Artemis Fowl_ The Opal Deception - Eoin Colfer [79]
Artemis smiled to himself. It seemed as though good was a more powerful motivation than bad. Who would have thought it?
The rest of the group gathered around the central holographic projector. Holly had parked the shuttle on the floor of a secondary chute close to the surface.
Butler was forced to squat on his hunkers in the fairy-sized ship.
“Well, Artemis, what did you find out?” asked the bodyguard, trying to fold his massive arms without knocking someone smaller over.
Artemis activated a holographic animation, which rotated slowly in the middle of the chamber. The animation showed a cutaway of the earth from crust to core. Artemis switched on a laser pointer and began his briefing.
“As you can see, there is a distance of approximately one thousand eight hundred miles from the earth’s surface to the outer core.”
The projection’s liquid outer core swirled and bubbled with molten magma.
“However, mankind has never managed to penetrate more than nine miles through the crust. To go any deeper would necessitate the use of nuclear warheads, or huge amounts of dynamite. An explosion of this magnitude could possibly generate huge shifts in the earth’s tectonic plates, causing earthquakes and tidal waves around the globe.”
Mulch was, as usual, eating something. Nobody knew what, as he had emptied the food locker over an hour since. Nobody really wanted to ask either. “That doesn’t sound like a good thing.”
“No, it isn’t,” agreed Artemis. “Which is why the ironclad probe theory has never been put into practice, until now. The original idea belongs to a New Zealander, Professor David Stevenson. It is quite brilliant, actually, if impractical. Encase a reinforced probe in a hundred million tons of molten iron. The iron will sink through the crack generated by the explosive, even closing the crack behind it. Within a week the probe will reach the core. The iron will be consumed by the outer core, and the probe will gradually disintegrate. The entire process is even environmentally sound.”
The projection put Artemis’s words into pictures.
“How come the iron doesn’t un-melt?” asked Mulch.
Artemis raised a long thin eyebrow. “Un-melt? The orebody’s sheer size stops it from solidifying.”
Holly stood, stepping into the projection itself and studying the orebody. “Foaly must know all about this. Humans couldn’t keep something so big a secret.”
“Indeed,” said Artemis, opening a second holographic projection. “I ran a search on the onboard database and found this: Foaly ran several computer simulations over eighty years ago. He concluded that the best way to deal with the threat was to simply broadcast misinformation to whatever probe was being sent down. As far as the humans were concerned, their probe would simply sink through a couple hundred miles of various low-grade ore, and then the orebody would solidify. A resounding and very expensive failure.”
The computer simulation showed the information being broadcasted from Haven to the metal-encased probe. Aboveground, cartoon human scientists scratched their heads and tore up their notes.
“Most amusing,” said Artemis.
Butler was studying the hologram. “I’ve been on enough campaigns to know that there is a big hole in that strategy, Artemis,” he said.
“Yes?”
Butler struggled to his knees and traced the probe’s path with a finger. “Well, what if the probe’s journey brought it into contact with one of the People’s chutes? Once that metal punctures that chute, it’s on an express ride to Haven.”
Artemis was delighted at his bodyguard’s astuteness. “Yes. Of course. Which is why there is a supersonic attack shuttle on standby twenty-four hours a day, to divert the molten mass if the need arises. All human probe projects are monitored, and