“This overhead only seems to include the chamber,” he said. “Is there a separate one for that corridor around it?”
Mesa swept back through the menus and opened another file.
“That’s it,” he said, and Mesa stepped aside. Cavalon hunched over the screen, staring down at it as his mind raced. He pointed to another series of symbols. “What’s this?”
“It is an alloy. Niobium and…”
“Tin?”
“Titanium,” Mesa corrected.
He shook his head. “It’s not a bomb,” he mumbled.
“What?”
“Open the atlas,” he instructed to no one in particular.
Rake pushed off the doorway of the curved corridor and placed the pyramid on the floor in the center of the room. Mesa knelt beside it and swept the medallion across the peak. The menus sprang to life. Cavalon stepped through the screens, then found the stack of yellow schematics and opened them.
He surveyed the information again, crossing back over to look at the terminal a few times to compare.
“This is not a bomb,” he said finally. “It’s a reaction like a hydrogen bomb, but not. It’s for this.”
“For what?” Rake asked.
“This.” Cavalon pointed to the dark glass window. “It’s a generator.”
Mesa’s skeptical look was apparent even through her visor. “So, this is simply a fusion reactor?”
“Yes, but no.”
“Well, which is it, doc?” Griffith said.
“Sorry.” Cavalon took a breath, willing his jumbled mind to calm down and organize the information in a way he could relate to the others. Or at least to Mesa. “Not a normal fusion reactor. I mean, it’s just a big empty sphere. It isn’t even toroidal—and I don’t see any systems for plasma injection.”
“Then how does it function?” Mesa asked.
“It uses this.” He led Mesa back to the terminal, pointing to the circular corridor schematics. “This is not just a containment chamber. Well, it is, it’s dual-purpose.”
“And its additional purpose?”
“I think it’s a grav generator. These coil windings? They’re niobium-titanium.”
“A component of superconducting magnets.”
“Right,” Cavalon said. “If it works the way I think it does, it’d be incredibly powerful. I’m surprised this thing doesn’t suck the whole complex into it when it’s on. Counteracting it must be part of the shell’s design.”
“What precisely is it you believe this gravity generator does?” Mesa asked.
“I think instead of plasma and an electrical charge and maintaining a magnetic field and all that crap, it just … takes a shit-ton of hydrogen and forces it to collapse. Then sits back and lets nature do its thing.”
Mesa scoffed. “Cavalon, you are describing how a star is made.”
“I know.”
“It requires prodigious amounts of mass collapsing for millions of years for a star to be born.”
“I know.”
“Even if it were possible,” she continued, “it could not be contained inside a structure. The heat and radiation generated would be astounding.”
He nodded. “I know. But I swear, that’s what’s going on here.”
Rake cleared her throat. “Okay, regardless of how, what about why? What’s all this power for?”