Timeline - Michael Crichton [58]
“We’re going down a thousand feet,” Gordon said. “Be patient.”
:
The elevator stopped and the doors opened. They walked down a long concrete tunnel, their footsteps echoing. Gordon said, “This is the control and maintenance level. The actual machines are another five hundred feet below us.”
They came to a pair of heavy doors that were dark blue and transparent. At first, Marek thought they were made of extremely thick glass. But as the doors slid open on a motorized track, he saw slight movement beneath the surface. “Water,” Gordon said. “We use a lot of water shielding here. Quantum technology is very sensitive to random outside influences—cosmic rays, spurious electronic fields, all of that. That’s why we’re down here in the first place.”
Up ahead, they saw what appeared to be the doors to an ordinary laboratory hallway. Passing through another set of glass doors, they entered a hallway painted antiseptic white, with doors opening off on either side. The first door on the left said PREPACK. The second, FIELD PREP. And further down the hallway, they saw a sign marked simply TRANSIT.
Gordon rubbed his hands together. He said, “Let’s get right to the packing.”
:
The room was small and reminded Marek of a hospital laboratory; it made him uneasy. In the center of the room stood a vertical tube, about seven feet high and five feet in diameter. It was hinged open. Inside were dull strips. Marek said, “A suntanning machine?”
“Actually, it’s an advanced resonance imager. Basically it’s a high-powered MRI. But you’ll find it’s good practice for the machine itself. Perhaps you should go first, Dr. Marek.”
“Go in there?” Marek pointed to the tube. Seen up close, it looked more like a white coffin.
“Just remove your clothes and step inside. It’s exactly like an MRI—you won’t feel anything at all. The entire process takes about a minute. We’ll be next door.”
They went through a side door with a small window, into another room. Marek couldn’t see what was in there. The door clanged shut.
He saw a chair in the corner. He went over and took his clothes off, then walked into the scanner. There was the click of an intercom and he heard Gordon say, “Dr. Marek, if you will look at your feet.”
Marek looked down at his feet.
“You see the circle on the floor? Please make sure your feet are entirely within that circle.” Marek shifted his position. “Thank you, that’s fine. The door will close now.”
With a mechanical hum, the hinged door swung shut. Marek heard a hiss as it sealed. He said, “Airtight?”
“Yes, it has to be. You may feel some cold air coming in now. We’ll give you added oxygen while we calibrate. You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”
“I wasn’t, until now.” Marek was looking around at the interior. The dull strips, he now saw, were plastic-covered openings. Behind the plastic he saw lights, small whirring machines. The air became noticeably cooler.
“We’re calibrating now,” Gordon said. “Try not to move.”
Suddenly, the individual strips around him began to rotate, the machines clicking. The strips spun faster and faster, then suddenly jerked to a stop.
“That’s good. Feel all right?”
“It’s like being inside a pepper mill,” Marek said.
Gordon laughed. “Calibration is completed. The rest is dependent on exact timing, so the sequence is automatic. Just follow the instructions as you hear them. Okay?”
“Okay.”
A click. Marek was alone.
A recorded voice said, “The scan sequence has begun. We are turning on lasers. Look straight ahead. And do not look up.”
Instantly, the interior of the tube was a bright, glowing blue. The air itself seemed to be glowing.
“Lasers are polarizing the xenon gas, which is now being pumped into the compartment. Five seconds.”
Marek thought, Xenon gas?
The bright blue color all around him increased in intensity. He looked down at his hand and could hardly see it for the shimmering air.
“We have reached xenon concentration. Now we will ask you to take a deep breath.”
Marek thought, Take a deep breath? Of xenon?
“Hold your position without moving for thirty seconds. Ready?