Nora listened, becoming increasingly spellbound.
“The bottom line is this: Even though we know element 126 can theoretically exist, we can’t make it. It’s too difficult. We don’t have an accelerator with enough energy, and we don’t have the right ingredients. It is technologically beyond human science.”
He paused. “But here it is. It looks like someone was able to make it. My question to you, Nora, is: Who?”
Nora hesitated. “Aliens,” she said, half-jokingly.
He gazed at her a long time, and then smiled, his dimples appearing. “You said it, not me.”
Nora tried to absorb this. In combination with the microtektites they’d discovered, this appeared to leave little room for doubt: this was indeed the crash site of an advanced, extraterrestrial ship.
She found herself breathing hard, her heart accelerating. Little room for doubt—and yet she realized she was clinging to that doubt with something like desperation. A part of her, she now understood, was simply not ready to accept a conclusion—however obvious—that would alter her perception of the world so significantly.
Her storm of confusion wasn’t due to this discovery alone: it was, in part, because of the closeness of Tappan’s physical presence. The intensification of her heartbeat, the tingling feeling in her limbs, the scent of his excitement—these were things she hadn’t felt in a long time.
But Tappan seemed oblivious—he was too intoxicated with the discovery, it seemed, to think of anything else.
She took a deep breath and stepped back.
“And there’s something else,” Tappan said. “Even more important. That yttrium-palladium-hydron compound I mentioned earlier? It’s almost a room-temperature superconductor.”
“That’s not possible.”
“Then you know what I’m getting at! Something that conducts electricity at room temperature without resistance: we’ve been trying to make such a material for fifty years. It would revolutionize everything from computing to energy transmission. But in this compound, element 126 is substituted for palladium, and it appears to be a room-temperature superconductor: the holy grail of materials science.”
He stepped forward and gripped her shoulders. “Nora, this nails it. This is the proof we’ve been looking for. This is an alloy that could only have been engineered by a technology far more advanced than ours. Alien technology.”
As his hands gently held her, she tried to keep focus. Extraordinary conclusions, she tried to tell herself, required extraordinary evidence—and there was always a danger when people wanted very badly to believe something.
He embraced her shoulders for a while as silence fell. Then he dropped his hands. “Nora, you’re not saying anything. What do you think?”
“I’m…” She halted.
His glowing face and shining gray eyes, so close to hers, were becoming increasingly distracting. “I’m impressed,” she finally said weakly.
He laughed. “Impressed? That’s all?”
“Give me a chance to process it.”
“Of course, of course! God, I must sound like a fanatic.” He waved it all away with a sweep of his hand. “But you do realize what this means, right?”
She fell silent.
“You’re a natural skeptic. I get it. But as I said, we ran five independent tests on five samples. All came up with that same superheavy elemental line, way out there alone on the m/z axis.”
“Which layers did the samples come from?” Nora finally asked.
“The beginning of the trench, where the object first struck the ground at high velocity. Whatever plowed into the sand shed that substance.”
A silence fell as Tappan began gathering up the charts. “I’m going to lock these in my safe. I’d like to keep this under wraps for now.”
“Wait. You’re not going to tell the group?” Nora asked.
His smile went away. “Not yet.”
“Why?”
Now the smile returned. “Because, Nora, I hope to win you over first! You’re the skeptic I want to convert.” Suddenly, he looked at his watch. “Good God, it’s long past my martini hour. Would you care to join me? This calls for a celebration.”
Nora felt herself blush at the invitation—even if it was harmless—because the thoughts that unexpectedly came into her own head were not quite so innocent. She hoped it wasn’t obvious. “No thanks, it’s been a long day.”
“Of course, of course. A ‘maybe’ is fine for now. But I’m going to get you to yes before long—I promise.”