Halon-Seven Read Free Page A

moisture of his perspiration, the surge of power in the air was unmistakable.
    His eyes went wide as the chunk of ore rose from the bottom of the cube and floated freely in mid air. It took up a stationary location, vertically and horizontally, at the exact center of the cube. Then, after floating for several seconds without movement, the stone began to turn slowly on its axis.
    The stone spun slowly for almost a minute before Pellagrin realized he’d been holding his breath. Intelligence reports hadn’t detailed this phenomenon. He was unprepared for a reaction of this nature. He’d never seen anything like it. After another minute he realized the size of the stone had changed. Somehow the chunk of ore was growing smaller.
    His mind swam as he considered the possibilities. Was the density of the object increasing? But as he looked closer, he realized that an ultra fine particulate matter was beginning to spread inside the cube. It seemed the stone was somehow shedding its outer layers in the form of microscopic granules that floated freely inside the cube. They quickly began to gather in small foggy clouds.
    As a scientist, Pellagrin found this amazing. He’d never read of such a thing. A hundred questions collided in his mind. What was the strange ore? Why was it reacting to electric current in such a way? If it reacted to the present power flow in this way, how might it react to current of different voltage—or a different amperage? He’d come here to use the Russian’s Fire Star because intelligence suggested the device could power his platform. Reportedly, Fire Star was capable of generating massive amounts of electricity by amplifying a relatively small current when it was fed into the device. But what Pellagrin was seeing was beyond anything he’d ever imagined. Whatever the Russians developed defied explanation.
    A tapping sound drew Pellagrin’s attention away from the contents of the cube. The sound was coming from the gauge mounted on the back of the cabinet. Rapid tapping was made by the gauge’s display needle slamming against the right most wall of the device’s display, well beyond its maximum value. The power level had surpassed the max reading so quickly that the needle slammed against the end of the display area so hard that it bounced several times before coming to rest solidly against the display’s wall. Whatever was happening here, the device truly was generating a massive level of energy. This was encouraging! His gamble might pay off. If anything was able to generate the power level needed to fuel his platform, surely it was Fire Star.
    Pellagrin’s eyes jumped back to the cube just as the last layers of dust separated from the object that had been buried at the core of the stone. While whisking clouds of fine particulate matter continued to circulate inside the cube, at its absolute center now floated a perfectly spherical black orb about the size of a child’s marble. It was so perfectly shaped and uniform in color that Pellagrin found it impossible to tell whether the object was spinning as the stone had been.
    Pellagrin wanted to observe the process further. He wanted to take notes. He wanted to understand what he was seeing. In all his years of scientific endeavor, he’d never conceived of such a thing. Where in the hell had the Russians found this? Or worse—had they built it?
    The thought of spending time watching the strange orb snapped him back to the present. His concerns jumping back to the soldiers still working to breach his fortified position. They could detonate the TNT at any moment. In fact, why hadn’t they done it already? He spun around to assess the soldiers’ progress.
    To his horror, he found that a soldier had just attached a second, three-stick bundle of TNT to the opposite corner of the glass wall. No wonder they hadn’t stuck their first bundle to the center of the glass—the crazy bastards were going to detonate six sticks simultaneously! That much TNT