazillion Tera-Electron-Volts, or whatever they’re called, then we might be looking at Armageddon a little early. So what we are tasked with doing, gentlemen, is making sure that nothing from this hell even wants to come through that gateway, which would cover things nicely.”

  A somber aura silenced the room.

  “Well,” said Jackman finally, “I got no love for the place so I got no objections to any kind of doable plan. But what kind of plan we talking?”

  Whitaker folded his fingers in a pyramid as he stated, “The task, Atol, is to make our dimension off limits to them. We prepare our infantry, and if these things begin invading our space, we stomp their guts out.”

  Jackman blanched. “Jesus, Whitaker, stomping the guts out of a ten-foot-tall alien ain’t a damn plan! That’s what you do when your plan goes to shit! We need to hit ’em from a distance.” He paused. “Some serious distance!”

  “Then we go to our most reluctant option and send through a one-hundred-megaton warhead and hope for the best,” said Whitaker. “I seriously don’t give a damn how you get the job done, gentlemen, and neither does the president. He just wants us to shut this door.” His eyes widened. “Forever.”

  “Yes,” said Mansfield, “the president does not care how the mission is accomplished. He simply wants it accomplished.”

  “What about another collider opening this gateway?” Jackman asked. “We don’t even control this Hadron Supercollider. And this thing is in Switzerland, for God’s sake. If we can’t control some gizmo in Switzerland, we need to get a new job. Is this the real reason why they built this thing? So they could contact demons or whatever these things are?”

  Whitaker shrugged, “Well, Atol, a lot of us do suspect that that was the real reason for why they built it in the first place. It’s a conspiracy that goes back a hundred years to an occult movement that occurred in the late 1800s and is probably still around. Personally I think of it like the Tower of Babel. Man wanted to reach the other side and so they began building that tower. Then God confused their language and they all went their own way and the tower was never finished. But one thing has always nagged me about that old story, not that I’m unduly prone to metaphysical musings.”

  Jackman grunted, “So what bothers you?” He stared a long moment. “Metaphysically, that is.”

  Whitaker continued, “What bothers me, Atol, is that if there wasn’t genuinely another dimension that was hostile to the human race, and none of those ancient guys stood a chance at reaching it, anyway, then why did God go to the trouble of stopping them?” He stared without blinking. “I’m not a religious man by nature. But a photograph like this can make you come to Jesus real quick.

  “In the old days, those fools at Babel were obviously onto something just like these scientists at CERN. I mean, CERN might not be there yet, but my guess is that they’re getting damn close to opening a portal to this dimension and keeping it open. And if they succeed, disappearing in a nuclear holocaust will be the least of our worries. At worst, these creatures have some insidious plan to use this planet for a purpose. Then we’ll have entire truckloads of dark energy and demons and God-only-knows what kind Hell-born creatures or homicidal, fallen angels loose in our peace-loving world to enslave mankind. And I don’t need to tell you gentlemen that that battle may very well be the bloodiest battle this world has ever seen. And we won’t be counting empty saddles as we fall back because there won’t be any falling back. There won’t be any rules. There won’t be any retreating or surrender or ceasefires or internment camps because nobody will be taking prisoners. It will be kill or be killed from the get-go and I bet you that it’ll be so murderous that it’ll be fought and finished in a single day.” He shook his head. “Jesus, man, we’re supposed to be the emergency team that prevents something as screwed up as this from becoming an emergency in the first place. Why do you think I have to live down here? I probably handle ten godforsaken catastrophes a day but I have never faced a situation like this.”

  For a time no one spoke and then Whitaker added, “I’ll tell you what the president suggested to me. And, as we all know, the president is a brilliant man. He’s built a thousand Towers of Babel. That’s all he did before he was elected president, so he knows his business. And he told me that the surest way to shut down a deal is to lay down conditions that you know the other side will never agree to and, then, don’t compromise on a single penny. That’s how you end a negotiation. That’s how you kill a deal.”

  “I agree,” said Jackman. “But this ain’t no building and it sure as hell ain’t no negotiation. That thing came and went as it damn well pleased and took seven of those guys with it. And if they’re not dead, I bet they wish they were.” He turned a frown to the blank computer screen. “How do you stop something that can appear and disappear at will? And take stuff that don’t belong to it while it’s here?”

  Admiral Waters contributed, “The first rule of war is to know your enemy. But, clearly, we d
on’t know this enemy. So before we go launching nuclear warheads I suggest we plant some people inside CERN to collect information on what, exactly, we’re dealing with. Then we obliterate the collider. But if that’s not possible, and as a definite last resort, we send every nuclear warhead we’ve got through that portal and hope that wins the day.” He paused. “The delicate stage of the operation will be to strategically place people in that Observation Room where we really need them. I don’t believe it would serve much purpose to replace one of seven thousand electricians. We have to have someone in the brains of this operation.”

  Mansfield stated, “Under your president’s direction I have already placed two of your best CIA computer people in the Observation Room, admiral. They have been in orientation for one week.”

  Whitaker’s brow hardened. “When were you going to tell us about this?”

  “I also spoke with the president directly after this particular incident,” Mansfield replied smoothly. “He told me to immediately put someone inside CERN to replace the lost physicists. I obeyed his orders. Just as I am obeying his orders in this moment. I was told to inform you, Mr. Whitaker, of this asset directly before this meeting.” He glanced, apparently unaffected by the hostility. “I am still Chief of Human Resources at CERN because no one is aware that my allegiance has been compromised. Director-General Francois does not know I am no longer dedicated to opening a dimensional portal when we have no idea what dangers might emerge. If he did, I would certainly not be alive.”

  “Tell me something,” stated Jackman. “Why did an apparently intelligent man like you join a fool project like this in the first place?”

  “Because CERN was, up to that point, just another electromagnetic machine surrounded by a hundred thousand theories,” said the doctor. “And, to be honest, I needed the job and the money. The signing bonus made the down payment on my house. But now the proven existence of an infinitely hostile army from another dimension is no longer an empty theory. It is a very clear and present danger.” Mansfield shrugged, “I know that what they have touched upon at CERN is a trillion times more dangerous than the Manhattan Project, which began MAD—Mutually Assured Destruction. Rather, what they are doing at CERN might very well be the end of this galaxy, so self-preservation is my motive. And for your information, General Jackman, I am not the first physicist to harbor grave concerns over the destruction this device can deliver to our world. Our past director-general committed suicide after he realized that the supercollider had the power to expose this world to forces that might very well destroy mankind.”