Dead Sea

“Just understand one thing,” he told them. “Matter and anti-matter do not mix. When a particle meets its anti-particle, well, they tend to annihilate each other completely, knocking each other out of existence. And as they do so, immense amounts of pure energy are released.”

“An anti-matter bomb,” Cushing said.

“Exactly. If our explosion rips this membrane, then matter and anti-matter will collide in an explosion that will be devastating beyond comprehension.”

He laid it out for them, how a colleague of his once said that an anti-matter bomb would make a 50 megaton hydrogen bomb – about ten-thousand times as powerful as what was dropped on Hiroshima – look like a firecracker. A nuclear bomb, Greenberg said, only converts a small fraction of warhead mass to energy, but matter/anti-matter annihilation converts almost total mass-to-energy.

“Something like that… well, it could boil this sea to steam.” He shook his head. “You would need to pass through the vortex before I fired it.”

“It’ll be dark in about six hours,” Elizabeth announced.

“There’s no way we could arm that ship and then get ourselves to the vortex in time,” George said.

Greenberg smiled. “Not unless you had a speedboat.”

27

Cushing didn’t like any of it and he said so.

None of them liked Greenberg’s plan. What they wanted to do was quit wasting time and get on that speedboat of his and get out to the Sea of Mists and see what the compass showed them. The idea of letting Greenberg commit suicide for the sake of science was just unthinkable. Even the instinct to save their own asses wasn’t enough to make them jump at it, to leave this poor old man at the mercy of that… horror.

Even Elizabeth didn’t like it. “Please Mr. Greenberg… this is all ridiculous. You have to come with us.”

But Greenberg would not hear of it. “If there was a chance for me, dear, I would do just that. But… well I rather doubt this body has more than a few days left in it at most. I’m sick and you all know that. I’m terribly sick. Look at it this way,” he said sincerely. “I’m staying either way. If George can rig this bomb of his, then my death will be quick and painless, I won’t suffer anymore. Given that the alternative is the Fog-Devil turning my bones to liquid and my brain to soup, I’d say it’s my best chance. My death will be quick and maybe we can cancel that creature out of existence at the same time.”

After that, there was no more arguing.

“Let’s do this,” Menhaus said.

28

“Jesus,” Menhaus said when he saw the speedboat, “it’s a fucking cigarette boat. A racing boat.”

George thought it looked like a rocket. It was long and red and streamlined. It had to be nearly thirty feet in length and most of that was its nose which looked like a missile. Menhaus was real excited about it. When they got the lifeboat up to it, he jumped into the cigarette boat’s cockpit without hesitation.

“Drug runners use these babies in the Florida Keys,” he told them. “They can outrun Coast Guard cutters. I bet this baby can break a hundred miles an hour at full bore.”

Cushing just had one question as he looked at all the gauges in their anodized trim rings on the dash: “Can you pilot it? Can anybody pilot this sled?”

Menhaus was nodding. “Yeah, I think so. I’ve been on a few of these as a passenger, but, yeah, I can can make her go.”

George was thinking that the boat looked to be in nice shape. No encrustation or weeds as yet. It looked pretty new… save for a bloodstain on one of the white leather seats that he did not want to speculate on.

Menhaus was popping hatches, checking things out inside.

“You looking for drugs?” Cushing asked him.

“No… Jesus, look at that engine. A five-hundred horse Mercruiser coupled to a Bravo. Damn.”

Menhaus explained that when you raced these boats, you generally did it with three people. One guy doing the steering, another on the throttle, and another doing the navigating. He said it had a V-hull which made it plane over the top of the water.

“Okay,” he said, once the others were aboard and their equipment was loaded. He turned the key and punched the starter. The boat shook, sounded like it would never go, then the engines kicked in and all that power beneath them was thrumming.

“You feel up to playing navigator?” he asked Greenberg.

Greenberg honestly didn’t look up to playing anything, but he nodded.

When everyone was in their seats, they cast off the lifeboat and Menhaus took them through the weeds and fog. In ten minutes they were out into open water.

And their destiny.

29

Getting the satchel charges was child’s play.