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another, till all twelve were glowing, each one holding a scene of dull-finished and massive
installations.
Monitor # 1 showed an endlessly long underground tunnel painted eggshell white. Talbot
had spent much of his two-month wait reading; he recognized the tunnel as a view down the
“straightaway” of the main ring. Gigantic bending magnets in their shock-proof concrete cradles
glowed faintly in the dim light of the tunnel.
Monitor #2 showed the linac tunnel.
Monitor #3 showed the rectifier stack of the Cockroft-Walton preaccelerator.
Monitor #4 was a view of the booster. Monitor #5 showed the interior of the transfer hall.
Monitors #6 through #9 revealed three experimental target areas and, smaller in scope and size, an
internal target area supporting the meson, neutrino and proton areas.
The remaining three monitors showed research areas in the underground lab complex, the
final one of which was the main hall itself, where Talbot stood looking into twelve monitors, in the
twelfth screen of which could be seen Talbot standing looking into twelve...
Victor turned off the sets.
“What did you see?”
All Talbot could think of was the old woman called Nadja. It couldn’t be. “Larry! What did
you see?”
“From what I could see,” Talbot said, “that looked to be a particle accelerator. And it looked
as big as CERN’S proton synchrotron in Geneva. “
Victor was impressed. “You’ve been doing some reading.”
“It behooved me.”
“Well, well. Let’s see if I can impress you. CERN’S accelerator reaches energies up to 33
BeV; the ring underneath this room reaches energies of 15 GeV.”
“Giga meaning trillion. “
“You have been reading up, haven’t you! Fifteen trillion electron volts. There’s simply no
keeping secrets from you, is there, Larry?”
“Only one.”
Victor waited expectantly.
“Can you do it?”
“Yes. Meteorology says the eye is almost passing over us. We’ll have better than an hour,
more than enough time for the dangerous parts of the experiment. “
“But you can do it.”
“Yes, Larry. I don’t like having to say it twice.” There was no hesitancy in his voice, none of
the “yes but” equivocations he’d always heard before. Victor had found the trail.
“I’m sorry, Victor. Anxiety. But if we’re ready, why do I have to go through an
indoctrination?”
Victor grinned wryly and began reciting, “ As your Wizard, I am about to embark on a
hazardous and technically unexplainable journey to the upper stratosphere. To confer, converse, and
otherwise hobnob with my fellow wizards.”
Talbot threw up his hands. “No more.”
“Okay, then. Pay attention. If I didn’t have to, I wouldn’t; believe me, nothing is more boring
than listening to the sound of my own lectures. But your mite has to have all the data you have. So
listen. Now comes the boring--but incredibly informative--explanation.”
Western Europe’s CERN--Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire--had settled on
Geneva as the site for their Big Machine. Holland lost out on the rich plum because it was common
knowledge the food was lousy in the Lowlands. A small matter, but a significant one.
The Eastern Bloc’s CEERN--Conseil de l’Europe de l’Est pour la Recherche Nucléaire--had
