Power Play Read Free Page B

campus, but once inside, finding the laboratory where the MHD work was being done had been a bitch. None of the students ambling through the hallways seemed to have ever heard of the MHD lab. Jake had to contact campus security on his cell phone and even the gravel-voiced officer who answered him seemed unsure of the laboratory’s location.
    “They moved it last year, after the explosion,” the security officer said.
    “Explosion?” Jake yelped.
    “Yeah … wait a minute, I’m scrolling through on the computer. Yeah. Here it is. EEA-105 and 106. That’s in the annex of the electrical engineering building. You go down to the building’s basement and out the tunnel that connects to the annex.”
    After a few wrong turns in the basement, Jake finally stood at the double doors marked 105/106 and waited for the red light to stop flashing. The tunnel was narrow; insulated pipes ran along its low ceiling. Jake could hear water gurgling along one of them.
    Dr. Cardwell had told him to look into the MHD work.
    “If you want a good science-based issue for Tomlinson’s campaign,” Lev had insisted in his mild, soft-voiced way, “MHD power generation is just what you’re looking for.”
    A sudden roar erupted from the other side of the closed doors, like a rocket taking off. Jake flinched with surprise. The doors rattled, and he could feel the floor vibrating beneath his feet.
    Just as suddenly as it started, the howling roar cut off. And the red light went dark.
    Jake rapped on the door. Nothing happened. He knocked again, harder. The door suddenly swung open and a sour-faced man frowned at him.
    “Whattaya want?”
    The guy was about Jake’s height, wiry build, thinning sandy hair. He wore a checkered tan work shirt, cut-off jeans, and moccasins without socks. His light brown eyes looked pugnacious, almost angry.
    “I’m Jake Ross,” he explained. “I’m here to see Tim Younger.”
    “That’s me.” Younger did not move from the doorway. Past his shoulder Jake glimpsed a couple of technicians fussing over what looked like a pile of copper plates. A strange, almost sweet odor wafted from the lab; it was somehow familiar, yet Jake couldn’t place it.
    “Professor Sinclair told me that you’re running the MHD experiments.”
    Younger’s scowl eased a little. “The prof sent you over?”
    “Yes. I want to—”
    “Hey, Jake! What’re you doing down here?”
    Jake recognized Bob Rogers from the party at Tomlinson’s house, several days earlier. He came up beside Younger.
    “Come on in,” Rogers said, pulling the door open wider. To Younger, he said, “It’s okay, Tim. This is Jake Ross. He’s in the astronomy department.”
    Younger stepped back, still looking slightly suspicious. “I thought you might’ve been another one of those pissants from the safety office.”
    “No,” Jake said, stepping into the laboratory. “I’m an astronomer.”
    “So what are you doing down here?” Younger asked, almost truculently. “We don’t do any stargazing here.” His voice had an adenoidal twang and an accent that sounded to Jake like Boston or maybe Down Maine.
    “I came to see this MHD generator you’re working on,” Jake said.
    Rogers smiled boyishly and gestured. “Well, there it is.”
    The MHD generator was hardly impressive. The man-tall stack of copper plates stood in the middle of the lab. A squat cone-shaped contraption that looked to Jake a little like a rocket nozzle was stuck into one side of the pile and a stainless steel tube ran out from the other. A tangle of metal pipes and plastic tubing coiled all over the apparatus like the arms of an octopus. Thick wiring festooned the whole assembly, hanging from the ceiling, snaking along the floor. Jake recognized a big green tank of liquid oxygen off in one corner, a thin whiff of white vapor seeping from its top. Beside it stood what looked like a coal hopper, blackened with soot. That’s the smell, Jake realized: burning coal.
    “That’s